Sarah Palin, sports caster

Here is Sarah Palin announcing the sports from the 1980's - I like the big hair thing she has goin' on. And her accent. I feel strangely attracted to sarah palin - does she possess my mojo? perhaps....

Vietnam Napalm girl

All you have to do is search the above title and the photo of Ms. Kim Phuc will come up on internet - she is running, naked, with burns over her back and arm. I just saw the film "Hearts and Minds" from Netflix, I saw it before at Harris theater in pittsburgh, cried through most of it, second time around it wasnt so bad. In the film Kim Phuc is shown running, and the extent of her burns, and her anguish, is extended. It took over a year for her to recover, lucky to be alive, in a burn center in an American hospital in Saigon. The photographer got her immediate help, probably saved her life. The picture, and the film of her running, is terrifying for me - I wanted to scream the first time I saw the film. As a father.....well, you have to be a parent i guess.

anyway, she is a peace activist now, living in Canada (she received asylum there). She is married, mother of two. Still has terrible scars, pain from nerve damage. But she is UN Ambassador for peace, world traveler talking about help for burn victims.

Its amazing how something so terrible can turn into something sacred.

BTW, the plane that dropped the napalm was Vietnamese. An american pilot was told to hit the village days earlier, he refused, he was familiar with the territory, said that the village was not a viable target. American pilot said maybe the Vietnamese regional chief wanted to punish village, he couldnt figure out why the village was targeted, after he refused and explained it wasnt a target. So who knows why it was bombed, maybe it was just a general fuck up. The point being, that the village wasnt a target, shouldnt have been bombed.

Sarah the Cheetah

I love Cheetahs, my favorite animal. I like them more than human beings. Anyway, Sarah is the fastest Cheetah on earth. She ran 100 meters in 6.19 seconds, which is.....ah.....99mph? there is some arithmetic here, she ran a 5 min 5 k? which is 99 mph? Is it too late for me? (10:45 pm) or is my arithmetic just wrong?

"Jesus !" another baby ? !!!!

"I told Jim Bob and he couldn't keep it in, he was so excited," she says. That's what Michelle Duggar said about her husband, Jim Bob. The Duggars have 18 children, number nineteen is on the way. They name their kids with names starting with J, they have a contest now to name the 19th, a name starting with "J." I suggest, "Jesus," as in, "Jesus, you're having ANOTHER baby? !" The above quote is about Michelle telling her hubby, Jim Bob, that she was pregnant. Although it sounds like something else (funny...) They live in Arkansas. Men in Arkansas always have two names, thus "Jim Bob," or for their new baby, "Jesus Christ another baby Duggar."

Which reminds me of the old legend about Groucho Marx and his show "You bet your Life." Contestant comes one, says he has 12 children. Groucho asks why. Contestant says "because I love children." Groucho says, "Well....I love cigars, but every once in a while, I take it out of my mouth." Supposedly this never really happened, but its a Groucho legend, and a great story nonetheless.

I mean, I love Blow Pops, Jim Bob, but every once in a while I take it out of my mouth!

Ted Kennedy: his death, he should have driven a VW Bug

Here is my past entry about Ted Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick scandal.

I agree with the analysts, that Sen. Kennedy became a very effective, moderate voice in the US Senate after his marriage to Vickie Reggie. I think she saw the potential in him. I think the assassination of his brother Robert was what pushed him over the edge. His loneliness, the drinking, the infidelities, became his own perfect storm.

His behavior after Bobby's death, up to and including his run for the Presidency in 1980, are his worst years. Described as the last true liberal in the US Senate, he forgot his brother John F. Kennedy was no liberal, but a moderate. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was no liberal, broke with FDR over many things, including the socialist policies of the new deal,and of course, the alliance with Britain before US entry into WWII - Joe didn't like the english (he was irish) and thought we should tilt toward Germany. Which is why FDR essentially fired him from being ambassador to britain.

I think many people like Ted because of his brothers - the real Ted Kennedy didnt emerge until after his marriage with Vickie. He finished his life well. Perhaps that made up for the failings earlier in his life, as a husband, father, and US Senator.

So god bless him, he did the best he could given the family he was born into, and many people have benefited from his work in the US Senate.

