Out of the nightmare, into a beautiful dream. @earthpledge - Tumblr Blog

Is Giulia’s dad from Pixar’s Luca, the same dad in the Pixar short, La Luna? Maybe before he lost his arm?

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I love how the power of film transforms consciousness and makes you think more deeply about life in our universe, or universes. Dr. Strange is one such film capable of raising the viewer’s consciousness to transcend a single life time and see our human existence in terms of one organism. As individuals, we have been coming and going for thousands of years, but as a collective, we remain immortal in the sense that our unbroken, near endless succession of individual time loops has potential to carry humanity further into the future. It is possible someday the human species will successfully make a bargain with Dormammu (entropy) using technology to create a level of internal stasis that cheats the degradation of our DNA and death of cells. But before we get there, we have to somehow figure out how to create a level of internal political stasis within our civilization, making a bargain with the Dormammu of war, threatening to end our time on Earth through annihilation. That’s why we must rise up together and demand our politicians choose diplomacy with North Korea. The risks of our collective death get higher the more we flirt with nuclear war.

#DrStrange #Humanity

Through the vehicle of art, those who are spiritually liberated use deception to tell us the truth; war belongs on the big screen! And those who have become materially blinded, try to convince us real wars are like a fun movie, seeking to make lies out of the truth. Seeing Alpha as the best side of humanity, made me think of the best side of America. The technological computer revolution was born in California and eventually gave rise to the World Wide Web; a melting pot of Earth culture and sharing of ideas. The planet Mül has a perfect climate, covered in beach front property and inhabited by spiritually minded peoples using alternative energy and cutting edge technology to power their lives. Then a horrendous battle breaks open in the skies above them where massive shrapnel and broken ships crash into the atmosphere and tumble down into their oceans and beaches, wreaking havoc on their utopia. We find out it’s a war waged above their planet between humans they have nothing to do with. Unique to the Pearl species, at death, the soul of the Pearl travels across space and time to inhabit a being of their choosing, to help guide and expand their consciousness before a final exit of the universe. Lehoi’s soul travels 30 years into the future to inhabit the body of agent Valerian. He is a soldier in a relationship with the beautiful agent Laureline. We find out he is unable to win the entirety of her heart after asking her to marry him. There is something about his character Laureline finds untrustworthy. His self centered, arrogant, “pig headed” nature comes through when Laureline informs him he has forgotten her birthday. She also lets him know that nothing he can “get done in 3 minutes” can make it up to her, implying that she seeks something more than just sex. “I don’t want to be another name on your list of conquests.” It’s then we discover Valerian keeps a playlist (perhaps video or some kind of virtual representation) of all the sexual conquests of his life. Laureline makes it known to him, “My heart will belong to a man who will erase his playlist for me.” Valerian has Alex the ship’s computer, analyze the jewel he confiscated from a black market and discovers there is “ten times more power in that pearl” than in the entire ship. Pearl technology is beyond that of the federation, kind of like California and Washington technology is beyond that of most America. Agent Valerian and Laureline meet up with their command and learn there is a radioactive zone at the heart of Alpha. No signal of any kind can get through it. Meanwhile, the radioactive zone which is unbreathable, continues to “grow like a tumor”. Commander Filitt declares they must cut out the tumor before it keeps growing to destroy Alpha. “Commander, who would have any reason to destroy Alpha. Practically every living species is represented here.” “This is a weapon of mass destruction and behind every weapon there is a killer. It doesn’t matter who it is, it’s a threat to us all. It must be eliminated.” Reminds me of GOP talk about the need to preemptively take out North Korea’s government, who posses weapons of mass destruction. Even though there are North Koreans living in America along with every culture on Earth being represented here, many military brass see the situation like Filitt; that North Korea’s nukes are a threat to us all and must be eliminated. Commander Filitt enters a room where a government operative is torturing a Pearl. Filitt instructs him, “If he doesn’t talk, finish him off.” This brings to mind the torture instituted under the Bush administration and how the next president (person of color) tried to end torture and close down Guantanamo while Donald Trump is trying to reinstate water boarding. Laureline runs into 3 Doghan-Daguis and she finds out from them that Major Samk who was an expert on the Planet Mül, was murdered. We see an image of Samk getting shot. (a person of color) Laureline and Valerian continue on their mission to the heart of Alpha. Valerian - “…I know it sounds strange, but the princess, she’s guiding me. It’s hard to explain, it’s like she’s been with me the whole time.” Laureline - “Wait, you mean to tell me that you’ve had a woman inside of you since the beginning?” Valerian and Laureline meet a Pearl who invites them inside the shielded heart of Alpha. Emperor Haban-Limaï looks and sounds like an androgynous being, a perfect balance of yin and yang. Emperor Haban-Limaï - “My son sensed the presence of his sister in you. It seems she chose you.” Agent Valerian - “What do you mean?” Emperor Haban-Limaï - “Lehoi mina chose you to be the guardian of her soul. Our planet was a true paradise, in which we lived in harmony with the elements.” - Just like the spiritual side of humanity - choosing to live in peace rather than war.

