Some suppose the great Colorado River passes into the Gulf of California through some delta or wadi.
A little research using Google Earth helps wake us up from such romantic fantasies.
The Colorado River ends at an unmarked site just shy of the US-Mexico border, on the California side.
Check it out!
Since so much is and will be written on this movie, I'm gonna make it all about me (just kidding). Like I can vouch for the Institute for Advanced Study scenes, with Einstein and Godel in the forest, and faculty housing in idyllic proximity.
All true. I was there. Not as connected with said institute but as an undergrad at nearby Princeton Inn, once a country club with adjoining golf course, and by my time (arriving 1976) already converted to a mostly freshman dorm, or residential college. I'd jog in the forest with my fellow mutant ninja tigers.
We didn't meet Einstein, by then passed, but at least one guy I know met the Beautiful Mind guy, John Nash.
I'm circling the whole aesthetics of that time frame, coming in through the lens of Wes Anderson and Asteroid City. That place of atmospheric testing, confidant futurism, science fiction, comic books, UFOs. Oppenheimer takes us to that same place.
"Give it back to the Indians" said Oppie, of Los Alamos. That grated on the ears of the Manifest Destiny types (e.g. Truman), who now saw a chance to "go Frodo" with the nuclear weapons thing (or should we call it "going Gollum"?). Bagdad Cafe is nearby in this space. The Atomic Cafe is ground zero. Dr. Strangelove.
Speaking of Asteroid City, there's that scene in the gym or whatever, with the writer, where he wants them (the actors in his play) to all fall asleep at once, act it out. That seems where Oppenheimer goes when he gets to take the podium at his chief apex of popularity.
The stomping of feet and delirious shouts of hysterical joy was semi-deafening (haunting in retrospect) and my new Apple Watch logged a sustained 90 decibels period, I found out later. These were Walt Whitman's sleepers, giddy with their own sense of spacetime (history). Not especially sober or grounded.
Were such people ready for real WMDs? Would they survive them?
I'm an "all out of order" guy like Nolan, the director, meaning I like getting the story as an asynchronous non-chronological bag of events I then get to assemble, like life itself. Because chronology is not always so important.
We're still adding pieces today.
We have other action connectors besides calendar chronologies.
In vouching for the authenticity of the Princeton impressions, I'm mostly saying they match my own, as one who lived there. I'm suggesting that by extension we might trust the storytelling. The medium of film is akin to that of the imagination, such that a Narnia movie reminds readers of where they went in their own minds' eyes. "Yep, this is the place" is a hoped for reaction.
As a resident of Portland, Oregon, I'm also not far from Hanford, Washington, the campus, mentioned briefly in the film, where the Nagasaki bomb was made, or so I'm told. They did that same insta-village thing with the layer of secrecy and paranoia. It's not like Los Alamos delivered all of those bombs on its own.
I got close to Los Alamos once on a trip to New Mexico with Dawn and Tara, got some feel for the place.
Yes, egghead intellectuals like Einstein oft tend to be on the left. Why is that? Because they tend to be idealists and think lifting living standards for all makes life better even for those at the top. Why settle for Ghetto Planet?
They're impatient with the status quo, these idealizers. "Left" seems to mean "boat rocker". Intellectuals, visionaries, see the positive possibilities, one could say that's their job. Quakernomics.
Oppenheimer is a valuable contribution to the literature, reminiscent of some Oliver Stone films in that sense.
I'm moving up and down (out and in as Buckynauts say), between rooms and screens, with an interesting talk on amphetamine and other drug-induced psychoses in the kitchen, the BBC Proms, and the Dalai Lama preaching on Facebook, upstairs (outstairs) in the office.
The point Bucky was making with "instairs versus outstairs" is you want to school your intuitions (gut feelings) with what's intuitively important knowledge, or watch them become obsolete reflexes leading you astray.
If you're not thinking of your planet as a spheroid, quite commonly, meaning quite frequently during the day, then try some of these mental exercises he recommends.
Sydney the dog also follows me between floors. I do kitchen work in the kitchen, or other tasks, as I take in the pharmacology.
The pharmacology talk is critical of the spread of epidemics, which often have to do with companies working backwards from new patents they've gotten. Now that we own this intellectual property, lets find out what it cures. In the case of psychotropics, ADHD has been a target, enlarging, according to our narrator, because many more patented amphetamine-like drugs now crowd the shelves.
Lets definitely accept the hypothesis, offered in the talk as well-proved, that drug abuse correlates with a mental illness pattern. One slide links Cannabis, assigning a likelihood of a long term diagnosis of some 34%. What about the remaining 57%, what happens with them? Might some have special gifts? Why do we always only look at the downside, right? Sure drugs are dangerous, lets not kid ourselves.
