Watched a movie tonight called The Fountain. Quite an interesting movie; it's a fantasy / mixed with reality story dealing with life, love, death, and the afterlife. The main character is a scientist who is looking to find the cure to cancer. He is hoping to find a way to successfully remove tumors mainly because his beloved wife has cancer and is dying from it. He wants to find the cure to save her. She is in the last stages, and has, unlike him, slowly come to terms with her own death. She has spent time writing a novel that originally starts with the Spanish inquisition and eventually becomes a search for the Tree of Life. This Tree was hidden by God from Mankind after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and were banished from Eden. Supposedly, the Mayans knew the location of the Tree, and the Spanish conquistador was sent there to find it, and bring back the "fountain" for everlasting youth and life. This story is intertwined with the current age story of the researcher (Hugh Jackman) and his wife (Rachel Weisz), who are also the conquistador and queen of Spain. I won't spoil the ending by saying anymore, but I liked the movie and how it dealt with the subject matter of death. I think this is something we all need to think about, to understand and to come to terms with. It makes living and life itself seem all the more precious, and more alive too, if death is not something to be afraid of. The movie's not all about death, there's also enjoying and living life, and loving and be loved. It's a pretty good movie.
Here's an interesting story, mice sing ! Check out the sound clip at the bottom of the page. Apparently during courtship male mice sing. This was discovered when researchers let male mice sniff on female or male mice urine, and though the original intention was to see how the male brain differentiates the pheromones, they noticed a rather complex ultrasound pattern erupted when hetero (whether there are homo mice is a question) male mice smelled female pheromones. This places mice in the same league as some other complex singing beings such as birds and dolphins! This is interesting for many reasons, but one I can think of is since mice are relatively easy to manipulate genetically, and the fact that they utilize complicated vocal patterns to court mates means perhaps mice have some simple language abilities. So we may be able to understand how language and vocal abilities develop and play such a crucial role (obviously as in birds better singers get to procreate!) in animals. We a...
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