'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Baron Dave Romm
Happy New Year!
By Baron Dave Romm
Apollo 11 landed on the moon July 20, 1969 OC (old calendar), ushering in a new era in human history. Each year we celebrate the New Year with a look back and a look forward. At the start of YML 34, let's take the time to count our blessings.
The US Space Program was the most successful undertaking in human history. Not only did it accomplish it's goal, stated a few years after inception as "putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade," but the knowledge gained and resources developed have benefited all mankind.
Originally, the space program was started in a panic after the Russians launched Sputnik on October 4, 1957. We had been leisurely talking about sending up satellites, as part of the defense program that included such related projects as the interstate highway system. The ability to launch satellites was, after all, really about the ability to launch and target nuclear missles. When the Russians proved they could do it first, we hunkered down and started NASA and ARPA and the race was on.
One of the chief spin offs of the space program was the internet. Originally set up by ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) as ARPAnet and recognized by Sen. Edward Kennedy in 1969, the technology improved and to the point where Al Gore recognized its importance and promoted its public use. (Republicans lied, as usual, but as Vincent Cerf put it in the previous cite, "Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization of the Internet when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-driven operation.")
From weather satellites to lipstick, the benefits of the space program have improved your life. Since 1976, NASA has published Spinoff that you can order free (hard copy or CD!). A lot of the following information is from the Spinoff web site. Indeed, I'm just going to randomly search their database to come up with interesting spin offs.
Geeze, just exploring the NASA database is humbling. There are lists of spin offs at The Space Place and NASA's spin off imagemap is fun for kids and... well, you get the picture. The space program has more than paid for the money we put into it.
It was no coincidence that the two superpowers in the last century were marked by space programs. And it's no coincidence that the only remaining superpower is the country with the largest investment in R&D. Money spent looking into space reaps big rewards on the ground.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min'? Heck no. But that was last year. On this New Years Day, let us celebrate and look ahead!
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. He reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E here, and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio here (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air, and I'm collecting extra-weird stuff for a possible CD compilation.
Reader Links
Re: Astrology
Hi, Marty!
Hope your (hot and sticky) summer is going better than mine...had a tornado throw an 80-year old tree on the house, right through the roof! When we finally got back online, pretty much the first place I came was back to Bart Cop E...really missed the fun!
Don't know how you feel about astrology (come on...it was good enough for Nancy Reagan!), but here is a site that really delves into it's political ramifications. They've done some great work in their analysis of past events and for what's coming up. Two future dates to watch for are 7/29 & 10/3.
Please check out this page, then go to the
table of contents and read some of the other articles about the astrological associations of past events such as the last presidential election, the war in Iraq and America's militarism.
Tiera H.
Thanks, Tiera!
Reader Link
'Earth'
Imagine what the earth looks like from outer space. You can click on different areas to zoom in and if you check out the link at different times you get different views of earth as it rotates.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
The Wall Street Poet
Welcome To The Nut House California
Welcome To The Nut House California (A Poem)
It's prob'ly much too soon to say
That California¹s toast.
I mean we're talking here about
A big chunk of The Coast.
Cal's still got chips of silicon,
It's still got Hollywood,
It's got the storied Golden Gate,
A most impressive 'hood.
Of late though it's been looking like
This state has lost its way.
Instead of fezzin' up to pain
It¹s referending Gray.
Whichever way this game plays out
Will leave a fault-sized crater;
And who might then fill this huge hole?
Dear God!
The Terminator?
© 2003
**********
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
It's hot, it's humid, and I'm cranky, again.
Yesterday at the Dogger game, the army reserves were recruiting. They had a bunch of stuff to hand out - like those straps that hang around your neck with a clip at the end, with
www.goarmyreserve.com printed on it, and a made in china label. Regular keychains and bumper stickers, too.
Beer has gone up to $7 (or $12 for a micro-brew), but the price of water & soft drinks have gone down - water was $3 & $5. Soda was $4.50.
34 years ago today there were men walking on the moon. I was in a hospital in Pittsburgh, my face (& eyes) were covered with bandages, but I remember hanging on every word. Damn - we a space program that worked, and Walter Cronkite, too.
Tonight, Monday, CBS opens the night with a RERUN 'Yes, Dear', followed by a RERUN 'Still Standing', then a RERUN
'Raymond', followed by a RERUN 'King Of Queens', then a RERUN 'CSI: Miami'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Dave are Aron Ralston and Tobey Maguire.
