Here's what gets me.
Sometimes you might think all the world's problems can be solved by looking in your newspaper.
For example, once I was looking for the starting time of a movie when I stumbled across a story that said running beats swimming for weight loss. This came as both a head-whacker and a "Duh-h-h," because I remember back in the Embarrassing Sixties when the prevailing exercise advice was swimming and isometric exercises.
Swimming was best (so the theory went), because you are exercising all your muscles. Isometric exercises (where you just flex a few muscles against an immovable or counter-directional object) were good, because you could exercise specific muscles and not require a large area, such as a gymnasium.
As far as I know, no one ever recommended isometric swimming, probably because you can drown while forcing your arms or legs against the bottom, and using the side of the pool isn't really swimming.
Anyway, we all know how to lose weight: We just get rid of the pieces of our bodies we don't want, which usually comes in the form of ugly, disgusting, flapping in the breeze, bulging in the middle, protruding from the rear ... fat.
Unfortunately for Baby Boomers fast approaching, passing through or waving Bye-Bye to the Age of Weight Worries, you can't just take a knife and cut off the pieces you don't want. You have to improve your bodies on a slower basis by either eating less food, exercising more or preferably both.
And as we slowly lose the bloom of our youth and approach the lilacs of advancing age, we have to think more seriously about good health, proper diet and sensible exercise.
Because if it weren't for exercise, whenever we eat that Jumbo Supreme box of buttered popcorn at the movies, we tend to put on more weight than we normally take care of with our usual exercise, which for most of us consists of eating.
But the good news is that after that story I stumbled across another article that said other studies showed exercise is also a common way to shake the blues. The bad news is exercise improves your mood only if you're not used to exercising. You see, another article said if you do aerobic exercise daily, exercising has little effect on your mood.
Dr. Randy Larsen, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, said after research with Dr. Margaret Kasimatis at Hope College, "It's sedentary people who get the biggest boost in mood when they exercise."
Oh, great! So, we can either exercise daily and be thin, or we can exercise infrequently and be in a good mood. The question still flapping in the breeze with our unwanted body parts is "Which form of exercise, aside from eating, should I choose?"
Remember, everything we do is exercise. Sleeping is exercise (not a whole lot), walking is exercise, running is exercise (a whole lot), even thinking is exercise! (Which is why watching TV is not exercise.)
"Hey, wait a minute!" you say? "If everything I do is exercise, why am I sometimes in a good mood and sometimes in a bad mood?"
Good question, and the answer lies in "aerobic." Remember, the article said daily "aerobic" exercise has little effect on your mood, which could mean that if you start out exercising in a bad mood, you could also end up in a bad mood, especially if you were trying isometric swimming.
"Wait another minute!" you say? "'Aerobic' means 'living or active only in the presence of oxygen,' so if I breathe oxygen all the time and everything I do is exercise, why am I overweight?"
Another good question, and the answer is "I don't know."
However, I suspect that "exertion" and "heavy breathing" have something to do with what we normally call "aerobic exercise," as opposed to "watching TV." But don't try to fool Mother Nature by actively breathing heavily as you watch anything on television, thinking that will serve as your exercise for the day. The fat in our lungs is minimal.
So, we can't solve all our problems with a newspaper, especially weight problems. And naturally running beats swimming for weight loss. Running, your feet pound isometrically against the ground and your sweat flies off into the air.
Swimming, your arms and legs meet less resistance, your sweat mixes with the water and seeps right back into your body!
Duh-h-h. Now, pass the popcorn, please!
I rest my case.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Did You See What I Saw?
Here's what gets me.
Assuming that you attended school, do you remember taking an English or literature class in which you read and discussed some famous literary work?
This could have been in high school where the work could have been Silas Marner, the 1861 novel by George Eliot (actually Mary Ann Evans), Julius Caesar, the (about) 1599 play by William Shakespeare (at one time thought to be actually Christopher Marlowe or even Francis Bacon) or "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the 1798 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (always thought to actually be himself, except when he was writing "Kubla Khan," his famous, unfinished poem composed in an opium-induced sleep).
If you got to college, this could have been any of the plays or poems by Shakespeare or something more contemporary, such as Moby-Dick, the 1851 novel by Herman Melville, any of the novels by Ernest Hemingway or possibly even "Howl," the 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg, which had obscenity charges brought against it.
My point is, the instructor gave you an assignment to read an agreed-upon published work, you and your classmates all read it (assuming that you did your homework and didn't try to cheat by just reading the Classic comic book or the Cliff's Notes instead) and you all discussed the work in class.
As you progressed through the hierarchy of education, your examination of literary art became more focused and more modern, at least in the survey courses. However, what happens when motion-picture art is added as a topic for literary education?
Many Baby Boomers thought they had an advantage when they "got lucky" enough to be able to see a film based on a work they were supposed to read. Nowadays, students can probably get a digital movie of whatever work they're supposed to be reading.
One problem for them, of course, is that oftentimes a finished film is vastly different from the script the writer wrote, much less the novel or play that might have inspired it.
A work of literature, such as a novel, short story or poem, is always kept intact, based on how it appeared as published after negotiations between author, editor and publisher. Film, however, is altered, changed, shortened, lengthened, made in more than one version or rereleased "with never before seen footage," all to suit the exigencies of its current "owner," whether that is the director, the editor, the producer, the studio, the distributor, the television network or station showing it between commercials with altered or silenced dialogue or even a commercial airliner that omits scenes thought to be disturbing.
This almost casual treatment of the most important art form of the present damages how society regards film, damages the permanence of film and damages the creative work of the artists who made the film.
Perhaps film should be thought about and regarded the way songs are. A song is written by a song writer. It is bought and then owned by a publisher. Then it is worked on by an arranger and recorded by an artist. However, even though a particular recording of a song by an extremely popular artist may be extremely popular and successful, that artist's recording of a song doesn't become the song. The "song" is always thought of as being separate from the recording.
Other artists sometimes "cover" a song and make equally successful recordings of it, sometimes mimicking the original arrangement, sometimes changing the arrangement drastically.
Of course, more than one version (or "arrangement") of films and sometimes even novels are made, but no recording of a song is hacked up and altered by a radio station when it is played the way a film is on its way to being distributed, except for shortened openings and endings to suit the available time.
Therefore, what constitutes a film? What should we regard as being the "artistic work" that exists in society's mind when we discuss a particular filmic piece of "literature"? The screenplay? The shooting script? The cut that the editor turns over to the studio? The version that is first released by the first distributor? The uncut, uncensored version that the director wanted, but couldn't control until the film was rereleased?
When you and I discuss the novel Moby-Dick, we compare the versions we each have in our minds based on what we read, which undoubtedly consisted of the same words.
When we discuss the movie Moby Dick, we're lucky if we both saw one same scene.
I rest my case.
Assuming that you attended school, do you remember taking an English or literature class in which you read and discussed some famous literary work?
This could have been in high school where the work could have been Silas Marner, the 1861 novel by George Eliot (actually Mary Ann Evans), Julius Caesar, the (about) 1599 play by William Shakespeare (at one time thought to be actually Christopher Marlowe or even Francis Bacon) or "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the 1798 poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (always thought to actually be himself, except when he was writing "Kubla Khan," his famous, unfinished poem composed in an opium-induced sleep).
If you got to college, this could have been any of the plays or poems by Shakespeare or something more contemporary, such as Moby-Dick, the 1851 novel by Herman Melville, any of the novels by Ernest Hemingway or possibly even "Howl," the 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg, which had obscenity charges brought against it.
My point is, the instructor gave you an assignment to read an agreed-upon published work, you and your classmates all read it (assuming that you did your homework and didn't try to cheat by just reading the Classic comic book or the Cliff's Notes instead) and you all discussed the work in class.
As you progressed through the hierarchy of education, your examination of literary art became more focused and more modern, at least in the survey courses. However, what happens when motion-picture art is added as a topic for literary education?
Many Baby Boomers thought they had an advantage when they "got lucky" enough to be able to see a film based on a work they were supposed to read. Nowadays, students can probably get a digital movie of whatever work they're supposed to be reading.
One problem for them, of course, is that oftentimes a finished film is vastly different from the script the writer wrote, much less the novel or play that might have inspired it.
A work of literature, such as a novel, short story or poem, is always kept intact, based on how it appeared as published after negotiations between author, editor and publisher. Film, however, is altered, changed, shortened, lengthened, made in more than one version or rereleased "with never before seen footage," all to suit the exigencies of its current "owner," whether that is the director, the editor, the producer, the studio, the distributor, the television network or station showing it between commercials with altered or silenced dialogue or even a commercial airliner that omits scenes thought to be disturbing.
This almost casual treatment of the most important art form of the present damages how society regards film, damages the permanence of film and damages the creative work of the artists who made the film.
Perhaps film should be thought about and regarded the way songs are. A song is written by a song writer. It is bought and then owned by a publisher. Then it is worked on by an arranger and recorded by an artist. However, even though a particular recording of a song by an extremely popular artist may be extremely popular and successful, that artist's recording of a song doesn't become the song. The "song" is always thought of as being separate from the recording.
Other artists sometimes "cover" a song and make equally successful recordings of it, sometimes mimicking the original arrangement, sometimes changing the arrangement drastically.
Of course, more than one version (or "arrangement") of films and sometimes even novels are made, but no recording of a song is hacked up and altered by a radio station when it is played the way a film is on its way to being distributed, except for shortened openings and endings to suit the available time.
Therefore, what constitutes a film? What should we regard as being the "artistic work" that exists in society's mind when we discuss a particular filmic piece of "literature"? The screenplay? The shooting script? The cut that the editor turns over to the studio? The version that is first released by the first distributor? The uncut, uncensored version that the director wanted, but couldn't control until the film was rereleased?
When you and I discuss the novel Moby-Dick, we compare the versions we each have in our minds based on what we read, which undoubtedly consisted of the same words.
When we discuss the movie Moby Dick, we're lucky if we both saw one same scene.
I rest my case.
Friday, September 02, 2011
The Age of Entertainment
Here's what gets me.
We sure do like to name things, which, some would argue, goes all the way back to Adam, assuming that an Adam ever existed, who all of a sudden opened his eyes one day with the full-blown gift of language and ability to talk. So, Adam looked around, found somebody to talk to and said:
"Madam, I'm Adam."
See? We've even named his first sentence: "palindrome," which is a word, verse or sentence that reads the same backward or forward.
However, even before Adam met his rib, he had to name things: "And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field."
Even before Adam came on the scene, God was naming things: "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night."
Right. How else can you talk about something if you can't identify it by a symbol when one of them isn't around so you can point to it and say "that one there"?
Okay, let's say there was no "Adam" or that he himself is but a symbol for the early development of the human species known as homo sapiens or hominids. Once they learned to communicate with each other, they still had to have symbols with which to refer to something, because otherwise communication was just too slow and dangerous if someone had to drag someone else off to a lion's den just to say, "Beware that thing here."
So, now we have progressed to where we have named everything collectively ("universe," or "cosmos") and everything individually the minute, second or instant we discover it ("atom," not to be confused with Adam, "electron," "nucleus," "proton," "neutron" and so on down the line).
Of course, at that point, the line between concrete and abstract is so blurred as to be perhaps nonexistent, but we also feel the need to name abstract things the minute we think of them, from the small ("second") to the large ("century"). We even give a proper name to a whole century to suit our purposes, such as the Age of Enlightenment (sometimes known as the Age of Reason) for the 18th century of Western thought (that time from 1701 to 1800, or 1700 to 1799, depending on how much you subscribe to computer technology, lingo or thought).
The Age of Enlightenment (or Reason) was so-called, because its writers "applied reason to religion, politics, morality and social life," according to Benet's Readers Encyclopedia, which just about covered everything except for science, which has reason and enlightenment built in.
Now, if the 1700s were the Age of Enlightenment (etc.), what about the 1800s and the 1900s? What about the future? Why wait until something happens or is discovered before we name it? Why not name them now?
We like to talk. We need names for things when we talk about them, and we have to avoid that lion's den when we want to warn our friends about that particular beast.
So, for the purpose of discussion and to bring things up to date, let's call the 1800s the Age of Independence and the 1900s the Age of War. (The Age of Aquarius never really caught on.)
