Author Archives: jaj226

Use of unnecessary violence in apprehension of the Blues Brothers…has been approved.

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This movie was fantastic. Absolutely beautiful in just about every single way. I don’t know how the jokes or comedic timing or the stars could be any better. Rather than just summarizing the movie, I think there are a few points to make when considering applications to the world we live in today, as opposed to 1980.

At the end of the movie, the Blues Brothers are being chased by the police, a gang of Nazi’s and a country band. A radio operator says over the police channel “Use of unnecessary violence in apprehension of the Blues Brothers…has been approved”. What proceeds to unfold is the most over-the-top police chase I’ve ever seen on film, including helicopters, a tank, rappelling SWAT teams, 20-30 squad cars, etc. They proceed to hunt the Blue’s Brothers all over Chicago, finally cornering them at the courthouse.

These entire scene strongly reminded me about the issues going on today with the increasing militarization of domestic police forces. The comical overreaction of police violence to two runaway blues musicians is reminiscent of more recent overreactions of police violence in the last few years, both in Ferguson and elsewhere. The key part of the officers quote is *unnecessary* violence. One gets the impression that the officers are overjoyed to have a chance to test out some cool new toys: justice does not seem to be the motive. And I believe that this accurately reflects an attitude that we should have today: the more “cool” equipment and powerful weapons that we allow domestic police departments to have, the more inclined they will be to use them. This is exacerbated by the fact that the Blues Brothers aren’t even the most dangerous people in the movie: both the country band and the Nazi’s shoot at the brothers at points during the film, while the worst that the brothers do is (admittedly a lot of) property damage. Again, there is a parallel to the current day when it sometimes seems like the priorities of police departments aren’t to address the real sources of danger, but to stereotype and go after people that are assumed dangerous (particularly unarmed, black men) instead of actually dangerous people (Nazi’s).

In 5 to 10 years, maybe…

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Earlier this week I attended the Cafe on Hydroponics. I had never really heard of hydroponics before, but what surprised me the most was the level of control one can get by growing plants in hydroponic environments instead of regular greenhouse pots. Since all of the nutrients exclusively come from the water that the plants are grown it, it’s really easy to fine tune that nutrient mixture for optimum results.

Even though commercial hydroponics are mostly just popular in Japan as of now, they could become a lot more widespread in the coming years. One of the advantages of hydroponics is that you can create structures that house the plants with as little space usage as possible: it was mentioned that so-called “vertical farming” is a potential technique whereby a greenhouse stacks a bunch of arrays of plants on top of each other. Even though this requires a lot of energy with pumps, lights, climate control, etc. the space savings that one could get by doing this “stacking” could potentially make this a more efficient way to farm in the future.

Definitely the 50’s

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Last week I attended the screening of North by Northwest, and while it wasn’t bad, I definitely left feeling underwhelmed. Part of this may be hindsight: since the movie industry has progressed so much since 1959 the things about NbNW that were brand spanking new are now standard fodder. Being 50 years old definitely put a damper on being able to enjoy it as well: the blatant sexism was so bad at times that it takes the viewer right out of the movie experience. In that same vein there were several pieces of dialogue that I personally thought were laughingly bad.

However, I will give credit where credit is due: the thriller portion of the movie was very good. The plot was unexpected, there were a suitable amount of surprises and mystery, and I never quite understood what was going on until the very end. There’s also the standard trope of the drab, regular person (the main character) that is thrown into extraordinary circumstances and must fight their way out, or die trying. In addition, the infamous innuendo at the end was fantastically executed: I almost didn’t catch it until a friend pointed it out.

Overall it wasn’t a terrible movie but I’m not sure if I would recommend it as a recreational viewing instead of part of a film class or something.

Why am I alive?

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Dead Poets Society was one of the better films I’ve seen in quite awhile. There’s a lot to unpack from the movie so I’ll just focus on one specific aspect of the film. Neil Perry wants to follow his dreams of being an actor, but his father doesn’t approve and eventually ships him off to boarding school. Neil is so grief-stricken he commits suicide.

The scene when his father finds him dead is extremely powerful because I don’t believe most viewers expected something like that to happen. It was a deadly shock, just like in real life. Watching a scene like that really made me consider my own mortality. As we go about living our life, we rarely think of the fact that we will die, crumble to dirt, and be completely and utterly forgotten. We can usually stave off this realization with the trivialities of the day and other distractions. This begets people who live their whole life without having really lived at all.

I think the biggest lesson to take away from Dead Poets Society is that you are alive today, but not for long. Your life could end in a snap: there is but a fragile strand holding you here. Live like Robin Williams’ character in the movie: with vivacity and without fear. Obviously this is a tall order, and I don’t expect to be able to achieve such a goal in any real capacity. But I’ll be damned if I don’t try.

Is RubyFrost the next big thing™?