Scheduled on a FRESH Craiggers are Brooke Burns and Foo Fighters.
NBC begins the evening with a RERUN 'Fear Factor', followed by a FRESH 'For Lu$t Or $', then a FRESH
'Who Wants To Marry My Dad?'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jay are Angelina Jolie and Guster.
On a RERUN Conan are Tom Cavanagh, Patton Oswalt, and Kenny Chesney.
On a RERUN Carson Daly are Jamie Kennedy, air guitarist Dan Crane, and David Banner.
ABC starts the night with a RERUN 'Less Than Perfect', followed by another RERUN 'Less Than Perfect', then still another RERUN
'Less Than Perfect', followed by yet another RERUN 'Less Than Perfect', then 'Primetime Special Edition'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jimmy Kimmel are Mick Foley and Chaka Khan.
The WB offers a RERUN '7th Heaven', followed by another RERUN '7th Heaven'.
Faux has a FRESH 'Anything For Love', followed by 'Stupid Behavior Caught On Tape', then 'Funniest Wedding Outtakes'.
UPN here has the Rockies visiting Rupert's Doggers.
A&E has 'Biography' (Doris Roberts), 'Cold Case Files', and 'City Confidential'.
AMC offers the movie 'To Catch A Thief', followed by the movie 'Waiting To Exhale', then the movie 'How Stella Got Her Groove Back'.
BBC -
[7pm] 'Ground Force' - Whitford;
[7:30pm] 'Changing Rooms' - St. Leonards-On-Sea;
[8pm] 'Jonathan Creek' - Miracle In Crooked Lane;
[9pm] 'Red Cap' - Espirit De Corps;
[10pm] 'Red Cap' - Crush;
[11pm] 'So Graham Norton' - Alex Kingston;
[11:30pm] 'So Graham Norton' - Kelly Osbourne;
[12am] 'Red Cap' - Espirit De Corps;
[1am] 'Red Cap' - Crush;
[2am] 'Jonathan Creek' - Miracle In Crooked Lane;
[3am] 'So Graham Norton' - Alex Kingston; and
[3:30am] 'So Graham Norton' - Kelly Osbourne. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has the movie 'Interanal Affairs', followed by the movie 'Internal Affairs'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jon Stewart is Gabrielle Union.
History has 'Modern Marvels', 'Mail Call', 'Conquest' (the history of knives & daggers), 'Sons Of Saddam', and 'Behind Iraqi Lines'.
SciFi is all 'Stargate SG-1' all night.
TCM -
[6am] 'Chatterbox' (1936) (which should NOT be confused with this Chatterbox (1977);
[7:15am] 'Bad Little Angel' (1939);
[8:30am] 'Three Loves Has Nancy' (1938);
[10am] 'The Ghost Comes Home' (1940);
[11:30am] 'The Women' (1939);
[1:45pm] 'Susan And God' (1940);
[3:45pm] 'Pop Always Pays' (1940);
[5pm] 'Father Takes A Wife' (1941);
[6:30pm] 'My Favorite Spy' (1942);
[8pm] 'The Dirty Dozen' (1967);
[11pm] 'Raintree County' (1957) (as a side-note, during the filming of this movie, Montgomery Clift's face was crushed in a horrific car accident. If you're really bored, and watch carefully, you can tell which scenes were filmed before and after the accident);
[2:30am] 'The Rack' (1956); and
[4:30am] 'Vice Squad' (1953). (ALL TIMES EDT)
VH1 begins '200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons'.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Reggae legend from Jamaica, Jimmy Cliff sings at the Gurten Festival near Berne, Switzerland, Sunday, July 20, 2003.
Photo by Edi Engeler
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Contrite on Mixing News, Entertainment
Leslie Moonves
CBS Chairman and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves acknowledged on Sunday that CBS News probably erred by bringing up a possible TV movie deal when it tried to persuade Army private Jessica Lynch to give an interview about her rescue during the Iraq war.
CBS News drew criticism in June after it approached Lynch with a request for an interview about her capture by Iraqi forces and the April 1 rescue by U.S. soldiers that catapulted her to fame.
The news division mentioned possible deals from other units of Viacom, including a television movie, which was seen by critics as undermining the CBS News's objectivity.
"(The) letter should just have pitched the news show, probably," Moonves told reporters at a presentation on the network's fall schedule.
"Probably if we had to do it all over again, the Movie of the Week never would have been mentioned," he said. "That was not respecting, possibly, the sanctity of CBS News."
