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- The building in the middle is the Unity Center. Not sure about the other two.
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- In front of Museum of Natural History
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- Times Square
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- More Times Square
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- Chrysler Building
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- Lobby of Chrysler Building
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Dark Universe
“With astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as your guide, go beyond the night sky and into deep space to find out how discoveries over the past 100 years have led us to two great cosmic mysteries: dark matter and dark energy. You’ll hurtle through Jupiter’s atmosphere, peer at the web of dark matter holding galaxies together, and watch the colorful remains of the universe’s beginnings unfold.”
I was fortunate to experience this at the Hayden Planetarium (part of the American Museum of Natural History in New York). The most amazing and wonderful thing I have every seen.
NRA Hypnosis
Ammi Simon: Tour Guide
Next week I’ll be in New York for a few days. I don’t have much planned. Just walking around, soaking up the atmosphere. I’ve hired a guide for my first day. Ammiel has lived in New York City since 1960. He attended The High School of Music and Art and has performed as an actor and musician at Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall. I found him on ToursbyLocals.com. Ammi has promised to show me the New York that only New Yorkers see.
CreepShield.com
The tagline for this site is Sex Offender Facial Recognition and it works like this. If you meet someone on a dating site or Facebook you can check their photo agains those in the site’s database of registered sex offenders. I wasn’t impressed with the results of my search. Several of the dozen or so ‘possibles’ were of a different ethnicity. You can try it out at http://www.creepshield.com/
Sunsets: No two alike
Do I really need opinions?
Opinion: a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.
I have a lot of opinions. On lots of topics. Politics, religion, climate change, NSA, gun violence, racism, the Middle East, poverty, and on and on and on. But I’ve decided I don’t really need opinions. But is it possible to NOT have opinions. More on that in a moment.
What are my opinions based on (if not fact or knowledge)? Views expressed by family and friends (as a child and throughout life); personal experience; reading; media. What am I overlooking?
Does it even make sense to ask how “accurate” my opinions are? Can opinions be “valid?” I really don’t see how. Too fluid. I might be big on gun control today and change my mind after someone breaks into my home.
When do I NEED opinions? In the voting booth? Discussions in the coffee shop? Does my having an opinion on any of the topics above make a real difference? I don’t think so. Actions make a difference but not opinions. Do you have to have an opinion before you act? Perhaps.
I’ve concluded opinions have NO real value or use. But is not having an opinion even an option? Can I function without having opinions? Are opinions so much a part of the fabric of who we are we can’t help but have and express them? Is it possible to “catch” myself having an opinion… and then deciding NOT to?
Opinions seem like dead weight to me. Like lugging around a backpack full of rocks. What would it feel like to set that backpack down?
I’m going to write each of my cherished opinions on a rock, put it in a backpack, and carry that backpack around for a week. When I hear myself expressing an opinion (verbally or mentally) I’m going to open the backpack and find that opinion/rock and hold it until I’m done.
You’re just kidding yourself, Mays. You might not EXPRESS your opinions but you still HAVE them. True. But for starters, I’d settle for not spraying my opinions on others. And just being aware of when I’m under the influence of an opinion.
I’ll let you know how this little experiment goes.
We’re trained to need bosses
This post by David Cain looks at what it means to be your own boss. I’ve never been my own boss for many of the reasons mentioned by Mr. Cain. Looking back, I think that need to escape was there much of the time.
I wish somebody had pulled me aside and told me that the education system and working culture I’m going to be marched into are places that are ultimately going to need escaping from.
Parents (I’ve never been one) might bristle at Mr. Cain’s take on children but it seems a valid observation;
Many people deal with the vapidity of their jobs by having children, because parenting lends an immediate seriousness and purpose to one’s role on the planet. Providing for a child is an act that feels intrinsically meaningful to a human being, and so devotion to your job, even a dull one, can become an extension of devotion to your role as a parent, giving meaning to the hoops to be jumped through at work.
If you’ve ever thought of escaping the 9-to-5 life, the full post (below) is worth a read.
Gallery: Thumbnail view
How smuggled mobile phones are rewiring Brazil’s prisons
It’s easy (for me) to become discouraged about the surveillance state the US (and lots of other countries) has become. How can you resist an entity like the NSA? Perhaps, in the long run, we cannot. But in a twisted way, stories like the one below give me hope.
In Cell to Cell: How Smuggled Mobile Phones Are Rewiring Brazil’s Prisons, Jonathan Franklin describes how Brazil’s prison gangs are using technology.
Wired prisoners change the entire concept of incarceration. Instead of being isolated and punished, the inmate with access to a cell can organize murders, threaten witnesses, plan crimes, and browse online porn to figure out which escort to order up for the next intimate visit. […] Brazilian organized crime leaders continued to have widespread ability to make calls, receive calls, organize conference calls, and even hold virtual trials where gang leaders from different prisons are patched in to a central line to debate the fate of gang members accused of betraying the group’s ironclad rules.
Yes, I get that the gangs are committing awful crimes. But then, so are oppressive governments. We can talk about Right and Wrong at Sunday School, this is about technology.