Once upon a time I had a blog here and may go back to it but meanwhile I've put it aside. These are some of the better entries over the years which I think are of continuing interest. I'll update them as need be and may even add stuff from time to time. Flotsam and jetsam means goods of potential value floating on the sea. Jetsam are those which have been jettisoned and flotsam, those which got there accidentally. Don't ask me which entries are which.
March 2, 2008
SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE BUT DEAD BODY JUST WON'T DECAYIn 1927, the story goes, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, the lama or spiritual leader of Buddhists in Buryatia province in Russia's Siberia, then 75, told his followers to come "look at my body" in 30 years, took the lotus position, meditated, said the prayer for the dead, and died. In those next decades the Buddhists suffered horribly as did many members of other faiths under Stalin, 46 lamas being executed. In 1955 in secrecy his followers exhumed the body, found it preserved, and reburied it in an unmarked grave. It would have remained so but in recent years a young lama grew curious about the story and found an old man to show him where the grave was. In 2002 the body was exhumed again, still in lotus position, still preserved. The faithful say Itigilov had entered a higher state of mind to achieve this. Scientists can offer no plausible explanation.
The body is now situated in a monastery. It issues a fragrant scent. The monks haven't decided what to do next. I think it would be a pity if they turned their monastery in a carnival freak show and charged admissions, sorry, solicited donations, for people to see it.
The first link is from a New York Times article when the body was taken out two years ago (this too preserved, by Joseph A. Adler, east Asian religions professor at Kenyon College.) The second is from the Moscow News, an up to date report, after the body had been examined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itigilov
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln260/Russian%20lama.htm
THE TRAGEDY OF CANADA'S HILTON FAMILY
My father's passionate interest throughout his life was boxing. He himself was pretty handy with his fists. His arena was the mean streets of the Saint John, N.B. slums in the dirty 30s. Old-timers told me that they never saw him lose a street fight, and since he was always sticking up for the Jews, against all comers, he had lots.
In the 1960s as a sideline he began a manage a young fighter from Edmundston named Dave Hilton. He told me that Hilton had the ability to go all the way.
My father died in his early 50s in 1968 and Hilton won three different Canadian championships, pretty good, but he did not fulfill my father's expectations.
Two of Hilton's sons did, winning world championships, thanks the tutelage of their talented father. The Hiltons became the most famous family by that name in Canada, not Paris.
Then tragedy struck. Dave Hilton Jr., WBC super middleweight champion, was sent to prsion for sexually abusing his two daughters.
Now Jeannie Hilton, 21, has published a book on the ordeal entitled Le Coeur au beurre noir (The Heart with a Black Eye). His sister Anne-Marie is now 19.
Knowing how highly my father regarded Dave Hilton Sr., her grandfather, as a man and as a boxer, I feel very very bad for him and of course for the girls.
I hope Jeannie succeeds with her book written both to help her and her sister get over their trauma and also others who have fallen prey to incest. She and her sister are both married and Jeannie is the mother of two children.
FOLLOWUP: Book is still only available in French, sadly.
JEANNIE HILTON AT A PRESS CONFERENCE
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=2872638
ON DONALD SUTHERLAND AND H5N1
I'll watch any show that Donald Sutherland (or his son Kiefer, star of "24") has a role in. He was spawned in the same waters as I was, he being born in Saint John, N. B. (where his father ran the streetcars) and moved to Bridgewater, N.S. and I being born in Bridgewater, N.S. and moved to Saint John, N.B.; he's my senior by about six years. We also attended the same elementary school, Victoria. So it was a treat to catch him one middle of the night playing a Dr. Strangelove-type half-mad army general in "Outbreak"(1995) starring Dustin Hoffman. It has to do with a devastating virus landing in America and potentially threatening the entire population. It's a premise that can't be ruled out entirely given the Spanish Flu pandemic at the end of the First World War that claimed 21 million victims world-wide, 700,000 in America, with even H5N1, that's bird flu, out there potentially capable of mutating at some point facilitating human-to-human transmission. "Outbreak" is not science however but Hollywood. Enough said.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114069/
Donald Sutherland got his start in show biz with a puppet, it appears.DOROTHY DEARBORN WRITES: The Puppet Club was a creation of my mother (Huia Ryder) and Stuart Trueman. Stuart wrote the plays for the puppet shows and mom taught them how to make the puppets. Donnie had a little puppet he made and kept in his breast pocket and used to hold coversations with it all the time.
