It’s hard to believe I was in Haiti only seven months ago. It’s a weird dichotomy of feeling like time has been going both very fast and very slow, all at once.
Since my group went to Haiti in January, UPC has sent two more groups: one was a team similar to ours (i.e. short term, 10 day mission), the other is team of engineering students from the UW sent by UPC for World Deputation.
Team Haiti: Adam, Jeff, and Jordan
18.0 mm || 1/60 || f/3.5 || ISO200 || NIKON D70 Seattle, Washington, United States
They’re just about ready to return, but have been keeping a blog detailing some of the work they’ve been doing and fun they’ve been having:
This is going to be the first of many posts over the next few weeks as I slowly process and upload over 24GB of data. Today, videos! In High-Definition! For free!
I did something odd and posted them in two places. Why on earth would you do that? you ask? Because I’m trying to keep most of the stuff on Flickr, however they have a 150MB/90sec limit. I keep this value in mind when I shooting. However, some clips are several minutes long and/or several hundred megabytes in size1, and those went on YouTube.
Enjoy the video’s. I’d suggest you watch all the Fireworks ones (because they were that awesome this year). Also make sure that you watch all the videos in HD. On Flickr, click the “HD” icon in the bottom right corner. On YouTube, you’ll need to click the play button before the “HD” button will come up in the bottom right corner.
During high school graduation, I gave a speech. I remember having a fun time writing it. I wanted it to be my own special moment of profoundness. Whether or not I accomplished that is not for me to decide.
Let’s take a short walk almost four years back in my life:
I pulled quotes from a couple of sources which had been influential in my life, namely Shakespeare and Star Trek.
Quoting Shakespeare is nothing new for anyone. In fact, Star Trek takes from Shakespeare on a fairly regular basis and there’s some considerable similarities between Klingons and Roman Shakespeare1.
However, I did not use Shakespeare solely because of its Star Trek connection.
I had a hard time with Shakespeare in high school, and for me, quoting it was sort of a way for me to say: “I hate how complex you [the works of Shakespeare] are, but I still respect and admire you.”
I suppose that I could have also quoted Wordsworth, Blake, or Coleridge. But I didn’t.
I watched the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on Sunday and was reminded of one of the Star Trek quotes I included in the speech:
It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. We are explorers. We explore our lives, day by day. And we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge. And that is why I am here. Not to conquer you with weapons or ideas, but to co-exist and learn.
I never actually attributed this quote to Star Trek in my speech, which is probably one of my biggest regrets of the entire thing. I think my reasoning at the time was to try and reduce any negative impact that mentioning Star Trek would have on my speech.
For example, let’s say that I quoted this:
As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.
By itself, these come off as great words. Now let’s say that I told you C.S. Lewis wrote them. Now they’re even better words! Profound statement and respectable author makes a great quote.
Now let me postulate that Adolf Hitler was whom I quoted2. My guess is that would not go over so well.
Not that I would/should ever equate Star Trek and Hitler, but I think my point is made.
Back to the Star Trek quote though. I really like it, especially the first sentence: “It is the unknown that defines our existence.”
I like it because it is a statement of purpose and one that I can agree with. I exist because there are unknowns.
The statement of purpose then leads to a statement of mission: “We are explorers. We explore our lives, day by day. And we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge.”
We are explorers. We explore. We explore the human element and we explore physical element. And as we explore, we find answers to the aforementioned unknowns. But we also find more knowns.
To me, that’s exciting.
There really is no other point to this except to share that thought and rectify my failed attribution.
I went to quite a few weddings this past summer (some might even call the number absurd). However, none of the first dances were as awesome as this one. Sorry guys; I love you all, but this takes the cake (pun?). Better luck next time:
This is an amazing video that helps show the issues we (as people) have with organizing things in a natively non-physical world. It’s made by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University: Information R/evolution
Wesch has a some other great videos worth watching on YouTube: MWesch’s Videos
