A new spiritual hero of the moment

Dr. Strangelove has long been one of my favorite films and I always like Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack T. Ripper, but there was a lot more to Hayden than I ever suspected.



Driftglass posted a few bit of an amazing conversation between Tom Snyder and Sterling Hayden and it piqued my interest in a guy I've always thought was a good actor. I looked into his biography and damn, what an interesting guy. He ran away to the sea at 15, sailed and eventually skippered square-riggers and eventually ended up in Hollywood before the war, joined the marines and ended up running guns into Yugoslavia with the OSS in the war, joined and quit the commmunist party, named names for McCarthy and considers it the most shameful thing he ever did, became both a writer and fan of marijuana late in life. Say what you like about him, the guy was definitely an original. Having listened to these interviews, I now have a fantasy of traveling across the United States in Hayden's train car with him, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, Ruth Gordon, Ingrid Bergman, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Thomas Pynchon, Hunter Thompson and a couple of cases of good scotch.

Check out the first series of interviews on the Tomorrow Show here, the second one here and the third one here.

Not for sissies

Everyone likes to think that their favorite sport is the most demanding and produces the best athletes, but for the ultimate combination of physical conditioning, strength, skill and courage, I challenge anyone to top the hockey player.
Sure, soccer players can run full tilt for 90 minutes and need great skill to handle the ball. Yes, football linebackers are strong as bulls and can sprint like a deer. I know, I know -- hitting a curve ball is one of the most difficult things there is. NHL goalies do their best to hit a fast curveball with their bodies about 30 times a game. And while they may be in good shape, I have no time for the boohooing and theatrics of soccer players who bump into each other, or occasionally collide mid-air. And don't talk to me about the long term wear and tear on the bodies of the armoured behemoths in the front lines of the NFL, how often to they get hit with a stick by someone going in excess of 30 kph?. You want tough? Meet the Montreal Canadiens' Travis Moen.

Moen took a skate blade in the face on Monday night, resulting in between 40 and 50 stitches, but, as the Montreal Gazette tells us: "Moen had hoped to play in Wednesday’s game in Buffalo, but doctors didn’t want his injury subjected to the altitude pressures of flying. It was just the sixth game the durable forward had missed in his past 320 in Montreal, San Jose and Anaheim."

As Moen himself said in the article (emphasis mine): “I was unlucky to get hit, but lucky that it missed the eye – fortunate enough that nothing serious happened. I was fortunate that (the skate) missed my eye and I just got some stitches. I’m definitely happy that was the outcome.”


Rugby players take a pounding. Marathon runners have incredible endurance. Driving Nascar or Formula  One cars means knowing that if someone else makes a mistake you could end up trapped in a pile of burning, twisted metal. I acknowledge all that. I'll go one better and specify that all athletic endevours carry some risk of catastrophic injury- think of Joe Thiesman getting his leg snapped or Jessica Dube nearly getting her nose cut off in a figure skating accident. But name me one other sport where getting 50 stitches in the face is just another day at the office.
Moen is fully expected to be back on the ice tonight.

In the words of Warren Zevon: "Take care of your teeth, that might work for you, but what's a Canadian farm boy to do?"

Glass houses, petards and Brownshirt Annie

Now

"Free speech in Canada leaves much to be desired" Ann Coulter after event cancellation

Shorter Ann Coulter: "boo hoo, Canadians are mean and stupid and won't let me talk shit to them, that's why I'm glad there's a National Post."

Then

"They're always accusing us of repressing their speech," she said. "I say let's do it. Let's repress them."

She later added, "Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment."

(Hat tip to Dr. Dawg)

While I think pulling a fire alarm for any reason other than a fire is criminal, what Coulter does is not so far from shouting "fire" in crowded theatre.  What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, Ann, turnabout being fair play and all that. And you guys, please stop staring at her Adam's apple! (warning: Links something that is so very, very wrong and NSFW)

Censorship or the Free Market speaking?

