Ah, it is another magnificent morning here in Sewickley, and I am enjoying my morning routine of Italian coffee, Chobani Yogurt (Pineapple, yesterday was Mango, tomorrow will likely be Dark Cherry) and contemplating The Meaning of My Life, as it is my 59th birthday today (see When I was Young, written on the occasion of my 55th, and 57!), sitting on a comfortable grey couch looking out the floor-to-ceiling glass window, facing East, with sunlight streaming through the gaps between the lush green leaves of a gorgeous Magnolia tree.
Magnolia is a 1999 American drama film written, directed and co-produced by Paul Thomas Anderson. It stars an ensemble cast, including Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, Julianne Moore and John C. Reilly.
Steel Magnolias is a 1989 American comedy-drama film directed by Herbert Ross and starring Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, and Julia Roberts. It grossed over $96 million (on a budget of $15 million).
Indeed, it has been Another Year in Paradise.
Another Day in Paradise is a song written and recorded by English drummer and singer Phil Collins. It was a worldwide success, eventually becoming one of the most successful songs of his solo career. It won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year at the 1991 awards ceremony.
As you know from Paradise Reimagined my interpretation of jivanmukti is Liberation while Living, where beyond the material comforts for a luxurious lifestyle (exotic cars, private jets, Four Seasons home and vacation, Michelin rated restaurants and so on), there is ample leisure to be creative:
Where time is anything but money.
To be free of imaginative restraints.
To be inventive simply by casting a glance from a different angle.
To infuriate Puritans by actually being happy.
Let me take the opportunity to list a few publications year-to-date:
Implementing Innovations in US Transplantation System
Quantum Annealing Research at CMU: Algorithms, Hardware, Applications
Dynamic Exception Points for Fair Liver Allocation
Quantum Machine Learning for Pneumonia Detection
Another academic year has begun, and one of the PhD classes I teach is Healthcare Operations. (Here is my post on it from 2020. The other class is Quantum Integer Programming and Machine Learning.) I find it refreshing to reread the three chapters of The Making of Modern Medicine by Michael Bliss:
- Fatalism: Montreal, 1885. It covers the anti-vaccination movement (mainly from the poor and religious French-Canadians), and, has so many themes that still are in play today, as in the documentary film Virulent: The Vaccine War for which I was one of the Executive Producers (see Mes Annees). Of course, I will cover vaccine supply chains in the course.
- The Secular Saints of Johns Hopkins. I absolutely love the phrase “Salvation through Science” that they used for their Research Training.
Following my own Transcendental Engagement framework, one of the (four) pillars is Spiritual Nourishment, where I expect to find Salvation through Social Entrepreneurship, aka OrganJet (and Nudge Videos), and additionally, through research on Liquid Biopsy, Cancer Genomics, Split Liver Transplantation, Fair Liver Allocation, and Quantum Machine Learning for Pneumonia Detection.
- Mastery: Toronto, 1922. This covers the discovery of Insulin. I remember seeing a movie on this when I was young and being really inspired.
Of course, I am well aware of the irony that William Osler declared that “the master-word in medicine” was ‘work’ aimed against “wasting energies in idleness, drink and other dissipations” when my own mantra (Weston Brahmin)is
Leisure, Luxury and Pursuit of Newness
with particular focus these days on
Mythology. Poetry. Cocktails.
in addition to
Movies. Physics. Cars.
Of course, I was paying attention to F1 last weekend, the race yielding:
McLaren. Red Bull. Ferrari. McLaren. Ferrari.
