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| Mathmatica, biz-itchez! |
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| Ah, the story here... |
Here's an excerpt from my International Relations class I had to do as a light posting for the final week. I added a little anecdote of my past that I thought I'd share here. The article we had to read is from the Huffington Post which is a largely spread though mediocre publication. I'll post the article here from them.
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| The father's the one on the left, interestingly. |
For those that don't like to read my work, because they're Generation Zero and just like to look at the pictures, I've included non-related images of bad family portraits, because I have to cater to the masses such as the TV show, "Ow, my balls!" from the movie, Idiocracy (2006) because it'll be just as entertaining. See? I'm catering to two groups at once! That's freakin' amazing, but that's expected from a bard-demigod (bows). Enjoy, ALL! 1997... NOW.
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| Leonardo has schemes for this one. Ah yes... perfect. You ARE the chosen ONE! Soon.. young one.. soon! |
Huffington Post:
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| The only pussy this guy will ever touch. |
Think Globally, Act Locally:
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| "Soon, my plans will come to fruition!" |
In India, the Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship turned the social innovation technology model on its head five years ago. Through supply-chain and engineering methods, the Center tackled the global issue of hunger on a local scale. They developed a system to provide daily hot meals to poor Indian schoolchildren for only 12 cents each. By bringing the for-profit discipline to the compassion of a non-profit, the service provided 85,000 affordable, locally sourced meals. Now, the program has been scaled to feed 1.3 million kids a day across India.
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| Which is the mother of which? Answer: Follow the goat. |
This idea to pioneer new models to solve global problems, perfect them by partnering with local leadership and spread them to other parts of the world is the foundation of the Deshpande Center's Social Innovation Sandbox. In the Boston area, the Merrimack Valley Sandbox promotes social entrepreneurship and leadership in Lowell and Lawrence, by funding more than 600 student and youth entrepreneurs, working with more than 300 adult entrepreneurs, and partnering with 30 community organizations. The Center's founder, Desh Deshpande, enthralled and inspired me with these stories as he eloquently spoke about the potential for innovation and social entrepreneurship to meet commercial and social needs both locally and globally during Wheelock College's inaugural international conference on Global Challenges and Opportunities Facing Children, Youth and Families this past June.
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| Taboo: American Style IV: The Exciting Conclusion (1985) staring Raven, Gloria Leonard, and apparently in this deleted scene, "Little Timmy" replacing Tom Byron. |
Eight hundred plus professionals--representing 5 continents from over 40 countries in the fields of health, education and human rights attended the Conference to discuss the challenges facing global society today and to collaborate on possible solutions. Plenary speakers, such as Desh Deshpande and Cherie Blair, Founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, urged attendees to engage, stay connected and above all to remain hopeful as we work together across continents to ensure a brighter future for children, youth and families.
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| I actually think I work with this guy. Notice the kid hates his life and was obviously abducted. |
During her keynote address, Cherie Blair shared how cross-specialty international partnerships have developed innovative and long-term solutions to an array of complex, global issues such as widespread poverty, discrimination, violence against women, and corruption. Blair's foundation has worked in 70 countries in South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, to develop programs that build confidence, capability and capital in women. She cited an example of how her Foundation partnered with a phone company in India. They developed a mobile application to allow women to sell dried goods more efficiently via text message orders rather than spending a day traveling door-to-door.
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| When in Rome. |
"Now is the time to seize the opportunity to make a collaborative impact. Now we must work together to develop long lasting solutions to these problems," she said. "Big challenges require big solutions, and we cannot effectively address them alone."
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| This is why you don't want the "Ring of Calibos" |
As the four days of the Conference came to a close, agent for social change and Founder of Katalyst LLC, Kevin Carroll, reminded us how to fuse together thinking globally and acting locally or as he stated, how to create a "glocal attitude." It is critical that participants remain engaged as global citizens and advocates for education, health and human rights after the conference by bringing the ideas, discussions and dialogue back to their communities. We must continue to exchange best practices for improving the lives of children and families globally. As Cherie Blair voiced "If we're going to truly solve the problems of the world we've got to share our information whenever we can and strategically include one another in or efforts."
