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Looking Back in Time

When we look up into the night sky, we are also looking back in time. The light from the stars we see with our unaided eyes left those stars sometimes hundreds—if not thousands—of years ago. The arrival of Sirius in the winter skies always causes me to pause a moment and remember where I was and what I was doing nine years ago (the approximate time the light I’m now seeing left that star).

But if you look to the majority of bright, blue-white giants that form the Orion constellation, that light left well before you, me, our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and in fact, this country were even born. I’ve marked up my photo from yesterday as a thought experiment.

As always, click for full size.

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Oh Sah-NAP!”

Stolen from the ever-fabulous Towleroad:

The change.org petition asking The Learning Channel to cancel 19 Kids and Counting over the Duggars’ “LGBT fear mongering” that caught fire on the internet earlier this week also managed to catch the attention of right-wing Christian activists who are concerned with (but don’t actually understand) first amendment protections. 

American Family Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, and other anti-LGBT organizations and websites helped spearhead a #DefendtheDuggars tweetfest today. But like NOM’s Twitter warning last month that marriage equality would lead to people marrying themselves, the campaign quickly started backfiring in spectacular fashion.

Here are just a few highlights of what’s rolling in over on Twitter:

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Wingers Go Ghandi

Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo:

Yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn suggested that President Obama’s immigration executive order might lead to “civil disobedience”, “anarchy,” or even political “violence.” I asked just what that civil disobedience might look like and TPM Reader FS has an idea of what anti-immigrant forces might have in mind …

My suggestion for what civil disobedience should look like is to move to Phoenix, trade their imitation Army rifles for shovels, and do a protest march through the residential subdivisions, pulling weeds as they go.

They should march into restaurant kitchens, offering to wash dishes for free. Or volunteer to man the drive through at any of a hundred fast food joints. Maybe ask a California cabbage farmer if they have anything needs harvesting. Those are the jobs illegal immigrants might be taking away.

A little background. I lived in Phoenix for 13 years, the last eight as a homeowner. Ours was the fourth house completed in our neighborhood and I’d often sit on the porch drinking beer and watching Hispanic workers build our neighbors’ houses. For a few bottles of Pacifico, I learned most of the workers were from Mexico or Guatemala, and none were employed directly by the builder.

For all the anti immigrant bluster for which Sheriff Joe Arpaio is famous today, he could’ve effortlessly rounded up 100 immigrants a day in any new subdivision being built anywhere in Maricopa county, from about 2000 to 2007. But that would’ve really inconvenienced the real estate developers, so Sheriff Joe found other stunts like making prisoners wear pink underwear. He didn’t come to hypocritically discover anti immigration fever until the bubble burst and people turned on each other.

My time in Arizona made it really hard for me to get mad at a man who wants to work in 110 degree heat, for cash. But those are the jobs in question. Anyone who wants to protest should start there.

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This is Awesome

What would happen if today’s movie trailer standards were applied to a classic like The Empire Strikes Back?

Cameron Arrigioni decided to take a stab at it, and except for the “A George Lucas Film” part, I have to say the results are phenomenal.

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Quote of the Day

“Sometimes, you win the life lottery and the thing that you do for 40 hours a week in a nondescript office building somewhere in the city you live in is not a soul-crushing exercise in managing disappointments. Sometimes, you’re lucky enough to really, truly, love what you do. If you are one of these people, I’m very happy for you. . . .” — Megan Reynolds, introducing her new every-Monday column on work issues on “The Frisky”

Unfortunately I cannot claim that winning ticket at this time…

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Interstellar

Interstellar was one of the must-see movies on my list this year. I’m by no means a fan of Matthew McConaughey, but the story itself intrigued and excited me.

We saw it last night, and I came away impressed. I’d give it an 8 out of 10, and the only reason I didn’t rate it any higher was that I had to suspend belief for some of the “sciencey” things the film; the whole surviving a trip into a black hole among them. I know a lot of critics hated the “love transcends time and space” theme that figured so prominently in the final acts of the movie, but that aspect of the story didn’t bother me at all..

The visuals—as expected—were stunning, and the homage payed to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was brilliant: everything from the practical effects the filmmakers used to the very real total-silence-in space shots of the spacecraft themselves.

It was nice to see woofy Wes Bentley cast in a non-adversarial role for a change, and Matt Damon—not to mention Topher Grace—popping up (I hadn’t seen any mention of their involvement in the film prior to actually seeing it) was a total surprise.

Movie of the Year? This generation’s 2001? I wouldn’t go that far, but definitely left an impression.

We didn’t see it in IMAX, which I kind of regret because this film definitely deserves it—but there’s nothing to say we won’t see it again…

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Get Your Veto Pen Ready, Mr. President

…and pray that no Supreme Court Justices decide to retire before the Democrats regain control of Congress, because you’ll never get them approved now.

What comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, the pod people took over the Senate yesterday and I suspect that during the coming months the country will slowly wake up to one hell of a “what did I do last November? (or more likely, what didn’t I do last November since so many people couldn’t be bothered to get their asses out and vote) hangover as the full extent of the amount of crazy elected to office comes to light.

What does that mean? At the very least, two years of posturing, inactivity on any of the issues that the citizens of this country actually care about, religious batshittery and the political circus of Impeachment proceedings against the “black communist Kenyan about-to-unleash-ebola-on-the-good-upstanding-white-christians-of-this-country usurper” (did I forget anything?) in the White House—all the while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, what remains of the middle class will get bent over and screwed even more forcefully than before.

And though it all, the right-wing fear machine will continue to screech what they’ve been screeching for the last six years—that everything is still “Obama’s fault”—except that now at deafening levels.

As many others have opined today, I agree that in the long run this will be a good thing. By the time 2016 rolls around the country will once again be so thoroughly and completely disgusted with the Jeebus-lovin, bible-quotin’ obstructionist republicans, it will all but assure a Democratic sweep. (There’s also the fact that Presidential elections tend to bring out a younger, much more progressive voting crowd—versus the mid-terms where it was pointed out the average age of people voting in yesterday’s election was over sixty!)

That’s not to say the next two years will be without pain. You can count on the Republicans doing everything in their limited time in office to royally fuck over the greatest number of people as possible.

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I Actually Liked It

…a lot more than I expected, considering some of the reviews I’d read.

Disclaimer: I have never read the book(s), and frankly one of the main reasons I wanted to see it was because I think Dylan O’Brien is cute. And at my age I realize that makes me a bit of a perv, even if the guy is 23 years old.

Anyhow…

It was an engaging story. There was plenty of attractive eye candy in the casting and I didn’t find myself nodding off, or reaching for my phone to check the time. I didn’t leave the theater feeling like I’d been cheated out of $6.50.

Some reviewers had issue with the “ending” (there’s a sequel in the works, natch), of the film. Even I found it a bit of a letdown as the expected “it was aliens” storyline didn’t pan out, but that’s not my beef with the last act.

[Spoilers ahead]

My beef—and it’s not something that immediately slapped me up the side of the head while watching the film, but only came to me as a WTF moment when I was thinking about the film much later—comes from the fact that Gally, one of the characters who chose to remain behind in the Glade when Thomas and the others left to find a way out, miraculously showed up in the control room shortly after they arrived there and started to (pardon the pun) put the puzzle together.

So wait, let me get this straight: after Thomas’s group dispatched several of the dreaded and deadly grievers in the maze by bringing down the huge stone doors and blocking further access to the promised exit as well as having the only key to open the portals—not to mention the knowledge of the numbers necessary to unlock the final door—Gally somehow manages to recreate all that by himself?

Seriously?

Okay, I realize he was a bit of a dick character from the get-go whose offing wasn’t exactly mourned by the audience, and whose presence at the end of the movie was necessary to dispatch one of the more sympathetic players, but still…HOW DID HE GET THERE?

And while I’m thinking about all this, the perv in me keeps asking, “So we have this group of (presumably hormone-addled) teenage boys thrown together for the last three years with only each other for company and there wasn’t one instance of bump-bump going on out in the forest or even any romantic pairing? Or more importantly, when a girl arrives, she isn’t immediately passed around like a party favor?

I guess I really am jaded.

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Beautiful


As NASA’s Cassini spacecraft soared past Saturn’s moon Titan, it recently caught a glimpse of bright sunlight reflecting off hydrocarbon seas. In the past, Cassini had captured, separately, views of the polar seas and the sun glinting off them, but this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view.

[Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. Arizona/Univ. Idaho]

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