World's Anus

Finally found where all the Neo/Theo-Cons are going!

The world does have an anus after all!
Click on the photo to see what it means.

Film director Sydney Pollack has passed away.

The great film director, producer, and actor Sydney Pollack died today at 73 years of age, at his home in Southern California. Here is an obituary. I met him a ways back at a SAG convention. He had some truly inspired ideas about narrative in the digital age, and the clash between old Hollywood vs. new.

Houseplants to fight toxins

Stuff like tricloroethylene, formaldehyde, and benzene can be really toxic. Yet they're commonly found right in your house. Fortunately, adding some common houseplants to your surroundings can apparently help clean up the toxins. Friends at GOOD Magazine posted a useful charticle showing where the compounds tend to rear their ugly heads and the common plants that can act as, er, toxic avengers. Link

We could have colonized Mars with the money we spent on the Iraq war -- what else could we do?

An open conversation on other things we could have bought with the money wasted in Iraq: for example, we could have sent a colony of over 500 astronauts to Mars, provided modern nuclear power to the USA and shut down its coal plants, built modern cities for 600,000,000 Chinese people to live in, and so on:

For $6Tn we could buy a lot of juice — a quarter of our global civilization's energy budget would go carbon-neutral at a stroke. (Yes, we just solved our carbon dioxide emissions problem by switching to a nuclear economy.) This probably isn't the ideal way of dealing with our environmental problems, and it's a naive treatment of the costs (has anyone done a proper treatment of the economic implications of shifting the planet over to a nuclear economy, say to the same extent as France?) but it's thought-provoking.

Finally, there's all the other little stuff we could solve by pointing $513Bn at it, never mind $6000Bn. Eliminating childhood diseases in South-East Asia? Piffle — Bill and Melinda Gates are trying to do that out of their pocket lint. Build first-world grade housing in shiny new cities for 600 million Chinese peasants, nearly a tenth of the planetary population? Yes, this budget will cover that. What else?

Yes, I'm asking you: what would you do with the cost of the Iraq war (take your pick: $513Bn or $6000Bn) in your budget? Colonise Mars? Solve our carbon emission problem and fix global warming? House half a billion people? Or something else ...?

(And what isn't going to happen now, because we pissed it all away on the desert sands?)

*****

Yeah, what he said!

Call Out The Dogs

Call Out The Dogs! There's some nefarious doings afoot!

Chunk of Stonehenge stolen

Last week, two men hammered off a coin-sized chip of Stonehenge and also left a scratch several inches long on the megalithic ruin's Heel Stone. You'd think this kind of thing would happen frequently but apparently it's the first act of vandalism there in decades.

"Thanks to the vigilance and quick action of the security team at Stonehenge, very minimal damage was caused," said a spokeswoman for English Heritage.

"A tiny chip was taken from the north side of the Heel Stone with a screwdriver and hammer, but as soon as the two men were spotted by security guards they escaped over the fence and drove off.

"This is now a matter for the police," she added.

Global Warming Facts

Freeman Dyson on global warming

Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, reviewed two books about global warming for the New York Review of Books. His lengthy review is loaded with fascinating insights and ideas. Here's one highlight:

At this point I return to the Keeling graph, which demonstrates the strong coupling between atmosphere and plants. The wiggles in the graph show us that every carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere is incorporated in a plant within a time of the order of twelve years. Therefore, if we can control what the plants do with the carbon, the fate of the carbon in the atmosphere is in our hands. That is what Nordhaus meant when he mentioned "genetically engineered carbon-eating trees" as a low-cost backstop to global warming. The science and technology of genetic engineering are not yet ripe for large-scale use. We do not understand the language of the genome well enough to read and write it fluently. But the science is advancing rapidly, and the technology of reading and writing genomes is advancing even more rapidly. I consider it likely that we shall have "genetically engineered carbon-eating trees" within twenty years, and almost certainly within fifty years.

Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals. Biotechnology is enormously powerful, capable of burying or transforming any molecule of carbon dioxide that comes into its grasp. Keeling's wiggles prove that a big fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes within the grasp of biotechnology every decade. If one quarter of the world's forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by half in about fifty years.

It is likely that biotechnology will dominate our lives and our economic activities during the second half of the twenty-first century, just as computer technology dominated our lives and our economy during the second half of the twentieth. Biotechnology could be a great equalizer, spreading wealth over the world wherever there is land and air and water and sunlight. This has nothing to do with the misguided efforts that are now being made to reduce carbon emissions by growing corn and converting it into ethanol fuel. The ethanol program fails to reduce emissions and incidentally hurts poor people all over the world by raising the price of food. After we have mastered biotechnology, the rules of the climate game will be radically changed. In a world economy based on biotechnology, some low-cost and environmentally benign backstop to carbon emissions is likely to become a reality.

