He's Dead, Jim

I know a woman who recently lost her partner.  His name was Jim. In the weeks to follow her loss, she noticed a message on her computer, "He's Dead, Jim," when she shut down her computer.  Her first inclination was "spooky," the second inclination was that someone was playing a very cruel joke.  Because she couldn't consistently reproduce it, I asked her to take a picture of it so that I could troubleshoot it.  It was flashing on her screen so even getting a picture wasn't easy.  This isn't exactly what it looked like, but close enough:

After googling the message I figured out that this happens when you are using Google Chrome as your browser.  If you shut down your computer while Chrome it is still open, this message comes up.  I couldn't reproduce it on my PC but it does happen consistently on hers now that we know what is causing it.

Apparently, an engineer at Google thought that it would be funny to use Dr. McCoy's words (when talking to Jim Kirk) in this message without considering how many people out there know someone named Jim and who will some day die.  Stumbling on this at the wrong time, could be a very shocking experience.  

I found this on Youtube.  It is a compilation of all Dr. McCoy's death pronouncements from the original Star Trek: He's Dead, Jim.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Titanic Sky

James Cameron's Oscar winning film, Titanic, is famous for being accurate.  Everything from the design of the ship, the chandeliers, gown design and plate settings are historically accurate.  The film is supposed to be scientifically accurate as well.  For example, how the ship sank was a painstaking detail that Cameron wrought over ... the angle of the ship as it sank, the speed of the sinking and the affects of the impact.   When you go around claiming how accurate your film is, there are going to be people looking for things that are wrong.  One of those people is Neil deGrasse Tyson (my favorite astrophysicist), the director of the Hayden Planetarium.

The HMS Titanic sank in the Northern Atlantic on the 14th of April, 1912. There is only one set of stars that should have been visible on that night.   Yet this film, that totes scientific and historical accuracy, had the wrong set of stars in the sky.  Not only were they the wrong stars, but that star pattern that hangs over Kate Winslet shoulder at the end of the film, just doesn't exist.  Only half the pattern exists, the rest of the sky is a mirror image of the first half of the sky.  He got lazy here perhaps hoping that no one would notice or care.  

It is nice to have some pull.  In 2012 a revised 3D version Titanic  will be released for the film's 15th anniversary.  The correct sky is in the new release of the film.  James Cameron has bumped into Tyson a number of times.  I think Cameron might just be sick of Tyson bringing it up.

Romney in '68

In 1966 Gallup polls there was a Romney at the top of the pack.  Not Mitt obviously, but his father George.  He was ahead of the ex-vice president Richard Nixon by almost 10 points and was considered a shoo in for the Republican nomination for presidency.  With Johnson not running for reelection and the Kennedy's out of the picture, the Republican nominee would sail to the presidency.  So why didn't he defeat Nixon for the nomination?  It appears that Mitt and George have something in common .. their inability to adhere to a political position.

George Romney was the Governor of Michigan and a successful businessman.  He was popular and handsome but had a tendency to go off on tangents.  Also, his Mormon religious affiliation was an issue with a largely Protestant populace.  The more Americans got to know Romney, the more Nixon gained in the polls.  Nixon was not popular but he was a known entity.  It wasn't until an old interview with Romney was released that he plummeted.  He was asked by a Michigan newspaper reporter about why his opinion on the Vietnam War had change.  He was pro war until he flipped to anti-war.  He explained his initial support of the war as being "brain washed" by the American military.  He was a staunch anti-war candidate from there on end.  It wasn't the anti-war stance that sank him, but the use of the term "brain washed."  Both Nixon and the Democrats road this to Romney's easy defeat in the primaries.  You could say it went viral in an era prior to the Internet.

Romney came in fifth in the primaries and polled 40% below Nixon by November.  At the convention, he refused to give his delegates over to Nixon.  This is something that Nixon never forgot.  If not for this move, Romney may have been VP over Agnew and Ford and may have eventually been president.

The Film Rating System

I don't pay a lot of attention to the ratings on films.  Whether a film is rated G, PG, PG-13, R or NC-17 has little affect on me.  I am in my 40's and I don't have any children.  But sometimes I have to scratch my head as to why a film is rated what it is.  If you are at all curious about this, I suggest you check out the film This Film Is Not Yet Rated which you can stream via Netflix or IFC's web site.

