Section 1
The Pixar Story
A Between 2000 and 2005, under former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Michael D. Eisner, Walt Disney Company set its shareholder meetings in a series of cold-weather cities during cold-weather months. Many suspected that this had been to discourage attendance by the company's increasingly restless shareholders. In 2006, however, there was no need for such measures. In October 2005, Chief Operating Officer Robert Iger had replaced Eisner as CEO. On taking charge, Iger had quickly carried out a bold stroke, negotiating a buyout of Pixar Animation Studios. Although the price was high, the acquisition proved to be overwhelmingly popular.
B Pixar had started life twenty years earlier as Pixar Inc., a computer hardware company, one of hundreds dotting the landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Within the company, a tiny animation group made short promotional films that brought in practically zero revenue; the group came close more than once to being shut down. When the Pixar Image Computer proved unprofitable, the company turned to selling animation software and making animated commercials, but it kept losing money year after year.
C In 1991, when Disney agreed to finance the production of Pixar's first feature film for cinema release, Disney had virtually dictated the terms of the contract. In late 1993, Disney considered ordering Pixar to shut down production of the John Lasseter directed film, Toy Story, on account of issues with the script. At the time, Hollywood commentators doubted whether audiences would even sit through a full-length film in the new medium of computer animation. It was unclear whether computer animation would prove to be a novelty that would quickly wear thin.
D Before long, however, things had changed dramatically. A succession of beloved and commercially successful animated feature films, starting with the 1995 release of Toy Story and including A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo, made Pixar the world's dominant animation studio. Disney made a fortune distributing the films. When Pixar's majority owner and CEO, Steve Jobs, cut off contract talks with Disney in early 2004, as the end of their distribution contract was in sight, the business press focused on the question of how Disney would cope. By then, it was Disney that seemed to need Pixar – the distribution of Pixar's films made up around 45% of the operating income from Disney's film operations. Disney's internal market research showed that mothers of young children trusted the Pixar brand more than Disney's.
E With the 2005 acquisition, John Lasseter was soon to hold the titles of Chief Creative Officer for Disney and Pixar animation and Principal Creative Advisor for Disney's worldwide theme parks and resorts. Having created a new genre of film with his colleagues at Pixar, Lasseter had been able to make the films he wanted to make, and he was coming back to Disney on his own terms, having briefly been an employee there when he was young.
F When Iger brought Lasseter on to speak at the 2006 shareholders' meeting, Lasseter was met with energetic applause as the sound system played a few bars of the signature song of Toy Story. In his speech, Lasseter recalled afternoons as a schoolboy running home to catch Bugs Bunny cartoons on TV. It wasn't long, he told the audience, before he realized he wanted to earn a living from making cartoons. He went on to talk about working on the Jungle Cruise ride in Disneyland, and the terrible jokes that he and his fellow operator told to enliven the show. He said the experience had brought him out of his shell and given him confidence in front of people. He also explained how he joined Disney's animation division fresh out of the California Institute of the Arts, and saw one of the early trials of 3-D computer animation. He mentioned the disappointment he had felt as a young man in trying, and failing, to get the Disney studio to embrace the new technology. Keeping his presentation upbeat, he said simply, 'So I followed my dream to work with one of the most amazing people I've ever known in my life – Ed Catmull.'
G The sixty-one-year-old president of Pixar, Dr. Edwin Catmull, was seated amongst the shareholders. Catmull has been a computer graphics researcher who had fallen accidentally into the role of business leader. Those who knew him well invariably described him as brilliant, but his intelligence was not the kind that advertised itself by dominating conversations; by and large, he was keener on listening than talking. When he did speak, his words were friendly and polite.
H While Catmull had built upon the work of others, the revolution in 3-D animation was in many respects his revolution. It was Catmull who had held to his vision of fully computer-animated movies. And it was Catmull, while running computer graphics labs at the New York Institute of Technology and George Lucas's Lucasfilm, who had assembled the technical and creative staff that would go on to become the heart of Pixar Animation Studios.
Section 2
Why don't we sleep?
A Fifty-six million prescriptions for sleeping medication were handed out by doctors in America last year. Yet remarkably little is being done to understand insomnia's root causes. Socially and economically, the undertreatment of sleeplessness is hugely expensive. The Institute of Medicine, an independent scientific advisory group, estimates nearly 20 percent of all major accidents on the road are associated with driver sleepiness. The loss in terms of productivity within the workplace is even higher, costing billions. Then there are the softer costs which remain unmeasured but still exist; for example, the damaged relationships with others. If other medical problems were causing such widespread harm, governments would act, but US authorities contribute only about $230 million a year for the funding of sleep research, comparable to the amount that the manufacturers of popular sleeping pills spent in three months on advertising. Currently most medical school students get no more than four hours of training on sleep disorders; some get none.
B If we don't know why we can't sleep, it's in part because we don't really know why we need to sleep in the first place. We know that we divide it between periods of deep-wave sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when the brain is as active as when we're awake, but our voluntary muscles are paralyzed. We know that all mammals sleep, and that there are some insects and reptiles that only half sleep, in order to remain aware of their environment and predators.
C The predominant theory of sleep is that the brain demands it. Recently, researchers at Harvard, led by Robert Stickgold, tested undergraduates on various aptitude tests, allowed them to nap, then tested them again. They found that those who had engaged in REM sleep subsequently performed better in pattern recognition tasks, such as grammar, while those who slept deeply were better at memorization.
D Such studies suggest that memory consolidation may be one function of sleep. Giulio Tononi, a sleep researcher at the University of Wisconsin, published an interesting twist on this theory a few years ago. His study showed that the sleeping brain seems to delete redundant or unnecessary synapses or connections. So the purpose of sleep may be to help us remember what's important, by letting us forget what's not.
E Sleep is likely to have physiological purposes too. Some researchers have found that sleep deprivation impedes wound healing in rats, and others have suggested that sleep helps boost the immune system and control infection. But these studies are not conclusive. At Stanford University, William Dement, co-founder of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center, explains what he knows after 50 years of research, about the reason we sleep. 'As far as I know,' he said, 'the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy.'
F The Stanford clinic does more than 3,000 overnight sleep studies a year. Their main diagnostic tool is the polysomnogram, the main element of which is the electroencephalograph (EEG), which captures the electrical output from a patient's brain. As the EEG records a person's sleep patterns, the polysomnogram technicians also measure body temperature, muscle activity, eye movement, and breathing. Then they look over the data for signs of abnormal sleep. When a person has narcolepsy, for instance, they plunge from wakefulness into REM sleep without any intermediate steps. However, Clete Kushida, the clinic director, told me he can spot most people's sleep problems right at the intake interview. 'There are those who cannot keep their eyes open, and those who just speak of their exhaustion but don't actually fall asleep. The former often have sleep apnea where they stop breathing. The latter have true insomnia.'
G In sleep apnea, muscle relaxation allows the soft tissue of the throat to close, shutting off the sleeper's air passage. When the brain realizes it is not getting oxygen, it sends a signal to the body to wake up. The sleeper awakes, inhales, and sleep returns. Apnea is a serious problem but only indirectly a sleep disease. True insomniacs are people who either can't get to, or can't stay asleep for any evident reason.
H While apnea can be treated with a device that forces air down the sleeper's throat to keep the airways open, the treatment of classic insomnia is not so clear cut. Acupuncture may help. It has long had this role in Asian medicine and is being studied at the University of Pittsburgh sleep center now. Typically in the US, insomnia is treated in two ways. First come the sleeping pills. Though safer than they once were, they can still lead to psychological addiction. 'Many users complain that their sleeping-pill sleep seems different, and they feel unfocussed on waking. Sleeping pills are not a natural way to sleep,' points out Charles Czeisler, director of the Harvard Health and Safety Group.
I The second step in treating insomniacs is usually cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In CBT, a psychologist teaches insomniacs to think about sleep problems as manageable, and to practice good 'sleep hygiene': sleep in a dark room, go to bed only when you are sleepy, don't exercise beforehand. Studies have shown that CBT is more effective than sleeping pills at treating long-term insomnia, but many sufferers aren't convinced. 'Some people continue in my experience to struggle,' says John Winkelman, another sleep center director. 'They're not super-satisfied with their sleep.'
