Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Spaghetti Tacos!!!

Previously, more practical food related news has been covered in this space, however an emerging, whimsical culinary phenomenon demands attention. Spaghetti Tacos!!! It has been reported that the trend of children requesting this entree is cresting and threatening to go viral. While the library catalog has many holdings that speak to the capricious nature of the child's palate (The Star Wars Cookbook, for example), adults sometimes desire new and challenging eating experiences as well. Curiosity about food is a healthy expression for both children and adults and one could take this interest in the direction twinkies or spam, instead let's zoom out a bit and get the 30,000 foot view of how food and eating are a part of our overall experience of culture.

The chapter headings for Extreme Cuisine: The Weird and Wonderful Foods That People Eat by Jerry Hopkins read more like a taxonomy handout from a biology class than a book about food. Chapter headings for mammals, reptiles & water creatures, birds, insects, spiders & scorpions, plants and leftovers are the first clue that this will be an unusual look at the foods of the world. Closer inspection reveals separate sections for investigations into such tempting fair as; primates, guts, genitalia, birds' nests, gold & silver, kangaroos and human flesh. The foreword by Anthony Bourdain might also alert readers that this book will be a departure from the more staid style that foodies are accustomed to. Hopkins throws in some recipes (rootworm beetle dip, anyone?) for good measure. Delicious.

Where Extreme Cuisine looks outward from the food we might consider "normal" Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat looks inward and examines the science, hard work and blunders responsible for such innovations as Velveeta and Pringles. Carolyn Wyman's well researched prose is drenched in a super-sized helping of sarcasm. Her diatribes about how processed foods helped fuel feminism are impassioned but she has nothing but venom for the natural foods movement, insisting that foodies are akin to Luddites. Is her tongue firmly in her cheek? Difficult to say. In either case, trivia lovers will fall for Better Than Homemade, the perfect pre-meal read for your next dinner party.

Travel and innovation expose us to new eating experiences but so too do the people we  chose to break bread with. And sometimes the meals we share with others stay with us longer than the relationships that brought those foods into our lives. Erin Ergenbright and Thisbe Nissen came upon the idea of publishing their ex-boyfriends' recipes, and the stories surrounding them, at a BBQ. Naturally, they entitled this work The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up With Some Great Recipes). With colorful collages and heartfelt remembrances this is much more than a simple cookbook. If sharing is caring then the authors of The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook have channeled a smorgasbord of sentiment in this work and what better way to spread the love than to share a new eating experience with someone close to you.

PS: Mark your calendar. Renowned author Harold McGee will be speaking at Powells Monday, November 8th. McGee is the author of  that seminal work of food science On Food and Cooking. This is a rare opportunity to get in-person answers to your most probing and technical questions about why food is the way it is!

Here Comes the Sun...

A solar storm is causing beautiful sky shows the world over and similar activity could wreak havoc as the magnitude of solar activity ramps up in years to come. Though the sun gives life it seems that it is more than capable of taking life as well. In fact, as scientists explore and document our existence we find danger lurking everywhere. Particle accelerators could end the universe in an instant. The city of Berkeley has regulated nanomaterials for fear of the special properties that these building blocks, too small to be seen, have by virtue of their miniscule scale. And it is not just the unseen aspects of nature that we have to be concerned about, here in the PacNW we just acknowledged the 30 year anniversary of the eruption on Mt. St. Helens. Truly, danger is around every corner.

But surely it's not all that bad. We live in a safe world, right? Not according to Robert Brockway, the author of Everything is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead. Brockway will bring your anxieties to a fever pitch with tales of experiments in green energy that could consume the earth in a massive fireball or robots like EATR, an autonomous device that fuels its prowling by "eating" biomass that it encounters in its travels. It has been said that the horrific and the ridiculous are joined at the hip and Everything is Going to Kill Everybody provides comic evidence to that effect. The casual style Brockway writes in makes this a quick and engaging read and he can be excused for not delving deeply into details from such examples as the company that wanted to harvest the energy from contained tornadoes or the Soviet soldier who saved us from a thermonuclear war by ignoring his superiors. After all, when it comes to death most of us appreciate a light touch.

Yes, the Sun is going to have some big flare ups over the next few years that could disable much of the technology that we rely on. Then there is inescapable fact that it will some day expand, cook and engulf the earth. But how do we make the most of our relationship with this great giver of life in the meantime? Claudio Vita-Finzi's The Sun: A User's Manual describes, in humbling detail, the best and the worst aspects of our nearest star. The same charged particles that, ejected from the Sun in excess, disrupt our communication satellites also shield us from harmful cosmic rays. The Sun is is our primary source of energy and will almost certainly outlast our species but it is carcinogenic. It is tempting to call these paradoxes but Vini-Finzi's expansive text makes it clear that the Sun's nature (like much of the phenomena that we both rely on and cower in fear of) is not dual. It is only the limited bandwidth of our experience of reality that makes it seem so.

And so what if the Sun could wipe out life as we know it, who needs iPhones and air traffic control anyway. Authors Rex Ewing and Doug Pratt take a fearless and practical approach to life under the Sun. Got Sun? Go Solar: Harness Nature's Free Energy to Heat and Power Your Grid-Tied Home gives entertaining and detailed advice for working with solar power both in the civil world (permits, paperwork and contracting insights) and in the potentially post-apocalyptic world (living off the grid). Chapters on wind and geothermal energy have been added since the 2005 edition making Got Sun an even more complete guide to moving forward into an uncertain future.

