Dr. Metablog

Still Another Occupation Not For Me

So far my list includes taxi-driver, trapeze artist, surgeon, dog-groomer, monk, and hostage. Here's another. 

Last week I had a room on the twelfth floor of a new downtown Brooklyn hotel. From my window I could watch a new skyscraper being assembled. The basic I-beam members were in place and concrete floors and ceilings had been poured. But the structure lacked external walls!!  Where there will be walls sometime it the future, preferably before the building is leased and inhabited, was what looked to be an orange plastic mesh, perhaps reinforced with a thin cable or two. From my vantage point, I could could see right through to the interior of the building. There men on aluminum stilts were spreading on the ceilings something that might have been plaster but was more likely some sort of curing preparation for raw concrete. Let me make this clear: men on stilts were plastering ceilings in rooms that had no exterior walls and where a slip or trip would send them plummeting twelve stories to the hard sidewalk. Frankly, I found it difficult to watch without vivid and horrible imaginings flashing across my vulnerable brain. So without hesitation I can add to the set of occupations in which I would fail ignomiously, stilt-walker in high-rise construction. A terrifying way to make a living, especially for people like me, pre-frightened by heights. 

Joy of Extinctions

I am inordinately fond of mass extinctions. I find them consoling.

The most recent mass extinction, the newly-famous Yucatan-comet-iridium K-T boundary event of 66 million years ago is one of my personal favorites. To recall: a comet six or seven miles in diameter, zooming along at 65,00 miles per hour and therefore generating a good bit of momentum, smacked into what is now the Yucatan peninsula with the force of a heck of a large number of hydrogen bombs. The impact produced a crater that was initially an astonishing 65 miles across and 18 miles deep, triggered massive earthquakes as well as tsunamis half a mile high, and briefly heated the earth's atmosphere to hundreds of degrees. Within minutes, everything as far as Illinois became wasteland. Because of the blanket of smoke and dust, sunlight could not reach the earth, so temperatures plummeted, completely disrupting the world-wide chlorophyll-based food chain. At the same time, downpours of acid rain corrosive enough to dissolve rocks killed everything they touched. A full 80% of the world's animal species disappeared -- along with half of all land plants. 

Although it must have been quite a show, it was not as thorough a disaster as the Permian extinction (252 million years ago) which killed 95% of all living species, but it is, rather, comparable in scope to the Ordovician extinction (444 million years ago), the Devonian (375 million years ago) and the Triassic (201 million years ago). It's no wonder that folks in the know estimate that 99.9% of all the species that have ever existed have disappeared.

The knowledge that there will inevitably be another extinction helps to put our daily woes in perspective. How can I worry about whether the grout should be "Desert Sand" or "Forest Gray" or whether my newest skin thingy is benign or dangerous when our species and the cool green earth itself are doomed. Judgment day is a-coming, whether in the form of another wayfaring comet, or a series of explosive volanoes, or the release of the nitrogen and carbon now sequestered in the permafrost, or some event entirely unpredictable. Something is going to happen, as sure as shooting. Perhaps, some think, it's already happening. 

So that's one benefit of a mass extinction -- it helps you sleep well at night. Why worry about trivialities?

And also: if it weren't for the extinctions, we wouldn't be here at all. If the dinosaurs hadn't been killed by the comet they would most likely have continued to dominate the planet, and the descendants of velociraptors and mosasaurs and thunder-lizards sure as heck weren't going to leave a lot of breathing room for the proto-primates.

Extinctions are one of the many improbable accidents that got us here. Extinctions are jolly. 

Another Myth Debunked

One day, back in the 50s, our neighborhood softball team was hosting a team from some exotic location, such as Bensonhurst, at the PS 217 schoolyard. I think I must have been playing either shortstop or second base, because I had an excellent view of the earthshaking event that I'm about to describe.

It was the case that our guys were often a little less well-outfitted than the opposition because we didn't have enough baseball gloves for the whole team and had to borrow them from the visitors. Jimmy Nolan was playing first base and early in the game, possibly in the first inning, someone on the other team hit a grounder to third and the third baseman made a good on-target throw to first. But Jimmy, who happened to be wearing an official but I suspect borrowed first baseman's glove with a big pocket, reached out for the throw with his right hand (he was a southpaw) but let the ball miss the glove. He then casually caught the ball with his bare left hand which dangled nonchalantly at his knee. I was impressed, as was everyone, and I thought, "that's the way to show these visitors how tough we are -- we don't even need the gloves that we've borrowed." I was proud to be a PS 217 Misfit.

Sixty years later, last week in fact, at a reunion of PS 217 softball players, I asked Spike Cohen if he remembered the play. He did, much to my surprise. "Oh yes," he said, 'and I even remember who threw the ball. It was Marv Lasky, and he had a cannon for an arm." So The Play became even more dramatic and mythical. I thought, wow, I'm not the only one who remembers that catch, which ought to go down in history as one of the great iconic moments in PS 217 schoolyard athletics. And then, since Jimmy himself was present at the reunion, I asked him if he recalled the Great Event. He said he did. So I asked him,"Why did you do that? Why did you let the ball go under the glove?  Why did you catch it with the wrong hand?"  And he answered, "I misjudged the throw. It was a mistake." 

I was deflated, nay crushed. For all these many years, I had been convinced that Jimmy had made that play on purpose to make a statement. But now I know that it was merely an accident. And so another myth comes to be de-mythologized by revisionist historiography.

Next thing you know, they'll try to tell us Babe Ruth didn't point to the right-field bleachers just before hitting that home run. 

"Creating Space"

If you listen to the announcers of the NBA games, basketball players defy the laws and logic of physics. They "create space."

One of the greatest space-creators was Shaquille O. Others merely imitate his technique. His most characteristic play was to drive his massive left shoulder into the chest of the defender, knocking him backwards a couple of feet. When he had gained a sufficient advantage and had room to maneuver, he would flip the ball (awkwardly) toward the basket. HIs defender would as likely as not be charged with a foul while the pre-Newtonian announcers would celebrate him for 'creating space.' And a beautiful game would be transformed into a brutal game. 

And why is LeBron James allowed to create space on his every drive to the basket?  He's gifted enough that he doesn't need the advantage;  but nevertheless, he routinely pushes off with his off hand, often lodging his off-elbow in the chest of the hapless defender.  

I often watch LeBron create space on hdtv where I've precorded the game. I can therefore watch the same play again and again. In doing so I stop time, or run time backwards. He creates space, I stop time.

So two can play at defying Einstein. 

Superhero Perils

I awoke this morning from a semi-nightmare all in a dither about Superman's x-ray vision. Inasmuch as the blue-haired one can see through dense objects (except, if I remember correctly, lead) then it follows as night the day that he cannot help seeing through his own eyelids. Superman must therefore suffer from what the sleep consultants call "poor sleep hygiene." Unable to keep the light out of his own eyes, he must therefore be subject to a degree of insomnia. No wonder he's always powing someone in the jaw -- he's just not getting enough sleep.   

Has anyone else given thought to this important topic?