Platypus Found: Spain...On the Road Again

Monday, January 12, 2009

Spain...On the Road Again

A public television program I recently discovered, which I've found excellently wholesome and entertaining on multiple levels.

It's about good food, travel, etc., and the episodes of this show I've seen have all involved these things in delightful proportion.

Spain...On the Road Again is a PBS show that I've seen aired on Create TV, which locally is 36.4, if you have your digital converter box (or equivalent) hooked up.

The show is a healthy mix of travel, food, banter, celebrity, and Willie Nelson.

Basically, the recipe is this:

2 beautiful women (Gweneth Paltrow, Claudia Bassols)
1 expert chef (Mario Batali)
1 NYT food writer (Mark Bittman)
Mix in healthy dose of convertibles, crisp camera angles, unscripted conversation, and spread over the entire beautifully scenic country of Spain as the four adventurers road-trip on a mission to eat all kinds of fancy and interesting food all over the place, interacting with the people who make wine, grow mussels, prepare seafood, divvy out tapas, make cheese, raise pigs, etc.

Strangely, highly compelling television.

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Books I've Found Worthwhile Recently

Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan
Deception Point by Dan Brown
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Greek Mythology for Everyone: Legends of the Gods and Heroes by Donald Richardson
Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records by Gary Urton
The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths translated by Padraic Colum
The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Republic by Plato
The Symposium by Plato
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

On Platypuses

Platypuses—yes, that's the preferred plural—are quite remarkable creatures. Not only are they egg-laying mammals, but they have a sixth sense. Their duckbills function as an electrosensory organ, similar to how dolphins use echolocation, only with electromagnetic fields instead of sound waves. They are so sensitive that many a platypus died of sensory overload from being transported by boat across the Pacific.

The platypus is known as a peculiar creature, with attributes seemingly cobbled together from any number of other animals, but that's only because of our frame of reference. It's certainly well adapted to its own environment, swimming in rivers and swamps and darting across land, burrowing into underground mud nests. Females lactate but have no teats; young obtain milky secretions directly from their mother's underbelly. Males have a poisonous horny spur—presumed a weapon in courtship fights.

Although the species is threatened by habitat destruction, the platypus' survival reminds us of the artificiality of humankind's categorical systems in the face of natural spontaneity, adaptation, and diversity. And also emboldens those among us who can relate to taxonomical isolation.