Dorothy Dearborn supplied the picture
(Set browser at 50 per cent to see full-length on monitor.)
THE SECOND RENAISSANCE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY INFRA-RED RAYS
Edward Gibbon, said that history is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. The nearly total destruction of ancient literature is all of the above, and perhaps heads the list in all three categories, crime, folly, and misfortune. How many plays did Sophocles produce? We don't know. We do now there were 123 tites listed at the Alexandria Library and that only seven survive including Oedipus Rex. This is only the tip of a very large iceberg.
There was no paper back then, so they wrote on leather, papyrus, or parchment, and frequently it appears recycled their medium by writing over what had been on the manuscripts with new material. In almost all cases especially as we came into the dark and medieval ages when ignorance became institutionalized and the only interest was in producing religious texts, the earlier material was simply effaced although in some cases the writing had probably faded anyway. For a very long time scholars have been extracting texts and bits of texts from these palimpsests or overwritten manuscripts. There was no effective way to log into blackened and decayed manuscripts of which there are many especially from the Egyptian deserts.
Well there is some astonishly good news. Using infra-red technology scholars are now able to read decayed scrolls. Long-lost works of Sophocles, Hesiod,and Euripides may soon be available, and the cherry on the cake, an unknown novel by Lucian, one of the funniest guys who ever lived. To call it a potential second Renaissance as some are may be an exaggeration, but we'll have to wait and see what comes out of this.
http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/news/independent.html
BRICKLIN'S BACK -- THIS TIME A CHINESE CAR
Malcolm Bricklin earned a footnote in automotive history when he came to New Brunswick back in the 70s, was granted free access to the public purse, and proceeded to produce what was billed as a "safety car," the gull-winged Bricklin. It was a spectular failure, but not discouraged Bricklin returned years later by importing the Yugo, a Fiat produced in Yugoslavia. It became the biggest joke since the Edsel. Now he's planning to bring the first Chinese car to the US, the Chery. This is not such a bad idea considering how successful the Japanese have been and the fact that China is becoming an economic powerhouse. We wish him luck.
FOLLOWUP: He ain't gonna do it. Instead he's going to design his car and have the Chinese build it.
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=117627
FOLLOWUP: The car will have a lithium ion battery that gives 100 mpg.
http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/apr2007/bw20070412_025552.htm
WHISKEY ROBBER -- LET'S HAVE THE MOVIE!!!
I'm a book reader. If there's a choice I always like to read the book first and see the movie later and I'm almost always never satisfied with what goes on the screen. But here is a story made for the movies with all due respect to Julian Rubinstein, author of the uproarious Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts.
It's a true story about Attila Ambrus, a character as vivid and as controversial as Jesse James or John Dillinger. He robbed banks in the post-Iron Curtain Hungary. He also played hockey, so terribly that the actor who plays him will not have to learn the game. Unknown outside of Europe, Rubinstein learned of him when he saw a small item that a hockey goalie who had lived a double life as a bank robber had just escaped from jail using a bedsheet, and decided to check it out.
But it's not just Attila. The entire cast will be a treasure trove of incredible characters. For instance, the cop who tracked him doggedly for seven years was a portait in ineptitude who learned his trade by watching Columbo on television.
I'm giving you here links to Rubinstein's summary, an interview with Rubinstein on how he got the story, and a Hungarian site which brings you up to date. Was Ambrus a dashing Robin Hood? The Hungarian sites where you should go for more if you interested provide a few unpleasant details, like how he sometimes kicked security guards when they were down. But then he always treated his dog well.
http://mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a3165.asp
http://www.budapeststyle.com/pestpers.html
FOLLOW-UP: Ambrus is now serving 17 years in prison. And it says here Johnny Depp will play the lead in the movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Ambrus
STANISLAV PETROV: THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD
The time was September 1983. The Soviets had shot down a few weeks earlier a Korean airliner killing all 269 people aboard. Stanislav Petrov was commander in the secret bunker that monitored his country's early-warning system. Suddenly on the screen appeared five nuclear missiles heading his way from America. What to do?
Petrov had 12 minutes to decide. Launch the process of a response strike or gamble without knowing for sure that it was a false alarm. All eyes in the bunker were on him. At stake was the survival of the world as we know it. He had one straw to grab at. If this were a real attack, why would the Americans send just five missiles? He grabbed the straw and notified his superiors it was a false alarm, caused by a who knows what glitch in the system.
Petrov, 65, one of the great heroes of the century, lives out his days on a measly pension in a dank flat in Moscow. It's good though that his name has emerged. He deserves a mention in future history books.
http://www.brightstarsound.com/world_hero/article.html#anchor19021
MARIA THE JEWESS GETS SHAFTED
THE PICTURE IS FROM 1516.
When you are talking alchemy, you are talking Maria the Jewess, who with her trusty sidekick Kleopatra, made discoveries back in Alexandria that influenced alchemy for 1,500 years.
So why was she shafted by a site called WWW Chemistry Guide which produced a list of Top 10 Greatest Alchemists Of All Time? She's not on the list. I don't pay any attention to the bitching and complaining of the harridan movement, or whatever the feminists call themselves, that women are always getting short-shrifted by historians. But in this case they have a case. We all do.
No one would ever have known that WWW Chemistry Guide had made such a list except that it got picked up on the social networking site Propeller. Fair is fair. And these guys blew it.
It's not hard to find information on Maria. JUDAICA 2:546. "She invented numerous ovens and boiling and distilling devices out of metal, clay, and glass. ... Mary even discovered the water, sand, and oil baths which even today are indispensable in any chemical laboratory. Mary is the first to mention hydrochloric acid and one may therefore assume that she discovered it." JUDAICA 8:1430. "In chemistry, the bain-marie or water-bath used in all chemical laboratories is attributed to the first-century (CE) Jewess Maria Hebrea.: JACK LINDSAY (in "The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt" pp 243). "She elaborated all the essential appliance on which alchemy and chemistry was to carry on for nearly two millenia ... And she seems to have perfected the apparatus for distilling liquids. She described her methods of construction is much detail, even to the point of telling how to make copper tubes from sheet metal." RAPHAEL PATAI (in "The Jewish Alchemists," introduction). Maria the Jewish (was) the founder of alchemy." I'm sure the usually thorough Patai has good stuff on her, but I don't have the book, just stripped that quote off the web. Her protege Kleopatra is known to have written a book on cosmetics and poisons, which no girl should be without I should think.
The Wikipedia entry on Maria has her living around 300 CE, citing other sources. But this is bonkers. In that century Alexandria was close to being brain dead, and if she had been prominent then she ran the risk of meeting the same fate as the great female mathematician Hypatia, who was stoned to death. Even the 90 megabyte authoritative site The Alchemy Web Site is all over the map on Maria, guessing at 1st, 2nd, and 4th centuries. Bolos, says Britannica, lived about 200 BCE. Lindsay says, "Maria existed probably not very long after Bolos." That rings true because it would place her in the time when Alexandria was its zenith in intellectual ferment and discovery.
Interestingly her saying, "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth" was still being cited by the pioneer psychiatrist Carl Jung.
Not in the top 10? Give the girl a break. She's in a league of her own.
http://www.chemistryguide.org/articles/alchemists.php
GOOD NIGHT MARINKA, WHEREVER YOU ARE
Before the Bulgarian healer Marinka Petrova, late 50s, came to Israel in 1995 she told the physiotherapists who brought her here that wherever she goes there is sure to be a great increase in UFO activity. So she was the only one in the country who was not surprised by that huge wave that hit here in the second half of 1996 and filled the news columns week after week.
Marinka told her story in the Jan. 15, 1997 edition of the Hebrew-language magazine Signon under the headline "Don't panic. I brought with me my alien friends to help you." So far, so bad. But then she told her story.
First some background. The Dogon tribe of Mali believe that aliens from the star system Sirius visited Earth 3,000 or more years ago. They knew about the second Sirius star, a white dwarf, invisible to the eye, before science discovered it. Robert K. G. Temple in his book "The Sirius Mystery" postulated that the aliens came to Egypt and essentially established civilization on Earth. The Dogon came down from the ancient Egyptians. The Egyptian civilization did seem to rise out of nowhere.
