Into the Wild

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." -- Henry David Thoreau

I'm on a pretty good run of picking movies. I would say that the last 3 I've seen will be in my year-end Top 10. (3:10 to Yuma and Michael Clayton being the other two)


Into the Wild might be the best of the group. A 22 year old college graduate name Chris McCandless, chooses to opt out of the life lined up for him by his parents and society, instead choosing to donate his life savings, ditch his car, and begin a tramp's journey through America that culminates with him in the wilderness of Alaska. For a young man, he seems to have a defined moral code. A code that is influenced by the great authors he admires: London, Tolstoy, Thoreau.

The cast is outstanding. Katherine Keener turns in some of her best work (40-year-old Virgin, Being John Malkovich) as a hippy that Chris befriends. Vince Vaughn tones down his vince-vaughnness a little bit and turns in a good performance in a cameo role. And best of the group, I believe, is Hal Holbrook as an older widower that Chris brings out of his self-imposed shell.

In the title role is the relatively unknown actor, Emile Hirsch. His performance is revelatory and goes a long way towards helping the viewer buy into the character and the movie.

The characters he meets all identify with some part of Chris' life. Keener's character has not spoken to her son in several years and doesn't know where he is. As such, she understands what Chris' parents are feeling. Holbrook's character lost his child in death and sees Chris as a surrogate.

This is Sean Penn's best directing work. He gives the story and lot of space and doesn't crowd it with too much dialog. Penn also wrote the screenplay.

This movie is, quite simply, brilliant. I believe the viewer can take a lot from it. Don't get so caught up in what your are "supposed" to do, or what society expects from you. Don't get caught up in material things. They don't make you a better or more happy person.

This is based on Jon Krakaeur's book of the same name, which itself was an expansion of an article by Krakaeur. While I have read his other works, Into Thin Air (Mt. Everest disaster) and Under the Banner of Heaven (Mormons), I haven't read this. He's a great writer and I've heard that the movie is faithful to the book.

Last but not least is the incredible soundtrack highlighted with 9 songs by Eddie Vedder. Vedder, a close friend of Penn, and a contributor to an earlier Penn movie (Dead Man Walking), perfectly evokes nature and space and longing with his songs, serving as a perfect backdrop to McCandless's journey. Many of the songs even speak directly to the things McCandless strived for, such as the abandonment of the need for material goods - "Empty pockets will/Allow a greater sense of wealth." - in Far Behind. I'm a huge Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder fan and have been every since college. I'm going to get this CD this weekend.

Obviously, this movie comes highly recommended from me. At awards time, I really think this movie may see acting noms for Keener, Holbrook and Hirsch, writing and directing ones for Penn, and soundtrack for Vedder. Grade: A+

"There is pleasure in the pathless woods
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and the music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more."

Lord Byron

California Trip Highlights

All the sordid details of our trip to California:

Day 1-2 - Disneyland

Day 3 - Farmer's Market

Day 3-4 -Manhattan Beach

But, wait, if you act now, you will not only have to look at pictures of yours truly but you will also get recountings of near-encounters with no-name actors and a seemingly endless retelling of every single thing we ate. Most people would pay a lot of money for these things, but you, my loyal blog readers, get this for free. Lucky you.

Going to California ...

"Made up my mind to make a new start,
Going to california with an aching in my heart.
Someone told me theres a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.
Took my chances on a big jet plane,
Never let them tell you that theyre all the same.
The sea was red and the sky was grey,
Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today ..." -- Led Zeppelin

Just kidding, not making a "new start". Just going to Cali for a long weekend. Disneyland Thursday, Manhattan Beach through Sunday. Hoping to go to the Farmer's Market Friday and maybe Griffith Park to get my James Dean swerve on.

I'll have internet access all weekend and will be blogging often.

Michael Clayton

Expertly written and cast, Michael Clayton is all that you would want in a legal thriller. Part Grisham, part Erin Brockovich. The dialogue is sharp and technical, but not so much that it loses you.

The title character, played by George Clooney, is a "fixer" in a law firm. A "fixer" is an attorney who cleans up messes and gives clients a dose of reality in places where others might try to sugar coat it. He is called in to "fix" one of the firm's own attorneys, a character played exceptionally by Tom Wilkinson. That character is portrayed by the firm as having went crazy, while he maintains he's only had a "moment of clarity". He's been the lead attorney defending a large agricultural corporation who apparently has knowingly hid information damaging to them.

Wilkinson's character's moment of clarity is the realization that he has used the last 9 years of his life defending a company that is knowingly making people get sick and die. A realization long overdue, obviously, and not taken well by the firm who have received hundreds of millions of dollars in fees or by the agricultural company who see the publicity nightmare looming.