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| Little Rachel learns to count to carrot the next month. |
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| "My Tholian Web is nearly complete, Captain Kirk!" |
Boring read. My requirement was such:
1. Consider a community that you are
familiar with, whether you are living in the place where you grew up or in a
different community at the present time. What issues do you see around you that
could be alleviated by the idea to "think globally, act locally"?
Keep in mind that we are focusing on the power of the individual
citizen, as opposed to government solutions, etc.
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| Kanye West's next album cover, "Sugar and Spice (2015)" |
My response is here:
After reading the Huffington Post article, I can see that the scope is to
solve a worldwide issue on a local basis. This really is the key here, because
some issues on a worldwide level can seem far too overwhelming. One example of
this could be an impossibly cluttered, messy room. One might just instantly
"give up" in exasperation because of it's massive undertaking (on a humanistic
scale) but then if one just started on one small area, say a buried chair or
desk for that day and worked at it, eventually, the whole room would be clean.
This is the small-scale example of a "think globally, act locally" concept. In
the example we read (in which I actually lived exactly in between Lawrence and
Lowell in the Merrimack Valley) the focus is not all of the US or even
Massachusetts but two towns. Others should follow-suit and if so, worldwide
efforts can be accomplished.
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| "Do you wanna be hypnotized?" |
So many problems to choose from, some are assumed problems but are just
cultural diversity and shouldn't be touched. Quite a complex final-post which
no doubt would create some interesting results from the students. Very
provocative and interesting! Hunger, violence, illiteracy, gun-control; these
are obvious choices so I'll avoid them.
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| Christmas of the Planet of the Apes (1977) unreleased pilot. |
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| To Triangle, perchance to dream. |
I worked as a security guard called Altron in 1992. I had worked 48 hours
non-stop at some other locations that weekend and this would make a 3rd and last
12-hour shift due to people calling-in sick. Altron was a chemical company that
cleaned computer components using some volatile chemicals. Catwalks were
required to be navigated over open, 5000 gallon vats of toxic sludge blue-green
like "Smilax" right out of Batman (1989). Hydrofluoric acid,
silver-nitrate, and things that displayed dangers cryptographically such as a
man falling backwards from a lightning-bolt entering his brain after smelling
three chemicals simultaneously and Chinese warnings with exclamation-points were
the norm. There was an "Ammonia Room" where the room had to be saturated with
10% pure ammonia-vapor for certain computer components to be assembled. Workers
at 2am were busy manipulating them wearing only paper face-masks. I had to
travel that room to the next checkpoint every hour and nearly passed-out each
time, light-headed and dizzy. I can't imagine the longevity of those workers,
or if they had evolved to be able to process pure ammonia to survive, needing a
vial to take home after work to just function? I'm sure they're all dead
now.
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| This... this.. I have no caption for this. Imagine the chaos getting these monkeys here to the local WalMart photo booth alone! |
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| Yep. |
Altron was by a swampy area just north of Boston. Altron had waste they had
to get rid of from their cleanings and other unknown actions. Properly
disposing of the chemical doom in barrels and shipping them to proper facilities
was very expensive. The fine to dump all that death into the swamp annually was
cheaper, so they did that. There was a mild chemical reaction that made the
swamp glow a dull orange on its own. The lieutenant was giving me my final
briefing to be careful when I noticed something broke the sludge's surface and
ducked back-down into the mildly glowing mess in the evening murk and he
nervously laughed and drove off.
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| Kitty-kitty! |
The fines allowed Altron to cheaply devastate the local landscape which I
doubt will fix itself in 10,000 years. The EPA needs to ramp-up that region's
fines to a ridiculous level so Altron (and presumably other companies) will not
continue to choose the financially obvious choice of straight dumping. By the
EPA hiking the rates to a level that would devastate a company, they might think
twice on their practices and chose the then cheaper choice of properly disposing
Smilax-like death. Local county and State fines could also be introduced to
add-on to the penalty. If Essex County where Altron was located followed suit,
other local counties would impose their own penalties. This would stop that
sort of practice outright (for the most part, lest they do so in extreme
clandestine). This would help nonetheless.