In her interview Marinka said that when she was 37 she suffered from cancer and the doctors had written her off. One night she went to a seance, her first, and the other participants told her the messages referred to her. "They" would cure her. She followed "their" instructions, and after much suffering, was cured and subsequently became a healer herself. She related who "they" were. Aliens from Sirius. There appears to be no way that a Bulgarian women living behind the Iron Curtain could have been exposed to Temple's book or any other information on the Dogon. Yet her report of what they told her matches chapter and verse what Temple wrote about them. "They lived once on Earth and helped develop civilization." In my opinon Marinka has independently confirmed the Dogon tradition.
Marinka apparently left Israel in 2000 and didn't, from what I can gather, return to Bulgaria. There is no trace of her on the web unless it's in the Cyrillic language group, which I don't read. Here she was a semi-public figure advertising her healing services frequently and giving the occasional interview. Her satisfied patients were still seeking her on Hebrew-language forums until two years ago. She seems to have vanished into thin air. And this is a shame. I think more than anyone else on Earth Marinka may hold the key to shedding light on a great many mysteries. UFO investigators take note.
Good-night Marinka, wherever you are.
Stanton T. Friedmann
Stanton T. Friedmann is a nuclear physicist whose name is associated with Roswell. I first interviewed him in 1980 for Atlantic Insight magazine, out of Halifax, when he arrived in Fredericton, New Brunswick, to take up residence. This is his home page.
http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/sfhome.html
FOR THEM WWII WAS A 30-YEARS' WAR
Yokoi Shoichi and Hiroo Onoda were the last Japanese soldiers to surrender after the end of the Second World War. Shoichi was found on Guam in 1972 and Onoda in the Philippines in 1974. Fascinating stories of survival. Shoichi married, adjusted well, and even got elected to parliament. Onoda refused to lay down his still working rifle without a direct order from his superior officer who was brought over for the purpose, couldn't adjust to the new Japan, and went to farm in Brazil. He may still be alive; Shoichi died in 1997.
This site discusses how they survived.
http://www.primitiveways.com/jungle_30_years.html
HANS GRUBER COMES TO LIFE, DIRECTS PLAY ABOUT SCOUNDREL
Here's a case where the character in a movie has taken over the personality of the actor.
Actor Alan Rickman has become Hans Gruber, the German terrorist he played in Die Hard.
The story is this. A 23-year-old American woman Rachel Corrie came to Gaza to show solidarity with the downtrodden people. She gathered children around her and showed them how to burn a mock American flag in order to whip up sympathy for Saddam Hussein, the past master in downtrodding people. From that it was obvious what her philosophy was, all downtrodden are equal, but some are more equal than others.
St. Rachel Of The Bulldozer instructs little children how to burn American flag
The Israelis had a policy of bulldozing houses on the southern border when they were in Gaza if they found tunnels had been dug under them to smuggle weapons and explosives. The bulldozers came out to do their job. They warned people gathered round several times to keep their distance and no one gets hurt. Corrie climbs up on a mound exactly where a bulldozer is excavating, the mound shakes, she falls underneath the dozer, the driver doesn't see her and backs up, and she's wormfood.
Since then she's become the Joan of Arc of the anti-Semites. She lay down in front of a bulldozer and it ran over her on purpose, the instant propaganda myth says.
What does Hans Gruber do? He develops a play based on the "martyrdom" of Rachel Corrie, already the frontrunner in the annual International Sieg Heil Award competition.
They showed this in New York, omitting of course the scene where she burns the American flag. This burning was in support of a tyrant who killed, counting the conscripts whom he sent into two senseless wars which he started, the innocent victims of his mass gassings and torture chambers, and the children whom he let die from malnutrition from sanctions he brought upon his country and did nothing to lift, 2 million people, and never mind the countless maimed and crippled.
Saddam's dream was to nuke Israel but was left up the creek without a reactor so instead he fired dozens of scud missiles into populated areas and that made him the perfect champion for anti-Semites the world over; they could forgive him his other peccadillos. The Americans with their invasion ruined any chance Saddam would resume his assaults and for that they deserved to have their flag burned in front of a gathering of little children by Corrie in an attempt to infect them with her hate-driven fanaticism.
