Clint Eastwood, American Icon, Learns The President Might Be A Democrat, Gets Riled Up

I've been trying to puzzle out just what Clint Eastwood said last night at the GOP convention -- he had a semi-angry argument with an empty chair, which he claimed an invisible President Obama was sitting in. 

"You see, back in those days, rich men would ride around in Zeppelins, dropping coins on people, and one day I seen J.D. Rockefeller flying by. So I run of the house with a big washtub and... hey! Where are you going? Anyway, about my washtub. I'd just used it that morning to wash my turkey, which in those days was known as a walking-bird. We'd always have walking-bird on Thanksgiving, with all the trimmings: cranberries, injun eyes, yams stuffed with gunpowder. Then we'd all watch football, which in those days was called baseball...

I'm thirsty! Ew, what smells like mustard? There sure are a lot of ugly people in your neighborhood. Ooh, look at that one. Ow, my glaucoma just got worse. The president is a Democrat??!!!

"Hello? I can't unbuckle my seat belt. Hello?  There are too many leaves in your walkway...

"We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.

"Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

"Then after World War Two, it got kinda quiet, 'til Superman challenged FDR to a race around the world. FDR beat him by a furlong, or so the comic books would have you believe. The truth lies somewhere in between."

Oops, sorry, that was from Abe Simpson, not Clint Eastwood, though it's easy to get the two confused ...

Tampa's Convention of Dunces

Given the clumsy, clueless and mean-spirited 'debates' dumped out by the passing parade of Republican presidential candidates for much of 2011 and 2012, the final days of their selection of a candidate for president was never going to hold much credibility, was it?

The lack of honesty, ideas, plans and the abundance of denials that their party has stalled Congress for the last 3 years has been difficult to witness. I'm all for opening up a discussion of ideas about political policies - but it just has not happened. What's left is a precarious balancing act which signifies little other than the absence of ideas.

Perhaps it shouldn't be any surprise then that vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan hauled out a litany of distortions and deceptions while attempting to excite the folks in Tampa. Lies are what are cited in one report today (limiting the focus to just the five "biggest" ones):

"I’d like to talk, instead, about what Ryan actually said—not because I find Ryan’s ideas objectionable, although I do, but because I thought he was so brazenly willing to twist the truth.

"At least five times, Ryan misrepresented the facts. And while none of the statements were new, the context was. It’s one thing to hear them on a thirty-second television spot or even in a stump speech before a small crowd. It’s something else entirely to hear them in prime time address, as a vice presidential nominee is accepting his party’s nomination and speaking to the entire country."

And the most-repeated and lovingly embraced distortions from The Nominee himself, Mitt Romney, are likely to get repeated tonight too. 

As others have noted, it's just sad and weird that the only idea the GOP is pushing into the political field is simply - "We still don't like Obama and that's enough for us and should be for you too."

Dylan's 'Duquesne Whistle' Video Arrives

The newest album from Bob Dylan arrives next month, but today we have a new video from one of the tunes from "Tempest", called "Duquesne Whistle". The video director is one Nash Edgerton, who's had a long career as a stunt double in the "Matrix" movies and for Ewan McGregor in the "Star Wars" movies. So maybe that's why this video, featuring a young lady who drives a Gremlin, features her young male admirer who gets beat up for his single-minded romanticism.

This is a jaunty Bob Willis-styled tune, and Bob's voice is as gravel-bumpy as a forgotten road. I still so enjoy his work, and was recently diving back into his astonishing album from August of 1965. His musical creations have been a constant wonder during my lifetime. I'm quite glad we are both still here, exploring, playing and pondering life and love and everything else.

Duquesne is as fun to write and pronounce as Albuquerque.

Rep. Akin Said Out Loud What The GOP Really Thinks

The outcry from Republicans over the dangerously stupid comments of congressman Todd Akin is decidedly at odds with the very platforms of the GOP. One is left with the clear impression that the outcry is bogus, given the reality that Akin said out loud what the GOP really thinks about women, rape and abortion.

As columnist John Avlon writes:

" ... the Republican Platform Committee again included in its platform draft support for a "human life amendment" to the Constitution, which would not make exceptions for victims of rape or incest or even provisions for the life of the mother.

"So while this position is being roundly decried for political reasons in the case of Akin, it is simultaneously being enshrined in the official Republican platform. It is evidence that the problem is not the policies but the political damage of discussing them in public."

Republican-led legislatures have very successfully been challenging a woman's right to choose, with vows to shut down Planned Parenthood (despite the many vital medical services they provide) and in Tennessee, a new law has nearly eliminated choice options in Knoxville, forcing one clinic to shut down.

Great Moments In Banana Slicing History

Apparently everything real or imagined is for sale on Amazon.

But as entertaining as the products might be - like the UFO Detector or the Uranium Ore or Tuscan Whole Milk - it's the comments/reviews which are the most entertaining.

For example, take the Banana Slicer for sale.

- "For decades I have been trying to come up with an ideal way to slice a banana. "Use a knife!" they say. Well...my parole officer won't allow me to be around knives. "Shoot it with a gun!" Background check...HELLO! I had to resort to carefully attempt to slice those bananas with my bare hands. 99.9% of the time, I would get so frustrated that I just ended up squishing the fruit in my hands and throwing it against the wall in anger. Then, after a fit of banana-induced rage, my parole officer introduced me to this kitchen marvel and my life was changed."

