Neglected Mementos of a Gentler Time

     I was looking through a photo gallery of 75 abandoned theaters that Roger Ebert had posted on facebook this afternoon. There are few things as sad as an empty theater...at least to my eyes. A deserted collapsing theater is a metaphor for so much if  one is over forty and of a romantic disposition. We as a culture have traded style and richness of experience for utility and economy.

Most of the grand motion picture palaces are gone now, replaced with pods at the local multiplex. The rich burgundy velvet chairs have been replaced with seats so narrow that the average American may have given up on a night at the movies because he is too broad in the flank thanks to a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup to fit in the seats without loss of circulation  in the extremities. In my city we are fortunate. One of the old palaces was saved and restored to the glory of its youth.

Strangely enough, the price of admission there is the same as at the multiplex, perhaps even a little lower. It shows primarily "art" films; the ones that you see at the multiplex on their second run after they are nominated for awards. Sadly, this one may be threatened too. The chains have finally caught on that indie films are profitable and they are showing them first run now as well. 

    When I was a boy there was a magnificent palace near my town called The Alhambra Theater. It cost over a million dollars to build in the twenties. It could not be built today. Today a supermarket stands on that location with only a few palm trees and a portion of a mural to give mute testimony to those who remember of a bad bargain made. You may still buy calendars with a picture of that theater  even though it has been gone for over thirty-five years. It is a though the city reminds itself of its bad bargain constantly as a kind of penance for its sin against itself.

   If you think about it we have made the same bargain in so many other places. We have traded dining for refueling, learning for career preparation, and ask you grandfather what air travel was like in his day...back when an airline pilot was a glamorous professional career that paid a good wage. Today if one wants a rich experience one has to track it down in the wild. It is still worth the effort. There are still dozens of struggling art house cinemas and little theater companies out there. You can even find a ballet company or an opera within two hours drive. You might have to dress up a bit, but you will remember the experience a month later.

    Can you say that about the last movie you watched at the MultiMax or on Netflix?




   Be seeing you.

News Update:

    The NRC announced today that it was revising the status of the Republican Presidential Candidate field from its previous Level 5 status, similar to Three Mile Island. It is now considered to be a Level 7, the same as Chernobyl. A spokesman for the league of Concerned Scientists when interviewed, had this to say, "After Michelle Bachman and Donald Trump decided to throw their tinfoil hats in the ring it was no longer possible to pretend that the campaign was anything less than a total meltdown. It is still too early to tell how extensive the fallout will be. We will have to see which way the wind blows."

      Tests have already found detectable levels of bile and vitriol in the public discourse.

    

       Further updates as they develop.






     

       Be seeing you

More Oddity

    When Regina Mayer's parents refused to buy her a jumping horse she decided to make do with what she had to work with. This was a bit of a challenge since her parents own a dairy farm. Undaunted, she saddled up one of the cows and started training.

  After months of perseverance the 15 year old and her cow go for long rides together in the countryside. They also hurdle over makeshift jumps made from beer crates and painted logs.

            More on Regina and her jumper at: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3511212/Jumping-cow-is-udderly-amazing.html
                                              

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At a Swedish zoo in Eskilstuna one of the two anteaters kept there became curious about the flamingos at then enclosure next door. After some effort it succeeded in pulling the fence apart with its powerful digging claws, which are strong enough to damage concrete, he managed to gain entry to the flamingo enclosure.  Evidently the large long-legged birds put up a fuss and the anteater panicked a all of the flapping wings and squawking and well.....

It defended itself. Ten of the birds died and five more were injured.

                               That's all for now.

                               Be seeing you

And Now For Something Completely Different...

    I thought it would be a nice change to post news of the downright odd every so  often. Here are a couple of examples:


     It seems that the iPad-2 shortage extends even to the hereafter.

     During the Qingming festival, also known as the tomb sweeping festival, Chinese communities in Asia honour their ancestors by burning fake money or paper replicas of various luxury items such as flashy cars or designer bags."Some of my customers have dreams where their departed relatives will ask for luxury items including the iPad 2," said one prayer item shopkeeper. Although the 1Pad-2 itself is not yet available in much of Asia, the paper replicas are, but the demand is so high that many people are forced to use replicas of the older model. 
      IPad replicas typically sell for a dollar and come with displayed memory capacity of 888 gigabytes, the eight being an auspicious number in that culture.

Source: Reuters

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Children at a Scottish school had their physical education class called on account of rain...of worms. 

