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mellotrons and bad science
Tuesday, November 6 2001
When I was a young teen in the early 80s, I was only occasionally interested by the contemporary music of the day (Judas Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Coming" comes to mind). The music that really spoke to me back then was late-60s psychedelica-flavored Brit pop, particularly the Moody Blues. There was something about their flawless integration of the mellotron that grabbed me by the emotional balls. Mind you, I might not have ever found out about the Moody Blues had they not released an album with a few intriguing tunes - particularly "the Voice" - in 1981.
My dusty old vinyl Moody Blues albums (and I have all of them except Question of Balance) are all back in Virginia, so recently I downloaded most of them in crystal-clear MP3 format, using WinMX (my Napster replacement of choice). I've noticed that among certain hardcore MP3 people, there is a tendency to rip entire albums intact as single MP3s. This makes no sense for certain kinds of music, but for Radiohead, the Moody Blues, and other makers of "concept albums," it is very common.
Listening to these songs, some of them for the first time in 12 or 15 years, I realize that the fundamentals of my musical taste haven't really changed all that much. To Our Children's Children Children (1969) is a very strong album, though the excessive "Oh my God, a man is walking on the Moon!" excitement pervading the lyrics hasn't aged as gracefully as the melodies themselves. Similarly, though the anti-Vietnam-War vibe in Seventh Sojourn (1972) can occasionally rise to grating above the mostly-semi-obscure lyrics, I'm still moved when Justin Hayward sings, "So fly, little bird..." These were all thoughts I had when I was a scrawny 15 year old kid (when the music was so personal that it actually embarrassed me), and I still have them upon hearing the music today.
This evening Gretchen and I went down to Seventh Avenue to look at wedding rings for, um, me! (Gretchen plans to wear her grandmother's ring after getting it refinished in Rhodium.) I got a thrill out of how light the Titanium Ring was, and a similar kick out of the heft of the Platinum ring. In the end, as always, I couldn't make up my mind.
For dinner, Gretchen and I split a pumpkin pie. She ate about two thirds of her half and then said she didn't feel well, and I went ahead and ate the rest. There's never too much pumpkin pie for me to finish.
Later on, I was watching CNN (or, as one of Kristen Masson's friends reportedly calls it, "Porno for Patriots") and was exposed to yet another shoddy science report. The one of which I write concerned the relationship between profligate antibiotic use and the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. As we all know, people throughout America are wolfing down Cipro pills like there's no tomorrow, and in the process helping to create a world in which only Cipro-resistant bacteria may thrive. Explaining the process of how bacteria become resistant, the "CNN science commentator" had access to all sorts of fancy graphics and animations, but lacked one essential presentation aid: evolutionary theory. The commentator explained that when bacteria first encounter a drug like Cipro, they have no idea what to do and are killed, but after continual exposure they "learn" what to do and start to become resistant. Here would have been a golden opportunity to expose millions of scientifically-illiterate Americans to Darwinism 101, and the commentator instead chose to spread misinformation. Those bacteria don't "learn" anything. The bacteria who cannot tolerate Cipro do not head off to Cipro University and master a survival program there, they die, leaving behind only a tiny number of survivors. Those who survive are the resistant bacteria.
Perhaps one of the reasons there is so much drug-resistant bacteria in America is the prevailing belief in creationism here. After all, wouldn't a true creationist believe that when God created bacteria, He made them susceptible to various antibiotics and we should therefore be able to use them without restraint?
Just before I went to bed, I learned that Mark Bloomberg had just won the race for New York City Mayor. You can probably imagine how I feel about wealthy people buying their way into office, so I won't bore you with my reaction. By the way, our friend Debra once worked as Mike Bloomberg's nanny back when Bloomberg was still a married Democrat. Reportedly Bloomberg's former wife was a total psycho. Since Debra worked in Bloomberg's lavish Manhattan house for about a year, she ought to have some dirt on the guy.
When I climbed into bed, I told Gretchen the bad political news (ours had been a pro-Green household). Our conversation quickly shifted to the subject of metals used in rings, with me hypothesizing about little-used metals. "Hydrogen behaves like a metal when cooled to a low enough temperature," I observed, "So how about hydrogen rings?" "You're such a nerd!" Gretchen protested. She then used her nerd voice as she spoke the text of a letter in which a nerd complains to a credit card company about the lack of Platinum in his new Platinum card. "Um, I was hoping to melt down said card and fashion a ring from the Platinum, but, um, you can imagine my disappointment upon discovering that the card wasn't made of Platinum at all but had instead..."
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