Hawking's Invaders

Adding to a conversation I have always found fascinating, brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking of A Brief History of Time fame (great book), in his new television program Stephen Hawking's Universe, has chimed in on intelligent life on other planets. What Hawking had to say is interesting - that contacting aliens would be dangerous, using the analogy of Christopher Columbus and the Native Americans.

His remarks initially had me scratching my head because if we indeed have the planned (by them) Independence Day style "hard encounter," we're had. Apparently Hawking is suggesting that the best preparation for this is to get ourselves out there and diversify our locations, which he is known to support. Still, I think he's up to something else.

The inevitable first encounter between civilizations almost certainly occurs when the more advanced finds the less advanced. In this circumstance, the find will occur without the latter's awareness, and if the more advanced choose to make contact, as in Contact, it will likely occur in accordance with an established protocol, which will be a very "soft encounter" unlikely to make headlines for quite some time. One would like to think that a civilization lasting long enough to develop the means for interstellar or intergalactic travel would have its act together and the means to obtain the resources it requires from far closer planets that aren't covered with soft warm bipeds and kitty cats. There's a lot of planets between us and them.

This entire conversation stays inside a certain paradigm which may or may not apply. The best break outside this box that I've encountered in film is Andrei Tarkovski's extraordinary Solyaris, slower but superior to the (also pretty good) Soderburgh Solaris.

I wonder if this segment of Hawking's program is saying more about humanity and its treatment of Earth than the aliens who may want it (and so shortly after James Cameron's Avatar). Perhaps Hawking is showing us his version of Cameron's film by suggesting that perhaps to someone out there in the deep black ocean, someone nasty like Columbus, we're the blue people.

To A Certain Person

In the course of human events sometimes what may occur as small to all but one can be huge to that one, and this has just occurred. Of course this blog is not written for an audience of one. I'd just send an email. However, among the complex set of motivations behind it has been the desire to deliver a certain message, a message not captured in a paragraph or even a lengthy post, to a certain person.

The message is the intangible essence of the aggregate of both Something Else and the material at the blog, including (if not especially) the comments on the various posts.

I don't have any spooky software or analytics that peer into a visitor's web cam or let me see data on their computer, but I do get very basic information on the number of visits, the city or town of the visitor, and the Internet Service Provider (ISP) used to access the site.

A few days ago, mostly on Friday and Saturday (16th/17th), a certain person read my material, and I'm not talking about a casual glance. This person really read it, drinking deep with the brain engaged. Why this means so much is difficult to explain, but it means a lot. I don't expect this person to do or say anything, but I want to acknowledge and thank the individual for reading what I had to say.

From the content visited, the comments explored, and the nature of the reading, this person gets it.

I get that you get it, and it means more to me than you will ever know. Thank you so much.

The Truth about Tea

(Left-the actual sign at the rally. Right-the "Photoshopped" sign for the press.) President Clinton is warning the country that the hate infested rhetoric today has an eerie similarity to that which preceded the Oklahoma City bombing. The grotesque demonizing and vilifying of all entities not perceived as distilled tea has long passed the point of disgusting and entered the realm of the truly dangerous. Republicans are trashing rock solid candidates for a variety of positions simply because they were nominated by the Obama administration.

The distilled white mobs scream about impending white slavery yet expect the rampant racism and hysterical rhetoric to play as rational and intelligent discourse. Think about the white slavery sign for a minute.

So what are we supposed to think about these signs? I'd like Framer or anyone willing to associate themselves with the tea party movement to explain the signs at this post. They are not fabrications. I didn't make these up. They are the real deal at real events across the country.

I'd like to hear from the righty blogs (I won't) on why this vitriol is good for the country. It would be one thing if the venom were based on fact, but we witness the deliberate distortion of reality. They only have a problem with spending when a democrat is in office. Their position is a charade.

Republican Administration: SPEND!! SPEND!! DEFICITS DON'T MATTER!!
Democratic Administration: SPENDING IS DESTROYING THE NATION!!


What did Sonoran Alliance have to say about the deficit orgy of the Bush administration? Show me the deficit tirades at Seeing Red AZ, IC AZ, Espresso and Gila when it was GW Bush throwing the nation off a cliff. What were they saying while greed soaked Wall Street thrust the nation into economic ruin? Worse, who do they blame for our debt after eight years of cheering GW Bush's spending spree? The tirade against government is a farce. They're not against government or even big government. They're against government that doesn't have their face.

Why all of the hatred now? Why not in 2008? 2006? 2004? 2002? 2000? NOW they're screaming, and their signs scream the truth so loud it's hard to hear. Read the signs, real signs at real events, no fiction in this post. None.

We're so disgusted, so sickened, so revolted, that it's hard to continue. I've almost checked out on several occasions, as have some of my most valued readers. It has become so toxic and painful that many are dropping out. Dropping out of the blogosphere is one thing. Dropping out of the electorate is another, and it's critical that sound minds vote in the 2010 general elections. The 2010 strategy, more than ever, for respectable candidates, is to make sure those who voted in 2008 vote in 2010.

The unspeakable truth is that the white sheeted hate infested anger, the surge in venom towards the government is occurring because the face of the government has changed. The inevitable election of an African American as President has now occurred. I suppose with hindsight we should have anticipated that now everything about government is horrible and terrible, and that people would be screaming, "We want our country back!"

Ask them what has been taken from them. You will get no answer, but the answer is clear: a white country.

