PZ Myers, a fellow Minnesota blogger, seems to have developed a reputation as a troublemaker. He went to a screening of the pro-creation movie Expelled at the Mall of America. Before he could even step foot into the theater, he was, well, expelled. But you should really read PZ’s original post for the punchline to the story. It’s classic.
I’m now an official graduate of the Emerging Leaders Institute, a professional development program sponsored by the State of Minnesota. I’ll probably be “emerging” for some time to come. If all goes well, I should have enough years remaining in my public service career to figure out what this leadership business is all about. I’m already beginning to work on improving my assertiveness. So, watch out, cute women in elevators. I might start greeting you with an unsolicited “Hello” or even “How are you?” I’m getting dizzy just thinking about it.
Here’s a picture of me and my fellow emergent leaders: 
I’m the one in the middle, in case you couldn’t tell.
I’ve been working on a presentation most of tonight. More tomorrow.
I’ve been reading some of the reactions to Obama’s speech on race and class and one thing they seem to share is a sense of wonderment that a politician spoke so openly about a topic that comes with more baggage than an auditorium full of divorced singles. And he spoke in plain, unadorned terms that didn’t condescend to the audience. The speech nicely embodies what I think is one of Obama’s greatest assets: his ability to articulate the the sunny as well as the more shadowy aspects of American civic life without sounding rehearsed or inauthentic. I can’t picture Clinton giving a speech like this. Her years in politics have left their scars and I’m not sure that she’s capable of letting her guard down when there are more than five people in the room.
The YouTube clips of Reverend Wright had the potential to freak out a lot of white people; the kind of white people who make it a point to talk about their black friends when the topic of race comes up. Obama needed to take control of the narrative and he did that. But he also offered a glimpse of what it might be like have a president who is willing to treat us like adults.
Arthur C. Clarke, one of science fiction’s few remaining grandmasters, died today at age 90. Childhood’s End was one of those books that left a deep impression on my adolescent brain (aliens that look like Satan=way cool), but Rendezvous with Rama is probably my favorite of his. It’s such an economical story but it vividly conveys the head-scratching weirdness of a vast and ancient universe.
Hospitals across Minnesota are running short on ventilators and may not have enough to go around if a pandemic strikes. Good thing I already have one. In fact, I have two. Which means that, when the time comes, I’d better nail my door shut to keep out the plague-infested hordes.
Here’s video from a demonstration of a neckband that translates nerve impulses into speech. It only recognizes about 150 words and it doesn’t offer the same responsiveness of the human larynx, but the designers are optimistic that a version for patients with ALS will be ready by the end of the year. If the neckband can be miniaturized to a small patch, I’d consider using something like this for phone conversations and presentations. And it better be programmable so I can make myself sound like Alec Guinness or Laurence Fishburne.
I’m orientating a new nurse this afternoon and I’m trying to come up with a list of things to cover with her. Here’s what I have so far:
Did I miss anything?
My grandmother passed away a couple days ago and the funeral was today at the same cemetery where we buried my grandfather nearly twenty-five years ago. I chatted with relatives I hadn’t seen in several years and learned via the rabbi’s eulogy that my grandmother had cared for a younger brother who had died young. I had never heard this bit of family history before today and it led me to imagine my grandmother’s life as a young woman, something I had never really considered before. She would have been a teenager during the Depression. The world she left is in so many ways a radically different place than the one into which she was born. And I’m here to experience it because of her.
I neglected to mention in yesterday’s post that Spitzer’s successor, David Paterson, is legally blind. The media keeps making reference to the fact that he doesn’t use a cane or a guide dog. If he put on a pair of dark glasses, would that convince them that he is really is blind? Maybe some reporter should drop a pin at Paterson’s first press conference, just to make sure he really has the super-sensitive hearing that we know is a universal trait shared by all blind people on the planet.