#Valerian #Internet

Slowly making my way through this excellent series by David Eagleman, called The Brain. Just caught the episode, Who is in Control. And as was demonstrated in the episode, sometimes the subjects of various experiments thought they were in control when it was demonstrated they weren’t. Is free will just a cruel illusion?

http://video.pbs.org/program/brain-david-eagleman/

#nmedia2014 #nmedia2015 #thebrain #davideagleman

"This year is on track to be a record 1.8 degrees hotter than the 19th-century average, hitting a symbolic milestone in the temperature rise that scientists blame mostly on human activities, Britain’s weather service said Monday." "The increase is important because it’s halfway to the 3.6 degrees that governments have set as a limit to avoid dangerous levels of warming."

#media2015 #media2014 #climate2014 #climate2015

"The 41st president suggests that the 43rd president’s 2002 speech describing Iraq, Iran and North Korea as part of an “Axis of Evil” included comments “that might be historically proved to be not benefiting anything.” He says Cheney had “his iron-ass view of everything” and that Rumsfeld displayed a “lack of humility” and “was an arrogant fellow.”"

#media2014 #media2015 #war2014 #war2015

"According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), land use represents 61 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. That means deforestation causes far more climate pollution than all of the country's cars and power plants combined. In fact, Indonesia has the world's highest rate of deforestation, even higher than Brazil, which contains most of the Amazon rainforest. From 2000 to 2012, according to research published in Nature, Indonesia lost more than 23,000 square miles of forest to logging, agriculture, and other uses. That's roughly the size of West Virginia. In 2010, the government attempted to put the brakes on deforestation by exchanging a two-year moratorium on new logging permits for $1 billion in aid from Norway and the United States. But according to Susan Minnemeyer, a forest analyst at the WRI, that policy appears to have had the "perverse impact of accelerating [deforestation], because those with permits felt that they had to take action quickly or they would no longer be able to." This all adds up to global-scale pollution: Indonesia is the world's fifth-ranking greenhouse gas emitter, coming in just behind Russia and India. In other words, we can't stop climate change without saving Indonesia's rainforests. Indonesia is in the middle of a public health crisis from forest fire haze. The problem isn't just deforestation, but how that deforestation is happening. In Indonesia, forests are often cleared out with fire. This can be done legally with a permit, but it's often carried out illegally as well. This year, forest fires are also being fueled by El Niño-related weather patterns. The combination of El Niño and intentional deforestation has proven incredibly dangerous: The country has experienced nearly 100,000 fires so far this year, the worst since the last major El Niño in 1997. Fire activity typically ramps up in September and October, the end of the dry season, and over the last couple of weeks the conflagrations have grown to crisis proportions—hence Joko's hasty return. The fires are so big they can be seen from space. The greenhouse impact from those fires is staggering: On several days over the last month, emissions from Indonesian forest fires have exceeded all emissions from the US economy: World Resources Institute To make matters worse, more than half of those fires occur on land made of peat, the thick, soil-like material made from decomposed plant matter. Peat is packed with carbon, and fires that occur on peatland can have a global warming impact 200 times greater than fires on normal soil, according to the WRI. Last week, Joko said the government would stop issuing new permits for commercial development on peatland, but that won't stop the fires that are already burning. Climate pollution is just part of the problem. Firefighting costs are pushing $50 million per week. The impact of this fire season on Indonesia's economy could reach $14 billion. And the thick blanket of haze that is stretching from the country across Southeast Asia has caused at least 10 deaths from haze-related illness and 500,000 cases of acute respiratory illness. Your snacks and makeup are part of the problem. Of course, Indonesians aren't just chopping and burning down trees for fun. Besides logging, one of the main uses for cleared land is to plant African oil palm, the fruits of which are used to produce palm oil. Palm oil is the world's most popular form of vegetable oil, and half of it comes from Indonesia. It's also found in about half the processed food you encounter in a grocery store (as well as many cosmetics). "

#media2014 #media2015 #climate2014 #climate2015

"The meme that married people are happier and healthier than single people is unfounded. DePaulo dug into the research supposedly proving the benefits of getting married and found substantial experimental flaws across the board. (Often, these studies either excluded divorced people entirely or lumped them in with single people, thereby obscuring the fact that they had gotten married — and hadn’t liked it. Another problem: Unlike with drug studies, a study of marriage can never truly isolate that variable; you can’t randomly assign people to get married or not.) The least problematic research, in DePaulo’s estimation, which follows the same people over the long term, has found that around the time of their weddings, people show a brief increase in happiness, then go right back to where they were when they were single. (If they get divorced later, they don’t even show this brief honeymoon effect.) Stigma against single parents is easily debunked, too: what’s really bad for kids is not having a single parent, but “conflict, acrimony or cold, neglectful environments.” The bottom line is that there’s no better or worse — and no shortcut to happiness. Those who are happiest follow their desires, whether that means getting married or staying single. For DePaulo, as for many others, staying single just feels right. “If I got married, I would not become happier and healthier!” she says. “I love living single — except for all the singlism and matrimania.”"

#media2014 #media2015

"(CNN)Hurricane Patricia -- the strongest hurricane ever recorded -- made landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast Friday evening, its 165 mph winds barreling into southwestern Mexico near Cuixmala, officials said. The monster storm touched down about 6:15 p.m., hours after weakening slightly with sustained winds decreasing to 190 mph and gusts to 235 mph, according to the U.S National Weather Service."

#media2014 #media2015 #climate2014 #climate2015

“Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.” http://m.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/astronomy/its-either-aliens-or-a-swarm-of-comets-scientists-baffled-by-wtf-001-our-galaxys-strangest-star-20151014-gk9iwj.html

#media2014 #media2015

"For just the third time on record, scientists say they are now watching the unfolding of a massive worldwide coral bleaching event, spanning the globe from Hawaii to the Indian Ocean. And they fear that thanks to warm sea temperatures, the ultimate result could be the loss of more than 12,000 square kilometers, or over 4,500 square miles, of coral this year — with particularly strong impacts in Hawaii and other U.S. tropical regions, and potentially continuing into 2016. The event is being brought on by a combination of global warming, a very strong El Nino event, and the so-called warm “blob” in the Pacific Ocean, say the researchers, part of a consortium including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as XL Catlin Seaview Survey, The University of Queensland in Australia, and Reef Check. “This is only the third time we’ve seen what we would refer to as a global bleaching event, an event that causes mass bleaching in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Atlantic-Caribbean basin,” said Mark Eakin, who heads NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch. The prior events, Eakin continues, “were in 1998 and 2010, and those were pretty much one year events. We’re looking at a similar spatial scale of bleaching across the globe, but spanning across at least 2 years. So that means a lot of these corals are being put under really prolonged stress, or are being hit 2 years in a row.” The total loss could amount to 5 percent of the world’s corals in 2015, according to Eakin. That’s not as bad as the loss in 1998, but there’s a fear that if the event continues into 2016, the losses would grow. “We’ve been hearing worrying reports of bleaching from various places, and now the bad news is officially here, with worse news likely yet to come with the strengthening El Nino,” says Nancy Knowlton, an expert on coral reefs with the Smithsonian Institution, of the news. “No reefs that experience unusually warm waters are likely to escape unscathed, but reefs already suffering from overfishing and pollution may have a particularly rough time recovering, based on what we have learned from past bleaching events.”"