The children were playing soccer on an astroturf field when dozens of worms began to fall from a cloudless sky. According to their teacher, the rain of worms lasted for a while. When it finally ended he and other faculty members collected about 120 of the creatures from the soccer and tennis courts. 

Full story at: http://news.stv.tv/scotland/east-central/240577-its-raining-worms-schoolchildrens-lesson-interrupted-by-falling-creepy-crawlies/

Be seeing you.

Of Virtue and Teaching

A long time ago when I was a freshman in college, I took Introduction to Philosophy from a wonderful teacher named Doctor Charles Lovitt. He taught me to love his subject so much that for a time I considered making Philosophy my major. I wish sometimes that I had. He taught me that the fundamental assumptions of religion are the ultimate questions of philosophy. He introduced me to Hegal and Plato, to Aristotle and Descartes, to Reinhold Niebuhr and to Immanuel Kant.

It is Kant that stayed with me the longest, probably because Kant seemed to have the solutions for so many of the things that were wrong with the America of Viet Nam and Watergate. One thing in particular comes to mind as the Dominionist wing of Fundamentalist Christianity once more attempts to make their particular set of moral imperatives into the law of the land: Kant believed that virtue had to hurt. For a moral act to have any value it must be a hard choice. Forcing people to lead a virtuous life benefits no one.

Sadly, when I looked up the good doctor in Google to be sure that I spelled his name correctly I learned that he passed away March 15th of this year. 

The world is a poorer place now that he has left it. 

Seasons

 


 Spring of 2011. That was when we all learned what a millisievert is. When we learned how many it takes to make you sick...and how soon. When everybody took a crash course in nuclear chemistry by way of the internet or friends who used to be science majors because suddenly there was iodine 131 in the gentle rain and it would be nice to know if we ought to give the baby canned milk  or if we were just being silly.

    Suddenly Rem isn't just a band from the 90s anymore.

     Suddenly we are afraid.

      The old cold fear from the old cold war has returned.  No one has yet uttered the word "Strontium" on the news at eleven but those among us who are old enough whisper it to each other and wonder if the containment will completely fail and bring that too upon the wind.

     There is probably nothing to worry about. After all, the government exploded a lot of nuclear bombs in the Nevada desert and most of us were just fine. Sure, a few dairies in Utah had to throw away a few thousand gallons of milk, but nobody got sick or anything.

     Did they?

     When this tragedy finally passes and the reactors are sealed, each in their own concrete sarcophagus, what then? Can we go back to the way we were before? Sure, the 9.0 earthquake and huge tsunami were extraordinary events. Still, a system that turns into molten death if the water ever stops pumping for a few hours strikes me as being in need of a serious design modification, to say the least.

     Be seeing you

See? There's Nothing to Be Worried About...

    The EPA's response to the Fukashima reactor "partial meltdowns"? Lets ratchet up what we call a safe level! There! Problem solved. If there is a meltdown here we wont have to worry about evacuations.

     The EPA is preparing to dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after “radiological incidents,” according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
…
The radiation guides called Protective Action Guides or PAGs are protocols for responding to radiological events ranging from nuclear power-plant accidents to dirty bombs.
Drinking water, for example, would have a huge increase in allowable public exposure to radioactivity, the group says, that would include:
A nearly 1000-fold increase in strontium-90
A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for iodine-131
An almost 25,000 rise for nickel-63
The new radiation guidance would also allow long-term cleanup standards thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted, permitting doses to the public that EPA itself estimates would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed, the group says.


     Source: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110316/NEWS08/110316027/1969/NEWS/Group-warns-EPA-ready-increase-radioactive-release-guidelines-?odyssey=nav|head


   I have always been uncomfortable with the term, "partial meltdown". Seems to me to be about as silly as a "partial pregnancy". You either have one or you don't. Unfortunately, Japan appears to have three. According to MSNBC the same high capacity concrete pumps that were used to entomb Chernobyl are on their way to Japan now.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42359020/ns/world_news-asiapacific/&2


     The thing that bothers me is everyone keeps quoting I-131 levels. I am not that worried about I-131. It has a short half-life and we are a long way away. I want to know what the Strontium-90 levels are and if any has shown up here. That has a 28.8 year half-life and was what caused all the trouble when we still did above ground nuke tests. It is one of the common products of Uranium fission and concentrates in milk because it is chemically analogous to calcium.

    More when I have more to pass along.


     Be seeing you.