Friday, May 21, 2010

Six photos of Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Six pictures of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.  I am reading a long and excellent biography of him right now--Guevara, Also Known as Che by Paco Ignacio Taibo II.  A fascinating story and an excellent read.

The last picture is the one that has become the face of Che everywhere (including t-shirts, posters, etc.).  Some people say it is the most famous photograph in the world.  It was taken at a funeral, following the (CIA-assisted) bombing of a ship in Havana.   

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Harry Porter's Relay Computer - what a beautiful analog labor of love


Wow.  Check out the story, video, and photos of  Harry Porter's home-made relay computer here.
















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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Help spring Jack Brummet from jail!!


I have just been arrested and will be going to jail (I know, some of you are thinking "what took so long?") for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Executive Lock-up.

Don’t bother asking what crime I have committed – it’s not really that important. And most of you probably have a good guess.  If I raise bail of $2,400 before the Lock-Up, they will go easy on me, but I need your HELP to post my bond. Your donation will help MDA continue research into the cause and the possible cure of the 43 neuromuscular diseases they cover. Your support of the MDA Lock-Up will also help MDA provide medical equipment, clinic visits, support groups and a much-needed week of MDA Summer Camp for the families served by the Association. If my FB pals, blog readers, friends and family each kick in a few bucks, we'll make my bail. Please donate $5, $20, $100, or even $1.000. It's 100% tax deductible. If we all pull together, I can avoid bunking with my cellmates Tiny, Psycho, or El Cuchillo.

Jump to the link

https://www.joinmda.org/MyLockup/MyHomepage/tabid/154711/Participant/jack/Default.aspx

and donate heavily and often!

If you donate $500, I'll come to your house and make a four-course dinner with wine and beer pairings for you and seven of your friends--Paella, North Carolina barbecue, Mexican Nayarit/Jalisco, Italian, Vietnamese, or NW cuisine--you name it--carnivore, gluten-free, vegan...whatever works for you.

Thank you ever so much. And, hey, Jerry Lewis thanks you too.
 
/jack

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

The last photos from India - the Ajanta Caves

The Ajanta Caves, in the Aurangabad District (the same area where we saw the Ellora Caves) in Maharashtra, India are 30 rock-cut cave monuments created during the 1st BC and 5th century AD.  They contain paintings and sculptures considered to be masterpieces of Buddhist religious art.

I skipped this excursion, so there aren't too many pictures (I don't take good photos, but I take a lot of them!).  I have not succeeded in getting one of my fellow travellers to write about them. 

Keelin and Colin with a monkey and someone who wanted a photo.

These next two photos were taken at the house of our driver (who ferried us out to the country outside Aurangabad)...actually his sister's house.  They were a large extended Moslem family

The sleeping Buddha, carved into a wall at Adjanta, and for perspective,
see the photo below, where the Buddha dwarfs Claire

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Common Ground between Ernesto "Che" Guevara and the Tea Party Movement

By Jack Brummet
Poetry, Pranks, and Paranormal Editor
filling in for National Affairs Editor Pablo Fanque on assignment in Louisiana



"The people are never in the wrong; we make the mistakes and need to be corrected by them." - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

Members of the Tea Party Movement would embrace this statement whole-heartedly if they didn't know the author.  Guevara, however,  was actually referring to a majority, and the will of the people, and not to a splinter movement of cranky, hard-right factionalists.

With the Tea Party's first victory today, you have to wonder .just what their de facto front-runner has in mind. . .
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Monday, May 17, 2010

Matt Smith: Nature Walk With Chuck from Almost Live

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nowZ4pkarbE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozSuRlq7sB0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMCv3cLUTzU

Three espisodes of my friend's Matt Smith's Nature Walks With Chuck, from the Seattle sketch comedy show, Almost Live.
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Alien Lore. No. 172 - Is The Voyager 2 overrun with Greys 8.5 billion miles from earth?



Thanks to Jeff Clinton...for the alien lore news tip. 

Hartwig Hausdorf, an author of several books and German UFO expert recently said that a NASA spacecraft may have been hijacked by aliens, who are now attempting to contact Earth.

Hausdorf claims that Voyager 2, an un-manned probe we fired into space 33 years ago, is transmitting unintelligible signals from aliens who are now attempting to contact Earth.

After the erratic signals from the ship, the Voyager 2 went silent on April 22nd.  NASA told reporters that engineers were working to solve a data transmission fault.  NASA's only comment on the alien story are that the fault is a glitch in the probe's computer memory.  You may remember that Steven Hawking recently warned us to quit trying to contact aliens (because they would likely not arrive here with the noblest of intentions).

Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, launched in 1977 to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Thirty years later they are the most distant human-made objects in outer space.  Scientists say that the Voyager 1 is more than 8.5 billion miles from Earth and will soon leave the heliosphere (the sun's bubble) for interstellar space.  Each vessel contain a disk for whoever might find them with music, images, mathematical formulas, cultural artifacts, and greetings in 55 languages. Maybe the Greys didn't like what they saw and heard??   Or it was a Valentine from a planet ripe for plunder.
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Sunday, May 16, 2010

One of my contemporaries scores again



















A man wearing only a pair of woman's thong panties n his head has become the first person arrested under Boulder's public nudity law.  Police said 55 year old Glenn Ford was standing naked on an off ramp of Highway 36 during the Thursday rush hour this week.  Cops said Ford was drunk and refused to put on his clothes.

I've seen naked people in public four times (aside from hot springs/hot tubs and locker rooms)--once in the awesome Italian deli in long-gone Woolworth's (!), on Market Street/Powell in San Francisco,  where a woman was shopping, carrying a basket on her arm, stark naked; once, on the Upper West Side in Manhattan near our apartment where a bum (sorry - I'm not sure of the politically correct terms for bum or hobo, derelict, or fuck-up) was strolling naked; once in Seattle at 1 AM when I was driving home from a late night at work and two girls and one boy stepped toward the street and waves--all stark naked; and once in Pioneer Square--another bum, who was pushing a shopping cart, wearing only a pair of flip-flops.
---o0o---

Saturday, May 15, 2010

       By Pablo Fanque     
   National Affairs Editor  


The Ex-Governor makes a plea for diligent scholarship, research, and fact checking. Does this strike anyone else as insanely disingenuous? Her vituperation against the media is always fascinating, since even more than most politicians, she owes her fame and fortune to that same media. In fact, she is now a part of that media as a Fox News employee, and Fox has never been accused of meticulous fact checking in their hysterical "news" coverage.

From Sarah Palin's Facebook posting today:

  Research is your friend, News Media. Try it sometime. 

                            By Sarah Palin



The more things change, the more they stay the same with twisted media coverage of my comments. Stories from yesterday are littered with typical inaccuracies and half truths; and in our never-ending quest to hold the press accountable, here are the points that require correction:

1) I was not “interviewed” by ABC News. I had an ABC News camera in my face while I was signing things and greeting some attendees following the Susan B. Anthony List Breakfast.

2) My remarks at the NRA Annual Meeting regarding the anti-Second Amendment sentiments of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were as follows:

“President Obama and his allies like Nancy Pelosi have been relatively quiet on the gun control front – not because they don’t want to limit your rights, but because they’re afraid of the political consequences. Don’t doubt for a minute that if they thought they could get away with it, they would ban guns, and ban ammunition, and gut the Second Amendment.” (emphasis added)

That’s what I said. And here’s what Barack Obama himself once said: “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress.” (emphasis added)

Now, what proof do we have that he would want to limit our Second Amendment rights? Well, he made some pretzel-like equivocating statements about our individual right to keep and bear arms, and he flip-flopped on his opinion in the Heller case and then still wouldn’t come out and say that the court made the right decision. But the real proof is his terrible anti-gun record as a state senator in Illinois, where he voted repeatedly in favor of banning guns and ammunition. He even expressed his support for state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.” (This outrageous position was declared in a questionnaire, which candidate Obama later claimed he “never saw or approved,” despite the fact that his handwriting was on it – a fact which he did not dispute.)

As for Nancy Pelosi – she’s a San Francisco Democrat. That should be proof enough. But if you require more: She has an F rating from the NRA and supports gun bans and registration laws.

As noted in my remarks, I don’t believe that it’s politically expedient for them to attack our Second Amendment Rights. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to do so if they had the chance.

3) Despite reporters’ claims to the contrary, Obamacare does allow for public funding of abortion in myriad ways, which is why the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (speaking as the voice of authority for the Catholic Church in America) unequivocally opposed Obamacare despite the Church’s long desire for health care reform.

4) As for the remarks I made yesterday about my beautiful son, Trig, I ask that you watch my speech here and judge for yourself my intentions.
---o0o---

Friday, May 14, 2010

poem: [when the green grass is pulled up]






















When the green grass is pulled up
The sod comes with it
There is no one
Without the other
No valley is not followed by a slope
And no going not followed by return
There is no relief without an ache
And no virus without a host

One who parries danger
Is testing the margins of life
The bricks fall into the moat
The king's body hangs naked
From the flagpole
A ruler topples
And for one moment in transit
Change is in the air
---o0o---

Is Solicitor General/Supreme Court Associate Justice Nominee Gay? a) "Who cares?" and b) "Cool. It's about time."

By Jack Brummet & Pablo Fanque
Social Mores Editor & National Affairs Editor

Politico.com and various other sites have been debating and reporting on whether or not Elena Kagan in gay.  Our first reaction is "who cares?"  And, second, is "cool..  It's about time."   But if she is a lesbian, she will not be the first homosexual to sit on the bench, at least if you believe at all in probability and statistics.  Those statistics seems to say that around 10% of people are gay.  Therefore, The Supremes have likely had at least ten gay justices.  The issue then becomes sort of a snoozer, whichever way it turns out future Justice Kagan swings. 

From Politico.com:  "[Sarah] Walzer, half amused and half appalled to be discussing her friend’s sexual orientation, agreed to be interviewed after Kagan’s supporters decided they should tactfully put an end to the rumor, which White House officials had already tried to squelch in background interviews with reporters. She said she decided to talk to POLITICO because the discussion of Kagan’s personal life has become a 'distraction.' ”

As usual, none of the mainstream media are not really touching the story (and I admire them for that).  But then the mainstream media becomes less of a factor in all of this almost day by day.  There are probably kids being born tonight who will never hold a newspaper in their hands.
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