Happy Conquistador Day

Today is Columbus Day. It’s stupid. From my Facebook status:

Christopher Columbus shouldn’t be celebrated. The man raped, murdered, and converted his way through the Caribbean. It was genocide. Yet, revisionist history prevails.

I should add that all that raping, murdering, and conquering was done in god’s name. This guy was even a candidate for sainthood (Catholic) 1866. Ugh.

Try reading the first chapter of A People’s History of the United States (by H. Zinn) and tell me why this guy deserves celebration. Why insult the Native North Americans?

Don’t get me started on Thanksgiving…

Adam on Adams

Putting together a single “best of Ryan Adams” CD is hard – lots of great songs to choose from. Nonetheless, I decided to try. I realize that this list could change from day to day or from mood to mood, but it’s still pretty solid.

What would you add/delete? Does anyone who stops by this site listen to Ryan Adams?

Standing up for gay marriage

It’s a hot topic that stirs so much controversy and I will never understand why. Here’s my two cents:

People are generally against gay marriage for religious reasons. I could rant here, mostly about how an ancient book sprinkled with acts of pure evil shouldn’t ever be used to justify moral beliefs, and go further and state that our morals aren’t rooted in religion, but I won’t get into it. When people use religion to define marriage, they use religion to justify their homophobia. This very day, there are people protesting Iowa’s decision on the steps of the courthouse. I will take the anti-gay protests seriously as soon as people start protests about businesses being open on the sabbath, a sin just as sure to send you toward eternal hellfire (if you are in to that sort of imaginary stuff).

Opponents also use the fact that two people of the same sex can’t naturally conceive a child to bash gay marriage. As if the sole reason for marriage was procreation. It’s not. Besides, Mother Earth could use a reduction in the birth rate of the human species, but I digress.

I take no issue with same-sex couples marrying and having children. They could artificially conceive or adopt. The process of doing either of those things requires lots of proof that the couple is caring and emotionally able to care for children – heterosexual couples, on the other hand, can reproduce at will (or accidentally!), sometimes at the expense of the child’s well-being.

I’ve probably never felt the love that two people who are ready to marry feel. But I cant imagine feeling that way but not being able to act on it.

I am for any act of legislation (or removal of legislation) that allows for more people to be happier, provided that it does no harm. In other words, extending rights to others (so long as our own rights aren’t revoked) is okay. It’s noble.

Life is too short for these silly arguments. I am happy with the decision that Iowa’s courts made, and hope other states follow suit.

[For more on why this isn’t a big deal and not worth fighting about, see this post, and really take the time to let it sink in.]

Also, feel free to comment. I’ve enabled anonymous posting.

Human beings: beautifully insignificant

You are looking at one of the most eye-opening, paradigm-shifting photographs ever taken. It changed my life.

Without context, this image is a shoddy piece of photography. The photo is notoriously called the “pale blue dot” and was made famous by scientist, science advocate, and supercool Carl Sagan.

So why so wonderful?

That little pixel is Earth! The picture was taken by Voyager 1. Launched in 1977, it turned around in 1990 (after traveling 3.7 BILLION miles -  as far away as Pluto) and snapped a photo of our home.

Carl says it best:

…you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known."

I honestly get a little bit choked up.

A gem of a letter (to the editor)

Every day I read the letters to the editor of my hometown newspaper, the Fort Dodge Messenger. They always consist of a constant bickering between conservatives and liberals, each blaming the other for every problem you can think of, from taxes to bailouts to Iraq to the relocation of the post office… no topic is spared. (And the topic of god somehow always comes up.)

Today there was a real gem from Glenn Smith of Algona. A snippet:

I have learned over the years that politicians make many statements that they should print of Charmin, so we can get some good from them.

Chuckle. However, the following doesn’t sit right with me:

Somewhere most politicians have lost track of what the job they are supposed to be doing is. Maybe the French knew something we do not know – the guillotine!

Heeeere coooomesss god!

How does one get that liberal viewpoint firmly embedded in your mind, it is just satanic.

Satanic?

I hear about how smart these politicians are, but as a boy I picked up rocks that were smarter.

OH SNAP!

Keep ‘em coming, Glenn. Nothing perks me up in the morning like a little crazy-talk. (Except for the ethanol – I agree with him there.)

Read the whole letter and view comments here.

The New Camaro

When they discontinued the Camaro a few years ago, I knew they would bring them back. I told myself I would buy one when they did (my first car: 1987 Camaro). I just didn’t expect it to come back so soon. 430 horsepower has never been so affordable. Click the pic for more!

Paul Harvey 1918-2009

My dad used to listen to talk radio during car trips, so I learned who Paul Harvey was at a young age. I used to look forward to listening to him every day at work at the corn lab. He was famous for his news, the products he pushed, and then of course…

Hello Americans, I’m Paul Harvey. You know what the news is, in a minute, you’re going to hear … the rrrrrrrrrest of the story.

…and of course…

Paul Harvey… good day!

Good day, Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey – 1918 – 2009.

The NBA is exciting again?

One of the most amazing buzzer shots ever.

I’m just proud to be able to jump and touch rim… this guy can get his head up there.

Just for fun – one of my favorite commercials. MJ!

Ugliest car ever? Yes.

I have long loathed the Pontiac Aztek. I suspected I wasn’t the only one – but I didn’t know it had come to this:

This car was so badly received by the press that GM, to this day, won’t say which designer’s pen was responsible.

I imagine the design pitch went something like this: “Okay, so we take a picture of a minivan and we cut it up into pieces. We get drunk. We take the pieces and spill them on the floor. And then whatever we see, we make! Out of plastic! This will totally turn the company around!”

Sorry, it’s funnier in my head.

Source: GM’s Garage Sale: 2001 Aztek – BusinessWeek.

Open your eyes…

Wow, Vanilla Sky, I have seen you a few times before but have forgotten what a strange and awesome movie you are. If I were to watch you and Donnie Darko on the same night my brain would melt.

Yeah, I would probably put Penelope Cruz in my lucid dream, too.