Pacific garbage has become overwhelming environmental disaster

While scientists have documented trash's harmful effects for coastal marine life, there's little research on garbage patches, which were first explored extensively by self-trained ocean researcher Charles Moore just a decade ago. There's also scant research on the marine life at the bottom of the food chain that inhabit the patch.

But even the weather-beaten, sunbleached plastic flakes that are smaller than a thumbnail can be alarming.

"They're the right size to be interacting with the food chain out there," Goldstein said.

The team also netted occasional water bottles with barnacles clinging to the side. Some of the trash had labels written in Chinese and English, hints of the long journeys garbage takes to arrive mid-ocean.

Plastic sea trash doesn't biodegrade and often floats at the surface. Bottlecaps, bags and wrappers that end up in the ocean from the wind or through overflowing sewage systems can then drift thousands of miles.

The sheer quantity of plastic that accumulates in the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex formed by ocean and wind currents and located 1,000 miles off the California coast, has the scientists worried about how it might harm the sea creatures there.

A study released earlier this month estimated that thousands of tons of plastic debris wind up in the oceans every year, and some of that has ended up in the swirling currents of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist at Nihon University, Chiba, Japan, told the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society last week that plastic actually does decompose, releasing potentially toxic chemicals that can disrupt the functioning of hormones in animals and marine life.

The Scripps team hopes the samples they gathered during the trip nail down answers to questions of the trash's environmental impact. Does eating plastic poison plankton? Is the ecosystem in trouble when new sea creatures hitchhike on the side of a water bottle?

Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish, and one paper cited by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year.

The scientists hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of marine debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger.

"We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution.

Only humans are to blame for ocean debris, Goldstein said. In a blog entry posted a day before the science ship arrived in Newport, Ore., she wrote the research showed her the consequences of humanity's footprint on nature.

"Seeing that influence just floating out here in the middle of nowhere makes our power painfully obvious, and the consequences of the industrial age plain," she wrote. "It's not a pretty sight."

Yemeni Child Bride gets Divorce

10 yr old Nujood was married to an old man by her family. Her family is poor, lives on less than $1 a day. after two years of rape and beatings, she escaped and went to a court, sat outside until a judge would talk to her. The judge surprising arrested the father and husband, and after the trial hearing, granted Nujood a divorce. Catch is, her dad has to pay $200 to the ex husband under Saria law as compensation (for a defective wife I guess). Meanwhile....Najood has become a spokesperson for exploited child brides everywhere, has received donations for schooling. However, her family says they dont have the money to send her to private school for transportation or something. Nujood is mad, angry, refuses to go to school (abused children are often angry and mad). So, no happy ending. child marriages continue in many countries. Families are poor, "selling" a child relieves them of a burden, they hope their child will be well taken care of by the "rich" man who buys her. This must also go on in Afghanistan. there are parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, by the border, where it doesnt seem any "law" exists in some constitutional sense. Its the law of their own parochial version of Islam and tribal customs. I cant see how the US can change this.

But thats not to criticize the Afghanistan invasion, I think we should have invaded after the USS Cole attack in 1998, but Pres. Clinton was busy at the time ( denying he likes his own version of child brides, women younger than his own daughter ).

Cigarette warnings will become graphic

I love the movie, Thank You for Smoking, I LMAO all through the movie. I esp liked the scene at the movie producers corp office,a shinto monk raking sand in a japanese garden, and the young cocky assistant says, "That sand won't rake itself, Meiko" or something like that. The incredible BS facade of new age corporate hipness. anyway, Pres Obama, who still sneaks out of the oval office to have a smoke in the rose garden, signed into law a bill that would give the FDA much more power to regulate cigarettes. One thing up, is warning labels. The US has the weakest warning labels of any country in the world. So get ready for the pics you see here, from Brazil, a country with the most graphic warning labels.

Life on Earth

When I get depressed about my life, I reflect on the lives of others around this planet. Here are three pictures: (1) a mother is watching over her burned young daughter, who was forced to marry a 70 yr old man, but was discovered with a young man her age, and her family now disgraced, she decided to burn herself to death, unsuccessfully; (2) a boy rescued from a child labor factory in India (3) bangladeshi workers taking a break from dismantling a ship, full of toxic waste, by hand using hammers and welding torches.

Oh well, call it a life, eh?