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This past week I attended AppleFest down in the Ithaca Commons, which was every bit as wonderful as last year. In particular,  Professor Blalock gave an interesting presentation before heading down to the festival about some new developments in the apple market. He talked about “club apples”: apples that are only allowed to be grown by a few licensed growers. This is in contrast to apples like Honeycrisp, which can be grown by basically anyone as long as they pay royalties to the grower who initially developed the apple. This new model has upsides and downsides: on the one hand, this makes the apples much less widespread (especially in smaller communities). On the other hand, with a tighter control of the growers, a breeder can more easily ensure the quality of the product. This model is more conducive to the notion that an apple variety is a “brand”: with marketing and a fancy name to boot. Cornell currently has two club apples in development; RubyFrost and SnapDragon. They’re not on the market yet but you may see them in stores in a few years.

The festival itself was great: everything apple you could possibly find. Cider, doughnuts, crisp, cobbler. It’s also a good opportunity to get a change of scenery from the Cornell campus and just relax for a few hours. Overall, highly recommended.

It’s only going to get worse

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Last week I attended the Genetic Engineering table talk led by GRF Shivem. The discussion was focused both on ethical and technological questions that are related to advancements in genetic engineering. Although genetic engineering (broadly defined as direct manipulation of an organisms genome) has existed for awhile in a few forms, the main impetus behind a lot of current research is CRISPR. CRISPR is a big long acronym for something, but the idea is that we can control proteins and genes that bacteria use to edit genes to edit genes of our choosing. The applications are already being seen from cancer to plant breeding and others. But all of these wonderful technologies raise ethical questions. One question in particular deals with a new program that is attempting to grow human organs inside of pigs (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/pig-organs-for-humans/536307/). Normally such organs provoke a dangerous immune response in humans, but with genetic engineering that might be a thing of the past.

This brings up an obvious ethical question of using animals as glorified receptacles for human organs. Someone who believes that eating meat is fine isn’t likely to object to this, as in this instance the pigs are directly saving human lives rather than “just” providing a tasty treat. However, even if one is a vegetarian (or similar) this is not a straightforward question. A good portion of people alive today (although certainly not everyone) who eat meat do not need it in a strict sense: they could theoretically cut meat out of their diet and lead a regular life. However, in this case it is a matter of life and death: someone who needs an organ will die if they don’t get it in a timely fashion. There is far larger demand for organs today than there is supply, and it’s not easy to tell a small child with liver cancer that their life is worth less than a pigs. I’m not pretending that I have all of the answers to these questions but they will only become more relevant, with larger consequences as time goes on.

Jumping genes and clotting blood

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This past weekend I went on the Cornell Botanic Gardens tour and even though it’s a decent walk to get there, it was worth it. I had been a few times in the past but, not being a plant expert, didn’t really know what I was looking at. Having a tour guide there was a fantastic experience to get a sense of what these plants were used for in the past. For example, yarrow is a herb that was named for Achilles, who reportedly used it to promote the clotting of blood in the wounds of his soldiers. It has been known as a medicinal herb for a long time, and is still occasionally used today.

She also had a deep knowledge of the history of the gardens. One story in particular that I wasn’t aware of was the story of Barbara McClintock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_McClintock), who was a graduate of Cornell and won the Noble Prize in Medicine (one of only two women to do so solo) for her work on mobile genetic elements: what are colloquially called “jumping genes”. She was a role model for women interested in pursuing scientific research: at the time, her family thought it was more important for her to marry than to pursue research. And today, the original shed where she kept her gardening tools still stands in the gardens.

Ezra may have a point

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Visiting the Ithaca Farmers Market this past week, a few things struck me. The size: 150 vendors is a *lot* of people. I had been to farmers markets in the past in my hometown and other smaller towns in West Michigan, but this was a whole different setup. I got a gyro and scone for lunch (which were both delicious, incidentally) and lollygagged, delaying when I’d have to return to campus and start homework. Another thing that surprised me was the amount of non-food items there. There were woodworkers, jewelry stores, paintings, etc. Broadening the scope of a farmers market to more than just strictly farms makes a lot of sense: after all, one of the primary purposes of a farmers market is to support local businesses.

Walking back from the market, it got me wondering about all of the things about Ithaca we as Cornell students may miss while we’re here. In contrast to some schools that are very integrated into the wider community, Cornell can seem isolating at times. I’ve gone a month or more having not set foot off the campus and that worries me at times. Furthermore, I realized that I actually don’t know a lot about Ithaca. I mean sure, I know about Applefest, the copious amount of farms in the area, surface stuff like that. But I’ve never had a substantial conversation with an Ithaca resident that didn’t go to Cornell and maybe that’s not a great thing.

According to this article (http://www.ithaca.com/news/ithaca/ezra-s-vision-how-a-shortfall-of-student-housing-ripples/article_35319f30-e290-11e6-a942-3f7af49588f4.html) it wasn’t always so isolating. Cornell didn’t have on campus housing for a long time: almost 100 years. Ezra Cornell in particular wanted students to live in the community, not alongside it. The current housing market is a whole ‘nother can of worms, but maybe Ezra Cornell had a point.