March 24th, 1984. That’s the Saturday that students in the movie ‘Breakfast Club’ spent in detention.
It was a defining movie for this Gen X’er. I saw it in a theatre in downtown Toronto. My buddy Dino and I talked about it the whole way home.
It’s hard to fathom that this is a 39 year old memory (the movie actually came out in 1985). Where does the time go?
I’m on holidays and I’ve had the privilege of watching a few sunrises over the ocean. Before the sun rises, but the day has brightened, and before the glare gets in the way, birds nose dive for small fish feeding on the turmoil of the ocean; as waves crash near the shore. I’m reminded of another privilege we all have: we don’t have to spend most of our day seeking food.
These diving birds must constantly be on the move, seeking their next meal. Food is life, and the quest for food makes up a significant part of most bird’s and mammal’s day. We don’t have to do that. We have the luxury of grocery stores, restaurants, refrigerators, and means to store food without it going bad. Much of our innovation and subsequent convenience comes from our ability to spend precious time not in the quest for food.
But it’s not just about innovation and convenience, it’s also about creativity. I think we are on the threshold of a new era of creativity. AI and robotics are going to move us into an era of greater innovation and convenience, and ultimately give us more precious time to design, create, and be artistically inspired.
The quest for food will be replaced by the quest for self-expression. A new chapter is about to be written… it will feel much more like fiction than reality.
It’s 6:17 and I just got off of a Stair Master. When I am at a gym with cardio equipment I don’t have at home, I like to use it. I was contemplating heading out to the beach to see the sunrise at 6:21, but it would be a rush to get to a good viewpoint from here just in time.
Then in my head I saw the sunrise I took a picture of yesterday. Then I saw an image of the sunset I took the day before. Beautiful. Serene. Majestic.
Running from here to capture the moment today would not have been the same. It would have felt like an effort, and the moment would have been more about documenting that I saw it again, rather than appreciating it.
Tomorrow I’ll plan to be at the water, coffee in hand. I will not lift my camera as I have on previous mornings, instead I’ll just enjoy the moment. Un-rushed, appreciative, and listening to the waves crash.
You can rush to an event, but you can’t rush a feeling you are seeking. You can race to a meeting, and be present, but you also have to be aware of your presence.
I missed the sunrise this morning, but if I rushed to see it, it would not have added value to the memories of sunrises I already hold in my mind. There is the idea of watching the sunset, there is the actual viewing of it, and there is the experience it evokes. Today would have been all about the first two… and so I really didn’t miss all that much.
Tomorrow I’ll delight in the moment.
Now back to my workout.
This article was in my inbox this morning: Premier’s, attorney general’s, parliamentary secretary’s statements on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
Niki Sharma, Attorney General, said:
“We all must do our part to fight racism in all its forms. But words are only as good as the actions that follow, which is why we will be introducing anti-racism legislation in the coming weeks to address systemic racism in government programs and services, and launching more supports for racialized people. On this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, please join us in standing up against racism to create a more equitable and safer province for everyone.”
Imagine a world where we cared as little about skin colour as we do eye colour. A world where bodily autonomy wasn’t controlled by religiously biased policymakers. A world where entire groups of people were not disenfranchised or discriminated against based on how they looked or where they came from.
If you asked me 25 years ago, I might have said this was possible by now. Ask me now and I fear we are much more than 25 years away from this. How have we gone backwards? What will prevent a further slide? There will not be an end to discrimination in my lifetime, but I do hope it’s possible in my kids’ lifetime.
“It’s better to do something and be criticized for it, than to do nothing and criticize others.” ~ Ricky Gervais
Don’t fear the criticism. I have been labeled: weird, ‘out there’, attentions seeking, self-promoting, different, and odd.
I don’t criticize unless I see injustice or unfairness.
I’ll take the flack. I’ll accept that I’m ‘not normal’, and I’ll take what’s dished my way.
That s not bragging… I get things wrong, I try and fail, I think something will go out with a bang and it’s nothing but a whimper. I’ll get deservingly criticized. But I try, and that’s better than not trying at all.
I could listen to the ocean all day.
——
The ocean never sleeps, it’s always in motion. A rhythmic chorus of crashes, followed by the hiss of foam on sand. A heartbeat on the never still edge of shore. Another crash, another hiss, and another. And another. Speaking to me and asking me stay and listen… And another.
What would you do if you were a God? That’s a challenging question. An easier question is what wouldn’t you do?
