Tyson
Just watched Tyson – the documentary about the great boxer. I was struck by how impressionable a personality he has. I was also amazed that the source of his ferocity was the fear of being bullied. As a child he once kept pigeons. Some bigger kids came by and snapped the neck of one of them, throwing the limp body by Tyson’s feet. Tyson fought him, won and found some level of respect.
Anyway, Tyson found strong guidance in the form of an old Irish boxer/mentor. This guy built up Tyson’s confidence. He was a lost youth – surely would have ended up dead or in prison if not for this man.
What was most impressive to me was how this guy knew how to mold raw human potential. Equipped with a very specific vision – the heavy weight championship of the world – he took the mush and through discipline, training, visualization and guidance, made it happen (If only his fragile character could keep up with his fame and physical power).
I was inspired at the power of a vision to manifest when accompanied by faith, steely commitment and a strategy. Beautiful stuff.
In Service of a Singular Vision
Ever wonder how some people get so far, product so much?
The trick is to find and serve that singluar vision that puts the fire in your belly: forecasting, teaching, determining the mechanisms of x,y,z physiological event, music, proving some theorem, whatever (bonus points for obscurity!).
With this orientation, the world conspires to assist us (Goethe, loosely). Whatever it is, we must be small and humble, servants toward the larger vision. When we are that end, when it’s all about us, our vision is too small. Time to Rethink it!
It’s a gift to find some piece of the world, no matter how small, that we can work on and make just a little better; that we can leave some evidence of our having lived. That is really what it’s about.
Bad Lieutenant, Herzog and the Iguanas
What seemed a normal hollywood film is finally Herzogged when a couple of Iguanas, shot in digital, pull us out of the film. The iguanas are not beautiful in any way and symbolize nothing. There is no deeper purpose, no cinematic cohesion.
But they’re great!
Why?
When just a few seconds earlier we were enthralled by the Hollywood magic, the iguanas wake us up from our cinematic stupor. The key feature of interest – and the departure from traditional filmmaking – is that we are treated as adults by the director. Rather than collar our emotions and lead us like dogs, Herzog leaves us hanging in total ambiguity – WHAT THE F–??!!. My fiancee and I just started laughing at how Herzoggian (i.e. absurd) the whole thing was.
It feels like he’s playing a joke – not necessarily on us – but on filmmaking at large. Its like he’s telling everyone to just take a breath and stop taking things – and this movie I just spent $9.50 per ticket on – so seriously.
Hey here’s something I found that’s interesting….let’s veer off task for a second – come with me!
The iguanas are totally misplaced and frankly, rather dumb. They aren’t in the least bit cinematic. But these judgments would be missing the point. The iguanas reveal much about Herzog, providing an escape valve for the great director, allowing the him to hop down from his Hollywood pedestal to have a bit of fun with his audience.
The greater message is that Herzog has the courage to follow a capricious notion, if only for its immediate intrigue factor. Since life contains absurdities, why shouldn’t film? While big dreams and streamlining are important to the job of getting things done efficiently – let us remember that stupid fun is always available – if only we’re willing to risk a fleeting departure from the task at hand.
The mechanisms inhaled anesthetics
The ability to be anesthetized is clearly important from a physiological perspective. Indeed, virtually all life forms have this ability. Why? Anesthesia is not necessary in nature – bunnies do not perform surgery on one another (as far as I can tell). So why should evolution incur the cost of conserving this trait?
There are many theories out there, but this post is not so much about that question as it is the mechanistic possibilities underlying this feature. As engineers know, systemic redundancy leads to robustness; knock out one pathway and there are others to pick up the slack. Many of the studies probing the mechanisms of anesthesia tend to perturb one or a few receptors – either pharmacologically or via genetic studies (knock-in, knock out, RNAi). It remains an open question how this all works.
That the ability to be anesthetized is important is undisputed. It stands to reason that something this important – evidenced by its sheer ubiquity through the tree of life – would be robust, containing redundant paths to achieve the same end. Perhaps anesthesia is not primarily about certain compounds (and they are a diverse group) provoking some specific response (e.g. blocking sodium channels). Maybe it’s that introducing some noxious compound into the system provokes the physiological system at large to invoke a non-specific response – leading to the suppression of excitation and enhancement of inhibition – resulting in sedation.
Probing the mechanisms of inhaled anesthesics with single-receptor mutations is like trying to hold a beach ball underwater – with one finger.
