Audubon Research Ranch - Elgin, AZ

I just got back from a fantastic "vacation". Some people might not consider it a vacation because we did work every day, but not me. Being isolated from the computer, from the TV, from my cellphone to a large part ... I truly had a vacation from the real world.

The Sierra Club service trip that I went on was the same trip that I made 4 years ago to the Audubon Research Ranch near Elgin in southeastern Arizona. This area of high elevation grasslands is a very unique area of the world called a "sky island". "Sky islands are mountains in ranges isolated by valleys in which other ecosystems are located. As a result, the mountain ecosystems are isolated from each other, and species can develop in parallel, as on island groups such as the Galápagos Islands." (from wikipedia). The animals and plants within that area are largely unique to that area. This particular sky island is one of the top 3 such areas in the world.

The particular work they do on this ranch:

"The Research Ranch is a cooperative partnership among the National Audubon Society, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, The Nature Conservancy, Swift Current Land & Cattle and The Research Ranch Foundation. The Research Ranch lies three miles south of Elgin, and 65 miles southeast of Tucson Arizona. It is surrounded by 5 million acres of semi-desert grassland and forested mountains covering southeastern Arizona and adjacent portions of Mexico and New Mexico. For more than 30 years, the Research Ranch has protected grassland ecosystems through conservation, research, and education ..."

How the Sierra Club comes into play is through providing volunteers to assist with various projects on the ranch. The permanent staff of the ranch is only two people with several part-timers that perform office and maintenance duties. College researchers will stay on the ranch for different periods of time to conduct studies.

The last time I did this trip, our primary duty was replacing barbed fences with pronghorn-friendly wire. Pronghorn are smaller animals, similar to an antelope, that would go under fences on the property. They would get hurt on the barbed wire. Our job on that trip was to replace old fence posts and to put barbless wire on the top and the bottom runs. Normal barbed wire would be in the middle. This would still keep the cattle out but would be harmless to the pronghorn.

That trip was great and I made several friends that I still keep in touch with. 4 of them came on this trip also, in addition to the fact that we had the same Sierra Club service trip leader.

On this trip, we did several things. Most notably, we replaced a damaged pipe from a solar-powered well that was providing water to a watering hole for wildlife.

On another day, we adjusted a fence around a natural spring so as to keep invasive bullfrogs out. Originally the fence had an overhang bent inward, so as to keep the bullfrogs in from getting out (so that they could be gathered and relocated). Once the frogs were gone, we changed the fence to hang outward to keep any more from getting in. This ranch is a working experiment to get back to all-native and non-invasive species, both plant and animal.

Other days were spent with the more mundane, painting of the main building. But even in that, you felt you were doing something that benefited the ranch and their mission as a whole.

We did get an off-day and traveled through Tombstone:

and Bisbee:

There were some cool artist galleries in Bisbee and we had a nice lunch at the historic Copper Queen hotel. Though it was a fun trip, we still saw things that reminded us why were on the trip.

Outside Bisbee is a large gaping hole caused by strip-mining of copper over the last 50 years. It's a blight that is both beautiful and scary. Water quality is diminished and waste from the mining is strewn about Bisbee, to the dismay of residents and tourists alike. The are of the strip-mining itself is unusable and is a danger to wildlife and a place where nothing will grow. Sadie had a great movie quote about this that she posted on Facebook:

Remember that quote in Jurassic Park by the Jeff Goldblum character? "Scientists were so excited that they could, they didn't wonder if they SHOULD."
Strip mining is the same thing. We discovered a cheap, easy way to get copper-but didn't ask ourselves if we should use it--what are the long term effects?

The trip wasn't all work and environmental guilt, however. We did our part to support the wineries of Elgin and Sonoita and drank entirely too much beer. If you ever get a chance to do a service trip or if you just want to volunteer locally, by all means, I highly recommend it.

Some links with more info about the places I was at:

Sky Island Alliance

Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch

Kief-Joshua Vineyards

Bisbee Chamber of Commerce - Arts

Age of Stupid

I saw an interesting documentary/drama a few weeks ago called The Age of Stupid.

It's not quite a documentary because it is told through the eyes of a digital librarian of the future, played by Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father). From IMDb:

"This ambitious documentary/drama/animation hybrid stars Pete Postlethwaite as an archivist in the devastated world of the future, asking the question: "Why didn't we stop climate change when we still had the chance?" He looks back on footage of real people around the world in the years leading up to 2055 before runaway climate change took place."

He's the last person on earth and is preserving the record of our demise so as to warn future civilizations. The story is told through him viewing documentary footage from 2008 of people affected by climate change at that time. That footage is real footage ... hence the "documentary" designation. The method of storytelling is effective because it is both intimidating and encouraging. Intimidating in that the means of our destruction has already shown itself and there is some question as to whether we can stop it. Encouraging in that there are a lot of people that realize what is happening and are doing things to fix it.

There are some cool animations and the storytelling conceit helps to break up what could have been fairly boring documentary footage. Additionally, it helps to give the different footage a common thread.

The particular viewing of The Age of Stupid that I went to was the opening night premiere that was live broadcast to 440 theaters worldwide with live footage from New York and around the world. I talk about it a bit here.

If you are looking for something just a little bit different that will educate you but also entertain you, I recommend the Age of Stupid. It's still playing in some theaters but will be out on DVD in a few weeks.

Sierra Club Service Trip

I just finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food this week and watched a couple of great documentaries: Food, Inc. and The Age of Stupid. I wrote about the first two of those here and will have something on The Age of Stupid in a week or so.

I'm going to be off the grid (maybe) for about the next week, though you would scarcely be able to tell since my blog posts have been so infrequent anyway. I'm going on a Sierra Club service trip to the Audubon Research Ranch in southeastern Arizona. This is the same place I went 4 years ago and talked about here:

I had a blast on that trip and am going this time with 3 friends I made then. Lest you think it was all work, we were drinking every night.

If I remember correctly, the cell phone coverage was a bit spotty. But if I can, I'm going to twitter and post some stuff to my Facebook page while I'm there. If not, I'll have some pics and a story when I get back.

