Author: Mike P. Lewis

This would explain why i sleep so much

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Ever since i started my triathlon training, i’ve been going to bed earlier and earlier. I thought it was because i’m just getting old (turning 30 in 2 weeks), but today the NY Times has informed me that it is because i’m now an “endurance athlete” and these athletes require much more sleep than regular people. There’s a scientific reason for this….

One possibility, Dr. Chediak said, is that cytokines — hormones that signal the immune system — are making these athletes sleep so much.

Exercise, Dr. Chediak said, prompts muscles to release two cytokines, interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha, that make people drowsy and prolong the time they remain sleeping. In fact, those cytokines also are released when people have a cold or infection, which is why people sleep so much when they are ill.

It turns out that the single most important factor for increasing the release of those two cytokines is increasing the duration and intensity of exercise, Dr. Chediak said. And, he noted, that’s what is happening when endurance athletes train. “A sprint will not get you as great an effect,” he said.

Go ahead and read the entire article HERE  if you’re interested.

Dean Kamen's Robotic Arm

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Many of you know about my Kamen man-crush.  He just gave a speech about an arm he built for the Department of Defense.  It’s an awesome thing and brings the Luke Skywalker’s fake hand fantasy closer to reality

It bothers me that there have been over 7 million Michael Vick jersey’s sold and nobody knows who Dean Kamen is.

Check out the latest video here (click on video to play):

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Pearl Jam Revisted

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Today in 1991, Pearl Jam released their first album, called Ten, which was the number of NBA player Mookie Blaylock. The album sold over 10 million copies. That’s a lot. To compare, the top album of 2006 was Carrie Underwood’s which sold 3.7 million.

The band was orginally called Mookie Blaylock, but Eddie Vedder came up with the name Pearl Jam in honor of his Aunt Pearl’s homemade jam which supposedly is a natural aphrodisiac and contains peyote. (more band names explained here)

The album contains two-thirds of Eddie Vedder’s little known “Mamasan Trilogy.” In the spirit of rock opera, Vedder lays out a tale of a twisted life in the songs Alive and Once. The third song of the trilogy, “Footsteps/Times of Trouble” is on the Temple of Dog album. The story goes…the trilogy starts with “Alive” in which a young man’s Father has died and allows himself to be seduced by a older woman Mrs. Robinson type who also happens to be…err…umm…how to say this, well let’s just say maternally-related of the first order. This traumatic experience eventually causes the kid to go on a rampage falling down the ill-fated path of taking up serial homicide as a profession as told about in the song “Once” Vedder growls, “Once upon a time I could control myself.” And it all ends as our forlorn character is caught and lands on death row. “Footsteps,” finishes the trilogy off with reminisces of a doomed delinquent dallying his last days and lost in deep thought, regret, and denial from behind the bars of a jail cell.

Ron Mueck is the coolest artist i've seen in a long time

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Finally, a truly modern sculptor.

Ron Mueck is a London-based photo-realist artist. Born in Australia to parents who were toy makers, he labored on children’s television shows for 15 years (like Fraggle Rock) before working in special effects for such films as Labyrinth, a 1986 fantasy epic starring David Bowie.

Eventually Mueck concluded that photography destroys the physical presence of the original object, and so he turned to fine art and sculpture. In the early 1990’s, still in his advertising days, Mueck was commissioned to make something highly realistic, and was wondering what material would do the trick. Latex was the usual, but he wanted something harder, more precise. Luckily, he saw a little architectural decor on the wall of a boutique and inquired as to the nice, pink stuff’s nature. Fiberglass resin was the answer, and Mueck has made it his bronze and marble ever since.

His work is lifelike but not life size, and being face to face with the tiny, gossiping Two Women (2005) or the monumental woman In Bed (2005) is an unforgettable experience. The Big Man is in DC and i’ll definitely go check it out soon.

 

Continue reading “Ron Mueck is the coolest artist i've seen in a long time” →

It's not all technology – the arts matter too (Dana Gioia)

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Below is a great speech by the poet Dana Gioia to the Stanford graduating class of 2007….

Stanford Commencement address by Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (June 17, 2007)

Good morning.

It is a great honor to be asked to give the Commencement address at my alma mater. Although I have two degrees from Stanford, I still feel a bit like an interloper on this exquisitely beautiful campus. A person never really escapes his or her childhood.

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At heart I’m still a working-class kid—half Italian, half Mexican—from L.A., or more precisely from Hawthorne, a city that most of this audience knows only as the setting of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown—two films that capture the ineffable charm of my hometown.

Today is Father’s Day, so I hope you will indulge me for beginning on a personal note. I am the first person in my family ever to attend college, and I owe my education to my father, who sacrificed nearly everything to give his four children the best education possible.

My dad had a fairly hard life. He never spoke English until he went to school. He barely survived a plane crash in World War II. He worked hard, but never had much success, except with his family.  When I was about 12, my dad told me that he hoped I would go to Stanford, a place I had never heard of. For him, Stanford represented every success he had missed yet wanted for his children. He would be proud of me today—no matter how dull my speech.

On the other hand, I may be fortunate that my mother isn’t here. It isn’t Mother’s Day, so I can be honest. I loved her dearly, but she could be a challenge. For example, when she learned I had been nominated to be chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, she phoned and said, “Don’t think I’m impressed.” Continue reading “It's not all technology – the arts matter too (Dana Gioia)” →