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| Exercise the demons! |
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| The puppet knows one must die. |
I remember it was cheaper for me to park in Boston and risk a parking ticket
on the side of the street than actually park in a parking garage by 50%. The
gamble was that I might not get a ticket and the odds generally were 3 to 1 a
traffic-cop would not issue one. This made my actual costs 88% less each time.
If the tickets were 5 times the cost of a garage to park-in, I would not have
parked on the street as the odds would not be in my favor.
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| "Good, my brother. Soon this one will be sacrificed to Cthulhu and the Shoggoth will rise from the swamps. Gooood!" |
Fines, though draconian, may be the key.
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| Ghost BUSTERS! YEAH! |
I'd like to point out that sometimes some hard penalties are a solution to a criminal act, such as what Altron provided here. They're interestingly still in-business because hyper-liberal Massachusetts isn't fining them properly yet, even after 20 years of devastation.
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| That beeper... |
My brother used to joke that a cereal we used to get that had random colored smiley-faces and tasted like chemicals was "Altron Cereal" because it tasted like fruity chemical death, smiled sarcastically and defiantly, each disc smile of cereal unknownedness in some sort of denial like a scientist who's also a Christian and just clings to some specific Old Testament detail without really caring about the very important message within the text because otherwise they can't believe in the whole of it for some reason.
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| "You know, El Diablo, with the claws, and the beak..." |
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| Stupid Voo-doo! Shucks, not again! |
These discs were more than that: they mocked themselves in denial with the bitter knowledge of a crueler, more evil fate like a heroin junky who knows that sharing that needle with Tray-Ray who was just vomiting blood is probably not a best-choice, or that Hitler dude who thought his uber-men were going to take Russia in the winter like it was nothing but an inconvenience, or that Christian evangelist who knows that sleeping with that gay prostitute here in Colorado Springs for the 50th time "bare-back" is probably going to bite him in the ass both literally and figuratively with no exit-strategy.
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| One bunny is missing, "My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today." |
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| Lunch: caught. |
Those fruity smiles, crunch-crunch-crunch. Smiles of denial. Smiles of failure and evil betrayal and more like a grimace, holding back the fear. Crunch crunch crunch. Stays crispy in milk, and lava, and black-holes, and suns, and time, and Dimension 5.
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| Someone is going to get their wish... |
I never had to work back at Altron. That time had past, with a stronger knowledge that the World is a pretty bad place like some Phillip K. Dick novel or other William Gibson cyberpunk misery and that fatality was an inevitability for the Human Race. I had gone home to Derry, NH that morning and crashed for 24 hours, wrecked. Marysol left me because I had gone to shit two months later, and I was a jerk, and enough was enough.
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| Dodged the Bullet: A Rememberance |
Sometimes I didn't come back to her for weeks in that apartment to stay in Reading, MA to watch USA Up-All-Night with my cousin to just vent that Life wasn't quite working out the way I had hoped. Stupid choices. My path was taking me nowhere and I was not turning into the man I wanted to be. Her leaving me was the slap in the face I needed. I cleared out all that poison from my system (she was definitely NOT the cause of that, but what I lost), and the USAF told me what a man should be, how to stand on my two feet and remember to be strong under adversity, because the whole world is like that Altron, and for lunch, it might sometimes be "Altron Cereal" but you don't have to accept that, make your family eat that. Sometimes you have to put a stop to Altron, and if you find you're Altron yourself, sometimes you gotta put a stop to yourself.
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| Lady Death the Eternal enjoys the last moments of this doomed fool, "..to burst the bubble and watch him suffocate..oh, so soon, the exquisite agony, the grasping of the throat, and the turning blue, oh so pretty blue, then he'll shit himself." she muses. |
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| Kilrathi: "Tholian Web technology successful, commander!" "Meow!" |
We've all been that poison at one point, to others. We've all been a little "Altron" at one point or another, usually unknowingly, but we can at least not grin and accept it like the Altron Cereal discs, frozen in their chemical crunch shape. We can change, apologize, attempt to fix and heal, and move-on the wiser, never repeating those evils and turn-over a new leaf, and that's what Christianity is all about, Charlie Brown.
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| For the laaaadies! |
Out.
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| Your author. |