Who else would see the suicide of this malevolent scoundrel worthy of a play except a villain like Hans Gruber, birds of a feather flocking together and all that.
http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004796
SABINA, JUNG, AND THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
Sabina Spielrein is a towering figure in the history of psychiatry. An emotionally disturbed young woman she was both healed and seduced by Jung and then went over to Freud and supplied him with his death instinct theory. She became the first female psychiatrist. A Jewess, she returned to her native Rostov-On-Don in the Soviet Union, could not practise as time went on there under Stalin, and then the Germans arrived and murdered her and her daughters.
The Soul Keeper is a movie made about Sabina and I just caught it on Israeli cable.
Emilia Fox as Sabina was scintillating and so was Jane Alexander, the legend,looking as good as ever, as Carl Jung's wife Emma. In fact as far as acting goes everyone gets the maximum five stars. Iain Glen plays Jung.
The problem for the moviemakers was that Sabina's life is a true epic; you turn on the tap and her life will fill all your bottles and still be pouring out. They had to pick and choose what they would try to do. The first half or more of the movie which concentrates on her relationship with Jung was excellent. However her collaboration/treatment with Freud, historically equally as important, was ignored, which will bother only those who know about it.
Things start to fall apart in the movie when Dr. Sabina moves back to Russia. The scenes at her psychoanalytic school and the remembrances of the last pupil still alive, a man then 84, how she reached him at age 4 or 5 by use of a monkey are moving and spellbinding -- "the glory of these few admirable minutes of film destined to go down in anthologies on the relations between the Tenth Muse and psychoanalysis" in the descriptive words of the Corriere Della Sera reviewer.
However the producers resorted to a hokey gimmick in trying to convey the sweep of events in the background in Russia under Lenin by running black and white documentary film. It was an unnecessary distraction but could have been conceded for the sake of an attempt at historicity except for the fact that the concluding segment, the arrest of the Jews by the invading Germans, was a total joke. It has to be the worst Holocaust roundup scene in movie history, and reminded one of something patched in from the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers more than an actual event.
What was wrong? As the Germans were still, apparently, fighting with the retreating Russians in the city, knots of male Jews were milling about with their families dressed in traditional ultra Orthodox costume, skullcap, tallit, black suits. Under Stalin these outward marks of ethniticity had vanished long before. These men would hardly have brought out the suits and accessories stashed in the attic in order to draw attention to themselves and make it that much easier for the Germans to find them. Why were they in the streets? People stay indoors when combat is taking place or at least don't gather in groups. Everywhere else in Europe the Jews were trying to hide as best they could. There was no indication in the movie that there had been a formal roundup. Events were telescoped as if battle and herding were happening all at once, when this could hardly have been the case.
You can see what the moviemakers were thinking. The audience has to know Germans look like this, Jews look like this, you can't issue scorecards at the door. But if they were going to go to the extreme of documentary black and white film to capture one part of history, why go to the other extreme of dispensing with reality entirely in another part by falling back on stereotypes which did not apply. The bookends should have been asymmetrical. (If I'm wrong about all this, then of course I retract the criticism.) The lack of consistency in judgment is what was irritating.
This is what you call a worthwhile high-quality film. The moviemakers bit off a bit more than almost anyone could chew -- there is just so much to tell and so little time to tell it and having to keep it entertaining all the way through. Perhaps the only way to do a full Sabina biography is through a television series or something of that nature. All in all, it's highly recommended and a heartfelt thanks to those who made this movie.
Director Roberto Faenza made this comment about Sabina. "I have always thought that Jung was a madman. Sabina was lucky enough to be cured."
This will provide you with a synopsis.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349995/
There's also a documentary on Sabina. The English title is "My Name Was Sabina Spielrein" and it is directed by Elisabeth Marton. At this site they have photographs of Sabina with her family.
http://www.sabinaspielrein.com/
PRIVATE EYE CAN'T FIND LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS
Mary Mapes, who engineered CBS's attempt to hijack the 2004 presidential election using forged documents, and described as a "psychopathic liar" by commentator Liz Trotta, has been sacked along with three incompetents. Dan Rather having promised to walk the plank was not shoved out along with them.
