James Burke, Scary Guy
A friend of mine, Dorian, likes to keep me around because I know a lot of weird stuff and he likes learning about weird stuff. For example, his wife mentioned that he was trying to grow apple trees from seeds — why I can’t imagine, except he’s a health nut and he wants to grow his own organic food in his backyard. (The fact that his backyard is in New Jersey, ground zero for the Industrial Revolution in America, and therefore probably as contaminated as Chernobyl, doesn’t seem to bother him.) So he wanted to grow his own apple tree from seeds, but he didn’t know — and I could tell him — that apple trees don’t breed true. In other words, you can’t get a tree that bears edible fruit from the seeds of an edible apple. Not to mention that, if the apple is a hybrid variety, the fruit is sterile anyway. So your chances of getting a tree aren’t very good, and if you do get a tree, they’re hard to care for, and finally, the tree probably won’t yield good fruit. Apple trees are propagated through cutting and grafting.
Yes, Dorian loves having someone around who can tell him these things. Why can I do this? Um, I read a lot.
After I told him about the apples last Saturday, he suddenly asked me, “Have you heard of James Burke?”
Of course I have. James Burke is the guy who made Connections, one of the greatest science shows of all time. I even had Connections 2 on video until one day when I realized I didn’t own a VCR any more, so I donated it to my local library.
Dorian said he’d like the Connections series (of which there are three) on DVD to watch while he rides his exercise bike. He can’t use videotapes because his VCR isn’t on the TV in front of the bike, and neither is his computer. So he needs DVDs, but apparently the sets are out of print or something. So I downloaded 1 and 2 to burn him some copies.
I put on the first episode to make sure the download was okay. I was surprised to discover that Burke introduces the series from the plaza between the World Trade Center towers. Whoa. Very unsettling to see everything intact like that, especially since I was just thinking the other day that I still can’t quite grasp the shape of the streets downtown; I can still picture the World Trade so clearly.
Then I burned the DVD with the first three episodes. When it was done, I threw it in my DVD player to test it, and it seemed okay. Then I skipped ahead to the third episode, and scanned ahead at random, to make sure the audio was in sync (I’ve had that problem before). The show picked up with Burke in a field opening a suitcase and explaining that it was a suitcase nuclear weapon which could be set off in downtown Anywhere and what a nightmare that is.
Yeesh. I didn’t remember that James Burke was so frigging upbeat. First he films at the World Trade Center, then he tells us we’re all going to be nuked.
And that was back in 1978.
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