Take a guy who does humorous journalism, but not in the sneering sort of way, and send him out to find out more about extremists (KKK, Islamicists, etc.) and conspiracy theories (he didn’t really believe in the Bildeburgers…until he was followed), and what do you get?
Well, you get British journalist Jon Ronson.
I just listened to a wonderful interview with him on Radio West.
Don’t miss it.
The miracle of Netflix means that no movie or television show becomes unavailable. And there are so many produced over the last fifty years that are so very good. I recently re-watched the 1982 Gandhi with my family and have to say it is one of those fabulous movies that’s amazing every time I watch it. Not once did the production feel dated. And even though I’d already seen it, I found myself enthralled with the events and the character played so well by Ben Kingsley. No wonder it won eight Academy Awards.
The movie portrays the last 50 years of Mahatma Gandhi’s life. It starts in 1893, when Gandhi, educated in the UK, is thrown off a South African train for being an Indian and traveling in a first class compartment. Gandhi decides to start a non-violent protest campaign for the rights of all Indians in South Africa. Quite an undertaking in those years. He’s arrested and finds himself in a number of dicey moments, but ultimately brings change.
Gandhi is then invited back to India, where he is considered a national hero. Leaders there urge him to take up the fight for India’s independence from the British Empire. Gandhi agrees and mounts a non-violent campaign of unprecedented scale. Nothing of this magnitude has ever happened in the recorded history of the world. Which is why it’s a rough road all the way to the end.
There’s suspense and humor and heartbreak in this movie. But it goes far beyond entertainment. This movie will move you. It has power to change. This movie is what history should be. If you haven’t seen Gandhi, or haven’t seen it in a while, let me recommend you get it this week and sit down with friends or family to enjoy a wonderful experience.
I find it interesting that teachers in Utah, one of the most conservative states in the union, send almost three million dollars each year to the National Education Association. That’s the $165 in NEA dues for each of the roughly 18,000 union members in Utah. This is interesting because the NEA, the largest labor union in the United States, is one of the biggest supporters of the Democratic party.
For example, the NEA spends roughly 85-90% of its direct candidate donations on Democrats. The NEA is quick to point out that those direct candidate donations do not come out of the three million Utah teachers send to them, but from additional donations to one of their political action committees. It’s illegal, in fact, to contribute directly to candidates with money received from union dues. However, there are a lot of other ways to support candidates and causes in addition to direct donations.
Mike Antonucci, a teacher’s union observer, explains just how that works in his article “How Much Does the NEA Spend on Politics”. The upshot is that the NEA can spend as much as they want on politics with their dues. And the lion’s share of that spending goes toward liberal causes. ACORN, for example, has been a beneficiary of NEA grants.
Now, I don’t see anything wrong with that. People should be able to donate to whatever cause they think is important. The NEA has just as much right to make their voice heard as anyone else. I just think it’s interesting that so many conservatives have been led to donate their cash to these causes. And it’s not just in Utah. About 60% of NEA members identify themselves as conservative or independent. And yet they donate to these liberal causes via the union. What’s even more ironic is that most of them probably do not personally donate anything close to that to conservative candidates and causes. It’s not like teachers have tons of extra cash.
It’s a neat trick to get conservatives to donate so much money to liberals. And perhaps some teachers feel it’s the price they have to pay for the services they want from the union. I would think it would be better to start another union, but that’s me. However, this is not the only kink teachers unions have introduced into the education system.
I’m not going to argue that teachers unions are evil. These unions arose in a time when female teachers were heavily discriminated against. They do some good things. But mixed in with the good is, well, you’ll have decide for yourself if it smells.
A great place to begin is with the documentary Waiting for Superman. You should know this movie came out of the gate with a huge strike against it in my mind–it’s produced by Davis Guggenheim, the same guy who did An Inconvenient Truth. Good grief, that’s all I wanted was another two hours of Chicken Little running around saying “sky is falling, the sky is falling!”
But I didn’t find any of that in the film. For example, the film doesn’t say all American schools are awful. It doesn’t say teachers are terrible. Contrary to what the movie’s critics claim, including the NEA and its many state and local affiliates, the film doesn’t suggest charter schools or standardized testing are the silver bullet answers to our issues. I simply didn’t encounter the sensational propaganda others claimed would be there.
No. What the film does is examine some of the issues in our current system, which put so many children at a disadvantage, and the role the teacher unions play. It does not, as some critics claim, go on to suggest any solutions. It presents a problem, experienced by real parents and children right now, then poses a question: what can be done?
