Redrawing the family tree

[rysmiel, livredor, does this seem reasonable and/or startling to you?]

I get the New Scientist rss feed here; this morning, they tossed us another redrawing of the mammalian family tree, which puts horses closest to Carnivora, and close to bats, with cattle closer to whales than horses.
Before cheerfully putting horses closest to carnivora and a distance from cattle, the authors note that

Comprehensive analyses of large collections of DNA sequences mostly reject the conclusions from morphological analyses.

I'm not sure what that does to information derived from fossils.

Reassuringly, marsupials are still an outgroup to the rest of the mammals; the authors seem not to have tested sequences for monotremes, or at least didn't include them on their chart.

Redrawing the family tree

[rysmiel, livredor, does this seem reasonable and/or startling to you?]

I get the New Scientist rss feed here; this morning, they tossed us another redrawing of the mammalian family tree, which puts horses closest to Carnivora, and close to bats, with cattle closer to whales than horses.
Before cheerfully putting horses closest to carnivora and a distance from cattle, the authors note that

Comprehensive analyses of large collections of DNA sequences mostly reject the conclusions from morphological analyses.

I'm not sure what that does to information derived from fossils.

Reassuringly, marsupials are still an outgroup to the rest of the mammals; the authors seem not to have tested sequences for monotremes, or at least didn't include them on their chart.

King Lear: Actors' Shakespeare Company

On the strong recommendation of xiphias and cheshyre, I bought tickets for myself and cattitude for the Actors' Shakespeare Company production of King Lear, transferred from Boston to La Mama E.T.C. It's a theatre-in-the-round (well, rectangle) production, and takes the approach to Shakespeare that I tend to like, namely very minimal scenery. I do wish the actors, particularly those playing Lear and Cordelia, had enunciated better.

The company used the space well: not only were entrances and exits frequently up and down stairs, but some of the action was on the stairs between the seats. In particular, at the beginning, when Edmund is told to step back, he simply sat down on the stair, about six feet from us. By the time everyone else had exited and he spoke, I'd forgotten he was there.

I not only hadn't seen Lear live before [1], but if I ever saw a filmed production, it was a long time ago, and I didn't remember details. More precisely, the details I remembered were the lines everyone quotes, not turns of the plot.

The emotional shape of the play is odd; the first half is a lot closer to comedy than Macbeth or Hamlet. It's not just that the Fool, as Cattitude pointed out, has the best lines, it's that everyone has comic lines. Then there's a storm, and everyone and everything turns a lot darker. By the end, I was thinking "if he [Edmund] survives the battle, we're in trouble." He does, of course.

A good production, if not quite as good as my Boston reviewers led me to expect, but I don't know if that was me or the play; transfers are always potentially iffy, and 3.5 hours is a long time to sit in a metal folding chair even with a fifteen-minute intermission during which I found space to do most of my shoulder and heel stretches.

I think I want to track down a good filmed Lear and put it in our Netflix queue, for a few weeks from now. Good defined for these purposes as minimal cuts, good acting, and clear speech. Period/costuming aren't important, and while I know there's no film equivalent of a bare stage, the focus should be on the language, not the landscape or the storm effects. Recommendations, please.

[1] Lots of Hamlets, multiple Macbeths, Tempests, and A Midsummer Night's Dreams, some very good variations on Romeo and Juliet, from West Side Story to Shakespeare's R and J, a four-man production set in a boys' boarding school, an assortment of histories and comedies, even Cymbeline, courtesy of the completists at the Public Theatre. Some of that is fashion: The Tempest was very popular about ten years ago. And some is probably chance.

King Lear: Actors' Shakespeare Company

On the strong recommendation of xiphias and cheshyre, I bought tickets for myself and cattitude for the Actors' Shakespeare Company production of King Lear, transferred from Boston to La Mama E.T.C. It's a theatre-in-the-round (well, rectangle) production, and takes the approach to Shakespeare that I tend to like, namely very minimal scenery. I do wish the actors, particularly those playing Lear and Cordelia, had enunciated better.

