My New Meds

  

  So I recently began self-medicating.   

A graph explaining your age over time

Normally I’m a tough-it-out sort of guy and I don’t subscribe to these “fix-all” medicines, but I found one recently that I really like so far. After looking at the numbers of how it could improve my overall health and life, I decided to give it a try.

Right off the bat, this treatment increases the longevity of your life by approximately 7 years, possibly more.

It also helps people to sleep better and more deeply, raises their daily energy levels by improving the cardiovascular and circulatory systems and helps to fight stress. So, thus far this medicine is Nyquil, Five Hour Energy and Cymbalta all in one, not to mention the superior life expectancy.

But that’s not all! Regular dosage can also fight heart disease and Alzheimer’s, burn fat, lower the risk of developing diabetes, lower blood pressure, reduce back pain, combat osteoporosis, and even increase the brain’s ability for complex thought. So now we've added Aspirin, HTC, Metformin, Diuretics, Ibuprofen, Bisphosphonates, and Ritalin to the list of medications that this can supplement or even replace.

Anyone? Joe Versus the Volcano?

Sounds like a dream come true for any hypochondriacs in the audience, right? This is a great remedy for those with more than one ailment since so many medications nowadays can’t be mixed with each other.

Perhaps you've guessed what this mystery drug is....

 

Exercise!

Who knew that your life could be so much better by raising your heart rate a few times per week? Those who exercise report being happier and more satisfied with their lives, both because of their self-image and as a result of activity-produced endorphins. I could well be preaching to the choir, but I think that many in my generation could definitely use a (large) dose of exercise.

Life expectancy in the United States has increased steadily for the past couple of centuries, ever since that good old Penicillin came around. I fear, however, that that statistic has been reduced to a mere number which signifies how long the heart beats and the brain fires synapses without mention of quality of life. Having toiled in elderly respite care myself, I've seen what a generation of people who worked through World War II and the Great Depression becomes in their golden years- while their bodies became decrepit, they continued to work and strive for independence.

That being said, I dread to think of my generation’s longevity through increasingly advanced medicine because it is likely that our age of physical decline will occur much sooner than our predecessors if we do not work as they did. Sure, our hearts may beat and our brains function longer, but in what condition will we be?

I, for one, intend to be that spry old guy who goes on bike rides and hikes with his wife at 90 years old. My plan of attack? Regular exercise (and a good diet).

Records vs. MP3s

In a moment of introspection, I purchased a record player.

I had a teacher in high school who was an ardent advocate for older methods of recording, contending that music quality was declining as a result of digitization  I didn't understand much of it at the time, but as I encountered more like-minded people and increased my music knowledge, I came to learn that the supposed advantage of listening to LPs versus MP3s has to do with overtones.

Overtones are the reason that in-tune music sounds so good and out-of-tune music lacks moving quality. It has to do with the way the notes vibrates- in layman’s terms, when a chord is perfectly in tune, the notes vibrate together in such a way that they create completely new extra notes way up high (synergy!). The argument is this- because records use analog recording, they capture overtones, while digital recordings do not.

    

Complicated stuff; if I had a constituency of music nerds maybe I would post a blog about overtones...

Back to records. I was curious to know people's reactions to MP3s and records played side by side and whether not they could hear anything like overtones. So, I prepared three songs (Thriller, More Than a Feeling, and Oh, Lady Be Good) and set up an Oz-esque curtain in my apartment so that I could switch between sound from the computer and the record player without people knowing which. I then invited several groups of people into my apartment to listen to the different sound bites one after another and fill out a survey with specific questions on what they heard and which they preferred. I also asked them to try to identify which was the MP3 and which was the record.

My findings can be summarized with one word- inconclusive. 