Michael Clayton is sent to talk him out of his change of heart but ends up having one of his own. The story works because all of the characters are real and flawed.

The movie is very appealing because it makes the viewer think about their own lives and the choices he/she makes. We all have these moments of clarity. My last major one led to my quitting a management job in a great company and branching out on my own. I'm about due for another.

We may have these moments and choose not to act on them. It's when you get older and keep ignoring those clarion calls, that you slowly lose your integrity and your soul. It becomes easier and easier to lose every bit of humanity that you may once have had. Don't keep thinking there will be a better opportunity or a more convenient time to do the right thing. Right now is the right time to do the right thing.

It's all well and good to decide on changing your life. Frequently we don't have the luxury of being able to afford a change, financially or otherwise. But, how can we afford not to?

What are each of us worth? How much will it take for us to turn the other way, to subvert our integrity? Really, we're all sell-outs. If someone else pays you to do something ... you are selling out. Whores, basically. But, hopefully, we're prostituting ourselves for some greater good. How we are defined as people is largely determined by where we draw the line.

We can frequently rationalize the things that a company we work for does. One person is just a small cog in the machinery ... or so we think. If we knowingly work, buy goods from, or promote a company that is immoral, illegal, unethical, then aren't we just as culpable? Aren't we giving tacit approval with our silence? It is our responsibility as workers to call out our employers when necessary just as it is our responsibility as citizens to call out our government when necessary. Loyalty and patriotism are hollow words if we are propping up unethical people.

I'm not talking about quitting your jobs and joining the Peace Corps. I'm just saying keep your eyes open. It's not about agreeing with everything your co-workers and bosses say, politically or otherwise. People of good conscience can disagree ... and that's OK. But if somebody is being unethical or is endangering someone else, if you look the other way, you might as well be an accomplice.

It's with no apparent sense of irony that I start this discussion after just a couple of days ago telling you about all the perks that I get working for certain people. I believe those are borne out of satisfaction with a job well done, not with any kind of quid pro quo. I've turned down clients who I had ethical concerns about.

Reviewing this movie appears to have been an excuse for me to lecture ... sorry about that. I really liked the movie. Clooney is on an incredible roll. His career right now is a model of what I would hope to do in my own field -- work on projects that mean something, that are provocative and intelligent. When not doing those projects, have fun, do no harm, and make money that will allow you to make more meaningful projects. Grade: A

"This is not a psychotic breakdown; it's a cleansing moment of clarity." -- Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network

Construction Orange

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some weeks you feel like you must be living right ... or that you are just one lucky bastard. Probably the latter. This was one of those weeks.

A couple of days ago, I made $60/hr for 5 hours to stand around and eat donuts. A client of mine who owns a print shop was having a $100,000+ large format plotter delivered to his store and installed by the techs who brought it. It was one of the most complicated devices I've ever seen and took them until noon just to assemble.

Not to get too technical, but my sole purpose there was to make sure that the new device got an IP address from the network so that it could be accessed by all the computers. 5 minute job ... tops! But there was no way of knowing when that 5 minutes would be. So, my client wanted me to be there the entire day. And he wanted to pay me for the entire day. I tried to insist to him that we discount the amount of hours. He would hear nothing of it. He just felt more comfortable having his "computer guy" there while they were setting everything up. He'd had bad experiences in the past with other techs and wanted someone he trusted to watch over everything.

I get that he was not just paying for technical knowledge but also piece of mind. He appreciated the work that I've done for him in tough situations in the past and knows that I always go out of my way to be honest and thorough. And that I'd never overcharge (he's actually accused me of undercharging!).

So, forget all the technical crap, I was basically a DOT worker standing around on the side of the road, "supervising". I just didn't have the orange construction vest.



Speaking of undeserved benefits, one of my clients gave me his extra Palm Treo 700p yesterday. Broadband Internet, Palm OS, QWERTY keyboard, etc. Sweet. I am the master scrounger. This is a $500+ phone and less than a year old. It was bought for his dad, but the dad decided he wanted the iPhone instead.



Yeah, I'm really living the "simple" life. Sorry, but I dig all those crazy toys way too much.

In the past, clients have given me football tickets, baseball tickets - you name it. I mooch with the best of 'em.

Well, not really mooch. I don't seek out any of this stuff. I've just been fortunate. There are some regular clients that I've had for 8 years plus and who I would go do work for any time of the day, any day of the week. And I always bill them less hours than I work. You build a good relationship in any job and there is a lot of things that go above and beyond a normal business relationship. That's probably the biggest aspect of this job that I like -- the close friendships that I've built with a lot of my clients.

