Friday Evening Photo Blogging: Wave Hill Edition

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 21 May 2010 11:53:13 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

This diary is for curmudgeon who asked in last week's post of FEPB "are there other gardens that you'd include in a must-see list for visitors to your fair city?" As a matter of fact there is. A few here who enjoy my flower fluff from the New York[...]

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UN report: saving species even more important
than climate change

post from AMERICAblog News on 21 May 2010 11:45:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News

Too extreme or fair warning? The Guardian:

The UN's biodiversity report ? dubbed the Stern for Nature ? is expected to say that the value of saving "natural goods and services", such as pollination, medicines, fertile soils, clean air and water, will be even higher ? between 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the habitats and species which provide them.

To mark the UN's International Day for Biological Diversity tomorrow, hundreds of British companies, charities and other organisations have backed an open letter from the Natural History Museum's director Michael Dixon warning that "the diversity of life, so crucial to our security, health, wealth and wellbeing is being eroded".

The UN report's authors go further with their warning on biodiversity, by saying if the goods and services provided by the natural world are not valued and factored into the global economic system, the environment will become more fragile and less resilient to shocks, risking human lives, livelihoods and the global economy.

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FRIDAY NIGHT DISTRACTIONS

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 21 May 2010 11:36:18 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Due to personal time constraints, I was not able to post last Friday`s usual distractions.Tonight, I`m submitting a few shots of what I close the day with, taken from my deck.Not only is the view outstanding, but the sounds of crashing waves, which[...]

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Friday Stuff

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 21 May 2010 11:34:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

(MSNBC?s site is majorly fracked up at the moment, so this is what I?ve got...and I also posted a video here.)

Jack Conway takes the softball tossed to him by Wingnut Rand Paul and hits it about a mile here...

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?and with everything going on concerning Paul in the Kentucky U.S. Senate race, this song has been running around in my head a bit (Paul?s an ophthalmologist).

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 21 May 2010 11:30:49 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Long, long ago, in a theater far, far away...

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(h/t Miss Cellania)

30 years ago today, a young George Lucas reached once again into our collective, cinematic memories to release "The Empire Strikes Back". The best movie of the original SW trilogy, it was both as perfect a "middle act" as you will find in movie history, as well as a tonic that washed the horror that was "The Star Wars Holiday Special" out of our collective mouths.

Sitting there in the dark, gasping equally at the socko CGI and the emotional depth and power of the story of the Dark Father at war with his son, little did we know that, 19 years later, the same George Lucas who had brought us such wonders would take a big, steaming "Phantom Menace" on his own creation and break it forever and ever.

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NRSC ignores history, defends Rand Paul

post from Daily Kos on 21 May 2010 11:30:05 PM. © Daily Kos

TPM got an e-mail from the NRSC that defends Rand Paul by "by pointing out that it wasn't Republicans who were the most vocal opponents of the 1964 Civil Rights Act when it was in Congress." Of course, they conveniently ignore the fall-out from the passage of the CRA:

The true history of the Civil Rights act, according to Princeton university Sean Wilentz, is not exactly worthy of glib emails from the GOP.

"Everybody knows that in 1964, a proud southern Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, pushed hard to secure the Civil Rights Bill, with the aid of a coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans," Wilentz said. "This sent the defeated segregationist Southern Democrats (led by Strom Thurmond) fleeing into the Republican Party, where its remnants, along with a younger generation of extremist conservative white southerners, including Rand Paul, still reside."
...

Wilentz said that any suggestion that Democrats talking about the Civil Rights act is somehow hypocritical is pretty much a complete rejection of the actual facts -- and the political landscape at the time.

"In many ways, the 1964 Act defined the modern political parties -- with the Republicans becoming the heirs to the traditions of the Confederacy and Jim Crow, and the Democrats embracing the tradition of Abraham Lincoln," he wrote.

He said that the history of the bill shows that Republicans didn't hold the high ground when it came to supporting Civil Rights.