Biking By The Rules

Remember those old serial news/training films we had to watch in school back in the day? Well, here's one ...

The Road Less Traveled

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.



Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.



And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.



I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.


Robert Frost........

Notable Nudists

The following is a list of notable persons who have embraced nudism.
It is a growing list ...



John Quincy Adams
Christina Aguilera
Jennifer Aniston
Fiona Apple

Kevin Bacon
Oksana Baiul
Josephine Baker
Eric Balfour
Kylie Bax
Drew Barrymore
David Beckham
Victoria Adams Beckham
Amanda Beard
Jack Black
Lara Flynn Boyle
Kevin Brauche
Jimmy Buffett
Robert Burns
Gene Burton

Winston Churchill
Kelly Clarkson
Nadia Comaneci
Billy Connolly
Cindy Crawford

Johnny Depp
Athena Demos
Alan Dershowitz
Cameron Diaz
Dido
Isadora Duncan
Erica Durance

Marianne Faithful
Ralph Fiennes
Colin Farrel
Ralph Fiennes
Colin Fletcher
Flea
Bridget Fonda
Peter Fonda
Matthew Fox
Jamie Foxx
Benjamin Franklin

Eva Gabor
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Gerald Gardner
Ian Gillian
Jeff Goldblum
Cuba Gooding Jr
Amy Grant
Macy Gray
Spalding Gray

Linda Hamilton
Tom Hanks
Daryl Hannah
Woody Harrelson
Melissa Joan Hart
PJ Harvey
Goldie Hawn
Robert A. Heinlein
Ernest Hemingway
Margaux Hemingway
Mariel Hemingway
Alfred Hitchcock
Paris Hilton
Fiona Horne
Kate Hudson
Kate Humble
Elizabeth Hurley
Angelica Huston

Enrique Igelsias
Julio Iglesias
Natalie Imbruliga

Hugh Jackman
Janet Jackson
Jade Jagger
Famke Janssen
Lyndon Johnson
Raul Julia

Nicole Kidman
Kiera Knightly
Olga Korbut
Heidi Klum

Avril Lavigne
Lucy Lawless
Heath Ledger
Hyapatia Lee
Lindsay Lohan
Jennifer Lopez
Mario Lopez
Peter Lupus

Andie MacDowell

Matthew McConaughey
Ewan McGregor
Sir Ian McKellen
Sarah McLachlan
Patrick McNee
Elle McPherson

Madonna
Barry Manilow
James Mason
Eva Mendes
Christopher Meloni
Helen Mirren
Demi Moore
Alanis Morrisette
Kate Moss

Jack Nicholson

Patrick "Tip" O'Neal
George Orwell

Paloma Picasso
Pink
Brad Pitt
Sidney Pollock

Sheryl Lee Ralph
Daniel Ratcliffe
Keanu Reeves
Lynn Regrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Tara Reid
Fred Rogers
Sara Rue

Claudia Schiffer
Seal
Jerry Seinfeld
Shakira
George Bernard Shaw
Sherri Shepherd
Alicia Silverstone
Jessica Simpson
Rod Sirling
Britney Spears
Princess Stephanie of Monaco
Patrick Stewart
Joss Stone

Emma Thompson
Henry David Thoreau
Justin Timberlake
Leeann Tweedon

Vince Vaughn

Robbie Williams
Bruce Willis
Walt Whitman
Katrina Witt

Xuxu

Adrian Young

Expert of Dumb

While speaking to a friend today he announced he has become an Expert of Dumb. When I asked him what he meant by that statement he replied that having to deal with the public face to face on a daily basis at his work he has in fact become the premier Expert of Dumb.

He works in a grocery store and gave some examples of the dumbness of the public he deals with daily - this is a high-end specialty grocery store and not a 'Big Chain' store so it would be safe to say the clientèle are a bit above average or maybe they are not. In the past few days over the holiday weekend he has had one gap-toothed individual ask for the gourmet burgers advertised in the paper only he pronounced the words like this: them gore-met burgarz that was abertized, another lady (or at least a female anyway) asking for Fillet Mignon as Fill-lets Mag-none.

I agreed with him, he has become a bona fide Expert of Dumb having to deal with people all day everyday and these two prime examples of the public mean.

Thought for the Day

Why is it that those who indulge in childish games always think everyone else indulges in them as well?

Drugged, Robbed then Killed in Rome

From the Newswire:

An American tourist was killed by a train as he walked on the tracks in a daze after he drank a cappuccino laced with drugs and then was robbed, railway police said Monday.

Frank Phel, 74, of California, died early Friday at the suburban Tiburtina station, police official Giovanni Piccolantonio said. Phel's hometown was not disclosed.

