Oom-Pah-Pah!

I love this song.

Zombie Marathon Theme

Back at BU, I starred in a 16mm film about a Zombie who trains for the Boston Marathon, only to learn that the undead are not allowed in the competition.

I wrote a track for the Zombie's bitter disappointment, but I've since lost it. It wasn't anything particularly intricate (it follows my over-used musical pattern: A - variation on A - B - 2nd variation on A - Ending) but it has always stuck with me.

So I decided to re-write and re-arrange the theme song for your listening pleasure! ...okay, more like my own listening pleasure. I like the midi viola, so poo on naysayers. I'm also pretty happy with the 'second variation on A' Have a listen:

Zombie Marathon Theme (scroll down)

If You Know French, Watch Now!

GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS GO SEE PERSEPOLIS!

I Need Something to Blog About, So I'm Going to Blog About This

Eerily human, eh? Looks straight out of the Uncanny Valley.

On QI, Stephen Fry presented the little factoid that only humans respond to the pointing gesture. Animals, like dogs, just look at the finger and not where you are pointing.

Well, as any dog owner can tell you, this is balderdash. Sophia has mastered this gesture quite well. And just the other night, I caught a program on dog evolution and intelligence in which a researcher came to the 'surprising' conclusion that dogs, unlike chimpanzees, respond to the pointing gesture.

Well, this is balderdash too! Chimpanzees are orders more intelligent than canines. Not only that, but I have seen Bonobos, a close relative of the chimpanzee, use the pointing gesture. I have no doubt that chimps can learn and use it too.

"Learn" is the key word here. If you point to something for a human baby, I'd bet dollars to donuts the baby will either look at your hand or not respond. A baby needs to be trained just like any other moderately intelligent animal.

In the program, it appeared as if the researchers had spent no time trying to teach their chimpanzees to point and understand pointing. Then they used pet dogs that were no doubt already trained by multiple years of human cultural reinforcement.

I'm not an animal behaviorist, but these mistakes seem infantile. And they annoy me.

Quite Interesting

In researching the amazing Stephen Fry, I've uncovered his new, amazing show: Qi

Have a look:

I Am Not A Scientist

And sometimes I wish I was a scientist. Oh well. I'm not ready to give up on the entertainment business just yet.

Anyway, I was hoping a science-minded person (Ryan? Justin?) could help explain genetics to me.

On the one hand, science eradicates the notion of 'race' with genetic data suggesting human populations are equally diverse. In other words, there's as much genetic variation in Asians as there are in Africans, Anglo-Saxons etc. That makes sense to me.

What I find somewhat incongruous, no doubt a result of my ignorance, is the fact that the dissimilarities between peoples - eyelids, noses, skin color - have a genetic basis which can become isolated in gene pools.

Now, my argument against racism usually amounts to "the gene pools are still accessible, and becoming more accessible, so the differences among populations are small and fluid. The use of 'race' as a categorizing technique is therefore ultimately pointless"

But what I'm trying to ask, is how is it that we can declare there is no such thing as a genetically based "race," yet the small differences we can identify between relatively isolated populations have a genetic basis?

What am I missing?