Daniel T. Baldassarre, assistant professor of zoology at SUNY Oswego, is asking a very important question in the latest issue of the Scientific Journal of Research & Reviews: “What’s the Deal with Birds?”

Birds are very strange. Some people are like “whoa they’re flying around and stuff, what’s the deal with that?” This sentiment is shared by people across socioeconomic backgrounds. Figuring out what the deal is with birds is of the utmost scientific importance. It is now widely appreciated that the majority of socially monogamous passerine species are weird [1]. In species with moderately high extra-pair mating and paternal care, we need to understand what is going on with them [2]. In territorial species, what are they even doing [3] and they do all sorts of weird stuff [4] (but see [5]). In addition, there is a rich body of literature on how birds – which are very strange feathered creatures [6] – can strengthen the pair bond and signal commitment, or directly guard against extrapair copulations (EPCs) [7-9]. Despite these insights, the relative weirdness of birds as opposed to other animals is yet untested.

So, naturally, he studied them.

I looked at three different birds: a woodpecker, a parrot, and a penguin. I looked really close at them, squinting and everything, to try and figure out what was up with them.…Briefly, I watched them really close for quite a while [13-15]. To eliminate potential confounds, I thus conducted my experiments only on animals that I knew for sure were birds, and no other things like bugs and bats.

His conclusion? Though it’s the first study Baldassarre is aware of to “attempt to quantify the deal with birds,” the results were, sadly, “ambiguous.”

Not that I want to argue with a guy who holds a PhD from Cornell University’s vaunted Lab of Ornithology, but, as it happens, I know exactly what the deal with birds is: They’re not real.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

So I get a regular email from Huckberry, which normally I trash without reading because it’s usually little more than an attempt to get me to buy overpriced togs and faux survival gear for blue-collar poseurs and cubicle dwellers—and I say this as someone who generally likes what they have to offer. It’s just…I can’t bring myself to spend $200 on a “Norwegian Kindling Splitter.”

Anyway.

Today I scrolled through their latest missive to see what was on sale, and my eye landed on an article entitled “How to Fall Asleep in 2 Minutes or Less.” Naturally, I clicked. And beheld the following:

A couple years into WWII, the U.S. military realized it had a problem on its hands. Due to the enormous pressures of aerial combat, many of its pilots were accumulating levels of stress so debilitating that they were cracking under it. The tension caused them to lock up in flight and make fatal mistakes — accidentally shooting down friendly planes, or becoming an avoidable casualty themselves.

In an effort to stem the loss of pilots and planes, the military brought in Naval Ensign Bud Winter to research, develop, and test a scientific method for teaching relaxation. Before the war, Winter had been a successful college football and track coach, who had also worked with a professor of psychology on techniques to help athletes relax and perform better under the stress of competition. Stationed at the Del Monte Naval Pre-Flight School in California, his mission now was to coordinate with other coaches and professors to create a course that would similarly instruct cadets on how to stay calm and loose under the pressures of combat.

Which led me down the aforementioned rabbit hole, from which I’m still trying to extricate myself.

First, Lloyd C. “Bud” Winter coached my grandfather, Hal Davis, at Hartnell College before Davis went on to become a standout at Cal. And second, the Del Monte Naval Pre-Flight School, now known as the Naval Postgraduate School, is about a 20-minute drive from where I grew up. In fact, my fifth-grade class took several field trips there (and to the nearby U.S. Naval Research Laboratory) to launch weather balloons, hang out in the anechoic chamber, that sort of thing.

Now, I obviously knew about Winter’s career as a USATF Hall of Fame coach, but I had no idea of his work in the area of relaxation techniques—never mind his involvement in training naval pilots during World War II.

But wait. There’s more.

While at San Jose State, Winter coached Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who were in turn coached by Payton Jordan at the 1968 Olympics. Jordan himself competed against my grandfather—handing him only his third (and final) loss in 1943—and the two became lifelong friends. In fact, I have in my possession a letter Jordan wrote to my grandfather on December 6, 1998 in which Jordan says about Davis that “there was none better.”

I could go on. But there’s work to be done, and I’m not doing it. I blame Huckberry.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

I’ve learned a lot in this business—about people (we’re credulous), writing (it’s hard), and client expectations (they’re wildly optimistic).

I’ve also learned that everything we do takes far more time than people outside the industry could ever imagine. Especially photo shoots. Which is something to ponder as you scroll through the 50 Weirdest Stock Photos You Won’t Be Able to Unsee.

What’s really astonishing to me is that somebody thought that every one of these images was not only a good idea, but also a money-making proposition. I mean, that’s the whole reason behind stock photography: You come up with a concept, you shoot it, you sell it—then just sit back and watch the sweet, sweet royalties roll in. But a woman tossing spaghetti in a forest? A snake with a cat’s head cooking soup in a hollowed-out pumpkin? A couple of bros at urinals, um…helping each other out?

The mind boggles.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

Tired of all the coronavirus talk? The media’s pendulum-like swinging from despair to hope and back again; the constant barrage of conspiracy mongering on social media; the numbers that keep going up…and up…and up?

Yeah. Me too.

Do yourself a favor this weekend: Forget about social distancing, self-quarantining, and the cratering economy and read this amazing story. That’s all I’ve got for you. But it’s enough.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

Here’s more evidence for the theory that messiness and creativity are somehow connected: W. H. Auden was apparently a disgusting pig. “The speed with which he could wreck a room,” said his friend James Stern, “was barely credible, certainly dangerous.” Another friend, Charles Miller, reported on Auden’s New York apartment after a visit (“Wystan” was Auden’s first name):

The coffee table bore its household harvest of books, periodicals, half-emptied coffee cups scummed over with cream, a dash of cigarette ashes for good measure, and a heel of French bread (too tough for Wystan’s new dentures?). An oval platter served as ashtray, heaped with a homey Vesuvius of cigarette butts, ashes, bits of cellophane from discarded packs, a few martini-soaked olive pits, and a final cigarette stub issuing a frail plume of smoke from the top of the heap, signature of a dying volcano. This Auden-scape reeked of stale coffee grounds, tarry nicotine, and toe jam mixed with metro pollution and catshit, Wystanified tenement tang.

Counterpoint: While my workspace at helveticka world headquarters is—compared to everyone else’s anyway—practically antiseptic, if it weren’t for my long-suffering wife, I would, in fact, be quite content to live in a steaming pile of my own filth. The first is a function of my need to work without distraction; the second is simple laziness.

So perhaps the purported link between creativity and clutter is more tenuous than we’d like to admit.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

Not to make light of a serious situation, but I’m noticing that most people don’t seem to know what to do with themselves during a pandemic. Now, all things being equal, I actual prefer social distancing—Washington’s stay-at-home order is basically my default mode—so may I offer a couple of suggestions to see you through the next few weeks?

Dig in to a good, long, classic book. Something like Moby-Dick or Middlemarch or War and Peace. You can’t say you don’t have the time. Heck, you might even like it.

Binge-watch something that makes our current situation look downright festive and gay. Like, say, Mr. Robot. TV not your bag? Try a film or two from George Romero’s oeuvre. 1978’s Dawn of the Dead is my personal fave. Or, for a more modern take on the zombie genre, it’s tough to beat 28 Days Later.

Whatever you do, moderate your news consumption and, for the love of God, lay off the social media. (Now that I think about it, that’s just good, solid advice regardless.)

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

“After fifty years, billions of dollars of intensive marketing campaigns, and tens of billions of dollars of profits for pharmaceutical companies,” writes George Scialabba, “it is still far from clear that antidepressant drugs are any more effective than placebo. The only group of people who have demonstrably benefited from the widespread use of antidepressants are pharmaceutical executives and investors.”

There’s more—much more—in Scialabba’s forthcoming How to Be Depressed, excerpted in the current issue of n+1 magazine.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment