A PREOCCUPATION WITH RUBBER DUCKS

My apologies to everyone for my absence. Your ever-curious Octopus attended an alternative energy conference this weekend, which reminds me. Please scroll down and look for this in the lower right panel: “Join the Conversation - Blog Action Day October 15, 2009 | Climate Change.” I will be posting an article (hopefully) on Thursday, the day of this event.

Octopus will be away next weekend too … attending this:


The annual International Sea-Bean Symposium is one of my favorite events. What is a ”sea-bean,” you ask? These are drift seeds carried by ocean currents that wash upon our shores. Drift seeds drop from trees and vines as far away as the Amazon River basin and beyond. After they enter the waterways, they are carried downstream to the Atlantic and moved by ocean currents until they find our beach. Sea-beans are hard, tough, and buoyant, which helps them survive the long-distance voyage. Finding a sea-bean on the beach brings good luck. Some folks turn them into jewelry and pendants.


This year, the keynote speaker is Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who studies all things that float in our ocean:


Ebbesmeyer grew increasingly fascinated by sea currents and eddies and began to focus on beaches, specifically on debris deposited there. An epiphany came in May 1990 when a Pacific storm knocked five containers filled with thousands of athletic shoes off a cargo ship. Nearly a year later, the shoes began washing up along the West coast of North America. With the help of a surprisingly large and cooperative fraternity of beachcombers, Ebbesmeyer tracked the progress of the shoes up and down the coast and as far away as Hawaii, producing a groundbreaking study of ocean currents.

Even readers with little interest in ocean science are riveted by epic travels of oceanic trash, entertaining accounts of how floating debris guided Christopher Columbus and the Vikings to safe harbors, horrific stories of men adrift at sea, how flotsam may have triggered the origin of life, and dire warnings about the threat of plastic waste in our oceans.

All in all, a busy week for Octopus who will be canvassing the beach for flotsam and escaped rubber ducks. BTW, welcome home, Captain Fogg.

lying for God

I don't expect much from anything attached to the Breitbart enterprise, whether it's politics or religion or movie criticism and in part because such things are all the same in that venue.  Take the review of Ricky Gervais' new movie The Invention of Lying by the Great S. T. Karinick.  The movie was made to lampoon Christianity, he says, yet it proves, despite itself, that not only are we better off with God ( the Christian God ) but because belief is the source of all that's good, belief proves itself valid.

" The godless society is unpleasant and uninspired."

he says, never mind that most people would find much more inspiration and cultural development  in increasingly Godless and humanistic Europe than in the bigoted, gay hating Bible Belt. Most normal people that is, rather than failed people who find life so horrible and frightening that they have to invent another mystical one to mystically be transported to. Perhaps withdrawal from the opiate of the masses is indeed unpleasant for the addicted, but for others, like me, the flowering of humanism and liberty is to be preferred.

Freedom of belief is all well and good but if they would stop mocking and persecuting the sane for their efforts to improve the human condition and further the cause of secular liberty fewer of us would need that fantasy world they find so comforting.

"So what we have here are two worlds. One, without God and controlled by thoughts of evolution, is a spectacularly dreary, unhappy place without love or meaning. On the other hand, even a fictional God brings the world meaning, joy, liberty, and wonder."

Can it be that only someone trapped in the fictional world we call "conservative" could read this without sadness, pity and yes, horror?  I find precisely those things in a meaningless and hostile universe. I love the more because of love's futility, I treasure life more for it's evanescence and meaninglessness.  I wonder more at the spectacular  and vast and complex universe of reality than at the childish little one born of ignorance and legend -- and most of all I'm free without Gods as no man could be with their jealous tempers and wrathful deeds, their narrow minded  priests, preachers and divine retributions trapping him in a world of guilt, fear, original sin and self-loathing.

"Thus although Ricky Gervais has publicly said that his film takes an atheist position, it appears that even he cannot imagine a happy, emotionally fulfilling world that does not acknowledge a good many fundamentally religious thoughts, and in particular Christian ones."