"Brian Walsh may have forgotten that Lyndon Johnson ran for president in 1964 against a Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater, who repudiated the Civil Rights Act," Wilentz wrote.

Ah, the Republican selective memory.

Please support Rand Paul's Democratic opponent, Jack Conway: he's a good guy, he needs our help, and he can win.

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So, lets start with a partisan prayer

post from Where's the Outrage? on 21 May 2010 11:16:40 PM. © Where's the Outrage?

To be honest, I have no problem with a prayer to start a Board of Education meeting. I think[...]

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Department of Book Reports: The Paranoid Style in
American Politics: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

This week we explore a book where the Apocalypse meets the paranoid. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick's novel of the future, and the literary inspiration of the movie Blade Runner, was originally published in 1968. Dick himself was a prolific writer, having written some 40 plus novels in his lifetime, and many more short stories. His books were all in the science fiction genre and he became the first sci-fi author to be included in the Library of America series. Among the many themes Dick explored, one of the most important is the question of what makes us human? What makes us real and what is fake.

And, indeed, this is what Electric Sheep is about. In spite of the many differences between the book and the movie (the phrase Blade Runner never is used by Dick, and in fact, was a borrowing by the screenwriters from William S. Burroughs), the plot outlines are similar. Rick Deckard is bounty hunter, living in a post-Apocalyptic United States, who specializes in "retiring" replicants, human synthesized androids. Six (four in the movie) replicants have escaped from the off-world and have returned to Earth. Deckard, a man who once owned a live sheep which has died of tetanus, and has replaced it with a sheep replicant, now must find the replicants and destroy them.

The test used to detect androids is called Voight-Kampff, which measures certain bodily responses to a series of questions and by which a bounty hunter can determine whether the respondent is a replicant; replicants are incapable of empathy. The new, improved Nexus androids are otherwise indistinguishable from humans. Living in a world where one doesn't know if the person next to you is "real" or "fake", and with a powerful, totalitarian government, one could easily be a bit paranoid. Deckard, at least in the book, displays his empathy. He feels empathy for his prey. In a book (and movie) as richly textured and felt as Do Androids, I could write another book explicating it's many facets. This feature is the one I most wanted to emphasize. Empathy. Not important? Perhaps you'll remember the Sotomayor hearings last year and the Republican objections to her "empathy" as being an insufficient reason to placing her on the court.

The movie Blade Runner, as I've mentioned, differs in many details from the book. But I love it. It is lush in its visuals, and the story remains complex, and the moral issues it raises remain important. The cast, the direction with an incredible film score by Vangelis, bears many repeated viewings. I see something new in it each time. There are a couple of books I can recommend: Blade Runner by Scott Bukatman (British Film Institute) is a good scholarly look at the film. Paul M.Sammon's Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner (HarperCollins) is a great history of the film's production.

And I'll leave you with this. The clip is the climax of the film wherein the replicant leader, Roy Batty, saves Deckard from falling to his death. and as Batty dies, delivers his "I've seen things..." speech. And I wonder if Batty saves Deckard because, at last, he can feel some empathy? Or does Batty save Deckard so there may be someone who will remember him?
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These books are available from Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores. (Our copy of Do Androids is a scarce first paperback printing and, hence, a bit pricy...but we'd be happy to get you a good reading copy).As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.

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Theories of the Fall

Josh Green has a theory about the Rand Paul implosion: the in-state Kentucky press has been so decimated by the newspaper crisis that there was no one to give him the kind of scrutiny Paul got on day one when he went national and had a head on collision[...]

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C&L's Late Night Music Club With Serge Gainsbourg
And Brigitte Bardot

Title: Bonnie And ClydeArtist: Serge Gainsbourg And Brigitte Bardot
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Tonight's selection is from one of the sexiest duos to ever walk the earth. Released in 1968 on both Gainsbourg's Initials B.B. and Bardot's Bonnie And Clyde, the song is based on a poem ("The Trail's End") written by Bonnie Parker just weeks before her violent death.