- "I always struggled with cutting bananas. Should I use my holiday cookie cutter set? My spoon? My laser pointer? My chainsaw? Sometimes the options were so overwhelming that I'd just throw caution to the wind and eat the banana skin-on. This tool has really taken the complexity out of a task that had left me in tears time and time again. Thank you Vittorio Banana Slicer."

- "As you may or may not know, I have 27 trained monkeys I use to do my evil bidding. Well, the younger monkeys teeth have not fully developed and so slicing a banana to feed them is a necessary chore. The adult monkeys used to have to chew up bananas and feed their young but not anymore with the Victorio Kitchen Products 571B Banana Slicer."

Pages of comments/reviews begin here.

Happy Blog Birthday to Me

August 2005 marks the creation of this humble yet lovable blog. And no sign of stoppage yet.

I'm moving into the 8th year of global digital publishing, noting that many a web site and blogging page has arisen and vanished, and I am, as always, simply happy to be here. Readers from just about every nation have made their way here over the years and I appreciate all of you so very much.

I must also thank The Google for creating this platform which allows me the ability to share my thoughts with the rest of the planet.

Here's a salute to all of you courtesy of Sam and Dave -

100 Best Maniacal Laughs

A hearty rip of maniacal laughter is created by both the Good and the Bad ... and the Lunatic too. In the clip below, honors go to multiple entries from Nick Cage, Gary Oldman, Bruce Campbell and just about all memorable Disney villains. One of the best things about this 100 Best Maniacal Laughs in Movies - you'll probably laugh yourself while watching.

There Is No Voter Fraud In Tennessee (Or Any Other State)

When the ridiculous notion that new, photographic Voter IDs were needed in every state of our nation, the most cursory examinations of voting records clearly indicated such laws and IDs were totally unnecessary, that no large scale fraud existed.

Now - as legislatures across the nation have made the decision to require these IDs - we get a formal, comprehensive study which plainly reveals what we already knew ... there just isn't any fraud to combat at all:

"News21, a part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education focused on investigative reporting, analyzed 2,608 alleged election-fraud cases, going back to 2000, mined from thousands of public records requests, in all 50 states. (You can peruse the resulting database here.) In all, they found just 10 cases of voter impersonation, or, "one out of about every 15 million prospective voters" during that time."

"In Tennessee, the study turned up 14 total cases of reported fraud since 2000, none of which were cases of voter impersonation. The city of Memphis filed a lawsuit last week, challenging the state's voter ID law on constitutional grounds."

Imagine that one person, let's say his name was Bob, and back in 2002, Bob ate a chicken salad sandwich that was rotten and it killed him, and every state in the nation voted to outlaw chicken salad sandwiches, even though no one can find anyone named Bob who died after eating a rotten chicken salad sandwich - that's pretty much what the bogus Voter ID law is built on - mindless fear.

In Pennsylvania, just as a case against the implementation of the law, the state has agreed the law is utterly without merit or necessity and is likely illegal:

"... state officials conceded that they had no evidence of prior in-person voter fraud, or even any reason to believe that such crimes would occur with more frequency if a voter ID law wasn't in effect.

"There have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states,” the statement reads."

 The goal of the law, sadly, has been achieved - it will stop many from voting and will confuse the rest of us. It is not about fraud - it is a rollback to the days of when only white, adult males with property are allowed to vote. And that is not American at all. Shame on every legislator who approved these laws.

Tennessee Designers Make Mars Rover Move

It's deeply gratifying to learn that some very smart folks in Ooltewah, Tennessee are responsible for making the massive, newly-landed mobile laboratory on the surface of Mars actually move around.

The American Bicycle Group in Ooltewah (population: 687)  designed the legs to withstand to the landing and be able to move around the surface for the next several years, according to the story in today's TimesFreePress:

"The Chattanooga team left its mark on Mars, too. Each one of their names is etched inside the legs they helped create that have now found a permanent home among the stars."

At KnoxViews, R. Neal noted today that the wheels of the car-sized rover will leave a "secret coded message" in the Martian soil.

As this new hallmark in robotic space exploration made it's landing, some thousands of folks gathered to watch it all live on the giant screen in Times Square. (click to enlarge)

More pictures of the evening here.

The rover has a nuclear battery which could power the robot for some 14 years - the graphic below, via Space.com, reveals how it is loaded with cameras and equipment. (click to enlarge)

Mark Clayton: Triple Tennessee Facepalm

Our humble state of TN made national political news - once again - for achieving a new level of Dangerously Stupid Acts. The cause this time was the election victory last week for a full-blown toon named Mark Clayton as a Democrat U.S. Senate candidate.

Seems the voters just plunked down their votes for Clayton because his name was first on the ballot - and when you add in the idiocy with which the state Dem party operates, as discussed by Southern Beale on her blog - well, it becomes clear that it was just about inevitable that Dangerously Stupid would win the day.

For many months, I was fairly certain that actress and activist Park Overall was going to win that primary - she campaigned with much energy and speaks so plainly, it seemed a no-brainer that she would make a very fierce competitor for the incumbent millionaire Senator Bob Corker. Never underestimate the power of ignorant voters is the lesson we are left with I suppose.