Hopefully, my good fortune has something to do with the way I run my business. I don't believe in karma in a mystical sense (I believe Shawn's our resident "karma" expert), but I do believe that in the grand scheme of things if you do good for others, it generally comes back around. But even if it doesn't, it's still the right thing to do.

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." -- Steve Jobs

Congrats Al!

2007 Nobel Peace Prizes to:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - Geneva, Switzerland

Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. - USA

"for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"

The Problem with Atheism

"Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself." -- J.K. Rowling

Second hand, by way of Andrew Sullivan's blog, is noted atheist (but don't call him that) Sam Harris' admonition to atheists to not be so quick to accept the label of "atheist":

"... Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities, especially if the thing you are naming isn't really a thing at all. And atheism, I would argue, is not a thing. It is not a philosophy, just as "non-racism" is not one. Atheism is not a worldview—and yet most people imagine it to be one and attack it as such. We who do not believe in God are collaborating in this misunderstanding by consenting to be named and by even naming ourselves.

Another problem is that in accepting a label, particularly the label of "atheist," it seems to me that we are consenting to be viewed as a cranky sub-culture. We are consenting to be viewed as a marginal interest group that meets in hotel ballrooms. I'm not saying that meetings like this aren't important. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think it was important. But I am saying that as a matter of philosophy we are guilty of confusion, and as a matter of strategy, we have walked into a trap. It is a trap that has been, in many cases, deliberately set for us. And we have jumped into it with both feet.

While it is an honor to find myself continually assailed with Dan [Dennett], Richard [Dawkins], and Christopher [Hitchens] as though we were a single person with four heads, this whole notion of the "new atheists" or "militant atheists" has been used to keep our criticism of religion at arm's length, and has allowed people to dismiss our arguments without meeting the burden of actually answering them. And while our books have gotten a fair amount of notice, I think this whole conversation about the conflict between faith and reason, and religion and science, has been, and will continue to be, successfully marginalized under the banner of atheism.

So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves "atheists." We should not call ourselves "secularists." We should not call ourselves "humanists," or "secular humanists," or "naturalists," or "skeptics," or "anti-theists," or "rationalists," or "freethinkers," or "brights." We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them ..."

While I agree with a lot of Harris' arguments, he has a tendency to outclever himself sometimes - and this might be one of those occasions. He seems to be getting just a bit hung up on semantics. Whether I call myself an atheist, humanist or skeptic, it doesn't fundamentally change who I am. If an argument or a critique of something (in this case, religion) has merit, should it matter where it comes from? Maybe that's naive on my part. As he says, naming "has allowed people to dismiss our arguments without meeting the burden of actually answering them. And while our books have gotten a fair amount of notice, I think this whole conversation about the conflict between faith and reason, and religion and science, has been, and will continue to be, successfully marginalized under the banner of atheism".

It's too bad that people are not taken on the merit of their ideas, instead of what we perceive them to be. We're too quick to slap a label on them. I certainly am. I've bandied about terms like neo-con, right-wing, liberal, etc. It's a shortcut. People's opinions are hopefully more nuanced than a mere name can capture.

I'd have to agree with him that naming something certainly makes it an easier target. Hence the tendency of some to give the mantle of religion to atheism.



So, overall, I agree with a lot of his comments. Where I could disagree is in his position that we should allow our fear of being label atheists to affect our behavior. Certainly a lot of atheists call themselves humanists or agnostics because the fear of being ostracized. That's a problem with society, not with one's views. If more were not afraid of the label, maybe society would get over it's hangups.

"What's in a name?
That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) -- William Shakespeare

Kids

Bush cares about kids ... right.





Our kids may not have healthcare, but at least our "chidrens do learn". It's just our moron president that doesn't.

I take Saturdays off for religious reasons

The weather's finally cooled down enough (a chilly 90 degrees) that one can go hiking without evaporating. We checked out a new trail (new to us) at South Mountain Park (the largest muni park in the country). It was a nice trail with lots of elevation changes and great scenery (see pics here). To see even more pics (taken by my 6 year old son), go to Ladybug Writing. My son Alex has a blog now. It's funny in a Steven Wright ironic sort of way (completely unintentionally).