Blog Roundup

Some of my favorite blogs and their recent posts:

I saw Inglorious Basterds a few weeks ago, liked it, but was confused on how to review it. Wunelle allayed my doubts:

As Seen on a Rifle Butt

Cyberkitten found this great graphic of Charles Darwin. I've decided I have to get the t-shirt of this:

Fellow movie lover Sadie has a couple of nice reviews (old and new):

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Ponyo

Laura with some nice pics of Chi-town and life there:

That's it for now. This is what I do when I'm not clever enough to write something for myself. Thankfully you guys are.

Ignorant boisterous free speech is OK, but silence is not?

You'll have to forgive me, I'm confused. It's OK to for an elected official to yell at the President during a speech, and it's OK to carry guns, be rude and yell at town hall meetings, but it's not OK to exercise your free speech by not saying anything and by merely staying seated? What kind of bizarro country are we? I didn't sign up for this.

TRENTON, N.J. — Three teenagers who say they were tossed from a New Jersey ballpark over their refusal to stand during the song "God Bless America" are suing the minor league Newark Bears.

The boys argue that their constitutional rights were violated when they were asked to leave Newark's Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium on June 29 by Bears' president and co-owner Thomas Cetnar.

Cetnar acknowledged the boys were asked to leave but declined to say why. He also has denied making some statements attributed to him in the lawsuit.

The boys — Millburn High seniors Bryce Gadye and Nilkumar Patel, both 17, and junior Shaan Mohammad Khan, 16 — sued in federal court on Friday seeking unspecified damages.

According to the lawsuit, the boys were seated behind home plate when the song began playing. Once it ended, they say Cetnar approached them yelling.

"Nobody sits during the singing of 'God Bless America' in my stadium," the lawsuit quotes Cetnar as saying. "Now the get the (expletive) out of here."

... "The boys weren't trying to make any political statements, they just didn't get up," he said. "No one gave them an ultimatum. The song was sung, it was finished, then they were thrown out."

..."I think what makes it so horrible is that they were publicly humiliated for exercising a right that was guaranteed to them by the United States Constitution," Gadye said ...

And don't tell me it's the national anthem. God Bless America is not our anthem. I do stand during the Star Spangled Banner. I've got no problem with that. It's a matter of civic participation, rooted in ritual and has been performed at least semi-regularly at ballgames since the 1890's. God Bless America, however, is overtly religious and has only been played with any type of regularity at ballgames since 9/11.

If you ask me, Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land is a much more fitting anthem. Let's see ... on the one hand, we have a couple of "anthems" that glorify religion (specifically Christianity) and war. On the other hand, we have a song that talks about the natural beauty of our country and of brotherhood. The last couple of verses of This Land is Your Land are even oddly prescient (considering they were written in 1956):

"... As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me."

I'm grumblin' and wonderin' indeed.

Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America'

"The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate unwillingness to do so." -- Sam Harris

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

"That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said.

"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.

"It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.

"Charles Darwin is, I suppose, the hero of the film. But we tried to make the film in a very even-handed way. Darwin wasn't saying 'kill all religion', he never said such a thing, but he is a totem for people."

Creation was developed by BBC Films and the UK Film Council, and stars Bettany's real-life wife Jennifer Connelly as Darwin's deeply religious wife, Emma. It is based on the book, Annie's Box, by Darwin's great-great-grandson, Randal Keynes, and portrays the naturalist as a family man tormented by the death in 1851 of Annie, his favourite child. She is played in the film by 10-year-old newcomer Martha West, the daughter of The Wire star Dominic West.

Early reviews have raved about the film. The Hollywood Reporter said: "It would be a great shame if those with religious convictions spurned the film out of hand as they will find it even-handed and wise."

Mr Thomas, whose previous films include The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, said he hoped the reviews would help to secure a distributor. In the UK, special screenings have been set up for Christian groups.

Movieguide.org is a site that gave GI Joe 4 stars because, as they put it, it gives "A very strong moral, light Christian worldview of good vs evil, honor vs treachery, etc., with a very strong patriotic presentation of the military as it protects civilization from violent evil forces". Not content with just reviewing that movie, they had to preach, "America is unlikely to fall to a military strike. What Hitler and Stalin could not impose on us with their armies we are accepting peacefully because we are morally weak. More than super-troops in accelerator suits, America needs Christians willing to defend the right to life, the true meaning of marriage and the moral values that make our civilization civil. " That is perhaps the most unintentionally funny review I have ever read.

More unintential levity on their site is the link to donate: Link to donate: "Donate: Help us bring God's light to an industry with much darkness."

Movieguide.org worries about protecting against the forces of darkness, but darkness is exactly what it is breeding. It promotes ignorance over openness, misunderstanding over insight, mysticism over enlightenment. The worse kind of stupidity ... ignorance couched in righteousness.

It'd be easy to write off this site and those that sponsor and use it as the fringe or "fundamentalists". But they're not. This is mainstream Christianity. That's the scary thing. God bless America.

"Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan." -- Sam Harris

Book Review: The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

I FINALLY finished a book that I've been reading for awhile, Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. Pinker is a popular scientist who spoke at the Origins Symposium that I went this last year (though I didn't get to see him). His particular field of expertise is experimental psychology. This particular book delves into how humans developed the capacity for language.

It's an exhaustive book and hits on the common forms of all languages regardless of the supposed level of sophistication of the speakers. It's very interesting in that he demonstrates how many forms of slang are actually more internally consistent forms of communication than the supposed arbitrary rules of style that all languages try to stick to. But these styles are really moving targets and are no more right than the slang. Many things that start out as slang eventually end up in the language. He really rails against the intellectual snobbery of supposed language experts that have no more claim to what "proper" English is than anyone else does.

The Language Instinct is most engaging when it compares different languages and when it talks about how children progressively pick up language. When it lost me was actually earlier in the book when it talks a bit too much about "phonemes" and "word structures" and so on. It's basically equations for linguists. Just a little too close to feeling like I was back in college.

Another part of the book I like is how he describes that the development of language was just another biological process in humans created by natural selection:

" ... the pains that have been taken to portray language as innate, complex, and useful but not a product of the one force in nature than can make innate complex useful things"

He is, of course, referring to natural selection. Pinker's assertions are in marked contrast to some linguists, like Noam Chomsky, who believe that there is a hard-wired universal grammar among all languages that is a by-product of other adaptations instead of an adaptation in and of itself.

