Teen Art Students Unwittingly Create Recruiting PSA for Belize Military

Marcus Waller, 17, and Jacob Menache, 17, thought they were working on a class project.

The assignment: create public service announcements for the Belize Defence Force.

[EDIT]

What the teens didn't know was that their commercials will air throughout Belize.

Full article

I'm glad these two boys had the opportunity to develop and display their video editing skills. I also congratulate them on their success and wish them well in their future careers. However, I'm not sure that U.S. public high school art classes should be doing PR work for Central American militaries.

Granny Rube

While going through some old family photographs recently, I found these two great pictures of my paternal grandmother. She's the tall girl in the middle in the trio above and the one wearing the suit in the quartet below. I don't know why they were cross-dressing.

Zombie Jesus Loves You

Thanks to The Invisible Library, where you can find a version of this image large enough to make into a t-shirt transfer.

Some Things I Froze a Long Time Ago

My digital camera (a Sony Cybershot DSC-P51 that I bought in 2002) is one of the most useful purchases I ever made. In the old days I probably wouldn't have wasted film taking a photograph of the contents of my freezer. (Well, I might have.) Thanks to digital photography, however, I've been able to freely document much of the minutiae of the most recent five years of my life. That's why I'm able to show you exactly what was in my freezer at 2:38 p.m. on January 24, 2004.

I recognize the Totino's, the bags of shredded mozzarella, the caviar, and the aluminum foil-wrapped hamburger patties as mine. The rest belonged to my then-roommates.

I don't know why I had caviar in the freezer. Surely I didn't actually freeze it. Maybe I had bought it very recently and it hadn't been refrigerated, so I wanted to let it chill before eating it. Or maybe I just put it in there to make the picture classier.

Help find Miss Atomic Bomb

Her name is almost certainly Lee Merlin and if she is still living she is in her early seventies.

A woman resembling Miss Atomic Bomb and identified as Lee Merlin appears in a Long Beach Press-Telegram photograph in the newspaper's July 25, 1953 edition. In the photograph Merlin stands between Long Beach, CA Mayor Lyman B. Sutter and Jack Arnold of the Long Beach Culinary Workers union. The article concerns the mayor’s proclamation of "City of Hope Week"

Merlin came to Las Vegas in late 1953 or early 1954.

Her first job was at the Desert Inn Hotel.

She worked as a Copa Girl at the Sands Hotel (now the Venetian Hotel and Casino) from 1954 to the summer or early fall of 1957.

She lived with one of her co-workers at the Bali Hai Apartments on Desert Inn Road for most of her time in Las Vegas.

One of her fellow dancers, Carolyn MacMullen, recalls Merlin as "very bookish" with a "dry" sense of humor.

Photographer Don English was assigned by the Las Vegas News Bureau to take a picture outside the Sands Hotel in connection with an above ground atomic test. By 1957 the repetition of the tests had inspired English to become creative in his photography on this theme. He and his colleagues designed the striking mushroom cloud that adorns the bathing suit worn by Merlin. It was constructed of cotton wadding glued to cardboard.

Don English did not photograph Merlin at the exact time of the detonation. Also, the landscape behind Merlin demonstrates that the picture was taken facing east, away from the test site.

Contrary to oft-repeated claims, there was no beauty contest preceding the photograph and the title "Miss Atomic Blast" that is sometimes associated with the picture is incorrect.

Thanks to Conelrad Alert, where you can learn a lot about atomic culture.

Genetic Diversity Among Chimps and Humans

They may all be black and hairy and they may all eat and act in much the same way, but chimpanzees from different parts of Africa are genetically more diverse than all of humanity, researchers reported on Friday.

Full article

Chimpanzees and genetics are two of my favorite subjects.

Part of the article was distracting, though. Here's the second paragraph:

Experts have long marveled that older ideas of race are not reflected in human DNA. Genetic diversity is more pronounced within population groups than between them, with only a few gene differences accounting for the wide variations seen in eye, skin and hair color across humanity.

It's slightly awkwardly placed in what was otherwise a coherent article. The second sentence of that paragraph especially caught my attention, because it includes the first part of a non-sequitur that has annoyed me for a long time. (The author of the chimpanzee article doesn't actually make the non-sequitur, but the appearance of its premise reminded me of the whole thing.)

My sociology professor used to make the point in class about there being more genetic diversity within each race than between races. He surmised from this that race had no genetic basis. I've heard this argument made more and more over the years. However, it doesn't really make sense.

The idea seems to be this: The genetic difference between the two most genetically dissimilar members of any one race is greater than the genetic difference between the typical member of that race and the typical member of any other race. That's true, but it's not as significant as it might sound at first. The difference within any one race is huge. Just think of the two most dissimilar white people you know of. Of course the difference between them is greater than the difference between the typical white person and the typical member of any other race. That leaves plenty of room for interracial difference.

I realize that the question of whether race exists is a complex one and it gets some people very upset. I've only barely touched on the subject here. This post is not a thorough examination of the question and I don't want it to be. I just wanted to give my criticism of one of the arguments that I've heard.

I know that the people who claim that race does not exist have good motives. They want to stop racial animosity and mistreatment. (I suspect, though, that a few of them just want to play iconoclast or contrarian.) However, we can like and respect each other and treat each other right without discounting or denying the differences that exist among us.

I don't think that many of us will do that, but we could. Even if race didn't exist, there would still be lots of differences on which we would base our prejudices and our dislikes. That basic moral flaw is what we should be trying to get rid of.

A Very Special Concert

The enduring bond between Huey Lewis and the developmentally disabled

There is, however, one stereotype about retarded people that is true, one broad brushstroke that one can make about them all: Good gosh a'mighty, retarded people love them some Huey Lewis. Part of the reason is that Huey is apparently a sweetheart who does a lot of volunteer work with people who have developmental disabilities. But another big part is the music.

Full article

Really interesting article. You should go read the whole thing. I'm a pretty big Huey Lewis & the News fan myself.

Thanks to Slice O' Life (a very good blog) for bringing the article to my attention.

No More Limbo

The Catholic Church has decided there is no limbo.

I'm a little sorry to see limbo go. I don't actually believe in it. (I'm a devout atheist. I don't believe in any sort of supernatural things.) However, it's just that sort of weird mythical thing that makes religion fascinating to me. (I do also enjoy the philosophical content of religions, but I consider that a separate subject.)

I actually thought about joining the Roman Catholic Church when I was a teenager. I didn't believe in Church dogma, but I figured it might be interesting to be Catholic. After awhile, reason won out. Then, I became interested in the Mormons.

In my 20's I had an idea about going through the motions of converting to several different religions (e.g., Catholicism, LDS, Orthodoxy, all sorts of Protestantism, all sorts of Judaism, Islam). I never did any of that, but I thought the experience could have provided the material for a good book. The title of my book was going to be The Faker.

Aishwarya Rai has gotten married

...but, sadly, not to me.

More Aishwarya

Happy 420!

Wright on Imus

Elizabeth Wright, editor of the black conservative Issues & Views, has written a great commentary on the Imus controversy:

The day that CBS canceled Imus's show on WFAN, Mike and the Mad Dog, the afternoon sports entertainers on the station (now subbing in the morning), expressed their shock that so many "friends" had deserted Imus. Don't they know that the one thing you can count on white men to do is abandon other white men? Where have they been? The idea of loyalty among whites is a notion that abides only in misguided brains. Blacks often mistake class solidarity among particular circles of whites for a race bond. Do you think the tightly knit Bush social-financial circle of relatives and friends is focused around skin color?

There are thousands of Mike Nifongs out there, in one capacity or another, waiting to pounce upon what they consider the vulnerable, and supposedly hated, white male. Just as blacks, like Sharpton, use members of their race to enhance their profiles and careers, so do whites, especially when it offers a chance to show the world just how "anti-racist" they are, how good and moral. Those Duke University students were viewed by prosecutor Nifong as dispensable fodder, who can afford to take a hit or two, and even go down a time or two. After all, they've got the world on a string, according to this illusion, and their white skin allows them to bounce back from anything.

[EDIT]

One of the most unfortunate consequences of this episode is the fact that yet another white man has helped to restore credibility and social power to those two cynical buffoons, Jackson and Sharpton. Just when it looked like their stars were waning, along comes the groveling Imus, to remind us blacks of just who our "leaders" are.

Full article

Grindhouse / New Beverly Cinema

I saw Grindhouse last week. I liked it, especially Planet Terror. I was surprised by that preference since I'm generally more of a Tarantinoist than a Rodriguezian.

I had mixed feelings upon hearing Nouvelle Vague's cover of Too Drunk to Fuck used in a scene in Planet Terror. I'm a big Nouvelle Vague fan and I like their version of the Dead Kennedy's classic a lot, but I'm always a little disappointed when one of my relatively obscure interests gets a lot of attention due to its use as an element of some larger pop cultural work. That happened to me big-time with the Priory of Sion and The Da Vinci Code.

