Gigapixel view of Notre Dame v. Michigan

Hey, Irish fans! Did you go to the Michigan game?

Can you prove it?

Check out this 26 billion pixel interactive image of Notre Dame Stadium just before kickoff at the Michigan game. The resolution is phenomenal.  

Notre Dame v. Michigan Gigapixel - presented by South Bend Airport

I enjoyed looking for friends who were able to attend the game, but retired without success. I guess I'll have to wait until they tag themselves. Or, maybe they will post their seat numbers in the comments. I have a stadium map!

I noted that relatively few people were honoring the flag during the playing of the National Anthem. In fact, it took me several seconds of scanning before I found a few people rendering honors, and figured out from them what was happening. How many people are wearing hats? How many have their right hand over their heart but are still covered? Search for the man who doffed his hat and covered his heart. He's in there, God bless him.

Notice the number of people who were taking cell phone photos while the Gigapixel Camera was simultaneously taking their pictures!  Kinda takes "living in a fishbowl" to a new level, doesn't it?

I zoomed in on the three parachutists, and was quite surprised to find the clear image of an airplane in the deep background behind the risers in one of the parachutes. Can you replicate the screen shot I pasted in below? Can you zoom in even more and recognize the plane?

Screen capture image shows one of three parachutists. See the plane in the deep background?

This image is presented by South Bend Airport. It's an interesting and entertaining bit of technology on display.

Art of Style: Determining the Right Colors for Your Skin Tone

A glass block wall makes a wintry, ice-cube backdrop for a "True Winter."

Someone saw the above photo and said I was a true Winter. And like many folks, I was baffled by the comment. What does it mean to be a Winter? Is this good or bad? Should I see a doctor?

Faced with the uncertainty and associated concern, I did what anyone else would do: I consulted the oracle (Google). I found lots of interesting information about skin color, skin tone, and using skin tone to guide fashion choices--or at least clothing and accessory color choices. Fabrics, textures, shapes and other aspects of fashion are beyond the scope of this inquiry. People who wear make-up have probably already figured out how to accentuate their natural colors. Me? I am a neophyte.

First, color. Look at the palette of skin tone colors. Human skin comes in a wide range of colors, doesn't it? And some of the differences are very subtle. Naturally, all the different colors have very distinct names as well. Pantone's numeric identifiers seem to be most popular, based only on how frequently they are referred to by others. Every paint company and make-up company comes up with their own twist, but in the end, one person's Latte and another's Sepia are both cross-referenced to Pantone's 62-8 C.

Do you see your skin tone here?

I like what Brazilian Angelica Dass is doing by matching a human face with a swatch of that person's respective Pantone skin color. Human beings come in a glorious spectrum of different colors: skin that is light, dark, plain or freckly; hair that is black, brunette, blond, auburn, or white; and eyes that are blue, hazel, green, amber, or brown, to name just a few. The variety is attributable to a single class of pigment known as melanin. How much melanin you have is (a) an accident of birth, and (b) the primary determinant of where you fall on the color spectrum.

Angelica Dass is mapping the world's human colors at SLR Lounge

But what about skin tone? How do we get from color to the four seasons? Actually, there are many helpful skin tone charts out there on the Interwebs. Many, like the example below, focus on the underlying color aspect of skin tone, using relative temperatures like icy blue, cool, warm, and red hot.

I found the Tone and Contrast chart below published by Art of Style and feel it is a helpful resource. It combines color with contrast to create a 2x2 matrix of four "seasons."

Based on the above charts, I would tend to agree that I am indeed a Winter. This brings us to the third level of inquiry: how to use information about skin color, tone, and contrast to guide fashion choices.

According to the Art of Style's article, The Right Colors For Your Skin Tone, "the Winter skin tone has cool skin tone (isn't that skin tone-skin tone redundant?) and clear contrast with stark, dramatic skin. Asians, Africans and Caucasians with very pale skin and dark hair all find themselves in this category."

Art of Style goes on to specify the Do's and Don'ts of color choice for us Winters thusly:

Colors To Wear: True white, true black, cool (i.e., bluish) grays, navy blue, deep reds, bright pinks, jewel tones (emerald, royal blue, royal purple, ruby red), and icy pastels are all flattering.

Colors To Avoid: Beige, orange, gold, brown, and other washed out shades would make you look faded and ashy.

"Caucasians with very pale skin and dark hair?" My hair has never been dark but it certainly has gotten, um, lighter lately. These days, it blends in with my cool and clear skin, making my blue eyes stand out more. So I will try to play up that natural color when I can.

