"In a Moment": In a high school in Germany, music and basketball set off a relationship

“In a Moment” (“In Einem Moment”), directed and written by Sharon Lucia, is a sweet coming out film set in a high school in Germany.  The film as shown on YouTube did not offer subtitles.

Max (Born Helge Jochum) prepares a guitar song (“Meine Kleine Festung”) for a rock concert, and plays basketball (imported from America). He witnesses Leon (Aaron Rufer) get bullied. Later, when Leon shadows him on the court in practice, Max feels some intimacy.

  

Leon will indeed open up to him after the concert.  The music (arranged by moog) sounds like a theme from Arvo Part, I think, and it sometimes is a church hymn.

Picture: Whiteface Mountain, NY, 2012 (mine) 

"Papercut": Just conversation in the back seat of a cab

Omad Productions offer “Papercut” by Damian Overton.

Two closeted actors talk in the back seat of a cab about the film awards they will get.  One of them even says he is straight.

The cab driver has different ideas, though.

   

Both young men are “interesting” and the film could have done more with this material.

"What If We Relocated Humanity to Proxima B?"

Some day we may do this: “What If We Relocated Humanity to Proxima B?”

This is a relatively new “evacuate Earth” video.

A select group of humans boards a spaceship that will take generations to get to Proxima B.  It will have an authoritarian political structure.  Everyone has to have kids.  People will be born and die on the vehicle.  Everyone will have to share the same communist version.

The Chinese may be better at this.

  

Proxima B’s earth-like planet may well be tidally locked and is not likely to have free oxygen.  

"Just Like Arcadia", a gay Garden of Eden that starts out with perfect communism and non-compete

“Just Like Arcadia” (7 min) is a short film by Serj Llado, presented by Cine Gluck.

  

The world starts as a gay garden of Eden, perfect communism, off the grid, with no need for ego or initiative. It’s only when ego comes into the picture that, well, the pretty boys start smoking.

  

There was no need for women, for reproduction, for genetic diversity.

   

The film appears to be shot in Spain, Castille.

Picture, mine, near Myrtle Beach SC, Feb. 2019 

"The Math of Epidemics": statistics, and differential equations; many good videos (2 of them here)

Professor Tom Britton at the University of Stockholm, from Vetenkapenshus (36 min) explains “Mathematics of the Corona Outbreak”.

He models diseases abstractly, and mentions how HIV developed in the 1980s with a smaller totality of susceptible populations but very long incubations which is what resulted in increasing the R-naught.  The R0 came down with changes in behavior and with drugs that suppressed the virus.

The presentation with regard to Covid19 (Sars-Cov2) is relatively abstract and simplified.

Then Trefor Bazett explains “The Math of Epidemics” with an introduction to the SIR Model.   He uses differential equations to model outbreaks (a system of three equations).  This reminds me of an undergraduate course at GW and then a more difficult course in Partial Differential Equations at KU (starting with the Wave Equation, which may matter to quantum theory now) with a text by Blaisdell which was hard to follow as I remember (in 1966).

For predicting the peak of an outbreak (like in New York now), it is the second derivative of the curve that matters, it needs to become negative for the actual slope to flatten. I’m not sure which functions would mimic the curves;  maybe my 1968 thesis “Minimax Rational Function Approximation” (KU in Lawrence, KS)  matters.

The graph on page 12 of my thesis (picture) looks like a poorly controlled pandemic with recurrent waves with sharp peaks, where there had been no social distancing (e.g., Trump). I’ll look into this some more and see if this is a close model to outbreaks.

"Elevate" from the series "Frame of Mind" by Braden Summers

“Elevate”, by Braden Summers, is the first short film in a series called “Frame of Mind”.

   

A male-female trans person (Aug Wang) rides a glitzy elevator and gradually interacts a little bit with the people.

  

The link from the director on Vimeo is here.
     
There is no embed.  So I embedded one of his other videos.

"Science Proves Dogs Really Loves Us", and there is a genetic twist

“Science Proves Dogs Really Love Us but For a surprising Reason” by Anton Petrov.

Petrov was trying to raise money for a dog charity in South Korea.

Dog personalities and attachment to humans comes from the way oxytocin works, but, compared to wolves, they also have a genetic predisposition like those with Williams Syndrome in people. People with this syndrome may demonstrate a dyspraxia similar to mine, but I am not particularly sociable.  

The syndrome is quite interesting, in that it sometimes lead to individuals with verbal skills that seem to outflank their lack of intelligence in other areas.  And they are unusually friendly or sociable.

Wolves, compared to dogs, have the pack behavior but not the same friendliness.

   

Cats may, however, for entirely different reasons which Petrov will explore in another video. And Petrov mentioned that dolphins have languages with actual grammar.