But this still leaves open the question who committed the crime? Bill Burkett, a known wacko and Bush hater from Texas, supplied the documents. He said the source was one Lucy Ramirez who called him and they were delivered to him by a male stranger at a rodeo. No one has found this Lucy in the sky with diamonds not for lack of trying. Now the word is, Mapes, the producer of the show, looks to be the forger. This story is not over until someone is hauled into court.
http://scyllacharybdis.blogspot.com/2004/11/mapes-did-it.html
It turns out that CBS itself hired a private eye to find the source. His name is Eric T. Rigler of San Antonio, former FBI agent and Navy flyer. He ran into a dead-end at Burkett.
http://www.observer.com/node/50441
Perfect crime. The law has turned a blind eye, no one's even looked for the forger.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=6790
FOLLOWUP: Rather is now suing CBS. This is what is called in Hebrew, hutzpah. Example -- Kid kills both his parents. He's hauled into court. "Judge," he says, "you gotta show mercy on me. After all, I'm an orphan."
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=6790
Here's my favorite cartoon from the scandal.
GYPSIES SUING IBM FOR AIDING NAZIS
Like the Jews the Gypsies were singled out for extermination by the Germans and suffered enormous losses in the Holocaust. The company that made finding victims of both groups possible was IBM. There is a saying, It may be too late to be early, but it is never too late to be right. The Gypsies are now suing that fiendish company for damages in Switzerland and I wish them well in trying to get just a little bit of justice.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/08/ramasastry.holocaust.ibm/index.html
There are several million Gypsies alive today, mostly in central and eastern Europe, and they suffer horrendous discrimination almost everywhere. Human rights will reach every corner of the globe before it does Europe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,7369,870469,00.html
FASHION TYCOON WEARS NO CLOTHES
The suit of clothes is altogether
But altogether it's altogether
The most remarkable suit of clothes a tailor ever made.
Christian Fabre may not be a king but he rules over one of the largest industries in southern India, which results in the employment of 60,000 people. He's a clothing manufacturer yet he himself walks around as naked as the day he was born, as the rule.
And no he wasn't as in the Hans Christian Andersen fable sold a bill of goods by some swindlers. Quite the opposite.
Fabre landed in India from his native France to establish a clothing business, soon lost all his money, his wife took the kids and left him, and he found himself alone as a chain-smoking wreck. Then one day he met a leper who had no hands or legs but exuded serenity as if he had not a care in the world. The man became Farbe's guru. He told him that to find peace of mind you must get by with only the barest necessities, pardon the pun. On the other hand the guru told Fabre he should not give up his business which is a social responsibility, and this began to flourish.
Fabre today is known as Swami Pranavananda Brahmendra Avadhuta. He lives a dual life, most of the time as a Hindu holy man, part of the time back in the office (well robed) as a high-powered executive. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet he can keep an eye on his affairs from his retreat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3094780.stm
HIT FILM STAR DISCOVERED BEGGING ON STREET
The chances that this movie would ever be heard of, let alone watched, were infinitesimal. It cost only $46,000 to produce. It was made in a foreign language that few people in the world understand. The star of the film, a 13-year-old girl, was discovered begging on the street, trying to support her family of eight who lived in a one-room flat. Yet the film is being acclaimed, by all reports an artistic and financial success, has been screened privately by both Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton, and it's one of those very rare films from what I can see will still be fresh in 50 or 100 years, in short, an instant classic.
The film is called "Osama," but it's not about America's public enemy no. 1, rather some of the victims of the Afghan society under the repressive Afghan regime. Women were not allowed to work, so a doctor and her mother had no way of supporting themselves. The doctor hit upon a plan, disguise her young daughter as a boy and send her out to work. She was given the name "Osama." All went well until the girl was shanghaied into a religious boys' school (the only kind) -- there were no schools for girls whatsoever -- and then her true sex is discovered.