As much as I dislike Ann Coulter, I do respect her right to say just about any stupid thing that comes into the space between her ears. I don't think the University of Ottawa should have invited her in the first place, but I'm not sure how I feel about her speech having to be cancelled due to "security concerns."
I'd rather have seen her be allowed to speak, and then roundly booed and mocked by those in attendance.
One thing is for certain though, and that is that she, and Ezra Levant and the rest of the para-fascist shriekosphere will be milking this for all it is worth.

Run over by the Mack truck of history

I'm puzzled as to how Canadian Immigration Authorities can justify allowing a hatemonger like Ann Coulter into the country while barring British MP George Galloway, scholar and former radical  William Ayers and trying to keep out journalists who might say mean things about the big burning stick festival in Vancouver.

But then, I suppose such people are not going to bring teh laffs like Brownshirt Annie:

During the Q & A a 17 year old female Muslim student quoted Ann Coulter's statement encouraging 1) the US to invade the Islamic nations, kill their leaders and convert their citizens to Christianity; and 2) for Muslims to be banned from airplanes, and that if they need to fly they should take their magic carpets. The girl asked if 1) she should be forced to convert, and 2) given that she doesn't have a magic carpet, what should she do if she needs to fly somewhere. Coulter didn't much address the first question, but addressed the second one by telling her to take a camel! (not that camels fly but, you get the drift).

Laugh? Ha, I almost started!

Stay KKKlassy conservatives!

Ann was introduced in London by fellow wingnut trougher and longtime media whore Ezra Levant. And apparently Kathy "12 feet of nasty packed in a five foot box" Shaidle was also there to try to claw her way onto the gravy train and spreading her usual sunshine.


What these half-bright hate peddlars and their "moran" fans fail to realize is that history has completely passed them by. They and their morally and intellectually bankrupt ideology are flavor-of-the-moment relics from the last decade and anyone with any sense at all has long since moved on. All their outrageous statements and publicity stunts aimed at getting them back in the limelight will fail, because after 20 years of their screaming "wolf" and predicting doom if they weren't given the keys to the kingdom even conservatives are now realizing they've been had.

And speaking of cheap and obvious publicity stunts, apparently Coulter is planning to launch a complaint with the Human Rights Commission over a letter she received prior to speaking at the Univeristy of Ottawa.

"...a senior University of Ottawa administrator has warned her to use "restraint, respect and consideration" when speaking at the school.
Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost, advised Coulter, who holds a law degree, to review Canada's hate speech and defamation laws before giving her talk at the university.
In an e-mail sent to Coulter on Friday, a copy of which has been obtained by the National Post, Houle wrote: "Our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or "free speech") in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here."

He continued: "Promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges."

After also mentioning defamation law, the provost wrote: "I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind."

Shorter: "We both know you like to shoot your mouth off and we have laws against hate speech up here, and every liberal in the country will be waiting to pounce, so please don't drag the univerisity into a lawsuit by saying something actionable, mmmkay?"

And Coulter's response?

"Now that the provost has instructed me on the criminal speech laws he apparently believes I have a proclivity (to break), despite knowing nothing about my speech, I see that he is guilty of promoting hatred against an identifiable group: conservatives," Coulter wrote in an e-mail to the Ottawa Citizen Monday...

Shorter: "You Canuckistani socialists aren't the boss of me! I'll say whatever hateful thing I want!"

Obviously, Ezra has had a word with Ann about the publicity value to be had in getting to speak in front of the Human Rights Commission, no matter how obviously stupid your case, something he has considerable experience with.

Seriously, there ought to some kind of fine levied for wasting the commission's time with this kind of bullshit.

More movie goodness

This week's feature by the Glorious People's Cinema Project in Second Life
Music from 6 pm, movie from about 7 pm SLT/Pacific Daylight Savings time

One for all, and all for one

If you look up "swashbucker" in an online dictionary, this is the movie they should link to. Queens, kings, cardinals, rogues, duels, damsels in distress, derring-do, intrigue, action, comedy - Michael York, Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston, Christopher Frickin' Lee as the greatest bad guy ever, Raquel Welch and Faye Dunaway at the peak of their gorgeousness --Spike Milligan for cryin' out loud --  and a screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser of "Flashman" fame. All directed by Richard "Hard Day's Night, Help, How I Won The War, Robin & Marian, Superman" Lester. It's possible that this is not the greatest movie ever made, but what more could you possibly ask for?

