Even if you've never embarrassed yourself by unknowingly spreading an urban legend as fact to friends and family, you've at least been on the receiving end of one of these misinformed messages. Next time an email, tweet, or link seems a little fishy, here's how to spot it before your itchy trigger finger sends it to all your friends or followers.
    
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As a child, Egon Spengler was my hero.
It’s funny to think that in a decade populated by such brawny cartoon characters as the steroided-out He-Man gang, the all-powerful Transformers, and the bicep-flexing GI Joe’s, a skinny, awkward, glasses-wearing scientist could somehow stand out from the crowd.
But Egon was my favorite. I wore out about ten different action figures, I had a little jumpsuit with his name on it, and even though my eyesight was fine, I would often put on a pair of lensless glasses because I thought it’d make me more like Egon (smart!).
As many Scouting NY readers probably know, Ghostbusters is my favorite movie. This is partly because I think the film is one of the great comedies of all-time, the perfect blend of horror and humor, realism and fantasy. But of course, a favorite movie is never a rational choice, nor should it be (I am always highly suspect of people who say that Citizen Kane is their favorite movie; greatest, OK, but favorite?). As with any favorite film, the time, place and circumstances of that first viewing is often as important as the movie itself, and for me, Ghostbusters arrived right about the time I started to learn about the unknown.
I was a pretty neurotic kid, which I suspect was due in large part to my early Catholic school education. I remember being at Friday mass one day in first grade and listening to the priest going on about death and heaven and hell. All of a sudden, it occurred to me for the first time that death was a very real thing; someday, all the people around me would be gone. My friends, my brothers, my parents. Would they go to Heaven? Would some wind up in Purgatory, or the unthinkable, Hell? The implications became overwhelming, and I began to cry.
My teacher, Sister Frances, saw me and quickly took me out in the hall. She asked what was wrong, and I told her that the priest had made me think of my parents dying. I’ll never forget the look on her face as it clouded over with irritation. “You made me miss the service for this?” she snapped. “Your parents are fine. Now get back inside.” Oh, parochial school, where would I be without your warm embrace?
More frightening unknowns began to steadily reveal themselves, as they do for all children. I recall reading a second grade Weekly Reader article (remember that four page newsletter for kids?) on the Chernobyl disaster and becoming deeply concerned about the possibility of a nuclear meltdown. The Seabrook, NH nuclear power plant was just 25 miles away from where I grew up, and I’ll never forget the large sign put up by activists on the highway, which we would frequently drive by: “Mr. President,” it read, “In the event of a nuclear meltdown at Seabrook, there would be no chance of escape.” Just what a seven year old wants to think about.
And of course, there were the usual childhood boogeymen. Most kids were afraid of monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet, but after reading a book on aliens (courtesy of the Scholastic Book Club), I realized that the real threat came from outer space – and there was nothing you could do to stop it. Death, illness, nuclear holocausts, alien abduction…The more I grew up, the more the world became a very scary place.
What made Ghostbusters so special? I certainly loved He-Man, Transformers, the Smurfs, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, and all the rest. But Ghostbusters was my favorite, the fantasy land that I most often drifted off into when playing. And after some reflection, I think I’ve figured out why.
Superman fought Lex Luthor. GI Joe fought Cobra. He-Man fought Skeletor. The Ninja Turtles fought Shredder. The Smurfs fought Gargamel. Each series featured a recurring villain as the antagonist, a bully-substitute who would attempt a new fiendish plot each week, only to be thwarted at the last minute by the smarter, stronger heroes.
The Ghostbusters fought the unknown.
I can’t remember how young I was when I first watched the original movie, but I’ve never forgotten my reaction to one scene in particular: the four Ghostbusters, having narrowly survived a supernatural earthquake, head into Dana Barrett’s apartment building to try and save the day. “They don’t have a plan,” I remember thinking in horror. “They don’t know what to do.”
And it’s true. Now knowing what happens, it’s easy to forget that at this point, our heroes have absolutely no idea of what they’re going to do once they get to the roof. Sure, they’ve got four nuclear accelerators on their backs, but their firepower quickly proves useless against Gozer. Soon, Dana Barrett is a terror dog, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is tearing up Central Park West, and it looks like the end is near.
And then, as they crouch in an alcove for safety, Egon speaks up. “I have a radical idea. The [dimensional] door swings both ways. We could reverse the particle flow through the gate.” “How?” asks Venkman. “We’ll cross the streams,” he replies.
“Excuse me Egon? You said crossing the streams was bad,” says Venkman, as Ray and Winston both look reluctant. “You’re going to endanger us. You’re going to endanger our client. The nice lady, who paid us in advance, before she became a dog…”
“Not necessarily,” says Egon. “There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive.”
This is when Egon became my hero.
Sure, it’s Venkman who leads the charge (“I love this plan! I’m excited to be a part of it! Let’s do it!”), but it was Egon who, on the verge of a paranormal apocalypse, was able to keep his wits and turn to science for a solution. And despite the grim odds, he shows absolutely no hesitation in suggesting they risk their lives to stand up to the gates of Hell.
Egon made it cool to be smart.
Each week on the tie-in Real Ghostbusters cartoon show, which I watched religiously, saving the day would come down to some kind of scientific know-how, or knowledge of history or arcane literature, and more often than not, it was the brilliant scientist Egon who provided the necessary answers. When bullies at school would make fun of me for being a nerd or getting good grades, the insults never made any sense. Of course I wanted to be smart. Just like my hero.
What’s more, Egon would always confront the weekly cadre of spooks, specters and demons with a cool, scientific detachment. He wasn’t afraid of the unknown.
Looking back, I now see that as I got older, I began gravitating closer to the things that scared me. In third grade, though I was very much afraid of spiders, I strangely chose to do a science report on tarantulas. I learned all about them, and even went to the pet store to take photos of a live one. Doing the report didn’t exactly make me 100% comfortable hanging around enormous arachnids, but I did find that embracing my fears and looking at them logically greatly helped to diminish them.
The unknown became a little less scary.
On Monday, Harold Ramis, co-writer of Ghostbusters and the actor who brought Egon Spengler to life, passed away at the age of 69. An incredibly gifted writer, director, actor, and producer, countless obituaries have heralded his landmark contributions to cinema and comedy.
For me, his death made me reflect on the importance of childhood heroes, and the immense effect they can have on one’s growth. I once read that in the 1960s and 70s, approximately 50% of the applicants to Rockefeller University’s PHD program cited TV’s Mr. Wizard as the reason they first became interested in science. How many would today cite Dr. Egon Spengler?
In an interview, Ramis talks about the first time he showed the Ghostbusters films to his young children. After the movies ended, he recalls, “my four year old turned to me and said, ‘Dad – you’re a really good scientist.’”
“I thought that was the highest compliment of all,” he says, clearly overjoyed by the memory.
You were a great scientist, Mr. Ramis. Thank you for teaching me that wanting to be smart was OK, and that you didn’t have to be afraid of those strange things that go bump in the night.
-SCOUT
BiteLabs has a modest proposal. Industrial farming is unsustainable, so why don't we grow meat in labs? And if we're growing meat in labs, why not make it the meat of celebrities? You know what, I don't see any reason why not.
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Inceptor is a board game based off Chris Nolan's Inception, which means it's gorgeous but also complicated. Very complicated. So extremely complicated, in fact, that sometimes doesn't make any sense. But that's okay, we're in.
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Infocom's classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy turns 30 this year, and to celebrate, the BBC will publish an updated online version of the game on March 8, the 36th anniversary of the series' first radio broadcast.
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If you've got a couple of screwdrivers, popsicle sticks, an elastic band and a bottlecap lying around, then why not put them to good use? These common household items are everything you need to make a surprisingly powerful mini crossbow.
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Maybe changing the perspective on the original Legend of Zelda is a little weird—everything looks so different here—but that's exactly what makes this Oculus Rift version of the game interesting. Its almost like you're playing (or in this case, watching) an entirely new game.
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In what may be the first of its kind, a proposed bill in Missouri would require that parents be notified when evolution is being taught to their children at school. They could then pull them from the class. Critics say the bill would "eviscerate" the teaching of biology.
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You know you can still mock good movies, right? That's why Honest Trailers chose Gravity — a film they clearly genuinely like — for its newest installment. It's still just as funny as when they take on crap like Batman & Robin. And besides, now we know Gravity would be even better with pinball sound effects.