A final thought- someday the Sun will cook us but until then you might try using the Sun to cook! Solar cookery is a fun way to expand your picnic options. Lighten your load by leaving the camp stove at home on those backpacking excursions this Summer.

A Gut Check You Can Take to the Bank

Last week the New York Times reported on an unusual medical case involving a husband/wife transplant. The uncommon aspect of this transplant procedure was not the relationship between the donor and recipient. What was striking about this operation was the material being donated, bacteria from the husband gastrointestinal tract. The patient had lost 60 pounds in eight months due to constant and debilitating diarrhea. By delivering a serum made out of her husband's stool and saline solution, the attending doctor was able to alleviate this life threatening condition, literally, overnight. It turns out that the flora of the wife's gut had been colonized by microbes outside the typical spectrum of those that are useful and productive within the human body. Bacteria from her husband's body were able to flourish and provide the necessary digestive assistance allowing her to make a full and speedy recovery.

Though written with children in mind, Poop Happened: A History From the Bottom Up is a resource of great fecundity. The bacteriotherapy described above (also referred to as a fecal transplant) is a relatively novel application for excrement, especially when compared to the history detailed in Poop Happened. Sarah Albee's work underscores the historical methods used to deal with all matters excremental and does not shy away from details. From knights in armor to astronauts, everyone has to go sooner or later. But how? Poop Happened takes a peek at the particulars of evacuation but also addresses the larger issues of public health related to effective waste treatment and what can happen when that treatment is unavailable or just plain hasn't been invented yet!

Anne Maczulak's The Five Second Rule and Other Myths About Germs: What Everyone Should Know About Bacteria, Viruses, Mold and Mildew acknowledges that many of our most strongly held beliefs about microbes are unduly biased. The bathroom is not the dirtiest room in your house and only a small percentage of the micro-organisms in our surroundings could be considered pathogens. For the most part we live in harmony with, and require the assistance of, the wee beasties in our environment. Maczulak's writing style is direct and informative and she provides plenty of examples to illustrate her overarching themes. The Five Second Rule reads a bit like a text book which lends its directives a certain gravity. Helpful sidebars distill in the most important information into an easy to reference format.

Just what would our world be like without microbes? Is such a thing desirable, or even possible? Idan Ben-Barak would answer those last to questions with a resounding, "No." Without micro-organisms we would perish in days if not hours. So why are people so fixated on eliminating these unseen life forms? Ben-Barak's The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes takes a magnifying glass to the many issues that inform our gut reactions to bacteria, fungi and viruses. His conclusion is that they are not only essential and inextricably interwoven into our environment, they may just be a source of salvation. Microbes could be the key to eliminating radioactive waste and may provide a delivery device for helpful medicines. In short, we may do better to increase rather than decrease our reliance on the invisible creatures with which we share our world.

What Is This Monkey Business Called Father's Day!?

Father's Day is June 20th this year. In recognition of this, the New York Times published an interesting article that details recent insights into how and why male primates might favor publicly displaying their fatherhood this week. In a nutshell, the piece suggests that Men Behaving Dadly (to borrow a phrase) may provide important social cues that contribute greatly to the character and strength of the social fabric of some primate species. Examining these social connections is a complex science but there is no doubt that they exist for apes and humans alike and that fatherhood is a bond more robust (and subtle) than we usually admit. While the questions "How?" and "Why?" we father the way do may be inextricably connected from a social science perspective, a more nuts-and-bolts look at fatherhood is a great way to reflect on the value that competent parenting brings in our lives.

So, where does a father start when it comes to proper preening and cobbling together an impressive parental infrastructure? Today's dad might consider Be Prepared: a Handbook for New Dads by Gary Greenberg. Presented in the style of an old scout manual, Be Prepared provides copious examples of workarounds that benefit the child AND demonstrate a father's superior ingenuity such as how to construct a teether from a clean sock and frozen apples. This hysterical read is really an invaluable operating manual written with a structure that parallels the aging of your infant. This is handy since dad might not have enough free time to read more than a few pages at a time in those first few months. Armed with this book, a towel and duct tape, a dad should feel confident heading out in to the world in his new role as a father. [A favorite insight from Be Prepared- Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier" provides a 66 BPM tempo that works magic for rocking your baby!]

The aforementioned New York Times article stresses that fatherhood activities can be a display with high social value. Carrying a child can be a sort of "battle symbol", a display that the male is capable of enduring stress. This type of observation speaks to the varied and deep connections that define primates as social animals. Connected: the Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives demonstrates how these social networks can be modeled and what those models reveal about how emotions, ideas, obesity and viruses (just to mention a few examples) move across these networks. Written by Harvard professor and health care specialist Nicholas Christakis, Connected's essential message is that our interconnection may make us susceptible to influence from others in ways that are beyond our perception but recognizing this effect should embolden us to return that influence in the most altruistic fashion we are capable of.

It's a rare book that merits being included in more than one Furthmore... post. James and Other Apes (as presented by author James Mollison) is one such book. At the risk of taking a discussion about primates, parenting and connectivity in an utterly anthropomorphic direction it must be stated that the larger-than-life portraits included in James are, in some way, transcendent. Even if looking into the dozens of apes faces between these covers tells us nothing more than that we are capable of a powerful inter-species sympathy, we must acknowledge that there is an empathic impulse within us that drives much of our more positive behavior. Even an infant, held in their father's lap, will be struck by the power and familiarity of these portraits, a sense of connection that crosses innumerable divides.

How the Ball Bounces - Basketball As an Oracle of Self-Knowledge

After a dry spell the Portland Trail Blazers are back in the playoffs. This year's impressive Game 1 win over the Phoenix Suns was enough to remove some of the sting from 2009's first round exit at the hands of the Houston Rockets. Basking in the glow of that victory had many Blazer fans feeling optimistic about the team's championship potential in the years to come. After a season plagued by injury (including potentially career threatening knee injuries to both the centers that Portland started the season with and a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered by head coach Nate McMillan while scrimmaging with his injury-depleted team) the team and fans could be excused for taking any opportunity to feel excited for the future or to wax nostalgic about past glories.

Of course, what passage in Blazer history could eclipse their (thus far) one championship season? Matt Love's third installment in his Beaver State Trilogy, Red Hot and Rollin': a Retrospective of the Portland Trail Blazers' 1976-77 NBA Championship Season captures all the iconic (and often surreal) images of this championship run, literally. Included with the book is a DVD copy of Fast Break a 1978 documentary about the Blazers' 76-77 season. Filled with stunning visuals such as Bill Walton riding his bike along the Oregon Coast and addressing a camp full of youthful hoopsters on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation or Maurice Lucas increasing his lung capacity by holding his breath underwater, Fast Break is worth the price of admission alone. The film was shown for a week in Portland after its completion before being virtually forgotten until the publication of Red Hot and Rollin'. Sadly, film maker Don Zavin passed away a few years ago but this interview with co-director Mark McLeod provides some in-depth detail about the production of such an unusual documentary.

The passion that even the most committed Blazer fan feels for their team, Bill Simmons feels for all things NBA. His most recent work, The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy, is a love letter to the NBA in which Simmons expounds on and re-imagines all things basketball; the Basketball Hall of Fame becomes a five-level pyramid with only the finest players occupying its most elite level, the long standing debate over who was the better player, Wilt "The Stilt" Chamberlain or Bill Russell, is finally resolved and the "secret" of basketball is revealed by, of all people, Isiah Thomas (psst... the secret is that Basketball is PEOPLE). Simmons is fiery writer who uses whit and charm to engage the reader but the most attractive quality of this work is the sincere love of hoops with which he writes. This makes The Book of Basketball a worthy and enriching read for anyone who cares to absorb vibrant and powerful enthusiasm, not just basketball fans.

At first glance, with its glossy, modern images and quirky styling, Freedarko Presents the Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats and Stars in Today's Game seems an ironic conflagration of obscure factoids and opaque whimsy but there is something deeper represented here. Freedarko started as a blog and Freedarko Presents captures much of the free-wheeling and playful sensibility that characterized that incarnation. Drawing inspiration from, and paying homage to, the most charismatic personas of the NBA's past and present (be they famous or not) Freedarko Presents could be accused of playing into the cult of personality that some feel has made us a celebrity obsessed society. Thankfully, threads of peculiar insight and subversive creativity flip this equation on its head. Instead of the passion of the fan empowering the superstar, Freedarko Presents imagines a universe in which basketball trivia becomes an oracle of self-knowledge. To know what makes our favorite, and most despised players, great is to know the source of greatness in ourselves. Bearing in this in mind, hoping for playoff success in 2010 for the Portland Trail Blazers might be a way of exploring our own potential. Fingers crossed...

Health Care and the Architecture of Choice

This week President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and in doing so brought to fruition a process of seemingly unending, intense debate. Health care reform is, without question, an enormous and sensitive undertaking. Making it over this latest hurdle inspires reflection on the compromises that allow such a complex process to move forward. The full import of representative democracy can be disputed but the epic effect of this particular vote, a "Yes" comprised of myriad smaller decisions and deliberations, cannot. And despite the gravity of this decision these individual members of Congress necessarily use the all same tools everyone uses in making choices of all sorts. The latest science regarding the interplay of emotion and intellect in decision making does not suggest that one should be the master of the other. Rather, a more integrated approach is recommended which can improve both policy making and the choices allowed by those systems we put in place.

The authors of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, practice what they preach. In fact, Thaler and his frequent collaborator Shlomo Benartzi developed Save More Tomorrow, a popular savings program closely associated with asymmetrical paternalism. Asymmetrical paternalism is a movement informed by the newest research into how people make decisions and Nudge is dedicated to spreading these insights. Nudge asks, "How can we best use choice architecture to help people recognize healthy, beneficial choices without diminishing their freedom?" Certainly, this is a very useful consideration for policy makers to make. Documenting specific examples of the ways that intellect and emotion cooperate and clash in contributing to such phenomenon as the spot light effect and the planning fallacy, Thaler and Sunstein explore psychological territory of interest to both public policy makers and individuals rerouting their own lives.

Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide references the sorts of nudges associated with asymmetrical paternalism within the larger context of exploring the biological underpinnings of how/why we make the decisions we do. Fascinating examples documented, in a style that may remind you of Oliver Sacks, include the tale of Ann Klivestaver who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to a gambling problem caused entirely by medication taken to combat Parkinson's and Wag Dodge's spontaneous decision to burn a patch of grass around himself, creating a buffer of burned out vegetation as a forest fire raged toward him at rate he could never out run. How We Decide documents the successes and failures of rational and intuitive decision making and proposes a powerful blend of the two in which individuals use metacognition (thinking about thinking/feeling) in acknowledging the weaknesses and strengths of both approaches.

Some of the most excruciating choices that we make happen in the market place. So how can we make ourselves better, more informed consumers using these latest revelations about how we choose? Michael Shermer's Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics provides some insight in its examination of how our natural inclinations often fail us. Shermer explores evolutionary implications in decision making on the individual scale as well as in the larger, global sense. Mind of the Market supplies many practical observations that are useful in avoiding seductive pitches on the sales floor and elsewhere in life. Thoughtful descriptions of tendencies such as availability and representative fallacies make Mind of the Market a worthwhile read in terms of creating a personal and positive choice architecture even if applying those same concepts on a macro scale is ambitious and possibly questionable.

Though the reality we experience is the result of countless choices made by and around us, ultimately we are responsible only for those decisions we personally make. It is encouraging to learn that those decisions are best made by consulting all the aspects that make us who we are (not rational thought alone) and that these resources could be aggregated by policy makers in making major decisions and, in turn, providing sensible options for all.

The Intersection of Ingenuity and Desperation

Customs authorities in Vancouver, B. C. made a grave discovery this week when they found nearly 57 kilograms of opium inside a hollow tombstone being shipped from Iran. The find is being called the province's biggest opium seizure ever. This type of criminal activity might be considered the intersection of ingenuity and desperation or perhaps optimism and immorality. In either case, these people and objects could tell an interesting tale.

Best known for his work as an award-winning writer for young adults, Jack Gantos tells the harrowing story of being drawn into a drug smuggling scheme and his ensuing arrest in Hole in My Life. As a teen living in the Virgin Islands fearing that his life was going nowhere with no chance getting away, Gantos was approached with an offer to transport a large quantity of hashish to New York City in return for free transport and money to start a new life. Hole in My Life documents the entanglements that slowly surround him as he realizes this adventure. Using a stark and direct style that eschews moralizing, Gantos captures an image of himself as a teen hungry for internal catharsis. Desperately looking outside himself for forces of change, Gantos ultimately finds an internal motivation  that drives him from wanting to write to actually writing during his incarceration. Our author finds that nurturing the creative impulse requires a self-discipline and self-care also essential to successfully surviving the harsh realities of life in prison.

Evidence of creativity out of desperation abounds in Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts. Collected here by Vladimir Arkhipov are ingenious examples of craft that put a hollow Iranian tombstone to shame. Leather cap made from an old punching bag? Check. Old Fanta cans turned into artful maracas? Check. Poet's flashlight for recording mid-slumber muse visits, built-from-scratch? Check. Home-Made is a testimony to the material expression of self-actualization that occurs when resources become bitterly scarce. Better yet, this is no simple picture book. Each example is grouped with insightful, and often entertainingly off-topic, comments from its creator. We learn that a hand fabricated motor scooter windshield was obtained by bartering medical alcohol and that the windshield's owner then attached a plastic visor himself, bending it to fit over an open fire. Our proud owner, Grigory Samorin, goes on to explain that the stickers of girls on the windshield are courtesy of his son who brought them back from Germany and that a similar trend has filled every kiosk in his town with porn.

Visceral yet hallucinatory, the images collected by Danzig Baldaev in the three volumes of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia are by turns inspiring and disturbing. Baldaev was the warden of "Kresty" an infamous prison in Leningrad. During his fifty-two years there (and in other reformatory settlements) he recorded hundreds of tattoos as they appeared on both men and women. Most of the tattoos here are presented as illustrations making Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia a flash book of sorts. Though translations are provided, only the most cursory explanation of the tattoos' meaning within the deep, complex subculture of Russian prisons is included. Still, the shocking power of these drawings speaks to a type of creative expression born out of a criminal subculture's tragic and autocatalytic need to define and enforce an articulated power structure. Plus, the drawings are cool looking.

How's the Air Up There?

In recent days the completion of the world's tallest building was announced and 6'8" Brittney Griner became the second woman to dunk more than once in a single NCAA basketball game prompting the question, "How's the air up there?" In the case of the newly minted Burj Dubai (which reaches 2,717 ft in to the sky) the air at the top is a full 8 degrees cooler than at the bottom. This necessitates a complex series of airlocks through out the building to dampen the possibility of sudden shifts in air pressure causing structural damage to the superskyscraper. For Griner the question would be the sort of playful comment that is a bit of a back-handed compliment but make no mistake, her arrival in the WNBA will have serious implications. She has serious talent to go with her height. But really, how is the air up there?

Gabrielle Walker's An Ocean of Air: Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere provides a variety of insights about the air around us. From Colonel Joseph Kittinger's record setting skydive from an altitude of 102,800 feet (in 1960!) to the recent scientific supposition that precipitation is seeded by unseen and omnipresent atmospheric bacteria, An Ocean of Air weaves an amazing tale from historical and scientific elements. Walker's text alternates between the fascinating stories of those who have studied the air around us and the implications of their findings. An Ocean of Air's quick pace and engaging articulation of complex scientific concepts makes for a great contrast to the ephemeral and essential nature of its subject. As the author suggests in finalizing her description of Kittinger's death defying fall to earth, "We don't just live in the air. We live because of it."

