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digitalbeachbum's picture

CNN 60's 70's and 80's documentaries

I have been watching on Netflix the CNN review of the previous decades. They are a multiple part documentary for each decade using old footage and news reports for a variety of subjects. Music, Politics, War, Crime, Abortion, Gays, Religion and Television are a few examples of what they cover.

It is amazing to be reminded of shit which happened thirty or forty years ago. Interviews with Trump, which I can't believe no one used his old interviews to play as an anti-election commercial. Terrorism and gangs from beyond what we see today. Corruption, hate and violence seemed to be a trend which carried through the various decades.

Of the most interesting stories is how religious people who believe in their religion attempt to force their views on every one. Anti-gay and anti-abortion campaigns were amazing to see this long ago. The people then were just as terrible then as they are today, in some cases even more vocal with what needed to be done. 

The IRA/British fighting in the 70's and 80's had been forgotten by me. Seeing the fighting again brought back a lot of memories of my youth. Watching the news reports on the bombings.  Also the Munich games when the Israeli athletes were taken hostage and then the killing of 10 of them.

The terrorists are saying the same thing now that they said in the 70's and 80's. Their targets are similar but the message is the same. In the 70's there were over 1,000 bombings each year between 1973 and 1978.

If you get an opportunity to see them I found them informative.

digitalbeachbum's picture

Rogue One (spoilers)

 What is it about these writers who get paid a ton of money but put out scripts which suck?

I saw Rogue One on xmas eve when a lot of my in-laws where in town. It was good but damn was it filled with issues. I can get over some of the smaller stuff like why a storm trooper could get knocked out in a fight with a weak stick or by some terrible choregraphing. The fight scenes really sucked.

But on to the more serious flaws.

Can any one explain to me why Darth Vader is chasing after the disc at the end, the disc with the plans on it, only to see it take off in an escape ship? Which later in A New Hope, Vader asks Princess Leia about the transmissions beamed aboard her ship?

Well is it discs or is it transmissions? Make up your fucking mind!

Also, what the fuck was Princess Leia doing in the battle? Did they even think the logic of this script out? It is completely illogical for them to warp in to the battle with Princess Leia onboard with the chance that she was going to get slaughtered. Hell. Why not make multiple copies of the disc and send them out in all directions? Why didn't other ships in the attack receive the transmissions?

Bah

Besides the special effects the entire script sucked donkey balls. I can't believe this is the best they can do.

RationalResponseSquad's picture

On the election of Donald Trump a teenager writes to her school

The following is being reposted with permission from a friend.  Her 17 year old daughter recently sent this letter to her school.

I would like to address the results of this presidential election, and propose a constructive response to the uncertainty it entails. You may praise this email, you may respond angrily, you may simply ignore it, you may respond as you choose. I write this email only in hopes of uniting our student body, or at the very least offering to those who share my frustration, fear, and confusion a voice of hope and sanity. (Besides, if one student can vent his frustrations over a $0.25 raise in Mentos prices to the entire student body, I believe I have the right to reach students who share my concerns in hopes of creating something positive out of an unfortunate situation.)

digitalbeachbum's picture

Slow deaths

My view is that we are all slowly dying but some of us suffer more from physical aliments than others. Take my dad for example, he is 86 and dying from Parkinson's and dementia. We've known about it for several years and he has been taking meds and seeing doctors for it. We all knew it when we saw the twitch in his wrist roughly five years ago. He also started to shuffle his feet rather than walk. His memory started to slip. He was getting angry because he would forget things that were simple. Then one day he went to my mom and said for her to take away the keys. He said he forgot where he lived and couldn't find home.

The memory is an interesting function of our bodies. We forget things all the time but when we are young we ignore it. We blow it off and we laugh about it. When we get older it happens more often. We forget things we shouldn't forget and it becomes a disability to our lives. Then it is magnified with other diseases like Parkinson's or MS. All neurological problems the elderly have on a regular basis.

Tonight I went to visit him but he didn't want me there. I had told him would come watch the Cubs and Dodgers play but he wanted nothing to do with it. He just wanted to be left alone in the dark with the AC on and the covers over his head. He was ready for the end. He told me he wanted to go home.

digitalbeachbum's picture

Time Travel Movies and TV shows

I just watched another show on television which must be the dumbest, most ridiculous time travel show/movie since Back to the Future.

Time travel, for what ever it is worth, is just plain silly. Sure on paper you can have the math all planed out but time travel (if you could do it) logically wouldn't work the way the movies/shows make it to work.

If a person goes back in time and stops JFK from dying, several things could happen.

1) The time line of the people in 2016 will still continue forward. A new timeline will exist for JFK living overwriting the original timeline and never catches up to the source.

2) The time line of the people in 2016 will instantly cease to exist and a new time will take the place of it.

3) A new time line will be created, multiple times, for each time the time travel happens, either allowing the original time line to exist or it destroys the original.