The suspected robber, a 54-year-old Italian man who was arrested Saturday, had chatted with Phel and his wife before fetching them cappuccinos at a local cafe and then adding a mix of drugs including sleeping pills, Piccolantonio said.

"This man approached these two tourists and earned their trust, and then offered them two cappuccinos with drugs," Piccolantonio said.

The robbery was filmed by security cameras at a nearby cafe, Piccolantonio said. Footage from other cameras also showed the man stumbling near the tracks, where he ended up by accident.

Phel and his wife, who was briefly hospitalized after the incident, had just completed a cruise in the Mediterranean and were going to Hungary by bus, Piccolantonio said.

Phel's wife went to Hungary, where her husband was born, after being released from hospital.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome did not have an immediate comment Monday on Phel's death.

Warren Buffett: America Is Already In A Recession!

Warren Buffett, whose business and investment acumen has made him one of the world's wealthiest men, was quoted in an interview published Sunday as saying the U.S. economy is already in a recession.

Asked by Germany's Der Spiegel weekly whether he thinks the U.S. could still avoid a recession, he said that as far as the average person is concerned, it is already here.

"I believe that we are already in a recession," Buffet was quoted as saying. "Perhaps not in the sense as defined by economists. ... But people are already feeling the effects of a recession."

"It will be deeper and longer than what many think," he added.

The 77-year-old chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. gave the interview while he was in Europe for what he called a "deferred shopping tour," looking for possible acquisitions.

Omaha-based Berkshire has about $35 billion in cash and is looking to invest. Berkshire's subsidiaries include insurance, clothing, furniture, natural gas, corporate jet and candy companies. Berkshire also has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co. and Anheuser-Busch Cos.

Rally Cry of Freedom

"...for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honors that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

This excerpt from the Scottish "Declaration of Independence" is the most remembered line of the declaration which predates the United States Declaration of Independence by 400 years.

It is appropriate rally cry for those in the United States today who will not submit to rule by the Neo/Theo-Con cabal. A rallying cry that is being heard and heard clearly, so much so the Neo/Theo-Con cabal is shitting themselves trying to disappear fast enough and the nation and the world are loving every minute of it.

We Lost Another One!

We lost another one ...

Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died. He was 86.

Martin, who went on to become one of television's busiest directors after splitting with Dan Rowan in the late 1970s, died Saturday night of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, family spokesman Barry Greenberg said.

"He had had some pretty severe respiratory problems for many years, and he had pretty much stopped breathing a week ago," Greenberg said.

Martin had lost the use of one of his lungs as a teenager, and needed supplemental oxygen for most of the day in his later years.

He was surrounded by family and friends when he died just after 6 p.m., Greenberg said.

"Laugh-in," which debuted in January 1968, was unlike any comedy-variety show before it. Rather than relying on a series of tightly scripted song-and-dance segments, it offered up a steady, almost stream-of-consciousness run of non-sequitur jokes, political satire and madhouse antics from a cast of talented young actors and comedians that also included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley and announcer Gary Owens.

Presiding over it all were Rowan and Martin, the veteran nightclub comics whose standup banter put their own distinct spin on the show.

Like all straight men, Rowan provided the voice of reason, striving to correct his partner's absurdities. Martin, meanwhile, was full of bogus, often risque theories about life, which he appeared to hold with unwavering certainty.

Against this backdrop, audiences were taken from scene to scene by quick, sometimes psychedelic-looking visual cuts, where they might see Hawn, Worley and other women dancing in bathing suits with political slogans, or sometimes just nonsense, painted on their bodies. Other times, Gibson, clutching a flower, would recite nonsensical poetry or Johnson would impersonate a comical Nazi spy.

"Laugh-In" astounded audiences and critics alike. For two years the show topped the Nielsen ratings, and its catchphrases_ "Sock it to me," "You bet your sweet bippy" and "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall's" - were recited across the country.

Stars such as John Wayne and Kirk Douglas were delighted to make brief appearances, and even Richard Nixon, running for president in 1968, dropped in to shout a befuddled sounding, "Sock it to me!" His opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was offered equal time but declined because his handlers thought it would appear undignified.

Rowan and Martin landed the show just as their comedy partnership was approaching its zenith and the nation's counterculture was expanding into the mainstream.

The two were both struggling actors when they met in 1952. Rowan had sold his interest in a used car dealership to take acting lessons, and Martin, who had written gags for TV shows and comedians, was tending bar in Los Angeles to pay the rent.

Rowan, hearing Martin was looking for a comedy partner, visited him at the bar, where he found him eating a banana.

"Why are you eating a banana?" he asked.

