September 19 – 23, 2016
You know the charming idea of effortless art, that you get in the mood and a couple hours later, you’ve magically got an incisive and elegant story or post or podcast? That idea always has been purest nonsense but it also, Rose says, gets in the way of being paid.
You know how, when you’re holding a hammer the whole world looks like a nail? Which, fine, things need nailing. The problem is, Christie reminds us, that research shows the same thing applies when you’re holding a gun.
You know how sad it is to lose something you like, how nice it would be if everything just had a little geotag so you could find it again? Cameron geotagged a shark named Pablo; a ship named El Faro was geotagged; and they still got lost and it was still sad.
You know how if two towns have the same mosquitoes, you’d expect that they should have the same mosquito-borne disease? They don’t, and my stepdaughter-the-entomologist gets out the bug spray and long cottons, heads out to the field, and finds out why.
You don’t know that you know this, and it’s an astoundment and a delight: if you’re in a tent at night and some animal runs past in the dark, you still know its mass, velocity, volume, and weight distribution. Jessa says this is called bioacoustics. Who knew.