"Tulpan" a movie from Kazakhstan

This is an amazing movie, (trailer here) about following your dream, even if it isnt someone else's dream. Asa is a sailor, who wants to manage a herd of sheep in the Steppes of Kazakhstan. That in itself is a twist. Asa lives with his sister and her family until he c an get his own place. however, to do that, the "boss" who finances herds wants him to get married, because life is harsh on the steppes, and poor, and he needs a wife to help him survive the life of a herdsman. Asa is in love with Tulpan (who we never see - she is the unknown beauty he imagines he wants to marry) but Tulpan and her mom have a different dream for her. Asa loves life on the steppes, such a harsh, barren landscape, but he sees the beauty in the land. He lies back, on his back, and feels the earth beneath him, the sky above, he is "anchored" you could say on the land. in the end, no spoilers here, he follows his dream. Will he achieve happiness? His sister and her husband dont seem very happy, they are poor, nomadic. Will Asa also experience this? Will his dream result in unhappiness, frustration? Isnt that a universal paradox, that our dreams can never be realized, that life is chasing our dreams, and we have to find happiness where we can, our dreams are ephemeral. So I almost cried just before the ending, but then the ending occurred, and I took consolation in the human spirit - believe in yourself, have courage, suck it up, follow your dream. great movie. I loved it. absolutely beautiful.

Muslim woman thrown out of public pool in France

So this woman wanted to swim, but wore her burguini, head to ankle covered swim attire. France does not like fully covered women, its the law, Pres. Sarkozy thinks it imprisons women. France has a large muslim minority, the results of its collapsed empire. I understand the public health issue, you dont want street clothes being worn in the pool. But as long as the woman changes into this in the dressing room, as long as she showers first with it on, why not? Dress codes are hard to enforce, and I know if muslim women can wear a burguini to the pool, some knucklehead will try to wear his street clothes into the pool just to be a jerk. but cant we all just get along? Muslim women cover up out of modesty, before their god, its a sign of humility and reverence. thats what some young muslim college students told me. they are proud to cover up. There has got to be a solution to this. our local high school does not allow any religious insignia to be worn, not cross necklaces, nothing. but what if a muslim woman wanted to wear a hijab to high school? or a jewish young man wanted to wear a kippah to high school?

Isnt there some middle ground here?

Pa. man convicted of groping Minnie Mouse

Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A 60-year-old Pennsylvania man has been convicted of groping a woman in a Minnie Mouse costume at Walt Disney World.

John William Moyer of Cressona, Schuylkill County, told the judge he is innocent. His son said before sentencing that his father would never inappropriately touch a woman.

He was convicted today of misdemeanor battery and sentenced to write the victim an apology, serve 180 days probation and complete 50 hours of community service. Mr. Moyer must also pay $1,000 in court costs and possibly undergo a mental evaluation.

The victim says she had to do everything possible to keep Mr. Moyer's hands off her breasts.


When I first read the headline I thought, "I haven't been anywhere NEAR Disneyworld for years." But it was someone else, in the picture. The guy gropes minnie mouse WHILE his picture is being taken. The Horror. The Humanity.

Sarah Palin speaks poetry: William Shatner interprets

Here is William Shatner reciting Sarah Palin poetry. He is the man.

If you liked that performance check out more shatner performances here.

Movie: "Seraphine"

a movie about Seraphine Louis, an expressionist painter 100 yrs ago, who lived in poverty while painting in her off time. She is self taught, or a "primativist" and is not discovered until after her death. The film looks really good, about love and squalor. I am not familiar with her work, but attached is one of her paintings, really beautiful. I always thought that the great impressionist masters were students of art, but their success was their ability to go beyond what they were taught. So a self taught painter, is by nature, someone not influenced by mainstream art styles. Right? Or am i missing something.

BTW, I presume to appreciate art, but i like what i like, am not an expert. But I can distinguish between low art (you buy it because the color fits your wall, or the size fits your bathroom wall) and art art that you can't stop looking at. I still remember being in National Gallery, in the room with Cubist paintings, I stood in the middle and turned 360 degrees, of all the paintings, one stood out. I walked up to it and.... Picasso. What a coincidence that in a room of cubist art, one painting is so distinctive. (!?) I'll type more about the movie when i see it.