Add in the fact that it was not until after the election of Clayton that the state Dem party disavowed Clayton. I know of many smart Democrats in Tennessee and read some fine writing from many of them online. But the state party is as deaf as a post apparently. You folks might want to start crafting some standards and hiring some people who are competent.

It's bad enough folks would vote for someone they knew zip about. And it's mighty clear that for the last few years the state Dem party has zero ability to operate with any significance. (And for the record I have never been a member of any political party.) The official state Dem response to Clayton's win simply "urges Democrats to write-in a candidate of their choice in November.”

Like that's a good idea. They need to throw 100% of their effort into backing Park Overall, who would at the very least make mincemeat of Corker during a debate. 

But here's my real concern -  our state has loads of Conservative voters and party leaders, I get that. But I also know there are many, many of us non-Conservative, non-Republicans who live and work in our humble state and we get zero representation in government, from the city level to the state level and the federal level. Like many of us in this minority group, I still write and call my elected representatives to express my views on many topics - and at best, all we get back is a "thank you for writing" and "your views are important" replies. And that's a lie.

These folks will not ever stand up for us, will not ever even consider the merits of the issues we raise, and that dismissal is final and permanent. And electing a full-blown toon like Clayton will just make it worse.

Does Gov. Haslam Want Dumb Workers or An Educated Society?

In recent days our esteemed Governor Bill Haslam has been holding meetings with folks from a wide range of business and university officials to talk about education with a particular goal in mind - that higher education must work harder to train people for jobs.

An article in today's KnoxNewsSentinel begins:

"Tennessee does not have enough qualified workers with specific skills, a high work ethic and critical thinking abilities, local business leaders told Gov. Bill Haslam on Tuesday.

College and university leaders, meanwhile, said they need more resources to adequately educate and graduate more students to fill those jobs.

"We're trying to have those conversations around the state to make certain we're providing positions that will train people for the jobs that are there today."

And while I certainly agree our state and community needs critical thinking skills, I read no mention of just what "specific skills" are being cited here, other than mentions of welding and engineering. And we certainly need to discuss and debate the role and the enormous impact which education has on our world at nearly every level.

The optimist in me wants to believe the driving forces for these Haslam-led meetings will lead to a better understanding of what the functions higher education should serve.

The pessimist, however, sees a day when higher education is either about technical services or football and other sports.

Reading the comments to the KNS story (often a grueling descent into nonsense) I noted the following one:

"We don't need any more fluff degrees.

No more philosophy, theatre, arts, sculpting, dead languages, mythology, psychology, library science, interpretive dance, music, music history, Greek literature, roman literature, American literature type degrees.
I could go on but why the state continues to fund universities that pump out not only worthless degrees but degrees that put their constituents into crushing debt with no real hope of finding a decent job in their field is beyond me.
If someone wants to get a degree in one of these areas its fine but why encourage it by offering scholarships to it?
China does it right. Scholarships and state funding only in areas that produce jobs in fields of study."

What kind of world will we have should we remove knowledge of history, science, the arts, language, libraries, music, literature, etc etc. Is emulating the nation of China our best option?

Is the sole purpose of attaining a college degree merely to obtain a high-paid job? Is there no value left in education if it does not lead to a giant paycheck?

Once we eliminate the areas of study the commenter suggests - critical thinking skills will likewise vanish. Absent ethics, philosophy, communication skills, understanding of history, the ability to express ourselves and our thoughts about our world, ignoring the past or ridiculing those who excel in all these areas - what kind of world would we have?

Humans are not meant to simply serve a machine of industry ... are they? 

Tennessee Senate Wants To Ban Teaching Gravity

(NOTE:  Satire follows below ... at least I hope it is satire.)

Speaking from outside the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville, Weinger said the bill would protect teachers who chose to criticize gravity and other scientific theories in their classrooms.

“The aim of all education is to teach students to think for themselves and we plan to do this by allowing children to be indoctrinated with whatever loosely founded views their teachers may hold.”

He added “there is strong evidence in the Bible that the Law of Gravity is a fallacy. For example, Hebrew 1:3 explicitly states that Christ upholds all things by the word of his power – seems like a pretty solid argument to me”.

“If you compare this against what’s currently taught – that matter ‘emits gravitational waves’ which ‘effect the curvature of the space time continuum’…well gravity starts to look pretty unlikely doesn’t it? I’m pretty sure most of those aren’t even real words. Unlike Christ’s.”

Ms. Jenny Fuller, an elementary school teacher from Gatlinburg TN who has been campaigning against the inclusion of gravity in the school curriculum for several years, said she was “delighted” with the outcome.

“I have long felt uncomfortable teaching gra…gra….this theory” she said. “It is clearly a dangerous idea to teach our children – Newton ‘discovered’ gravity by an apple falling on his head, Adam and Eve fell from the Garden of Eden for eating one. Then Newton calls gravity an ‘attractive force between all objects’ – such a mentality is clearly a gateway for temptation and sexual promiscuity”.

More here, and for those who need even more assistance:

SATIRE:  Noun: 1. The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices.

I Return to Blogging via A Wee Stroll Across The Internet

It was quite flattering to be called out by Mr. Silence for my absence over  the past month - it is good to be missed. So thank you.

It has certainly been a busy summer of news, grievous idiocy, botched governmental and social tomfoolery and more as the nation ponders presidential elections and witnesses the near witless fumbles of the old-fashioned media folks assigned to collect and share the national news.

