If I tend to poke fun at celebrity "culture" and the starfugger types who would line up at red carpet events and scream "I LOVE YOU" hysterically to anyone who walks by...well, I think this is a good reason why. Yea, a lot of this sorta thing is harmless, I understand that. And I consider 1960s Beatlemania "cool", so you might think this is an unbalanced opinion...but no. Beatlemania made sense. Screaming and crying for Tom Cruise or Madonna or P Diddy seems sad and pathetic. Right? Back me up here.

Presenting...the most dangerous man in the world. But I hope he keeps talking about this "holocaust as myth" thing, cuz that'll all but guarantee his failure, ultimately. It's amazing what hate can do to a human mind. And this guy wants to build nukes? Shudder...

Um...does it occur to anyone else out there how scary this could be if exploited? And you KNOW it will be....A few potential abuses spring to mind immediately. Maybe we should just stick to counseling, huh?

As I've said many times, anyone who breathes should care about the Earth. Care for the planet should come as naturally to all of us as self-protection does. But I can't stand all the assumptions and finger pointing and politicizing of the global warming phenomena. It doesn't matter what administration was, or is, or will be, in charge. The Earth doesn't change because of the activities of a 12-year period or whatever. The Earth has always had its cycles. The real problem is that we tend to look at changes through too small a prism of time. And we tend to want someone to blame.

Meanwhile, we're still constantly learning new things about Earth science. Discoveries keep popping up about the nature of climate change and the evolution of atmospheres, the shifting of magnetic zones and poles, and now...now we learn that a major source of global warming gasses is...plants. CUT 'EM DOWN!

So you know how insects see the world differently from most other creatures...with their Buckyball-like compound eyes, some bugs see things in multiple or as blotches of color. Instead of seeing a singular stand of a tree as we do, a particular species of insect might see a mottled blue blur instead. Then there's the butterfly. Their vision extends to the ultraviolet wavelength. Some of the flowers they pollinate have ultraviolet patterns that guide them into the flower. Without ultraviolet instruments to "see" these guides, we humans would have no idea that they exist. But they're there. So what else is out there that we can't see?

It made me think, "we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are." I thought that might make an interesting aphorism...y'know, something to be credited with. But then I learned that Anais Nin said it first. Dang.

Oh, and RE: King Kong: Good, but over the top. No salty cheeks for me. The 'effects' (are we still calling them that?) were impressive but the action lacked the subtlety of the Lord of the Rings films. There were simply too many improbabilities stacked on top of improbabilities. Yes, yes...I know...we're talking about a mysterious unmapped island where a single giant ape lives along with giant spiders, centipedes, bats, Brontosauruses (Brontosauri?), T-Rexes, and a host of other nasty unnamed things. So the suspension of disbelief thing is written right on the ticket. But still...you can't have an old man carrying a film tripod, running through unfamiliar jungle AND NOT LOSING GROUND TO RAGING DINOSAURS RIGHT BEHIND HIM. You just can't.

And I know that Peter Jackson wanted to remain true to the spirit of the 1933 original, and that's great and all...but the last line of the movie just didn't work for me. "Twas beauty that killed the beast...!" That line worked great during the Great Depression, but in 2006 it just sounded stilted and corny, like the dialog of so many old movies. It's either that, or the great Jack Black, who I find hard to accept in a serious role. The guy is just too damn funny as a comedian to deliver a line like that.

Creating a "Doomsday vault" with the seeds of all known crops is a good idea, but doesn't it sorta give you the creeps?

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