"Since biological systems with signs of complex engineering are unlikely to have arisen from accidents or coincidences, their organization must come from natural selection, and hence should have functions useful for survival and reproduction in the environments in which humans evolved (This does not mean, however, that all aspects of mind are adaptations, or that the mind's adaptations are necessarily beneficial in evolutionarily novel environments like twentieth-century cities)."

So language, and other things that humans do, were processes that in our evolutionary past were useful for our survival. Pinker even speculates about others:

"I would guess that most other human "cultural" practices (competitive sports, narrative literature, landscape design, ballet), no matter how much they seem like arbitrary outcomes of a Borgesian lottery, are clever technologies we have invented to exercise and stimulate mental modules that were originally designed for specific adaptive functions."

All very heady stuff. If you want an introduction to Pinker's work and a little different take on evolution, you could do worse than The Language Instinct. I recommend this book.

"Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground." -- Noah Webster

Zombie health care

The people that are perpetuating these fabrications don't want to admit who the real zombies are ... themselves. It's an echo chamber with the Grover Norquists of the world at the top, with the Frank Luntz's as framers of the message, and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as the snake-oil salesmen.

I know every generation thinks that it was better before when they were younger, that there is a reduction in civility in the current generation. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm starting to think that now also. I hope I'm wrong.

The very technology that I'm trying to embrace (Facebook, blogging, Twitter, smartphones) is also the technology that is enabling astro-turfing and manufactured discontent. I mean, this indignation about Obama's speech to children this week is the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard. Every President that has ever existed has spoken to students and told them the virtues of staying in schools and setting goals. If I have one person come up to me, e-mail me, or post something on their Facebook page about boycotting the speech, I swear I'm going to go Evil Dead on their ass because I will be convinced they are the very incarnation of the walking dead.

"But I don't care darling, because I love you, and you've got to let me eat your brains." -- Return of the Living Dead

Facebook/Accidental Billionaire's book review

As many of you already know, I've been indoctrinated into the world of Facebook. I've been on there for about a year have seen all the good and the bad. Before I get into it, though, I wanted to give a quick review of a book I just read, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich. This is the same guy that wrote Bringing Down the House, the book that the movie 21 was based on. That book and movie were pretty good. Accidental Billionaires ..., not so much. The problem is that Mezrich plays fast and loose with the narrative. Ostensibly, both Bringing Down the House and Accidental Billionaires are non-fiction, but he creates situations and conversations out of thin-air when he doesn't actually know what was said. He just infers it from the situation and from second-hand knowledge. It makes for an entertaining read (it really reads like fiction) but it makes you question it's veracity.

This particular book is the about the several founders of Facebook, most notably Mark Zuckerberg, and their humble beginnings in a dorm room at Harvard. It's definitely an interesting story because as big as Facebook is, its CEO Zuckerberg is only 25 years old. Facebook's background involves Harvard's clique system, competing social network sites, disgruntled co-founders, etc.. Knowing the background is nice, but I just question how accurate the account can be when Mezrich didn't really to talk to the majority of the founders. Another problem I have with the book is that it seems like Mezrich was writing for the screen from the get-go. I believe the book was optioned to Kevin Spacey's production company (the same that did 21) before it was even written. And the book really plays more like a screenplay than a book. Not enough details, superficial, and with stereotypical characters -- the kind of stuff that may play on the screen, but not necessarily on the page. I wouldn't really recommend this book. Hopefully the movie will be better.


On to Facebook in real life. Now, I don't have a huge friend list (60+) and don't necessarily want one. I think I've got a good mix right now with local friends, friends I've made through blogging, family, some clients, and some of the kids I graduated from high school with. Especially with the high school friends, it has been very interesting in re-catching up with them.

The problems I am running into relate to content. With my friends that I see all the time and my blog friends, I don't really worry about self-editing. That doesn't mean I'm going to be mean or discourteous but rather that very few subjects are off limits. And anything said is said in the interest of getting to the truth of something or at the very least getting to the humor of it. So, I try to keep these topics on my blog and don't really talk about religion or politics on Facebook.

My friend group in Facebook encompasses more casual friends and family members that either don't know my leanings or whose leanings could not be more opposite than mine. For example, I'm very close to my recently deceased grandfather's step-grandkids. Grandpa was the only grandfather they ever knew and I very much consider them my cousins. Hell, I've seen them more and like them more than my real cousins. But, they are all fervent Assembly of God Christians. Several of them are pastors. They are good people and are never really pushy about it. They don't really judge us and we have never gotten into a down-and-dirty discussion on exactly what my religious beliefs are. Just as I don't like Christians proselytizing, I don't feel it is necessary for me to say what my beliefs are unless I'm specifically asked, in which case, I'd be more than happy to say.

In any event, about a half dozen of them are Facebook friends. I wouldn't dream of saying anything that would denigrate them in any manner. I'm sure several of them wouldn't mind my views and might even find them interesting. But, I'm not prepared to test that theory yet.

All of that is not a big deal to me. Blogging is for one side of me, Facebook for another. My problem is with a specific former work friend of mine (and a guy that is some fantasy sports leagues with me) who doesn't have a similar demarcation. I've always known we had opposite political views but it just didn't apply in our social interactions before. He's a nice enough guy and has a wife we've known for 10 years plus. He posts wretched stuff clipped from Glenn Beck shows or Rush Limbaugh and just today, he chose the passing of Edward Kennedy as an appropriate time to post this:

"Well that's one way to stop a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Delayed for five months anyway until the special election in MA."

It's a comment that just begs me to respond, but I won't. He's the worse kind of ideologue ... one who thinks he knows what he believes but actually just believes what he is told to repeat. And he doesn't realize the inconsistencies in his beliefs. I don't mind if you have a different viewpoint, just make sure that it is at least internally consistent. For example, he says he's an atheist but he's against gay marriage. In my book, if you don't believe in God but still hate gays, then you are just a straight-up bigot. I borderline think that even if you do believe in God, but at least I'm more likely to understand where you are coming from. Secondly, he says he's a Libertarian but he's for a strong military around the world. My buddy Scott (who does know what he believes )will be more than happy to point out the problem with that.

My point is this: I want to jettison him from my friends list but I'd have to bear the questions of why when I'd see him at baseball games or when I drop by my old work or when we're chatting during fantasy sports seasons. I have figured out how to suppress his posts from showing in my Feed, but it's not perfect solution. He'll still feel compelled to chime in when I might post something of an environmental nature, which I don't consider political, but he does.

I know Laura pruned her friends list awhile ago. How did you do it Laura? Having friends used to be so much easier before online social networking. :-)

RIP: Senator Edward Kennedy 1932 - 2009

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

District 9

... When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher

...And the eyes of the world are
watching now
watching now

Biko by Peter Gabriel

From the opening scenes of squalor and poverty in Johannesburg, you know that District 9 is not going to be some sanitized and overly clean piece of Hollywood sci-fi. Actually, my first thoughts when I saw these scenes was not of science fiction, but rather of another movie based in South Africa, Cry Freedom, about the friendship formed between a South African journalist, Donald Woods, and freedom fighter Steve Biko. Cry Freedom, from 1987, is one of my favorite movies and it was very important at the time internationally. The movie, and the book written by Donald Woods that it was based on, did a lot to awaken the world to the plight of the blacks in South Africa under apartheid.

District 9, which chronicles the oppression of a stranded alien race in Johannesburg, is an obvious allegory for apartheid South Africa in the 80's. At least it's obvious for anyone that cracks a book occasionally. I'm sure there will be a large contingent, perhaps of younger people, that doesn't understand the symbolism, but that's OK. The movie works on a visceral level also. You can understand the transformation of the main character regardless of whether you know what the movie represents.

The parallels with Cry Freedom are extensive, at least to me:

- the apartheid angle

- a white Anglo protagonist who is initially critical of the resistance but comes around to being sympathetic to them

- that protagonist is not only critical of the resistance at the start but also active in it's suppression. Donald Woods writes editorials critical of Steve Biko in Cry Freedom. In District 9, a corporate operative under orders, Wikus Van De Merwe, seeks to relocate the stranded aliens.

- each performs a selfless act that endangers himself so that the resistance can escape in some manner ... whether it is literally in District 9 or through words in Cry Freedom.

- the character of Stephen Biko and the main alien in District 9, Christopher Johnson, seem initially like cruel and arbitrary terrorists but are actually brave advocates for their people.

- the resistance is dehumanized by their containment, their abuse, and the derogatory manner in which they are talked about. They are made to seem as though they were less than a person.

In every case District 9 does a great job of driving the symbolism home. It's cast is of no-name actors, though I recognized a few from Peter Jackson movies. Peter Jackson produced District 9 for his protege, Neill Blomkamp. They were initially going to work on a big-screen adaption of Halo, but that fell through and Jackson offered Blomkamp $30 million to make a movie on whatever subject he wanted. District 9 is the result. Considering it made back it's investment in the very first weekend, Jackson seems to be continuing his artistic lucky streak.

Now District 9 is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I've heard some people complain about the extensive use of hand-held cameras. It can be nauseating at times if you are not prepared.

Others have complained that the apartheid symbolism is too obvious. If this movie was made in the 80's, I'd maybe agree with them. But it's made 25 years later. Sure, you could have set it in a different part of the world, but the director is from South Africa. He is making a movie that tells of his personal experience. You cannot criticize him for that.

The violence, gore, and moral ambiguity of some of the characters are sticking points for yet others. We've gotten into this discussion on another blog that I participate in, here. I won't belabor the points I made there, but my main point is that true art should be a reflection of the real world. It should represent some kind of truth. Not necessarily a pleasant truth, but one we should hear. Life isn't black and white and nobody is "pure". District 9 is just a representation of that fact. But District 9 is not a history lesson. It's still entertainment.

The movie may seem hard for some people to watch. How could humans possibly treat an alien species this way? You know how ... the same way in which they treat people of a different skin color or of a different religion. We've done it throughout history. We continue to do it. If you can't stomach this, then how can you stomach Gitmo, the Iraq war, Afghanistan? The point of good art is to get you to look at something in a different way, from a different perspective. By showing how we treat an alien race, hopefully this will show how we treat each other. But that's just my two-cents worth. Go see this movie, you won't come out of it apathetic. And while you're at it, check out Cry Freedom. Grade: A

Teabagger Ironies

Book Review: The Road

Father and son walking The Road in a post-apocalyptic world. We don't know the cause of the devastation. We can infer from the telling of the story that it has been many years since it happened (maybe 5 or more). All plant and animal life (save humans) are dead. The landscape is permeated with ash. The blocking of the sun's rays by the ash has rendered the planet cold.

The goal of their trek along "the road" -- getting to the coast. What awaits them, they don't know. But it is a goal. They live on scavenged cans of fruit from abandoned houses. They spend their days hiding from fellow travelers on the road. Some may be good ... others they know are bad.

It's a the story of a man's love for his son. What are you willing to do to save your son? And not just in the sense of life and death. How do you save his soul from the horrors he sees and has to endure?

You could call this a science fiction story, though many have tried to say it is not. It is not an environmental book, but it's not hard to take an environmental message from it. They're basically living on borrowed time in a world where the rest of the ecosystem has vanished. Though not inhabited with the zombies of another similar world's end tale, I Am Legend, the cannibals of this world are just as scary.

Written by Cormac McCarthy of No Country for Old Men and All the Pretty Horses fame, the author says more with less. He's effective with creating terror from the silences between events instead of the events themselves. Behind every shuttered window or blocked door, you steel yourself for the monster behind it. When it isn't there, you know you should feel relieved but like the characters in the story you know that they are only prolonging the inevitable. They almost crave the end because it will cease the agony of not knowing.

This is not a pleasant book to read, though it is not a hard read. The pleasures are fleeting and abstract. But it is well-written and The Road will stick with you. McCarthy has an odd writing style without quotes, apostrophes, or even most punctuation. It is dry but will go into highly poetic and symbolic flourishes, most of which I can't even pretend to understand. One of my favorites:

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy, I have you.”

That's the type of writing that we all aspire to, but few attain.

Like other McCarthy stories, The Road doesn't have a tidy ending. But, life doesn't really have a tidy ending. A movie of the book is coming out this fall, starring Viggo Mortensen. Hopefully, they won't Hollywoodize it. The power of the story comes from it's bleakness. I recommend this book.

IMG00004-20090809-0006.jpg

Please ignore this. Just me exploring my posting options. This is mobile posting of images from the phone through e-mail.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

My first mobile blog post ... Yay! There was much rejoicing ... or not.

Technology

"Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road." -- Stewart Brand

In one fell swoop, I've indoctrinated myself into the world of Blackberry, mobile e-mail, Twitter, and Twittering to Facebook. I know ... not really a big deal. Most of you are already there. And I'm a computer tech who does this stuff for clients all the time. But, I'm usually the last to adopt the technology for myself. Mostly because of cost.


Having mobile access to my e-mail has become a necessity for my business and will actually make my work easier and could get me more clients. That was reason enough for me to get the Blackberry. All the rest of the stuff (Pandora, much better camera, web access, Facebook and Twitter access, etc.) is just a bonus. Plus, we are now getting a fat 17% discount off the top of every month's bill because Michelle's employer subsidizes anything you spend at certain vendors (in this case, Verizon). So, we got rid of an outdated plan, got a new phone (Blackberry Tour 9630) for about $100, added a new plan with better features, and we will still spend less than we had been each month.

Ultimately, though, the new phone will be just another way for me to waste time and not concentrate on posting to the blog. Perhaps I need to look into mobile blogging. Stay tuned.

My Favorite Movies: Sid and Nancy

"There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow." -- Dorothea Brande (American Writer and Editor, 1893-1948)

With a nod to Cyberkitten and his very entertaining series of "Favourite Movies ...", I'm going to take a wack at a few of my faves. Much as Gary Oldman was first up in my series of favorite actors, the first movie I saw him in, Sid and Nancy, is what I'll kick off my favorite movies with.

Sid and Nancy is the story of the destructive 22 month love affair between Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious and American groupie Nancy Spungen that broke up the band, led to her murder, and later, Sid's death by overdose.

Dialog:

I've seen this movie so many times (at least 50), that I'm pretty sure I could recite the entire script from memory. And as far as random quotes that I say on a daily basis, it surely rivals the Holy Grail. The script, written by director Alex Cox, is alternatively funny and dramatic.

Feel:

It's not presented as straight reality. There are scenes where Sex Pistols' manager Malcolm McClaren shoots the ground with a pretend gun, where Sid and Nancy walk away from a crime-scene unscathed, and another where Nancy comes back from the dead. Obviously none of them really happened, but like most other things with Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, they may present more truth than the actual occurrence. Truth is all relative.

The cinematography by the famous Roger Deakins (Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, O' Brother Where Art Thou, No Country for Old Men) is gritty and fits the subject matter and setting.

Cast:

Gary Oldman is the obvious star here. I think it is his finest performance. Chloe Webb's Nancy Spungen is annoying, but that is pretty much the point. By every account, Nancy was violent, drug-addled, and verbally abusive.

The rest of the cast was largely unknown actors but included cameos by other punk notables such as Iggy Pop and the Circle Jerks. Courtney Love also has a small role.

Nostalgia/Music:

It's evocative of a time in my life that I'm very fond of ... my college years. You have to consider that these were the pre-Nirvana wasteland days of music. All pop-metal and pop-garbage. We were hungry for anything that went against that and thus immersed ourselves in punk, especially the Sex Pistols. So when we saw this movie, we just ate it up. Full of pop-culture references from late 70's London (Rod Stewart, Gary Glitter, Dr. Who) and with a great soundtrack (Joe Strummer, The Pogues), Sid and Nancy was permanently near our VCR. We watched it pretty much every weekend for about a year and a half.

There is a sick beauty in observing wanton self-destruction. It reminds me a lot of the similar death spiral of Nic Cage's character in Leaving Las Vegas. It's obvious that the person is intent on somehow killing themselves and you have a front-row seat. People say that movies like these glorify drug-use, but I think they do the exact opposite. If you can watch what happens to Sid and Nancy and still want to do drugs, then you are truly a sick puppy.

Definitely one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time, Sid and Nancy has stood the test of time. It came out in 1986 but I watched it again last night and it had the same power.

"Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can't even think straight." -- Marilyn French (American Writer, b.1929)

Poll: Just six percent of scientists are Republican

"I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reasons, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -- Galileo Galilei

This may be the least shocking news ever:

A full 87 percent of American scientists see their political alignment as Democrat or Independent, according to a new Pew Research poll.

Surprisingly or not, just six percent declared themselves Republican, and only nine percent overall expressed support of conservative ideology.


From the data summary:

Most Americans do not see scientists as a group as particularly liberal or conservative. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) say they think of scientists as “neither in particular”; 20% see them as politically liberal and 9% say they are politically conservative.

In contrast, most scientists (56%) perceive the scientific community as politically liberal; just 2% think scientists are politically conservative. About four-in-ten scientists (42%) concur with the majority public view that scientists, as a group, are neither in particular.

The scientists’ belief that the scientific community is politically liberal is largely accurate. Slightly more than half of scientists (52%) describe their own political views as liberal, including 14% who describe themselves as very liberal. Among the general public, 20% describe themselves as liberal, with just 5% calling themselves very liberal.

These figures should only be surprising to someone who neglected current events during the Bush administration, which was accused of censoring and intimidating scientists on matters from global warming to medical research and nuclear weapons.

It's safe to say that being treated like an unwanted step-child, along with continued, eye-widening nonsense like this, has not engendered much love of Republicanism in the scientific community.

-- Stephen C. Webster

The aw-shucks anti-intellectualism of the past 8 years has done incredible damage that will take years to recover from. The thing is, it doesn't have to be this way. And it hasn't always been that way. Teddy Roosevelt was one of our most environmental presidents, promoting conservation of natural resources. Dwight Eisenhower started the space race.

If the goal of your poltical party is to stick your head in the ground and to keep people stupid, then I can't believe you will have a lot of staying power. If you have a valid idealogy, you defeat arguments with better arguments, not by suppressing facts.

The mistakes that Republicans are making now will haunt them for a generation. And those so-called Blue Dog Democrats, DINO's (Democrat in Name Only) will face the same problem.

You can't ignore the scientific facts that are slapping you in the face when you are making laws that affect all of us. Republicans and a large percentage of the public think there is scientific debate over evolution or global warming, when there is not.

We are never going to solve the world's problems by denying they exist.

"Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error." -- Thomas Jefferson

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

As usual, Bill Maher says something very simply and funnily and is dead-on with how I feel:

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­-- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.

Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you're going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population ­-- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it."

But maybe they aren't. Because unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That's why it wasn't surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.

And finally, there's health care. It wasn't that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years.

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." -- John Maynard Keynes

These are our congressmen ...