All time travel movies/shows suck. I've yet to see one which is good.

digitalbeachbum's picture

Hurrican Matthew

So around 10am the outer bands started to roll in. It is always interesting to see the clouds shift to the south, which they never do here in Florida, it is always East to West or NE or NW in some fashion.  Yes, when a cold front comes through the clouds move south, but they are pushed in a line and you can see the cold front in the distance pushing the clouds as if they were egg whites on a pan being shoved to the side by a spatual.

However today when the outer bands hit the wall off water and wind was fierce and it lasted only for about 15 minutes, then it went perectly clear and the sun came out.

By 2pm the sky was dismal and the clouds started to get more of a circular pattern to them and were headed out in a SE direction. The rain and wind was hitting with more frequent and lasting longer. By 5pm the wind and rain was very intense, no idea on the speed but based on some of the previous experiences I put it at about 25mph.

We have batteries, a generator, a storm room under the stairs, and water just in case. The lines for gas were insane and I'm glad I filled up a day before. Most stations were out of gas and you couldn't find a battery on any shelf. Even the local super markets were empty.

By 8am the intensity increased. We had shut down work early and turned off all the servers. I had pulled in all the lawn stuff and tucked in in the corner of the house behind the south wall. The rain was really heavy and cold. I always find that very interesting about a hurricane. The rain is frigid.

digitalbeachbum's picture

Presidential Debates: Making a change

In an effort to rid the Presidential Debates from the hands of the CPD (commission of presidential debates), I'm trying to get a petition started to turn the running of the debates back over to the League of Women Voters. The Democrats and the Republicans have a monopoly in place and control it by making unrealistic 15% support in polls for 3rd party candidates. When it would be better to have 500,000 signatures to make a debate. I would also prefer questions from the American people rather than a bunch of rich people deciding what to ask. Please sign it and share to others if possible.

http://tinyurl.com/changethedebates

 

Orlando shooter was gay, World leaders fail to respond properly for the millionth time!

Many republicans #Drumpf included want to make sure the focus stays on "Islamic Extremism." There are now reports surfacing that Mateen was suppressing his homosexuality due to his religion. There is a lesson here that no politician will talk about and it's that religion is wrong. It's lies lead to repressing who you are, and in turn it makes you more stressed, irrational, and dangerous to yourself and others. We saw the same thing (and same lack of proper response) during the Priest fondling children scandals. They were repressing their human biology to the point that they became sick, irrational, and dangerous.

When politicians and world leaders start framing the discussion as what can we do to end religion, we will put one more foot on the right path to a peaceful world. They must start with an increased focus on critical thinking in our schools (and set a good example of this). From there we must be able to teach the history of religion in our schools while applying our critical thinking skills and allow our children to learn how we can determine that the gods our world believes in today are false. And finally from there, we must have an increased focus on science, including the big bang, abiogenesis, mitochondrial dna linking, and evolution. These topics must be looked at in depth, we must learn and understand them well.

Once our world leaders stop respecting religion and instead respect the people that have been brainwashed with bullshit we will have taken one giant leap for mankind.

digitalbeachbum's picture

Orlando: The City Bloody

Having lived and worked in Orlando for over 40 years I've thought I've seen it all. Yet last night was a new one for me, surprise, surprise, surprise.

The shooting of at the gay night club called Pulse was not just a religious or gay hate crime. Many of the people who were killed were a mix of bi, homo, trans and heterosexual. I know. I've been to these clubs. I was often out late at night bar hopping with friends and one of the best clubs in Orlando was always the gay clubs. They had great music, lots of straight women and if you had a date, it was an awesome place to go with out having to deal with drunk egotistical rednecks.

So as if Orlando wasn't already on the map, we now have two senseless nights of murder. Two nights previously a young singer from The Voice, Christina Grimmie, dies because some deflated obsessive fan decided that killing her was a better idea than moving on with their life with confidence and control over their ego.

I know some where that some one is going to bring up gun control or gun reform but that isn't the answer to this problem. It isn't about the guns. It is about the mind and health of others. Learning to control your emotions is a key to all humans bettering their personal life and the lives of others. Improving our communities by learning to control those impulses of violence and hatred. It is necessary for the entire community to teach their young that harming others is not the answer.

iwbiek's picture

political correctness encourages essentialism and artificial dichotomies in the area of religion



http://news.yahoo.com/kindergarten-trip-to-visit-santa-1326217319448630.html


christmas is for christians. hanukkah is for jews. diwali is for hindus. ramadan is for muslims.

except only at the dawn of the millennium have things become so deliciously (read: alarmingly) simple. political correctness, at least in this instance, is a perfect example of western cultural imperialism, in the form of essentialism. for those of you who don't know, essentialism is basically the idea that any construct--religion, culture, nationality, political ideology, etc.--has some sort of core or "essence" that makes it what it is. so, in this case, christmas, with all its attendent traditions, including santa claus, is, in essence, a christian holiday. ergo, a christian is someone who celebrates christmas, and a christmas celebration will always be at odds with the values of anyone who is not a christian.

the logical problems with essentialism should be obvious to anyone. beyond the inherent logical problems, once a person begins to look at the historical details of how religions have interacted, the essentialist view falls apart quickly. to preserve it, one has to look at religions in a vacuum, apart from their historical contexts, in which case we're looking at religions that literally no one follows.

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