What a smug and loathsome statement and how offensive to other religions -- as though love compassion, emotional fulfillment  and the rest of the fuzzy, fulsome package belonged exclusively to any form of extant Christianity other than the ad hoc and ephemeral chimera he puts together for this argument -- as though history, it's wars, persecutions, tyrannies, oppressions and inquisitions  could be disregarded as anomalous and never anywhere was there a Buddha or an atheist willing to lay down his life for his family or his country.

Regardless of how I loath this man's precious, smug and egotistical disdain for non-believers and non-Christians, I have to smile a bit at how he claims Gervais' movie "undercuts" his atheist position,  because if even a fictional God is as good, as he says, as a real God; if objective reality is less important than the noble lie,  then truthfulness, objectivity and indeed honesty are unnecessary and perhaps dangerous in his happy world of fiction, a conclusion which undercuts everything that, in his conceit, he attempts to prove.

Guns, Guts and Nuts

I hardly cringe any more when they call it Floriduh. All I can do is shake my head in agreement and defeat. I'm quite sure we have as many brilliant residents as any other state, and looking at all the billionaires and retired intellectuals and scientists we have, perhaps we don't rank as low on the intelligence totem pole as we do on the latitude scale, but nevertheless -- we have our idiots in Florida. We surely do.

I don't think it's a big deal that The Southwest Broward Republican Club would choose to hold their monthly meeting at a shooting range. Of course I'd rather see my politicians doing something worthwhile along the lines of community service, or self education or discussion of our problems, but I'm from planet Earth after all and I don't expect it. It's more productive not to be associated with problems anyway since it might prompt people to ask for answers rather than gleefully to participate in the business du jour: mockery and macho posturing.

It's just that club President Napolitano explained the idea by hinting at armed resistance to a democratically elected government and democratically approved legislation -- once more.

"Without the Second Amendment, I don't think the other amendments would hold up. I think they would just be suggestions that the government would decide to do whatever they want."

Even though we're certainly no more democratic or less oppressed than Norway or Belgium for instance, I guess he would know because the last Republican administration did just that and much of what they wanted was unconstitutional. Of course if we're talking revolution we hardly need to elect anyone in the first place, but OK, I understand the usefulness of such gestures. They're hoping to retain the Cracker vote by playing with guns although Broward county is a rather urban setting these days and overwhelmingly Democratic, yet still, it's a choice, a strategy even if it's a childish, stupid and certainly poorly thought out one.

But.

How much pre-frontal lobe capacity does a politician need to realize that shooting at human shaped targets with the initials of one's political opponents isn't really appropriate behavior for an adult, much less a candidate selling the idea of his wisdom, maturity and mental stability?

"One of the shooters at the Tuesday evening event was Robert Lowry, a Republican candidate hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. Lowry's target had the letters "DWS" next to the silhouette head."

says the Sun Sentinel. A joke, said Lowry and if I were 7 years old I might agree. I might think the targets portraying a turbanned "terrorist" carrying a rocket launcher was funny too, but I'm not 7 years old and feel no affinity for the giggling idiots who think it's a riot.

I'm fond of shooting sports myself and the ranges I go to have as many real country and backwoods people there as well as more urbane sophisticates from Hobe Sound and Jupiter Island, none of whom has ever exhibited a "personalized" target although Republicans dominate around here. Could it be that Broward County Republican Brats can't measure up to the maturity and manners of my friends from Yeehaw or Osowaw Junction?

BREAKING NEWS: Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Is a Mistake!

We have a BREAKING NEWS update: an anonymous source from Oslo contacted us with earth-shattering news: announcing Obama as this year's Peace Prize winner was premature and an unfortunate mistake.

It turns out the real winner was Jesus Christ from Jerusalem, a long-time community organizer and religious leader. The news has not yet been officially released, with the exception of an unsourced, so far, leak to The Ga-Ga Land Dispatch.

TGGLD reporters have the latest reactions of The Ga-Ga Land most eminent citizens to this explosive story:

Rush Limbaugh: "Something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn't deserve the award. This fully exposes the illusion that is Jesus Christ. And with this 'award' the elites of the world are urging Christ, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the world and the United States... They love a weakened, neutered U.S and this is their way of promoting that concept. I think God has a great sense of humor, too. Not to mention he is obviously partial to his only son." Limbaugh also told Newsweek that "the Nobel gang just suicide-bombed themselves."

"I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota," wrote Erick Erickson, of the site RedState.com, "but that is the only thing I can think of for this news. Obviously they chose the Jew here to make a political statement."

"Jesus Christ isn't the first minority to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he's the first to win it without having accomplished anything," wrote John Miller, of the National Review. "Christ's award is simply the projection of wishful thinking."

Indeed, the citizens of The Ga-Ga Land started an online petition just seconds after the announcement was made, objecting to the "absurd decision to award J. Christ Nobel Peace Prize."

"I predict right now that he will find a way to basically turn it down," Time Magazine's Mark Halperin told MSNBC's Morning Joe. "I think he is going to say, I share this with the world or whatever. I don't think he'll embrace this. Because there is no upside. He is the son of God -- does he really need a Nobel Prize?"

Bill Kristol suggests that Jesus Christ will be kicked out in 2012, based on the fact that the Soviet Union collapsed a year after Mikhail Gorbachev won a Nobel Peace Prize.

A prominent member of The Ga-Ga Land elite, Glenn Beck, says Christ doesn't deserve the prize, but the Tea Party protesters do. He credited an "extraordinarily powerful global progressive network for bagging Jesus the win," and added, "for Christ's sake, I hope he rejects this phony award and gives it to me."

National Review's Andy McCarthy says the prize is already damaged goods, because Yasser Arafat once won it, and so did the hopeless pinko Jimmy Carter.

Joe Schmoe, a president of the local Chamber of Commerce in Ga-Ga City was somewhat less critical: "I, for one, am glad that Jesus Christ won instead of Obama. A Nobel Peace Prize for Obama would be a joke. C'mon, the guy has two wars going, and today he bombed the Moon! Peace, my (expletive)."

An anonymous source from the White House said that upon hearing the breaking news, President Obama sighed and muttered, Thank you, Jesus!

H/t HuffPo

Cross-posted at The Middle of Nowhere (where else?)

A Simple Comment from a Simple Dino

Weighing in at over 3,000 lbs, I almost always prefer to be temperate in my comments, but today my usual lizard lowings have morphed into a predatory snarl that may be interpreted as follows: those who have been trashing Barack Obama with regard to our unsuccessful 2016 Olympic bid and this surprise awarding of a Nobel Prize are just upset because they cannot fit “America” into their stupid, paranoid, narrow perspective, and now the only option remaining to them is to lash out with juvenile idiocy at any good thing that comes this country’s way.

I myself was surprised to hear about the prize going to an almost newly elected president, but on reflection it should be obvious that the decision amounts to a thank-you note to America for remembering the better angels of its own nature and its great promise, and for rejecting the previous administration’s consistent failure to remember those things. Was it a political gesture? Possibly, but at the same time, it’s an honor that the president can share with all Americans – at least with the ones who are capable of taking pleasure in a gesture of good will accorded to their own president.

Back in the loony bin

535 e-mails were waiting for me when I returned Wednesday night. As you can imagine, many were spam, many were blog comments but more than enough were little packets of outrage; pictures of Muslims carrying signs warning of retribution billed as a general picture of all Muslims, dire warnings of collapse if we reform health care, little buckets of irrational snickering about Obama and much more. All unworthy of further comment.

Every time I leave the US and come back I'm shocked and have to wait a few days for the numbness to set in and the shivering to stop the way you do when you jump into cold water.

I watched BBC news every day whilst in the UK. We really have nothing like it here. It's dull, reasoned, thorough, polite and controversies are actual and not designed to make facts look dubious and madmen seem sane and well intentioned. Yes, there was much discussion about "reforming" health care and disability insurance, but no shouting, no interrupting, no slogan shouting, no insults, no comparisons with Pol Pot, Hitler or Karl Marx: more like engineers talking about making your car run better by adjusting the spark advance or fuel mixture curve. "Yes sir, we could perhaps remove some people from inability payments but wouldn't we have to provide more money to train them?" I'd forgotten what civility was like.

We're a crazy country, mad, ill informed, aggressively rude, contemptuous of reason, terrified of civilization and of its demands. I'm sick to death of it, sick of talking about it and sick of trying to do something about it -- at least for today.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

The winner is ...

The time is 5:00 am (you guessed it - a bout of insomnia), and the news was announced just moments ago. Let us hope President Obama can leverage this award into more political cooperation at home and the achievement of peace abroad.

WORST OUTRAGES OF THE WEEK: GENDER DISCRIMINATION, GANG RAPE, AND A CRIMINAL COVER-UP

OUTRAGE #1: GENDER DISCRIMINATION

A new law just passed in Oklahoma will require all physicians to disclose information on women’s abortions to the state Department of Health, which intends to post the collected data on a public website. Starting November 1, 2009, the new law will require the following information:

1) Date of abortion
2) County in which abortion is performed
3) Age of mother
4) Marital status of mother
5) Race of mother
6) Years of education of mother
7) State or foreign country of residence of mother
8) Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother

Plus 26 more questions including the woman’s health insurer (irrelevant), method of payment (irrelevant), and details about the medical procedure (exposing them to blackmail and/or threats).

An invasion of privacy? A violation of civil rights? Not according to supporters of the legislation. Nevertheless, the Center for Reproductive Rights, a former state representative, and several residents have filed a lawsuit. As Echidne points out in her commentary (see A new sex offender site), why are women always the object of legislative harassment, but not those who impregnate them (i.e. men)?

Sources: Huffington Post article here, and Echidne’s commentary here.

OUTRAGE #2: GANG RAPE AND A CRIMINAL COVER-UP

This story is about Jamie Leigh Jones who was gang-raped by co-workers while employed in Iraq by Halliburton/KBR in 2005. After the gang-rape, company thugs locked her in a shipping container, denying her food, water, and a bed for at least 24 hours. If she left Iraq for medical treatment, she was warned, she would lose her job. The Department of Justice refused an investigation. KBR claimed her employment contract indemnified the company from criminal charges, that her only means of redress was binding arbitration … by a KBR arbitrator. Last month, the 5th Circuit of Appeals granted her the right to sue, but it will be years before Jamie Leigh Jones gets final justice in a court of law.

Earlier this week, newly elected Senator Al Franken sponsored an amendment to a defense appropriation bill that stops funding for any defense contractor that denies women their right to legal redress for sexual assault. The measure passed by a margin of 68 to 30.

More revealing was the vote breakdown. All Democrat and all GOP women senators voted for the bill, not exactly an earth-shattering example of partisan division. However, all GOP men voted against. In their worldview, the interests of capitalism far outweigh the rights of women … and trump all crimes of rape. Here is the complete list of male sexist GOPigs:

Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), and Wicker (R-MS).

May their wives punish them with the Lysistrata treatment until the end of time.

Source: The Huffington Post.

THE NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE

This is a quick post to honor Herta Mueller, who just won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature announced today. She is a member of Romania's ethnic German minority who was persecuted by the Ceausescu regime for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain. Peter Englund, spokesperson for the Swedish Academy, said this about her work:

"At the same time she has something to tell, partly from her own background as a persecuted dissident in Romania, but also her own background as a stranger in her own country, a stranger to the political regime, a stranger to the majority language, and a stranger to her own family," he added.

What especially caught my attention was this back story swirling around Horace Engdahl, Englund’s predecessor, who told the AP last year that "Europe still is the center of the literary world" and the quality of U.S. writing was dragged down because authors were "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture."

A curious statement indeed, one I would NOT dismiss casually. My only reservation surrounding Engdahl’s remark is: Why mass culture? It seems Vladimir Nabokov profited from our adolescent reveries in his finest tribute to America, Lolita. These days, maybe what holds us back is the anti-arts, anti-science, and anti-intellectual rabble who have turned our fair land into a cultural wilderness. Maybe Mr. Engdahl has the right idea but merely misses the mark.

My Second-Ever YouTube Video

I'm looking for honest opinions here: I've now made two YouTube videos, and while I'm proud of the accomplishment in making them and enjoyed getting nearly 1000 views of the first, I have yet to get any real feedback.

My first ever YouTube video:

Aside from the technical issues -- I'm just working with a free Windows Movie Maker program here, folks! -- are these effective? Am I fooling myself? Should I get a day job? What?!