Stuff YOU Should Know
Paris to Lovers, Please Stop with the Locks
The Pont des Arts footbridge in the city of Paris was originally built in 1804 as a “suspended garden” for the royal family. It became a tourist attraction in 2008 with the popular “love locks” tradition. The ritual goes like this: couples take a padlock, inscribe their names onto the lock, clasp it to the fence and throw the key in the River Seine that flows below. The problem with this lovely tradition is that the weight of the padlocks is weakening the structure of the bridge. Environmentalists are also concerned about the negative affects of the large number of keys collecting in the river.
Paris is not the only city with such a growing tradition. More than 40 countries are known to have bridges where couples have left their mark. Many city officials are now strategizing on how to best to deal with the phenomenon. On one hand, they don’t want to offend well-intentioned tourists and lovebirds. On the other, the sheer volume of the locks and potential damage to public structures make many consider it vandalism. Paris city hall is trying to encourage people to transfer their declaration of commitment to a Web site.
What Do You Think? Come up with a tradition that you think would be both satisfactory to both tourists and local governments. Share with your classmates.
Do Animals Dream?
Have you ever watched a pet while she was sleeping and wonder what was going on in her brain? Since the animals can’t answer directly, researchers are left to observe and make assumptions about their behavior. In humans, dreaming plays an important role in physical, intellectual, and emotional health. About one quarter of our nightly sleep is spent in REM (rapid eye movement) mode, which is when we dream. In studies of humans, those who 1. are allowed to sleep but are awoken just as they are going into REM sleep, then 2. allowed to go back to sleep but further blocked from achieving REM sleep show signs of disorientation crabbiness, and short-temperedness throughout the following day.
Those who study animals believe human behavior could be paralleled in animals. In the early 1990s, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher named Matthew Wilson made an accidental discovery about the brains of rats as they slept. He was recording the neuron activity of his rats as they made their way through a difficult maze and decided to leave them hooked up after they were done. When they went to sleep, Wilson recorded similar patterns of brain activity, leading him to believe the rats were revisiting the experience in a dream.
What Do You Think? Do you have pets? If so, what do you think they might dream about? Why?
Avalanche on Mount Everest
Photo Credit: Pal Teravagimov Photography/Getty Images
Located in the South Asian country of Nepal, Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth (29,029 feet in height). It attracts many climbers each year. On April 22, an avalanche hit the Khumbu Icefall area, killing 16 professional guides who were carrying loads to camps further up the mountain. In the aftermath, many climbers are leaving Mount Everest even though it has not officially been closed. Some concerns are safety related and others are out of respect for the dead. Other climbers are ending their expeditions because they cannot make the climb without the help of the sherpa guides, who are reportedly in disputes with their employers (corporations who arrange climbs).
This tragedy is considered the single deadliest accident ever to occur on the mountain. In 1996 a blizzard killed eight climbers and became the basis for the best-selling nonfiction book Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Climbing Mount Everest is a long and dangerous journey, but doing so has great personal rewards. Training alone is an incredible feat, taking months (and sometimes years) of preparation.
Dig Deeper Check out Krakauer’s book, Into Thin Air, or at least an article or You Tube video about climbing Mount Everest. Is it something that appeals to you? Why or why not?
New Book on Work Life
You’ve probably put at least some thought into the types of careers out there that you’d be interested in pursuing after graduation. But how much have you thought about the type of work environment you’d either prefer or might be best suited toward? If not, you might want to check out author Nikil Saval’s new book, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. According to his research, about 60 percent of Americans work in a cubicle, but 93 percent don’t like it.
The modern office typified things like the suspend ceiling, the fluorescent light bulb and other efficiencies people love to hate. But office life isn’t all bad. It got people out of harsh and often dangerous environments like factories Some common styles of work environments are stores, schools, medical, and outdoors (landscaping, construction, and farming, for example). Today, corporate culture (in places like Silicon Valley, for instance) is blurring the boundaries between work and leisure. Some may argue that this is a practical transformation, as many employees in that field are expected to work many hours.