Sylvia Allen is representative of some of the people that make the laws for the state of Arizona. I don't even know where to begin with her. But, let's take a shot:

- she's of the Limbaugh school of environmentalism that the Earth is basically only here for us to exploit it and that there is no way that we could ever use all the resources.

- she purports to be worried about our children yet wants to leave huge gaping gashes in our state.

- she talks about the advances in technology that we should use. Technology based on scientific principles. Science that is apparently completely foreign to her when she talks about the Earth being 6000 years old!

If you come up to me and tell me that you honestly believe the Earth is 6000 years old, it is a deal breaker. We have no common ground. I'd be more inclined to talk to someone that came up to me and said that they were abducted by aliens. At least they wouldn't have an overwhelming preponderance of evidence disproving their beliefs.

I will respect anyone's right to worship at the altar of whatever silly god you choose, but do not try to make laws that govern all of us based on your beliefs that completely abandon reason and fact.

We talk often enough about all the wars that have been fought in the name of religion and how damaging that was. But I don't think we talk often enough about the damage that religion does in the throttling of scientific advancement and in harming our environment. If Sylvia Allen is the future of Arizona government, count me out. I'll be on the first train out of the state, along with thousands of other people who crack a book occasionally and that actually want a state worth living in.

"At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols." -- Aldous Huxley

It's Just Kirk and Spock

"Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do." -- Oscar Wilde

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." - Bertrand Russell

TV gameshow offers atheists 'salvation'

"I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me." -- Woody Allen

(CNN) -- A Turkish television show is offering contestants what it claims is the "biggest prize ever" -- the chance for atheists to convert to one of the world's major religions.

The show, called "Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor," or "Penitents Compete," features a Muslim imam, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and a Buddhist monk attempting to persuade 10 atheists of the merits of their religion, according to CNN Turk.

If they succeed, the contestants are rewarded with a pilgrimage to one of their chosen faith's most sacred sites -- Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for converts to Judaism, a trip to Tibet for Buddhists and the chance to visit Ephesus and the Vatican for Christians.

Ahmet Ozdemir, deputy director of Turkish channel Kanal T, which will air the show from September, said the program aimed to "turn disbelievers on to God."

"People are free to believe anything they want. Our program does not have a say," he said, according to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.

Contestants will be judged by a panel of eight theologians and religious experts prior to going on the show to make sure their lack of faith is genuine.

But the show has been condemned by Turkish religious leaders. The head of the country's supreme council of religious affairs, Hamza Aktan, told CNN Turk that it was "disrespectful" to place different faiths in competition with each other and accused Kanal T of using religion to boost ratings.

"To do such a thing for the sake of ratings, not only with Islam but with all religions is disrespectful," said Aktan. "Religion should not be the subject of this type of program."

Although Turkey has a predominantly Muslim population and culture, religion is a sensitive subject because of the country's staunchly secular constitution which outlaws most displays of faith in public life ...

This is a ratings grab, but there may be some unintended truth to it. Isn't how religion is peddled sometimes like a game show? Look what we have behind Door #1: Christianity - forgiveness, streets of gold, eternal light, etc. etc.

Behind Door #2: Muslim - 72 virgins

and behind Door #3: Buddhism - Nirvana, or as Carl Spackler would say, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends." -- Woody Allen

Going Green Update -- Food Co-ops

Today was our introduction into the world of food co-ops. I had been at one of my clients this week and she gave me a bag of peaches and mentioned that they had gotten them in their basket of fruits and vegetables that she picked up every two weeks at Bountiful Baskets, a Phoenix-area co-op:

This is a grass roots, all volunteer, no contracts, no catch co-operative ... As a group, we purchase items at deep discounts. Items are then distributed evenly among participants ...

$15 every two weeks (paid ahead of time so that no more than purchased is ordered), bring your own basket or reusable bags, and pick up at several designated locations around the Valley during a specified time, in our case 7:45 am Saturday morning at a local elementary school. For a little more, you can get a basket of organic fruits and vegetables or even artisan bread.

The concept is cool because it cuts out all the crap that has absolutely nothing to do with food: advertising, processing, a storefront, displays. Participants are asked to volunteer occasionally. Everything is very fresh, as they are buying it at the same places that the local grocery stores and restaurants buy.

For the $15, I got two laundry baskets full of fruits and vegetables. Evidently a lot of people are catching on to the idea, as there were about 200 families picking up at this location, and this is only one of about 50 sites in the valley.

If you are looking for a co-op in your area, check out this site: LocalHarvest

Palin Resigns

My favorite reader comments from Huffington Post's article on Sarah Palin's sudden resignation as Governor of Alaska:

• "Don't rule out the possibility that she simply wants to devote more time to exploiting her family."



• "Just when the Sanford story was getting stale. The republicans are the gift that keeps on giving."



• "Ah shucks, what a quality lady there... true blue Republican, back bone of the party - cute, clueless, and fertile. We'll miss her."



• "Is she defecting to Russia?"



• "It's ACORN's fault!"



• "Top 5 Reasons Sarah Palin resigned:
  
  1. She's replacing Michael Jackson on his comback World Tour.
  2. She can do more good as the new host of America's Got Talent.
  3. Last week she contracted Swine Flu on an undisclosed trip to Argentina.
  4. She signed a 5 year contract to be the new point guard for the LA Sparks.
  5. One word....Diprivan."

Tom Morello Album Reviews

I'm a big Rage Against the Machine guy. I saw them in concert 3 or 4 times in their heyday and they were incredible. Anybody that knows my politics knows that I would like Rage for that aspect also.

When they broke up about 10 years ago, I was greatly disappointed and really missed having rock music with a message. System of a Down's albums and Green Day's American Idiot were certainly worthy efforts in that realm and I enjoy them immensely. But I still wish Rage was around. They'll reunite occasionally to play a festival but they have no intentions of a tour or any albums. All the players have moved on. The band minus singer Zack De la Rocha formed Audioslave with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, a band that was fairly successful commercially but was not political at all.

Guitarist Tom Morello has a long history of political activism has a BA with honors in Government from Harvard University. His father was the first Kenyan ambassador to the UN and his mother was a civil rights activist. He hadn't given up his long held political beliefs when he was in Audioslave. He just channeled them in another direction, his one man folk band, the Nightwatchman.

