Author Archives: bjk224

Mad MAX

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Like any other action movie, Mad Max 3 does not disappoint us with its intense action scenes. The movie title includes the phrase: Beyond Thunderdome, which is the name of the fighting arena. The fighters are on elastic bands in a small upside down dome-like arena where they can jump at each other and use weapons such as crossbows and axes. Some of the best fight scenes in the movie occur in this dome.

The Thunderdome is notorious for a quote: “Two man enter, one man leaves.” Max faces one of his strongest opponents here, named Blaster who he is able to beat but refuses to kill. This upsets the leader of Bartertown, Aunty, where the Thunderdome is located, and she casts Max into the desert. Max is found and saved and brought to a community with only children and teenagers, who had crashed there in a plane. Initially, Max does not want to help them leave, but he ends up being a hero, crashing through Aunty’s men and helping the children escape. Max is left to wander the desert, looking for new journeys and adventures to take on.

I had seen the newer Mad Max before this movie and I thought it was interesting how the two are set in Australia, depicting the world as a nuclear wasteland. This movie seemed to have a better plot and richer characters than the newer movie which is mostly just an endless series of action scenes.

A Beautiful Mind: A struggle with one’s self

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What a powerful movie. The movie depicts the life of John Nash, a brilliant scholar who later in life goes on to win a Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on game theory (Nash Equilibrium among other things). Nash went to MIT, and later was invited to the Pentagon to crack encrypted communications. Nash then gets an assignment from the DOD and begins to work on deciphering soviet clues. After Nash gives a guest lecture at Harvard, he believes that soviet agents are trying to attack him. He ends up sedated after fighting, and is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. We learn that half of Nash’s life is a lie, completely made up in his head.

Schizophrenia is an incredibly scary disease to think about, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish what is real and what isn’t. What is even more incredible about this story is that Nash was able to overcome the disease, and realize that the people he was seeing were not real. It is after this that he goes on to receive the Nobel Prize in economics for his works. What an incredible story.

Bread and Roses: Fairness among those will all types of jobs

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I did some research on the historical backgrounds of the movie, and found that it was inspired by the slogan of a textile strike in Massachusetts in 1912, in regards to fair wage (bread) and good conditions (roses). It was one of the strikes where workers came together in unity against the company, arguing together for fair conditions. This forms the basis of the 2000 movie “Bread and Roses” in which an illegal immigrant (Maya) finds work as a janitor, and tries to unionize to get fair pay and better conditions.

The movie recounts her struggles with Rosa, her sister, as well as her bosses who know that she is an illegal immigrant and take advantage of it. This movie really got me to think about minimum wage in this country, which is not enough to support a family, especially in an expensive city like Los Angeles, where the movie is set. If minimum wage always came with benefits including health insurance then it wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but often the problem is that minimum wage jobs do not support those types of benefits. Jobs such as janitorial jobs are incredibly important, and someone has to do them, but people don’t want to do them because of how those with those jobs are treated.

People that do the jobs that are important for our society to function on the lowest level should have the same benefits as anyone else who works at a full time job.

A peek into the history of the Earth – Cascadilla Gorge Hike

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We walked from Rose into Collegetown, and met with a guide who took us on a hike of the Cascadilla Gorge, a 1/4 mile section that reveals hundreds of millions of years of the Earth’s history. We learnt about the story behind creating a path to walk through the Gorge, and the story of restoring the path to its former status in the last 5 years.

The guide pointed out rock layers of igneous and sedimentary rock, as well as explained how the gorge was carved by a large glacier that covered this part of New York.

We got to experience the waterfalls, and the rushing water in the gorge, and we really got to appreciate how beautiful nature can be.

Gorge Waterfall Movie

Above is an example of just how loud it was down in the gorge.

I had never hiked one of the gorges before, and this experience definitely inspires me to hike more around Ithaca.

Dr. Strangelove – Think more deeply about the need for weapons

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This was an interesting experience. I thought the initial discussion before the movie was played was insightful, and enabled me to think more deeply about the movie while I was watching. The prior discussion focused on methods of destruction and compared some of the methods that previous leaders of the United States thought about and executed.