Leslie Moonves
Ricci Martin, left, and Gary Lewis perform together at the Italian Heritage Festival in Buffalo, N.Y., Saturday, July 19, 2003. Ricci is the son of the Dean Martin and Gary is the son of Jerry Lewis. This is the first time they met and performed their father's stage act.
Photo by Don Heupel
Cast As Ronald Reagan
James Brolin
James Brolin, has been cast as Ronald Reagan in a four-hour CBS miniseries, "The Reagans," set to air during the November sweeps period.
Brolin, who starred in the TV series "Marcus Welby, M.D.," "Hotel" and "Pensacola: Wings of Gold," will play Reagan as he moves from his film career to California governor to president.
Australian actress Judy Davis will play Nancy Reagan.
James Brolin
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
30th Anniversary In Seattle
Bruce Lee
Dozens of people stopped by Bruce Lee's grave on Sunday, paying their respects to the kung fu legend 30 years after his death.
Whether they were old friends or young martial arts enthusiasts, many who visited Lake View Cemetery said their admiration for Lee went far beyond his fame as a movie star.
Born in San Francisco in 1940, Lee grew up in Hong Kong, then returned to the United States when he was 18. He lived in Seattle for 4 1/2 years in the early 1960s. He worked as a bus boy at a restaurant owned by Ruby Chow, a leader in the local Chinese-American community.
Lee opened his first kung fu studio while studying philosophy at the University of Washington. He had little regard for martial arts tradition, telling his students to focus on their own talent and to eliminate wasted motion.
"Bruce Lee Collectors Exhibit 2003: The Beginning of a Legend, the Story of a Man," runs through December. Most of the items on display come from the private collection Perry Lee, a martial arts enthusiast from suburban Renton. He was 14 when he met Bruce Lee at a kung fu demonstration at Franklin High School in 1964.
On Saturday, he led Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee Keasler, 34, through the exhibit. She was there with her husband, Ian; their 7-month-old baby, Wren; and her mother, Bruce Lee's widow, Linda Lee Cadwell.
For a lot more, Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee Exhibit
A group of 'Star Wars' fans dressed in ccostumes make their way down an escalator to the convention floor July 19, 2003 as thousands of comic book fans from around the world gather in San Diego for their annual four day convention 'Comic Con' a collection of comic book and industry related sci-fi, video and motion picture fantasy. With this years conference a wrap enthusiasts can look forward to the the 35th annual Comic Con to return to San Diego July 22-25, 2004.
Photo by Mike Blake
Springer Would Be Fine Senator
Maria Cantwell
Sen. Maria Cantwell says tabloid television talk show host Jerry Springer would make a fine senator for Ohio.
"I think people will be surprised by his intellect," the Washington state Democrat told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "There's much more to him than his TV show. He's an incredibly smart person."
Cantwell, Washington state's junior senator, was an unpaid volunteer for Springer's successful run for Cincinnati mayor in 1977. In 1982, she worked as a paid member of his campaign when he lost his bid for governor of Ohio.
"He's a policy wonk," Cantwell told the P-I, being careful to note that her opinion is based on his political career, not his fame as a talk show host whose nationally syndicated show has featured strippers and skinheads.
Maria Cantwell
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Mikey Wants Out
FCC Under Fire
Populist outrage is threatening to undo a controversial effort by the FCC to loosen restraints on media megaliths. In the Senate last week, seven Republicans joined 28 Democrats to schedule a rare "resolution of disapproval" to overturn new FCC rules that would let companies like News Corp. and Viacom expand their media holdings in local markets. Then in the House, defecting Republicans fueled a 40-to-25 committee vote to reverse part of the FCC's action. Now it appears that the chief architect of those rules, FCC chairman Michael Powell, may not stick around for the fight. According to industry sources, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell has told confidants he'd like to leave by fall, and three of his four top staff members are putting out job feelers. (Powell has denied he's leaving soon.) His most likely replacement, sources say, is either Rebecca Klein, who is head of the Texas public-utility commission and was on the staff of Governor George W. Bush, or FCC commissioner Kevin Martin, who helped the Bush team count votes in Florida in 2000.
Powell rammed through the new rules—allowing a single company to own TV stations that reach up to 45% of the national market, an increase from the old 35% cap, and lifting the ban on a company's owning both a newspaper and a TV station in the same market—on a party-line vote in June. But groups as disparate as the National Organization for Women and the National Rifle Association are decrying the move. In a new Pew Research poll, respondents most familiar with the FCC's action opposed it by roughly 10 to 1. Still, it has the support of key g.o.p. leaders, and resident Bush has threatened to veto any bill overturning it.