While still recording as Nightwatchman, Morello has just formed the band, Street Sweeper Social Club, with Boot Riley of the political rap group the Coup. I had previously reviewed them in concert, when they opened for Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction.

In the last couple of weeks, I picked up the debut albums by both of Morello's current bands. First up, Nightwatchman's One Man Revolution. This is bare bones, acoustic guitar playing. It reminds me a lot of Springsteen's Ghost of Tom Joad, which is not coincidental as Morello himself said he was inspired by Springsteen and Dylan. I sense a lot of inspiration from Pete Seeger in the subject matter, the poor and the downtrodden. The song highlights fro me are "Until the End" and "The Road I Must Travel". I'm really on a folk kick lately and have been listening to a lot of Woody Guthrie, Seeger, Dylan and Nightwatchman. Great stuff.

He's not a great singer, I grant you that. More of a "vocal stylist", like Leonard Cohen. That's what you call people that can't sing. I kid. I'm just saying that his voice is not the point. The words are. I like this album a lot and will be getting Nightwatchman's other album.

Morello's other band, Street Sweeper Social Club, just released their debut album. I like Street Sweeper well enough, but it does seem like it's trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Rage was one of those right-place, right-time, right people kind of things. Street Sweeper seems to be trying to reproduce that. Morello's Nightwatchman seems much more real to me. It's just him, his guitar and his beliefs.

I do appreciate the electric guitar playing of Morello on this album, but the political message just doesn't seem to have the same resonance of Rage or Nightwatchman. While Rage's lyrics could rightly be considered to have been delivered in a rap style, Street Sweeper removes any pretense. Having rapper Boots Riley as your singer will do that. When I first heard Rage, I wasn't sure if I liked de la Rocha's voice, but looking back, I prefer it to Boots Riley. It just seems much more appropriate for the anger and message of the songs. Street Sweeper sounds more like a funk party where you happen to be singing about politics. Rage was more like a bulldozer.

Speaking of Morello and Springsteen, check out this electric version of Ghost of Tom Joad by the two of them. It has an incredible solo by Morello:

PBS Bans New Religious Programming

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate." -- Ulysses S. Grant

The Public Broadcasting Service agreed yesterday to ban its member stations from airing new religious TV programs, but permitted the handful of stations that already carry "sectarian" shows to continue doing so.

The vote by PBS's board was a compromise from a proposed ban on all religious programming. Such a ban would have forced a few stations around the country to give up their PBS affiliation if they continued to broadcast local church services and religious lectures.

Until now, PBS stations have been required to present programming that is noncommercial, nonpartisan and nonsectarian. But the definition of "nonsectarian" programming was always loosely interpreted, and the rule had never been strictly enforced. PBS began reviewing the definition and application of those rules last year in light of the transition to digital TV and with many stations streaming programs over their Web sites. The definition doesn't cover journalistic programs about religion or discussion programs that don't favor a particular religious point of view.

The vote at PBS's headquarters in Arlington was good news for five PBS member stations that carry religious programs. Among them are KBYU in Salt Lake City, which is operated by an affiliate of the Mormon Church; KMBH in Harlingen, Tex., operated by the local Catholic diocese; and WLAE in New Orleans, operated by a Catholic lay organization ...

This seems like a pretty obvious move, but you just never know. Separation of church and state is fairly cut and dried, but there have always been (and continue to be notable exceptions).

This is a move back towards when PBS was actually relevant and programs like NOVA and Cosmos both entertained and taught. I grew up on PBS. We didn't have mindless fluff like the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon when I was growing up and we were better for it.

The politicization of public broadcasting during the Bush years has created a situation that will take years to recover from. Ken Tomlinson tried to starve public broadcasting, while at the same time tainting it with a conservative viewpoint during his tenure under Bush. NPR has done a better job than PBS at staying out of the fray but faced similar cuts in funding.

If anything, it sounds like PBS may have wimped out on the ruling by allowing the few stations to be grandfathered in. You don't hear of atheist programs being on PBS ... or anything for that matter. I know years ago I remember seeing some on cable public access. To be honest, it's not a loss. They were as unbelievably boring as Christian television programs are. Now, be honest, those Christians that read my blog, do you watching Christian programming on television and if so, which shows? The Christian-only stations all seem pretty fringe to me.

Don't get me wrong about religions (or anything) having the right to broadcast. If you can get funding and viewers, by all means, get your own show or even you own network. But, it's not the job of government-funded broadcasting.

I know some of you would have the government's hands out of broadcasting altogether. But I believe in institutions that are for the common good, that are unbiased, and whose decisions are not based on generating a profit. It's where the really good newspapers and news programs of the last 50 years have really dropped the ball. Pleasing stockholders and being afraid to offend advertisers seems more important now. It's not surprising that big stories aren't really broken by the Washington Post's of the world any more. There are no more Woodward and Bernstein's.

If the measure of validity of ideas was how profitable they were, then FOX News would be the center of intellectualism, and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would be the smartest people in the world. And that's a truly scary thought.

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death." -- George Carlin

Last Train to Nuremburg ...

... Last train to Nuremberg!
All on board!

Do I see Lieutenant Calley?
Do I see Captain Medina?
Do I see Gen'ral Koster and all his crew?
Do I see President Nixon?
Do I see both houses of Congress?
Do I see the voters, me and you?

Who held the rifle? Who gave the orders?
Who planned the campaign to lay waste the land?
Who manufactured the bullet? Who paid the taxes?
Tell me, is that blood upon my hands?

If five hundred thousand mothers went to Washington
And said, "Bring all of our boys home without delay!"
Would the man they came to see, say he was too busy?
Would he say he had to watch a football game?

Last Train to Nuremburg by Pete Seeger

I heard this on Pandora yesterday and it nicely fit into what I was going to talk about anyway. Pete Seeger wrote this song during the Vietnam War. Calley, Medina, and Koster all had degrees of complicity in the My Lai Massacre and it's subsequent cover-up.

The My Lai Massacre ... was the mass murder conducted by U.S. Army forces on March 16, 1968 of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and majority of whom were women, children, and elderly people.

Many of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.

... When the incident became public knowledge in 1969, it prompted widespread outrage around the world. The massacre also reduced U.S. support at home for the Vietnam War. Three U.S. servicemen who made an effort to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were denounced by U.S. Congressmen, received hate mail, death threats and mutilated animals on their doorsteps. Only 30 years after the event were their efforts honored.