"If you've ever eaten here, you'd know what's with the banana," he replied, and a comedy team was born.

Although their early gigs in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley were often performed gratis, they donned tuxedos for them and put on an air of success.

"We were raw," Martin recalled years later, "but we looked good together and we were funny."

They gradually worked up to the top night spots in New York, Miami and Las Vegas and began to appear regularly on television.

In 1966, they provided the summer replacement for "The Dean Martin Show." Within two years, they were headlining their own show.

The novelty of "Laugh-In" diminished with each season, however, and as major players such as Hawn and Tomlin moved on to bigger careers, interest in the series faded.

After the show folded in 1973, Rowan and Martin capitalized on their fame with a series of high-paid engagements around the country. They parted amicably in 1977.

"Dan has diabetes, and his doctor advised him to cool it," Martin told The Associated Press at the time.

Rowan, a sailing enthusiast, spent his last years touring the canals of Europe on a houseboat. He died in 1987.

Martin moved onto the game-show circuit, but quickly tired of it. After he complained about the lack of challenges in his career, fellow comic Bob Newhart's agent suggested he take up directing.

He was reluctant at first, but after observing on "The Bob Newhart Show," he decided to try. He would recall later that it was "like being thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool and being told to sink or swim."

Soon he was one of the industry's busiest TV directors, working on numerous episodes of "Newhart" as well as such shows as "In the Heat of the Night," "Archie Bunker's Place" and "Family Ties."

Born into a middle-class family in Battle Creek, Mich., Martin had worked in a Ford auto assembly plant after high school.

After an early failed marriage, he was for years a confirmed bachelor. He finally settled down in middle age, marrying Dolly Read, a former bunny at the Playboy Club in London. Survivors include his wife and two sons, actor Richard Martin and Cary Martin.

At Martin's request there will be no funeral, Greenberg said.

Martin lost the use of his right lung when he was 17, something that never bothered him until his final years, when he required oxygen 18 hours a day.

Arriving for a party celebrating his 80th birthday, he fainted and was treated by doctors and paramedics. The party continued, however, and he cracked, "Boy, did I make an entrance!"

You bet your sweet Bippy you did! Goodbye Dick.

Life on the farm

With all the projects and what not going on I have had to hire on several new people to help out on the farm and in the shops and all is going great.
Even have a new neighbor, granted by neighbor I mean they live two miles away on the backside of the farm, a nice family by the name of Vega.

The boring details of daily chores on a farm is exactly that ... boring. It is the odd happenings that cause pause for reflection. For instance when the cow came onto the porch and frightened a burglar last year, that stays in one's memory. This morning's adventure is no less memorable.

One of the new people was down by the creek around dawn for a little skinny dipping before breakfast and in typical stereotyped fashion another of the farmhands removed their clothing from where they had left them to another location hidden from their owner. The skinny dipping worker got out of the creek and found the clothing missing but instead of panicking he just began to do his morning job au natural with the intention of shocking whomever took his clothing. As I said he is new here so it was he who was shocked when he came into the hen house to find a couple of other workers there working sans clothing - the look on his face was priceless as Julie informed him it was she that had taken his clothing and put it in his closet while wearing only a basket of eggs in her hand (ok, she was wearing boots, you don't want to go into the hen house barefoot - although the newbie did!).

Right now he is still trying to figure out how the fact that being nude on this farm was the norm had escaped his notice for the three days he has been here. Pretty much wondering the same thing, myself. I guess this means we'll be seeing him around the pool in the evenings now.

Outfox the Fox

Danny Kaye at his best From 1956's "The Court Jester"

Not All That Unbelievable Now Is It?

What is so scary is that it isn't so far fetched as one imagines.

Daily Funny

"They" say I am the mastermind of the entire operation!

Now, if "they" would be so kind as to tell me which entire operation I am the mastermind of then we'll all know.

*****

Don't you just love reading the daily horoscope!

Chatter

There has been a lot of chatter over on the backpackers forum about goings on on yet another forum falling victim to the the PC police. It seems whenever the open flow of ideas is curtailed by a few misguided persons at one location the tragedy of it is known throughout the world - literally.

I must say it is disgusting how this is allowed to happen and what is more disgusting is the fact that hate and fear replace honesty and understanding when it happens. The loss is felt by all who strive for that honesty and understanding.

The bright side to this is that those locations where such has occurred wither and die ignobly as fitting they should and usually a lot sooner than some expect thus leaving room for places not infested with the like who seek to prohibit others to flourish and new locations to emerge and grow.

*****

New feature:
There will be more posts under the heading "Chatter" as I peruse the forums I frequent and find what is the rage of the moment. Just as the profuse distaste of censorship that is making the rounds for the past few weeks on blogs as diverse as there are diverse people.