Read, Listen, Watch

Staff Picks and Suggestions

‘The Town’ Comes Home

Everyone in Boston seems to be buzzing about The Town, and while I haven’t had the chance to see it yet, what with classes in full swing, I have to agree that it looks pretty fantastic. But, seeing as I’m a usual skeptic before watching movies longer than an hour and a half, I did a little research first. After seeing that Ben Affleck’s previous foray into directing (Gone Baby Gone, Oct 2007) was hailed by many critics and received a 7.5 out of 10 on metacritic.com, I decided to watch the trailer for The Town, and really see what this thing is about. For those who don’t know yet, The Town is set in Charlestown and the North End, and seems to be a mix of the Bourne movies with less mystery, and more of an inlaid plot conflict, with Affleck’s character falling in love with the hostage taken from a robbery, who has no idea of his true identity. The film has had a great opening weekend, grossing over 23 million dollars. (You can read reviews here.) The Town also stars Chris Cooper (American Beauty, Capote), whose wife, Marianne Leone, will be visiting Snell Library for a Meet the Author event on November 3. She’ll be discussing her book, Knowing Jesse, about the couple’s son who passed away in 2005 due to complications from cerebral palsy.

Friday Five: Animal Planet

For some reason, or maybe because I’m just more attuned to it for some reason, a lot of science news this week had to do with the animal world. 1. Compared to animals, humans don’t actually travel around much.  A team of NU researchers is finding that human movement is highly predictable and pretty restricted.  Their results, which were based on cell phone gps data (they swear it’s anonymized) were published this week in Nature Physics and a summary is available on the NU News site. 2. Jonathan Franzen’s acclaimed new book “Freedom” has arrived at Snell. A realist novel in the spirit of Tom Wolfe, it is the story of a dysfunctional family trying to navigate the shoals of 21st century America.  One of the protagonists is an environmental lawyer and much of it is set in and around the environmental movement.  Oprah’s just chosen it for her book club (despite the fact that Franzen has dissed her book club taste in the past!). 3. This week PLoS (Public Library of Science) Biology reports on the demise of the tiger and a way to ensure its survival through the protection of its breeding grounds. 4. When it comes to eating animal products, the Annals of Internal Medicine reports that there’s a big difference between low-carb diets high in animal products and those low in animal products.  Those low in animal products resulted in lower mortality from all causes. 5. Science News reports that an ancestor of the virus that causes AIDS has been present in monkeys for 32,000 years!

Friday five on the brain

Today’s Friday Five starts with the mind. Specifically, the hottest article in this week’s Times, judging by the number of times emailed, debunked common myths about studying. Based on a review article in Psychological Science, it says there are no “left-brain” and “right-brain” learning styles, we all basically learn the same way!    Furthermore, you should study a mix of different things and not immerse yourself in one thing according to a study of college students and retired people in the Journal of Psychology and Aging.  Other studies say you should study in different rooms not just sit in one place because changes of scene and environment help you to remember.  Finally, spacing your studying, and testing, help you remember better over the long term. Ready to blame the teacher?  Turns out that’s hard, we don’t really know scientifically what makes a teacher successful at getting kids to learn, according to Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?” (available on the 3rd floor of Snell Library!) Finally, an MRI scan can map brain development in children, according to research in the journal Science.  It could allow doctors to place children on a “maturation curve” just like we do with height and weight and perhaps even be alerted to signs of disorders.

The Stone Faced Man at Snell

Buster Keaton, whose expressionless, nonchalant demeanor gave him the nickname “stone face,” is well represented at Snell Library. In fact, if it weren’t for this library, I might not be such a fan. In the Hub, you can find a collection of Keaton’s films, both short and feature length, called The Best of Buster Keaton. That is far from where it ends, though. His masterpiece is The General, a comedy about a man and his train during the Civil War period, and how he uses it to cross enemy lines and rescue his girlfriend. This is one of the most purely physical films ever made. Keaton performed all his own stunts—which could include jumping between two train cars, swinging over a waterfall, or deep-sea diving—and The General contains such a plethora of hilarious stunts that we sometimes forget we are laughing at a man who is inches away from real bodily harm. Yet Keaton knew how to tell a story, so not a physical gesture is wasted. To top it all off, the film is often cited as the most historically accurate Civil War film ever made. Not bad for a slapstick comedy. Other Keaton films at Snell include Sherlock Jr. and Our Hospitality on one DVD, and Steamboat Bill, Jr. on the same DVD as The General. Even some later films, such as In the Good Old Summertime and Sunset Boulevard—where Keaton has a cameo—are on our shelves. His life is worth reading about, too: the son of circus artists, Keaton learned to be a magnificent athlete by the time he was ten, got into making films, but was later ruined by alcoholism and an incompatibility with sound film. Keaton was the original action hero, a mobile object of grace. His films are still highly watchable and purely cinematic. There has never been another actor like him. And he did it all with a stone face.

Friday Five for bio and health

Lately the news has been a little slow!  Everyone was either on vacation or trying to save the cat from Hurricane Earl.  A few biology and health sciences articles that did break can be read through the NU Libraries: 1. SAMe, a natural chemical often used as a dietary supplement, may alleviate depression. 2. In the latest issue of Nature, E.O. Wilson and two colleagues used mathematics to prove that even self-sacrificing altruistic behavior in animals like ants can be explained with the theory of natural selection.  For decades it has been thought that altruistic behavior was not consistent with natural selection and other theories like “kin selection” (protecting the survival of the family) were needed to explain it. 3. In sports news, an article in the New Journal of Physics explains the ideal spiral kicked by Brazilian soccer player Roberto Carlos against France in 1997.  (Watch it on YouTube here.) 4. This week, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sided with a psychotherapist, upholding patient confidentiality against Massachusetts Board of Registration, which tried to subpoena medical records from him.  The complete decision is available in Lexis-Nexis. 5. It might be a meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, but no comet or other impact 12,500 years ago killed the mammoths and other beasts, according to the latest issue of Science. And yes, we’re working on that new book by Stephen Hawking…I’ll let you know when it arrives!