Entries tagged with inspiration

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a graduation speech that is worth the time to listen

As the USA is added to an international watchlist for its rapidly declining civic freedoms (by an organization that has been doing its work since at least 1996), as we're seeing the first videos of government taking people without stating any cause during the apprehension, as this administration shuts down oversight that would give us trustworthy data on metrics from healthcare to economics, I thought that a word of hope might be in order.

I've queued this YouTube video at the relevant section. Just watch 4 minutes of it, until he moves on to another quote to lead the next section of his speech. This is Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, delivering a commencement speech in 2023 to graduates at Northwestern University.

Watch on YouTube

The whole speech is good, but please just watch those 4 minutes. They are even more relevant now than in 2023. As I've said too often in recent years, "the cruelty is the point" for some people in positions of authority. I expect that we'll see more sadopopulism in the next 4 years.

Entry tags:

inspiration,
music

theme song: somebody will

Today's theme song comes to us via technoshaman, via Plague Poems, in which the poet writes about being "a pessimistic utopian".

I know we will never reach that place
but still I cling to the idea.

I like the sentiment of the poem, that we strive today so that somebody in the future (and who is not us) can benefit. In that vein, this song captures the idea very well.

http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/songs/sci-fi-fantasy-fandom/somebody-will/

And I want it so much.
Close my eyes, I can taste the Mars dust in the air.
In the darkness the space stations shimmer in orbits that I will not share.

But I’ll teach the student
Who’ll manage the fact’ry
That tempers the steel that makes colonies strong.
And I’ll write the program that runs the computer
That charts out the stars where our rockets belong.
It will never get easy to wake from my dream
When the future I dream of is so far away.
But I am willing to sacrifice
something I don’t have For something I won’t have
but somebody will someday.

And it feels like a waste.
All this working and waiting and battling time,
And all for a kingdom that all of my efforts will never make mine,

Sure, the music quality may not exactly win awards, but the lyrics remind of that time that somebody wrote a great song about life as a code monkey. It's not often that tech reaches poetry.

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the Farmer-Labor movement in Minnesota

I just finished watching the premier of "The Farmer-Labor Movement: A Minnesota Story" on a local Public Broadcasting station. It was fascinating and uplifting history about "the most successful third party in U.S. political history".

I've written before about our state's DFL (not merely Democrat) party and its relation to the Wizard Of Oz story. This video finally explains in detail how and why this history came to be. It's such a wonderful story that gives me hope. Technically, Minnesota is a "purple" state (mixture of conservative "red" and liberal "blue" voters), but even so it has a long history of progressive politics. I didn't know until tonight that a Minnesota governor once deployed troops to protect the workers against the businesses!

I've written before that people should move away from the conservative states that have become so dangerous. Honestly, why wouldn't everyone move here, where the water is plentiful and the societal fabric is stronger than elsewhere?

Watch this film, if you get an opportunity. Please consider moving to Minnesota, where many people loudly proclaim the failures of monopolies, capitalism, and McCarthy-style fear-mongering, while simultaneously promoting farmer cooperatives, labor unions, and creative thinking for sustainable futures for all. As I've said more than once, Minnesota politics offers exactly my kind of crazy.

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biology is wondrous

The universe is deliciously complex and offers wonders aplenty, from the small to the large.

The biochemical processes in our bodies are immensely intricate and "look" like robotic machinery in operation. Those atomic-level structures can be captured only in still images of dead tissue by electron microscope imaging. This weekend, I happened across a great video that shows both the complexity and the sheer speed of these processes. It offers what we would see if we could use electron scanning on live cells in motion. Sure, the video is a scripted animation (and the added sound track is annoying), but this visualization of what we know about biology is still amazing. The 3-minute marker is where we get to see some of the folding and interaction of complex molecules on a dna strand. This is what happens in every cell of our body in every moment.

Watch on YouTube

It doesn't feel like any great leap of metaphor to see "life" at both the tiniest scale of unliving molecules and a vastly larger scale. The Gaia theory continues to gain acceptance, as with a new paper by astrobiologists who offer the idea of planetary-scale intelligence. It reminds me of the technologically-instantiated personality of our planet in David Brin's sci-fi book, "Earth". I believe that our planet will get there, if humans don't destroy our ecosystems (and ourselves) first.

Entry tags:

inspiration

some days

Declining health, climate change, citizen armament, exponential economy, and then...

... suddenly all is right with the world again.

I added it to my Amazon wish list. I'll be buying that one when I have the urge (and the savings) to splurge again.

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Medtronic

I learned something special tonight during my Thursday movie experience...

The Heights Theater has been around since 1926. One day back in those early times (perhaps 1931?), a kid visited the theater to watch the movie Frankenstein. That event gave him a desire to pursue a career in medical technology. That kid's name was Earl Bakken. Earl later co-founded a local company called Medtronic, now a global player in that industry.

I didn't catch all of the rest of what followed (too much applause/interest), but I think they said that in early December, they would be showing Frankenstein again and Earl Bakken would be attending. I think that's what was said. :) If so, I look forward to attending that movie too.

The theater had someone there to play the organ for early entertainment. The theater had contests after the music: best Vincent Price lookalike, best costume, and best screamer (the most popular contest, I think). They showed a vintage tv commercial and some vintage movie trailers before the main movie. Those were fun.

The movie itself was also very good. Great lines of dialog ("Remember the fun we had the time you poisoned me?"). Towards the end of the movie, when the skeleton is rising from the acid to float towards the woman, a red spotlight appeared in the theater and lit up a curtained balcony at the front of the stage. Then a skeleton floated out (in the theater, coinciding with the movie skeleton) and traveled across a guidewire across the main part of the theater. Funny stuff. :) A minute or two later, when Vincent Price was working his machinery, looking out of the screen at his skeleton marionette, the red spotlight came back on and the skeleton floated back to his alcove while Vincent Price watched. The crowd loved that too. The gimmick worked not just once but twice in the same show. *laugh*

My pager from work kept going off (vibrate mode, not audio) about 8 times right up until the movie started, but it was thankfully quiet afterwards. I could deal with all of the issues just by texting email responses back. I didn't have to leave to walk back home to deal with anything by remote session. Yay!

A good evening.