There is a famous 13th Century Persian poem that tells the story of an old woman whom upon encountering an eagle on her window sill captures it for she has never seen an eagle before. The old woman looks at the strange bird and finally says ‘what a funny-looking pigeon’! She then proceeds to clip its wings, straighten the beak, and trim its claws in order to change the appearance to suit her own ideas of what a bird should look like. In this Persian poem we have a mirror [...]