A few random observations for you -

-- Here in my humble community - as in many others - I cringed when I saw the middle-school level of headlines and reporting following, for instance, the horrible massacre in Colorado at a showing of the newest Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises"  -- the headline?

My local paper had a picture of the theater where the events took place with a two-word headline: "Dark Night" -- had such a headline been presented in a freshman newspaper class, it would have gotten an F grade and a note that said "Tacky and Shameful". Sadly, so many other newspapers and newscasters said the same thing. Mass murders and tasteless witty puns do not go together. Yeesh.

-- A congressional race in Middle Tennessee over the seat held by Diane Black has become nothing more than A Battle of Millionaires, and they spend more time all Chicken-Little fashion wailing that Sharia Law and Mosques are taking over the state like giant swarms of man-eating kudzu monsters. Again, shame, shame. Multi-millionaires do not give a diddley-squat about improving the state or national economies.

-- A  research scientist in Stockholm was jealous when he assumed his wife kissed another man, so he cut off her lip and ate it. He told  the press: "I got the idea spontaneously. I thought, 'I'll get rid of it. I'm a man of science, I have a very high IQ. I have the ability to solve problems in a second'."

--  On a more positive note- a professional hula hooper performs for the crowd on how to hula hoop, pour a glass of wine and drink it while hooping - God bless the Internet -

Bloater Paste, Punting and The Glamorous Blanchisseuse

It's obvious, that I, your humble narrator and blogger have been absent for most of the month. But it is with some good reason, as I have been on a journey through the British countryside via Kenneth Grahame's "Wind In The Willows".

I've been directing and rehearsing a stage version of Grahame's tale for the 21st Annual Rose Center Summer Players production here in Morristown, which runs one weekend only for four performances July 27, 28 and 29 at Rose Center. This is the fifth summer in a row I have been fortunate enough to work with the production, which is an arts education program Rose Center runs each year, offering students a chance to learn and explore the theatrical world. And as before, I'm having a blast working with so many talented young actors.

The story - which has been shortened and Disney-fied over the years into "Mr Toad's Wild Ride" - is a fascinating and very funny adventure of some very proper British woodland creatures who go boating and picnicking on the Thames river - Rat, Mole, Badger and yes, Mr Toad, plus many rabbits, squirrels, hedgehogs and some villainous weasels.

The weasels are fierce bullies, who do eventually get what they deserve, and the young actors decided to make them look like greasers from the 1950s, all leather jackets and jeans, and they remind me of the gang of witless thugs led by Eric Von Zipper in all those early 60s beach movies.

In working with Grahame's book, I had to learn just what "bloater paste" is - and it doesn't sound too good. It's a fish paste, usually made from sardines, and in fact, as of 2012, there are no longer any makers of this dubious culinary delight in England. Bloater Paste is fast becoming a lost menu item (probably a good thing).

Punting, of course, is a bona fide British past time, which the young actors today simply giggle about. Punting is just fun to say, after all. 

In the course of the story, Mr Toad gets sent to jail for stealing cars and then escapes dressed as the jail's laundress. Yet when he describes his escape to his friends, he claims he transformed into a "glamorous blanchisseuse", and that sent all of us scrambling to figure out how to say and what it was. We learned that many of the world's most famous painters had made the lowly washerwoman, or laundress or blanchisseuse all subjects of paintings, such as Van Gogh and Lautrec. Who knew?

With opening night just a week away, I expect to have even less time to spend online, so please provide a bit of forgiveness for me. And for a mere five dollars, you can get a ticket to the show too, and join in the wild world of Pastes, Punting and Laundry.

Zombie Theme Parks and Country Music Zombie Ballads

Walking dead folks are quite popular - so popular that they could bring a wave of economic booms and boomlets.

One developer in Detroit is pushing hard to let the city fathers sell off some 200 acres of the more derelict sections of the city to build Z World Detroit -- a zombie-infested theme park. While his fundraising is pretty low so far, but the final outcome might just be that one day you and the family can trek to the Motor City and flee and fight zombies. The LA Times has more on the story.

The official website for Z World Detroit offers t-shirts, buttons and fun drawings like these via this promo video:

But what about the fans of country music with earnest singer-songwriter aspirations who also have zombies on their mind?

Then meet Amanda Richards, who has a new record out, a 'concept album' about the plaintive tunes of the last lone survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse called "Play Dead". Richards says her music is from the perspective of " ... a collection of old-school country songs about the zombie apocalypse written from the perspective of the soon-to-be last person on Earth who happens to be a country singer and a feminist.  The songs span nearly the entire history of country music: from boot-stomping old-timey banjo tunes to classic he-done-me-wrong ballads; endearing melodies sung with charm and poise countered by gory apocalyptic themes."

Songs include:

"Don't Leave Your Woman (When There's Walking Dead)" 
and
"Undead In My Bed"

Freedom

Today's Court Ruling on Heath Care and What It Means

UPDATE: Much surprise that the Supreme Court has upheld that the Affordable Care Act. Chief Justice Roberts and the majority of the court agrees that the law is indeed constitutional - much to the surprise of many court followers and those who have opposed President Obama, it's a clear win for his policies -- from the SCOTUS blog:
"In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding."
 
 original post follows below ...
---

Today, some people are hoping the Supreme Court effectively ends the presidency of Barack Obama by ruling his health care law unconstitutional and thus rejecting a centerpiece of his first term in office. It's the culmination of a fierce and dedicated attempt to discredit and dismiss Obama from the political world, and this effort really has no concern about that status of health care in America.

Some have framed the entire discussion about reforming the way we pay for and receive health care as a debate over President Obama's worth as the nation's leader. They have worked so very, very hard to disguise the decades-old problems of affordable health care as some horrible governmental monster.

Court watchers all claim there are four key issues on which the court today will issue it's decision - the media meanwhile has bought into the narrative that this is a do-or-die game akin to a run for the final playoffs in the upcoming presidential election.

What I deeply dislike is the eagerness to ignore the realities of a for-profit health care system, a fatally flawed system where so many simply cannot afford basic medical care. There is little interest in providing such care to those who need it, even though we claim to have the finest medical care in the world ... if you can pay for it. Indeed, such folks who oppose reform laws embrace the notion that if you cannot afford it, that also proves something about your worth (or lack of it) as a citizen.

I don't expect the court will back the president today - Conservatives would knock anything and anyone down in their blind ambition to prevent any change to the status quo and to marginalize any idea from this president. In the eyes of some, the issue is not that our nation has citizens who can't receive medical care - and the cure for that delusion remains elusive.

A Zombies Summertime

Thousands Support The Weight of One

Endless studies and statistics and graphs would easily tell the story of how the top 1% of our modern world overwhelm and stunt the remaining 99%, but this simple artistic display by Korean artist Do-Ho Suh tells the story even better.

As shown in photos above and below (via this website) thousands and thousands of tiny plastic figures hold up the very floor people can stand on. And yes, one could view the metaphor as showing how it is that many support one and how that might work for or against you.

Artists sure are tricky.

Martian Memories With Ray Bradbury

One of the best aspects of people is the way we make writers and artists part of our lives. This week, we lost a great friend and a member of our human family, a person who helped make imagination into reality, who urged us all to make dreams possible.

Writer Ray Bradbury, who died this week at age 91, told tales in such a unique voice and with such simple grace. As I was reading about his life and works this week, I learned that a digital copy of his book, "The Martian Chronicles". was sent to Mars in 2007 aboard the Phoenix spacecraft which landed near the Martian North Pole. And in August of this year, a robotic mission to Mars by a craft named Curiosity will land and many have already suggested the landing site should be called the Ray Bradbury Memorial Station.

His awards and achievements are many. President Obama expressed what many of us thought this week about Ray Bradbury:

"For many Americans, the news of Ray Bradbury's death immediately brought to mind images from his work, imprinted in our minds, often from a young age. His gift for storytelling reshaped our culture and expanded our world. But Ray also understood that our imaginations could be used as a tool for better understanding, a vehicle for change, and an expression of our most cherished values. There is no doubt that Ray will continue to inspire many more generations with his writing, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends."

Back in 2005 when I first began writing this blog, I wrote about my own thoughts about Mars as images of dust devils were filmed by a robotic platform sitting on the planet. I've always liked that post, and in many ways it was my attempt to create something Ray Bradbury would like to read. So, what follows below is a reprint of that post -- and thank you Ray for making our world and our endless sea of stars feel like home.

----

Aug. 23, 2005

MARTIAN

I sit at my computer and I can watch Martian movies, real ones, filmed on location by the first robotic astronauts, mechanical twins roving the desolate reddish landscape for the last year and a half. NASA revealed these images in a short film of just a few seconds, in black and white, robotic cinema verite. I'm pecking at this keyboard on this computer and some 45 million miles away -- Mars will be getting a bit closer these next few months -- and many will mark how this other planet, smaller than the one I call home, takes a slow circular dance around the Sun.

There are no people to see in the short movie, no mulit-limbed invasion squads. The camera filmed in some 12 minutes this passing of "dust devils" across the rocky expanse of Mars which I have sat and watched for maybe a half an hour. It is odd, really, here at this far technological beginning point, this moment and place where I can see what a camera on a remote control cart sees. How long, I wonder, will we Earth-folk take to build and then send other robots to Mars or beyond? In a hundred years, will some other inhabitant of this valley in eastern Tennessee watch robots taking clunky steps to build some empty metal shells that might house fuel or food or other robots? Will it take fifty years or maybe two hundred and fifty?

There have been recent discussions here on this planet about Science and Space and what Science is or should be. Some theories put forth that millions of years ticked past here on this world -- hundreds of millions -- and lifeforms bubbled and swam and clumped together, thanks to the water and the dirt and the air and the fire, and caught hold and started growing. Some theories put forth that a Creator, a Prime Force, made all there is on this planet in six days and rested on the seventh day from that labor. And not only what is on this planet, but everything out in this solar system and beyond it, millions and millions of other galaxies made of planets with fire and ice and gas and shattered meteor bits, and all in six days. It has taken a very very short span of some forty years, 1965 to 2005, for the inhabitants here to begin accept the ideas that inhabitants of other colors or gender might all have the same basic freedoms, another beginning point that is still revolutionary in terms of how we live with each other.

And here I sit, staring at the 17 second movie of dusty twists of wind, ragged white whips that lash back and forth across a desolate world.