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I love True Detective. I think it is as brilliant and unique a show as I have ever seen. Everything about it has been amazing, from the writing to the direction to the brilliant lead performances. But as pointed out by some commenters in the recap of Episode 5, the show is narrowly focused on the two white male leads leaving everyone else undefined and in the background. This got me thinking about my own experience as an African-American male experience media.
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—
It all started with a tap, tap, tapping.
I was completely bowled over when I found out I was going to be a dad. I was elated, terrified, anxious, giddy, shocked, terrified… did I mention terrified? I can honestly say that, in that moment when I first found out about her, the daughter that was growing in my wife’s belly, I loved her. I loved the idea of her. But that’s all she was at the moment – an idea. And loving an idea and loving a person are two completely different things.
One of the many, many things that differentiate men and women is that, when a woman is expecting, the baby is a concrete fact, an existing thing, much earlier in the pregnancy for her than it is for him. Yes, minutes into finding out about the baby, I was already starting to feel emotional, protective, and proud of it, but there’s no way I can even pretend that I had the same appreciation of that child as a physical, three-dimensional human being that my wife did.
The baby was inside of her, it was part of her. On good days, the baby was a symbiotic organism, a companion, a complementary life-form inexorably tied to my wife’s being. On bad days, the baby was a parasite, sucking away nutrients, blood, sleep, youth, and inspiring her to throw up chocolate milkshakes or whatever else she was able to keep down that week. However, throughout the good and the bad, my wife’s early interactions with our baby created a bond that I was sometimes jealous of. Her love for our daughter was both a tactile and an emotional love and I just wasn’t there yet.
Maybe it was because a kid is a hard concept to wrap your mind around, if you’re not holding it, looking at it, or changing its diaper. I was the proud father of an abstract idea of a baby and I was nervous about how my feelings would change towards it when that child emerged out of the aether and solidified into an actual, living person.
Cut to four months into the pregnancy.
We’d had a long night. My wife’s anti-nausea medicines hadn’t done their job, so she’d spent a lot of time in the bathroom with me perched above her, delicately holding her hair.
I awoke from a dead sleep to feel my wife tapping on my hand, obviously trying to wake me up. Maybe she needed me to get her new meds, grab her some water, or run out to look for some food that she might be able to stomach for a few hours. I didn’t mind. Nights like last night made it clear that my wife was getting the short end of the stick on this deal, so, getting up a little early to go grab some glazed donuts was nothing to complain about.
I groggily glanced over at my wife. She was turned towards me, fast asleep and curled up on her side. I was confused. Had she passed out while waiting for me to wake up? Had I dreamed it? But then I felt it again. A tap, tap, tapping…
My eyes went to my left hand, which was pressed up against my wife’s stomach, which had been pressed there for most of the night. A second passed and then, from inside that stomach, a living, breathing person tapped on my hand, grabbing my attention and letting me know, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was real.
I’d felt the baby move before, but this was different. This was the first moment that my daughter and I ever shared on our own. My wife was asleep and this chorus of tapping – it was for me. It was an introduction, a private conversation, an intimate hello.
Lightly, very lightly, because I didn’t want to wake my wife, I pressed back, tapping as if I could communicate with my daughter in some form of in-utero Morse code. She tapped again, I responded, and, in that moment, my love for my daughter was no longer abstract. She was a person, a person I had now met, a person I had a relationship with, and, in that funny little moment, my love for my daughter was concrete and real and as grounded as it ever was and ever will be.
Now I know that there a million different ways to debunk what happened there. It was probably just gas, or I was feeling her knee, or there was no way she could’ve been responding, or fetuses aren’t particularly known for their ability to communicate old-school telegraph style. I am aware of them all and I do not care.
Because, even if it made absolutely no sense, that was the moment where my love for my daughter evolved, the moment where the unreal became real, the moment where I got my first sense of what it would be like to love “My Daughter the Person” rather than “My Daughter the Idea.”
That silly tap, tap, tapping endures to this day as one of the most loving moments of my entire life and I’m so happy my daughter woke me up to share it with her.
♦◊♦
Original uncropped image – Credit—Photo: Beglen/Flickr
The post The Day My Love for My Daughter Became Real appeared first on The Good Men Project.
Areas served by London’s major railway stations
Fox Business thinks the blockbuster, feature-length toy commercial The Lego Movie is anti-business. The mind boggles.
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Top 5 misconceptions about evolution: A guide to demystify the foundation of modern biology.
Version 2.0
Donate here to support science education:
National Center for Science Education http://ncse.comThank you followers for all your support!
Love,
molecularlifesciences.tumblr.com
Here’s an updated version of the common misconceptions about evolution. I much prefer this one, on account of correctly spelling “descent” vs “decent” :)
Spotify may be one of the most popular music streaming sites on the internet, but not all songs are created equal. A sizable chunk of Spotify's collection has never been played. Forgotify finds those tracks and turns them into a playlist for you.
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Resolution HR467 has been reintroduced into the US House of Representatives. If passed, it would officially designate February 12, 2014 as "Darwin Day," recognizing "the importance of science in the betterment of humanity."
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The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope has been used to create history's first-ever map of weather on the surface of a brown dwarf. These images provide us with an unprecedented look at the atmospheric features of these poorly understood "failed stars."
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![Obama: "The debate [over climate change] is settled"](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/19e1mquu6sp53gif.gif)
"The shift to a cleaner energy economy won't happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way," said President Obama last night in his State of the Union Address."But the debate is settled," he added emphatically. "Climate change is a fact."
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Lately, there's been a big push for people to start a side project and quit their day jobs—or at least with the intent of quitting their day jobs one day. Over at Playboy's (safe for work) Kinja, Mike Sager explains that sometimes, a side project is just that—a side project. And even if it costs you money, sometimes it's worth it for the fulfillment it brings.
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A white dwarf exploded last night up in the Cigar Galaxy (also known as M82 to its friends), creating the closest supernova we've seen in the last 25 years — and one of the brightest, too.
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A mysterious rock suddenly appeared in front of the Opportunity rover's cameras on Mars, puzzling scientists who describe the rock as both "a total surprise" and "about the size of a jelly donut."
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New measurements from the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) study have charted the shape and size of our universe to within 1% accuracy. Above, David Schlegl, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and research team member, describes the flat, and probably infinite, Universe that the findings suggest.
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What happens when a cat sneaks over and pees all over the precious manuscript that you've spent months of your life inscribing? If you're this 15th century monk, you leave a note cursing the cat and move on with your writing.
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The authors of The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility, have offered an interesting and balanced article on Politico appraising why so much of the media has become polemical and angry-immature, here and now in the 21st Century. In Are Americans Addicted to Outrage? -- Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj suggest that we the viewers are to blame, by flocking to the hate-waves for our daily doses of sanctimonious thrill.
(3) Who does it all serve? Follow the beneficiaries. There are reasons that Fox is co-owned by the Sa'udi Royal House and that coal and other carbon barons finance the right's propaganda machine.
America now has by far the biggest disparities. Major U.S. execs now pull in, on average, over 350 times the pay of America’s rank-and-file workers. Even the most successful Japanese firms, by contrast, don't exceed ratios of seventy to one. See a global comparison of CEO to Worker Pay Ratios.
Could 2014 be Year One of the Pay Ratio Era? A vigorous article at Truthout -- while of course partisan -- nevertheless makes a strong case that these measures portend a rebellion brewing, against what I've called the Oligarchic Putsch -- the transformation of America from a diamond-shaped society, dominated by an empowered middle class, more toward the classic pyramid of privileged (and largely inherited) power that dominated 99% of human cultures across 6000 years.
1- On the rare occasion when a member of this caste comments on this contradiction, here is their excuse. At the very highest managerial level, they are irreplaceable! They are in effect calling themselves "mutant geniuses" like NBA basketball players -- worth any price. And hence, market forces do not apply to their own compensation. (See: The Syndrome of the Essential Man.)
3- Critics of socialism cite Friedrich Hayek and proclaim that any control over an economy by the state -- by civil servants -- will fail. Because, no matter how smart a set of top-down allocators are, they will be foolish simply because their numbers are few. Because of limited diversity of knowledge and insight and perspective.
Only in that case… how is a secretive cartel of 10,000 or so conniving, back-room-dealing, circle-jerking, self-interested golf buddies intrinsically better allocators than say 500,000 skilled, educated, closely-watched and reciprocally competitive civil servants? Both groups suffer from delusional in-group-think, Hayek had a good point. But the smaller clade - more secretive and inward-looking, uncriticized and motivated solely by conniving greed - is inherently more likely to fail.