Heading home from the park, we looked for something to eat. The wife and kid decided on Chick-Fil-A. I picked up something from Baja Fresh. As a matter of principle, I try to avoid eating at restaurants that purposely misspell their name for the sake of cuteness. That and the fact that they are not open on Sundays. I'm thinking of starting a discrimination suit. If I want chicken nuggets on Sunday, I should be able to get them! For some reason, lawyers won't return my calls. I'm thinking it might be something along the lines of Coke suing Coke for taste infringement. But I digress.

I kid. Businesses (especially privately owned ones) have the right to run their ship in a manner they see fit, as long as it is not discriminatory. And I have seen no indication that Chick-Fil-A is doing anything too hokey.

I'm just saying. The Christian music piped in and the Winshape posters (marriage retreats, Christian kids' camps) on the wall might make some people feel they are in the wrong place. By the same token, a Christian might feel out of place in Hot Topic with pentagram jewelry and Lamb of God playing. I guess I'm not really criticizing, just observing. When you are not looking for some things, you might not see them. I only started to notice some of the things because I had wondered why they weren't open on Sundays and delved a bit deeper. Their official line:

Admittedly, closing all of our restaurants every Sunday makes us a rarity in this day and age. But it's a little habit that has always served us well, so we're planning to stick with it.

Our founder, Truett Cathy, wanted to ensure that every Chick-Fil-A employee and restaurant operator had an opportunity to worship, spend time with family and friends or just plain rest from the work week. Made sense then, still makes sense now.

Nothing wrong with that, I guess.


And on a completely unrelated note, Dbacks make the playoffs!! Woo-hoo! And we're going to game one of the Divisional Series on Wednesday. I got on the Internet early this morning when they went on sale and was able to get tickets for us and my folks. This is the first time my dad has ever been able to go to a playoff game of any kind and was thrilled when I told him.

3:10 to Yuma

You know you've probably done a movie right when my wife actually likes a Western ... a violent one, no less. The charisma of one of it's main stars, Russell Crowe, is a big reason why. She actually agreed to go see this movie on a "date" night.

3:10 to Yuma is the story of a down on his luck rancher, Christian Bale as Dan Evans, who agrees to accompany a ruthless killer, Russell Crowe as Ben Wade, to Yuma to get on a train and to stand trial. A road movie of sorts -- both characters go through a sort of transformation through the adventures they experience on the trip.

3:10 certainly owes something to recent so-called "revisionist" Westerns like Unforgiven and The Proposition. They all do a great job of turning the classic Western motifs of good and bad / black and white on their heads. Life is shades of gray. I'm guessing W might not like this movie. He likes his Westerns cut and dried - Bush as John Wayne, terrorists taking the places of Indians. Never mind that we are taking those Indians land or are trying to make them more like us. I probably overuse this quote from Unforgiven, but it's one of my favorites and very apropos to this movie:

Munny: "It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. You take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have."

Kid: "Yeah, well I guess they had it comin'."

Munny: "We all have it coming, kid."

Even if you don't think you like Westerns, go see this movie. It's themes of loyalty, honesty and family transcend the genre. The quality of the acting is consistent. Most notably, Crowe, Bale, Alan Tudyk (of Serenity) and Ben Foster as the light-in-the-loafer sidekick to Crowe's Ben Wade.

3:10 to Yuma's based on an Elmore Leonard story (the same guy that wrote Get Shorty, Jackie Brown and Out of Sight). It has a lot of the same moral ambiguity of those stories.

Crowe's character is so charming, intelligent and confident, you are forced to like him whereas you see Bale's character's faults and failures - as he sees his own. Do these characters ultimately redeem themselves and does the movie do a good job of handling it? I believe so, but you be the judge.

The movie is beautifully shot. I guess the biggest surprise of the movie is the dark humor. Not forced punchline type humor, mind you. But rather humor borne of the strange interaction between the characters. I highly recommend this movie. Grade: A

"Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends" -- Gandalf, Fellowship of the Ring

Crybabies

"And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven." -- Bible

PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. - Members of a Christian theater troupe are spreading the word that they're irate about Kathy Griffin's off-color speech in accepting a creative arts Emmy earlier this month.

The Miracle Theater in Pigeon Forge spent $90,440 on a full-page advertisement in USA Today that ran nationally Monday, proclaiming "enough is enough."

In accepting the Emmy for her Bravo reality show, "My Life on the D-List," Griffin said that "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus."

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "This award is my god now!"

"We at The Miracle Theater consider it an honor to stand for Jesus today," the ad said. "We may never win a national award. We may never be household names. We may never be seen in Hollywood. Although others may choose to use their national platform to slander our God, we are honored as professional entertainers to stand for Christ."