Perhaps my wintry tone-and-contrast combination explains my preference for white gold and silver over yellow gold. I have few accessories, but none with any yellow gold in them. It just doesn't work. Now I know why!

My closet is full of jewel tones, so I supposed I have been picking flattering colors on my own, without much regard for the underlying science. However, I now appreciate the idea of using skin tone to determine colors to wear which accentuate my natural features.

I hope you learned something--I sure did! Since good clothing is expensive, let's choose well.

H/T: Huckleberry

Am I Part of the Problem?

Cognitive dissonance: when you expect music but all you hear is noise  

I look at the world and I shake my head in confusion. I should be living the dream. Instead, my life often feels more like a nightmare. There are glorious aspects for which I am profoundly grateful, but the context around the golden nuggets seems increasingly disconnected and bizarre. Or was August 2014 just a particularly horrific month?

Just this past month alone:

• ISIL is threatening. Video footage of a journalist’s brutal execution circulated through social media networks. The United States authorized airstrikes in Iraq. Approximately a dozen American citizens (read: US passport holders) have taken up arms in support of ISIS, ISIL, or whatever they are calling themselves this week. After our huge investment in Iraq, why have we been unable to promote stable societies in the region?
• Russia is looming. War raged between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russia denies fomenting this or supplying the separatists or supporting them with troops, weapons, and equipment. Yet Russian troops, weapons, and equipment are clearly involved. Putin says that maybe some troops are using their military leave to vacation in Ukraine, and what is he supposed to do, pull their passes? After our Cold War victory and NATO expansion, why have we been unable to contain Russia?
• The Levant is boiling. The death toll in Gaza escalated. The US has negotiated with Hamas, giving them the legitimacy they desire. The US has simultaneously backed an increasingly aggressive Israeli regime. Combined with our failure to contain ISIL, our schizoid foreign policy is paving the way for Armageddon. With all the bright minds at our disposal, why were we not able to see this coming?
• Diseases are raging. About 1,500 people died in one of the largest Ebola outbreaks in history. Even supposedly cured diseases are coming back. Polio is back and on the rise, mostly because some parents refuse the vaccine. What!? My own brother is in the fight of his life, battling Glioblastoma Multiforme Grade 4. This same drama is playing out for many, many families who love someone fighting a horrible, incurable disease. We are all pleading for more time as the doctors, doing all they can, are scrambling to find a cure. Why have we been unable to eradicate disease?  
• Ferguson is burning. A policeman fatally shot an unarmed black 18-year old Michael Brown, and left his body in the street for 4 hours. The incident incited protests and more violence. White people tend to point our that at 18, Michael Brown was an adult, not a boy, and he should not have been involved in a robbery, and he should not have pushed the Police officer before making a move to swipe the officer's side-arm. In other words, he was a punk who had it coming. And black people view the incident itself and the militarization of the Police force as proof of institutionalized oppression. Why have we been unable to build stable communities? 
• Heroes are dying. Robin Williams, who usually makes us laugh, succumbed to his personal demons and took his own life this month. Whether Robin Williams was a hero or not is debatable, but he was certainly popular. What about the relatively unknown soldier who cannot find a way to cope with war's aftermath? One hears the term "Hero" bandied about so often that it may be over-used, but the young men and women who answer the Nation's call to duty qualify in my book. Suicides among our warriors are surging, averaging nearly one a day this year – the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war. Why are too many people feeling that the only answer to their problems is to end their own lives? 
• Reporters are lying.  A psychologist claims that 10% of men are rapists, and NPR broadcasts and publishes this as if it were proven fact. Really? A democracy depends on an objective media reporting the truth in a clear manner. We do not need editorial slant on the front page. We are all entitled to our opinions, but we don't need someone else's opinions or biases passed off as objective fact. What happens to a society dedicated to democratic ideals when the Fourth Estate touches the Third Rail? 

How did this cauldron of greed, hatred, and injustice become the world in which I am raising my children? How could I be so wrong about so many things? Is my way of thinking outmoded? Am I actually part of the problem?

Nicholas Kristof thinks so, at least on the Ferguson issue, He says the race issue deserves more attention, not less. He says that racism caused the militarization of the Police force in Ferguson. He says that racism, not thuggery, caused the inevitable death of Mr. Brown. And in Part 2 of his New York Times OpEd, Kristof again shared the view that I am part of the problem when he wrote that whites just don't get it. My opinion is probably not going to be published in the New York Times, but in my opinion, we should look at behavior, not race. In my opinion, looking at race is the very definition of racism.

