Movies – Julie Fredrickson

I love Carl Sagan’s Contact. I first read the book in my middle school years and was allowed to watch the movie starring Jodie Foster despite having a very limited “screen time” diet.

As I got older I was allowed to watch edifying science fiction and book adaption only if I had read the source material. Contact passed both tests

It’s a beautiful story of faith and science about on a radio astronomer who finds a signal from alien intelligence which kicks off a planet wide space race to make contact.

There is a scene in the film where our protagonist Dr Arroway is set to launch a machine which we humans do not fully understand but is presumed to be some sort of transportation device.

Just as the countdown nears zero, she loses contact with the ground team. Roaring machinery and turbulence drowns her voice as she repeats over and over “I am OK to go” until a blind colleague finally picks her voice out of the static. The capsule is let go. I won’t spoiler it.

I had a little moment of being out of contact myself today. I am now the proud owner of a hyperbaric chamber but still getting used to the machine. Alex, watching me as I adjusted, communicated with me through the glass with gestures.

Hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy has roots in diving as managing pressure changes is an important aspect of safety for underwater and high altitude work.

When diving you don’t give a thumbs up to show you are alright. Thumbs up actually means ascend. You give the OK sign to communicate that you are doing fine.

The “OK” hand signal in diving is formed by touching the tip of the thumb and index finger together to make a circle, with the other three fingers extended upward.

Even as I was a little dizzy and struggling to acclimate I was ultimately “ok to go.”

It’s hard not see every day as more of a beak with the past even as so much remains the same. No wonder the French have that handy slogan about “plus ça change” as systems remain even with violence. They really know how to balance being disgruntled with the past.

I was suggesting La Haine to someone earlier this week as the French movie that made an impression on Gen X and elder millennials who paid attention to Francophone culture. It’s hard not to think current problems are similar tensions recycled for a whole new era. Atmospheric, vulgar and dangerous are the keywords.

The Hate or La Haine by Matthieu Kassovitz

The addiction economy repackaged the same old things that kept our attention economy running. And they will keep running it till it is so refined and so well packaged you won’t even remember that Starship Troopers was meant as a satire of fascism.

We repeat so much. The Churn as the Expanse called it.

Amos: This boss I used to work for in Baltimore, he called it the Churn. When the rules of the game change.
Kenzo: What game?
Amos: The only game. Survival. When the jungle tears itself down and builds itself into something new. The Expanse

Survival breaks out into the only game all the time and we are always running a Red Queens race. So try not to get too distracted. Ween yourself off of anything that you’ve not got any reason to hold dear. Change to meet what you can so long as you can still see yourself.