This film is about the MPAA (Movie Picture Association of America) and spends a lot of time on the decision process involved in rating a film NC-17 which is the rating that they give films that children are not allowed to see in the theater. They are not quite as explicit to warrant an X rating (aka pornography) and generally have more of a plot than an X rated film.  NC-17 means no children under 17 admitted under any circumstances. There are not a lot of hard and fast rules about ratings.  They are decided by a group of anonymous parents who watch the film and decide who should be able to watch it.  The difference between an NC-17 rating and an R rating can mean millions of dollars because the NC-17 rating can limit the distribution of the film.  Sometimes the offending scene is a few second long while other times, the entire film would need to be re-edited.

I find some of the decisions made by the MPAA to be very odd.  They seem very concerned about sexual content and have little concern over violence.  Boys Don't Cry, Blue Valentine and The Cooler, good films with relevant social commentary, were initially given an NC-17 rating due to some fairly innocuous sexually content. The Cooler received the rating due to the exposure of Maria Bello's pubic hair.   Yet, the film Scary Movie is rated R and depicts a cheerleader being decapitated and her head thrown in a lost-and-found bin.   If I were a parent, I'd be more concerned about gratuitous violence against woman (or violence in general) than a pubic hair.

This wouldn't be a problem with me if the MPAA didn't have a monopoly and since their raters are anonymous they are beyond scrutiny.  If there were other pre-distribution rating agencies, people (parents in particular) and theater owners could choose the rating system that better suited their values and/or tastes.  Until then, I don't take the ratings from the MPAA very seriously.

Napoleon at Elba

My knowledge of 19th century European history is rudimentary at best.  For the longest time, I thought that Napoleon had spent the end of his days in exile on the island Elba.   While he did spend time exiled on Elba, it was for a short amount of time and before his defeat at Waterloo.  His end days were spent in exile on another, far more remote, island named St. Helena.

Napoleon went to Elba after his loss in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 and abdicated from his title of Emperor of France.  Elba appears to be a beautiful place. If I were exiled, it would nice place to spend my time.  It is in the Mediterranean not too far from his native Corsica.   He lived in a villa, no prison cell.  He was given an escort of a 1000 men and the title of Emperor of Elba.  In the nine months he was there he formed an army and navy, he ruled over the 110,000 people, developed the iron mines and resided over the island's social calendar.

After he escaped from Elba, he returned to Paris and was greeted by the people with cheer and was reinstated as Emperor.  He then took up arms again and returned to the battlefield and met his biggest defeat at Waterloo in what is now Belgium.  When he was sent to exile this time, it was not a cushy exile.  No one wanted to ever see him again.  He was sent to St. Helena because it was the one of the most remote islands in the British Empire.   It was damp, windswept and mostly desolate.  He spent the last five or so years of his life depressed and sickly.

The Great Migrations

The Great Migration is a term we use to describe the mass migration of Americans of African descent, most of them descendant of slaves, to the cities of the north.  The first great migration took place between 1910 and 1930 when 1.6 million African Americans left their homes in the Jim Crow South for northern American cities like Detroit, New York, Chicago and Cleveland.  During this time period, the lynching of blacks in the South was happening on an estimated average of one every four days.  The Great Migration is a good example of how economics can drive history.  When the economy improved in the northern US, many of the factories in the north needed more labor.  My family immigrated south from French Canada during this same boom.  Opportunity allowed many to move to a better situations. The move to the new locale had its challenges. Many of the other ethnic groups did not welcome them particularly the urban Irish who were losing jobs to cheaper labor.

The Second Great Migration started during World War II, when factory jobs were many, through the booming time of the 1950's and 1960's.  Five million African Americans migrated from the South this time spreading out West to California, to the Midwest as well as North. Much of the migration routes of families can be traced by the train and other travel routes of the times. For example, Mississippi families migrated to the Chicago area, Alabamans to Ohio and Michigan cities and Louisianans over to California. Up to this point, African Americans were thought to be rural folk This is also where the Black American middle class got its roots.