Here is what I wouldn’t do:
I’m not wise enough to list all the things I would do, without contradicting myself or being in some way myopic, selfish, or egotistical… that said, I could probably get together with a team of thoughtful people and improve on any and all holy texts. It would take equal or less effort compared to the apologists who defend and justify the contradictions in these texts, rather than admitting that a wise and benevolent God would never had allowed such poorly written scriptures to be written either by Him or in His name.
I have not yet seen a scripture or text written to this day that I believe a benevolent and loving God would have written. But there are many holy texts that such a kind and worthy-of-worship God would never have written.
We are in Mexico and tonight we went to a small restaurant with an octopus in their logo. I took that as a hint that this might be their specialty and so I ordered an Asian Octopus appetizer. Spicy and served in a mild soy sauce it was a mouthwatering treat. I also ordered the Octopus ceviche, which again was a real palate pleaser.
I was not disappointed! The meal was wonderful. And so was the service. And so was the company. There is more than just good food that makes a meal delicious, and tonight’s meal really had everything I could ask for.
Sometimes life can be just so delicious!
It’s holiday day time and that means it’s time to pick up a novel. Well, metaphorically pick it up because I’m actually going to listen to an audio book. Every extended school break I usually choose a good fiction and enjoy having an author take me on an adventure.
A few summers ago I got deep into the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney, and now I’m on book 13, ‘The Chaos Agent’. I love escaping into a world of spies, espionage, and more action in a week than any one person would ever experience in a lifetime. The books are fun, fascinating, and exciting… but the movie is absolutely awful!
The movie combined characters and made a cookie cutter Hollywood movie, which undermined the essence of the book, and more importantly the character. Here is a movie spoiler that proves my point: The Hollywood version of the final fight starts with the Gray Man facing his rival. The Grey Man works alone the entire book, but the movie has his female team member with a gun pointed at the bad guy and the Gray Man doesn’t say ‘take the shot’, no instead he chooses to fist fight the guy.
This would never happen in the books, it would never be a choice made by this deadly assassin. It doesn’t fit, other than to have a Hollywood version final battle. Then to make the scenario worse, the army trained rival only remembers he has a knife after he starts losing the fight to the Gray Man. None of that is a spoiler for any of the books.
It’s really too bad the movie had to veer so far away from the book. It took a great story and made into a Hollywood cliche, where any of 100 action hero’s could have replaced the Gray Man and the script would have looked the same.
If you are into spy novels, enjoy reading or listening to tthis series, and stay clear of the movie. And I don’t just mean enjoy the book first, then watch the movie… This is a case where telling you to avoid the movie is keeping you from guaranteed disappointment. It’s that bad!
I recently wrote about the Top Risks of 2024, which were in order of concern:
Any of these three risks can have dire consequences on the stability of global politics, global trade, and global conflicts far beyond the borders of the mentioned countries.
These are imminent dangers that leave the rest of the world feeling like pawns on a chessboard filled with ‘other’ power pieces making all the strategic moves. But there is one danger on the geopolitical chessboard that I think will become the biggest threat we face when in the near future, and that’s the pawns themselves. Not the powerful pieces, but rather a rogue ‘nobody’.
While people fear Artificial Intelligence, and the rise of AI robots, what I fear is rogue humans using AI with harmful intent. The future will permit individuals with evil intentions to have too much power. It comes down to two well known adages: information is power, and power corrupts.
The problem isn’t a rogue leader, or a rogue country, it’s a rogue individual with too much information and too much power. A perfect example? See #5 on this article: ‘Why we’ll never actually destroy the last samples of smallpox’,
5) We could always recreate smallpox from genetic information
One could argue that in the information and genetics age, nothing really dies forever. It just dies until the technology to resurrect it appears. And for smallpox, that time is now.
The technology is here. And so is the necessary information: the complete DNA sequences of roughly 50 smallpox samples are available to the general public. This means that people could make smallpox in the lab. “Someone could if they wished recreate live virus from scratch just from that public information,”
We are less than a decade away from one intelligent crackpot, working in his or her (more likely an incel ‘his’) basement lab, creating or recreating a deadly virus and having it spread covid-19 style across the globe.
We are 15-20 years away from some crackpot scientist developing a nuclear bomb from parts and resources ordered online… without ever raising red flags to warn of his intentions.
The greatest threat to mankind isn’t wealthy people, politicians, and powerful countries, it’s one individual with malice in his heart and access to knowledge and information more power than anyone should ever have.
