Entries from September 2005 ↓

I’ve always been interested in the concept of evolutionary biology as most often championed by insane atheist Richard Dawkins. I think that many of our instincts, behaviors, and reactions can be explained when viewing the world in terms of evolutionary biology. The basic concept is that there is an environmental need or advantage to most if not all of our common traits as a race.

A few examples, for those of you that aren’t familiar with the field :

Women are attracted to money and power as a result of their need during the hunter gatherer period for a man who could properly care for their children.

Jealousy roots itself in a time where groups of humans were small and women wanted to ensure that their mate would stay with them for the duration of the difficult child rearing process. Men, of course, wanted to be sure that the child they were rearing was in fact populated with their own DNA.

Many aspects of what people consider romantic love are representative of the typical amount of time it takes to raise a child to be relatively self sufficient. 2-3 years is the amount of time in which our brains produce the chemicals that we call love when we see our partner, after that you actually have to like the person without the aid of self-manufactured pleasurable compounds. This is also the amount of time it would take to raise a child to an age of relative self sufficiency.

Now, what I’ve detailed above is obviously a gross oversimplification of the theory in general, but it gives you an idea of where I am coming from when I say that I’m going to start eating like a caveman. I’ve also made sure to carefully make all of the examples related to sex. I do so love my readers. By the way, if you’d like to read more into the subject, Dawkins is tuned mostly to the micro scale, and Matt Riddley is more interested in the social implications of the theory…both writers are easy to read and any of their books would be a nice starting point.

I’ve been thinking about our problem as a nation with obesity for a long time, and recently stumbled into an informational page on the Paleolithic Diet whose main philosophy is that processed and cooked grains were something that our bodies have not yet adjusted to from an evolutionary standpoint. In the hunter gatherer era, our diet consisted purely of lean meat, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Before the discovery of cooking tubers and wheats, those foods were actually toxic to us, so the current reliance on simple sugars as a majority of our diet is an amazingly potent source of calories…and perhaps more than we can really handle.

I believe that changing to a diet focused on lean meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts will not only help me to keep my weight in check, but that it will also serve to make me healthier in general. It will lessen the amount of toxins I take in to my body, and improve my overall well being. So for the next two weeks I’ll be giving up a few things : caffeine, carbonated beverages, dairy (apart from eggs, which were available in short supply during that era) cigarettes, and over the top sugars like desserts. This first two weeks should be the easy part. I’m assuming that like all other things I’ve given up in my life, there will be a fairly annoying physical withdrawal period of roughly two weeks where my body will have to relearn how to handle itself in the absence of the substance I’m currently abstaining from.

I’ve decided that every two weeks from now until Thanksgiving, I’m going to attempt to cut down on a few more items in the same spirit. During the Thanksgiving week and for the week immediately following Thanksgiving, I’ll be on vacation. During this vacation I’ll make the final cut and most likely send my body into a shock. If I had to work, and go through a serious detoxification then I am not sure that I could contain myself…my desires would get the best of me. I may even try a fruit and vegetables cleansing period of a week during this time to flush my body as much as I can before I return.

I suppose that as I’m going through this process I’ll post some of my reactions to the changes and my feelings during the migration, though I may not do it at all. This should be interesting for the sadists in the crowd…I have a feeling that my anguish will bleed through the page.

For more information on the paleolithic diet (this is a bit of a link fest) check out http://www.paleodiet.com/

What is with the special effects in Donnie Darko? I wonder, since the movie is set in 1988, were the effects meant to be true to the technological filmmaking abilities of the era? The “spears” that visually represented man’s ordained path through God’s infallible plan looked seriously crap.

My favorite part of the movie is when Donnie uses the phrase “overwhelming goodness” to describe the Smurf way of life. Also, was it just me, or did everyone wish that the scene backed by the Tears for Fears track Head Over Heals would last forever, or at least the 4:14 duration…why, oh why must these kinds of scenes be cut short? Is our attention span really that short?

