Half-Asleep Dolphins

According to Andrea Rock, author of The Mind at Night: The New Science of How and Why We Dream, dolphins only sleep with one half of their brain at a time. Unlike most mammals, dolphins and whales are conscious breathers; they decide when to breathe, so that they can go for long periods without a breath. This means, however, that they can never be completely unconscious.

Bach: Improvisational Genius?

After knowing very little about J.S. Bach, I feel like I learned a great deal last night, when I was fortunate enough to attend a Tafelmusik concert at Ravinia (near Chicago). Here's what I found most interesting: For some of his compositions, Bach wrote nothing more than two chords. Apparently, like a jazz musician, Bach would improvise a riff over those two chords, without ever bother to write down what he'd done. This, of course, can be a bit of a problem for those attempting to perform one of his pieces. For Tafelmusik's performance of the second movement of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 last night, Jeanne Lamon, Music Director and First Violinist, tried her best to do what Bach would've done: she played a breathtaking solo which concluded with the two written chords.

We're so accustomed to recorded music that it's almost difficult to imagine a time when music was created to be played only once and then discarded.

Sharks are older than trees?

Sure, I'd heard that sharks are an ancient animal, predating humans and even dinosaurs. But did you know that sharks were around even before trees? TREES?

According to Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud, Stephen E. Scheckler, and Jobst Wendt, the earliest modern tree, the now-extinct Archaeopteris, lived 360-345 million years ago, in forests where the Sahara desert is now.

Sharks, on the other hand, have been around for 400 million years, and survived four global mass extinctions.

Learned this from The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks. Dang.

Baby's First Blog

Today I'm learning the what, how, and a little of the why of building a blog. As an old-school personal website dude, I've never really understood what the big deal with blogs is. Haven't people always been able to put whatever they want on their websites? What makes blogging new and different and exciting?

And what have I learned? It's easy, for one thing. Easier than HTML, easier than messing about with FTP and buying a domain and all the stuff we had to do back in '95. Are there other advantages? Five minutes in, none that I can see so far. I'll keep you posted.

THIS JUST IN: While spell-checking this post, I learned that Blogger's spell-checker doesn't recognize the words "blog," "blogs," or "blogging." Hmm.