... Griffin's comments have also drawn ire from the Catholic League, an anti-defamation group that called on the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to "denounce Griffin's obscene and blasphemous comment" at the Sept. 9 ceremony. The E! channel chose to edit Griffin's speech when it aired the taped event last Saturday night.

Griffin, whose standup comedy shows often focus on mocking and dishing on celebrities, issued a statement through her publicist in response to the Catholic League's criticisms, indicating her statements were meant as a joke.

"Am I the only Catholic left with a sense of humor?" she said in the statement.

Russ Hollingsworth, general manager of The Miracle Theater, said members of the theater's cast were tired of celebrities' joking attitudes toward Jesus. The theater is sponsoring a petition on its Web site, Miracle Theater.

"When word reached our cast that a Hollywood celebrity had stood before TV cameras and said such vulgar things about Christ, they were incensed," he said. "It's just not OK anymore to mock Christians and Jesus with impunity."

Griffin was fired in 2005 from her job as an E! Channel red-carpet commentator after joking at the Golden Globe Awards that child actress Dakota Fanning had checked into rehab.

What level of respect should people's religious beliefs be afforded? Is religion fair game for satire or humor? Would atheists be offended by a joke about them? Was what she said actually offensive?

It's nauseating how many athletes and actors thank God for them scoring or winning something. If there was a God, do you think he would really care who won an Oscar or scored the winning touchdown? Griffin, raised Catholic, was playing on the irony of not thanking God. That's funny.

Here's the unedited quote from her:

Upon winning this past Saturday, Kathy said, "Can you believe this shit? I guess hell froze over. ... a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award."

"I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. So, all I can say is, 'suck it, Jesus.' This award is my god now."

I'll grant you that that quote would obviously rile some Christians. But she was trying to be funny ... and I have to personally attest that she succeeded.

Obviously some people would be up in arms if someone said on stage, "suck it, Allah". So, I'm not denying the effect of such statements. But, is there any real reason that people should take it so personally? Like the earlier Danish Muhammad cartoons flap, it's all just a bunch of religious zealots that need to chill a bit. If you are secure in your beliefs, why would you care what Kathy Griffin thought? Don't you think that as Christians, the Miracle Theater could have found a more noble use for $90K than to spend it on an ad condemning Kathy Griffin?

I think I'm asking more questions than answering. But I don't really have an answer for this one. I get why some people might be offended but at the same time wonder why we live in such a screwed-up society where people would be offended by a joke. I get that there needs to be a line. I took offense by the Don Imus comments earlier this year but am not sure he should have been fired. But who's to decide what the line is? And isn't it a moving target? Christians would probably say it wasn't. But discussions of "absolute" morality are for another time.

"Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place." -- Robert A. Heinlein

Blog list cleanup

A cleanup of my blog list is way overdue. I've been reading all of your blogs and like the comments I've see from many of your visitors. Here are the ones that I've added to my blog list. From Laura's blog, Sarchasm:

Stupidity is an Equal Opportunity Employer -- You have to like any web address that starts out "stupidass...". I'm sure that was merely coincidental, Donna.

It's My Life - pop culture musings

From Cyberkitten at Seeking a Little Truth:

Journal Wunelle - Movies, politics, religion. That's basically my world right there.

Our dear friend Sadie has a new blog, so I'm updating my link. She's got some outstanding crafts, so check her out: Craftily Ever After

from James at Genius of Insanity:

An Angry Dakota Democrat - I didn't know there were such things. A truly rare animal.

I'm removing the following blogs:

Liberal Desert - Nice blog, just doesn't speak to me.
The Hungry Blogger - Love you Isabella. I think it was originally through finding your blog that I ended up at GWB and in turn Laura and the rest is history. But, alas, she doesn't update her own blog. If you are still out there, let us know and I'll re-add the link.
A bit of this, a bit of that - Again, just not enough posting.
Vern's Blog - link issues
Minor Ripper - ditto


I'm going to keep the following links but will chastise them endlessly for never posting.

Eric's blog - Wow, he blogs never. I swear he's actually interesting in person. :-)
JT's blog - Probably too busy out being a mac daddy to post anything.
Great White Bear - OK, you've been given a reprieve since you just posted something.
Will Brady Journal - Hello Will ... I know you're out there.


Also, I added a new feature on the side of my blog. I had talked about the online library site that I had found awhile ago, LibraryThing. They have a little add-in for blogs that will generate a random list of a few books from my library. So, you'll get a little glimpse into the crap I read and it will serve as a reminder to me on what I still need to get around to reading.

"Privatized Tyranny"

On his last day of work, Alberto Gonzales, with a straight face, said the following:

"Over the past two and a half years, I have seen tyranny, dishonesty, corruption and depravity of types I never thought possible ... I've seen things I didn't know man was capable of."