Finally, tomorrow, for the sake of our children, we must inpose what more advanced nations in Europe and Asia have imposed -- a tiny High Frequency Trading (HFT) transaction fee. Just 0.1% or one thousandth per trade would push these fellows back into earning their livings by helping real humans to find value differences or gradients that are useful to genuine investers or sellers. See my article: A Transaction Fee Might Save Capital Markets...and Protect us from the Terminator? This is urgent, in some very surprising ways.
Alas, as happened when the First Estate fought all-or-nothing for their privileges, in 1789 France, that negotiation will probably not happen. (See Class War and the Lessons of History.) Instead, lacking a Roosevelt, there will instead be dullard obstinacy. We'll hear howls of outrage by a rising oligarchy and their media shills. 
After 10 years of painstaking development, the Gemini Planet Imager has returned its first image of a distant exoplanet. Behold Beta Pictoris b, a massive planet several times larger than Jupiter — and over 63 light-years from Earth.
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Depression can be a difficult illness to understand if you've never experienced it, and depressive episodes can be incredibly isolating experiences. But the webcomic Depression Comix offers a peek into the depressed mind while helping a lot of depressed folks feel less alone.
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“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” – Joseph Campbell
ANYONE WHO HAS WATCHED “STAR WARS” (and if you haven’t you should be ashamed) knows that this classic film is an example of a “monomyth” – the belief that all narratives follow a common pattern.
Joseph Campbell famously referred to this concept as the “Hero’s Journey.” From Hercules to Luke Skywalker, from Humphrey Bogart to Harry Potter, this pattern can be found throughout literature and film. We are in fact hard wired as humans to follow the Hero’s Journey; it is the bedrock of all great storytelling.
The traditional Hero’s Journey is essentially as follows:
This pattern has stood the test of time. But like any organism, the pattern also evolves. It adapts.
And it is happening again.
The Brand Storytelling “Hero’s Journey”
Upon reviewing dozens of successful brand storytelling efforts I found another pattern: A Hero’s Journey for the post-modern media age.
Following are the four main steps in this new narrative approach to storytelling. I’ll dive deeper into these steps in subsequent posts, as well as provide more brand storytelling examples. For now I’ll use a brilliant piece of storytelling by TrueMove, a Thai communications company, titled “Giving.”
Universal Truth
The story begins with a common frame of reference, a “universal truth” or situation that transcends culture or language. Often there is little or no dialogue, the truth being so honest and relatable that words would merely get in the way.
A child steals medicine for his sick mother; a shopkeeper shows the boy compassion and sympathy
Emotional Hero
Emotion – not “logic” – is the raw material that paves the story’s path. Embodied by people, brands or circumstances, the Emotional Hero is a construct of feelings over logic, of humanity over “messaging.”
Shopkeeper has heart attack 30 years later; daughter can’t pay medical bills
Twist of Fate
Here the journey takes on an element of surprise, an unexpected turn in the narrative. This is more than just a standard “plot twist,” but rather a truly unanticipated event that can take the entire narrative in a new direction.
Revised bill shows all expenses paid; the doctor was the little boy that the shopkeeper helped 30 years earlier
Transformation
The journey concludes with a form of transformation – a problem is resolved, the main character or circumstances (the Emotional Hero) are changed, a new “universal truth” is revealed. The conclusion can also be a call to action or a reminder to refocus or do things in a different way.
The boy becomes a man who dedicates his life to helping others; we see a new truth that giving is not just a one-time act but rather has ripples across time
A Hero’s Journey back to Narrative
We need a new Hero’s Journey to guide us through our overloaded media environment. We need a shift back to narrative, to story, to real emotion that we can trust. People don’t want to connect with marketing messages – they want to connect with their innate human nature.
Of course, merely following these steps is no guarantee of success. For every Star Wars there is also a Krull. Storytelling requires more than a good formula, it requires a good story.
But for brands that have something real, emotional and powerful to say, the Brand Storytelling Hero’s Journey is a path worth exploring.
In the next installment we will take a closer look at how the Universal Truth begins the Brand Storytelling Hero’s Journey.
Seattle’s rail & streetcar systems , by Oran Viriyincy
SounderBruce:
Source: "Puget Sound Rail 2023" by Oran Viriyincy (on Flickr)
For comparison, this is what the light rail system looks like today.