#climate2014 #climate2015 #media2015 #media2014

"The U.S. bombing attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, was grotesque, lasting more than half an hour and burning people alive — medical staff and patients alike — in the kind of facility that international rules of war recognize as a safe haven. There should have been no question about the nature of the work done in the building. Doctors Without Borders has operated the hospital for four years. It had reminded the U.S. and Afghan forces just days earlier of the hospital's location, and it reportedly told U.S. military officials mid-attack that it was under fire from a helicopter gunship. Yet the attack continued, destroying the facility, killing 12 staff members and 10 patients, including three children, and wounding 37 more. The Pentagon, after some initial confusion about what had occurred, acknowledged that the hospital was mistakenly struck and promised to investigate, which is the appropriate response. Gen. John F. Campbell, who leads the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, reportedly suspects that U.S. troops failed to follow established protocol in approving and conducting the attack. That's troubling, if true, and the Pentagon should ensure that its investigation proceeds quickly and transparently, with an eye not only toward understanding what happened but also toward drafting procedures to reduce the chances of a repeat episode. War, it is said, is conducted in a fog, and while civilian deaths are to be avoided and lamented, they are also inevitable. But the incident at the Kunduz hospital was more than a misdirected bomb. It was a sustained attack and, according to Campbell, seems not to have been justified under rules that limit U.S. military engagement to defending American and allied troops, supporting missions targeting Al Qaeda and assisting Afghan forces if they are under attack and at risk of mass casualties. Although Campbell said the Afghan forces requested the air support, the decision to provide it and the approval of the target came from within the U.S. command. He told a Senate committee this week that he has ordered the "entire force to undergo in-depth training in order to review all of our operational authorities and rules of engagement." Doctors Without Borders is understandably outraged by the attack, which led it to close its operations in Kunduz, a regrettable loss of medical support in that war-torn city. President Obama on Wednesday offered his apology to Joanne Liu, the head of Doctors Without Borders, but the organization is pressing its allegation that the attack constitutes a war crime and has called for a non-prosecutorial investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-finding Commission under the Geneva Convention. The medical relief organization is within its rights to seek that independent assessment, and the U.S. government should cooperate."

#war2014 #war2015 #media2015 #media2014

I caught The Walk last night in IMAX 3D and my mind is officially blown.

The documentary about Philippe Petit blew my mind the first time when I became aware of his death defying act a couple years ago…

…but seeing it reinacted in all its 3D special effects glory on an IMAX screen was enough to give me vertigo. I found myself on the edge of my seat through most of this movie while going through the full range of emotions Petit felt along with those of his friends and the New Yorkers watching below.

Petit played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt begins his narration by explaining that high wire walking was a metaphor for life. And nowhere did this ring the truest than at the end where Petit stages the most gut wrenching and fearless act of his career. The art of wire walking is about balance. Where there is balance, there is life. When balance is lost, there is death and suffering. By walking this precarious line, everyone watching is reminded of the same balancing act of life they are living, even if its truth has been dulled or hidden from consciousness.

Walking on a wire between the World Trade Center 110 stories off the ground was so fantastic to behold, it was almost hard to believe someone actually did this in real life. And at one point in the high wire act, I was so overcome by the emotion of it all, I couldn’t help but break down! That’s how powerful this movie is!

I also couldn’t help think about the power this act had on the people around Petit. Seeing his courageous act was enough for those watching to experience it vicariously through his eyes. One of his friends helping with the “coup” was afraid of heights and almost seemed liberated from his phobia at the end. The police officers waiting for Petit at the building’s ledges, were so identified with him, that when he slipped, they were thrown into fits of terror. If he fell from the wire, it was as if they were attached to him, ready to plunge to their own deaths too.

And this sent me on a brainstorm of thought that lead me to think a lot about the human nature of empathy and how we are wired to see ourselves in another and identify with them. Ultimately this leads us to help one another when we are in danger. This is the theme of another big movie released near the same time as the walk, called “The Martian”. In the teaser, Matt Damon explains, “Every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people coordinate a search. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world send emergency supplies. This instinct is found in every culture, without exception.”

The disaster that befell NYC on 9-11 is a perfect illustration of this instinct in practice. When the towers were destroyed and images of people free falling to their deaths from the 80th floors hit the airwaves, the world identified with America and there was an outpouring of sympathy and support like nothing we witnessed before. It is identification with others that send us into fits of terror witnessing the very thing the cops at the top of the towers didn’t want to see happen to Petit.

But this also got me thinking about war and how the Bush Administration’s invastion of Iraq began erroding this goodwill and empathy people around the world felt towards America. And we now see a Middle East in turmoil in which every day there are images bombarding us of stateless people’s fleeing to Europe. But where we find the universal impulse to help save these people, we also witness a darker impulse to ignore them and in some cases, beat them further down.

Because someone was there with a camera filming this journalist tripping fleeing immigrants, these images were broadcast around the world causing an uproar leading to action to right the situation of those who were wronged.

If these isolated incidents aren’t righted, then it will embolden those like this journalist and others seeking to turn this human instinct to help into its opposite manifestation.

The police wouldn’t have come to the top of the World Trade Center to assist Petit if it was not for those on the streets below to witness his high wire act. In the same way, it is often documentation of the horrors of war that reveals to us the high wire like dangers so many civilians and innocents are facing in their daily lives.

Syrian Civil War; before and after photos of the same street: