'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Penguins!
By Baron Dave Romm
Shockwave Radio Theater
Podcast now up and running!
Paste the following string in your podcast software:
www.romm.org/podcast.
All podcasts also on the Shockwave Radio audio
page.
Sorry, it's been a while since I've updated the files;
been busy with these pictures.
I went to Antarctica last month, and returned with 2389 pictures worthy of keeping. Herein are some of the pictures of penguins taken at Paradise Bay, Neko Island, Lemaire Channel, Petermann Island and Torgerson Island. I'm slowly but surely adding all the pictures taken by me and/or my mother at Porpoising To Antarctica, a Shutterfly site, which is not nearly complete. Far more pictures will be uploaded later, as I organize and rename the files. The pictures on Shutterfly are uncropped, unedited and uncompressed. The thumbnails are fairly small, but my pictures average about 850K and my mothers' about twice that. Hope you have a fast connection.
All pictures here taken by Baron Dave.
Read the Daily Expedition Report on Paradise Bay.
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| Gentoo Penguins, nesting on Paradise Island note egg |
Gentoo Penguins, nesting on Paradise Island note egg |
Read the Daily Expedition Report on Neko Island.
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| Gentoo Penguins, nesting Neko Island |
Gentoo Penguins, nesting Neko Island note egg |
Read the Daily Expedition Report on Lemaire Channel.
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| Penguins on ice, Lemaire Channel |
Penguins on ice, Lemaire Channel |
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| Penguins on ice, Lemaire Channel |
Penguins skittering away on
ice, Lemaire Channel |
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| Adelie Penguin in a
hurry, Petermann Island |
Adelie Penguins in a
hurry, Petermann Island |
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| Adelie Penguin bringing rock to
nest, Petermann Island |
Kestral (I think) gathering
rock, Petermann Island |
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| Adelie Penguin taking a break, Torgerson Island note egg |
Adelie
Penguin stretching, Torgerson Island note egg |
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| Adelie Penguin calling amid nests, Torgerson Island |
Adelie Penguin bored with visitors already, Torgerson Island |
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a Live Journal demi-blog, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E , and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Venezuela to send US more cheap oil (english.aljazeera.net)
Venezuela has said it will expand a programme to provide cheap home heating fuel to poor Americans, helping low-income families in Vermont and Rhode Island, as well as four Indian tribes in Maine.
KRISTIE RIEKEN: 4-year-old boy on government 'no-fly' list (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
HOUSTON -- Edward Allen's reaction to being on the government's "no-fly" list should have been the tip-off that he is no terrorist. "I don't want to be on the list. I want to fly and see my grandma," the 4-year-old boy said, according to his mother.
ROGER EBERT: In defense of the 'Worst Movie of the Year'
Having selected "Crash" as the best film of 2005, I was startled to learn from Scott Foundas, a critic for LA Weekly, that it is the worst film of the year.
Pamela K. Taylor: Seven Ways to Reconnect with Hajj (beliefnet.com)
Lost your Hajj spirit? There are plenty of ways Muslims can find their Hajj groove again.
Gene Shalit on his gay son (1997; Advocate.com)
My eldest son, Peter, is a physician, he's gay, he and his partner have been together for 17 years, and I wish we'd see each other more often. ... Peter is humane and intelligent, and I'm crazy about him. (One of the nice things about me is that I never brag about my kids).
Joey Guerra: Review of The Book of Daniel (afterellen.com)
The Book of Daniel has emerged as one of the TV mid-season's most buzzed about shows, and NBC has the American Family Association to thank for it. The notoriously conservative group, led by the Rev. Donald Wildmon, has called for a boycott of the show and its advertisers--without having seen an entire episode, of course.
Christopher Stone: Review of 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men (afterelton.com)
Alonso Duralde's fresh trade paperback 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men (Advocate Books, $14.95) is a must-have book for the lavender movie-lover in your life. If he didn't get the volume for Christmas, then you know what he needs for his birthday, or Valentine's Day.
The Best in Film 2005 (Out.com)
To Brokeback and beyond! The best gay-and gay-friendly!-movies of the year.
Lesbians We Love! (frontierspublishing.com)
Starring Honey Labrador and eight more groundbreaking, good-doing, butt-kicking women we adore.
Jeff Danziger Cartoons
Hubert's Poetry Corner
HOT, WET AND WANTING MORE
ENOUGH IS JUST NEVER ENOUGH FOR SOME MEN!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and a bit cooler.
The kid's Christmas vacation has come to an end. He's pretty bummed. Heh.
Check out the freshly updated Erin Hart Show Links page.
Visiting Venezuela
Harry Belafonte
The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called resident Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" on Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including the actor Danny Glover and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West that met the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group attended Chavez's television and radio broadcast Sunday.
"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution," Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast.
Belafonte accused U.S. news media of falsely painting Chavez as a "dictator," when in fact, he said, there is democracy and citizens are "optimistic about their future."
Harry Belafonte
LSD's Father Ponders His 'Problem Child'
Albert Hofmann
Albert Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog hanging just beyond the crest of the hill. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the windowpane.
Mr. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday, a milestone to be marked by a symposium in nearby Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered and that famously unlocked the Blakean doors of perception, altering consciousnesses around the world. As the years accumulate behind him, Mr. Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact.
"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature," he said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. "In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature." And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.
For the rest, Albert Hofmann
Buying DreamWorks Library?
