What I've realized about Trump, Putin, and the hackers apparently targeting my email
Videos
📺 Watched PBS NewsHour full episode Dec. 1, 2016
Thursday on the NewsHour, President-elect Trump travels to Indiana in celebration of a jobs deal with Carrier. Also, recovery efforts mount as the Tennessee wildfires wane, the future of American manufacturing jobs, volunteer medics struggle to save lives in Mosul, advances in the battle against AIDS, how failing infrastructure is limiting U.S. productivity, a new book on Iran and the war on weed.
The segment on crumbling infrastructure was very interesting and I’ll have to get a copy of American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (Simon & Schuster, March 29, 2016)
The short snippet on the history of cannabis was also relatively interesting, particularly the discussion of how it’s perception was changed by the government.
Reading Katumuwa
Video published on Apr 18, 2014.
This video by Travis Saul features a digital rendering of the Stele of Katumuwa. The ancient stele was discovered by University of Chicago archaeologists at Zincirli, Turkey in 2008. The inscription on the stele, written in a local dialect of Aramaic, is dated to around 735 BC. In word and image, Katumuwa asks his descendants to remember and honor him in his mortuary chapel at an annual sacrificial feast for his soul, which inhabited not his bodily remains, but the stone itself.
This reading of the Aramaic inscription and its English translation is kindly provided by Dennis Pardee, Henry Crown Professor of Hebrew Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. For more detailed information about the inscription, read his chapter featured in this Oriental Institute Museum Publication:
Pardee, Dennis. “The Katumuwa Inscription” in, In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East, edited by V.R. Hermann and J.D. Schloen, pp.45-48. Oriental Institute Museum Publication 37. 2014. Chicago: The Oriental Institute.
http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/oimp/oimp37.html
The reading is also featured in the video “Remembering Katumuwa” featured in the Special Exhibit “In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East” at the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago, April 8 2014–January 4 2015.
https://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/remembrance/
In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East.
Virginia Rimmer Herrmann and J. David Schloen, eds., In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2014.
Download the free e-book: http://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/oimp37.pdf
Remembering Katumuwa
Additional context for the stele
h/t to my friend Dave Harris for sending this along to me.
Attack of the Killer Donald Trump: A Zombie Movie?!
There is a multi-lingual low-budget movie shooting across the street from me in which Trump is terrorizing some Spanish speaking gardeners!
It doesn’t appear to be a comedy and Trump is grumbling as if he’s a Zombie!
There were some more-than-steamy scenes (shot behind the neighbors’ bushes) which are NSFW, so they won’t appear here.
I won’t spoil the ending, but the last shot I saw involved the cinematographer lying on the ground shooting up at a gardner with a shovel standing over him menacingly.
Click below for some of the video I shot.
Instagram filter used: Normal
Photo taken in: Glendale, California
Trump meets a girl in the garden
I won’t even describe this one…
Trump upset about the illegals in the garden
Rampaging
Just before things come to blow with a shovel…
Mike Morell interview by Charlie Rose on World Politics relating to the Presidential Election 2016
Mike Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, on Donald Trump and his recent op-ed endorsing Hillary Clinton.
First let’s start with the fact that I’m a big Mike Morell fan! If you want to know about world politics and know more about not only the big picture but the minutiae, and learn it from someone who can not only lay out an argument succinctly but with great depth, there is no better tutor than Morell. A former deputy director and a former acting director of the CIA, Mike Morell is about as good as it gets in understanding foreign policy. Morell is great at laying out simple facts and figures relating to incredibly complex and nuanced events and exploring a range of potential options, and then, only if asked, will provide any personal opinion on a subject. I love the fact that he appears frequently on Charlie Rose which is about as good as it gets in the interview game. Listening to their discussions will make you a better citizen, not only of America, but of the world.
Last week I was floored that Morell, a lifelong non-partisan due in great part to his decades long government service, broke ranks to endorse Hillary Clinton in an influential op-ed piece in the New York Times. I suspect (completely a gut reaction on my part) that despite not having registered with a political party, Morell leans more to the right and would generally vote Republican. Despite this, he laid out a scathing argument why Donald Trump should not be the next president. He was my foreign policy hero to begin with, but now I’ve got to build the pedestal even higher. I’m glad that despite the sacrifices he had to make to present such an argument, that he stood up firmly for what he believes is right for the country.
If you haven’t read his piece from Friday, I highly recommend it. If you prefer a video version with more discussion and elaboration, then last night’s Charlie Rose was fantastic.
Even better, if you want a scintillating and engaging primer on world politics, jump back into Rose’s extensive archives and watch all of Charlie Rose’s past interviews with Morell.
Andrew Solomon Interview on Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose from Charlie Rose.comAuthor Andrew Solomon introduces his new book, "Far and Away."
A great interview with Andrew Solomon relating to his new book Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change, travel, and the world in which we live. Though it’s not discussed directly, there’s a feel of Big History philosophy in the discussion.
A peaceful moment on the Shiawassee River
Instagram filter used: Normal
Photo taken at: DeVries Nature Conservancy
César Hidalgo on Why Information Grows | The RSA
I’ve just recently finished the excellent book Why Information Grows by César Hidalgo. I hope to post a reasonable review soon, but the ideas in it are truly excellent and fit into a thesis I’ve been working on for a while. For those interested, he does a reasonable synopsis of some of his thought in the talk he gave the the RSA recently, the video can be found below.
The underlying mathematics of what he’s discussing are fantastic (though he doesn’t go into them in his book), but the overarching implications of his ideas with relation to the future of humankind as a function of our economic system and society could have some significant impact.
“César visits the RSA to present a new view of the relationship between individual and collective knowledge, linking information theory, economics and biology to explain the deep evolution of social and economic systems.
In a radical rethink of what an economy is, one of WIRED magazine’s 50 People Who Could Change the World, César Hidalgo argues that it is the measure of a nation’s cultural complexity – the nexus of people, ideas and invention – rather than its GDP or per-capita income, that explains the success or failure of its economic performance. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order itself.”
Nicolas Perony: Puppies! Now that I’ve got your attention, complexity theory | TED
For those who are looking for a good, simple, and entertaining explanation of the concept of emergent properties and behavior within complexity theory (or Big History), I just came across a nice TED talk that simplifies complexity using a few animal examples including a cute puppy video as well as a bat and a meerkat example. The latter two also have implications for evolution and survival which are lovely examples as well.
[ted id=1916]
Bucket List: Write A Joke for Robin Williams
In all the sadness of the passing of Robin Williams, I nearly forgot I’d “written” a short joke for him just after I’d first moved to Hollywood.
Killing some time just before I started work at Creative Artists Agency, I finagled my way into a rough-cut screening of Robin William’s iconoclastic role in PATCH ADAMS on the Universal Lot. Following the screening, I had the pleasure of chatting with [read: bum-rushed like a crazy fan] Tom Shadyac for a few minutes on the way out. I told him as a recent grad of Johns Hopkins University and having spent a LOT of time in hospitals, that they were missing their obligatory hospital gown joke. But to give it a karate chop (and because I’d just graduated relatively recently), they should put it into the graduation at the “end” and close on a high note.
Killing some time just before I started work at Creative Artists Agency, I finagled my way into a rough-cut screening of Robin William’s iconoclastic role in PATCH ADAMS on the Universal Lot. Following the screening, I had the pleasure of chatting with [read: bum-rushed like a crazy fan] Tom Shadyac for a few minutes on the way out. I told him as a recent grad of Johns Hopkins University and having spent a LOT of time in hospitals, that they were missing their obligatory hospital gown joke. But to give it a karate chop (and because I’d just graduated relatively recently), they should put it into the graduation at the “end” and close on a high note.
I didn’t see or hear anything about it until many months later when I went to Mann’s Chinese Theater for the premiere and saw the final cut of the ending of the film, which I’ve clipped below. Just for today, I’m wearing the same red foam clown nose that I wore to the premiere that night.
Thanks for the laughs Robin.
Bucket List:
#1. Write a joke for Robin Williams.
http://youtu.be/kx2FhY_akDY
Uri Alon: Why Truly Innovative Science Demands a Leap into the Unknown
I recently ran across this TED talk and felt compelled to share it. It really highlights some of my own personal thoughts on how science should be taught and done in the modern world. It also overlaps much of the reading I’ve been doing lately on innovation and creativity. If these don’t get you to watch, then perhaps mentioning that Alon manages to apply comedy and improvisation techniques to science will.
[ted id=2020]
Uri Alon was already one of my scientific heroes, but this adds a lovely garnish.
Brief Thoughts on the Google/Verizon Compromise and Net Neutrality in the Mobile Space
This last week there’s been a lot of interesting discussion about net neutrality as it relates particularly to the mobile space. Though there has been some generally good discussion and interesting debate on the topic, I’ve found the best spirited discussion to be that held by Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani, Jeff Jarvis, and guest Stacey Higginbotham on this week’s episode of This Week in Google.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJQy2R6UT5U?wmode=transparent]
What I’ve found most interesting in many of these debates, including this one, is that though there is occasional discussion of building out additional infrastructure to provide additional capacity, there is generally never discussion of utilizing information theory to improve bandwidth either mathematically or from an engineering perspective. Claude Shannon is rolling in his grave.
Apparently, despite last year’s great “digital switch” in television frequencies from analog to provide additional television capacity and the subsequent auction of the 700MHz spectrum, everyone forgets that engineering additional capacity is often cheaper and easier than just physically building more. Shannon’s original limit is far from a reality, so we know there’s much room for improvement here, particularly because most of the improvement on reaching his limit in the past two decades has come about particularly because of the research in and growth of the mobile communications industry.
Perhaps our leaders could borrow a page from JFK in launching the space race in the 60’s, but instead of focusing on space, they might look at science and mathematics in making our communications infrastructure more robust and guaranteeing free and open internet access to all Americans?
A lovely bit of satire on Evolution vs. Creationism… what will they come up with next?
Constitutional debate continues over whether public schools should include biblical Armageddon alongside global warming in end-of-world curriculum. http://v.theonion.com/onionstudios/video/1368/640.mp4