Kittinger's awe inspiring military mission was scientific in purpose but shared a passion for adventure with the subjects of Michael Abrams' Birdmen, Batmen and Skyflyers: Wingsuits and the Pioneers Who Flew Them, Fell in Them, and Perfected Them. Here Abrams reveals the history of the questionable and highly hazardous pursuit of flight using wingsuits. Many of the stories included here end poorly for the participants; broken bones and death are fairly predictable outcomes. Still, Birdmen, Batmen and Skyflyers captures a sort of lunatic mania that is inspiring. From that most famous of men to theorize about (and perhaps attempt) winged flight, Leonardo da Vinci, through the golden era of wingsuits and into today's scientific advances, which allow for accomplishments such as Felix Baumgartner's crossing of the English Channel in a wingsuit, Birdmen, Batmen and Skyflyers contains some truly batty tales!

Gasp! The Swift and Terrible Beauty of Air personalizes the gases around us and waxes philosophical on how our human experience is necessarily and inextricably immersed in the nature of air. Beginning with an infant's first breath Joe Sherman plots a course through the history of air that touches such seemingly unrelated topics as; the evolutionary source of fear in humans, the return of life to Krakatau, how and why mammals returned to the sea as whales, why you should never get between a hippo and the water, the physiology of hearing and the etymology of the Arabic word for absurd. Those topics are discussed over the course of just three pages and all within the context of  how air defines and informs our human existence. Yes, Gasp! is dense, it may even leave you breathless, but Sherman's writing is more inspirational than existential so it's well worth diving in!

A Shanty for the Salish Sea

Bellingham biologist Bert Webber is closing in on accomplishing his goal of unifying Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Strait of Georgia under the name he first coined in 1988, The Salish Sea. On October 30th the Washington State Board of Geographic Names voted 5-1 to adopt the new name and similar committees at other levels of government are expected to follow in coming weeks. Webber's interest in suggesting this new umbrella term is to acknowledge, and promote understanding of, the ecological interconnectedness of these bodies of water. That it has taken twenty years from Webber's first push to place the Salish Sea on maps for this to occur might mislead one to believe that the geographical lexicon is nearly static. In fact, we are encompassed by constant, subtle changes in geography.

Cartography itself embodies a certain paradox. Even the perfect map is by definition an abstraction and as our understanding of the world changes and increases so must our maps morph and reflect these improved, or simply different, forms of comprehension. As the companion publication to the Field Museum of Chicago's "once-in-a-lifetime exhibition" Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is an amazing compendium of maps developed by a vast cross section of our world's cultures. Edited by James Akerman, Maps explores how mapping has changed over time in many ways. From the technological perspective, Maps contains examples from the most rudimentary (but aesthetically stunning) maps of ancient mariners to modern maps of the ocean floor created using advanced sonar techniques. More impressively, Maps provides a context for understanding maps as the product of historical and cultural circumstances. The maps shared here, as a near universal form of communication, express an inspiring variety of data and desires. From maps that illustrate the spread of disease to those that show our position relative to heaven or explore Middle Earth, the images here say as much about how we want others to see the world as how the world might actually be.

Adding the Salish Sea to our maps may seem a small way to express a vague, shared appreciation of our region's waterways but a look below the surface of the ocean reveals that this other world truly deserves our attention. The Blue Planet, as adapted by Andrew Byatt, lets readers follow along with the truly stunning images from the documentary series by the same name (available on DVD in four parts: 1 2 3 4). It's fair to say that most people would not consider these works to be of tremendous scientific value. Instead, their function is to inspire and the breath taking visuals associated with this series succeed wildly in that regard. If ever one needed to find inspiration to cherish and protect the Earth's oceans from excessive human impact these works would be an entirely appropriate place begin that search.

Wish to delve a little deeper into the question of just what life below the waves is like? The World Ocean Census (as compiled by Darlene Crist) may well provide the answers you seek. However, one of this census's great strengths is that it embraces the mystery of the Ocean. Water covers 71% of the surface of our planet and a vast portion of this area remains unexplored. Even in more approachable areas there is much to be learned. Scientists say that as little as 10% of life in coral reefs has yet to be identified. Still, the life forms detailed and pictured in these pages are striking and serve as a potent reminder that the expression of our understanding about the world we live in has real consequences, even for those for those life forms that we have not yet encountered and who may inhabit the familiar waterways or our own region. These life forms may yet find a place in the feedback loop comprised of what we understand, the understanding we project and what we hope to understand.

Caster Semenya and the "Rules" of Gender

South African, middle-distance runner Caster Semenya has been embroiled in controversy these last few months. Last week Semenya withdrew from competition amid reports in the Australian media regarding leaked findings of a sex-determination test that implied Semenya, who had dominated the field running against women, has Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Indicators of AIS include elevated testosterone and the presence of undescended testes. Semenya's success as a runner brings to light surprising limitations in our culture's conception of gender but this is not the first time that an athlete has faced such scrutiny. Indian runner Santhi Soundararajan tested positive for possessing a Y chromosome and was stripped of her silver medal from the 2006 Doha Asian Games. Soundararajan attempted suicide the following year. The International Olympic Committee banned genetic testing in 1999 but during the 1996 games in Atlanta eight women athletes tested positive for having a Y chromosome. Of those eight, seven had AIS and all were allowed to compete.

Gender is, of course, a complicated issue and as a construct it is difficult to contextualize. Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature succeeds mightily in comparing/contrasting human expressions of gender and sexuality to those found elsewhere in the animal kingdom. The book's title refers to the Red Queen's race in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass during which the Queen remarks, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Ridley uses this analogy in explaining the advantage of sexual reproduction for individuals within a species as well as the constant evolutionary arms race that exists between species competing for resources in their shared environment. By using frequent examples from throughout the animal kingdom Ridley illustrates that our cultural concepts of gender and sexual reproduction are frequently much narrower than those recognized by science and expands these insights into valuable reflections on the nature of our behavior as a species.

Then again, if professor of genetics at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University Bryan Sykes is correct, humans may not have to worry about gender issues in the future. In Adam's Curse: a Future Without Men he posits that within 125,000 years (not really that long by evolutionary standards) Homo sapiens may lose the Y chromosome entirely. Sykes describes the deterioration of the Y chromosome in dramatic terms and proposes that its diminishing stability may be responsible for increasing rates of infertility among men. Though the author has impressive academic credentials, this story of conflict and cooperation between mitochondrial DNA (which we all inherent from our mothers) and the Y chromosome (which males inherent from their fathers) is written in concise and entertaining prose. The central thesis of Adam's Curse may not come to fruition until well beyond our days but the science that Sykes describes in exploring this intriguing possibility has many applications in the present.

As much as the parent's genes may battle for expression in their child's body, sexual reproduction is still an altruistic (and very successful) process. How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do by Dr. Sharon Moalem explores human sex from a practical, scientific vantage point and the results are a fascinating and revealing look at what makes us human using our sexuality as a lens. Moalem presents up to date research about human sexuality in a compelling and informative way and doesn't shy away from difficult issues (can twins have different fathers?) Competing theories are included in an effort to be as informative and honest as possible about the complexities of the issues at hand. Although How Sex Works enthralls with its detailing of the unseen machinations of our bodies, such as the development of the secondary sexual characteristics that we commonly use to distinguish the sexes, its greater import is to suggest how flexible our society may need to be if we are to acknowledge the gap between our cultural constructs of gender/sexuality and science's interpretation how and why we behave the way we do.

Considering Charisma

Leonid Chernovetsky, embattled mayor of Ukraine's capitol Kiev, held a press conference this week to address suggestions that he should undergo psychiatric evaluation and that he may not be fit for office. Chernovetsky chose to face his detractors in his swimming trunks at a rec center having just proved his competence through a vigorous display that included jogging, pull-ups and swimming laps. "Look at my body, at how I express my thoughts. I am absolutely healthy. I think logically and philosophically." the man sometimes called Lenny Cosmos opined. A very successful and charismatic business man who rose to power in the wake of the Pro-West Orange Revolution, Chernovetsky is also an author (having written a book on how to become a millionaire) and claims to be the second best singer known to mankind. The blue-ribbon pipes, according to Chernovetsky, belong to none other than the man upstairs.

Chernovetsky claims that the future belongs to those who are "open and vulnerable" and in striking this pose he is similar to another charismatic leader who started his own orange revolution (which eventually led him to Eastern Oregon of all places). The rise and fall of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, referred to by his followers as Osho since his passing, is given careful consideration by author Tim Guest in his memoir My Life in Orange. Guest's personal account of living on the Bhagwan's communes details the effects of coming of age within a community outside the Western norms that attempt to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the group. Instead, his experience speaks to the pressures of adjusting to life within a hierarchy in which charisma served as the mechanism for leadership and information took a back seat to mysticism.

But why choose between information and mysticism when you can have both and give your charisma a boost while you're at it? Certainly having a copy of John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise by your bedside could do well to help you on your way to becoming a leader through charm, whit and an exhaustive knowledge of trivia so amazing it must be true, right? Hodgman's tome is described as an almanac of complete world knowledge compiled with instructive annotation and includes portions with headings such as "Nine Presidents Who Had Hooks for Hands" and "Colonial Jobs Involving Eels". The knowledge compiled here creates endless possibilities! For example, using Expertise's comprehensive list of hobo names (700!) and illustrated dictionary of useful hobo signs, one could gain entry into hobo society and perhaps even scale the ladder of leadership in that shadowy world. This hilarious reimagining of reality makes the wildest fantasies possible. Hodgman's fanciful writing doesn't just prepare a reader for rigorous intellectual debate it completely redefines the rules of engagement and the terms for success by stretching reality and history to such an extreme that they are barely recognizable.

Of course, even when we've done everything we could to prepare for a difficult situation (e.g. entering the aforementioned shadowy underworld of hobo society) we still sometimes find ourselves grasping for just the right turn of phrase to help us out of a jam. Books like Cynthia MacGregor's I'm at a Loss for Words: What to Say When You Don't Know What to Say can help. Here MacGregor has assembled simple suggestions for how to approach innumerable, awkward situations. This is practical advice that is equally useful in everyday life or in those rare moments outside the norm such as dealing with cranky, bizarre people in a position of authority. Drafting a letter of apology for arriving at a social engagement with a contagious ailment? I'm at a Loss has got you covered! Unfortunately, we may have to wait for next year's edition to learn how to explain to a mayor that proclamations of sanity while wearing Speedos are just plain awkward.

Four Russians, a German and a Frenchman Walk Into a Hermetically Sealed Tube...

Tuesday July 14th marked the end of an important early stage in the ambitious Mars-5oo project. Six Europeans spent 105 days in a hermetically sealed tube in Moscow meant to simulate conditions that might be experienced by astronauts traveling to Mars. While sequestered they conducted experiments, tended to their garden and watched "Lord of the Rings". This 3 and 1/2 month "voyage" was a build up to longer simulations that will be used to gauge the best way to prepare future traveler for the physically, mentally and socially challenging journey to the red planet. To that end, the Mars-500 call for candidates listed "Personal or family history of psychological disturbance or disease, which could adversely affect data or increase risk to the subject during the study" as one possible reason for exclusion from the experiment. Nobody wants to see a "Silent Running"-esque meltdown when the actual Mars expedition takes place.

The idea that perfectly rational, level headed people are the stewards of space travel is put to the test in Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons by George Pendle. Here we learn about the enigmatic co-founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratories and Aerojet Corp who associated with Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard and participated in occultist activities as leader of the Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis. The cutting edge science that Parsons engaged in as a member of Caltech's "Suicide Squad" was emblematic of a time when humanity's potential seemed to be growing exponentially and Parsons applied this fearless experimentation to cultural matters with rare passion. Strange Angel documents the success that his imagination and skill made possible and delves into the fascinating and bizarre personal life fueled by that same ambition and creativity.

John Whiteside Parsons was eventually killed in an explosion but his writings provide some insight into a life that defied social convention. His collection of essays Freedom Is a Two-Edged Sword provides some insight with passages such as, "The truth, that is the truth about the immediate aspect of some culture, is always different from the accepted values and alleged truths of the culture. This truth is then irritating, annoying, upsetting, and highly dangerous." The truth is dangerous but so is messing with mercury fulminate in your home laboratory. Parsons' untimely death lends an air of intensity to Freedom but even without the mystery surrounding his demise this read sheds some light on an era in American history that typically is seen as rigid and conformist but must have necessarily contained the seeds for the social upheaval that occurred in following decades.

Certainly the six Mars-500 participants (the aforementioned four Russians, a German and a Frenchman) who spent fifteen weeks sharing 550 cubic meters experienced a greater test of personal freedom than most of us will face in our lifetimes but the experiment was equally about creating a self-reliant environment. Some might argue that those qualities, personal freedom and self-reliance, are inextricably inter-related. To that end I include here, The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living as edited and compiled by Walter Szykitka. In these 600+ pages the reader will find all the information necessary for living off the grid and/or seamlessly integrating effectively with society. Looking for tips on how to find a source of water in the desert? How about choosing between renting or buying a house? Either way The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living has you covered. Go forth and do what thou wilt!

Willamette Hosts the World

Last week our own Willamette River played host to The World, a floating condominium of profanity inducing proportions that just happens to be shaped like an ocean liner. Conceptualized by Norwegian cruise ship magnate Knut U. Kloster Jr., The World set sail from Oslo in 2002 and now roams the oceans of, well... the world with a cargo of presumably rich (2.3 million was the starting price for a studio at the time the ship first hit the water) seafarers. Having left Portland, where it spent three days crammed between the Morrison and Hawthorne bridges, World travelers will next visit Astoria before heading up the coast to Seattle, British Columbia and points further north. So if on a recent trip into downtown you didn't get chance to tap a friend on the shoulder, point and exclaim, "What in The World is that!?" I'm sorry. That ship has sailed.

Reflecting on what it might be like to live in a 290 sq ft studio-condo aboard The World reminded me of Stewart Brand's insightful and highly utilitarian How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. Brand, best known as creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, discusses the virtues of efficient use of space and embraces the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi which, architecturally speaking, calls for some space in new buildings to be left unfinished so that the buildings can better "learn" the best way to suit its tenants. Brand calls on numerous examples including his own home (a tugboat in dry-dock!!!) and his work space/studio (an over-sized, retro-fitted shipping container). How Buildings Learn is chock full of theories and case studies that can be applied to the spaces around you and will really inspire you to rethink the way you see and use space.

If one was looking for further practical advice for developing space in a humane fashion it'd be hard to imagine a better resource than A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction which is full of maxims such as: "Arrange houses to form very rough, but identifiable clusters of 8 to 12 households around some common land and paths. Arrange the clusters so that anyone can walk through them, without feeling like a trespasser." Author Christopher Alexander, et al, reverse engineer the most livable and enduring structures and complexes from around the world and distill rules and guidelines that could give life to columnist Thomas Friedman's sense that we Americans may need to "Europeanize" our lifestyle to in order to maintain our quality of life.

But I've gotten a little off topic, traveling the oceans of earth in a buoyant borough is one way to see the world but Thor Heyerdahl experienced life on the water at a much more intimate and graphic level while testing his theory of Polynesian diaspora in raft made of, mostly, primitive materials. He documented the 101 day voyage in Kon-Tiki (the library also has a documentary by that same name with footage from the original undertaking). Heyerdahl's incredible courage made a strong impression on me as a 12 year-old when I first read his descriptions of setting sail on a raft of balsa logs lashed together with hemp ropes. The voyage of the Kon-Tiki only seems more impressive today with advances in technology that make me wonder if anyone will ever chose to do something this difficult again. Setting aside Heyerdahl's anthropological theories, Kon-Tiki is a compelling tale of adventure and careful observation that leaves one with a strong respect for the power of the ocean and the creatures that live there. Though Heyerdah's ideas have since been discredited no one can discount the experience that he had traveling the Southern Pacific at sea level. That's something that money simply can not buy.

