Planet Earth

Please note: this is not a 2008 wrap-up post. There are enough of those out there that you might find worth reading.

Since Tuesday morning, I’ve been working my way through the BBC’s Planet Earth DVD set, on loan to me from a friend. The footage is extraordinary–specifically-designed cameras can capture groups of animals from 1km away, leaving them completely undisturbed. The narrator, the incomparable Sir David Attenborough, takes you from one end of the planet to the other in each episode, following a theme. Right now, I’m enjoying “Mountains,” but they’re all just about as good as each other. Definitely worth the time to watch these shows.

Watching something like Planet Earth, I’m always reminded of the incredible responsibility we have as human beings. In addition to watching out for each other, we share this planet with so many other living things that are doing what we do, which is to go through the procedures of eating, sleeping, and passing along their DNA to the next generation. This is the purpose of life, and the incredible diversity of life here on Earth makes the living mechanism that is our planet a more complex machine than one would think possible.

There are baboons in Ethiopia that are unique among primates for being able to live solely on grass. They live on the side of the mountain, using their great strength to scramble up steep inclines away from the Ethiopian wolves that are uniquely adapted to hunt them. Grizzly bears penetrate into boulder-strewn Rocky Mountain highlands to find the hidden roosting places of moths. Every creature has a role to play.

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about the interconnectedness of things a lot in the past few years. I’d be a bad teacher-blogger if I wasn’t concerned with getting my students to take advantage of Web 2.0 at every possible moment, expanding my “personal learning network” and maximizing exposure to the great world classroom that is now opened up to us. But there are smaller connections that I think are actually more important. Which is a greater bond–the potential bond between my students in suburban CT and their colleagues halfway around the world (assuming they have colleagues halfway around the world) or the very real bond with the custodians who clean our classroom and Student Center?

It’s a tough call.  Everyone is interconnected.  The financial crisis we’re in is an obvious demonstration of that fact.  I don’t need to be Thomas Friedman to point out that the current Gaza crisis will, most likely, have effects that will ripple across the entire world.

My favorite new (or at least new to me) blog, Science Teacher, never ceases to amaze me:

When I eat an apple, I eat everything but the stem. Sometimes I eat that, too. I did this even before my sister fell in love with Dave Keeney, who knows apples. Like most folks who know something well, Dave knows lots of things well. Mary Beth believed she would love him until she died, and she did.

In a few years I will chew an apple core from a tree that has a tiny bit of my sister in it. Several hundred apple trees at Keeney Orchard already do. You breathe around apple trees, some of your carbon dioxide bound to get mixed up in the apple blossoms.

Life’s messy that way.

You breathe anywhere and your carbon dioxide is going to mix with that of everyone around you.  I’m not a science teacher, but I have an idea that the nicer a person you are, the better your carbon dioxide is.  Since my 2008 calendar will run out in less than eight hours, I guess it’s time to formally declare my intention to increase the quality of my own carbon dioxide in the next year. I want to be nicer to people–to treat my students with more respect, to find ever-better ways to show my love for my loved ones, to work harder to create good music.

There’s change afoot in the US, if everyone is to be believed.  In less than a month, Barack Obama will take over as President, and it is my sincere hope that he is not a disappointment.  If he does his job right, our national carbon dioxide may start to improve.  He’s certainly got his work cut out for him, and I wish him (and all of us) all the best.

In 2009, I promise to continue my streak of not blindly following any leader or nation without asking the questions that beg to be asked.  I will do my best to keep a positive outlook.  I will try to overcome the urge to complain constantly in favor of actually trying to do something, either to change a negative situation into a positive or to get myself out of that situation.

And I’m going to write.  Erica and I went to see Marley and Me a few days ago, and it was awful.  It was manipulative in all the worst ways, including the complete tearjerking nature of the last thirty or so minutes.  But Owen Wilson’s character did remind me of my younger self, back when I was determined to be a real writer and do it for a living.  I’m rediscovering that dream, and I plan to do whatever I can to make it one step closer to a reality this year.

In the meantime, I hope everyone reading this–if anyone is reading this–has a happy and healthy 2009 full of love, beauty, and peace.  I’ll catch you all on the flip side.

Filed under: Matters Metaphysical & Philosophical, Matters Scientific

Maybe I don’t need to get involved with a realtor after all?

The Urban Pirate Life – Making a Ferry a Home in NYC – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Matters Maritime

My brain on music

I’m totally geeking out on music right now.  I don’t know if it’s because the weather’s been so bad around here recently, or because the first few months of the school year were so intense for me, but I’m finally getting around to deep music immersion now, in the waning days of 2008.  I say “finally” because I feel like I’m back in what was for me, until a few years ago, a near-constant state.  And now that I have less time to devote to reading about, listening to, and creating music, I find that those times when I actually can do all of those things are a little more special.

I’ve been reading Daniel J. Levitin’s excellent This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession for a few weeks now and am about to finish it.  The book, which reads like a very good episode of Radiolab, seeks to explain what music does to the brain and how and why certain people are more musically skilled than others.  I am a bit of a science geek with absolutely no training, and I’ve been completely entranced by this one.

The other thing I’ve been doing a lot of recently is finding out about all the good music I’ve missed for the past year.  Starting with the end-of-the-year  lists on All Songs Considered and three discs of awesomeness from Erik, I’ve started catching up.  Quick notes on some of the year’s more-hyped/lauded releases, as they come to my head:

Portishead Third I so wanted to love this, but I just don’t.  Their sound has changed in the eleven years since their last proper release, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but since Dummy and Portishead were such favorites in my immediate post-college years, I don’t think I can ever fully give this one the love it deserves.  I feel like it’s going to be dated really soon, as opposed to their older albums.

Vampire Weekend s/t I heard the hype, fought the hype, and succumbed to the hype.  I think I’d like them live but want to give most of their fans wedgies.  Also, I still prefer Graceland.

Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes Made of awesome.  I’m glad I got into this one (as well as Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago) when it was cold out.

The Very Best Mixtape Probably my album of the year, unless I decide that The Roots’ Rising Down is actually better.  They’re both worth checking out over and over and over again.

John Legend Evolver Wait, this might be my favorite.

It’s probably because I’ve bought less new music this year than before, but the new ones from Bloc Party and Lyrics Born, both of whose earlier albums are car-stereo mainstays for me, struck me as pretty bad.  Jury’s still out on TV on the Radio and Li’l Wayne.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I don’t follow music as much as I used to–I was, a few years ago, the guy who read Pitchfork every day (and even wrote a review for them before deciding that I really had better things to do).  Levitin writes that

[i]n contemporary society, interest in music peaks during adolescence, further bolstering the sexual-selection aspects of music.  Far more nineteen-year-olds are starting bands and trying to get their hands on new music than are forty-year-olds, even though the forty-year-olds have had more time to develop their musicianship and preferences.  “Music evolved and continues to function as a courtship display, mostly broadcast by young males to attract females,” [cognitive psychologist Geoffrey] Miller argues.

Leaving speculation into my happily-settled-down life aside, this totally makes sense given the conversation I had last night with my friend Brian, who plays with Talking to Walls.  They’ve been playing a lot of shows for high school and college-aged audiences with a good deal of success.  Meanwhile, the two bands I play with, Kovax and the Terryl Lee Band, play for audiences in their mid-20s to mid-30s.  I’m not saying that talent, showmanship, and drive don’t factor into it, but is it possible that we really should be reaching out to younger crowds in order to achieve some sort of artistic/financial success?

There’s a lot more on my mind right now, but this post is getting long.  I’d definitely welcome comments on this one…

Filed under: Matters Musical & Artistic, Matters Scientific

Late December cheer

Santacon vs Canal St, originally uploaded by One Ping Only.

School’s out for almost two weeks, I’m at my parents’ house not celebrating Christmas (we Hebraics have our own traditions), taking advantage of some much-needed downtime to read, watch a couple of movies, and, yes, catch up with my family.

I’m not going to think about the raging problems and controversies in the political, educational, or financial worlds if I can help it. I’m going to try to avoid even thinking about the thick layer of ice that seems to be everywhere I want to park my car. Instead, I’m thinking about speedy get-wells for a couple of important people in my life who are ill, and best wishes for everyone I know.

What are you doing to celebrate the end of the calendar year?

Filed under: Matters Metaphysical & Philosophical

REVIEW: The Duke Spirit’s “Neptune”

I first heard about The Duke Spirit through a friend in England, who told me they were first and foremost a great live band. I then managed to miss them recently, supporting Eagles of Death Metal, at Paradise. Live band they may be, but I only have their new 2nd album Neptune to go on. Having missed my chance, how could I gain access to their energy? As it turned out, it was very simple: Volume.

I guess many bands would sound pretty grating once they passed a certain level of loudness, but for The Duke Spirit, it is pretty much essential. Perhaps this is not a ringing endorsement. When I was first learning about sound engineering, we were told that just boosting the volume of music would only impair our judgment of it’s range and quality. More cynically, I remember one engineer telling me that he just put up the levels of everything before the band first heard it played back, and thus won them over. We’ve all heard about the recent, stupidly loud, Metallica album. How can loud make this band, and yet not make them bad?

I think you can find the answer in a close relative. The Raveonettes are rather like The Duke Spirit in several ways. They are indebted to a lot of music from the 50s and early 60s, particularly on tracks like “The Step and The Walk.” Harmonies and Liela Moss’ main vocals, horns and shrill single strikes on clean guitars all give the band a tinge of something from the past. But The Duke Spirit are certainly not old-fashioned, and this gives us another similarity with The Ravonettes. Both bands add vicious guitars that sound like noise-core stomping all over nursery rhymes. “Neptune’s Spirit” for example opens like an early Wannadies track, a soft voice destroyed by a burst of anger. The Ravonettes take this logic a little further, sitting quite comfortably in static and drone for whole tracks. But the sudden shocks on this album also demand higher and higher volume.

The album does have some delicacy too. Tracks like “Sovereign” are sweet, but somehow also call for the hum of still air after a storm – air that could break into deafening distortion without warning. So I feel rather like I’ve danced (!) in a crowd once I get through listening to this album at a suitable volume, and we have all sweated pounds and burnt ourselves out in the mix. I wish I could have been there, but perhaps then the damage to my ears would have been irrevocable.

Nick Parker writes for Nick Sounds Off and Ryan’s Smashing Life.

Filed under: Matters Musical & Artistic

You should be reading Ta-Nahisi Coates.

His blog is awesome:

Now, nihilism was always at work in The Wire, but at the end, I felt like it just became too much. It felt like a desire to show futility of systems became the author of plot, not character. I thought that the press angle was poorly done–and saying “Yeah well it’s reporters who are objecting” is a weak, ad-hominem defense.

The guy can write about about politics, race, pop culture, the NFL, and whatever else he wants.  Ne never writes too much or goes too far.  And he’s really funny.  We like that.

The comments are often even better.

Filed under: Matters Literary

More on Mumbai

Vikram Chandra, author of Sacred Games, on life imitating art.  Seriously, I heard this on my way to work this morning and, if I hadn’t been stuck in five minutes of traffic pulling into the parking lot, I would’ve just pulled over and listened to the rest of the segment anyway.

Filed under: Matters Literary