George Soros
Paramount Pictures may sell the film library of DreamWorks to a private-equity fund headed by legendary investor George Soros to help finance its acquisition of that movie studio, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Citing people familiar with the situation, the Journal reported on Saturday the sides were in exclusive talks. A spokeswoman for Paramount, a unit of Viacom Inc., was not available for comment.
The Journal said that Paramount wants to close the deal by the end of January, but that the timetable was "challenging" and that no deal could be assured.
George Soros
23rd Adult Video News Awards
Porn Stars
Cameras whirred and fans pressed 10 deep against a velvet rope in Las Vegas to catch a glimpse of their favorite stars sashaying into one of the first entertainment awards shows of the year.
The 23rd annual Adult Video News (AVN) Awards, the Oscars of porn, boasted a higher attendance than ever this year, with more than 5,000 watching Saturday night's two-hour-long event in a huge ballroom at the ritzy Venetian Hotel.
Porn is big business. Adult entertainment, including porn videos and films shot mainly in Southern California's San Fernando Valley, racked up estimated sales of $12.6 billion in 2005, according to statistics compiled by AVN.
That compared with U.S. theatrical revenue of $8.9 billion for mainstream Hollywood films, according to figures from box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations.
Porn Stars
Utah Theater Cancels
'Brokeback Mountain'
A movie theater owned by Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller abruptly changed its screening plans and decided not to show the film "Brokeback Mountain." The film, an R-rated Western gay romance story, was supposed to open Friday at the Megaplex at Jordan Commons in Sandy, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Instead it was pulled from the schedule.
A message posted at the ticket window read: "There has been a change in booking and we will not be showing 'Brokeback Mountain.' We apologize for any inconvenience."
The movie's distributor, Focus Features, said that hours before opening, the theater management "reneged on their licensing agreement," and refused to open the film.
'Brokeback Mountain'
Motorcycle Mishap
$chwarzenegger
Gov. Arnold $chwarzenegger received 15 stitches in his lip Sunday after he and his 12-year-old son were involved in a motorcycle accident near their Los Angeles home, his spokeswoman said.
$chwarzenegger was riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle with his son Patrick in the sidecar when another driver backed into the street, spokeswoman Margita Thompson said in a statement.
Both $chwarzenegger and his son were treated for cuts and bruises at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica and released, Thompson said. Both were wearing helmets at the time, she said.
$chwarzenegger
No Bids at Foreclosure Sale
Courtney Love
A Los Angeles mortgage company owns the historic bungalow Courtney Love bought in the late 1990s, after a foreclosure auction generated no bids.
The debt on the house totaled $386,000, which includes court costs, sheriff's fees and interest, said Thurston County Sheriff's Sgt. Dan McLendon. Love could have prevented Friday's auction by paying off the debt.
Love stopped paying the mortgage in December 2003, court documents say. The house had been occupied by Cobain's sister, Kim, who moved out before the auction.
Courtney Love
Nets $25,300
$20 Bill
A $20 bill printed on paper that mysteriously had an ordinary fruit sticker on it sold Friday for $25,300, an auction company official said.
The flawed note bears a red, green and yellow Del Monte sticker next to Andrew Jackson's portrait.
The 1996 bill originated at a U.S. Treasury Department printing facility in Fort Worth, but how the fruit tag found its way onto the paper of the greenback is unknown.
The seal and serial number are both printed on top of the sticker, meaning the fruit tag must have found its way onto the bill midway through the process, he said.
$20 Bill
Secretly Married?
Howard Stern
Is Howard Stern secretly married to Beth Ostrosky? On Thursday morning, as the King of All Media did a dress rehearsal at Sirius for his satellite radio launch tomorrow, he played the infamous voice mails Pat O'Brien left for a woman he lusted after. The conversation turned to some other nastiness, and Stern remarked that if he did anything like that, "Beth would divorce me." Oops. Stern quickly changed the subject. Meanwhile, the 6-foot blonde Ostrosky is featured in an ad for MasterCard Pay Pal, also debuting tomorrow, which won't likely win her any acting awards. Beth simply poses in a red gown and smiles bimbonically as the announcer says, "amazingly faster and safer than cash." He means Pay Pal, not Beth.
Howard Stern
In Memory
Sanora Babb
Sanora Babb, whose novel about the struggles of Dust Bowl migrants in California was published to critical acclaim 65 years after being shelved, has died. She was 98.
She was the widow of Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe.
Babb was working for the manager of the Farm Security Administration, a federal agency that helped farmers during the Depression, in the late 1930s when she began writing "Whose Names Are Unknown."
Inspired by her work in migrant camps and based partly on her mother's accounts of Kansas dust storms, the book was declared "exceptionally fine" by Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf, who planned to publish it.
But then John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath" with the same theme in 1939 began dominating best-seller lists.
The manuscript languished for decades until the University of Oklahoma Press rescued it in 2004.
Her first novel, "The Lost Traveler," was published in 1958. Her other books include the memoir "An Owl on Every Post," a short story collection, "Cry of the Tinamou," and a book of poems, "Told in the Seed."
Born in an Otoe Indian community in Oklahoma in 1907, she followed her father across Oklahoma to a farm in Colorado. There, her grandfather had settled a desiccated piece of land.
Babb eventually became a reporter for The Associated Press and moved to Los Angeles. Through the years, she worked as a radio scriptwriter and wrote for and edited literary magazines.
Sanora Babb
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