And that was just Dick Cheney he was talking about. You should have heard what he said about Bush! Sorry ... I kid. Gonzales did say those words and they hold a lot of truth. But, just not in the way that he intended.


Speaking of tyranny and depravity, check out the great short film, Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and Alfonso Cuaron (of Children of Men fame). It does a good job of showing how some leaders use the period of collective shock after disasters to ramrod through those policies that they could not get passed in peaceful times. It compares that to shock treatment and to torture and the effect those methods have on the subject.

"Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change." -- Milton Friedman

Mr. Friedman was an advocate of using those times to push through free market policies that wouldn't stand a chance of passing during peaceful times. Guess who liked Miltie and his concepts of "privatized tyranny"? Yep - Nixon, Reagan, Bush. Milton Friedman -- the guy who once commented that "there is no poverty in America".

"The free market is socialism for the rich - [free] markets for the poor and state protection for the rich." -- Noam Chomsky

Get Your War On

I think that David Rees may just be the funniest political cartoonist out there right now. Of course, to call him a cartoonist may be stretching it because he is using stock black and white images. But, it's the clever and irreverent words that he puts to those images that makes him stand out. In three panels, he is able to get at the heart of the chest-thumping jingoism we call patriotism over here. Here are some of his latest (courtesy of David Rees and Rolling Stone Magazine):







Some of his older stuff is on his site and on Campus Progress.

And for one of the best beat downs of people that are now against the war but originally supported it, check out his blog post at Huffington Post.

Some of those that work forces ...

"Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses ..." -- "Killing in the Name of" - Rage Against the Machine

From the Arizona Republic:

Mesa police plan to discipline an officer who admitted making an obscene gesture as he drove past pro-immigrant protesters Wednesday in a marked police vehicle.

Sgt. Mike Doherty, a 20-year veteran, admitted he made obscene gestures "due to his general distaste for protesters," according to Holly Hosac, a Mesa police spokeswoman.

Doherty was in uniform when he passed about 30 members of Immigrants Without Borders, an immigrant advocacy group that has protested in the past against crackdowns on undocumented immigrants by Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The group was protesting peacefully at Alma School Road and Main Street. Several group members reported an officer displaying an obscene gesture twice as he drove past them. Information from witnesses led police to identify Doherty.

"While Doherty stated that he did not know what the demonstration was about, he acknowledged his actions were inappropriate and unprofessional," Hosac wrote in a press release.

Police Chief George Gascón said the department is required to respect the Constitutional rights of everyone, saying, "there is no justifiable reason for this type of behavior."

Police said disciplinary action against Doherty is pending but did not elaborate. He was working as a school resources officer for the past two weeks, but will be reassigned, police said.

I personally know several policemen and their intentions are noble and they seem to be in law enforcement for the right reasons. But civil service, whether it be police or politics, can also attract those that seek nothing but power. The goal of both should be to be the voice for those that don't have a voice.

This police officer should have been vigorously defending this group's right to protest. Instead, while in a position of authority, he let his inner-racist show.

Going Green - Update

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. -- Francis Bacon

Our latest attempts at greening up:

Mrs. Myer's Dryer Sheets - which you can get at Sprout's

Shaklee Laundry Soap

both biodegradable.

I'm proud that our earlier attempts are going as strong as ever (cloth napkins, grocery bags). BTW, I highly recommend IKEA's reusable bags for 59 cents. They're huge and sturdy. Several grocery stores (including Fry's here in the Valley) will give you a discount for using your own bags.

If we had any guts, we'd actually hang our clothes to dry instead of using our dryer. But, Noooo! -- we have to justify the money we spent on it in the first place. I know ... that sounds stupid. Kinda like saying that you are not going to read a book because you've paid for that perfectly good TV and cable and you don't want it to go to waste.

The biggest impediment to change is not the technology or even the cost. It's retraining ourselves. It's no wonder that a large part of society doesn't understand this when our own leaders preach consumerism (instead of conservation) in the face of tragedy. God forbid that any of us would ever make a sacrifice for the common good. Oops! I said "common good". I must be a Communist.


Also, go check out Leo's environment documentary, The 11th Hour, soon. I haven't seen it yet but will within the next week. If you've already seen it, post a review here.

"Purity" Ball

Let me preface this by saying that the concept of fathers and daughters building a strong relationship is, in and of itself, a good thing. But surely I'm not alone in thinking several things about the following are just a little weird (and unhealthy):

Girls will have a unique excuse to put on fancy dresses and prepare for a night of ceremony and dancing in Chandler next weekend at the Valley's first Father Daughter Purity Ball.

