David Nolan 1943 - 2010

I had the pleasure of meeting David Nolan and watching him debate during the 2006 AZ CD-8 election where he sparred with Arizona Senator Gabrielle Giffords and former Arizona Rep. Randy Graf. Nolan was a delight to both see and hear, and I learned when we were young we shared very similar sentiments.

We were both avid science fiction fans during high school, in particular enjoying the works of Robert Heinlein, agreeing that Heinlein's best was, no, not the best selling Stranger in Strange Land (1961), but in fact Time Enough for Love (1973), which features the Notebooks of Lazarus Long, "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house."

In high school we were Ayn Rand devotees (he more or less remained one). He chose what is generally considered the preferable sequence, The Fountainhead (1943) first and then Atlas Shrugged (1957). I started with Atlas Shrugged, which renders The Fountainhead rather unclimactic. Religion never came up, so only today did I learn that Nolan was also a Unitarian Universalist.

The growth of the Tea Party, the Nolan chart, and the comments in the video above all point to the need for more illuminating angles and perspectives regarding our political discourse. His frustration with the Libertarian Party sounds eerily familiar with what Tea has expressed about the GOP. Without question David Nolan was a truly free thinker committed to what he considered best for humanity and not focused on what was best for himself and his friends at the expense of others. He will be missed.

Bread and Butter

When a DVD comes with a boatload of previews, almost every time I am annoyed and hit the skip button to pass over the lot of trailers as quickly as possible. I knew something was up when I found the previews to the Winter's Bone DVD so compelling as to make the disc worth watching for the previews alone without watching the film itself.

If the trailers preceding a film on its DVD are extraordinary, odds are high the film is as well, and in the case of Winter's Bone, that's a yes.

Gender equality continues to ooze into the human psyche, lagging and leading in various areas. In a lot of cinema, and without question in Winter's Bone, it has arrived. Played by virtual unknown Jennifer Lawrence, protagonist Ree Dolly, for the sake of her younger siblings who clearly cannot survive without her, seeks to find her father, who has put up the family's home and land as bond for bail after being caught cooking banned concoctions. Well, he's dead, and everyone knows he's dead, but without evidence of his demise, the family's home and land are toast.

"He didn't show up for court because he's lying dead somewhere."
"And you know this how?"
"I'm a Dolly, bread and butter, and that's how I know dad is dead."

The night ride in the boat, and what happens at the end of that ride, is truly unforgettable cinema. Winter's Bone is a serious film about family ties and bonds when things go bad in the part of America you don't see on CNN.

Winter's Bone is a fantastic motion picture worthy of Academy Awards.

Sarah Palin Blasts Academic Elitists

Sarah Palin has extended her war of words from those with the Wall Street Journal and other economists regarding US monetary policy to blasting university professors "in all fields" for practicing academic elitism and misleading Americans away from common sense values and understanding.

The condemnation left few areas untouched. Palin asserted that mutating bacteria strains and the frequent use of fruit flies in scientific experiments implied nothing about evolution and that the good people of America accept Jesus Christ and the fact that God created the heaven and the earth as described in the Bible.

Fossils, according to Palin, are simply interesting rock shapes and have nothing to do with the remains of former life on earth, and NASA is an atheist conspiracy to continue the fallacy of space, which does not exist, "The sky is just a pretty picture God gave us to admire."

Palin condemned mathematicians and physicists for deliberately confusing students with material that "never gets used" such as trigonometry, which has no practical application, claiming that "math people" seeking job security deliberately complicated the number pi with lots of extra digits, "Common sense people know that those digits don’t make any difference."

On Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, she declared that "speaking a language other than English is un-American, and everyone knows that Cultural Studies professors teach their students to hate America."

Palin’s financial advisors have suggested she run for president as it would provide lucrative speaking engagements and television gigs for herself and everyone in her family. Robin Leach, known for his television show, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," notes that a POTUS gig for Palin would easily generate tens of millions of dollars.

Palin is running in 2012, and if elected, she promises to make everything great for America by canceling all education after the eighth grade, "All that elitist stuff contributes nothing to the common sense values of God, guns, and country."