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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-01-17, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013. PAGE 5. Here’s a sobering thought: we are all, collectively, dumber than we were three millennia ago. Not my idea – it belongs to Gerald Crabtree, a research geneticist at Stanford University. Crabtree posits that if an average citizen from the city of Athens, circa 1000 B.C. were to be dropped, Star Trek teleportation-style, into modern-day life “he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions”. What? Ancient Greeks were smarter than 21st century citizens? Impossible! Consider the relative levels of sophistication. We modern Homo sapiens have 18-wheel semis, iPads and waterproof Tilley safari jackets. The Ancient Greeks rode donkeys, wrote on wax tablets and wore bedsheets. On the other hand, those old Greeks had Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. We have Donald Trump, Rob Ford and Sarah Palin. Crabtree says we’re dumber today because we no longer need to be smart the way we used to. Back in the bad old days, if you didn’t figure out a way to keep the sabre-toothed tiger out of your cave or ensure that your family was warm and well-fed the results were...profound. Back then, to be dumb was to be dead. Mother Nature, unsenti- mental matriarch that she is, had no qualms about pruning dead wood from the family tree. “A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died” says Crabtree, “whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate.” Case in point: the aforementioned Trump, a bouffant baboon who’s been bankrupt more times than Lindsay Lohan’s been arrested, has his own TV show and a personal line of cologne. Some people want to smell like Donald Trump? Explain that, Darwin. But, ancient Athenian or contemporary Canuck, there’s no question that we are, for better or worse, the dominant species on Planet Earth. And how did we pull that off? We can’t soar like eagles, run like cheetahs, swim like orcas or out-wrestle a grizzly. Physically we are comparatively pallid, puny and more than a little pathetic. So what do we have that our fellow earth tenants lack? What do we do that they don’t do? Simple. We cook. Heating food – be it meat or vegetable – breaks down the cellular structure, which speeds up chewing and digestion. That means the human body absorbs more nutrition with each bite. Watch a cow or a robin or a gopher for awhile. They spend most of their time chewing or pecking or grazing whatever they can find to chew, peck or graze. Other creatures are forced to eat or look for food virtually all their waking hours, but not us. About two million years ago some anonymous caveman accidentally dropped a chunk of mammoth haunch into the fire and discovered the secret of cooking. That changed everything. Researchers reckon that had our Homo erectus ancestors eaten only a raw food diet they would have had to spend more than nine hours every day just eating and digesting food to feed their over-large brains. So, nine hours for digestion; say, eight hours for sleep, and enough other hours every day to build fires, avoid predators, find shelter, forage for food...That doesn’t leave much time to invent the wheel. Fortunately, we stumbled upon the concept of cooking. That bought us time – time to invent language and art and science and...and...Have you met the Segway? It was invented in our lifetime – only unveiled in 2001 as a matter of fact. The experts promised it would revolutionize transportation around the world. It’s a two-wheeled scooter built along the lines of a push lawn mower. You stand on it, tilt the handle in the direction you want to travel and off you go, at a stately 10 miles per hour. The Segway is compact, environmentally friendly, very safe (George W. Bush fell off his, but....) and cheap. Well, pretty cheap. I saw one on EBay for $6,000. Yep, the Segway is a transportation dream come true – except hardly anyone likes them. Because when you stand on a Segway you look like a dork. I know I’m going to get e-mails from the 11 Segway owners in Canada saying that I’ve maligned the vehicle and it’s really a sexy ride. I respect your position. All I’m saying is, Socrates would have thought you looked ridiculous. Arthur Black Other Views We’re older but we’re dumber … Being associated with mediocrity must be tough. Sometimes it’s out of your hands and other times you bring it on yourself, but either way, when it sticks, you’re stuck for good. As the years go on, I often wonder how many people know what they’re actually saying when they claim something has “jumped the shark”. It’s a saying that has worked its way into the everyday lives of many, but I personally find the saying’s origins hilarious. It was the dawn of a new season of the show Happy Days in 1977 and Fonzie (Henry Winkler) was water skiing when he encountered a shark on the water. In a cartoonish move, The Fonz physically jumps over the shark, avoiding danger. The “event” marked the beginning of the end for Happy Days, as it began its slow, steady decline over the next five season, before it officially ended. Since then, however, “jumping the shark” has become commonplace for when something has gone too far. Example: If you liked the early work of the Rolling Stones, but hated the album Goats Head Soup, and everything thereafter, you’d say that with Goats Head Soup, the Rolling Stones jumped the shark. Everyone knows the saying, but which of the Happy Days writers could have anticipated that one simple (although physically there’s no way manoeuvering over a shark in the air whilst on water skis could be simple) plot point could create a cultural phenomenon based around its stupidity? No one could have counted on it, just as no one could have predicted that a solid defensive shortstop from Mexico would define the line between mediocrity and usefulness. His name was Mario Mendoza and while he was a great defensive baseball player between the late 1970s and early 1980s, his hitting left much to be desired. With a career batting average of .215, Mendoza spent just as many seasons batting under .200 as he did batting above it, resulting in the even