Isn’t it fun when science echoes the movies?

It seems that Agent Smith was right all along:

Over the decades, many theories have been offered to explain what caused the demise of the Neanderthals, ranging from climate change to simple bad luck. In recent years, though, it’s becoming increasingly clear that, as Pääbo put it to me, “Their bad luck was us.” Again and again, the archeological evidence in Europe indicates, once modern humans showed up in a regions where Neanderthals were living, the Neanderthals in that region vanished. Perhaps the Neanderthals were actively pursued, or perhaps they were just outcompeted. The Neanderthals’ “bad luck” is presumably the same misfortune that the hobbits and the Denisovans encountered, and similar to the tragedy suffered by the gian marsupials that once browsed Australia, and the vaied megafauna that used to inhabit North America, and the moas that lived in New Zealand. And it is precisely the same bad luck that has brought so many species — including every one of the great apes — to the edge of oblivion today.
From “Sleeping With the Enemy,” Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, August 15, 2011

Public Theater Preview Party

The Pittsburgh Public Theater has an excellent season coming up — where else will you see Shakespeare, Freud, Sophocles, and Jules Verne all within a season? — and to kick it off they’re having a preview party Thursday, 8/25 (that’s tomorrow) at the theater in downtown Pittsburgh.

Preview Party at The Public
A Happy Hour and Sneak Peek to ignite the Red Hot season

Pittsburgh Public Theater will celebrate its upcoming Red Hot season with a Preview Party on Thursday, August 25 from 6 to 8:30 pm at the O’Reilly Theater in Downtown’s Cultural District.
The doors will open at 6 pm for a happy hour with musical entertainment, munchies, and refreshments (including beer and wine). At 7 pm, Producing Artistic Director Ted Pappas will give an entertaining sneak peek at The Public’s 2011/12 lineup of plays and special events.

In addition, one-night-only discounts will be offered on subscription packages and a raffle will feature valuable prizes, such as season tickets with a year’s worth of pre-show dining ($1000 value), and other great items.

Tickets for the Preview Party at The Public are $10. To purchase, visit the O’Reilly Box Office, call 412.316.1600, or go to ppt.org

 

Two views on boredom

Two opinion pieces that arrive at much the same conclusion through very different routes:

My period of greatest creative output was during my corporate years, when every meeting felt like a play date with coma patients. I would sit in long meetings, pretending to pay attention while writing computer code in my mind and imagining the anatomically inspired nicknames I would assign to my boss after I won the lottery.

Years later, when “Dilbert” was in thousands of newspapers, people often asked me if I ever imagined being so lucky. I usually said no, because that’s the answer people expected. The truth is that I imagined every bit of good fortune that has come my way. But in my imagination I also invented a belt that would allow me to fly and had special permission from Congress to urinate like a bird wherever I wanted. I wake up every morning disappointed that I have to wear pants and walk. Imagination has a way of breeding disappointment.

“The Heady Thrill of Having Nothing To Do,” Scott Adams, The Wall Street Journal, 8/6/2011

 

So perhaps boredom is designed to encourage people to adapt their behavior and to protect them from social toxins, just as its first cousin disgust is designed, biologically speaking, to cause people to adapt their behavior to real physical toxins. Perhaps boredom should be viewed just as gout sometimes is, or angina or even mild strokes — as a sign of worse things to follow unless there’s a change in lifestyle. It’s not for nothing that the great Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov’s beguiling behemoth of boredom, the endearing Ilya Oblomov, perished of a stroke after a long lifetime of ignoring boredom’s siren signals. Boredom, I am saying, may play a salutary, evolutionary role in human life.
“The Thrill of Boredom,” Peter Toohey, The New York Times, 8/6/2011

Clean slate



After the rain, originally uploaded by cynthiacloskey.

A big rainstorm last night washed away the first design. Not all of it — you can faintly see the smiling flower and some of the other elements, and there are smears of chalk under the side handles. It looks like it wil rain throughout the week, so perhaps tomorrow I’ll put up a drawing that’s designed to smear.

If you like funny things, here is what you should do tonight

Promotional photo for Book of Liz
Photo credit: No Name Players

There is just one last showing of a very funny production of Book of Liz in Pittsburgh tonight. The production is by the No Name Players, and it’s at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater on Penn Ave — get tickets online here from Showclix.

I wrote about Book of Liz a few years back, when I was in the Butler Little Theatre production of it. Such a funny, weird, and weirdly sweet play it is, written by David and Amy Sedaris. Here’s how I explained it back then:

The story centers on Sister Elizabeth Donderstock, a member of a Squeamish community. She makes cheese balls (traditional and smoky) that sustain the existence of her entire religious community, Cluster Haven. Sister Donderstock faces personal crises, loses her way, finds it, reconsiders, and confronts questions about her faith and place in the world. It sounds serious, but actually it’s outrageously comical.

I saw a preview of the No Name Players‘ production, and they make the most of every laugh and gag and moment. If you can’t see this show, sign up for their mailing list to hear what bright thing they’ll be presenting next.

Classy trash

Today I learned something about myself. I learned that I am the kind of person who will pay $60 plus tax for a receptacle in which to store my kitchen garbage.

Shiny trash can

I used to stash my trash in a cheap Rubbermaid trashcan under the sink. It was a wonderful solution, until my new cat Max discovered that he could pull open the doors and get in, the better to eat whatever I’d just thrown away. I tried various means of fastening the doors, settling on a couple of elastic hairbands. But he’s a persistent little feline, and he would keep pulling and pulling at the doors and squeezing his head in until he stretched the bands and they no longer worked.

Then I resorted to sealing the doors with duct tape.

Under-sink-trash protection mechanism

This worked well, in that it kept Max out of the trash. But at the same time it didn’t work at all, because it also kept me from putting anything into the trash. I found myself putting trash in plastic grocery store bags and hanging them from a hook at the top of the basement door, because that was much faster than peeling away the duct tape and then reapplying it.

I bought some childproofing things to secure the under-sink area, but I didn’t want to spend time affixing them — I dislike any task that requires drills — and I didn’t think they would be much of an improvement. How long would it take Max to figure out how to unlatch the childproof latches? My guess: one day.

Instead, I bought the shiny chrome trash can. It takes up little space, and it’s actually easier for me to access than the under-sink can was before Max came along. I think of it as snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Or at least, from the jaws of a clever and persistent house cat.

Icky, but very funny

“I don’t fault any one host for throwing a party or any journalist for attending. Many of them are friends. There’s nothing inherently wrong with savoring Johnnie Walker Blue with the politicians we cover.

But the cumulative effect is icky. With the proliferation of A-list parties and the infusion of corporate and lobbyist cash, Washington journalists give Americans the impression we have shed our professional detachment and are aspiring to be like the celebrities and power players we cover.”

— Dana Milbank, “How the journalist prom got out of control”

With that said, I enjoyed both President Obama’s and Seth Meyers’s remarks this year very, very much. Our President has an excellent sense of comic timing.