Author Toni Morrison's family is one of the families that migrated in the First Great Migration.  Her maternal grandparent migrated from Alabama to Lorain, Ohio (on Lake Erie) in 1910 after they lost the family farm.  Her father's family migrated from Georgia to the same town where both sides of the family worked in steel mills.  The Nobel Prize winning author is famous to being a voracious reader, even as a child.   If she had grown up in the Jim Crow South, depending on what state and what year, it is possible that she wouldn't have been allowed to read, to attend a good school or even have a library card.  The world would be missing one of America greatest writers.  You have to wonder who or what other potential was lost during the lynchings in the Jim Crow South.

Don't Be Afraid to Say Revolution

I know a lot of people who are not interested in politics.  Most people don't get interested in politics until they have to.  For me, it was my "Approaches to Politics" class at Bryant College when I was surrounded by Young Republicans.  I was almost always in the minority in any discussion in class.  I was often revolted by some of their opinions and I began to understand why my working class parents were Democrats.  Each time I heard the privileged individuals call a working class person lazy, each time I stepped out of my beaten Dodge Dart into the parking lot surrounded by the smell of new car, each time I heard one laugh at one of the janitors ... I was driven further and further to the left.  I would often say that we were doomed, as a nation, if my fellow classmates were the future leaders of industry.  I regret how correct I actually was.

When I was in my 20's, I thought I was on the radical left.  It wasn't until I moved to Boston in the 1990's and actually met people who were on the radical left, that I realized that I wasn't radical at all.  I realized that people on the far left are as whacked as those on the far right.  Now that my political dust has settled, I have landed on left-of-center clinging desperately, with less faith daily, to a dysfunctional political system. I can see why some people run away screaming from politics.  Everyone has their own sets of facts, stats and favorite pundits. I think of how many hours I've spent yelling back and forth with friends in bars, at parties and on road trips.  We must have looked like such assholes.  Politics is fun, even funny sometimes, but is tiring and sometimes ugly.

Regardless of how far left I thought I was, I have never attended a protest.  Never held a sign, never chanted a slogan.  I've driven by and beeped a few times for protests against the Iraq war. For the most part, I find the protests annoying.  They never seem to accomplish anything and I have always felt that they probably do more harm to their causes than good. I am no activist, not because I am apathetic, but because I have not really seen anyway that actually has a positive effect on change. My political activity, in addition to arguing in bars, mostly involve writing letters, blog posts, attending town meetings and an occasional phone call to a politician.  Nowadays, I am slowly appreciating why one would attend a protest, not because it would affect change, but simply because nothing else will.  So attending a protest, might at least make you feel good and give you the delusion that you are doing something.  Calling your Senator or Rep. isn't going to do anything when a corporation lobbyist can wipe out any appeal you might have as a voter.  For the first time in my life I am tempted to join the protest, for in a world where nothing you do can change anything, it would nice to be around a bunch of people who at least share your concerns.

I have no idea what the Occupy Wall Street folks are up to. They don't seem to know themselves.  Is Wall Street at the root of this country's problems?  Probably, yes.  So Wall Street is probably good place to start.  Their disrespect for environment, their blind dedication to the bottom-line, their true lack of accountability and ethics ... do you really need anything specific to complain about Wall Street?  Revolt is in the air regardless of what side of the political spectrum you are on. Can you imagine if Occupy Wall Street crowd got together with the Tea Party movement and rallied together?  I realize that these two crowds probably have little in common, other than dissent, but that might just be enough.  Earlier this week, one of my favorite thinkers Cornell West, twitted "Don't Be Afraid to Say Revolution."  Probably the most profound statement I have seen on Twitter.  Are we afraid to call it a revolution?  Perhaps. The Age of Revolution took place from 1775 to 1848.  Perhaps we are there again.  After see what has been happening in the Middle East and Northern Africa, it certainly seems that way.  Is this a time of new political thought? or are we just a group of whiners?  I don't know, but I may just show up at the protest this weekend when they organize in Burlington.  Not because I see solutions in sight, but because I see no other options.  Thanks for Dr. West, I am not afraid to say "revolution."