There was no definitive leaning toward one medium or the other since almost everyone preferred at least one analog and one digital recording. As far as identification goes, the listeners performed somewhat more consistently, able to identify which was the record approximately 75% of the time. The exception to this statistic was the third selection, Oh, Lady Be Good; I purposely chose an MP3 that sounded scratchy while the LP was silky smooth in order to test whether people identified the records by some sort of greater depth of sound, or simply by listening for scratches and pops. Apparently the latter was the case, since identification of the analog recording dropped to 35% on that song.

Basically all this proves is that everyone's taste in music and sound is different. Some prefer the vintage, sometimes compromised tone of a record while others opt for the squeaky clean, remastered MP3s. Few, if any, can really hear overtones coming through on a record and only orchestral and homophonic vocal works would really display them anyway. 

To me, I love listening to both for very different reasons having nothing to do with the sound quality. If I want to listen to a mix, especially one that includes pop or hip-hop, I'll usually go with an MP3 since the digital medium allows for easy skipping and in my opinion most computer-generated sounds weren't meant to be put on records. However, if I'm in the mood to clean around the house while listening to an entire album without having to choose tracks, I'll almost always go with an LP. This is essentially why the record industry has seen a huge dip in album sales and a proportionally large spike in single track sales. But that is a topic for another day.

My recommendation- listen to both on different occasions. If you don't have access to a record player, feel free to purchase a record for a dollar or two and bring it to my place and I'd love to listen with you.

Superheroes on a Schedule

Beginning with "Spider-Man" in 2002, the film industry has produced an unprecedented number of films about super heroes. Most people have their own, distinct taste for cinema, preferring, perhaps, romance over action, or light-hearted over heavy/dark movies. Super hero movies, however, seem to be largely immune to this distinction, especially among younger audiences, and, as a result of this universal taste for the supernatural, American youth can feel almost ostracized if they haven't seen the most recent installment of any given hero franchise.

After a decade of hero movies, though, I began to notice certain trends in the screenplays, especially when the movie is considered an "origins story," or how the man becomes the hero.



In an oversimplified sense, every superhero origin movie seemed to me to include 6 main sections:
1. the introduction of characters
2. the acquisition of powers
3. the first heroic deed (or first deed as a hero)
4. the montage of heroic deeds (not as common)
5. the final battle
6. the denouement

I first noticed a trend in the length of these movies. Without knowing anything about the plot or the characters, I could count on any given superhero movie being approximately 2 hours long, most of them only plus or minus a couple of minutes. From there I drew up this table showing what percentage of the way through the movie each event occurs.

	Exposition	Powers	Heroic deed	Montage	Final Battle	Denouement
The Amazing Spiderman	15	20	42	42-44	89-92	92-100
Batman Begins	15	27	48	N/A	90-95	95-100
Captain America	18	32	61	69-72	90-92	92-100
Daredevil	8	8	27	N/A	91-95	95-100
Fantastic Four	13	26	38	N/A	89-95	95-100
Ghost Rider	12	41	47	N/A	92-95	95-100
Green Lantern	19	28	67	N/A	93-96	96-100
Hulk	11	23	33	N/A	94-97	97-100
Ironman	29	53	67	N/A	86-95	95-100
The Mask of Zorro	18	31	37	N/A	90-96	96-100
Men in Black	18	35	49	N/A	90-95	95-100
Spider-Man	9	14	42	47-49	90-95	95-100

bold signifies the high and low outliers which were eliminated from the mean percentage
Also, sorry, to the Halle Berry fans out there, Catwoman wasn't surveyed.




For those of you who are visual thinkers, here's the same date crunched into averages and plugged into our 2-hour timeframe

To tell the truth, this study was less disillusioning than I had originally thought it might be. As it turns out, a lot of the same timing of plot events is shared by Aladdin, Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Wizard of Oz, Inspector Gadget, How to Train Your Dragon, and Flubber.

What I learned instead is that these statistics simply quantify standard story-telling. Therefore, what's most important is that we, as an audience, demand innovation in other areas, such as characterization, cinematography, and dialogue.

tl;dr- Most modern superhero origin movies are modeled after the primordial Star Wars mold