I was looking forward to seeing Grindhouse because its double-feature-with-trailers gimmick reminded me of one of the things I miss the most about Los Angeles: the New Beverly Cinema. The New Beverly (which was thanked, I saw with delight, in the credits to Grindhouse) is a revival theater where you can see double-features for the price of one admission. The movies they pair always have something in common. Usually, it's something obvious, like the same director, but sometimes it's harder to figure out.

I saw several good combos there, including:

2001: A Space Odyssey / A Clockwork Orange

Easy Rider / Two-Lane Blacktop

City of Lost Children / Delicatessen

Mulholland Dr. / Lost Highway

The Third Man / The Magnificent Ambersons

I know I saw others, but can't recall what they were. I think I saw Kubrick's Lolita there, but can't remember what it played with.

The New Beverly doesn't have a parking lot (or, at least, it didn't when I used to go there), so movie-goers had to park a block or two or three away in a residential neighborhood and walk to the theater. Most of the residents of this neighborhood were ultra-Orthodox Jews (black hats, beards, etc.), which really added to the whole experience. I especially enjoyed going to the New Beverly on Friday nights, when the sidewalks were full of shul attendees.

One time I stopped at a garage sale. I bought a rotary telephone, which I still use. As I was leaving I saw a menorah, which I really wanted. Since I had already paid for the phone and was afraid I might be late for the movie, however, I passed on the menorah.

Graffiti on graffiti

Thanks to Titty Blog.

Cindy Brady has a blog

R.I.P., Kurt Vonnegut

This is the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography. I have called it "Slapstick" because it is grotesque, situational poetry -- like the slapstick film comedies, especially those of Laurel and Hardy, of long ago. It is about what life feels like to me. --- KV, from the prologue to his novel Slapstick

Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite writer, died slowly from a fall.

So it goes.

"Be careful what you say (out loud) about race." or "The First Amendment is not enough."

Race is the great taboo in our society. No one white can talk about it, seriously or jokingly, without knowing that he or she is treading on dangerous ground. People hesitate when the subject comes up in conversation. Some of the things that go unsaid aren’t worth mourning, but others leave great holes in the discussion that we should be having about race.

There is no legal guarantee that America will be a land of open public discourse. There can’t be. The Constitution protects speech from restrictions by the State, but there are more basic and personal obstacles to free and honest discussion. Hypersensitivity to the words of others is one. Timidity in the face of our critics is another.

Nappy Headed Poe

R.I.P., Johnny Hart

Johnny Hart died on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

After Hart became an evangelical Christian (a conversion he attributed to a born-again father-and-son team of satellite TV system installers), he began occassionally infusing his strips with overtly religious themes. I appreciated the irony of Christian content appearing in a comic strip called "B.C."

His most famous strip is the one shown above from Easter 2001. It caused great controversy, as illustrated by this parody from the JDL website:

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday at Eye of Ra Ha

In recognition of the last few days of Holy Week, I've posted the following three photographs over at my photo blog. Click on the pictures to be taken to the original posts.

Wax Judas (Hollywood, California, 2002)


Pietà (Vatican City, 2004)


Spider Thread (Hollywood, California, 2002)

Happy Easter!

Here's my favorite Easter sermon:

Easter Sermon (WARNING: bad language)



I found this picture online, but cannot remember where. Anyway, I think it's one of the most ominous / funniest Easter pictures I've ever seen.

Parakeets of London

Invasion of the parakeets

It's been a case of pretty polly up to now, but it may not be for much longer. Government scientists are to investigate the activities of the flocks of rose-ringed parakeets breeding in London's suburbs, amid rising fears that they may be harming native British bird species.

The brilliant green parakeets have hitherto been a popular sight in the parks and gardens where they are to be found, squabbling and dashing from tree to tree, in a broad swath of south London from Croydon in the east to Esher and beyond in the west. But since they first began breeding in the wild more than 40 years ago, their numbers have built up to a point where now some ecologists fear their population is exploding, with potentially damaging results. It is feared that the parakeets, which nest in holes and crevices in trees, may be displacing British tree-nesting species such as woodpeckers, nuthatches and starlings.

There is as yet no hard evidence that this is taking place, says the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). But as a precaution the society has asked the Government to investigate the risk from the parakeets under its recently launched strategy for dealing with invasive non-native species.

The strategy is focusing on troublesome plants such as the rapidly-spreading Japanese knotweed, whose eradication from the Olympics site in east London alone may cost millions of pounds, and invertebrates such as the Chinese mitten crab, which is doing much damage burrowing under the banks of the Thames and other rivers.

The rose-ringed parakeet,Psittacula krameri, which is native to a great belt of land stretching from Africa across to India and the Himalayas, is the most obvious bird which in Britain today could be seen as invasive and non-native.

No one knows how it came to start breeding in London, although it is certain to have been the result of the accidental or deliberate release of captive birds. One persistent theory is that an entire flock escaped from Shepperton Studios in Surrey in 1951, during the filming of the adventure drama The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn.

They are now particulary plentiful in west London, especially in the wooded stretch of the Thames from Kew to Hampton Court; they have become a permanent feature, for example, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, where their sharply-loud screeching call and long flight silhouette are as distinctive as their brilliant emerald plumage.

The ecologist Tony Drakeford thinks their population must be in excess of 30,000, and rapidly expanding. He is convinced they must be displacing native birds. "Recently I went to Bushy Park where there thousands of parakeets and very few native birds," he said. But he thinks it may be too late to do anything about it. "A major cull would meet with a lot of opposition," he said.

News reports of the Government inquiry, to be carried out by the Central Science Laboratory, have prompted local paper headlines that a cull is imminent, backed by the RSPB. But an RSPB spokesman, Andre Farrar, denied the society was backing any mass killing. "We have simply asked the Government to study the situation," he said. "Some people think they are doing harm, but as yet there is no hard evidence that they are."

If it were proved that the parakeets were causing a reduction in the conservation status of native British bird species, "then a cull might be the right answer", Mr Farrar said - pointing out that of the 1,200 globally-threatened species of birds, 340 were threatened by introduced non-native species.

But, he said, at the moment the RSPB was not calling for any cull, merely for an inquiry.

Original article

What are ring-necked parakeets doing in London?
Among London's diverse residents are a range of birds including the St James' Park pelican, the odd red kite and an enormous colony of ring-necked parakeets.

These stunning birds (also known as rose-ringed parakeets) squawk noisily each morning. No one knows for sure where they came from, but suggestions range from aviary escapees, a pair released by Jimi Hendrix on Carnaby Street in the Sixties, refugees from the Ealing studio film-set for African Queen and angry partners releasing prized pets following relationship breakdowns. Any or all of these stories may be true.

The fact is that these birds now number something in the region of 30,000 across London, mainly concentrated in the west and south. Their number is predicted to top 50,000 in the capital by 2010.

Up to 6,000 parakeets now congregate at their communal roosting site in Esher, bringing an assortment of other parrots with them!

Ring-necked parakeets are long-lived, eat a diet of seeds, berries and fruit and live in holes in trees. There is no record of their presence impacting on native birds, but the RSPB is monitoring areas where these birds have settled.

Complaints about them vary from the noise they make to the destructive power of their beaks on garden feeders. The Government is developing a framework for dealing with non-native species.

These bright green birds are now recorded in every single London borough. In the 2006 Big Garden Birdwatch, they featured in the top tens of six boroughs: Bexley, Greenwich, Hounslow, Kingston-upon-Thames, Lewisham and Richmond-upon-Thames.

Original article

I'm fascinated by feral flocks of exotic birds. Here are some related links:

How do parakeets survive in the UK?

Wild parrots settle in suburbs

Feral Parrot Population Soars in U.K., Study Says

The Norwood Grove colony of Ring-necked Parakeet

Quaker parrots invade Barcelona

Brooklyn Parrots

Feral Monk Parakeets in Chicago!

The California Parrot Project (Their link page.)

Feral Parrot Populations in San Francisco

Born Wild In the USA

Happy Good Friday!

I wasn't sure whether this picture was more appropriate for Good Friday or for Easter. It looks as though Jesus has been resurrected, but he's still on the cross. Since I have something else planned for my Easter entry, I decided to post this one today.

To see many different versions of the Savior, go to Jesus of the Week.

R.I.P., Bob Clark

Obama the Christ

I resisted the temptation to entitle this post "Chocolate Jesus II," but I had to include that joke in here somewhere.

I hope your Holy Week is going well.

Happy Passover!

Here's a Passover greeting from Harold Stern, my second-favorite Jewish cowboy. (You're still number 1 with me, Kinky.)

Passover Greeting

Legion of Episcopalian and Anglican Super-Heroes

Kim Richards and Olivia Barash

Tonight, Hallmark is showing Escape to Witch Mountain and its sequel, Return from Witch Mountain, both starring Kim Richards. This brings back nice memories for me because Kim was one of the two great celebrity crushes of my early childhood.

The other was Olivia Barash. When I was a little boy in the 1970's and early 1980's, Kim and Olivia were on TV very frequently and I thought they were the two prettiest girls in the world.

Since I usually saw them in movies or reruns that were a few years old, they appeared to be the same age as me, but I was aware that they were older because I would sometimes see them in more up-to-date roles.

Kim seemed to have the more active acting career. I was a faithful Hello, Larry viewer, primarily because of her. The episode in which she let the blind kid feel under her shirt is one that I'm sure I'll remember until I die.

I remember that they also sometimes had cross-over episodes with Diff'rent Strokes and her character, Ruthie, would interact with Arnold and Willis and Kimberly.

I was aware that Kim was growing into a very hot young lady. What I didn't realize at the time was that she was the sister of Kyle Richards, who appeared on Down To Earth, one of my favorite shows from the 80's. I wouldn't make that connection until the late-90's, after the internet made learning so much easier. Later, I would be even more surprised, and a little dismayed, to learn that she and Kyle are the aunts of Paris Hilton.

I was not able to follow Olivia's development as thoroughly as I followed Kim's. I saw her in an episode of Alice in which she played Tommy's girlfriend and I can remember vividly her appearance in a very special (and, to me, very disturbing) Little House on the Prairie two-parter, but I mostly lost track of her. Maybe it was because our cable company started offering an expanded package of channels in 1986 and I just had so much more to watch.

Now, I know (thanks to the internet, again) that I did see her in later roles, but I just didn't realize it was her. Perhaps my failure to recognize her was due to a crucial gap in my observance of her career, but she did change in appearance a lot more than Kim did.

I re-watched Repo Man a few years ago just so I could look for Olivia. Knowing that it was her, I could see the resemblance, but I wasn't surprised that I hadn't been able to recognize her on earlier viewings. She was still very beautiful, but different. Apparently, she's also in Floundering (playing a character named Ruthie), but I've not gotten around to re-watching it.



Strange story: Kim and Olivia appeared together in the film Tuff Turf. I watched that movie (on cable, shortly after its theatrical run) when I was in high school primarily to see Kim (who looked fantastic), but I didn't recognize Olivia. I'm sure the movie would have meant so much more to me if I had.

Happy Palm Sunday and April Fools' Day!

I don't have anything to post about Palm Sunday, so here are two April Fools' links:

Possible Origins of April Fools' Day

Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time


What appears below was added to this entry on April 20, almost three weeks after the post was originally made. I'm explaining this because I'm not sure if it's proper etiquette to substantially edit a blog entry this long after it was posted without explaining that you've done so. Given that Kurt Vonnegut has died since I made the original post, I thought some sort of disclaimer like this was especially appropriate. I don't want anyone to think that I'm psychic or anything like that. I would have just posted my addendum in the "comments" section, but I thought you might miss it if it were there. I also considered waiting until the next time that Palm Sunday and April Fools' Day coincide, but I didn't want to have to figure out when that would be. Also, I may be dead by then. In any case, I don't want to wait that long.

Too late, I thought of an appropriate post for Palm Sunday / April Fools' Day:

I asked an Episcopalian priest the other day what I should say to you about Palm Sunday. She told me to say that it was a brilliant satire on pomp and circumstance and high honors in this world. So I tell you that. --- Kurt Vonnegut, from a sermon he delivered on Palm Sunday 1980 at St. Clement's Episcopal Church in New York City, later quoted in his essay "In the Capital of the World," which was published in his book Palm Sunday

Prominent evangelical backs out of pro-Israel event over proselytizing disclaimer

Christian radio talk-show host Janet Parshall, a high-profile American evangelical known for her strong support of Israel, has dropped out of a Jerusalem conference sponsored by a Christian caucus of the Israeli Parliament. Parshall says she decided not to speak at the conference after she learned that the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus "condemns" and does not associate with groups that share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Parshall says she is also troubled that the strict religious political party Shas has yet again introduced legislation in the Knesset that would give up to a one-year prison sentence for people who share the gospel in Israel. "I thought, wait a minute: we can't just blindly support Israel," she observes. "We have to be able to tell them, as a friend, [that] you can't do that. You can't silence us."

Full article