The song intimates that the troops involved and their superiors were not the only ones guilty. Nixon (and various other Presidents) were guilty for conducting the war at all. We, as citizens, were guilty for voting for these people and for paying taxes to fund illegal wars. We had "blood upon my hands", all of us. And we continue to. We comfort ourselves that when bad things happen, it's someone else's fault.

Bad actions by bad people do not doom our world. What curses us is that supposedly good people will do and support the most vile acts because they were told it was OK by someone of authority. We tell ourselves that we are not personally guilty because it was given a pass by our President, our church leader, our "freedom fighters". It's OK to invade Iraq because they have WMD's ... OK, Mr. President, whatever you say. It's OK to torture because they might give us some important information ... OK, Mr. Vice-President. It's OK to hate gays because God says so ... OK, Pastor. It's OK that I shot that illegal alien because he was on the wrong side of some arbitrary line ... OK, Mr. Minuteman, you were just fighting for our "liberty".

What is this that comforts us in our guilt? Is it a defense mechanism or is it just human nature? There was a great discussion on Science Friday on NPR yesterday about the famous research psychologist Stanley Milgram. Besides conducting studies which became the basis of six degrees of separation, he is most famous for the Milgram Experiment:

"The experimenter orders the teacher , the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner , who is actually an actor and confidant. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level."

The supposed shock levels increased all the way to 450 volts, a fatal level. An unbelievable 65% of the participants continued to administer a shock all the way up to this level merely because they were told to do so. Only one person refused to administer the shock before the 300 volt level. Milgram's conclusions:

"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study ...

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority."

Milgram's experiment was in response to the crimes of the Nazis and the complicity of the German people. But it's relevance to any situation where good people "go along" with the crowd is obvious. In effect, we're all on that "last train to Nuremburg".

Cartoon of the Day

Sci-Fi Movie Reviews

I am so far behind on movie reviews. Not behind on watching new movies, mind you ... just on reviewing them. I've been going to movies like a mad man. Anyway, I'm going to try and break it up into genres. First up are all the sci-fi or comic book adaptation movies that I've seen lately, oldest first:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - As you would expect, this movie establishes the origins of the Wolverine character, from his birth in Canada in the 1800's, through his involvement in all the major wars and finally as part of a government group of mutants. The background is more interesting than the meandering story of the group of mutants. I'd explain it to you if I understood it. It's not that it's deep or complicated ... it's that it's contradictory and not well-paced.

I thought the special effects were not that great. Specifically, Wolverine's blades's effects were not seemless. I could clearly see it shifting on his hands. With the state of the art computer effects that movies have now, there is no excuse for that.

Ryan Reynolds was good, sarcastically funny as usual, but not enough lines. Liev Shreiber is a good actor, but I don't think his role as Sabretooth really required any talent. It seems like the movie was more concerned with establishing characters that could have their own spinoff movies, like Gambit. But they were just thrown in haphazard and didn't really have anything to do with the plot. Wait ... there was no plot.

The movie is full of good actors like Jackman and Danny Huston, but they're stuck doing stupid things and saying stupid stuff. The dialogue was iffy, even for a comic book movie.

I'm not saying it's a terrible movie, but in this age of comic book adaptations standing on their own as good movies (Iron Man, Dark Knight), you have to bring it better than this. This movie is not as good as any of the X-Men movies, which weren't exactly high art themselves. Grade: C-

Star Trek -- You could probably call this Star Trek Origins. The movie's goal of establishing a backstory like X-Men, however, would be the only similarity with that movie. In every aspect where X-Men falls short, Star Trek hits it out of the park.

Star Trek establishes how all of the Enterprise characters we know from the original series (and several bad movies) get to be on the Enterprise. It's a story point that has never been explored in depth, just hinted at. By doing this, we're released from having to use crusty old actors. All of the young(er) actors that they brought in to fill the roles are outstanding. Especially in the roles of Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto), they had to make sure that they got good performances. And they did. The characteristic bravado and charm of Shatner is there in Pine, but he's not mimicking him at all. He makes the role his own. Quinto takes the best traits of Nimoy but, again, inhabits the role. The other two performances I want to make note of are Karl Urban (LOTR, Bourne Supremacy) as Bones and Simon Pegg (Shawn of the Dead) as Scotty. They are both hilarious. But not in a campy way.

The movie as a whole is not camp at all. It makes a nod to some catchphrases that we all know, but this is not an inside-joke "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" type movie at all. It stands on it's own. If you had never seen a Star Trek movie or series, this would still be an entertaining movie. The special effects are nice, but at no point are they the point of the story, like in a George Lucas movie. Star Trek is much more about character development. As I mentioned before, several moments are funny, but just as many are touching, particularly the opening scene with Kirk's father. I'm not ashamed to admit that I might have welled up a bit on that one. Plus, there are some definite sexy moments.

I could get into the details of the movie, but that's not what I really do with my reviews. I don't want to ruin it, I just want to give my impressions. Suffice to say, there is some time travel, some Romulans and maybe a visit by someone we know. The familiar directing/writing/producing team of J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindenof, Bryan Burk (all of Fringe and Lost fame) does a great job with the film and I'm excited to see what the next film holds. Grade: A

Terminator Salvation -- This is a fairly dark, thematically and literally, account of John Connor in the future as an adult. Whereas Star Trek didn't rely on any previous knowledge, Terminator Salvation wouldn't really make a lot of sense if you hadn't at least seen Terminator and T2 (I don't think anyone saw T3).

Christian Bale, an actor I like a lot, plays John Connor. He brings to it his normal intensity and I think he does a good job. Bryce Dallas Howard (Spiderman) plays his wife but is underused. There are some other bit actors but the two I would highlight would be Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) as the young Kyle Reese (the Michael Biehn character in Terminator) and Sam Worthington as a terminator that is not aware that he is a terminator. Both actors are very good.

The movie is loud, but that's to be expected since it's really about them fighting huge robots in a post-apocalyptic world. But, in between explosions, the movie does a decent job of exploring the philosophical concept of what really makes us human? Is it flesh and blood? Is it a soul? Can machines have a soul? Etc. It's the combination of effects and philosophy that have made the previous movies interesting. And Terminator Salvation does a serviceable job of continuing it. Nothing great. Not as good as the first two movies, but much better than the third. Grade: B-