The iconic towers of the World Trade Center before 9/11

To me, the turning point in the World as We Know It was 9/11. The unpopular (but in my opinion, justified and necessary) wars that followed under the Bush Administration paved the way for the election of 2008. Americans elected Barrack Obama in part because the American people got tired of fighting to preserve stability in the Middle East. The problem is not Obama, the Man. The problem is America, the Sheeple. We elected an idealistic orator over a crotchety curmudgeon in 2008, and again over a smarmy oligarch in 2012. For better or for worse, in a democracy we get exactly what we deserve.

So let's look at what kind of world we have crafted for our children. Iraq is crumbling from within, not just because the Coalition departed, but our departure (abdication?) certainly emboldened and enabled the broader, Anti-West agenda, to wit:

• Russia is cackling with glee. It has (a) Europe in a headlock over energy, (b) the bulk of Asia as military customers, and (c) a feckless America at arm's length; 
• ISIS is literally erasing the borders between Syria and Iraq, as in, cutting the berms with dozers. 
• Though the Sunni-Shia divide is sharp, ISIS wants to re-establish the Islamic dominance in the Middle Eastern region first, then settle the leadership issue under the restored Caliphate 
• The Russian-backed Syrian president has just been re-elected, despite (or because of?) dropping barrel bombs on dissenters 
• Iran is happy to push Shi'a Islam westward, through Baghdad and toward Israel. Soon they will be within striking distance of Jerusalem with Russian-made weapons; 
• The Kurds are happy, since they have set their sites on swiping Diyarbakir from Turkey and creating the country of Kurdistan. And really, who will stop them? Iraq? Turkey alone? Turkey with NATO? Russia and China patiently await NATO's demise. They will watch and secretly help NATO sink into oblivion. 
• By negotiating with Hamas, even "unofficially," the Obama administration is giving them all the legitimacy they need; 
• China is not Anti-West in the same sense as the Russians and most of the Muslim world. China would rather ally with Asia than with America, it's as simple as that. 

If I have been part of the problem, let me be part of the solution going forward. Or, if the solution is unacceptable capitulation, then let me continue to be part of the problem until balance and stability is restored. Here is my wish-list:

• I want Russia neutered. Not physically, but politically, diplomatically, and--if necessary--militarily. (And maybe physically.) The Russia-Syria-Iran-China alliance is deeply troubling, especially when added to the ongoing unrest in Israel and surrounds. How much more of a threat does Russia need to be before we do something?
• I want Israel to exist. Preferably peacefully, and preferably as a state on land promised to her in the Bible. Granted, the Torah says that the Jews are to live in permanent diaspora as punishment, and the Koran is even less kind to God's Chosen People. But I do not advocate wiping Israel off the map. Further, I support resisting any attempt to do so. That said, I don't want Israel to have carte blanche to do whatever she pleases with our unblinking backing.
• I want ISIL crushed. Too few people in this country worry about whether their children will have grandchildren before Armageddon. Really, is pushing off Armageddon for a couple more generations too much to ask? Can we put down our wide-screen TV remotes and think past Tuesday?
• I want a cure for disease. Especially cancer and Ebola. And I want it by Tuesday. My brother needs a cure now and there are many others in a similar fight. On that note, I also want to live in society where people respect science and take the vaccine rather than risk infecting the rest of us. Speaking of society,  
• I want social justice. I want respect and rewards for people who do good, and fair punishment for people who break law--regardless of age, race, gender, or economic standing. This means that I want a Major General killed in combat to be revered while a thug who gets himself killed trying to take a cop's side-arm to be quickly forgotten, not the reverse. And 
• I want the truth. Yes, I want it, and yes, I can handle it. I want people to expect--no, demand--the objective truth all of our institutions, to include the media. Wait, especially the media. If the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches all screw it up, we can still get by if the Fourth Estate holds to the Truth. But if the media fails, too, we are well and truly screwed.

Is that to much to ask? Am I so wrong to ask for these things?

"Bring home the troops!" Polls are running this country, not leaders. Where are the leaders like the Churchill and Roosevelt who articulated a compelling, unifying vision, and only then listened to advisers and even the public opinion polls? In this country, the selfish tail is wagging the stupid dog. And Putin is playing fetch with bigger and bigger sticks (Crimea, Ukraine, former Eastern Block countries who joined NATO...).


Am I right? Or am I part of the problem? Or perhaps I am just ranting again...

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Recently, I wrote about five related words describing human existence: alive, conscious, sentient, sapient, and awake. As a result, I offered the following functional definitions of these five words. The definitions are repeated here with light editing as indicated:

• alive: having a heartbeat and emitting brainwaves, i.e., neither dead nor unfeeling. In human existence, there are degrees of aliveness ranging from barely to fully alive. Aliveness is manifest in the physical world, in the body. 
• conscious: aware of one's surroundings; responsive, i.e., neither asleep nor comatose. In human existence, there are degrees of consciousness ranging from barely to fully conscious. Consciousness is manifest in the physical and mental world, in the body and all the sensory organs, especially in the brain. 
• sentient: alert; having the power of perception by the senses; aware of one's place in the Universe, i.e., neither lost nor confused. In human existence, there are degrees of sentience ranging from barely to fully sentient. Sentience is manifest in the physical, material, and cosmic domains, and as a construct in the brain of the observer. Sentience requires an awareness of self that is not required in previous states, i.e., one may be conscious yet not self-aware. 
• sapient: having or showing great wisdom or sound judgment; i.e., neither ignorant nor incompetent. the actions of the hands align with the plans of the head and the values of the heart. Sapience manifests in the social world. Sapience, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. External observation validates one's degree of sapience. 
• awake: a fully functioning body, mind, and spirit; clear; at One with the Universe, i.e., neither conflicted nor distracted. In human existence, there are degrees of awakeness ranging from barely to fully awake. Full awakeness requires no external validation--it simply "is." Awakeness is manifest in the metaphysical world, when hands, heads, and hearts align in harmony. 

Are you awake?

Now let's really have some fun and use these definitions to dig a little deeper. Can we use our five-term lexicon describing levels of human existence to compare and contrast mankind with other forms of life--five entities in existence, if you will? Let's make the comparison with humans and other animals, other forms of life such as plants, and with entities that stretch our imaginations a bit, such as robots, and even rocks.

Man--in particular, an armed man in provocative tribal war paint

• Mankind. All people may be created of equal value, but we are not all equally "-abled" or gifted. Some of us are born faster, stronger, or smarter than others. Opportunities are not evenly distributed. In addition to genetic variety, luck or chance also plays a role.
• People experience the 5 terms on a sliding scale from low to high. Why is that? Why are we not all perceiving the same things? Are these variations in how and what we perceive part of what defines humanity?
• We have different skills, knowledge, abilities and other traits that have been developed by education and experiences gathered from birth over time. In addition to what nature imbues, the experiences of nurture also shape our outcomes--and those of our fellow humans.
• All other things being equal, we achieve varying degrees of  happiness and success in life. Why is that? In addition to our "born-in" attributes and all of our deliberate developmental choices, individuals are also subject to life-altering randomness.  

The within-species variation is great. For the sake of our comparison of various entities using the 5-term lexicon, we'll compare the theoretically "typical" human against the typical examples of the other entities. 

Monkey appears to be lost in thought

• Monkey. The animal kingdom contains many species besides homo sapiens. Bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans share about 99% of the human genome, making these primates our closest human relatives. Just as with humans, there is much within-species variation between individual primates. The variation occurs in appearance, aptitudes, and behaviors. Monkeys are primates, but unlike apes they have tails and tend to look and act more like four-legged creatures. For this study we'll think about our more distant relative, the monkey. Mmmmm, I think I see a pattern developing here...

Marigold, could have been any plant, but this one fits the alliteration scheme

• Marigold. Biology--the study of life--includes two main subsets: fauna, represented by the human and the chimpanzee discussed above, and flora--the plant kingdom. Though we don't typically think of plants as thinking or feeling, we do know that they have common biological functions such as ingestion, respiration, digestion, excretion, and reproduction, and that these functions occur over a life-cycle. Naturally, plants recognize and respond to sunlight, as well as the absence of the sun's life-giving rays. There have also been studies that suggest plants respond to music, and even to positive or negative emotional energy. 

Machine, in particular, the spectacular Large Hadron Collider

• Machine. A machine is a tool containing one or more parts that uses energy to perform an intended action. People are tool-makers and have made machines since pre-historic times. As machines get more complex, do they reveal human creativity, or is it the other way around? That is, is there a Master Machine who reveals itself through the successive approximation techniques of its human drones?     
• Simple machines include Inclined plane, Wheel and axle, Lever, Pulley, Wedge, Screw. 
• Machines have grown in complexity from the first flint hand-ax to the Large Hadron Collider. 
• Computers have led to robots which in turn have yielded androids. 
• Computers play chess with human Chess Masters and play Jeopardy against champion human Jeopardy contestants. 
• With increasing amounts of "intelligence" coming from non-biological sources, the Singularity seems to be drawing near. How soon will we have computers which can pass the Turing Test? Futurist Ray Kurzweil estimates that the Singularity will happen in the year 2045.

Meteorite: Compressed Stardust

• Meteorite. What is a rock? When is a rock more than it seems? Why do we laugh at the phrase, "Dumber than a box of rocks"? We have descended to the lower end of the intelligence scale and we are now discussing mineral clusters, aka rocks. 

• The Earth spins on its axis and revolves around the sun. The molten core of the Earth swallows up the edges of tectonic plates and spews the excess out through volcanoes along a "ring of fire." We are riding on a rock surfboard skimming across a burning lake of molten iron.

"The surface of the Sun is hot – over 5500 degrees Celsius (which is nearly 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). But if new findings are correct, then the center of our own planet may actually be hotter – over 1,000 degrees hotter than previously thought." --Forbes 

• We think that our life on the surface of Earth is pretty stable but things look much different from the perspective of geological time.Continents drift. Mountains are formed, and mountains erode. Minerals circulate from the center to the surface and back again. But did you know that out of 4,000 minerals known to exist on planet Earth, a great number and a significant quantity have been transported here from outer space? 

"...[C]oncentrations of precious metals such as platinum and rhodium in the rock portion of the Earth today...could not have ended up there by any known internal process, and instead must have been added back, likely by a 'rain' of extraterrestrial debris, such as comets and meteorites."-- Science Daily

Summary.

We have used our five-term lexicon describing levels of human existence to compare and contrast mankind with other forms of life--five entities in existence. We compared humans and other animals, other forms of life such as plants, and with entities that stretch our imaginations a bit, such as robots, and even rocks.The table below is a matrix of the entities in what are assumed to be descending order from top to bottom, and the terms in what are assumed to be increasing order from left to right. Imagine the path from lower left to upper right. Buddha's body was composed of stardust--as is yours!

Table 1. Matrix of Entities and States

The bottom line:

• As a human, I can recognize other humans and distinguish humans from other non-human entities in my environment. What makes me human is the same stuff that allows me to make this basic distinction. But when I try to define that "stuff," I find that the distinctions are not nearly as obvious as I had thought.
• I certainly believe that all other mammals can do the same basic sorting. For example, fish give sharks wide berth, and lions recognize and occasionally obey their human trainers. 
• I assume also that plants have some awareness about themselves in relation to their environment. This awareness is manifest in the Venus Fly Trap, but is less evident (to me) in other plants who lack the ability to move. Yet a plant can distinguish sunlight from darkness, and grow toward the light. A carrot can sense the coming freeze, and pull all its sweet nutrients to its core in an attempt to survive.
• We have created machines capable of sensing and responding to environmental cues. 
• When one considers rocks and minerals one must consider
• the Big Bang distributed all known material and non-material elements into the void of space
• so many of the minerals we have on our little planet have been deposited here from external sources
• the Earth's volcanic activity continues to churn, producing new surface material and consuming material pulled in to the center from the edges of tectonic plates. 
• Tall, jagged mountains wear down to older, rounded ones, and trees somehow grow in the cracks.

The seed from a tree found enough food and water in this crevice to survive.

According to Arthur Koestler, the Universe is composed of fixed rules and flexible strategies. All things are simultaneously whole and part of something else. His so-called holarchy applies to inanimate objects, too, and objects that are created by people or by natural processes. For example, a piece of music that resonates with the human ear is an expression of fixed rules of tone, rhythm, and harmony. Despite fixed rules "governing" music, there exists a near infinite variety of potential original musical compositions. Who am I to deny that the mineral components of a mountain do not yearn to be absorbed, transformed, and ultimately united with the Divine?

In the next installment of What Does It Mean to Be Human, we'll delve into the difference between a brain and a mind. Stay well, and stay tuned!

Elvis Costello, 60 anni di rock: "Le trappole da evitare? Andare indietro nel tempo" da Repubblica.it (and PhilosFX!)

My third and final repost in honor of Elvis Costello's 60th birthday is this article by PAOLO RUSSO and published in La Repubblica.

Elvis Costello, 60 anni di rock: "Le trappole da evitare? Andare indietro nel tempo" - Musica - Spettacoli - Repubblica.it:

Buon compleanno, Signore Costello

A Happy 60th To Elvis Costello from Londonist (and PhilosFX!)

Here is a fine article by CHRIS LOCKIE of the Londonist, featuring five favorite moments brought to us by birthday boy, Elvis Costello.

A Happy 60th To Elvis Costello | Londonist:

Happy 60th birthday Elvis Costello from the Liverpool Echo (and PhilosFX!)

Today is Elvis Costello's 60th birthday. Here is a link to a retrospective written by Josh Parry and published in the Liverpool Echo. The post includes a countdown of the paper's 10 favorite Costello songs, complete with video performances.

Enjoy!

Happy 60th birthday Elvis Costello - here are 10 of his greatest songs - Liverpool Echo: