100th Post
Last night we took our Evolution talk to another venue, a community center in a . . . not exactly a suburb - an exurb? what does that mean? - neighborhood? town on the outer edge of? . . . anyway, a place on the other side of Boston from where I live which has more "diversity", by which I mean black and non-English speaking residents. We're trying to take our lecture series into "the community" and get a wider audience. This is the first year we're doing talks at this venue, and we only had about ten people, but those ten were very inetrested so with luck it will continue to grow exponentially.
The lecture series is, I think (and Boomy thinks), a wonderful opportunity for us lab rats to poke out noses out of our gilded cages and mingle with the regular people. Scientists need to practice putting into words what the hell it is we're actually spending taxpayer money on and why. My talk was not as polished last night as it was on Thursday (though the other Pittsburgher's was better) but I think I made some good analogies in the Q and A. There was a picturesque editor guy with wild curly hair who had brought his tiny old mother from Maine; a dad and adolescent boy; a young guy in a food service type uniform; a middle-aged Hispanic woman; as well as assorted retirees of the Balb-C, Agouti, and BL-6 varieties . . . (this is me classifying humans using strains of lab mice, which I understand might not be amusing to anyone who is not typing this). There were good chats about GM foods, the meaning of "exerting selective pressure", and the cultural-historical significance of creationism. (Thanks to Boomy for her info about the emergence of anti-evolutionism in fundamentalist Islam!)
A very adorable older gentleman, a black guy with a terrific bushy moustache, told me afterwards that I ought to be testifying in Dover which pleased me to no end. I had used him as an example of a trait that could come under selective pressure. ("Say that . . . you . . . you could breathe underwater. Now, that would be really cool, and you'd probably be a great swimmer, but since all of our houses and shops and things are up here in the air, there's not a real advantage to having that ability. But, if global warming continues and Boston is flooded, we're all going to have to run away or drown while you and your descendents will be able to swim around and stay here. That would be a tremendous selective pressure that would favor that trait.)
There were no real dissenters, but then this type of seminar in this city probably selects for the kind of people who are not anti-evolutionists. Or Republicans, even. Still, I think it was informative (we got good responses back) and we illuminated some of the more subtle issues around ID - specifically that it's religiously motivated, it's not asking a scientific question, and there's really no controversy in the realm of science over whether or not the major tenets of evolutionary theory are more or less correct. (Sorry, Ben.)
The community center smelled just like the JCC where I went after school - the same mix of industrial cleaning solution, graham crackers, and basketballs.
I've been loading up my fun new toy, Mister iPod. Listening to music on the bus this morning was emotionally overwhelming, though. One of my favorite Spoon songs was going right from my ears into my nerves like an electrode and the ecstacy of it had me wanting to kiss everyone on the bus, burst into sobs, call all of my old lovers, run around wild . . . Every song that came on kept zapping my amygdala and dislodging memories so that the street was overlaid with image upon image, place upon place, time upon time upon time.
Which is good, because that means I am generally in a good mood. Six months ago I would have been wanting to tear my eyes out and fall into the river from the same songs.
I have no idea how normal or abnormal this is. But music just does that. Smells tap into the lizard brain - music zings right into the lining of the white matter.
I remember my mom saying that after her divorce it was ten years before she could listen to music again regularly. There were just too many emotions that had to stay buried for her to function then.
The lecture series is, I think (and Boomy thinks), a wonderful opportunity for us lab rats to poke out noses out of our gilded cages and mingle with the regular people. Scientists need to practice putting into words what the hell it is we're actually spending taxpayer money on and why. My talk was not as polished last night as it was on Thursday (though the other Pittsburgher's was better) but I think I made some good analogies in the Q and A. There was a picturesque editor guy with wild curly hair who had brought his tiny old mother from Maine; a dad and adolescent boy; a young guy in a food service type uniform; a middle-aged Hispanic woman; as well as assorted retirees of the Balb-C, Agouti, and BL-6 varieties . . . (this is me classifying humans using strains of lab mice, which I understand might not be amusing to anyone who is not typing this). There were good chats about GM foods, the meaning of "exerting selective pressure", and the cultural-historical significance of creationism. (Thanks to Boomy for her info about the emergence of anti-evolutionism in fundamentalist Islam!)
A very adorable older gentleman, a black guy with a terrific bushy moustache, told me afterwards that I ought to be testifying in Dover which pleased me to no end. I had used him as an example of a trait that could come under selective pressure. ("Say that . . . you . . . you could breathe underwater. Now, that would be really cool, and you'd probably be a great swimmer, but since all of our houses and shops and things are up here in the air, there's not a real advantage to having that ability. But, if global warming continues and Boston is flooded, we're all going to have to run away or drown while you and your descendents will be able to swim around and stay here. That would be a tremendous selective pressure that would favor that trait.)
There were no real dissenters, but then this type of seminar in this city probably selects for the kind of people who are not anti-evolutionists. Or Republicans, even. Still, I think it was informative (we got good responses back) and we illuminated some of the more subtle issues around ID - specifically that it's religiously motivated, it's not asking a scientific question, and there's really no controversy in the realm of science over whether or not the major tenets of evolutionary theory are more or less correct. (Sorry, Ben.)
The community center smelled just like the JCC where I went after school - the same mix of industrial cleaning solution, graham crackers, and basketballs.
I've been loading up my fun new toy, Mister iPod. Listening to music on the bus this morning was emotionally overwhelming, though. One of my favorite Spoon songs was going right from my ears into my nerves like an electrode and the ecstacy of it had me wanting to kiss everyone on the bus, burst into sobs, call all of my old lovers, run around wild . . . Every song that came on kept zapping my amygdala and dislodging memories so that the street was overlaid with image upon image, place upon place, time upon time upon time.
Which is good, because that means I am generally in a good mood. Six months ago I would have been wanting to tear my eyes out and fall into the river from the same songs.
I have no idea how normal or abnormal this is. But music just does that. Smells tap into the lizard brain - music zings right into the lining of the white matter.
I remember my mom saying that after her divorce it was ten years before she could listen to music again regularly. There were just too many emotions that had to stay buried for her to function then.
posted by Joolya at
1:15 PM
1 Comments:
I think, also, that music listened to through headphones has much more of the quality you mentioned. Listening through headphones, you keep out other noises, so the music can get right into your brain with little distractions. I actually find headphones troubling for that reason.
PS--another evil subliminal letter verification -- lkkkrgb!
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