Some even more primitive robots have, in less than 30 years, been shot out into the inky blackness which surrounds us, and other planets are photographed -- planets that are thick with heat and pressure, enormous swirling clouds of gas and storms that bring acids and liquid metals in a hazy sheet across a surface whose contents I can barely imagine or conceive. The robot cameras explode or dissolve into nothingness long before they can attain anything even remotely considered a "landing"..

I ponder the Martian landscapes and wonder about it's design -- why create such a place? What purpose does it hold? Were the robotic twins on the scene too soon or too late to catch a sight of intelligent, conscious creatures?

Why make a world of dust? Of ice? 

Perhaps those winds are scattering particles of sand as part of a ten billion year planet renovation plan, and if so I doubt anything left in this valley on my home planet will know about it, even if I wish or hope that someone will be here to see a transformed world.

The Martian world today has little robots staring intently at rocks and dust devils, and people here, too, see it -- observing the location. I seem to understand so little of stars and atoms, I don't understand why the inhabitants here are so contentious and vile, or loving and compassionate in the face of such an enormous collection of galaxies filled with random winds and rotations. I am surprised we have not all stayed hidden in caves, full of fear from moment to moment, like we see it in the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's movie of space travel, "2001: A Space Odyssey". 

But what always excited me watching that movie was that slow, rhythmic rolling dance of men and machines and planets all moving to the Blue Danube Waltz, and how thrilled I was just to see it, to observe this quiet emptiness of space and stars and galaxies whose movements I cannot comprehend. And at the end of "2001" (a title whose name once resonated with an implausible future and now is just part of our past), at the end of the movie the astronaut has been moved from the caves to the stars and Kubrick leaves me to make up my own mind about what I have seen, what it all might mean.

My niece told me some years ago she fell asleep when she watched the movie it was so boring to her. I could hardly believe it. How could anyone watch those images and not feel some kind of un-nameable connection. some sense of endless wonder, some urge to search among the stars?

Filming geologic time will not bring box office dollars.

Mars has been in our books and our imaginations for thousands of years. Once on a Halloween night it escaped from the radio and terrified thousands of radio listeners, and Mars landed on top of actor Tom Cruise this summer. TV gave us "My Favorite Martian", and in ancient days it was the home of Gods and myths barely remembered, and today I sit and watch the dust devils filmed on location, on Mars, with no laugh tracks, no panic in the streets.

Maybe the best way to think of it is as development property -- a slow development, true. But I can almost see it all as part of the view of Our backyard. I have to use my imagination, to consider time and distance and what Life requires or how Life must adapt. I have to be willing to consider so many theories, and if I dismiss the possibilities, then I limit my view and I might as well stay in the caves.

Congratulations You Graduated, Now Get To Work

It's the season for Advice to the Graduate. We live in a time when those old and reliable models for careers don't work so well (if they ever did) and few will admit that just about everyone who has both failure and success are simply making up their plans as they go along. 

I found a good commencement speech for 2012, from author Neil Gaiman, given to the University of  the Arts in Philadelphia. I liked is because I too have been for decades trying to do what Gaiman encourages: make good art.

I'm unsure if our society wants good art. That's a question I constantly struggle to resolve and really haven't. But like so many others, I keep at it because making art is what I want to do, right down to my bones. I also like Gaiman's thoughts since I too realized a long time ago that their really are no rules, other than the ones we make up, to guide the artist.

The entire transcript and video are here, and you should read all of it. Here are some selections to entice you. (And congratulations to the many classes of 2012 graduates - now go do something.)

"When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing.

This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.

If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again."

---

"I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work."

---

"Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

Make it on the good days too."

---

"We're in a transitional world right now, if you're in any kind of artistic field, because the nature of distribution is changing, the models by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing. I've talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, in bookselling, in all those areas, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people had built over the last century or so are in flux for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds.

Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, and on the other, immensely liberating. The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're supposed to's of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be to get your work seen. YouTube and the web (and whatever comes after YouTube and the web) can give you more people watching than television ever did. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are.

So make up your own rules."

Camera Obscura: Headed To Cannes Film Fest; And A Summer Movie Guide

I'm happy to announce that a longtime friend and colleague, Michael Abbott Jr., has his most recent movie closing this year's Cannes Film Festival. The movie is called "Mud", set in rural Mississippi, and is directed by Jeff Nichols, and stars Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey.

Michael is an East TN native, and he's not only a great actor, he's a rare person who will go more than the extra mile to help folks in all walks of life. "Mud" is his second feature with director Nichols, the first was the acclaimed "Shotgun Stories", which won high praise from critics like Roger Ebert as being one of the best movies of 2007.

"Mud" will be the closing film at Cannes and is a contender for the festival's highest prizes. More on the movie here.

Michael is also co-producer for a powerful new documentary set for release this year about the grim reality of living with toxic pollution from nuclear fuel in Erwin, TN, titled "Acceptable Limits". The website for the movie is here.

So kudos and much continued success to Michael!

---

This weekend brings the onslaught of the Summer Movie Season, so a handy Summer Movie Guide is a must hae for movie-holics like me.

A few I'm curious about - Ridley Scott's "Prometheus", and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" and a new version of "The Great Gatsby" too. Find out about all of them via this Guide.