The movie is set in the time of the Cold War, and the USSR has created a “doomsday device” that could destroy the world upon detonation. This got me thinking about the size of the United States’ and Russia’s nuclear arsenals, which include thousands of nuclear weapons, which could easily destroy large portions of the Earth. The size of the stockpiles have been reduced dramatically since the Cold War ended, but do we really need the threat of nuclear weapons to protect ourselves?

When the doomsday device was detonated, Dr. Strangelove wants to put people underground in mine shafts in order to rebuild the population, in a ratio of females:males – 10:1. This is just one example of the satirical comedy employed during the movie in order to put a lighter spin on the events.

All in all, the movie prompted some insightful thinking.

Genetic Engineering

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I thought the movie was interesting, it was interesting to think about how eugenics could influence social inequality in the future. It is weird to think about the possibility of genetic engineering, and yet it is a phenomenon that occurs today, and is becoming a major ethical discussion. We already use CRISPR-Cas9 to edit genes and select for favorable or unfavorable traits, and the uses of CRISPR are only expanding. The movie highlighted a possible scenario of genetic engineering, one where those who are born “naturally” are immediately looked down-upon, and have almost no chance of competing with those who were genetically engineered creations.

Although, the movie touches upon how people can live up to those who are genetically engineered, but it requires a high degree of difficulty and planning in order to resemble those who were were bred for success.

I enjoyed the movie, and it really got me thinking about the future of genetic engineering and its capabilities.

Attica Prison Uprising

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I’m from New York, and I had never heard of the Attica prison uprising, a fact which speaks volumes about the whole incident. It seems that there were no bounds to the deviousness of the state government in covering up the fiasco. It took Dr. Thompson 13 years to write the book because it was so difficult for her to find the information from archives about the event. In fact, she had to spend most of her time researching the incident interviewing parties involved, both guards and prisoners. The tale that they told demonstrated the vast dichotomy between what the state told the public about the event. This lack of archives about the event ended up hurting almost all of the parties involved because it was impossible for those hurt to defend themselves in court because the state could deny what happened. There were a number of false witness statements which cluttered the facts.

Dr. Thompson told us that the most important lesson from Attica is that we need to dig and search for both sides of the story, and not just take what the media presents us with as fact. The good in the whole Attica story is that the determination of ordinary people matters, while the bad is that the true history is not always told right away and every day.

Trump’s Travel Ban

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Last week I heard a panel on President Trump’s recent travel ban, which banned people from 7 countries from immigrating to the United States. Currently, the ban is being blocked by federal judges, until they make a decision on the action. One symptom of the ban is that it enables people to be targeted for eviction from the country, based on any kind of crime that a person may have committed. The panel suggested that the ban is a result of a symptom known as ‘islamaphobia’, which has been developing over the past decade.

The major issue that I have with the ban is that it prevents ALL people from leaving and going to/from these countries, whereas those who are militant, or terrorists are only a tiny tiny fraction of the total number of people. People from these countries have very important impacts in the United States, and some are citizens of the United States who would be trapped from seeing their families because they still live back in those countries. If these people go back to one of those seven countries, they may be unable to get back to the United States, where they work or go to school.

The panel then went on to discuss what Cornell is doing and has done to protect and educate students that are impacted by this ban. Cornell has filed an AMICAS brief saying the order is unconstitutional, and has worked directly with those students to educate them in the proper manner.

The main observations I had from this discussion were that executive orders can carry a lot of weight, yet the judiciary system can quickly activate its checks and balances to block an executive order. It is good to see the countries checks and balances working as they were intended.

The Super Bowl!

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Last week I watched the Super Bowl in the Rose Main Dining Room. The actual football game was incredible, one of the best in history because of the Patriots overcoming a 25-point deficit, and going on to win it in overtime. My first thought when I realized that this was the only Super Bowl to go to overtime was how incredible that really was. Given that there have been 51 Super Bowls, it seems incredible that only this one has gone to overtime. During the regular season, the percentage of games that go to overtime is greater than ~2%.

In addition to the crazy game, we got to see a lot of very expensive ads. I did a quick look up, and the 30-second spots cost on average $5 million. However, it did not seem like the quality of ads was as good as in previous years, which could be the result of cable television slowly dying in popularity. A few of the ads seemed to be direct political statements against some of our President’s policies, and that led me to think again about where we stand as a nation.