James Cameron says that climate-change skeptics are “swine.”
[Tuesday morning update]
Well, he can dish it out, but he can’t take it:
A real shame [he chickened out of the debate]. Would have been fun to watch the reaction to him calling skeptics “swine” to their faces, for once. Exit question: Forgive and forget? C’mon — he has important things to do this week!
Bwwaaack, buck buck buck buck, Bwwwaaaaack.
[Bumped]
A perspective, over at National Review. Two things struck me about the piece, one of which has nothing to do with Bradbury per se:
While he is a great advocate for NASA and space travel, his greatest fictional works address the recurrent theme of much of the modern age’s more significant literature: the separation of spirit and imagination from technological achievement and the dangers that attend this divorce.
Note that James Person assumes that NASA and space travel are synonymous. This is a mind set that we have to break if we are to move forward in space. Here’s the other:
All too soon it was time to take our leave. Hamner, ever the gracious Virginia gentleman, shook hands with Bradbury and quietly expressed his thanks again for that long-ago piece of advice. As Bradbury turned to me, I shook his hand and said quietly, “Ray Bradbury, live forever!” Tears sprang into his eyes — he is a man who cries for joy at every kindness — and his mouth moved soundlessly for a moment, searching for words. Quickly he raised my hand to his lips and gave it a quick kiss. “God bless you, Jim,” he said. “God bless you — and I wish the same for you!”
What a contrast with Asimov, who was a notorious deathist (a major theme of The Bicentennial Man). Asimov is gone now, as he wished, and Bradbury is still with us, as he apparently continues to wish.
It’s not clear though, whether things like this will increase, or decrease his remaining time with us. If it’s the end of him, not a bad way to go.
Both rum and beer. Porters and stouts are my preference for the latter, though they don’t list them. Probably off-the-scale manly.
The video, explained.
A non-political discussion over at Free Republic.
One of these days I’ll get a new tonearm and cartridge for my Rega Planar turntable and break out a collection that I haven’t listened to in over a decade. Of course, sometimes things that you put off till “one of these days” sometimes never happen.
Declaration Entertainment has been going for a month now. Look forward to more details on a private mission to Jupiter.
Or is it Starfly? Either way, this is just wrong.
[Evening update]
The comments over there are great (not to disparage my own commenters…).
Or maybe not. Maybe they really believe this nonsense.
And now for something completely different — an estimate of how fast the signal of the Beacon of Gondor propagated:
After the first signal is on fire, Gandalf sees the next signal only 6 seconds later. WHAT? The guys (or gals) at the next station must have just been sitting there staring and waiting for a signal. Oh, it was probably like 40 years since the last time it was used. I guess you can do stuff like that if you don’t have youtube. But wait, the more I think about this, the more upset I get. I am ok with invisible rings, flying dragons, glowing swords and stuff. However, it is beyond the bounds of reason to expect me to believe that some guys are sitting way on the other mountain with a hair-triggered lighting mechanism. Six seconds. Seriously.
[Via Geekpress]
From Lileks:
I like Grumpy. Don’t identify with him, though – I’d go with Doc, maybe.
What? You don’t see many people wearing mildly abrasive Grumpy shirts? You need to spend more time in Disneyworld, where such things are encouraged as an expression of the outer limits of Disney-sanctioned negative personality characteristics. They’re aimed, probably, at the middle-aged men who accompany their families and need something that seems aimed at their particular demographic, and they accommodate Disney agnostics and Disney adherents. Doc speaks to them both.
Aside from that, though, what do adult males have for Disney character identification? Squat and diddly, it seems. We’re not in the mood to wear a Prince on our shirt: teh ghey. Sully: too hairy and fat for some. There’s Donald, but in his T-shirt form he’s Grumpy + anxiety disorder.
There’s no Disney version of Bugs Bunny. No character with the self-possession, the amused expression – he’s laughing at you, not with you, but he’s doing you the favor of not laughing out loud – the cynical tilt of the eyebrow, the carrot-cheroot, the eyes calculating the odds and the way this caper will play out. There’s a scene in “Roger Rabbit” where they finally meet, and I remember at the time it was a moment of great pop-culture significance. Which, I suppose, it was. It was fleeting, as it should be – together they would never work, like swing played on top of ragtime, but for that one moment there was a certain pleasure in seeing them together, like Bogart shaking hands with Harold Lloyd.
Which is a roundabout way of saying the only Disney shirt I’ll wear around the Kingdoms is a Classic Mickey.
No one opines on pop culture better.
[Update a few minutes later]
And don’t miss Red Planet Mars.