The First Southern Baptist Church of Scottsdale and New Life Pregnancy Centers are sponsoring the Sept. 7 event at the Castle at Ashley Manor. Girls and young women ages 10 and older who attend make commitments to live a pure life before God and set personal standards for themselves.

According to event's Web site, fathers also read covenants over their daughters and promise they will protect the girls' commitments and serve as positive role models of purity and spirituality. Their dedication is symbolized by commitment cards the girls sign during the ceremony and white roses laid at the foot of a cross.

"The dads or mentors commit before God to be a living example of purity," coordinator Mona McDonald said. "The daughters are going to try to do their best to honor their fathers' involvement in their life."

... The first Father Daughter Purity Ball was held in Colorado in 1998 by a Christian group called Generations of Light, according to Ashley Ellingson, development coordinator for the Arizona Baptist Children's Services.

"A woman who worked at ABCS heard about these Purity Balls and thought they were a really neat idea," Ellingson said.

... Mona McDonald said about 75 people had signed up for the Chandler event as of Aug. 28, although previous balls in Tucson have attracted up to 200 attendees. She said she chose the Castle at Ashley Manor because of its romantic ambience.

"For a girl it's kind of fairytale romantic," she said, describing the reception hall's new castle-themed building on Price Road. "I can't wait to see their eyes when they drive up."

Mitch McDonald said he feels the ball has become an annual way for his daughters to spend a special evening with their father.

"What really makes me feel good is that I know my daughters are going to be going to dances for the rest of their lives, but the first time they were dressed in a formal, their dad was the first one to slow dance with them," he said.

"I've been able to tell both of my daughters how precious they are to me," he said. "Those are moments in time that are very important."

Somehow, I don't think most girls want their first romantic experience to be with their dad. And I doubt that a slow dance with dear old pops outside of their wedding is going to rank as a stellar memory.

But even if you get past the creepiness of it, it's still a bunch of bunk. Anybody that's seen The Education of Shelby Knox knows where I'm coming from here. If you want to solve the problems of teen pregnancy and promiscuity, don't strap on the chastity belt, but rather analyze the underlying reasons.

"It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge." -- Voltaire

Bio-hype

As much as you hear politicians talking about it(both D's and R's), you would think that ethanol is the answer to all of our energy and pollution problems. Well, not so fast. It's more about courting votes in the pivotal Midwest (specifically Iowa). Ethanol, in general, is not necessarily the problem. It's the specific type ... corn. From Sierra Magazine:

In our beautiful biofuel future, cars and trucks are powered by wood chips, prairie grass, wheat straw, fast-food grease, garbage, and even algae--whichever material is most plentiful locally and least damaging environmentally. With cars getting 40 miles a gallon or better, greenhouse-gas emissions plummet. The biofuel revolution sparks an economic boom by keeping U.S. dollars at home instead of sending them to Middle Eastern sheikhs.

Biofuels can be made from nearly any organic material. By essentially recycling carbon from living things (as opposed to the ancient biomass in coal and petroleum), biofuels help fight global warming. But some could also add to our environmental problems: In an equally possible but less rosy future, governments and agribusiness clear rainforests and wetlands for vast plantations of biofuel crops like oil palms. With arable land increasingly devoted to fuel production, food prices push higher. The roads clog with biofuel SUVs that still get lousy mileage. Global warming slows insignificantly, if at all.

... corn is the source of 95 percent of the United States' ethanol. Although politically popular in farm states, corn is a problematic source of fuel: It requires good land and petroleum-intensive cultivation and fertilization, and it can also readily feed both humans and livestock. (Food prices are already increasing because of competition with ethanol.) If the mill processing the corn is powered by coal, ethanol produces more net greenhouse gases than gasoline does ...

... Putting a dent in global warming requires conservation as well as biofuels. A 3 percent increase in fuel-economy standards for vehicles, for example, would save more gas than the entire 2006 production of corn ethanol. Sadly, we've been driving in reverse: For the past five years, U.S. gasoline consumption has increased by 1.4 percent annually, and diesel by 3.6 percent.

The rush to biofuels is putting the squeeze on wildlife. Nearly 40 million acres of farmland are currently idled under the federal Conservation Reserve Program, which seeks to reduce soil erosion, improve water quality, and provide habitat. The Bush administration has proposed that land set aside under the program be converted to fuel production ...