FCC Under Fire
A look-a-like Wright 'B' Flyer flies over the graves and memorial of Orville and Wilbur Wright during a ceremony Sunday, July 20, 2003, at Woodland Cemetery, in Dayton, Ohio.
Photo by David Kohl
Or Deplorable Deployment?
Tour of Duty
By Jeff Danziger
In 1969, it took between 10 and 18 hours to get to Vietnam on the Flying Tiger contract planes. A long, numbing flight to a war with no liquor, not even a beer. The stewardesses, who were the last American women we thought we would see, served low-bidder airline meals, a little sorrowfully I thought, treating us like doomed children. Stops were made in Hawaii, where a special lounge separated us from the tourists and honeymoon couples.
At Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, the main entry point for American troops, the first whack of reality was the heat. We walked down the stairs from the plane into the boil of the Saigon humidity, weighted by duffle bags and weapons, swaddled in fatigues and canvas boots.
This was going to be awful.
But the one thing that kept us mildly sane was the knowledge that it would last only a year. That was guaranteed. You could, you told yourself, put up with anything for a year. Three months later, especially in combat units, you weren't so sure. Even so, it was the knowledge that every day brought you closer to deliverance from the heat and the noise and the violence and the death that kept most of us from losing it.
This week, the Pentagon informed the 3rd Infantry Division troops in Iraq that they would not be going home on the dates previously promised. In fact they will be extended in their duty "indefinitely."
In Vietnam, every soldier had his short-timer calendar, carried in his plastic wallet. These curious documents, which counted 365 days like weird little advent calendars, were often humorous and sometimes ribald, drawn up by local wags with artistic talent. Every morning meant crossing off another day. And the calendars held the promise that if you could just get through however many days were left, then regular life — with families and cars and air-conditioning and cold beer — would start again. If you got down to less than three months you were termed "short," the cartoon for which was a helmet sitting on two boots.
For the rest, Tour of Duty
Re: Treason
Ann Coulter
Reviewed by Walter C. Uhler
Imagine that your 12-year-old daughter hands you her essay. Its opening sentence reads: "History is an endless process of liberal brainwashing." Loving parent that you are, you say, "No, honey. Your sentence is incorrect. It's possible -- although barely -- for the writing of history to be an endless process of liberal brainwashing. But 'history' itself? Absolutely not. Just think about the commonly accepted fact of Adolf Hitler coming to power in Germany. Is it liberal brainwashing?"
But what do you say to the physically mature, opinionated female pundit (suspected of leveraging her sex) who begins Chapter 6 of her new book with the very same sentence? You say, "Ms. Coulter, in light of the insipid invective, appalling ignorance, slipshod scholarship and egregious dishonesty oozing from your new book, 'Treason,' I'm not surprised. You richly deserve the title of pseudo-intellectual and give real meaning to Jacques Barzun's complaint about 'the menace of the untaught -- the menace to themselves and to us.' But I'm not sure what to conclude about your publisher."
And why don't fellow conservatives fear being discredited by her rants? Because, as the infamous Nazi, Herman Goering, once observed, "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
Thus, although Ann Coulter's "Treason" may be proof positive of Samuel Johnson's observation that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," what really matters is how many of her die-hard fans (a.k.a. stupid white males) seize upon it as the gospel truth, and vote accordingly.
The book is a mess! Coulter's first paragraph contains the vile suggestion that liberals constitute an inferior race. The evidence? "Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." Essence? According to George Fredrickson's history of racism, "It is when differences that might otherwise be considered ethnocultural are regarded as innate, indelible, and unchangeable that a racist attitude or ideology can be said to exist."
For the rest of the spanking, Ann Coulter
Didi, matou mâle âgé d'un an et demi, a décroché le titre du plus beau chat déguisé lors d'un concours organisé à Kuala Lumpur, en Malaisie. Il a devancé quelque 200 concurrents, siamois, persans et autres Cornish Rex.
Photo by Bazuki Muhammad
'Ark of Darkness'
"The Ark of Darkness", a Political/Science-Fiction work, in tidy, weekly installments (and updated every Friday).
The Ark Group discovers a final member of the last expedition in a place dominated by Murphy's Law.
'The Osbournes'
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 5
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 4
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 3
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
