Saving Private Ryan Again
05:44 Tuesday, 13 June 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 75.69°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 736
I watched Saving Private Ryan again last night. The movie came out in 1998, but I didn't see it until 2003, which I know because I wrote about it in Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day has been offline since 2009, I think. But I still have the Tinderbox file I wrote it in.
Anyway, I made it nearly through the movie and kept wondering why I thought I could never watch it again. Then I got to the end and got punched in the gut again.
Damn you, Spielberg!
Back in May I mentioned that I might watch it again, along with Joe vs. The Volcano, Cast Away, and A Man Called Otto. Haven't watched the other three again, but I guess D-Day was on my mind because a little metal model of that C-47, the Tico Belle, sits on my desk now.
In each of those three movies, Hanks' character fails in an attempt to end his life; yet each finds a new reason to go on living. A meaning. In each movie, the character is leading an inauthentic life, one which doesn't proceed from the character's own center, instead being buffeted along by the uncaring vicissitudes of life and the illusions or misguided beliefs that frame them in his internal experience. (Been there, done that.)
In Ryan, Hanks' character, Captain Miller, wants to live. Wants to return home to his wife, and her love. There's a line he says to Reiben, after talking about getting Ryan and getting closer to going home. "I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel."
In that same speech, Miller wonders if he's changed so much that his wife will even recognize him.
"Changed so much." Personal transformation. Denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance. Saving Ryan is part of a bargain. Ryan doesn't want to be saved. Ryan wants to stay with his unit, the only brothers he has left. This transformation has been ongoing throughout his experience in combat. His hand shakes. His men ask him, repeatedly, "You all right, captain?"
He's not all right. It's an impossible situation. Why not just bonk Ryan on the head, tie him up and carry him out? Because he knows what the rest of that unit will face. Because he knows there's no guarantee of even getting Ryan out if they tried something like that. There's no guarantee of any of them getting out, even if they left Ryan's unit at the bridge.
Or who they would ultimately be, even if they did?
Sergeant Horvath suggests "We might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess. Like you said, Captain, maybe we do that, we all earn the right to go home."
So is Horvath Krishna to Miller's Arjuna? That hadn't occurred to me in 2003, it does today.
Okay, just got back from my walk and I'm up against the clock. Mitzi's coming home and I have to go to the airport, so let's wrap this up. These aren't carefully drafted, considered, edited and posted. Nope, this is pretty much stream of consciousness.
Ya gets what ya pays for.
Anyway, I wondered if Miller was being unfair when he spoke to Ryan in his dying words, "Earn it." I'm still not sure, but I don't think so. Clearly, it was a burden Ryan had to bear his entire life.
"Earn it." Make it mean something.
I loved how Ryan asked his wife. "Am I good man? Have I lived a good life?" An aching question, surrounded by the dead who cannot answer. And I'm reminded of Neo and Trinity and her faith in him, because love is faith in action.
"Now get up."
Of course, it's just a movie. It wasn't even a "true story," but kind of based on some actual events.
But those rows of crosses and Stars of David are really there. And they should speak to us today, in their silent voices, "Make it mean something."
And we should ask ourselves, "Are we good people? Are we living a good life?"
And as we consider the answer, we should think about Nazi swastikas appearing outside Disneyland.
Who will answer for us? Who will have faith in us? Who will love us and tell us to "Get up."?
I don't know.
✍️ Reply by emailDopamine: Still a Hell of a Neuropeptide
13:47 Tuesday, 13 June 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 91.96°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 55% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 118
In the weird way things sometimes go, I posted my thoughts on Tinderbox and The Brain yesterday, and this piece appeared on NPR.
So, in terms of "rewards," dopamine doesn't play a role in "liking" an activity or behavior; but it does mediate desire for an activity or behavior. Which kind of makes sense. I didn't like much of my experience on Twitter, but I did want to do it. And desire is the source of all suffering. (Usual disclaimers apply.)
I don't think this more complete understanding of the role of dopamine seriously alters my "thinking" on how our biology interacts with our technology to shape our behavior.
But I did laugh when I saw the piece!
✍️ Reply by emailGood Morning
Current Wx: Temp: 79.12°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 4.61mphWords: 342
Sunrise looked promising but I wanted to get my bike ride in before I put the drone up. The best clouds had drifted away by the time I got home and got it launched, but it still wasn't bad.
I took a look down into the swamp and it's pretty dry, maybe drier than I've ever seen it. Net, we're above average in total rainfall in the preceding 12 months, but May was about 30% below average. (We're in St Johns County.)
Meanwhile, south Florida is flooding.
I've been watching Dark Matter on Apple TV+ and I'm ambivalent about it. It's like Quantum Leap in some ways, but the latest episode makes me think it's a remake of The Wizard of Oz, with Amanda as Gwendolyn and the tip that, "There's no place like home." The only thing missing was a pair of ruby slippers (which I saw at the Smithsonian a couple of weeks ago).
I've been playing Quartiles in Apple News+ Puzzles. I guess it's Apple's version of Wordle. I find it pretty entertaining. I seldom get all the words, but I get all the "quartiles" and made "expert" on every game I've played since late last May. I don't understand the "streak" thing on the Scoreboard. My "Current Streak" is 1 day, but my "Expert Rate" is 100% and my "Longest Streak" is 7 days, and I've played every day since I started. Makes no sense to me.
The chainsaw arrived yesterday, and it was really used. They stuck a new chain in the box, but I'm sending it back. I'd rather buy a new one than a scratched=up, oil-soaked used one with a well-thumbed, oily user manual for only a 12% discount. If it'd been discounted 35%, I'd say it was a fair deal. But the previous owner did some serious wood cutting and then returned it. Cheapskate. I didn't even stick a battery in it.
Anyway, the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailRon DeSantis, Please Take Note
10:07 Thursday, 13 June 2024
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This is alarming, but then everything is alarming these days so...
Toward the end, he notes that we may have already passed the tipping point. We won't know until we have a few more decades of observations showing consistent slowing. Here's the PDF.
Florida Republicans don't care. Depending on the speed of the effects, they may not live long enough to regret it. Their grandchildren will, though.
✍️ Reply by emailDinner
Current Wx: Temp: 77.04°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 4.61mphWords: 537
Busy day yesterday. Planned to post this last night, but I was just exhausted by the time we got finished with dinner.
There was a lot of running in and out as we were unpacking boxes and then moving them to the garage and so on, and at one point Mitzi said a fly had gotten in. Not the most earth-shattering news out here in "the country."
I had to take a break, and as I was sitting down, Mitzi said, "There's a spider!" She was pointing at the ceiling and I figured she had noticed the nail pop up near the peak, but that wasn't it. It was a bold jumping spider and it proceeded to lower itself down using a thread of silk. Jumping spiders don't build webs, but they use their silk for making little barriers in their hideouts, and to get quickly down from high places.
She wanted me to kill it, but I explained they were harmless and helpful and actually very cool. And then I happened to look up at the little semi-circular window near the peak, where we have a security camera installed. There seemed to be something up near the top of the window frame, and Mitzi said, "That's the fly that came in. It was huge." With that prompt, I could make out the wings, and I knew something else was going on. So I grabbed a camera with a zoom to get a closer look.
This was what I saw. Another bold jumping spider dining on the fly Mitzi had admitted. It had only been in the house for a matter of minutes before it became prey for a spider. Pretty amazing.
All in all, it was a pretty good day yesterday. We got a lot of stuff unpacked and organized. Space is very much at a premium, especially in the bathroom, but we're figuring it out. She want's to get a tall pantry cabinet, which won't be integrated with the rest of the cabinets in the kitchen, but against wall near the "dining area," still within the kitchen "area" of this very open floor-plan pole barn. I'm not sure how it'll look, but the kitchen is her domain.
Funnily enough, Mitzi just stepped out of the bedroom and, unprompted, said that one of the unanticipated benefits of living in a confined space is that everything is close at hand. Wherein a discussion ensued about the necessity, or desirability of two sinks in a bathroom. (Something that never made sense to me.) We don't have a sink problem, but we also don't have any vanity space, or even under-counter cabinet space. Using a water-pick is an unresolved challenge at the moment.
The weather was kind of cloudy yesterday morning, through the early part of the afternoon, but then it cleared up and was beautiful. Tuesday night the soot from the Canadian wildfires turned the sun into a red meatball, but no clouds meant the sunset was otherwise unremarkable.
52°F this morning, so refreshing. Slept with the windows open last night. Woke up with the birds this morning. So much horrible news "out there," I'm glad I've got something keeping me busy.
✍️ Reply by emailHappy News
Current Wx: Temp: 81.9°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 6.91mphWords: 57
Yesterday's unpacking and re-organizing yielded the location of the missing black E-PL7. I'd put it into a lens bag! I was taking all the lenses out of their bags to save some space and there it was.
Photo was shot with it. It's much prettier because the camera is all black.
Obviously.
Very happy surprise.
✍️ Reply by emailCatching Up
06:48 Saturday, 13 June 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 61.36°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 3.69mph
Words: 512
It's been busy around here, mostly in a good way.
The big news, such as it may be, is that we finally have signed plans in hand. The bad news is that this process has been bumpier than I think it should have been. Part of that is on us for not having a clear idea of how the process should have worked.
We're having a post and beam deck and porch attached to the house. The plans from the designer included notional drawings of what those features should look like. We'd known from the beginning that that portion of the build was going to be performed by a third party. What we didn't understand going in was that most third parties are going to do their own design and engineering calculations. So we didn't communicate that to our architect, and he did his own thing that we have to pay him for, which we aren't going to use.
That and some other things have caused a bit of a mess that's going to cost us a couple thousand dollars more than we'd planned; but this isn't the kind of thing any of us understood going in, so it's been an expensive lesson.
We just received the plans yesterday afternoon, they were supposed to be here earlier in the week, and we haven't taken a close look at them yet. I expect we'll find errors. The post and beam engineers are supposed to meet with the architect by Zoom on Monday to go over the details of how the features attach to the ICF walls. Hopefully that all goes smoothly.
In other news, I've made some progress in finding a low voltage DC LED lighting solution from a company called ATX-LED. I'll be requesting a quote from them on Monday. Our builder's electrician has never done anything like this, but since it doesn't involve pulling Romex through a cathedral ceiling, he might like it.
It runs on 48v DC, and instead of having dozens of little power supplies converting 110v AC to DC at the light fixture, there are two DC power supplies providing power to all the fixtures in the house. There is some redundancy or fail-over capacity if one of the power supplies should fail, so you're not without lighting throughout the house. I'll probably buy a couple of spare power supplies to have on hand should that ever happen. The LED lights should last a lot longer. When conventional ones fail, it's usually that little power supply that fails because of heat.
There are a lot of other advantages with DC lighting in that they're dimmable without using pulse width modulation, which some people can detect as flicker. It's never been a problem for me, but good to know. It's very automated, but doesn't rely on cloud services, everything is local to the home.
I'm sure I'll flinch when I see the quote, but it just makes more sense to me. More to follow on that.
If the weather cooperates, we should be breaking ground next week.
✍️ Reply by emailCriminal Record
07:29 Saturday, 13 June 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 63.14°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 3.69mph
Words: 233
A quick comment on this British series on Apple TV+. We just finished watching season 2. I started season 1 last year, but didn't make it through the first episode. I think I got the impression it was going to be mostly about a black woman cop fighting white patriarchy, and that didn't exactly draw me in.
Perhaps partly out of dumping Prime and having fewer shows to watch, I gave it a second chance this year and I'm glad I did. Now, I will say that season 2 is much better than the first one. It is about a black woman cop fighting white male patriarchy, but it's about much more than that too.
I haven't read any reviews of the series. I expect that season 2 will be criticized for the very things I found compelling, though perhaps they might also be called "manipulative."
But the evolution of the strained relationship between June and Dan was fascinating to observe.
The one part of the show that never felt credible to me was June's relationship with her husband. I never felt any empathy toward him, though I could see how I was supposed to. He just didn't seem to be a very relatable character.
Anyway, good show. Worth watching. You have to watch the first season to understand the second one, but all episodes are available now, so that's not a problem.
✍️ Reply by emailWidow's Bay
07:44 Saturday, 13 June 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 65.91°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 4.27mph
Words: 142
I'm not a horror guy, but I am a humor guy.
I love this series, mostly because of the characters. It reminds me of Deadloch in that way.
It's a genuine horror story, there is some supernatural evil going on, which shouldn't be too much of a spoiler.
But it's also a lot like Deadloch, because you have a fairly "normal," level-headed protagonist surrounded by a bunch of decidedly abnormal characters confronting something frightening and unexplained.
It's not as funny as Deadloch was, which was mostly played for laughs with some suspense on the side. Widow's Bay is mostly played for the scares, with some laughs on the side.
But I enjoyed the characters in both series, and I think that's the key.
I'm looking forward to the season finale, and I've read that it's been slated for a second season.
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