Category Archives: Muddled Musings

The Species of Origins

 

I can barely microwave a Pop Tart. Yet Anthony Bourdain’s suicide this weekend really threw me for a loop.

Not for my love of food, obviously. But I discovered him during a hospital stay a couple years ago in which the TV remote control broke. One afternoon, I was force-fed  his Parts Unknown series on CNN. Then I watched another. And another. By the end of the stay, I had watched him criss-cross the world in a sort of international potluck dinner prep.

Like I said, boiling water and I are not on speaking terms. But his show, I later discovered, was never really about food. If anything, it was about journalism: meeting strangers, collecting anecdotal histories, asking open questions. Like the comedians of late-night TV, who have used parody to become the nation’s most influential political reporters, Bourdain connected with us by using food as verbs, spices as nouns, sauces as adjectives.

My fandom was confirmed with a tiny bit of research on him, when I discovered he was the son of a New York Times copy editor and routinely wandered newsroom halls. It cemented when I saw an interview in which he waxed philosophical that most of our introductions to new cultures are through the taste bud. More importantly, he said, we seal our relationships over meals, where anecdotes flow like wine. That’s Journalism 101.

Now he’s gone. Like Kate Spade, Robin Williams, Chris Cornell and endlessly on. And these were people at the top of humanity’s evolutionary chain: rich, creative, free to travel and purchase much of the world. It’s enough to draw you to an unnerving realization: We have over-evolved.

While Charles Darwin has no chapter on overevolution in his seminal book on natural selection, he has plenty on underevoltion, instances when a species could not adapt quickly enough to changes in their environment and perished. Roughly 99.5% of every species that ever existed on this planet have joined the cloud circuit, scientists estimate.

But if there are so many examples on that extreme of the continuum, what about the other? The Humane Society estimates an overpopulation of dozens of creatures, from Australia’s kangaroo baby boom to England’s badger surplus to Central America’s coyote explosion to Africa’s python epidemic. America is overrun by white-tailed deer.

And, of course, there’s us, 7.62 billion strong and growing, making us the world leader in overevolution.

Consider our other symptoms of evolving a bridge too far:

  • Karauli Suicide There are about 16,000 homicides a year in the U.S. But there are 40,000 annual suicides, a number that has increased 30% since 1999. When a species is three times more likely to kill itself than other members of the species, it’s overevolved.
  • Brain size We’ve gotten too smart for our own good. Our brains have evolved into such large organs that, without medical advancements, more than 20% of the world’s births would end in maternal or infant mortality. When a noggin is a deadly threat during childbirth, it’s overevolved.
  • Host threat When a species is capable of ending all life on its host planet, it’s overevolved.
  • Oxygen bars

I know Darwin died in 1882, but maybe the president could ask him to revise the book. After all, Trump keeps in contact with Frederick Douglass.

And now, less combustible factslaps:

  • About 20% of the world’s tech founders are immigrants, even though immigrants only make up about 4 percent of the world’s population.
  • Richard Nixon was an accomplished musician who could play the piano, accordion, violin, saxophone and clarinet.
  • The Moon gets hit by over 6,000 pounds of meteor material per day.
  • A study found that orcas can learn to speak dolphin.
  • Canada’s national parks are free for children.
  • Researchers have found that muscle soreness after a workout doesn’t necessarily mean you’re growing more muscle.
  • Vicodin’s name is based on it being approximately six (VI in roman numerals) times stronger than codeine.
  • In 1494, Michelangelo, at the age of 19, was commissioned by the ruler of Florence to sculpt a snowman in his mansion’s courtyard.

    Piero de Medici ordered Michelangelo to build a snowman.

    And finally, a neighborly word from Mr. Rogers, who gave the U.S. Senate its most elegant description of what should be mankind’s evolutionary plateau, and would have been such a beautiful message for Tony Bordain to have taken within:

 

 

 

Sorry Seems to Be the Easiest Word

 

I don’t like watching unrecorded television, probably because I have no dominion over it.

Live sports are maddening: My favorite teams have the audacity to err, lose a game even. And studies have shown that listening to the “Keyes on Van Nuys” jingle repeatedly will cause human ears to bleed and, eventually, fall off. That’s just science.

Same with any show that isn’t called Breaking Bad or Fargo. I’d rather record a late-night airing, even if I’m awake for it, to avoid sales pitches for hemorrhoid creams and personal injury attorneys.

But this week, I was drawn to the unadulterated boob tube by a much-publicized game for which I cared little. And I was glad I did.

Not for the game, which was putrid. But the ads were fascinating. In the span of two prime time hours, three companies ran advertisements with movie-quality production values, which is nothing new. But this is: The ads collectively said one thing: ‘I’m sorry.’

First came Uber’s, which apologized for its reputation of misogyny and driver/rider mistreatment:

Then came Facebook, which apologized for giving out personal data to anyone with a checkbook:

Finally, there was Wells Fargo, which apologized for creating bogus customer accounts — and the requisite account fees:

https://youtu.be/1rrivHxCeeY

Whether the ads are effective remain unclear. But on a corporate scale, the mea culpa marketing strategy is in full bloom. A cursory check of commercials of other  corporations reveal a similar tack. Here was Domino’s apology for making pizza that tastes like a cereal box:

General Motors asked forgiveness for all the taxpayer bailout money it needed to stay afloat:

And, not to be out-humbled, Toyota said ‘my bad’ for a string of recent recalls:

The strategy seems risky but well-defined in purpose: to make corporate America appear more humanoid. The Supreme Court has ruled that businesses have much the same rights as American citizens. But the court didn’t require them to have manners.

So corporations are putting on their best human airs. How many times have we seen a commercial with the subtext “Real people, not actors?” As if a) actors are not people; and b) real people are less likely to lie to you.

Only time will tell if the public will forgive. But an informal poll of friends suggests skepticism is a hard wall to bring down once it’s erected. Do you believe a deceiver who tells you, ‘This time, for real?’ We hear your apologies, corporate America. And we apologize for being so suspicious of ulterior motives. We’ll do better next time.

Promise.

 

 

 

 

The Royal Fuss

 

For a relatively slow news week, it’s been fascinating to see networks juggle the  dominant stories of the weekend: the royal wedding and the Texas high school shooting.

Headlines crawl and split screens shrug as the networks seem to juggle their own conscious. CNN appears particularly torn. It had a thoughtful piece on a public beleaguered by grim news — followed by live reports and video feeds from across the pond. Did we just witness a massive rationalization?

Let’s stick with a few non-agenda facts:

  • Lin Ching Lan is a deaf Taiwanese professional dancer and choreographer who feels the vibrations of music through wooden floors.
  • King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was shocked when Queen Elizabeth II drove him around her estate, since women couldn’t drive in his country.
  • Catholics in Nicaragua, who observe Lent by abstaining from meat, make meals of armadillo or iguana instead. 
  • Self-driving cars play Grand Theft Auto to learn how to drive better.
  • The record for the most Wimbledon titles is held by Professor Bernard Neal: he was croquet champion 38 times.
  • A cat has been the mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska for 15 years.
  • More than four tons of old U.S. paper money is mulched into compost every day.