One of the tricks – techniques? skills? – I admire in an artist is the ability to create a picture that looks like nothing up close and only looks like something when the viewer stands back. The parking garage at the San Jose Airport has a – sort of – super premium chain link screen that – sort of – hides the parking garage.
Industrial strength hocky pucks are then wired to the screen and they form a design when seen from a distance.
Most of us who have been to the San Jose Airport have driven right by the hands; I know I have more times than I would like to admit. Last Sunday, I was given the chance to stop and look at what I will call the Hands. With climpses of garage behind them, they are great!'
Richard Taylor sent me a link to an article in the New York Times on extrasensory perception – a couple of days ago – and I have been thinking about it ever since. Not so much the extrasensory perception part, but a quote in the article that inadvertently points out what I see as the major problem with Science. And with everything else, as far as that goes – the Stern Unified Field Theory on what is wrong . In disagreeing with the results of an experiment, a scientist says Claims that defy almost every law of science are by definition extraordinary and thus require extraordinary evidence.
What he is really saying is Claims that agree with the already agreed upon laws of science are, by definition, ordinary and do not require much evidence. In other words, if it reinforces the status quo, we start by presuming it is correct. Of course this reinforces the status quo which – then – is used to prove the status quo is right. What ever we are doing, what we believe, is right because we are doing it, because it is our belief structure.
Maybe it's the movies, maybe it's the books Maybe it's the bullets, maybe it's the real crooks Maybe it's the drugs, maybe it's the parents Maybe it's the colors everybody's wearin' Maybe it's the president, maybe it's the last one Maybe it's the one before that, what he done Maybe it's the high schools, maybe it's the teachers Maybe it's the tattooed children in the bleachers Maybe it's the Bible, maybe it's the lack Maybe it's the music, maybe it's the crack Maybe it's the hairdos, maybe it's the TV Maybe it's the cigarettes, maybe it's the family Maybe it's the fast food, maybe it's the news Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's abuse Maybe it's the lawyers, maybe it's the prisons Maybe it's the Senators, maybe it's the system Maybe it's the fathers, maybe it's the sons Maybe it's the sisters, maybe it's the moms Maybe it's the radio, maybe it's road rage Maybe El Nino, or UV rays Maybe it's the army, maybe it's the liquor Maybe it's the papers, maybe the militia Maybe it's the athletes, maybe it's the ads Maybe it's the sports fans, maybe it's a fad Maybe it's the magazines, maybe it's the Internet Maybe it's the lottery, maybe it's the immigrants Maybe it's taxes, big business Maybe it's the KKK and the skinheads Maybe it's the communists, maybe it's the Catholics Maybe it's the hippies, maybe it's the addicts Maybe it's the art, maybe it's the sex Maybe it's the homeless, maybe it's the banks Maybe it's the clearcut, maybe it's the ozone Maybe it's the chemicals, maybe it's the car phone Maybe it's the fertilizer, maybe it's the nose rings Maybe it's the end, but I know one thing. If it were up to me, I'd take away the guns.
Michele and listened to the memorial at Tucson last night. I think this may have been the first public memorial I have ever watched. I missed both Reagan's Challenger speech and Clinton's Oklahoma bombing speech. I don't know why I usually don't like to listen to these sort of things but did want to hear Obama's comments ( which were billed as being about ten minutes), but I am glad I listened.
At first I was taken back by the boisterous crowd. I was expecting a church – with hushed, somber, rhetoric - and I got a basketball arena. But -starting with the opening prayer – I was moved by the whole thing. I thought Obama was at his best and it reminded me of Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech – not so much in the words but in the internal timing of the speech. I was not the only one that felt that way.
But, in the end, it was not so much what Obama said, but the obvious emotion that was so powerful.
I'm going to just blatenly rip off Time magazine on this:
He says he's just a goofy dork on a silly network, with prank-calling puppets as his lead-in. But when it comes to events like Sept. 11, the Iraq War and Monday night's post-assassination processing, Stewart has increasingly been turned to as not just the man to mock the absurdity of our media-political machine, but also to make sense out of the madness. Whether he recognizes his role or not, Stewart has become an influential barometer as to the seriousness of an offense (Rick Sanchez), the merits of an argument (John McCain, on “Don't Ask, Don't Tell”) and the hypocrisy of lawmakers (the 9/11 health care bill). And every once in a while, in moments of startling sincerity and intimacy, he has also embraced the challenge of trying to process a nation's fear and pain.
In fact, over the span of a decade, he's done the latter so well that we now look to him for our dose of sanity amidst the chaos: