The Life Experience ~ Spring '12

What I Learned Since The Spring Equinox

• Mae Jemison was the first black woman in space, and continues to be completely awesome and I want to know more about her.
• While the term had been around for a while, the first computer bug on record was an actual bug. A moth who wound up flash-frying itself in a computer component in 1947.
• The snowflakes in Fantasia were animated using a system of gears under the black velvet against which the flakes themselves were shot. You can see photos of it here, reached via what must be the most misleading URL of all time.*
• Moles don't eat roots. They eat earthworms and bugs and things, but not their vegetables. BRIAN JACQUES, WHAT ELSE DID YOU LIE ABOUT?
• Science has officially gone on record saying that Fiction Is Good For You.
• Radishes have pretty flowers when you let a few of 'em grow up.
• Those goddamn pine beetles that've been eating all the trees and hazing up the atmosphere now pose another problem: the dead trees are WAY more flammable. Weather forecasts for this summer in the West say mostly sunny with a strong chance of scattered BEING ON FIRE.
• Braces are not magnetic.**
• When Michael Jackson pitched the idea of Thriller to his producers, it became rapidly apparent that he was staggeringly unfamiliar with monster movies. The producers made a list of films he should watch for research, but he couldn't do it: they were too darn scary.
• The Woolly Tyrannosaur is a REAL THING.
• Getting all the Gold Skulltulas in LoZ: Ocarina of Time really isn't worth it.
• Making a shepherd's sling is easy, but mastering it? Not so much.
• It is official canon that Star Trek: Nemesis never happened.
• LoZ: Skyward Sword has a glitch that won't let you finish the game if you get the Thunder Dragon's part of the Hero's Song first. Fortunately, I did not learn this the hard way.
• Kew Gardens has "the largest palm tree in captivity." Good thing they had tree wranglers to keep it from escaping!
• Hedy Lamarr was a glamorous actress and also an inventor. It can happen!
• Tempered glass can shatter in slow motion.
• Some con-goers really do fit the stereotype for hygienic laxity.
• The worst part about agent queries isn't the rejection; it's the WAITING.

*As a small kid, I always assumed that the snowflakes were CGI. Then I grew up a bit and realized that Not Everything Is Now, and in fact Fantasia was made in a Then when a "computer" was a lady with a pencil and a slide rule who did calculations so busy and important executives did not have to. And then I was really confused, because that meant I had NO IDEA how it was actually done.

**I deliberately looked this one up after watching Super 8, and spending the entire exciting and emotionally satisfying scene with the water tower turning into a giant electromagnet wondering just how it was Tinsel Teeth there still had a face. He gets a pass.