Speaking of Tears for Fears and 80s music in general…I wonder how these songs would sound with updated synthesizer patches and production. It seems to me that the 80s as an era in music had such strong emotional songwriters, everything was so twisted and depressing. Somehow, music in the 80s managed to coat this deep sadness and confusion with a beautiful sugary feeling of happiness that reflects man’s true state on this earth. The songs that I like best represent true emotional range encompassing man’s ability to feel great sadness and great joy in a single moment. When I listen to what I consider the best of the music from the 80s I feel like someone is force feeding me the most indescribably delicious ice cream I’ve ever tasted. The catch is, there is glass in it, and it is killing me, but I don’t care.

So I’ve adopted a new mantra : “Never put something off when you can do it right now.” I’ve been repeating this in my head endlessly over the last few days, as I find that my desire to procrastinate manifests itself at least 4 times per hour. I’ve noticed the following interesting results :

1. I am really tired now, after work. It seems as if I can do everything right now(the mantra), and this sucks!

2. I am at least twice as productive in all areas of life now. This can’t be a good thing. I wonder, will people who know me well, or work with me on a daily basis, see me as a normal person who is really upping the ante? Or, and this is the foreboding part, will they see me as someone who has finally gotten their act together and guess on an exact date on which my newfound productivity will finally fail?

3. I have considerably less desire to take part in those things that would serve to reduce my productivity. Is this some kind of sick upward spiral where I will turn into a robot or some kind of giant celestial gear that will not, and cannot, ever stop? My mind wanders from the joys of alchohol and video games when I begin to feel guilty for not taking care of my lawn, or programming my universal remote control, or even working on keeping Lynn entertained with this journal.

Do “good” people ever stop, or have they just become calloused to the slow death that is a constant state of activity.

So now that I’ve got my concern for a newfound way of living and working (note the seperation, as it is indeed relevant) voiced…I’ll recommend some nice jazz albums for those who don’t typically listen to Jazz.

Joshua Redman - Elastic (particularly the tune Jazz Crimes)

Dave Holland Quintet - Prime Directive

The former being a funkalicious tour through a serious and dedicated artist’s classic and not so classic training, and the latter being a most experimentally wonderful expression of five men’s love affair with music theory as seen through a lense colored with deep blue mathematics.

An interesting fact or anecdote regarding both groups :

On Elastic, there is no bassist, the keyboardist plays all of the bass lines. When people start playing piano, they often find that it is difficult to seperate the rhythm and melody to each hand. What Sam Yahel does here is much more difficult and interesting, not so much because he is fluent with melody and rhythm at once, but that he is able to play bass lines on the keyboard and make them feel like they were written and played on a bass guitar. This is something like smoking a salmon to make it taste a whole lot like a rack of lamb.

Regarding Dave Holland, his influence led me to begin playing, and his was the first jazz music that I ever fell in love with. Because he didn’t often tour in the states, I had resigned myself to never really seeing him in a live setting. Imagine my shock, horror, and elation when I found that he’d be coming to my home town…

and playing in a park. Outside. For free.

God DAMN it was windy on that day. They were stacking sandbags around the drum kit to get the cymbal stands to stay up. I was 20 feet from the man (really, men, the entire quintet has my utmost respect) that changed my musical outlook. He was backstage preparing, if you can call preparing standing near a park toilet, smiling about nothing, and at no one. I contemplated talking to him but I felt that it would be pressing him unduly. I regret that decision every day of my life. He was RIGHT THERE.

So, the concert is about to start, and Nathan Tannenbaum of channel 8 (3? i don’t know) news comes wobbling onto the stage in a suit that is obviously two sizes too small to seriously compete with his ridiculous red bowtie. He began thanking people for coming out and bringing their insane children and large pastel balloons when, oh misgiving of misgivings, he mispronounced Dave Holland.

This is for nate : (lack of capitalization intentional you bastard)

How can anyone who fashions themselves a media personality or qualified public speaker mispronounce DAVE HOLLAND. Come on dude, your name is Nathan Tannenbaum! You have to have some kind of sympathy for people getting names wrong…and that bowtie is ridiculous!

After that, the show went off without a hitch, and is one of my more cherished memories.

Back to the point.

I happen to think that anyone who is curious about Jazz will find these two as interesting “jumping off” points. I think I’d be fooling myself to think that anyone would take these recommendations seriously, but if you happen to do so, and would like some more, you can leave a comment for me here. I promise to inundate you with useless trivia, much like the “information” above!