Saturday, October 13, 2007

Global Warming and the Moonwalking Mannequin Bird

There’s lots going on today, lots going on this past week. Al Gore is going to get his Nobel Peace Prize. This puts him in a very exclusive club that includes Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. The only difference between them is that while all four of these awardees were elected President of the US, only Al Gore had his office taken away from him by the US Supreme Court.

How do you recover? What do you do after that? Make a very convincing movie about global warming and sea level rise and receive the world’s most respected prize, I guess. Well, respected nearly everywhere but these places.

So there, I commented on Al Gore’s prize. I even viewed a video clip of his acceptance speech taken in Palo Alto, Ca yesterday. It’s on YouTube. But I am going to forego embedding it here because there is nothing surprising in what he said.

The world is too unsurprising today and I want to be surprised, and I want the same for readers of this.

That’s why, instead of embedding Al Gore’s acceptance speech, I am going to put up a clip of the Moonwalking Mannequin bird. It is the most bizarre animal behavior I think I have ever seen.

One asks oneself, why is this bird doing this? What need is he fulfilling? The answer is in the clip, but I’ll give you a hint. It’s for the same reason that ANYthing acts bizarrely.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hooray!

Thanks for attempting to find reason and surprise in the every day.

If only I could moonwalk.