Pause to Wonder

The survey found that many people engage in very poor dental habits, with a significant number admitting to using every day items such as hammers, screwdrivers, scissors and lollipop sticks to pick food from between their teeth - risking cuts and infection.

More than a quarter (27%) of respondants said they had opened a bottle with their teeth.

More than one in ten (13%) of respondants admitted to flossing their teeth while driving.

Dr Carter said: “People are putting themselves at risk with these shocking habits… [full article]

Here’s a bit of recorded music time travel for you: mp3s, CDs, cassettes, 8-tracks, LPs, reel-to-reel, wire recordings, 78s, one-sided records, cylinder recordings. The latter were the standard from approx. the 1880’s to 1929. Here’s a fabulous site with over 8,000 recordings that you can listen to! To get you started, here’s a favorite of mine: Yes, we have no bananas!

 Did You Know?

Concert cylinders sold for around $5US in 1898, about $110US in 2005 dollars.

And you think CDs are a rip off!

[from the CPDP website]

When the Buddhas of Bamiyan were carved out of the mountainside, the Roman Empire still held sway.

They towered over a rich valley in what is now central Afghanistan, where caravans of traders would stop and rest on the Silk Road as they transported goods between east and west.For centuries the two huge statues stood guard over Bamiyan. But in 2001, just months before they were forced from power, the Taleban dynamited what they considered un-Islamic representations of the human form.

Today all that remains are the recesses where they stood, and the labyrinth of fragile caves surrounding them…

Inside those caves the steep, narrow steps are crumbling, there are cracks in the mud tunnels carved into the mountainside, and still visible high in the echoing chambers are pieces of Buddhist iconic art which are now thought to be the oldest oil paintings in the world.

Read the full article here. (Don’t miss the video at the beginning!)

Why, oh why, is that Canada only makes international news with bizarro stories?

Our serial killers are… pig farmers, which is grisly yet efficient (if you don’t know, you don’t want to), albeit not very glamorous. Our departing prime ministers try to sell off the furnishings of the government-owned official residence.

… an attempt by the Mulroneys in 1993 to sell the furniture, decorations and drapery they had accumulated at 24 Sussex Drive … for about $150,000. [more Mulroney corruption here]

We also harbour “rogue elves” that impersonate Santa and write shocking letters to small children in his name.

Each Santa letter Canada Post delivers contains the same main message with a hand-written personal postscript.

[2-year-old child recipient] Maya’s personal “P.S.” said: “This letter is too long, you dumb s - - t. [full article]

And now the latest — just in case you were thinking of flying Air Canada:

… the co-pilot was carried into the cabin with his hands and ankles cuffed after he was restrained by cabin crew and a passenger.
…
“He was very, very distraught. He was yelling loudly,” Finucane told Canadian broadcaster CBC. “His voice was clear, he didn’t sound like he was drunk or anything, but he was swearing and asking for God. He specifically said he wants to talk to God.” [full article]

I read a few different articles and it sounds like the Air Canada co-pilot removed his shoes and was running about the airplane screaming. Not good for nervous fliers.

Why is it that small children and the insane love taking their shoes off?

A group of Czech artists who inserted a nuclear explosion into a national weather broadcast have been told by a prosecutor they could be sent to jail. [see video, read BBC article…]

I have to admit, my first reaction was laughter. Lots. It reminded me of Orson Well’s little stunt.

Then, I started thinking. What a cynic I’ve become! It never even occurred to me that people would see the footage and think it was real. Guess I’ve seen too many movies, used Photoshop too often — and I never watch television, so I’m not used to reality feeds. I am as skeptical of images as I am of what I read in the paper.

It’s a given that you don’t just accept and believe whatever you hear or read, whether it be in the media, the local pub or what one co-worker says about another. You look at alternate sources, you ask around, you keep in mind likely biases, you think about it.

So why doesn’t this automatically apply to images? More precisely: to photographs and video? We don’t look at a cartoon and think: “Oh my god, that chicken knows how to drive a car and I can see what he’s saying!” I think it’s safe to say that most people in most cultures don’t confuse reality with depictions of reality.

So why is photography (and by extension, video) different? I guess, because it’s new (150-odd years) compared to drawing, sculpting, painting, etc. which we’ve been doing for eons. And perhaps also because it seems scientific due to the more or less mysterious mechanical/chemical processes involved.

But from the very beginning of photography, people were making adjustments. Why, then, are we still so quick to believe photos? Why does it seem disappointing and even disturbing not to be able to believe images? Perhaps because there’s no obvious filter between us and the realness of the image: no brush strokes in the paint, no pencil lines on the paper, chisel marks in the marble — photos just look so damn real. Like what we see with our own eyes. And if you can’t believe your own eyes… what can you trust, what can you believe? What links us to reality?

This reminds me of an essay by Montaigne on the importance of truth between people: “we have no other bond with one another but our word”.

P.S. The Montaigne link just above is an episode from a television series done for BBC 4 by Alain de Botton, who is one of my favorite authors. I discovered it utterly by chance when looking for a good Montaigne link. I’ve never seen any of the episodes before, so this is a gift from the gods as it’s not available on DVD (yet?). Enjoy!! To support the man, and for a wonderful book, pick up his “Consolations of Philosophy” or any of his others, they’re all extremely good.