The answer is to think of it more as a global issue and an engineering issue instead of a political one. We need to stop thinking we can just trade kissing the ass of big oil for kissing the ass of companies like ADM and Monsanto. Ethanol can be part of the answer if done in the right way:

The best sources of biomass for fuel are waste products and native perennial grasses, which provide more usable energy per acre than corn ethanol or soybean diesel. In fact, says a report by the University of Minnesota, fuels made from native plants can actually be "carbon negative," because they store excess carbon dioxide in their roots and the surrounding soil, reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

But here's the kicker, and why I am against corn-based ethanol as the whole answer -- It's raising the cost of my beer:

Here's where some get off the biofuel bus: It's raising the price of beer. In Germany, subsidies for corn and rapeseed production are squeezing production of barley--an important ingredient in the national beverage. The effects of higher barley prices are starting to appear at the tap. The price of a liter mug of beer at this year's Oktoberfest, for example, will be up by 5.5 percent.

Loaded Questions

Oh, I long for the day when I don't have to have the kind of exchanges that I had today ...

New client - mom of a chiropractor that's one of my clients. Nice nondescript house. Maybe just a few too many bibles lying around (like maybe 50 too many) but otherwise normal. Then I get into their home office. This is on the wall:



Two cheesy photos with real authentic faux signatures. Nice. Be afraid when someone considers it a point of pride to have given money to George Bush.

Fast-forward about 15 minutes. Everything's going normal. Just fixing their computer. Then the lady comes back in the room and asks me some computer questions. She says that she heard on FOX News that terrorists could bring all the world's computer down at once. Trying not to sound too sarcastic, I comment that that sounds like something that you would hear on FOX. And then I try to soften my disdain by going into an honest discussion of the security of PC's, networks, the Internet, etc.

Next, she talks about some anti-spyware program. She says that it was endorsed by Michael Savage and asked me what I thought about him. I did say, "I'm not a fan" but I wanted to say, "He's a fucking clueless, racist, religiously bigoted hypocrite" who says stupid things like:

"I don't like a woman married to a woman. It makes me want to puke...I want to vomit when I hear it. I think it's child abuse."

... and speculated that Democrats had messed with Supreme Court justice John Roberts' health, causing his seizure.

Some days it's real hard to keep my mouth shut.

Apparently, this is what conservative commentators have been reduced to -- corporate pimps. I'd commented on that very same point back in January, talking about Michael Medved. They must be getting kickbacks.

If I were religious, seeing what so-called "Christians" really value would probably cause me to lose my faith. And if I were a Conservative, seeing how idealism is bought and sold for convenience, I'd give that up too. Kinda makes you wonder if anybody really believes in anything any more.

Arizona Science Center - Global Awareness Day - 500th post!

It's been about 2.5 years of semi-regular blogging and today I've hit my 500th post. A lot of you have been here from very early on. Thanks for continuing to visit even when my posting has gotten a little sporadic or uninspired.

This last weekend saw us visit the Global Awareness Day at the Arizona Science Center. The Arizona Science Center is an interactive science center intended to educate people (mostly kids) about science. We're members there and I had gotten an e-mail flyer advertising the awareness day. I knew it would be a great opportunity for Alex to get exposed to a lot of environmental groups that Michelle and I already knew about but that he wouldn't have. He loved it. We practically had to drag him from each exhibit. The obvious ones like the Sierra Club were there, but smaller groups that I hadn't even heard about like the Southwest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Educational Foundation were also there. There were very nice and have a cool mission:

Southwest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Educational Foundation is a non-profit organization that specializes in rescuing and rehabilitating injured and orphaned wildlife native to the southwest, educating today's youth on the importance of native wildlife and the environment, and encouraging educational career opportunities in environmental science.

There was also some representatives from the Light Rail that is being built in downtown Phoenix. It's set to be operational by the end of '08. It's an idea long overdue in the Valley and I think one that will succeed -- even in a place where idiots are way too in love with cars.



I think the booth that we liked the most was the company, a.k.a Green. It's an eco-friendly building supply center in Scottsdale. Some of the cooler things we saw there were cork and bamboo flooring. But the one we liked the most was countertops made with recycled glass, like these, Enviroglas



I was all trying to show my enviro cred on this day, wearing my Urban Outfitters' global warming ... it's not cool t-shirt and chatting up anybody that would listen (and even those who wouldn't) about going on a Sierra Club service trip. I'm sure all these people who are living a green lifestyle every day of their lives and making a true difference with little fanfare thought I was just some lame yuppie with a guilty conscience. And they'd be right.

But shit's going on and I'm looking to blow up my comfortable, staid little suburban existence. Stay tuned.