The company used the space well: not only were entrances and exits frequently up and down stairs, but some of the action was on the stairs between the seats. In particular, at the beginning, when Edmund is told to step back, he simply sat down on the stair, about six feet from us. By the time everyone else had exited and he spoke, I'd forgotten he was there.

I not only hadn't seen Lear live before [1], but if I ever saw a filmed production, it was a long time ago, and I didn't remember details. More precisely, the details I remembered were the lines everyone quotes, not turns of the plot.

The emotional shape of the play is odd; the first half is a lot closer to comedy than Macbeth or Hamlet. It's not just that the Fool, as Cattitude pointed out, has the best lines, it's that everyone has comic lines. Then there's a storm, and everyone and everything turns a lot darker. By the end, I was thinking "if he [Edmund] survives the battle, we're in trouble." He does, of course.

A good production, if not quite as good as my Boston reviewers led me to expect, but I don't know if that was me or the play; transfers are always potentially iffy, and 3.5 hours is a long time to sit in a metal folding chair even with a fifteen-minute intermission during which I found space to do most of my shoulder and heel stretches.

I think I want to track down a good filmed Lear and put it in our Netflix queue, for a few weeks from now. Good defined for these purposes as minimal cuts, good acting, and clear speech. Period/costuming aren't important, and while I know there's no film equivalent of a bare stage, the focus should be on the language, not the landscape or the storm effects. Recommendations, please.

[1] Lots of Hamlets, multiple Macbeths, Tempests, and A Midsummer Night's Dreams, some very good variations on Romeo and Juliet, from West Side Story to Shakespeare's R and J, a four-man production set in a boys' boarding school, an assortment of histories and comedies, even Cymbeline, courtesy of the completists at the Public Theatre. Some of that is fashion: The Tempest was very popular about ten years ago. And some is probably chance.

Lies, honesty, and story-telling

papersky posted some interesting thoughts about kinds of lying, and when to tell what truths this morning. I kept thinking of it while watching King Lear. Much of the action in Lear is driven by a liar and his plots; much of the rest is driven by the mad king's demand that his daughters flatter him.

Some of what Papersky was reacting to was a discussion where "she lied to me" slid into "she betrayed me." In some sense, most betrayals may involve lies, if only the implicit lie of leading someone to trust you with their safety or secrets; it is not the case that most lies are betrayals. Many just aren't that important, either because the subjects are trivial or because there isn't enough of a connection for betrayal to be a meaningful concept: it's not betrayal if I let a random shopkeeper in a city I'm visiting for three days think I'm married when I'm not, or vice versa.

I've left a couple of comments on Papersky's discussion, and recommend it if the topic interests you and you aren't reading her journal.

Lies, honesty, and story-telling

papersky posted some interesting thoughts about kinds of lying, and when to tell what truths this morning. I kept thinking of it while watching King Lear. Much of the action in Lear is driven by a liar and his plots; much of the rest is driven by the mad king's demand that his daughters flatter him.

Some of what Papersky was reacting to was a discussion where "she lied to me" slid into "she betrayed me." In some sense, most betrayals may involve lies, if only the implicit lie of leading someone to trust you with their safety or secrets; it is not the case that most lies are betrayals. Many just aren't that important, either because the subjects are trivial or because there isn't enough of a connection for betrayal to be a meaningful concept: it's not betrayal if I let a random shopkeeper in a city I'm visiting for three days think I'm married when I'm not, or vice versa.

I've left a couple of comments on Papersky's discussion, and recommend it if the topic interests you and you aren't reading her journal.

One more note on Lear

As far as I can tell, there is not a character in all of Shakespeare who can recognize their most-loved relative, nor their most dangerous enemy, by voice, or if that person changes clothes. Was this a convention of the Elizabethan stage, or his own invention?

One more note on Lear

As far as I can tell, there is not a character in all of Shakespeare who can recognize their most-loved relative, nor their most dangerous enemy, by voice, or if that person changes clothes. Was this a convention of the Elizabethan stage, or his own invention?