Sadly, politics has its pornography as well. Pornography and prostitution are also lucrative in politics, and Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and in particular, Sarah Palin have discovered that the beast is most willing to fork over fortunes to have its ugliest sentiments stroked and supported. These whores (and that is exactly what they are) get rich showing the world America's ass.

After the Wedding

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in a Foreign Language, Susanne Bier's After the Wedding (2006) probably would have won had it not been for Von Donnersmark's profoundly thought provoking The Lives of Others. Restricting remarks on the plot to the most basic, a troubled man finds peace by working himself to the bone at an African orphanage, immersing himself in helping kids in desperate need. Not surprisingly, the orphanage is always on the brink of financial extinction, and suddenly he is contacted by a wealthy executive in Europe, whose corporation appears eager to support his cause.

If it sounds too good to be true.

What distinguishes the film is its mastery of capturing the angst and spiritual trauma associated with family and parent and child and what these relationships mean. I have experience in this area, and the film is brilliant. Situations include a man learning he is a father, facing a daughter he didn't know he had, and the daughter, thinking her father dead for her entire life, seeing him while he sees her. Some people have some explaining to do, and souls are engaged, and more often than not, everyone cares. I've been there. This film gets it as demonstrated by an intelligent, insightful script and the attention given to the acting with extreme awareness of the facial expressions, the energy behind the eyes, and the states expressed by the characters.

The “Before the Wedding” motifs have been beaten bloody six ways to Sunday through Saturday including leap year. Virtually every possible concoction of what connects to what and how under which circumstance has been explored. We love the love story of the two, separated by the drama and circumstances of choice, overcoming outrageous barriers, embracing for imminent bliss, roll credits. In reality people do get married. In reality the wedding is not the end of the story.

My Dinner with Sirocco

Exactly a year ago I posted about a a visit to San Diego for a conference, and former Tucsonan Casey DeLorme, who lives in San Diego, emailed me the next day. We met for a great dinner at a San Diego wine bar. Well, this week I posted about the SAS Global Forum in Seattle, and the next day I heard from long time blogger friend, Sirocco. Sirocco and I go way back to the spring of 2006.

Tonight, just hours ago, I got to meet Sirocco face to face for the first time and had a delightful dinner with him and his terrific wife. We discussed what the knowledgeable reader would guess we discussed, blogging, who each other is (since he is actually anonymous, my learning who he is involved a lot more conversation, A LOT), politics and the upcoming elections, but mostly the past and our time in Tucson.

Over the years, Sirocco has become one of my dearest blogger friends. Finally getting to meet him and enjoy a fine meal in a fantastic city provides a priceless memory I will have for the rest of my life.

SAS in Seattle

By sheer coincidence, almost exactly a year after an AERA convention in San Diego, I extend greetings from the Sheraton on Pike Street in the heart of downtown Seattle. Arriving late Saturday night, Sunday I walked all over downtown, having breakfast at the delightful Von's Roasthouse famous for it's exquisite $3.50 martinis (skipped these - 10 AM).

Von's place is fantastic for an afternoon drink among friends. For lunch enjoyed phenomenal seafood at the famous Ivars on the water watching the "dainty" eating seagulls descend on tossed scraps of fish, other meats, or french fries.

Seattle is an extraordinary city in the big leagues with San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, and NYC, real cities with diversity, massive economic infrastructure offering real jobs, developed public transportation, and real downtowns that attract tourists from other countries. Today I walked by restaurants that together featured food from just about every country on the planet. The coffee is incredible, and the coin laundries have free wireless internet. On 12th Avenue I saw a film house showing unusual, award winning independent films no Republican has ever heard of, let alone seen. On the same street I entered a coffee shop, sat down with my coffee, and in minutes found myself talking to an engineering student who had expressed enthusiasm for his differential equations class. We had a terrific conversation about what ODE opens up beyond calculus and the role of math in engineering. In listening to him it became clear the guy should be a teacher, which I told him and explained why. He left beaming.

Seattle has committed to be a carbon neutral city by 2030, the first in the country. I love Seattle.

The SAS Global Forum is also terrain about as x4mr candy as an environment can be. SAS is the Rolls Royce of statistical software, a far superior product to STATA, and infinitely beyond the user friendly but inherently novice oriented SPSS. Beginning statistics students typically get an introduction to SPSS as part of the course. STATA enjoys quite a large set of users, especially in fields like sociology and education research, and some of these are very brilliant scholars. They just don't want to invest in the SAS learning curve. Now that IBM has purchased SPSS, it will be interesting (for some) to see how it evolves.

In the major leagues, enormous financial institutions, insurance giants, global economists, health and medical research statistics, institutional research at many universities, where mind boggling quantities of data and highly sophisticated data mining algorithms (SAS Enterprise Miner) are used, SAS rules. Co-workers are promising me that the next couple days are going to blow my mind. I hope so.

Event Promo Video

Tonight's kick-off event gave a taste. Among other things, they are looking at mining social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to conduct what they are calling "sentiment analysis."

Divided We Fall

Czechoslovakian director Jan Hrebejk's Musíme si pomáhat (2000) offers a compelling and realistic depiction of a WWII Czech couple who take in a former employer of their community, David, a Jewish businessman who had escaped the Theresienstadt concentration camp and knew any capture meant death. They allow him to live in their secret closet for two years. Without getting into the plot, I will share that the film masterfully sets up a final 30 minutes of very moving and realistic sequences where individuals face imminent death and maneuver a turn of events requiring personal risk and sacrifice to save the life of another. The final scene with the baby carriage is cinematic genius.

Divided We Fall deserved its nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film is must see cinema.