Saluting A Tennessee Pioneer: Evelyn Bryan Johnson

Evelyn Bryan Johnson, who passed away last week at the age of 102, was more than the most famous person in the Morristown-Jefferson City community - she was an aviation pioneer, and will forever remain so.

Over the years, I met and spoke with her many times. She was always most friendly and she held a quiet authority which barely told of her incredible life and many adventures. Her influence will be felt for many, many years to come.

 The LA Times obituary offers a powerful glimpse of her accomplishments:

"She was 34 when she took that first flight and continued flying until glaucoma restricted her vision and caused her to quit in 2006, the year she turned 97.

Johnson, who died May 10 at 102 in an assisted living facility in Jefferson City, Tenn., held the Guinness World Record for logging the most hours in the air for a female pilot. By the time she stopped flying, she had logged 57,635.4 hours, or more than 6 1/2 years in the air.

At the time of her death, Johnson had flown an airplane more hours than any living pilot."

---

"Affectionately nicknamed "Mama Bird," because she treated her flying students as a mother bird does her babies, Johnson said she trained more than 5,000 student pilots and administered more than 9,000 flight checks for the FAA.

Johnson was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2007. She also was an inductee in the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame, the Flight Instructor Hall of Fame and aviation halls of fame in Tennessee and Kentucky.

"Evelyn loved flying, and she loved teaching," said Bob Minter, founder and chairman emeritus of the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame. "There are airline pilots today flying around the world that Evelyn trained, both men and women."

Is Everything OK?

Is everything OK?

No?

Would you like to make sure that everything is OK? A simple one-step way to making everything OK .

I Have A Signed Excuse for Absence

I essentially lost an entire week of writing, dear readers, and I do apologize. For the past week I was presented the opportunity to experience life under the relentless authority of  food poisoning.

Said experience left me weaker than a one-legged kitten, and thus, as I could neither read much nor write since the computer screen (as well as most all my faculties) was an infinite roiling Hell, and I was forced to halt my daily reading and writing habits.

Healthy days have mercifully returned.

So I'm now tasked with accumulating the properly suitable ingredients to once again start serving up your fresh, hot Cup o' Joe. I thank you for your patience and normal service will shortly resume.

The Political Illiterate

Governor Haslam OKs Dress Code for Pants In Schools Which Already Have Dress Codes For Pants

Our state will now police your pants - and pretty much all clothes worn by students in Tennessee thanks to a new law our governor has signed.

See, even though every school in the state has dress code policies, now the state is ordering them to have - you guessed it - dress code policies.

Our ever-watchful state officials this year have decided junk science must be allowed in schools and that hand-holding leads to making babies, not to mention that boys and girls making eye contact might need to be banned as well.

TN Legislators Back Sweeping Changes to Internet Privacy via CISPA Bill

In stark contrast to the widespread awareness and opposition to the recently failed PIPA and SOPA bills, awareness of the vast and fundamental changes to internet privacy created in a new bill, called CISPA, is very low.

Part of the reason for this is that this new bill is framed as a must-have tool to protect vital computer operations from attack, a tactic Tennessee's legislative coalition is pushing, as presented in this article from the Tennessean, headlined "TN Seen As Likely Cyber Target":

"Tennessee Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper and Republican Reps. Marsha Blackburn, Chuck Fleischmann and Phil Roe have signed on to legislation that would encourage the intelligence community and private sector to share certain information to better protect computer networks from cyberthreats.

"The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act would allow private companies and the government to share any information “directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to,” a computer network. Currently, the government can’t share classified intelligence on cyberthreats with the private sector.

“Because our Pentagon and other government agencies are attacked thousands of times a day, we have learned ways to help American business and individuals guard against identity theft of their customers, disruption of electricity and water service, and other threats to daily living,” he said."

But  there is far more is at stake here, and private businesses already are further ahead when it comes to security measures, since their businesses depend of secure operations.

Opposition to the legislation and the wide range of powers it creates gets a presentation here, noting that this legislation creates several problems:

• An overly broad, almost unlimited definition of the information can be shared with government agencies. And because that info is shared “notwithstanding any law,” CISPA trumps any federal or state privacy law that currently prohibits disclosure.
• Enactment is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications.
• It could shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the NSA.
• It creates a backdoor wiretap program because the information shared with the government isn’t limited to just cybersecurity, but could also be used for other purposes, such as law enforcement or by intelligence agencies.

Pages and pages of rules and regulations such as this are akin to the long and confusing paragraphs for the average Terms of Service Agreements which the average internet user encounters and OKs without really reading. Forcing private business to give their information about you to an intelligence agency may well be the norm if this bill passes - and most internet users will never even know it's happening.

Camera Obscura: RIP Jonathan Frid, aka Barnabas Collins

I was sad to read of the passing of actor Jonathan Frid, best known to TV audiences as Barnabas Collins, the vampire soap opera so popular for many years and now about to launch again as a movie, with Johnny Depp playing Frid's character.

That menacing wolf's-head cane (get yours today!) he carried and his near-alien voice and looks made him one of the coolest characters on TV in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a commanding performer onscreen and on the stage too. A friend of mine had the great opportunity to work on a Shakespearean show with Frid some years back, an envious task.