batting average of .200 as “The Mendoza Line”. It’s a common baseball term, but only recently did I discover that there was an actual soul behind the naming of the Mendoza Line. Anyone with a batting average under the Mendoza Line is often a player that coaches and management have a tough time justifying their place on the team to anyone, despite any other contributions they may make to the team. So here it is that poor Mario Mendoza, who no doubt came to the United States of America from Mexico looking for a better life, who put his heart and soul into nearly 10 years of professional baseball for Pittsburgh Pirates, Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers will always be known as the very, very bottom of the basement where a baseball player might still be considered valuable to his team. Mendoza no doubt worked hard every day to improve, but yet here he sits. Just as the writers of Happy Days will be remembered for a classic television series, but viewers will always remember when the show jumped the shark and when the show gave us “jump the shark”. Unfortunately there is no accounting for how the human memory works, and sometimes we tend to retain the negative, instead of the positive. So whether you’re Winkler, or Mendoza, or you, it could always be a misstep for which you’re remembered, not your triumphs. Jumping the shark Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense O ver the past year or so I’ve replaced a lot of things I own including, but not limited to, my cell phone, a video game console, a camera and countless other little gadgets. At first I just saw it as the cost of deterioration and (with the cameras, my car, my laptop, my cell phone and other things) I saw it as the cost of doing business. Recently, however, going through all of my old bits and baubles from my past, I’ve noticed something that I’ve long suspected: older things survive better than newer things. I’m not just talking about that tank of a refrigerator people have in their basement that would likely save the life of Indiana Jones if he was about to get stuck in a nuclear detonation. No, I’m talking about more modern items and the fact that I’m paying more and more for less and less quality is really bothering me. The trend isn’t something that I’ve noticed over my near three decades. It’s really a creation of the last five to 10 years. A prime example is my Apple MacBook Pro, which I bought just over five years ago to replace my Apple PowerBook. For those of you scratching your heads, these are just laptops. The older of the two laptops, which I bought a decade ago for school, is still running and is being used by a family member. Despite having a part replaced after I was hit by a car while walking to class, this laptop, which is getting to be as old as a Grade 5 student, is still operating just fine. The model that I bought to replace it five years ago, however, isn’t. The screen has burnt out, the disc drive isn’t working and it hasn’t been through anything as rough as being hit by a car. The model is, plain and simple, inferior to its previous incarnations. The first one is still alive and kicking while it, the replacement, less than half the age of the original, is ready to be put out to pasture. When I first became a journalist, I decided to invest in myself by buying a decent camera. I figured if I couldn’t be a fantastic photographer, I could at least have good enough equipment to make the photos I did take look better. Within three years, I figured it was about time for an upgrade. That original camera, a Nikon D60, is still working fine. It’s found its way into the hands of a family member and, at last look, was taking pictures just as well as it did the day I excitedly unpacked it. I replaced it with the Nikon D3000 (don’t worry, the numbers are pretty arbitrary. The D3200 is better than the D3000, obviously, but beyond that, it’s not to scale). Here we are, just over a year after unpackaging it and I’m currently without my camera (and feeling pretty professionally naked because of it) as it needed to be taken into the shop and repaired (for more than half the cost of the camera body, no less). When I was younger, I was rough on things, but they still lasted years and years. Now I’m older, still clumsy and klutzy, but a little more careful with things (especially since I’m paying for them myself). Unfortunately they don’t seem to be lasting. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect to buy something and have it last forever. The world just doesn’t run that way anymore. However, I more and more find myself giving the boot to companies that treat me poorly or sell shoddy products. I bought a new laptop recently and I got away from Apple. After what I spent on the last laptop, they wanted more than half the price of the laptop to fix what was wrong with it and I said forget it. I can buy a Windows laptop every three years for the next decade and still not spend that much. I would have gotten away from Nikon for my camera needs, but I’ve done the research and, even if my D3300 was a lemon, there isn’t much better out there. Also, all the equipment I’ve invested in is Nikon-only, so it would be quite an expense to switch now. I guess the one company that has impressed to some extent, is Sony. I have a Sony MP3 music player, video camera and cellular phone right now because I find them reliable, rugged, reasonably priced and easy to use. I was an early adopter of the infamous iPhone because of my experiences with Apple (having owned an iPod since the first generation), but I still find the Sony products to be far superior for one reason: value. They offer a reliable product for a reasonable price and, in my books, that will always win. So to anyone out there with ideas of creating the next camera, the next laptop, the next car or the next cell phone, do me a favour and build it well. Make it with high quality parts and put the time in to make use of that quality. Make sure it will last and make sure it’s a reasonable price. If you follow that recipe, you will find yourself customers who will keep coming back, and they are worth their weight in gold. A good product will always win out Denny Scott Denny’s Den