Brace Yourself for Some Biting Cinema Verite
A young lad of our acquaintance is just about to get braces, and in preparation he’s been doing some research. Being from England, a country not known for its perfect, white smiles, I figured I could stand to learn more, too. So I headed off to this Web site he found: https://www.caltech.edu/~pinelab/TimeLapse/ToothCam/toothcam.html.
Yikes!
The Web site shows what happens when Steve Potter, a Caltech scientist in his 30s, decided to straighten his teeth. (Think that’s old? There’s a lady in Florida who was in braces at 91.)
Anyway, Potter filmed his teeth! With 2 1/2 years of time-lapse photography! Kinda like those gorgeous, speeded-up scenes of daffodils and snowdrops sprouting forth from the rich, loamy earth in springtime, except instead of flowers it’s Potter’s rather snaggly chompers being torqued around by little bits of metal until they miraculously straighten up, just in time for the closing credits.
Potter explains that his family was too poor to pay for braces when he was a kid, and that he filmed his teeth simply as an art project. Since then, though, he’s had lots of letters from kids and adults alike telling him how useful they found the movie and the “ToothLog” accompanying it, a blow-by-blow, don’t-spare-the-reader account of life with braces. Highlighting both the lows--”I laughed out loud as I looked in my mouth after having my spaghetti dinner tonight (with well-cooked carrot slices). . . . My braces were decorated like a Christmas tree!”--and the highs--”Things are happening! My upper left incisor is now in line!”--it makes for strangely compelling reading.
A Body of Work on Emotions
A few weeks back, we described how scientists had found that muscles are weaker when we laugh, lending truth to the phrase “weak with laughter.” This week, we researched a few other colorful phrases.
To do so, we called emotions researcher Paul Ekman of UC San Francisco. He’s spent years studying the 42 facial muscles we use to form frowns, grins and grimaces--and he’s cataloged thousands of expressions, including 19 types of smiles. He’s also traveled the world studying emotions in different cultures. Here’s what he said.
* “Hot head” and “red with anger.” A lot of languages have expressions for anger that imply pressure and heat in a container. And blood pressure does increase because heart rate increases, in preparation for that fight you may just be about to have. Skin does get warmer--and redder--because blood flow to the skin increases.
(There’s another kind of anger that’s cold and steely, but Ekman doesn’t know the rules on when you get one kind versus the other.)
* “Thin-lipped with fury” and “glaring with anger.” Lips get thinner when we’re angry, says Ekman, because a muscle called the orbicularis orbis automatically tightens. The brows lower too, so we glare. These things happen in cultures all over the world, including ones in Papua New Guinea, which hadn’t been exposed to Western civilization at the time of the studies.
* “Wide-eyed with fear.” Again, eyes do widen when we’re scared. The eyebrows go up and together at the same time, which is really hard to do voluntarily--Ekman has tried--and really hard not to do if you are scared.
* “Green with envy.” Ekman couldn’t help us here.
Molding the Young With Pizza and Fries
Oh, no! For years, I’ve been telling my daughter to eat a healthy diet with lots of fruits and vegetables (even as I scarfed down Twinkies and cherry-filled toaster pastries), get plenty of sleep (even as I pulled all-nighters), eschew the demon drink (no comment) and just generally treat her body as a temple.
Now, reports Reuters, there’s new research suggesting that children emulate not what their parents tell them but what their parents do. How about that? Anyway, in the study, scientists from Iowa State investigated the lifestyles of 330 adolescents and their parents. Kids whose parents drank to excess, didn’t exercise, ate poorly and didn’t sleep enough were more likely to have similarly unhealthful habits.
Sigh. Time to clean up the old act again. Anyone out there have use for a couple gross of Twinkies?