




I'm Butter on the Bread Like Parkay

CHRISTINE JANIS (Brown University): People always think that big predators are like the top of the heap, the king of beasts, the king of the jungle. And in fact, those big predators, particularly ones that sort of highly specialize in just eating meat, they're very vulnerable.
NARRATOR: Scientists are sharply divided about what caused Thylacoleo and all the other giant animals in Australia to die out. One view is that the final climax of cold conditions toward the end of the Ice Age, 30,000 years ago, pushed the great creatures into oblivion...But a rival theory places the extinction much earlier, around 50,000 years ago. At that time, climate changes were probably less severe. And the first humans to arrive in Australia, the ancestors of today's aboriginal people, were entering the continent.
GIFFORD MILLER (University of Colorado): If we look at what was happening in Australia, 50,000 years ago or so, we can see a relatively stable climate, not that much different than today. And we also see that that's when the first humans colonized Australia. So it raises the question: could it be a human impact that's the main driver for these big extinctions?[...]When humans come to Australia, we know they have fire on-demand. And so that's one of the tools people use in modifying landscapes to their benefit. And humans burn for a whole range of reasons. I mean, partly, they just burn to clear the land so that they can move across it. They hunt along the fire front, they signal distant bands, they promote the growth of plants that respond after burning. So there's many reasons why humans might be burning the landscape in a way that they thought was a positive impact.
CHRISTINE JANIS: It's sort of like a snowball rolling uphill, if you like. The big predators are the ones who are going to feel any effects first, because they're the ones on top of the pyramid, and they're dependent on everything below them.
Or on the outermost layer of the snowball, if you like.
Some marsupials live in other parts of the world, but Australia's geographic isolation contributed to the evolution of many unique species, like wombats, koalas and kangaroos. So the perplexing question is how did Thylacoleo, the extinct "meat-cutting lion," come to share features of both marsupials and big cats?
NARRATOR: Since this skull is so well preserved, it promises to deliver clues that have eluded previous researchers. Mark Walters is a doctor who uses forensic techniques to rebuild shattered human faces and skulls. Today he's using a CT scanner for a different kind of detective work. For the first time, he will peer deep inside Thylacoleo's skull, and try to reconstruct the creature's ancient brain.
MARK WALTERS: CT data provides us with a stack of images, and we can bring those into the computer, and then we can create geometrical files. And from those geometrical files we can do a number of different types of manipulations, including taking a cast of the internal surface of the bones.
NARRATOR: The CT images are transformed into a plastic replica of the skull. Then Walters takes a set of precise measurements of the interior cavity. The final result is a remarkable three-dimensional cast of Thylacoleo's brain.
MARK WALTERS: There's a lot of information that can be derived from such a cast. We can see, quite clearly, the lumps and bumps on the bone. And they correspond to different parts of the brain. Well, the very first thing and obvious structure is that we see these very large olfactory lobes. So this animal is going to be able to detect its specific smells over very long distances. Also we can see the parts of the brain associated with sight. And we can also see the big nerves that go to the eyes. And these nerves are quite large, so you can see this animal also required a lot of good vision. So, what we can quickly see by this cast of the brain is that this animal had a very powerful sense of smell. It also had a good sense of hearing, and a very good sense of sight. So it was using all of its senses in its day to day activities.
An island, of course. The authorities when they were releasing me had asked in their suspicious way where I would go and I said at once, Oh, an island, where else? All I wanted, I assured them, was a place of seclusion and tranquillity where I could pursue my studies of a famous painter they had never heard of. It sounded surprisingly plausible to me. (Oh yes, guv, says the old lag, standing before the big desk in his arrowed suit and twisting his cap in his hands, this time I'm going straight, you can count on it, I won't let you down!) There is something about islands that appeals to me, the sense of boundedness, I suppose, of being protected from the world--and of the world being protected from me, there is that, too.
Here they are. There are seven of them. Or better say, half a dozen or so, that gives more leeway. They are struggling up the dunes, stumbling in the sand, squabbling, complaining, wanting sympathy, wanting to be elsewhere. That, most of all: to be elsewhere. There is no elsewhere, for them. Only here, in this little round.John Banville. Hadn't read him since before I read Robbe-Grillet. Informative.
And the doctor?
So you often see the stamp-collector? Not a sly question, although it looks like it. When one has slept badly one asks without knowing what. One wants to keep on asking forever, not sleeping means nothing but asking: if one had the answer, one would sleep.
But we play certain favorite parts so often for the eyes of others, and we rehearse them so much in our hearts, that we come to rely more readily on the fictions of their evidence than on a reality we have all but forgotten. (170)What is your most marked characteristic?
African American Lit w/ Peabody: B-Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday. I want to wake up early for coffee, see a matinee after lunching and laundering at my parents, and then go to Pioneer's Park for a chess picnic. What do you think?
Blacks in Film 1970-Present (actually Ethnicity and The Western) w/ Dreher: B
Japanese & Asian Cinema w/ Foster: A+
Writing of Poetry 4 w/Anthony: A