Why do...

This might be the first truly drifting post. 


First, I apologize for jinxing us in my previous post about perfect weather to walk to work. The death clouds and rain are going to end soon, I promise hope. Or maybe, I should say this will never end, if the mentality is the same, for it to stop immediately? 


Secondly, school is out for the summer, which has left my brain with much more drifting time than usual and much fewer people with whom to discuss said driftings. My classmates and I are usually curious about  the same things (often because we've read the same article and are having similar, or entirely opposing, thoughts). Being the person that I am, there will probably come to be a theme, eventually, to the these driftings, and incidentally blog posts, along the lines of public health/women/children/disparity/sex/human rights/baking/running/yoga/you get the idea.


So, I began to wonder about different things with my friend, Google, and simply wrote the words, "Why do..." which Google tried to automatically complete with what people most typically search for when they start with those words. The top three results, in order were:


Why do men cheat?
Why do cats purr?
Why do we dream?


Wow.


I'm not going to touch the first one. I didn't look at the results, so I really don't know. I don't think Google has that answer either. There are obviously a whole slew of reasons, and I don't want this blog to become a place where genders are polarized or stereotypes are reinforced. But the image of someone Googling that is a far cry from someone curious about cats and dreams. That was a little sad.

BUT like the first question, there are apparently many possible reasons that cats purr and for our dreams.  If you don't want to click on the links, cats purr to self-soothe, communicate with young, during social contact with owners, recover from an injury and improve bone density. Our first cat, who purred so loud that hearing the TV was difficult, must have had really dense bones. This is pretty cool all by itself but even moreso since their purring can be further researched for possible cures for bone loss, or prevention of the loss in the first place. In terms of humans, Freud says we dream because our unconscious mind is unleashing its desires, thoughts, and motivations, but others say we dream as a response to signals within our brain during REM sleep... really as it turns out there are lots of theories on this.

I think there are two conclusions to be drawn from this short visit with Google:

1. Way too many people are unfaithful (or suspected to be) in relationships. Ouch.

2. I am really curious. But seriously, it's pretty awesome how little we know about pretty much everything.

Hopefully you have enjoyed these newfound facts and rather pointless rambling :-)