Rev. Ike dead ! He knows how to bribe St. Peter at the Gate

Rev. Ike died, 74 yrs old. I havent heard much about him, he was big in the 1970's appearing on UHF tv stations (there was VHF for very high frequency, the standard antenna, and then UHF for ultra high freq which was a smaller round antenna on the back of the set). He was a showman, with his ornate gowns, his slicked back hair, his makeup face. He preached self help, God is within you, to a black audience. His message of getting rich, believing in yourself, made him rich, I am not so sure about his congregants. The photo is of his rolls royce, car, and his church was in a theater that was built like a palace back in the 1930's, a real historical landmark. here is inside the church some pictures and description of his ministry.

Movie, "Silent Light"

This is a movie about a Mennonite community in northern Mexico. Mennonite's are a protestant christian religion and they believe they owe allegiance to God and not to any one nation. They have been persecuted in Europe (Anabaptists) and from there they have had a diaspora across the globe. This film is in low German, and spanish. Johan has a wonderful family, six children, a wonderful wife Marianne. However, he has fallen in love with a single woman, Esther. They are all members of this religious community. Johan has told his wife about Esther from the very beginning. This affair is making everyone sad, and Esther tells Johan it must stop. Johan confesses to his wife about his latest intimate moment with Esther (he had prayed that he could stop) while they are driving, and she becomes sick, jumps out of car. runs off in a rain storm, weeps, and presumably dies. At her funeral, Johan realizes how much he loved her, and how wrong his affairs with Esther was. Without spoiling the film, Johan is given a second chance to make things right.

The film is filmed with great beauty, from the opening scene watching the sun come up, to the closing scene, watching the sun set, and the night sky become brilliant.

This family (and Johan's parents, the "family" is the whole community) has something wrong with it. Instead of being harmonious, Johan's affair has introduced much sorrow and unhappiness in the family. At the beginning of the movie, Johan stops a clock from ticking, at the end of the film, Johan's father restarts the clock. Johan's affair demands that time "stop" so that the family can be healed.

The film depicts the timelessness of the land, of the lives of this community. Happiness is the well being of the community, and family, and individual happiness (gratification) is subordinated to the happiness of the community. Its as though the film is saying, we are not here on earth for our own happiness, but for the good of our community.

The scenes of farm life are so beautiful, and the soundtrack is amazing, I could hear birds, crickets throughout the film. as though these life forms are just as important as the humans, or at least they all are inhabiting the same space, share a common function. What a film! i think a masterpiece. I might buy this when it comes out on DVD so I can share it with others.

Here is the only utube trailer I could find. Oops, one more in german.

Woody Allen on the meaning of life - Hannah and her Sisters

nothing on tv last night, and I am tired of reading the book "On Killing, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, (a tough subject). So I saw woody allen's Hannah and her Sisters, on dvd. I really love that movie, especially the scene where he tries to kill himself with a rifle, misses, and then goes to see a Marx brothers movie which makes him believe that life is too much fun to end abruptly. I have been battling depression lately, and the movie really helped my outlook on life.

The picture of the Marx brothers includes their distant relative, Karl. Once while I was a teaching assistant at the Univ of Georgia, I remarked in class that there is a book published on the daughters of Karl Marx, he had no sons, and who they married and what happened to them and so forth. A student asked for the name of the book, and I couldnt remember it, so I said, without thinking, "The Marx Sisters" or something like that....and i paused, thought about what i just said, and started laughing uncontrollably. The class didnt get it, I guess these 19 yr olds never saw a marx brother movie.

More on Hannah and her Sisters: it has an amazing cast, including Max von Sydow, the famous actor from Igmar Bergman films. Woody is a fan of Bergman films, "Deconstructing Harry" is similar to Bergman's Wild Strawberries, "Love and Death" copies scenes from "the Seventh Seal." Anyway, there is a long scene with Barbara Hershey and Max and Barb go through it once, to practice where woody wants them to stand, walk and so forth. then they shoot it once, all the way through, and a second shoot, and woody says "wrap." Max is incredulous, a wrap after two takes? woody says he wants it fresh, with minimal rehersal, it makes the acting raw and more realistic. Max is impressed. what woody didnt explain is that his films make a very little profit, from low viewership, and that the only way to get the studios to back him is to keep his cost of making the film as low as possible. For example, "Sleeper" I think cost the most of the early woody films (i might be wrong), and the studios tried to keep his costs down after that. He never has had a "hit" with the exception of Annie Hall (Hannah comes in 3rd place in revenue of all his films). Also there are great scenes in Hannah, he takes the viewer on a tour of landmark buildings in manhattan (sam waterstan plays an architect), central park (he has mickey and holly walk left to right in front of stationery camera) and of course the last scene, at thanksgiving, with mickey and holly kissing, candles in the background, minimal lighting (there is a Scandanavian group of filmmakers who make movies with only natural lighting, or candles, but no "lights," I am sure woody knows of this group and borrowed their technique for the final scene.