And the Alexandre Dumas catchphrase that sums up my philosophy of friendship and civic duty and probably got me started down the path to being the proud commie pinko I am today.

For the impatient, the fight with the Cardinal's Guards about 13 minutes in is the something I could watch again and again and again, and have.


Press play, press pause and then go make yourself some popcorn while the buffer fills.




and the second half - The Four Musketeers.




and there goes your Sunday afternoon. You're welcome.

the way it's going

I could not be more grateful to the most excellent Seattle Tammy and Seattle Dan aka Bookem & Dano, proprieters of Jackson Street Books for the gift they included in my Christmas shipment - an autographed copy of "The Financial Lives of The Poets" - a novel of considerable excellence and humor. However, I may not have picked the most auspicious time to be reading it as it rings a little too close to home at times, what with having only another week left at work before plunging into the abyss and all that.
I had a moment of head-meets-table this morning when picking it up over my steaming morning cup of maple syrup and turning to the new chapter to find this bit of poesy from author Jess Walter:

Chapter 7

The Last Days of the 

Newspaper Business

I dreamed  I was on my bike, delivering the last paper

to the final porch and I tossed that rag at least a mile --

last dream of a democratic process -- and the end of the papers 

fell like a snowflake on the faded wood planks

of my old man's porch, and came out in slippers, 

picked it up, slipped off the rubber band -- and the thing

exploded with fresh despairs: new Vietnams and 

Watergates, Mansons and Patty Hearsts, not to mention

Andy Capp and Hi and Lois, horoscopes, a Crossword puzzle,

box scores -- even the obit of my poor mother. And

my old man told me not to cry, that even good things die, 

son, and he folded that paper back up and tucked

the only good thing I ever did under his arm, easing back 

into the warm house of my dead childhood to take 

his morning shit. 

Go buy this most excellent book. 

further excellence

Would you believe, Superheroes in rehab?  No, really -- a great monthly video series.

Reformatories: throwing away the key on Canadian kids

Attention must be paid to what Willy Loman said about the asinine changes in the works for the Young Offenders Act.

Prosecutors will now have to justify why they are not trying a 14 year old as an adult in a serious offense, not the other way around.

Hell, that's nothing, just wait until Harper get his majority and they get that whole "presumed guilty until proven innocent" thing in place as an efficiency measure.

Logically locking up our youngest offenders instead of focussing on their rehabilitation, while there is still time and better chance for rehabilitation will more likely produce hardened young adults who will have better chance of becoming professional criminals as soon as they are back on the streets, than productive members of society. But that is just too logical.
Unfortunately facts and logic do not exist for the Harper reformatories or if realized, they are just ignored. The main purpose of these draconian changes to our societal laws is to satisfy a rabid narrow base of bible bangers, living in privileged, sheltered rural based cities

In the meantime, you might be interested in this old post of mine.  Plus ca change, eh?

Excellence

Apparently, the Iraq war is over and the good guys won, or something.

Y'know, whenever I start to fancy myself a wordsmith, I need only read whatever the latest post on Fafblog or Driftglass is and that pretty much kicks the chair out from under that notion.

God hates tract-pedaling busybodies

This week I had another visit from the Jehovah's Witnesses. And they had the temerity to come to my door the morning after the big farewell party at the office. Which of course brings this story to mind and requires that I once again post this marvelous little movie.

On a personal note...

After nine years in the same job, I'm about to get the financial debriefing lecture that comes before my "early retirement" at the tender age of 43. I've been obsessively rereading the complete works of the greatest author of the 20th century all weekend and listening to a lot of Warren Zevon, who is in my not so humble or unschooled opinion, a goddamn genius.

What could a bunch of nerds on YouTube do?