Altruism, Basketball and Competition

Jeremy Tyler, a talented basketball prospect from San Diego, CA has decided to forego his senior year of high school in order to play professional basketball in Europe. This is the latest development in a series of youth athlete's decisions that sidestep the NBA draft's age restrictions which call for players to be at least 19 and one year removed from high school at the time they are drafted. Some might see this as the latest assault on the innocence of youth by professional sport. Others might comment that Tyler's choice to play overseas is enabled by the economic power of his rare abilities and that if his dream is to play basketball professionally in the NBA, playing in the Euro-Leagues might be a better apprenticeship than playing college ball. Either way his choice says something about changes in our world as seen through the prism of sports.

Tyler's decision to play in Europe was guided by Sonny Vaccoro, the man who signed Michael Jordon to his first shoe contract with Nike, founded the Adidias ABDC basketball camp and a man who casts a long shadow over the Summer AAU basketball circuit that some blame for hastening the aforementioned loss of innocence in amateur basketball. Vaccoro's career provides the thread that Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger follow in an effort to identify the major players in the growing corporate presence in amateur basketball in their book Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America's Youth. Whether or not you agree with the premise of Influence, that the corporate race to find the next Michael Jordan has ruined youth basketball, Wetzel and Yaeger's book does a great job of illustrating the vicious competitive drive that has fueled profound changes in the world of amateur hoops.

Perhaps these ultra-competitive shoe company executives and AAU team coaches could perfect their craft with lessons learned from Richard Conniff's The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Workplace Beast in All of Us. Conniff applies the questionable study of Evolutionary Psychology to the work place, a setting where many are looking for any edge that will help them get ahead. While animal driven metaphors are common place in the business environment (after all, it's better to be head of the pack than to be thrown to the dogs when they thin the herd) Conniff's witty and engaging style might make you reassess what you can do differently and/or better to get ahead or just not fall behind in these troubled economic times. Ape in the Corner is also set apart from other related books in that Conniff acknowledges the value of altruism, that is, the idea that helping others can be a way of helping yourself. This idea can be applied on any level of an organization, from individuals cooperating on a project to entire departments sharing resources. Come to think of it, this sort of cooperative competition might even be used to build better basketball teams!

Robert Wright takes the idea of examining and emphasizing the altruistic aspects of human nature to the extreme in his book Nonzero: the Logic of Human Destiny. The view he presents is that our increasingly interdependent global society is not just a positive expression of the benefits of an altruistic approach but is a more or less predictable result of the competitive advantages that altruism allows for participating parties. Further, Wright imagines that we may be soon arrive at a time when the complexities that intertwine our societies create an unprecedented moral stability. He proposes an unintentional but undeniable system of checks and balances that results in our collective experience of an unprecedented spiritual ballast. Nonzero's title is a reference to the game theory concept that not all exchanges can be characterized as one party losing while the other wins. For example, clearly Jeremy Tyler leaving the US to play professionally in Europe is a loss for college basketball here but if he has an enriching experience in Europe, represents his community well there and returns a better player and happier person then, in a sense, we all win.

"I Get So Emotion-Able, Baby"

While watching the most recent Oscars telecast a friend remarked on a particularly dramatic acceptance speech saying, "Actors are so emotionable!" And you know? They really are! I mean, they are so capable of signifying emotion. How can we believe in what they are expressing from behind that podium? The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that emotionable is synonymous with emotional but I think that "emotionable" has a much more active sense to it and that got me thinking about books that capture the act and the action of emoting.

 In Character: Actors Acting is full of famous faces doing what they do best, often with ridiculous results. Photographer Howard Schatz challenges his subjects to capture, in a single frame, a moment of his design. Where else might you see F. Murray Abraham as "a teenage girl chosen to go backstage at a Justin Timberlake concert" or Edie Falco doing "a little girl telling your mother that your twin brother said a dirty word." Copious sidebar comments from the actors regarding their craft provide useful context but the real joy here is the sheer over-the-top nature of every expression on every page of this book.

If you require a more serious (or more hilarious depending on how you look at it) set of emotionable images then check out Sam Taylor-Wood's Crying Men. When a friend first mentioned this book to me my first stammered, impatient question was, "But does it have Robin Williams in it!?" and indeed Mr. Williams does make an appearance. While his cheeks are dry, his wrinkled and worried brow rests upon those familiar, furry forearms in a way that can only suggest that the deepest and most intense of fake tragedies has just taken place. Does it count as schadenfreude if the object of your joy is feigning their misery? I'm not sure but I can say that while some of the subjects of this book inspired serious contemplation of the import of human emotion in our daily experience of reality, others made me laugh so hard I nearly dropped the book. Yes, Jude Law in the fetal position and Ed Harris with the trembling, lower lip, I'm looking at you.

If a person wanted to find themselves on the other side of the camera, as the puppet master pulling the strings, it'd be hard to find a better source of inspiration than Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1988. Lee Goldberg's collection of descriptions of unsold pilots is outlandish and wild. Witness: Dr. Franken, a drama featuring a doctor who reanimates a dead accident victim with organs and limbs from a hospital medial bank. The resulting creature has the memories, convictions and emotions of the donors and goes about contacting the living associates of said patrons. Think of it as Frankenstein meets Highway to Heaven. Or, consider Clone Master which was to be a series in which a government scientist makes 13 clones of himself. Each clone is sent to battle evil and is the focus of his own episode. Presumably, each clone would meet a shadowy end and season two would have featured a fresh batch of 13 clones. Bad ideas? This book is chock-full of them. Ideas so bad that they're good? Yeah, there just might be a few of those in there too. Lots of opportunities here to draw out that perfectly emotionable performance!