Personally, I want to call the 21st century the Age of Entertainment (although a good case could be made for the Age of Communication). We already jumped the gun in the 1900s, and even though we are a few years into the 2000s, yearly and century boundaries are just as arbitrary as names, and even though other nations, societies and worlds in the cosmos might be concerned with activities other than entertainment, we in the U.S. seem to be consumed and obsessed with amusement, distractions and divertissements.
Even TV Guide said "entertainment has become the primary force in American life and especially in our media" (July 30, 1994). Studies are conducted and stories written that conclude we increasingly value leisure, but increasingly fear we have less leisure time.
Now that television and computers have taken over the scene, the whole world can communicate at once with each other, can experience events at the same time and can discuss those events. And what do we discuss? Madonna, Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson.
Maybe the Day is over, Night is upon us and we are huddled around the campfire amusing ourselves with tales of amazement and wonder so we don't have to think about that nasty old lion in its den.
I rest my case.
We sure do like to name things, which, some would argue, goes all the way back to Adam, assuming that an Adam ever existed, who all of a sudden opened his eyes one day with the full-blown gift of language and ability to talk. So, Adam looked around, found somebody to talk to and said:
"Madam, I'm Adam."
See? We've even named his first sentence: "palindrome," which is a word, verse or sentence that reads the same backward or forward.
However, even before Adam met his rib, he had to name things: "And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field."
Even before Adam came on the scene, God was naming things: "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night."
Right. How else can you talk about something if you can't identify it by a symbol when one of them isn't around so you can point to it and say "that one there"?
Okay, let's say there was no "Adam" or that he himself is but a symbol for the early development of the human species known as homo sapiens or hominids. Once they learned to communicate with each other, they still had to have symbols with which to refer to something, because otherwise communication was just too slow and dangerous if someone had to drag someone else off to a lion's den just to say, "Beware that thing here."
So, now we have progressed to where we have named everything collectively ("universe," or "cosmos") and everything individually the minute, second or instant we discover it ("atom," not to be confused with Adam, "electron," "nucleus," "proton," "neutron" and so on down the line).
Of course, at that point, the line between concrete and abstract is so blurred as to be perhaps nonexistent, but we also feel the need to name abstract things the minute we think of them, from the small ("second") to the large ("century"). We even give a proper name to a whole century to suit our purposes, such as the Age of Enlightenment (sometimes known as the Age of Reason) for the 18th century of Western thought (that time from 1701 to 1800, or 1700 to 1799, depending on how much you subscribe to computer technology, lingo or thought).
The Age of Enlightenment (or Reason) was so-called, because its writers "applied reason to religion, politics, morality and social life," according to Benet's Readers Encyclopedia, which just about covered everything except for science, which has reason and enlightenment built in.
Now, if the 1700s were the Age of Enlightenment (etc.), what about the 1800s and the 1900s? What about the future? Why wait until something happens or is discovered before we name it? Why not name them now?
We like to talk. We need names for things when we talk about them, and we have to avoid that lion's den when we want to warn our friends about that particular beast.
So, for the purpose of discussion and to bring things up to date, let's call the 1800s the Age of Independence and the 1900s the Age of War. (The Age of Aquarius never really caught on.)
Personally, I want to call the 21st century the Age of Entertainment (although a good case could be made for the Age of Communication). We already jumped the gun in the 1900s, and even though we are a few years into the 2000s, yearly and century boundaries are just as arbitrary as names, and even though other nations, societies and worlds in the cosmos might be concerned with activities other than entertainment, we in the U.S. seem to be consumed and obsessed with amusement, distractions and divertissements.
Even TV Guide said "entertainment has become the primary force in American life and especially in our media" (July 30, 1994). Studies are conducted and stories written that conclude we increasingly value leisure, but increasingly fear we have less leisure time.
Now that television and computers have taken over the scene, the whole world can communicate at once with each other, can experience events at the same time and can discuss those events. And what do we discuss? Madonna, Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson.
Maybe the Day is over, Night is upon us and we are huddled around the campfire amusing ourselves with tales of amazement and wonder so we don't have to think about that nasty old lion in its den.
I rest my case.
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