From the NYTimes.com: A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota
This story is not specifically about meatpacking but a mysterious disease occurring at a meatpacking plant. However, it still makes me a little queasy about going out grab steak for dinner tonight.
From NPR.org: Americans Spending Less Time in Nature
Since the late 1980s, the percentage of Americans taking part in such activities has declined at slightly more than 1 percent a year. The total effect, Pergams says, is that participation is down 18 percent to 25 percent from peak levels.
I’ve only been actively making trips to see the natural wonders of this country in the last 5 years. Whenever I’m in a National Park, I’d say it seems a large percentage of them are foreign visitors. I’m amazed at how few Americans actually take advantage of our amazing National Parks.
From news.com.au: China ‘will stop the rain’ for Olympics
Stopping pollution was a little too hard, so China decided to start with “stopping rain” and “slowing the revolution of the earth” so that there are longer dryer days for the Olympics!
The picture pretty much sums up Super Bowl XLII. The Patriots go from being the best team to the biggest disappointment ever. It’s an amazing accomplishment to win 18 straight games, but not being able to close out the Super Bowl is going to haunt them even more than any other Super Bowl loser. They seemed to be a team of destiny, able to will themselves to victory at the end of the game. You never got the feeling that they were going to lose. But, the Super Bowl was different. Tom Brady was different. In the third quarter you could see something different in Tom Brady’s eyes. Almost a look of confusion. It’s something I had never seen before. But, still they followed pattern and took the lead with 3 minutes left. The last drive usually goes the Patriots’ way as the quarterback usually makes an error and throws an interception that ends the game. But not this game.
I mocked Eli Manning’s Citizen Eco-Drive Unstoppable ad in an earlier blog entry. He’s still not unstoppable. Now that Tom Brady has been stopped, no one is “unstoppable”. It’ll be interesting to see where Eli Manning goes from here. Has he finally turned the proverbial corner or has he just had an extended hot streak?
Fortune Magazine has an interesting article about Melinda Gates, a woman most people know nothing about!
I like this quote about leaving money to their children:
Melinda says they will follow Warren Buffett’s philosophy: “A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”
Just saw this ad on ESPN. Thought it was pretty funny. Love the kick. The guy in the Hawaiian shirt is Cooper Manning, the oldest brother. He was a wide receiver, but never played in college because he was diagnosed with a narrowing of the spinal column.
At the Shell gas station on Liberty in Over the Rhine, you’ll hear classical music piped over the speakers, not to entertain patrons like me, but as an audible youth repellent. Classical music hasn’t met the changing times and the audiences continue to grow older and older.
But, Concert:Nova, a new dynamic ensemble group changes that. Cool and fresh, Concert:Nova fuses the classical with the contemporary that rejuvenates the art form. Performed in a non-traditional setting, with unique visual twists, Concert:Nova is a fun, relaxed, hip evening of music that is a much needed expansion of the musical scene in Cincinnati.
Concert:Nova is the creation of Ixi Chen, a clarinetist in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She has assembled a highly talented group of musicians from the Cincinnati Symphony and Chamber Orchestra. The choice of instrumentation in the pieces are unique and fun. Instead of a traditional lead musician playing a violin, you’ll hear it in the flute or even a trombone. The advantage of a small ensemble performance is that you can truly hear the beauty in the music and the expertise of the performers. At the symphony, you’re separated farther from the performers and with so many musicians it’s harder to appreciate the individual skills of the players. But, in an intimate setting, you can see the musicians draw their breath and phrase as they feel the music that they’re performing.
Concert:Nova also seeks to bring talented new musicians to town. In their last performance on December 3, 2007, Nico Abondolo, Double bass, and Nadine Sierra, a soprano were the featured guest soloists.
Nadine Sierra is an up and coming 19 year old soprano. Recently reviewed in the NYTimes, they described her as:
“Already she possesses something that can hardly be taught: a commanding stage presence, complete with flashing eyes, a winning smile and unmannered gestures.”
Seeing her perform up close you could see her power and her beauty. I believe that the next time she comes to town she’ll be performing on a much bigger stage.
Nico Abondolo brought humor and a human face to music. Nico spoke a bit about his experiences performing in many motion picture soundtracks in film. Nico brought the house down with his performance of a very non-traditional piece called “Failing: a very difficult piece for solo bass”.
Concert:Nova closed the performance with Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man”. Truly a great night of music.
I’d tell you to go to see Concert:Nova to support Cincinnati music, but that would be selling Concert:Nova short. You should go because it’s great a blend of music performed by world class musicians in a jazz like environment. What more could you ask for?
All concert images copyright Concert:Nova. Used with permission.
Here’s a funny, somewhat profane little break from all the seriousness in the blog for this last week! It’s the funniest thing that I’ve seen Sarah Silverman do.
The bad thing is that I think I’ll be singing this song for the rest of the weekend!
I saw the Bodies the Exhibition in Cincinnati this morning when I visited the Cincinnati Museum Center to film a segment with Fox19 News voicing opposition to the exhibition. I had not planned on seeing the exhibit at all, but when I arrived at the production van at the Museum Center to meet with a reporter, she wasn’t there. It was raining a little so I decided to seek cover inside. I ended up following an electrical cable through a couple of doors and I suddenly I found myself in the middle of the exhibit.
It was a room eerily quiet only inhabited by the dead. Around the corner I could hear the sounds of an interview being done so I followed the reporter’s voice into another room. There she was interviewing Dr. Roy Glover, the chief medical director of the exhibit. I sat down on a bench next to a gentleman who turned out to be Rodger Pille, Director of Media Relations. I had popped in a little unexpectedly and unannounced to the Museum personnel, but they didn’t seem to be too startled by my presence. I was wearing a suit. I remembered hearing how Martin Luther King jr. always wore suits when protesting. It shows that you’re serious and that you mean business.
Anyways, some of the exhibit seems more academic, a heart over here, another organ encased in glass over there. Other organs showing different maladies. This is strongly contrasted with the parts that are meant to be more dramatic and artistic. Seeing the bodies in poses bothered me a little, especially with all I know about the exhibit and the fact that I was totally alone with the bodies. However, it was the props that make the exhibit seem undignified to me. One of the bodies is of a person throwing a baseball. He’s totally naked, except for a glove and ball. Looking at it, it just seemed a little over the top, meant more for pointing at than learning from.
After seeing the exhibit, my thoughts still haven’t changed much. I am firm believer in consent You need to have a donor that gives explicit informed consent. But, my feelings in terms of human dignity might have grown a little more. It isn’t dignified to pose a dead human with a prop. If medical students were caught doing the same with a cadaver, they’d be kicked out of school. The intent may have been education, but it has crossed over to exploitation. And it’s something that I would have rather not seen.