Alien Conspiracy at DIA?

Sure, Denver can be bland, but we have our own creepy conspiracies here, too. Or do we?

How's Your News?

I first heard the story of the "How's Your News" team on This American Life, and had to see the DVD. It's a documentary made by a group of mentally and/or physically disabled adults and their caretakers as they travel across the nation in a van, interviewing people they meet along the way. Some can't talk, some can't walk, but all of them are excited about the opportunity to travel and to make their documentary. It's a little uncomfortable to watch, at first, because we've sort of been trained to pity these people, not to watch them, and this could've gone horribly wrong if there was any hint that the "How's Your News" group was being exploited for our entertainment. But the filmakers are obviously great friends with the news crew, and everyone seems to have a great time.

Of course, the reactions of the interviewees are varied and fascinating as well. Some avoid eye contact, some make excuses and sidle by, but most people are open to conversations and a few even join in song with the interviewers. My favorite interviewers were Ronnie Simonsen and Susan Harrington, whose creative questions and enthusiastic singing keep the cross country tour joyful and, frankly, very funny.

March of the Breeders

I didn't see "March of the Penguins" when it first came out; my rate of new-movie viewing has slowed to a crawl as life has grown more complicated. By the time I finally got to see it, it was on the small screen, a pan-and-scan "Network Television Premiere." This took away much of the grandeur of the Antarctic vistas, and left only the grueling facts: these penguins were barely making it, barely holding on in the most unforgiving environment in the world.

At the same time, I've been very much enjoying Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling On Happiness, which quotes study after study exploding the myth that "Having children makes you happy."

So with Gilbert's reality check in my head, and the miserable icy slog of the penguins in front of me, I realized: the one and only thing that makes these penguins' lives so hard is that they have offspring. If, through some miracle, a penguin decided, no thanks, I'll skip it, he or she could just waddle over to the feeding grounds and live there. No seventy-mile marches, no near-starvation. All you can eat, a penguin's garden of Eden.

Of course, penguins can't make that sort of choice, to the best of my knowledge. Can any animal make this choice? Are homo sapiens alone in this respect? Is this one of the few things that makes us special, our ability to choose a life without children? Hmmm.

Sense and Prejudice

Jonah Lehrer over at The Frontal Cortex tells of a new study in the Journal of Marketing, suggesting that foods that we think of as "healthy" don't taste as good, no matter what our senses tell us.

Subjects were given a mango lassi, a yogurt drink, and subjects who were told it was unhealthy liked the drink significantly more than those who were told it was healthy.

Apparently, I've always thought it was unhealthy, 'cause I love the stuff.

The Quiet Earth

What if you woke up one morning and discovered that you were the last person on Earth? That's the idea behind The Quiet Earth, a 1985 New Zealand sci-fi film that has finally come out on DVD. Apparently thought-provoking sci-fi is very difficult to pull off on film, and, at its best, The Quiet Earth does the job beautifully.

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.