If you don’t have time to watch the video below, read this summary now. It’s well worth the investment of your time. This is visionary.
Crazy Italian Packers fan celebrates on the Super Bowl field – Shutdown Corner – NFL – Yahoo! Sports.
The above story tells all of the fantastic details of this incredible “crazy Green Bay Packers’ fan” story. But here are the two Camera Angles you need to view to really get this story, and not with jaded view, discount it as some stunt. It appears to have been a real coincidence and this gentleman leads a charmed life, apparently.
1. Gio (the fan’s) camera (view at minutes 3:00-3:15):
2. The Aaron Rodgers’ Disney commercial (Gio is in the last angle of Rodgers):
In the video by Gio, be sure to watch between 3:00 and 3:15 and you will clearly hear Aaron Rodgers giving the line for the Disney Commercial. One view is chaotic fan insanity, the other is strangely, amusingly ordered. Enjoy!
Reading this opinion, and being very well versed in the science of stem cells, let me say that I’m shocked at the ignorance of the judge in this case. His factual statements are so far off and so wildly inaccurate as to show, in my opinion, quite a bit of reckless disregard for the impact of his decision, if such a thing is possible in the exercise of judicial powers.
Hopefully, and I’m not a litigator, this can be addressed on appeal. But the fates of many people are tied up in this, in profound ways that this judge appears to not really have fully understood. Perhaps the NIH, in approaching the litigation, did not approach it with appropriate zeal. I think anyone in stem cell research who didn’t try to intercede in this case, should be joining together now in the appeal process for the injunction and thereafter. Major efforts to lobby Congress probably also have to get into high gear.
You can read the decision, here.
By the way, some of the media are reporting that the decision makes stem cell research illegal. I came across this in my brief review of the comments for the New York Times story. This appears to be part of an unfortunate tendency to misreport on the subject of Human Embryonic Stem Cell (“hESC”) research. The ruling makes the NIH policy, stemming from President Bush’s first decision to provide some funding to stem cells, through Obama’s executive order, illegal. That means that Federal Funding for research that destroys, discards, or knowingly subjects embryos to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for fetuses in utero under federal law is prohibited. It doesn’t mean the research is illegal itself.
For an example of an incorrect article, see The New York Times:
For scientists, the problem with the judge’s reasoning is that it may render all scientific work regarding embryonic stem cells illegal — including work allowed under the more restrictive policy adopted by President George W. Bush in 2001.
I think this is a case where a journalist misheard the point of a lawyer perhaps. The ruling affects Federal Funding for ALL scientific work regarding embryonic stem cells… it doesn’t make the research illegal. The judge is certainly wrong about the impact of his own decision, which will possibly be embarrassing even to him, when he eventually realizes it. However, the NYTimes, in recognizing that the judge got it terribly wrong, takes it too far as well. It’s shocking how many sources get this stuff wrong.
One additional note, the pending NIH approval of a proposed change to the definition of stem cells may yet also have an impact in the context of hESCs. Stay tuned.
In the context of my previous posting of the Culture Networks 2010 presentation, Clotaire Rapaille, is referenced quite frequently. (If you haven’t gone through that fascinating presentation, please do so now.) As a general primer on social network science and study, please see Wikipedia: Social Network.
Clotaire Rapaille is more about the organic nature of our ideas and thought processes. Apparently he developed his key ideas about marketing from, according to wikipedia, his work
as a psychologist for autistic children and studying Konrad Lorentz theory of Imprints and John Bowlby theory of attachment. This work led him to believe that while children learn a given word and the idea connected with it, they associate it with certain emotions. He called that primal emotional association an imprint. This imprint determines our attitude towards a particular thing. These pooled individual imprints make up a collective cultural unconscious, which unconsciously pre-organize and influence the behavior of a culture.
So I thought it might be worthwhile to drill down a bit into his concepts, and the easiest way to do that was to reference this fascinating 2004 episode of Frontline, called “The Persuaders”. I don’t claim Rapaille is necessary or relevant to the social network concepts, but I did find quotations from his book in the presentation both fascinating and compelling enough to want to know more. It may be that his ideas are potent via the evolution of modern social networks and the shrinkage of distance as a meaningful barrier to the transport of ideas, among people and cultures. The focus of Rapaille’s efforts is on why people do what they do, not on what they say are the reasons for their actions. In the context of understanding Social Networks, this distinction is very useful.
The review on Amazon is not encouraging, but the book has sold very well, so that review may not be an indicator of anything. The ideas are worthy of understanding. And since he was quoted quite a bit in the presentation, I’m thinking, why not spend a little time contemplating what his ideas are about? Honestly, I may buy his book to get a better sense, after I’ve done this bit of research.
Check out Clotaire Rapaille’s book The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do
Below is a short video segment, on Rapaille, from the PBS Frontline report on modern marketing called “The Persuaders”. Only a small segment is about Rapaille:
After you’ve watched the above segment which comes midway into the program, you may want to click HERE to view the program from the beginning.
The complete program offers a fascinating insight into how advertising influences us, in many ways. The discussion on media embedded advertising, of which we very likely are often unaware, was both interesting and a bit troubling. I thought the segment on Sex and the City, and the Absolut Hunk episode, was amusing, for instance. But I also found myself disquieted by the discussion. I do often enjoy advertising as entertainment, but the suffusion of advertising throughout our culture and daily experiences appears to be driving culture and meaning in ways that undermine our sense of self and our well-being. In those moments of revelation, it might not be an exaggeration to feel like culture, where it may have once been life affirming, is dead (or dying) and commerce, the usurper king of our competitive social drives, may destroy us with all of the junk of our basest wants and puerile emotional needs.
On the other hand, given the presentation on Culture Networks, to some degree, perhaps less overt and obvious, all of our communications via commercial networks have been evolving toward this ultimate revelation: Commercial memes are taking over the evolution of our very notions of culture and society. If you don’t have some time to watch the above videos, honestly, the more interesting thing to do first, is to go through the Culture Networks presentation.
A very interesting, simple yet sophisticated, powerpoint presentation. Please take 20 minutes or so to view this, if you are so inclined:
