Forgetting is death, forgiving is life
Remember Them, They Paid With Their Lives, Forgetting is Death, Forgiving is Life
Category Archives: social
Pope Francis
Pope Francis. I pray for for him from all my hart to succeed in convincing people that love and inclusiveness “Is The Way”.
Even though, I don’t side with the organized religion for the same reasons I don’t side with any political parties, I’m impressed on the effort Pope Francis makes to straight our twisted current ways, all focussed on short term and small group gains. He does need all the help from God and us all to succeed, because what he fights is almost impossible to fight, to convince people to balance their focus to include more of the long term impact of their actions and and full societal (Earth level) wealth. In this case I see wealth as more (way more) than just money…
Why do we die?
Just reading this excellent book of history of science and knowledge called “The upright thinkers” by Leonard Mlodinov and read what Max Plank thought about revolutionary new ideas. Plank said “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and new generation grows up that is familiar with it“.
This resonates with some of my own observations about how human mind works. A child mind is like a fluid, just prepared, cement mixture, getting more like a set cement stone as we age. We get to be stony and unable to adapt. This gets so bad that in the end both the body and the mind becomes a drag to the current reality and the universe simply discards us.
Interesting is that in the bible, Jesus says that God expects us to be like children. I’m pretty sure he (or they if he was invented) was thinking of the same phenomena of low adaptivity as we age. On the bright side this shows though also the the path to the immortality… You guess, stay adaptive, meaning you have to be able to drop all you know and embrace new ideas if they prove to explain how the reality works!
The other observation is that all conservatory ideals seem (at least for now) deemed to fail. Simply the universe can’t be stopped from changing, we have to adapt or end up in the garbage.
What really matters, Have you found joy in your life? Have your life brought joy to others?
We ask ourselves at least once in our lives why are we here and what really matters. There are rivers of written words on this subject so I’d hate to add more stuff on it. But I found this explanation in an unusual palace and it stuck with me. I’d like to share it as it wormed my hart and gave me a direction in the jungle of life.
In the movie “The Bucket List” Morgan Freeman’s middle class character asks Jack Nicholson’s rich character two questions. He says that “The ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death, when their soul got to the entry to heaven the God asked them two questions. Their answers to the questions determined if they were admitted or not. The questions were:
— Have you found Joy in your life?
— Have your life brought joy to others?
”
Just finished reading “The Narcissist Next Door” by Jeffrey Kluger
I’ve started reading the book before the US elections started. Now after I’ve finished it I seem to get a better understanding of the current dynamics of the campaign as I’m looking at it from a new perspective. If you wonder what’s going on just read the first few pages on amazon.com (those are free) and yes I recommend you buy it and read it if you are a US citizen. I think it will pay off.
I have the feeling that “Mr. Dobbs” will once again get very close to the high office and for the same reason… 🙂
RIP: John Nash, another “Beautiful Mind” gone
John Nash and his wife Alicia have died in a car accident.
I’ve learned about Jon Nash and his accomplishments in mathematics and game theory from the Hollywood movie “A Beautiful Mind” as many other of us.
That is why I’ll use some of the scenes I found favorite and touching. Of course the movie introduce images of actions which never happened exactly like that in the reality, but that is not the point. The point is to make the deep thoughts this man acquired about our reality available to all of us, a window and a chance to understand them and to help build better lives for each of us.
The scene from the movie where Nash gets the idea about effects of collaborative actions in the game theory or “Nash Equilibrium”
The “Pen ceremony” (didn’t really happen but is a touching event in the movie)
And The Real Jon Nash
Baltimore Burning, Why kids burn down their own community assets?
I’m amazed how some of us are “dazzled” on the burning just happening right now in Baltimore and happened some time ago elsewhere in US.
There are cases when people are willing to burn their own property, but I bet this is not it. This is different, this is deeper, this is something that if it is not well understood by as many of us, will only amplify over time. My guts are telling me that, these kids are burning down what they feel and regard as not being theirs. A society built on “dog eats dog” philosophy emerged from throat cutting business competition can easily breed these types of mentalities (this is not limited to US at all, is universal). At their age (as the video footages shown mostly youths) they are pressed by the crowd effect, to do “special” things and at the moment the “community” is only a far echo in their minds.
Interesting enough way back in time on the time of the socialist Romania people used to say “What is everyone’s is no-one’s” and that society was supposed to be all about “community” and “sharing” and it did not work. Lesson learned? Seem not.
Lead by example they say. What example I say?
Let’s Think, or even better, let’s Think different…
Again I believe we have to start asking “why?” and continue the “why?” after each answer it comes in our minds, not stopping before we do this exercise at least 4 levels down. You’ll be surprised what you’ll discover.
My hero from law enforcement business
After (re) awakening to a crude reality of the injustice in the justice system, finally a break, one giving us hope, hope that we can hold our humanity high in most dreading conditions.
I’m saying re-awakening since I’ve seen first hand, back in the communist regime of Romania, what the injustice of the justice can be, and one of the reasons I’ve emigrated to Canada was the better justice system the occidental countries built over time. I still believe (or hope) I was not wrong.