Section 3
The Peopling of Patagonia
A The human settlement of the southern extremity of the Americas has always fascinated pre-historians. Viewed from a global perspective, this was the last major continental land mass to be reached by human beings. The earliest occupation of Patagonia carries obvious implications for understanding when the North and South American continents were peopled, because it gives a baseline that all calculations regarding the rate of dispersion of humans throughout both continents must take into account.
B For many years the human settlement of North and South America has been conceived of as beginning in the far north and travelling progressively southwards to Patagonia. However, fundamental disagreements developed concerning the length of time involved. Some scholars accepted a human presence in the Americas as early as 20,000 years ago, while others proposed that it could date no earlier than 8,000 years ago, and the debate is still with us today.
C The idea of a relatively 'late' settlement of the Americas (around 8,000 years ago) implies that a rapid process of migration took place. Herein lies a second debate which revolves around the question of how migration is to be understood. The 'late' model demands a hypothetical migration conceived of as a single continually advancing wave of settlement. This has always been difficult to take seriously and many scholars now support the idea of an 'early' model that sees the migration as a less ordered migration, and this is surely the most realistic scenario as migrants slowly adapted to the diverse natural habitats they would have met while travelling through the continent.
D Those who argue for an earlier settlement, however, must contend with the lack of unequivocal evidence for archaeological sites older than around 14,000 years. Nevertheless, evidence for human occupation of the centre of South America is now securely dated to around 12,500 years ago at the Monte Verde site, which casts doubt on the 'late' model. The lack of archaeological evidence further south for this time period may be explained by the obstacle to humans on foot posed by the huge glacial streams that were present at that time.
E We can speculate then that the retreat of the Patagonian glaciers around 14,000 years ago allowed the initial human intrusion into a pristine environment, which was similar to that of early post-glacial Europe. Human settlement of the vast horizontal expanse of treeless high country must have been tenuous at best, and the evidence for this occupation remains relatively scant, most of it coming from rock shelters in Argentina and Chile. There is, however, reliable evidence from these sites to confirm the presence of humans by around 11,000 years ago in different habitats and some hints of an even older occupation. However, some other sites where evidence for even earlier human occupation was initially posited, have recently come under fresh scrutiny. This is because anthropologists have come to recognise that bones or other evidence may be deposited in caves by natural agency, in other words by other forces such as floods or predators, and not necessarily by humans.
F We shall turn now to a more detailed discussion of the archaeological evidence found in various parts of Patagonia. At the site located beside Chinchihuapi Creek, excavations have produced convincing evidence of human occupation, including hut foundations and wooden artefacts. They were buried in layers of peat, which has the property of preserving wood remarkably well, and as a result radiocarbon dating* tests have shown these artefacts to date from around 12,500 years ago. One of the most famous Patagonian sites is a cave known as Los Toldos. However, the evidence from this site has recently been called into question, because dispersed flecks of carbon used in the test process were taken unsystematically from many different places in the site. As a result, the association of this material with the artefacts is not at all clear. About 150 kilometres south is the site called El Ceibo, where a similar collection of artefacts to that found at Los Toldos has been discovered from the lowest levels of the dig, but as yet no radiocarbon dates are available and this sort of analysis of the existing evidence is required before the site's value can be confirmed.
G The Arroyo Feo site is located very close to the high plateau. The artefacts from the earliest occupations were found at the same depth and have the same origins as those from Los Toldos, and have been securely dated to around 9,000 years ago. Another site that is mentioned in the debate is at Las Buitreras, where a number of stone flakes associated with bone remains of various animals have been discovered. However, anthropologists now believe that presumed cut marks on the bones are somewhat dubious, and despite detailed testing there is no way of securely relating any of these remains with human occupation. Finally some 50 kilometres to the south is the site at Cueva Fell, which was the first Patagonian site to be systematically studied by modern archaeological methods. However, it is now recognised that the utility of this site must be restricted to its direct vicinity, given changes to the nearby area caused by flooding, and findings cannot be freely extrapolated further afield.
H In conclusion, based on the evidence from a number of reliable sites, it seems probable that human populations reached Patagonia around 11,000 years ago.
*radiocarbon dating: finding out the age of an organic object by examining carbon it contains