I found it eye-opening and thought-provoking. I think it’s a must-see. If you have children or grandchildren in school, if you’re one of our many fine teachers or school administrators, you’ll want to watch this movie and then ask yourself that same question. What can be done? What works? What’s best for the children? And does the current way our unions operate work in any way against those interests? For those who elect not to go into immediate union-attack or union-defense mode, I think this film will introduce some valuable points to the discussion about education.
Time magazine has named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. This summer, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s honored her with the Lifetime Achievement Award. She serves as an animal-welfare consultant for international companies like McDonalds, Wendy’s International, and Burger King. Her work has transformed the design of cattle handling facilities worldwide. In fact, fifty percent of the cattle in the U.S. and Canada are handled in equipment she has designed for meat plants.
She is one of the most fascinating people I have read or listened to. Her name is Temple Grandin. And she’s autistic. When she was four years old she couldn’t speak a word. The doctors, at the time, wanted her mother to commit her to an institution. But her mother wouldn’t accept that. Temple learned to read. She was tormented in junior high and high school. But she persevered, got into college, was almost expelled, and ultimately earned a PhD in animal science.
Recently, HBO produced a film about her called Temple Grandin. It is one of the best films I have seen in the last five years. It’s full of drama, heartache, triumph, and good humor. When you’re done, Temple Grandin will likely become one of your heroes.
Claire Danes does a fabulous job playing Temple. The movie also features Julie Ormond as Temple’s mother, Catherine O’Hara as her aunt, and David Strathairn as Dr. Carlock. Earlier this year, the film won seven Emmy Awards. But I didn’t need that to know how good it was. All I had to do was look at my wife and girls who sat rapt as the story unfolded. Get it on DVD. And if you want to know more about Grandin’s ideas, go to www.grandin.com.
My wife was recently possessed by an evil squash spirit.
How do I know this?
Simple. Have any of you out there ever been sitting around and suddenly got a mighty hankering for pureed squash? Even when you were in the Gerber bottle stage?
No, didn’t think so.
So what else would explain her sudden need for a bowl of butternut bisque?
Alas, I did recall once having a tasty pumpkin soup in a fancy restaurant in California, and so I didn’t immediately call the Brethren in for an exorcism. Instead I went to allrecipes.com and looked up a recipe for her.
I found “Butternut Squash Soup II” by someone named Maplebird, which inspired tons of confidence since all the great chefs are named after tree-animal mixes.
Then Nellie made the soup. I partook. And the evil spirit must have jumped into me because I’m telling you right now that I could not get enough of it. The mouth feel, the taste—the TASTE. There wasn’t a thing squashy about it.
Folks, this is the real deal. And at least 494 other people out on allrecipes agree with me and have rated it an average of 4.5 starts out of 5.
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter in a large pot, and cook the onion, celery, carrot, potatoes, and squash 5 minutes, or until lightly browned. Pour in enough of the chicken stock to cover vegetables. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover pot, and simmer 40 minutes, or until all vegetables are tender.
Transfer the soup to a blender, and blend until smooth. Return to pot, and mix in any remaining stock to attain desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper. Say a prayer and call for a priest or someone with the Melchizedek priesthood to be on hand just in case.
Okay, I know some of you are rolling your eyes. Squash? Have you got to be kidding?
If that’s you, then let me recommend Five Guys burgers and fries. Burgers started to bore me years ago. But a buddy recently recommended Five Guys, and I’m so glad I went. They’re a national chain. In Utah, we have eight of their joints from Layton to Orem.
They don’t offer salads or wraps or yogurt. They make four kinds of burgers, three kinds of dogs, and two kinds of fries. That’s it. You order the toppings you want–the regular things like grilled onion, cheese, and pickle, but you can also get grilled mushrooms, bacon, jalapenos, and BBQ sauce. More importantly, your burger is cooked fresh, right before your eyes. No microwaved unmeat retrieved from a mystery bin. It comes to you hot and juicy. The fries, cooked in 100% peanut oil, are served up sizzling. And there are a lot of them. I ate mine with a Cherry Coke.
If you’re ever in the mood for burgers and fries, you’ve got to try Five Guys.
In 1969, Greg Laurie, was seventeen and going to high school Newport Harbor High School in California. Fourteen miles from Disneyland. Just one mile from the beach.
Laurie was raised by a single mother who had seven marriages and struggled with alcoholism. They moved often, sometimes to very different locations such as New Jersey and Hawaii. He was not raised in the Christian faith or a church environment.
He began participating in the hippie movement, doing drugs, dropping out, because it was fun and because maybe this was the way.
The 1960s and early 1970s was the height of the hippie movement, which sought love, beauty, honesty, freedom, and fun. Hippies felt that “The Man” (the establishment, the authorities, those in charge, Big Brother) had caused huge problems. And they wanted to drop out of that society. Leave it utterly. Find a new way.