Please view (or review) this CNN article and video on a US Richmond
Officer Jesse Kidder which did the right thing and shown a high regard for life in distress. This shows that officers do not have jobs like all of us. They have dangerous jobs which outline this: not any person can or should be a first line officer holding a gun and ready to take lives. We need people which can and will put their own life on the line to save another no matter if that entity cooperates or not. Second, for this type of high stake job I totally subscribe to pay these people much better. I want to know that when an officer points the gun at me (hopefully never) that he or she will only be motivated by high morale stakes and not by the need to “make a quota” for the day or simply chicken out or even worse “snap” an my (temporary) bad behaviour or mental state.
Unfortunately we see more and more evidence of some officers taking the stance of a “Rambo” or “Judge Dredd” type of characters, which tend to take short cuts and be all the justice system at once, (Cop, Judge, Jury, and Executioner) all in a fraction of a second. This is a best recipe for disasters on both sides, as I’m sure you can’t take a life without being impacted. Someone being able to do so is a mental disordered killer having no place in this society let aside police.
I was stunned to see “experts” called by CNN to weight in on Officer Jesse bold action, saying he should have shot that person! This is scary, really scary, that these type of thoughts can exists in the minds of the people which you’d expect to cherish life as they market themselves as “life protectors”. Think of why all the Police cruisers have (or had at some point) the slogan “to serve and protect“? On that register I’d suggest making the slogan more precise as in “to serve and protect all life“. How about that? I’d be more than happy to have well paid high morale person working to protect life instead of the narrow view of “law enforcement”. I’m saying that because we have too much history of laws which were (and some are today) morally wrong which only serve narrow interests of the few being able to sweep those laws under the scrutiny of the overall society.
Until now we have been technically unable to solve those issues, as they need mastering a very difficult form of communication, the “many to many” case. Yet with the rise of the new information technologies we can now address this issue frontally and choose to build a better future!
Safe flying with Automation
Another 150 souls vanished in little pieces on the slopes of a mountain. Can we prevent such things in future? I believe so and here is how.
All new modern airliners can be flown automatically from take-of to landing. The pilots are there for backup reasons and mostly to alleviate our fear of machines (too intelligent machines maybe). So, how can we use this capabilities without alienating people and with high effectiveness.
We can use the idea of “kill switch” which other industries use where when something bas is spotted you can hit a button to stop a process or in this case to start one.
The main issue in those case is that you can never rely 100% on people. Ill minds can be anywhere as this disaster shown, passengers can go rogue, crew can go rogue and ground personnel can also go rogue. The only way we can solve this is to have anyone, I mean anyone on the plane as passenger, crew member of ground personnel be able to hit a “kill switch” and when that happens the aircraft computers will go in a “land on one of the closest known (pre programmed)” airports and until the aircraft is not safe on the runway nothing in the world can change that in any way.
The aircraft automation will simply land the plane and all the controls on board of the aircraft will simply be ineffective until the aircraft has safely landed on the runway.
The aircraft will send continuously its position parameters and intent to its ground personnel and new destination airport.
Looks a simple use case, but due to the current “psychology” of man must dominate machines some changes should be done to the aircraft in order to allow full automated flights.
Keep in mind that this system must be a specialized one to do one and one thing only, detect a abnormality in the flight path, or being “hinted” by the “kill switch” in order to take over and do a single task only, safely land the aircraft. From the moment it is triggered nothing in the world will be able to disable it or influence it in any way until the aircraft is safely on the ground.
Of course there will be resistance on such a system but I personally feel better if it would exists in the flight I’m on and there is a button just next to my seat which if I push I can get safely on the ground. and yes that will cost me a lot of money but not my life!
Emergency Automated Landing? or EAL?
About Gemanwings disaster: The Guardian
My today’s Hero Kaci Hickox and all frontline workers on Ebola
Kaci Hickox
A nurse, front line worker, who treated Ebola patients in Africa was put in isolation for 21 days in conditions close to the ones in a prison, because of our collective irrational fear.
CBS News Article and Huffingtonpost article
This irrational fear acted and reacted in many ways and as with any fear, it will only hurt us all on long term. So, why governor Cristie put Kaci in prison? Because he’s a rough politician? I’d say he did it as a response to the average street level citizen (like myself) who rushes to conclusions and uses ignorance instead of knowledge, to “demand action”, that’s it, “do something” we say, and politicians which are fearful of loosing their power (and being most likely as ignorant as any of us) rush to take populist decisions which in the end will hurt us all. So, in a nutshell we kick out own asses!
Hooray for the ignorance! Now all front line workers will thing more than twice, before going to battle the invisible enemies which we fight for long time. Next all people travelling from places where outbreaks happen will, take their chance and lie to avoid being treated as criminals and that my friends, is not going to make us safer.
Maybe, just maybe, we should pause and think. THINK DAMN IT! Before panicking. And… let’s get out of that TSS (Temporary Stupid State) we all find ourselves in, from time to time!
To the bureaucrats who took this decision, a suggestion, please subject yourself to the same conditions as you imposed to those people! I would normally include caring for an Ebola patient first, but it would be in vain, so just do the quarantine and use a tent to do your daily necessities. We will watch…
Kaci, Thank you!
To all workers putting themselves in harms ways for all of us, Thank you!