Hope I Didn't Catch Anything

At the Carl Zimmer talk on the Evolution of Disease as part of the Biodiversity Museum's Darwin celebrations, I saw my neighbour who apparently works for them. The only thing she ever said to me was please move my tree. The Geology curator I'm working for displayed some fossils. I met David Ng who runs Science Creative Quarterly in which I'd published my Nemo story. I found out H1N1 describes the surface of the virus responsible, it did come from pigs after having sex with bird and human variations. Another case against factories of chickens and pigs.

A Two-Storey story

I was sitting on the bus and two relatively young women who I took to be native (I don't know if that is relevant or not) were chatting. At one of the bus stops one of them pointed at the building and said, "See that building? That's where I fell out of the second storey when I was three. I made a crack in the sidewalk. I guess they've patched it pber by now. Jason was looking out at me. It was all in slow motion. I hit my head. I remember it like it was yesterday."

Doubt

They set up the protagonists beautifully from the outset. The priest Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a sermon on doubt as the head nun Meryl Streep slaps dozing kids into shape. The church is the context, but it deals with judgement and belief, mixed in with sexuality, gender and power, perspective and race. Her righteous certainty appalled me. It reminded me of my realizing that the reason for all the data in science is to convince others of an idea because it is so easy to fool yourself. Back and forth I shifted in who I believed. And still I wonder.

Community Theatre

We took out-of-town friends and their two boys to see a show called Little (Famous & Beautiful) Red Riding Hood. This one-time live performance featuring adult actors and children who had taken performance lessons with this organization was a fun, slapstick, mash-up of fairy tales and humour for different ages. They also incorporated video of the actors in local settings (sponsors), e.g. Jack getting a bandaid at the drug store after breaking his crown. Yesterday, I saw a guy in lederhosen followed by a cameraman on the street. Now I know it was Hansel in distress.

Evolution of Memes

Interesting to see how the Nature of Things presented Darwin's development of the Origin of Species with the importance of his connections to Hooker and Huxley in spreading the idea. It resonates with this book I'm reading on creativity and the importance of being recognized in your domain in an active field like art in the Renaissance. Also like the Tipping Point and the importance of influencing key people. I've been wondering about how memes like democracy and voting rights change. I'm wondering if they share underlying processes that could be applied to sustainability and atheism.

Nova program on Homo erectus

Interesting to think of sweaty protohumans hunting on the savannah at mid day to run down their prey which overheat. Intriguing example of the skull of an elder with no teeth impling a social network of caring for others. And the importance of gathering around a fire to cook food as central to social development. I wonder if the thing about families eating together as a key predictor for subsequent success in life among the children has to do with some primitive wiring for optimal conditions. Maybe I should run and cook more to get in touch with my roots.

Benjamin Button

It's hard to recognize Cate Blanchette and Brad Pitt initially. I kept wondering the significance of the idea of someone born old and then growing younger. I think I heard a joke about that once. Apparently based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, but some elements have obviously been added to shift the time. I felt far more emotional in response to parenting scenes than the romantic bits. Brad Pitt's character is intriguing for his physical transformation, but I found his characterization a bit flat. Maybe like Forrest Gump, it seems more about the circumstances of life.