It’s gonna be a short one, though, because I’m in the middle of cooking dinner. I was surfing the web and found a blog entry making fun of Micheal Moore. I turned on the radio and listened to a talk radio host talk about Micheal Moore, calling him by the affectionate term, “fat-ass” (his words, not mine). This is the rhetoric of the Right, people. They don’t have a thing coherent to say to refute MM (or any liberal for that matter) so they resort to ad hominem attacks. Just take a look at the venomous, hate-spewing Blogs for Bush website. Look at the sidebar on the left. You will find advertisments that tell you to “annoy a liberal” by buying a dorky t-shirt. Please. The fact of the matter is that there is no real dialog going on. The Conservative Right do not know how to argue, and they reveal their ignorance by flinging these personal attacks on those who speak up for what they believe in. Censorship, I’m noticing, seems to be a big thing with the Right.
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In keeping with our recent tradition, we tried out a new hiking spot over the weekend, the Bonny Doon Ecological Preserve. We didn’t have a map and I don’t like not knowing where I am going, but otherwise we had a good hike.
Bonny Doon Ecological Preserve is a special place. It is the home of a few endangered species such as the Santa Cruz Cypress (see picture), the Ben Lomond Wallflower, and the Silver Leaf Manzanita. I didn’t have my native california plant guide with me so I couldn’t really determine if I saw them or not. I’m pretty sure the picture that I have here is the Santa Cruz Cypress. There are only a little over 5,000 of these trees left, and most of them are here at this preserve! Interestingly, as a side note, I was browsing the current periodicals on friday and found a journal called “American Forests.” I grabbed the most current issue and opened the magazine to an article about the Santa Cruz Cypress. So of course I wanted to take the short drive up to Bonny Doon over the weekend to see if I could find this rare tree.Sadly, a few months ago, the park’s neighboors ran a bulldozer through the park, destroying some precious plants. You can read about that here.
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Well I saw Farenheit 9/11 on Saturday during a matinee. The experience of seeing it on the big screen in Santa Cruz was so cool. It was nice to get out into my community and be around people who feel the same as I do (although, it really isn’t hard to find people who dislike Bush in California). It was interesting to hear the audience reaction to different scenes. There was one scene in particular that was really moving to myself, and apparently, the rest of the audience. The film crew was in a military hospital interviewing solders who had been wounded. It was so sad to see these poor guys. Many of them had limbs blow off. One guy was wrapped in bandages and and had his arms blown off up to his elbows and he mentioned that he could still feel his hands, and that they were in pain. One guy had severe nerve damage and said he was in constant pain. He said that he went into the war as a republican. He was all for the war and what he thought it stood for. But as he fought over there and came to the realization that the American people were duped into this war, he stated that he has reversed his position and that when he goes back home he will be heavily involved in the democratic party. That’s when everyone in the theater cheered 🙂 .This movie was extremelly moving. It excels in the places where it really shows how horrible the Iraq war is. It shows us the innocent civilians who have died needlessly. It shows us the solders who are over there fighting and not knowing what they are fighting, and dying, for.
It was interesting to see the connections between the Saudi family and the Bush family and thier business connections. It raises some extremely interesting questions.
The information presented is not stuff that MM is just making up. This is stuff that has been reported in various news outlets over the past 4 years.
This is by far his best work to date. It is very polished and it certainly deserved his award at Cannes. In and of itself, it is just a great film. It is by far the best documentary I have ever seen. I would, and probably will, go see it again.
Go see this movie. Seriously. It DEFINATELY lives up to all of it’s hype. Hell, Fox News even praised it:
“It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail. As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, “F9/11″ is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty — and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.”
– Roger FriedmanNow go out and see it. You know you want to 😉
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Image via Wikipedia t r u t h o u t – Extra: William Rivers Pitt | Thank You, Michael Moore
I can’t wait to see Farenheit 911! R and I are going to see it tommorrow during a matinee. I’ll give my opinion of it tommorrow. I have a feeling it will blow my mind.
Oh, and this is soooo cool. Since MM loves the librarians, there will be a showing of Farenheit 911 at the ALA Conference tonightLibrarians will be able to watch it for a $10.00 donation that will go toward “ALA’s efforts in the areas of the First Amendment, Intellectual Freedom, and the struggle against the USA PATRIOT Act”…aw! The librarians love you, too, Michael!
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I just finished listening to this book and wanted to give my review of it here. It was very very long, first of all. As I said, I listened to it (I download mp3 books via Audible.com.) It was approximately 24 hours or so…That isn’t exact. As long as it was, it was extremely interesting and well written. Bryson wrote it because he realized he didn’t know about how our world was made, how we are made, how we (humans) got here, etc. So he spent a few years of his life finding out and he wrote a book. It is written for the layman, so it is written in language that anyone can understand.
He begins with the creation of the Universe. He discusses the big bang theory and how it was discovered by accident. He then goes into various disciplines and talked about thier inception as a discipline, the major scientists, a history of the discipline, and some important theories.
I loved this book. It opened me up to the fascinating world of science.