Also, what is the background likelihood of a long term diagnosis in the general population absent drug use / abuse? I'll need to go back to see what's given, or do some more digging.
There's also the chicken-egg question of aren't those prone to mental instability the same demographic more likely to experiment with controlled substances? Why not see Cannabis use as part of the descending / ascending spiral, not the cause but the symptom? Like I said: chicken-egg.
Any skepticism aside, however, my hypothesis is the Roaring Twenties maybe had more to do with the later outbreak of amphetamine abuse than we normally let on. I'll be reading more on these topics as I enlarge my echo chamber in American Studies.
I haven't had enough time in the heartland, both figuratively and literally. More blues and more jazz would be welcome.
For sure Benzedrine abuse was a side-effect of World War 2, when it was widely introduced to the military. Was it also a contributing cause? War is a groupthink psychosis and/or the search for a cure, depending on one's mindset.
The upstairs screen also has had my Jupyter going, the notebook environment available for several computer languages, Python most famously, but also Julia and R (hence the name: JuPyteR). I've been doodling with the Mandelbrot Set again, producing another one of those low resolution ASCII art renderings characteristic of my Just Use It ad campaign (pro Python).
The occasion this time is M4W and an upcoming meetup on complex numbers.
Readers, searchers, of these journals, may have already encountered various sojourns through Central Oregon, high desert country. My in-laws, my wife’s brother and his partner Judy, came to Oregon well before I returned in the mid 1980s. They eventually settled in the Sisters area and Dawn and I, Alexia, and later Tara, would go visit them, through various chapters. Alexia would live with them in one chapter.
Without going back myself, and consulting everything I’ve said, I’m recalling Extremely Remote Livingry (XRL), an acronym that probably won’t catch on, but tries to capture the mix of high and low tech that might make remote, so-called off-grid living an enjoyable experience. Not that humans don’t already enjoy such environments. Per GST, we spiral through periodic improvements, as to what’s in inventory. Do we always remember though? What we already have?
As an older guy with a lifetime of writing, I’m trying to train myself away from the “two spaces after a period” rule, which by social agreement, is falling by the wayside (has fallen). Lately I’ve been editing some of these blog posts with an eye toward removing the offending spaces, as more offending typos. I’m doing this without the benefit of my office device, having been sent on the road by my company.
A health goal for me is to not turn into a Homer Simpson donut eating machine around foods I adore. I’m at an age where the management function is not meant to stay back burner. I ate way too many BBQ flavored potato chips yesterday. We watched History channel tell us stories about North American brands, such as Jiff versus Peter Pan versus Skippy. Pepsi versus Coca-Cola. The subtitle might be “business heroes” i.e. we’re celebrating innovation, including in tricky ways to get moms choosing the right stuff. We don’t spend a lot of time on Lucky Strikes for women story from a health industry angle. We stay focused on the parade stunt (strident stylish women appeared to protest, while smoking).
This morning I’m touching base with a few in my far-flung network, tangentially talking “design science revolution” in the sense of what memes caused us to find one another in the first place. Networks are content-driven meaning one’s tribe’s identity is knit together with interweaving stories, with overlapping casts. If you don’t have a tribal lore up close, civilization offers fall-backs, including the worldly mega-religions, such as Mormonism. I’m thinking about Las Vegas these days for various reasons, which brings of memories of documentaries and books.
Although in the high desert, I’m hardly roughing it. I’m not camping or doing anything that remote. We drove over to Smith Rock (dog Sy, and I) just to make sure it’s still there. I’m using what I call the ISEPP iPad to get my work done (company business).
I often wonder why the “battle of the sexes” (however many) seems to get all the headlines, alongside the battle of the so-called “races” (as with “sexes” their number keeps changing) whereas the inter-generational battle seems to me more front and center, yet not as much in the news.
The elderly are committing the young to fight each other over obsolete ideologies, and are refusing treatment, in the form of more up to date thinking (better ideologies). Is that because the old don’t want to feel lonely in their beliefs? If the younger folk revolt over their debtor status, how will the older folks pay the bills?
For example, most Boomers watching USATV, absorbed the view that the world was conflicted over two leading ideologies, capitalism versus communism. The more educated learned of a “third world” that was opting out of this conflict, with the freedom to stay friends with both sides.
The terms of debate were not always crystal clear however. The Pentagon always seemed plenty socialist in its ways, with LAWCAP (the so-called military industrial complex or MIC, as studied by our AFSC) needing military socialism to stay on top.
Then communism seemed to whither away, becoming socialism also, in the form of central government spending and a growing public sector.
China invested big time on commuter rail and high rise apartments, and in taking over manufacturing from the so-called “west” (as if Europe were not in Eurasia) with its spanking new facilities.
Meanwhile, Russia went back to being more of an oligarchy, much like the USATV system, now run through six or so controllers.