Plenty!



If you're reading this, you can afford a computer. If you can afford a computer, you can afford to send a couple of bucks to Shawn, who is just some guy from Toronto who got tired of the world sucking and decided he was going to do something about it, and help make some lives better.

Higher, Faster, Stronger, Prettier

Nevermind what I think about figure skating for just a moment and go read the funniest thing I've read in a few weeks of reading silly, over-the-top, crapola about figure skating. Mind you, its not as creepy as the second half of this earlier piece by the same writer. If I were Mao Asada, I'd be looking into a restraining order.
Look, I won't deny that figure skating is very popular and major draw for the olympics. It draws a huge number of television viewers and that means moneny. I would never deny it is very athletic and requires a huge amount of skill, discipline and talent.  So does synchonized swimming. So does rythmic gymnastics. So does ballet. None of these are sports, they are artistic endevours which are for some reason forced into competition and judged on subjective criteria.
Anything in which your chances of winning can depend on the music you choose, the costume or make-up you wear and whether you smile while competing is not a sport.

My Canada does not include war criminals

In light of this, I think that it is undeniable that there must be a fully public, non-partisan inquest, preferrably by a provincial coroner or similar authority that is more than arm's length away from the federal government.

From the CBC:

Federal government documents on Afghan detainees suggest that Canadian officials intended some prisoners to be tortured in order to gather intelligence, according to a legal expert.

If the allegation is true, such actions would constitute a war crime, said University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has been digging deep into the issue and told CBC News he has seen uncensored versions of government documents released last year.

If the allegation that Afghan prisoners were purposely sent to be tortured turns out to be true, I  want people sent to jail.
And by jail I don't mean country club Conrad Black minimum security jail, either. I want to see them walking the yard at Millhaven. And by people I mean every single person in the chain of command that approved or did not act to stop this - right up to the Cabinet level, including the Prime Minister. If it happened under the Liberals and Paul Martin knew about it, fine, jail his retired ass, too.
This is not about politics or the party currently in power. This about Canada upholding basic human rights. We may have gotten a lot of things related to human rights wrong in the past - from residential schools to head taxes to incarcerating the Japanese during World War Two - whichever party is in power, but we have never tolerated outright evil like this.
This must be investigated, fully and completely and in the full light of day, with nothing redacted or left unexamined to "protect operational security" or any other bullshit reason the people involved want to try to cite to save their asses. My Canada does not include torture.

Update: the Mound of Sound has more here, here and here

Would that be Arrrrrrshtanga Yoga?

Sure, an just you try to do a flyin' crow pose or a downward facin' dog with a pegleg and a steel hook on a pitching deck, matey.

(with a grateful doffing o' me nautical tile t' Engrishfunny.com and Ms.GreatDismal

Doors fans are born, not made

Is it warm in here or is it just me?

No, it isn't just me. It's science. The world is getting warmer and we causing it.
I can't believe I've had to point this article from last December out to no fewer than four people this week, three of them otherwise intelligent, skeptical people who are not usually taken in wingnut big lie propaganda ( the other incident was work-related and I'll say no more about that for now). The right has been screeching about "Climategate" for months now and you know how they never let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

Science Not Faked, but Not Pretty

Climate scientist e-mails show effort to not share data, pettiness, but no fakery


BY SETH BORENSTEIN, RAPHAEL SATTER and MALCOLM RITTER Associated Press Writers


LONDON December 12, 2009 (APE-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Can we please drop all this Climategate bullshit now? It is like arguing about the color of the trim on the truck that is about to run us over. Yes, there are scientists who dissent - there are also some scientist that don't think there is a provable link between smoking and lung cancer. The niggling details are irrelevant, the core science is very clear: The Earth is getting warmer, and that is not a good thing. And it is happening because we are pumping too much crud into the air and cutting down too many trees, and that is not a good thing. So lets stop rearranging deck chairs and start steering the goddamn ship away from the goddam iceberg. OK?

Destination Moon!