Growing up, just about everyone I knew fled schools in the afternoon to race home and catch the newest daily episodes of the vamp tales, and like many, I had a sort of crush on one of the actresses, Lara Parker, who played Angelique. I discovered a few years ago she was a native of Knoxville and grew up in Memphis before tackling television. Her website today boasts a warm regard for the late Jonathan Frid:

"He was a warm-hearted and compassionate man with a lovely sense of humor, and he was a staggeringly charismatic actor, who is personally responsible for the lasting success of the Dark Shadows TV show in so many ways,

His introduction on the soap opera saved it from cancellation and initiated five years of wonderful stories, of which his character of the reluctant vampire was most often the centerpiece. It was his choice to make the vampire terrifying but also tortured by guilt, and in doing this he became the heartthrob of thousands of housewives across the country watching him over their ironing. They longed to be bitten!

My personal association with Jonathan was life changing. I had been in New York just over a week when I auditioned for the part of Angelique on camera with Jonathan, doing the scene in which I tearfully entreated him to love me and not my mistress Josette Of course my head was spinning but he leaned in before the red light went on and said, “You know, she’s a witch.” Without that bit of information, I might never have put the evil spin on the moment that snagged me the role. How fortunate for me that he was there! He also whispered in my ear, “I hope you get it,” which sent my confidence soaring."

She goes on to write how frail Frid had been as they filmed their cameo scenes for the new film, and mourns that he will now miss the relaunch of the mythic show.

While the series, in retrospect, are but brief jaunts into the supernatural made on minuscule budgets, I always thought the duo of Parker and Frid were terrific onscreen. Doomed villains trapped by their fates, they brought the characters into vivid life - and afterlife.

The original show was a mass of terrors - werewolves, witches, warlocks, ghosts, time-traveling, vampires, telepaths, mausoleums, gothic homes and endless shadows almost always underscored with a most haunting theme music (with plenty of theremin music). It was a true television original and the template producer Dan Curtis made still thrives on shows like True Blood today. New books, fan conventions and radio podcasts continue to tell the tales of Dark Shadows.

Thanks for all the fine afternoons of vampire madness, Jonathan. Hope that this time, they let you rest in peace.

Kraftwerk Retrospective - The Art of Computers

We are driving on the Autobahn

In front of us is a wide valley

The sun is shining with glittering rays

The driving strip is a grey track

White stripes, green edge

We are switching the radio on

From the speaker it sounds:

We are driving on the Autobahn

Celebrating the works of a unique group of musicians, Kraftwerk, the Museum of Modern Art provided 8 nights of concerts from the German band, whose creations of minimalist techno tunes signaled  the beginnings of our digital age.

I latched onto their album Autobahn as a Christmas gift to myself in 1974 and absolutely loved it and still do. When I shared the music with some friends in my small town back then, they grimaced listening to the vocoders, looped tracks and computerized rhythms as if fingernails were scraping a blackboard and I told them, just like a time-traveling Marty McFly, "Your kids are gonna love this."

As much as I enjoyed the simple, hypnotic sounds (check out a sample from Autobahn or from Trans-Europe Express) I also marveled at what their work implied - music generated by computers and technology offered a glimpse of what was ahead for the world, which would soon be transformed by technology. It was a science-fiction soundtrack for this emerging force. So I'm not surprised, decades later, to see these musicians show off their work at the MOMA. Seems the most appropriate place for them:

"Kraftwerk anticipated the impact of technology on art and everyday life, creating sounds and visuals that capture the human condition in the age of mobility and telecommunication. Their innovative looping techniques and computerized rhythms, which had a major influence on the early development of hip-hop and electronic dance music, remain among the most commonly sampled sounds across a wide range of music genres. Furthermore, the use of robotics and other technical innovations in their live performances illustrates Kraftwerk’s belief in the respective contributions of both people and machines in creating art."

This past week audience members could capture the performance on hand-held devices we all think of as commonplace and ordinary.

Does The Internet Have A Future?

Technology leaps ahead thanks to computer usage and internet access - though some innovators fear the strongest threat yet to all-access open internet is here today, thanks to governements, businesses and even Facebook and Apple.

At least, that's the opinion of Google's co-founder Sergey Brin in this interview, part of a series of reports by the Guardian on the internet, as both support and opposition worldwide grows for the current round of new internet restricion legislation, CISPA, a new 'cyber-security act'.

"He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.

"There's a lot to be lost," he said. "For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."

Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. "You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive," he said. "The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation."

Both Google and Oakley are working hard on new tech/internet delivery systems in the form of glasses which would project images and info right into your eyes, combining smartphone and, I suppose EyePhones. Actually it's called Google Glass, and here's a video of how it might be used ... funny, you'll notice in the video that a meeting at a 'bookstore" is featured. Is that supposed to be ironic?

Oakley's CEO says: 

 

"Ultimately, everything happens through your eyes, and the closer we can bring it to your eyes, the quicker the consumer is going to adopt the platform."

Google is busy in court these days too facing fines and lawsuits.

'Needs More Cowbell' World Record

Some 1,600 people gathered in Burlington, VT this weekend to play some cowbell. You can never have too much cowbell - you need more cowbell. That was the advice actor Chris Walken had for Will Ferrell in a Saturday Night Live Skit in April 2000 - it's a phrase which made the Swiss set a world record for public cowbell playing in 2009. Now Burlington has the record.

Members of the band Phish put the world record effort together and raised money for charity at the same time. The result - loudness!!

Needs more cowbell - the catchphrase of a generation.