Telling the defunct USSR and emergent USSA apart has become increasingly Orwellian, with words like “authoritarian” bandied about i.e. each side calls the other an oppressor of its own people, while appealing to the neutrals and non-aligned, to finally align. Sweden succumbed. Switzerland and Austria remain proud.
Except what are these “sides” anymore? Don’t we just have unfree peoples everywhere you look, and isn’t that “double plus ungood“ (Orwellian utopia-talk)?
By unfree I mean, in part: “programmed to hate the baddies” from a young age, then trained in weaponry, then sent, in kill mode to, if required, die on command against the other side. That’s called “being a hero”. The elderly applaud and make cemeteries, as that’s what many of them had to go through too. They’re just passing the torch. Who needs an upgrade?
As a Friend (NPYM’s Annual Session goes on without me — I’m visiting family this year) I see older generations, more comfortable in power roles, sending younger generations into Great Tragedy scenarios, to act as extras (and stars), as a part of the backdrop, as the obsolete ideologies duke it out in the foreground, trying out various new forms of rhetoric, looking to see what sticks.
In the meantime, our campaign to push an updated ideology meets with roadblocks at every turn. The investment in keeping any newer technology out of the schools is highly selective. Machine Learning is allowed to flood in, taking over a lot of responsibilities. Human Learning is put on the back burner.
However, Human Learning (yes, a form of reprogramming, lets face it) is what it takes to give a younger generation a sense of better prospects and new possibilities.
“Why are we being sacrificed?” is a good question. I encourage them to keep asking it.
Don’t let them tell you it’s “for God and country”. That line has worn thin.
I'm speaking metaphorically, but then so does polite society, sociologists, when describing how a next generation may have antibodies against X, where X is not a literal virus, but a vector that spreads like one, and may be correspondingly countered. If you hear Category Theory between the lines, you're growing new ears maybe.
Take propaganda, in the broadest sense, which includes PR and advertising, rhetoric more expansively. In American English (Amerish -- a MER ish, Fowler), "propaganda" is almost always used in a derogatory sense, to impart a negative spin. Perhaps we're hearing remnants of Protestantism decrying the continued propagation of a more Catholic catechism. There's always "high church versus high church".
We also call these rhetorically polemical clashes "wars" (e.g. the Math Wars) as in "culture wars" but we hope to manage and contain them around an ideal of non-violence. The martial arts usually circle a sense of peace and equanimity as core to the warrior mentality. A true warrior is not "looking to start a fight" but lets not forget about sparring i.e. helping others get better.
Today I watched a lot of reels, Facebook's answer to TikTok, and become more aware of this Auditor movement, wherein civil rights activists engage in some "suspicious" activity that's nevertheless within their rights, or defensibly so. There mere act of recording is often the triggering "offense".
If an authority figure tries to challenge them, they turn into expert lawyers, some more successfully than others. They remind police personnel to recall their own training, and make professionalism the value at stake. A professional activist inspires professional responses.
Against a backdrop of police brutality and movements such as Occupy (in the civil rights lineage), it's not surprising that new antibodies might form, giving rise to new breeds or professions. This is what evolution goads us into.
What's made a big difference is the smartphone and live streaming, in combination or isolation. Cops are increasingly wearing body cams, but then so are ordinary civilians. Citizens march around in fashionable uniforms, or dressed casually, with Go Pro helmets and/or other recording gear.
They look and act a lot like cops, disciplined to not use unnecessary violence. Except a lot of police escalate and lean towards violence rather quickly, which is where that police brutality may kick in. Mind over brain, brain over brawn, is how they teach us in school.
I find it curious, not to mention ironic, that NATO is out of its pond, contemplating the growth of militarism in the Pacific. Really? And NATO is here to protect us right? Nothing interesting in the Atlantic hemisphere happening? You need more business?
I'm a professor Jeffrey Sachs fan though. He's not another knee-jerk Russophobe, dime-a-dozen type. So hey, I'll keep an open mind. That a Quaker magazine would bring this event to our attention is quite appropriate. No endorsement of NATO is expressed nor implied. I'd say that's obvious, but bears repeating.
I thought of this ridiculous ad campaign: "I'm healthier than my doctor!" I jump on stage all sprightly fat, like a Tinkerbell on steroids (which no, I'm not on), and then they wheel my doctor out, all pale with an IV. The implication is somehow snake oil X is best for you.
Hey, before I go on, thanks to Ms. Vam I got to see the Crystal Skull episode of Indiana Jones last night (thanks to Movie Madness having it in stock, yes a DVD for rent, how quaint right?). It makes a crater (and I mean that as praise) in the same territory as Asteroid City. Maybe that's the actual crater it made, with the ETs in question returning to see if they needed the exhibited meteor (nah, scan it and put it back).