Why? What was the problem?
The 1960s was the decade of the Vietnam war. It was the decade when we came to the brink of a nuclear World War 3 with the USSR over the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was the decade when a huge portion of the United States strove for equal rights for minorities and women against a lot of opposition. There were riots. Protests. Beatings. This was the decade when Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy were assassinated. There were problems galore.
Now the 1960s was also a terrific decade. We passed civil rights legislation, men landed on the moon, super nerds introduced BASIC computer code which opened the door to the computer revolution. It was a decade of many good things, including the year when Lovely Wife was born. Let’s not forget that.
But it was certainly a tumultuous decade. And the hippies offered a counterculture. A different path.
A lot of youth followed that path. For example, in 1969 half a million hippies showed up at the Woodstock festival to protest the war, capitalism, and convention, and celebrate peace, love, and individual freedom.
This is the world young Greg Laurie was living in. And he was heading down the drug-hippie path.
But then he met a man named Lonnie Frisbee who looked like a hippie, had been a hippie, right at the epicenter in San Francisco, but was now inviting fellow hippies and youth to a different path.
A path that featured Christ. But not in the way of many of the churches at the time.
How was this path different? Did Greg turn around?
There’s a new movie out that is based on these true events. You can watch it and find out.
It’s called Jesus Revolution.
Nellie and I enjoyed the heck out of it. We laughed. We were on the edge of our seats, moved, and inspired. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I want to watch it again.
It’s a great entertainment for the whole family.
If you’re looking for a terrific, feel-good show, I think you’ll love Jesus Revolution. Give it a try.
I just had the most uncanny, coolest experience. It’s 6 PM. I’m out on a walk along a road that runs by a swampy river called Birch Creek to a fork in the road. The sky is this glorious blue with brilliant white and gray clouds. I stop and pick some ripe black currents off a little spindly bush growing down off the shoulder in the rocks and continue on.
I take the left fork, south along the hill and enjoy the sight of the mown fields, a scattering of green ton bales standing on the short meadow grass, and the storm clouds gathering over the hills to the west.
A few rabbits spook and run across the road. I reach the mile mark and turn back. I’d already done 30 minutes worth of shred before the walk and needed to get back to practice basketball with my oldest. The whole time I’m listening to Lois McMaster Bujold’s HALLOWED HUNT read by Marguerite Gavin. It’s warm, sunny, lovely. The story is good.
I come back by the fork and hear this sound over the audio. It’s like a single prop airplane in the distance. I continue on another hundred yards. That distant, thin drone grows, but I can’t figure out what it is, so I put the audio book on hold and take off the ear phones.
The air is perfectly still. That muggy stillness that precedes a storm. But all around me is this sound. This thin drone, filling up road. It’s coming from all sides.
Insects?
I look down off the side of the road at the sloughs and cattails and willows and see nothing. I look back up. Look around. And then I notice a small black body speed past. And another. And another.
Flies? It can’t be flies. When have you ever seen a fly pursue a straight line?
Three more. Half a dozen. Another, another, and they’re everywhere. But they’re not flying thickly. Not mobbing. Not massed in some cartoon clump. They’re all spread out. I strain to see them in this odd light.
Bees. They’re dark. Almost black in their flight, but it has to be bees!
And they’re all around, thirty feet to either side of me. Zooming past. There, there, and there. It’s like dozens and dozens of refugees in flight with single purpose. There’s no looping around. No dalliance. No crazy panic. They’re serious, focused. All of them going the same way. Straight ahead on some urgent goal.
There’s a big fat blue dragonfly in the willows that keeps zipping after individual bees as they fly past, trying to get a meal, but each time, just at the moment when it would attack, it spooks and darts back for cover. Dragonflies are voracious buggers. But these aren’t single bees. It must be thinking the other bees are coming for it. Still it can’t resist and darts out again.
And all around is the humming. It grows. The bees directly in front of me see me as they approach and make course corrections. I keep walking. A half a mile and the thin droning still surrounds me. The bees keep coming, but they’re thinning.
Thunder cracks behind me. The wind begins to pick up. The sky behind me is darkening.
The sound of the drone grows thinner, is almost gone. But there are bees still out there, following. I can hear them. See them. Individuals trailing the others, flying past me toward the storm that’s still about a mile off. And I think they’re too far behind.
Maybe their hive was wrecked. Maybe it’s just time to swarm and there’s a queen up front leading them. And somehow her scent is on the wind. Somehow they know to follow.
I don’t know if they’ll find a new place. They’re going to have to cross a mile of mown meadow before they get to anything that might serve as any type of shelter. I don’t know if the wind will ground them, or the main group will find safety but the stragglers will be blown to their deaths. All I know is that I’m sitting here in awe, electric with life.
I just finished Known and Unknown, a fat memoir by Donald Rumsfeld, and enjoyed every page. Rumsfeld served as the Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush. But Rumsfeld’s service didn’t start there. He was a Navy pilot, an assistant to a congressman during the Eisenhower days, and, in the early 60’s, a four-term congressman from Illinois. He held various positions in the Nixon White House in the late 60’s and early 70’s, including ambassador to NATO. He was Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense when Ford took over from Nixon. Reagan tapped him to be a special envoy to both the Middle East after the Beirut bombing and to the Law of the Sea treaty discussions. He was the president of Searle, a pharmaceutical, as well as General Instrument, the company that pioneered HDTV. Only after all that, did George W. Bush bring him on as Secretary of Defense.
When writing novels, I try to create characters worth knowing, either because of their interesting personality or skills or because of the events they take part in. Donald Rumsfeld is just such a character, except he’s no fiction.
In his memoir he shares insider information on everything from Watergate to 9/11 to the war in Iraq. What emerges is a fascinating look into many of the most important events in the last forty years. You’ll get insight into some of the issues experienced in various White House administrations and see what really was going on with waterboarding, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, hurricane Katrina and many other of the hot button issues in the Bush years. There are some laugh out loud moments where his understated humor shines through. There are also parts where he reveals some of his differences with others that worked with him in the various administrations, including issues with Nelson Rockerfeller, Colin Powell and Andy Card. But in everything he writes he’s fair and restrained and attempts to present the facts accurately. This is no attempt to settle scores. Just a wonderful read.
If you are interested in politics at all, I think you’ll enjoy this book. Moreover, I think you’ll come out a little wiser, maybe a little better person, for having spent a few hours with Donald Rumsfeld.
I do not watch many r-rated movies. They are usually too vulgar or pornographic for my prissy tastes. However, I did my research on The King’s Speech, and having heard so many glowing reviews, Nellie and I rented it.
It was wonderful.
The movie tells the story of prince Albert Frederick Arthur George of Britain who did not ever expect to inherit the throne and did not want to, in part because of his stammer. Can you imagine having to be a public figure like a king and have to deal with something like that? Most of us dread the thought of public speaking. Can you imagine having to try with a stammer?
But Albert’s lot was not to live the sheltered life. He became king when his brother abdicated the throne because of improprieties in his personal life. The day before the abdication, Albert went to London to see his mother, Queen Mary. He wrote in his diary, “When I told her what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child.” That is not the entry of a power-hungry man.
He assumed the throne in 1936, when England ruled over almost a quarter of the world’s population. Three years later in 1939 WW2 broke out and Britain’s king needed to be able to address the people.
In the movie, Colin Firth plays Price Albert. Geoffery Rush (Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean) plays Lionel Logue, the unorthodox Australian speech therapist to whom Albert’s wife turns for help. The script is wonderful and the star-studded cast is spot on. There are moments of humor and poignancy and triumph. I was caught up in this movie as much as any I’ve seen.
If you like English dramas, you’ll enjoy this one. And the profanity, the reason for the r-rating, is not there to depict casual vulgarity. It was part of a technique used by the therapist. In the end, you’ll overlook it and find yourself on pins and needles, rooting for this fine man.
I’ve written about TED before. The annual TED (technology, entertainment, design) conferences, in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh, bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less). The folks at TED record these speeches and put them up for free on their site for the rest of us to watch. And I just watched two dandies.
The first is by Elaine Morgan who says we evolved from aquatic apes (sigh, just when you think you’ve found grandpa Eddy hanging out in the trees, you learn he’s an imposter). Morgan is a Welsh writer for television and also the author of several books on evolutionary anthropology. In the speech she describes the reasons why it makes sense that humans had aquatic ancestors. Along the way, she illustrates key principles of science, including why science by consensus is no science at all. Her manner is so delightful and engaging I think I could listen to her for hours, preferably around the dinner table. Watch her right now. She just might convince you.
The second speech was given by Bonnie Bassler, an American molecular biologist, who has been part of the team that discovered key insights into how bacteria talk. It appears that bacteria do not invade a host and start doing damage. No, they wait until their numbers are sufficient that they have a chance of surviving. They coordinate defense and mount attacks as a group. Who would have thought? Knowing how this works is not only interesting all by itself, but it has stunning implications for medicine and fighting infection. Bassler is a fascinating and enthusiastic presenter. Among other things, you’ll end up seeing that humans are more bacteria than you could imagine. Watch her.