From Popular Science

Last year’s “moon bombing” proved that water ice exists beneath the lunar south pole, but new findings from a NASA instrument aboard an Indian orbiter have determined that tons of water iceis hiding on the lunar surface in permanently shadowed craters at the north pole as well. Researchers estimate 600 million metric tons of water ice could be hiding there, an amount that could potentially sustain a manned moon base.

This is very, very good news for mankind because it means we no longer have to keep all of our eggs in the single basket that is the Earth. Millions of tonnes of water on the Moon means a self-contained, self-sufficient Moon colony will be a lot easier to build someday - probably not in my lifetime unfortunately, but someday. And a base on the Moon, with water, puts us halfway to Mars already and makes exploration of the asteroid belt exponentially cheaper.
Once you have water, you have oxygen and hydrogen, putting you much closer to making breathable air and useable fuel. Once you are out of Earth's gravity well and atomosphere, a little energy can take you a long, long way.
Now if only NASA could scare up a few hundred billion dollars...hmm, I wonder where they could get that?
A couple of years ago, NASA had a plan for permanent Moon base by 2024, which most said would cost a lot less than the $104 billion it is estimated it will cost to start sending manned missions to the moon again. I don't want to get into "if onlys" but that would cost a lot less if only the U.S. government hadn't shut down the Apollo program  and had kept up with occasional manned missions.
For that matter, it would probably be possible to use the International Space Station as a staging point by sending up the equivalent of the lunar landing module in the space shuttle and launching it from the ISS - though both the shuttle and the ISS are rapidly approaching their "best before" dates. So priority one is going to have to be building a replacement for the shuttle - without something to get people back and forth to orbit, the whole thing is kind of moot. Once we have a new earth-to-orbit people mover, we can start sending up building materials on cheaper booster rockets until we have a sizable space station in orbit.
Once we have that, its simply a matter of sending up components that fit inside the cargo containers that can be assembled in orbit by the space station crew and then sent to the moon. Remember, anything sent from orbit to the moon really only needs very limited engine capability, mainly to slow it down enough to make a soft landing on the Moon. If you timed it right, an object moving the speed of a good fastball could reach the moon from the same orbit the ISS is at in a little over 100 days - that's not bad for cargo. People obviously could make the trip a whole lot faster.
Another approach would be to send robots to the Moon to find and start collecting ice, excavating building sites and even assembling components of a base. This probably isn't cost effective just yet, but a  few score refrigerator-sized robots (think Wall-E) working steadily away for a decade or two could certainly lay the groundwork for a permanent manned base.
I know, I know -- we have more pressing problems down here on earth than some scifi geek fantasy -- but when you consider the leaps in technology that occurred because of the first decade of the space program, I think it is reasonable to assume that an effort to build a sustainable moon base would lead to all kinds of technological spin offs in any number of fields from materials science to computer technology to hydroponic farming to solar  and hydrogen cell power generation. Technological breakthroughs that can help us solve some of the problems plaguing us.
Furthermore, we need to go to space precisely because of the some of the problems we have here on Earth. We need an escape plan, a lifeboat, an ark. As the global warming and environmental pollution increase, we may need a place to flee to once we've made earth completely uninhabitable. At our current rate the won't be for a few hundred years and of course, we may find technological and sociological solutions to the current problems in the meantime, but who knows what the effect of those solutions is liable to be over time. If we switch to atomic power worldwide to eliminate greenhouse gas production that may work out well for halting global warming, but it does present an unsolved problem in terms of what to do with all the spent fuel eventually.
Hell, maybe that's what we could end up using the moon for in the end, the galaxy's biggest dumpsite.
The point is, we need to keep working on getting up there and building the infrastructure that will be needed and not spending millions on bullshit like say, professional sports or fast food or weapons or shitty Michael Bay movies or brainless wars that don't need to be fought. The money spent on any of those things in a year worldwide would, I suspect, pay for a couple of moon bases and probably a space station as well.
We need to stop keeping all our eggs in just one basket, and its going to take a long time to build that second basket. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can multiply the chances of our survival as species.