The appearance of the punk rock band "39 Steps" (an Alfred Hitchcock film- woody picks a punk group with a name taken from a famous film and film director!) is followed by Mickey taking Holly to see Bobby Short at the Cafe Carlyle (Mr. Short died before I was able to see him at the Carlyle, one of the missed opportunities of my life) and they hear Mr. Short play "I'm in Love Again," a great rendition of the Cole Porter song, but I cant find it on Youtube, so here is Bobby sining "I happen to like New York," which is a song that woody put in the beginning of his film Manhattan Murder Mystery.

BTW, Woody used to play clarinet in a new orleans type jazz band at the Cafe Carlyle. I dont know if he still does it. BTW, a room at the Carlyle will cost you $395 for one night, summer rate, and apartments are available for purchase starting at $1.5 million (which might be a bargain in today's market). There is a $85 cover charge to see jazz bands at the Cafe Carlyle, supposedly woody plays there monday nights. I assume you need a reservation well in advance.

Hybrids versus my 4 door Yaris

My Yaris gets 42 mpg mixed, and 44 highway. that is comparable, even better, than some hybrids.

But the Yaris has little power. I accelerate by using the transmission (5 speed manual) but on expressway, to get some power, I downshift into 2nd gear, revving up the engine so when I let clutch out I have high rpm. That is the downside to great mpg, the engine is not powerful, but if I drive defensively and pass on a straight away or downhill, the car is ok. I like the car a great deal, just there are a few times when the lack of power takes me by surprise.

F22 Raptor funding ended.

The senate voted to end production of the F22 Raptor. Reasons? The cost and the mission. Pres Obama and Def Sec Gates thinks the Raptor does not help fight the wars we are in today, such as Iraq or Afghanistan. The Raptor was designed for the cold war - war. Also, the expense cannot be justified given the deficit. My work on policy termination suggests that "cost" is usually not the reason why a program is terminated: usually, termination costs more than continuing the policy. However, a change in ideology is often a reason for termination. In this case, the Raptor does not give our troops an edge in the wars we are fighting - we are fighting a war on terror and insurgency, and what we need is the tools for counter-insurgency, how to eliminate the reasons and the support for terrorists and insurgents.

I have decided to look into the F22 termination as well as other terminated military equipment. Why was the F22 terminated but not the Osprey? Both were costly. Does the Osprey help fight our current wars better than the F22? Perhaps. I am going to look into this further, maybe write a conference paper on it. I havent done anything with policy termination since my book came out in 1997, other than one paper on terminating military bases (which was rejected by two journals at which point i threw it away, literally).

Louis Bleriot - the brave man who first flew the English Channel

Today is the 100th anniversary of Louis Bleriot's flight across the english channel. I guess i have to read more than I have about who had the "first flight" in an airplane. Wikipedia says wright brothers in 1903. But I suspect that the french had flyable aircraft before that. Most parts of an airplane have french names so the french obviously had much to do with inventing airplane parts. Anyway, I think the above picture is of Louis just prior to his takeoff, minutes before he departed for England. Look at his face - fear, dread. But he took off anyway, which is called "bravery." I really admire this guy. His plane was little more than an ultrlight. see a reproduction here (I think its a reproduction - let me research this more). UPDATE: Not a reproduction, it is a restored Bleriot identical to the one Louis flew. Here is another video of this guy flying a restored Bleriot.

Otto Lilienthal is listed as the first person to fly an aircraft in the 1890's - he made hundreds of flights. He also invented a steam engine that was light weight, weighing less than the gas-piston engines of the time. Were his flights powered? I dont know, Otto is known as the inventor of glider planes. How far were his flights? I dont know if they were as far as the wright brothers. How fast were his planes? I dont know. I guess the identity of the first flight depends on how you define aircraft, flight, and so forth.