And now, my more serious topic, mentioning doctors. The "systems analyst" role in society is still pertinent, especially the ability to graph workflows, say those of a working ER doc. Track her movements through the day, in a Tayloresque exercise in collecting big data, but not in a way that quantum perturbs.
That's the issue these days: the geniuses at the genius bar keep wanting to probe the ER with more forms to fill out, more direct doc reporting, a little more here, a little more there, fattening the living system (trying to live) with clerical bloat-work. BS jobs are on the rise because too many script kiddies learned React and now want to run society, thinking kiddy knows best.
I exaggerate though, in blaming my geek peers for the flood of forms. They're less the culprit than those with the magic to serve their overlords. The bureaucracy hampers working doctors with clerical tasks because that's what the bureaucracy knows how to do. Clerical Tasks R Us. The promise of computers, of automation, was to actually streamline workflows and relieve doctors of paperwork.
Example: ER doc to nurse: "OK to remove from special diet, standard tray check". Nurse: "check".
Same thing today: ER doc to terminal, boot app, navigate menu, pick this pick that, order meal, is or is not Jehovah's Witness, please enter emergency contact... you get the picture. Meanwhile, someone dies on the table.
Systems Analysts where are you. Please openly discuss these problems in ways the doctor lobbies never do, because there are no doctor lobbies (i.e. unions). Unions, labor organizers, are coming for your family physicians with great bargaining chips, given the slave ship many a clinic has become.
The idea of a "word-meaning trajectory" resonates with some of the memes bouncing around in this Tai-Danae Bradley lecture.
I used to write about the word "Pepsi", atypical (i.e. an outlier) in the philosophy of language, generically averse to commercial brands.
Highlighting Pepsi is shorthand for linking in Edward Bernays style "invisible persuader" propaganda budgets aimed at establishing a "market position" i.e. a place for some brand or meme in the collective mind of a stakeholder public. That's where "rubber meets road" in terms of "revectoring".
Stakeholders include the potentially and/or actually negatively effected. These are stakeholders nonetheless. One may have a stake in opposing one advertising campaign with another.
Expecting propagandists to just sit idly by while they see an underdog needing their help, is unrealistic. Onlookers self selectively surrender their innocence (as bystanders) and join some ongoing fray. They take a side, become partisans. Pertinent figures of speech: "getting sucked in"; "falling into a gravity well".
So where does a Pepsi or a Tylenol live in an LLM (large language model) and how do we machine learn to fully automate or at least cue finely-tuned repositioning maneuvers? Grossly-tuned if needed. Infants have similar needs for motor skills (and nutrition!) when learning to walk and/or to continue walking.
Keep a brand burnished and polished. How? Answer: keep introducing new usage patterns (permute the namespace). That may be easier said than done of course. Inertia levels may be high. Weights pertain. It's a balancing act, one of maintaining a qualitative as well as quantitative equilibrium, sometimes punctuated.
Other times, the wiser strategy is to just coast. Why fix what ain't broke? Why advertise what's taken for granted? Why make billboards to advertise blue sky?
What are the mechanics of gaining traction and getting work done? How does a media campaign leverage energy expenditure?
For example, how did Synergetics (Fuller) first inject and the revector the "Jitterbug" meme? It came in as a dance, somewhat in the Twist family, and Fuller capitalized on this existing trajectory to signify a geometric transformation.
Picture two tetrahedra on each side of a pinch point, like a bow-tie, left and right. Then picture a stella octangula or merkaba wherein left and right tetrahedrons are centered and interpenetrating. Packed spheres anchor the context, much as cubes do in XYZ. The icosahedron to cuboctahedron inter-twisting relationship rounds out this so-called Jitterbug Transformation.
From Tai-Danae Bradley I get a boost in seeing an ad campaign as a statistical challenge, i.e. to revector through "brute force" for example, whatever that means. Say by means of "blanket coverage". Omnipresence. More like a Pfizer or LEGO might roll out.
That's high budget advertising and one hopes a way of financially supporting a not-hostile relationship i.e. "at least you won't attack me if I'm sponsoring your program". Funding buys non-negative coverage, is the press, although it's not that simple. Sometimes a business or politician suffers because of disclosures about who the donors are.
Another strategy is to stay small and hard to find, such that the "surface area" or "perimeter" one needs to defend, is relatively minuscule. Not every luxury is mass-market, by definition. Instead of playing the most popular girl in school everybody knows, play at being mostly invisible and within some opaque clique.
Some companies are actually satisfied with their size and discourage sudden burgeoning, which could only mean uncontrolled. Metamorphosis is sometimes in the cards, but if so that's likely presaged in the company's DNA e.g. some of its antecedents were gigantic, and/or a tycoon-minded heir has come along. Many a small business deliberately stays small, with no desire to establish remote branches. The same stakeholder may be involved with companies in different phases of their lifecycle.