Who would play the lead? Writer-director Siddiq Barmak scoured the streets of Kabul until he saw Marina Golbahari, who had been begging on the streets for years. Her father had been tortured by the Taliban and maimed. Since she couldn't read -- what girl of her age could? -- she had to be fed the lines orally. A star was born, although in this case and in the context of Afghan society, it has not resulted in her enrichment beyond the fact that she now can go to school and at least for the near future, need not return to the street to beg.
The first link is a review, the second tells you what's happened to Marina since, and third is the official site where you can see the trailer.
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200403080830.asp
http://www.austin360.com/news/content/movies/aasstories/2004_march/osamateen.html
ON MOREY BERNSTEIN AND SHANTI DEVI
When the major religions flog an "afterlife" of endless length, "immortality," this is pure tripe, the product of demented wishful thinking. There is not a shred of evidence of survival beyond the grave nor can the claim of a lifeform existence exceeding the estimated life of the universe be reconciled with the known laws of physics.
But there is one law of physics that leaves the door slightly ajar to the concept of reincarnation. That's the first law of thermodynamics, nothing is created or destroyed, just changes form.
Assuming our essence is quantifiable, and it would have to be infinitesimally small since it exists at the moment of conception, the question then becomes what happens to it at the moment of disintegration.
The problem with reincarnation is that the population is increasing by leaps and bounds and so the idea that everyone hops back from one life to another gets eliminated quickly by sheer mathematics. The only ways, it seems to me, to square the circle is to postulate movement between species here or the existence of parallel worlds through which the human essences move without missing a beat.
Yet the stories abound of people "remembering" previous lives, many of these conjured up under hypnosis. Perhaps the most famous of these was the story of Bridey Murphy in the 50s which became a best-selling book and then was made into a movie.
This came about because a 29-year-old housewife Virginia Tighe went to an amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein in Colorado in hopes that he could help her stop smoking. He regressed her to her early childhood then kept on trucking into an alleged previous life in Ireland where she was known as Bridey Murphy. Researchers working on the data that came out of the sessions ripped the story to shreds and Bridey Murphy vanished from public view.
Morey Bernstein continued defending the truth of the story right to the end of his life. How do we know that? Well, someone in 1999 asked the Straight Dope answer man Cecil Adams the question, "Is It Possible To Recall Past Lives Through Hypnosis?" and he answered mainly by referring to the arguments against Bridey Murphy. Who responded with all guns blazing, almost like a voice from the dead himself? Morey Bernstein. He did die on March 21 of that year at age 79, apparently not long after his ripsnorting parting shots.
Here is this unique page followed (for balance) by the famous story of Shanti Devi in India, who without need of hypnosis recalled details of another life as a very young girl and, as it seems, passed all the tests put to her.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_287.html
http://reincarnation.gq.nu/Shanti.html
QUACK, QUACK OR IF IT WALKS LIKE A DOC ...
If it walks like a doc and quacks like a doc, it's a doc, right? Not necessarily in the medical field. Could be simply a quack. Far be it from me to push wild cure theories, there are too many sick people in the world grasping for straws and too many con artists willing to sell them worthless straws for bundles of cash. Well you can't take it with you, after all. So caveat emptor. This entry is not in any way an endorsement of or recommendation to try any product or alleged treatment.
But I'm fascinated with the life of one Gaston Naessens, an offbeat researcher and practioner who beat the rap on a charge of accessory of murder in a trial in Quebec in 1989 when a woman with advanced breast cancer died while being treated by him. At the trial there was a parade of witnesses who testified he had cured them. Christoper Bird, who had collaborated on the best-seller "The Secret Life of Plants," sat through the trial and later wrote a book about Naessens, "The Trial and Persecution of Gaston Naessens" (originally "The Galileo of the Microscope").
That's where the matter stands. Naessens's website is Cerbe, but the law forbids Canadian residents from entering it. And yes the treatment does cost bundles of money.
http://www.curezone.com/diseases/cancer/714-X.asp
ASPIRING TO EMULATE LONGFELLOW? DIEGO GARCIA NEEDS YOU
The United States and Britain have made themselves the champions of human rights on the planet and they are quick to take anyone to task whom they perceive does not live up to their idealistic standards. All power to them; we do need voices of conscience here backed up by large hands wielding rubber truncheons. The trouble is that these voices of conscience vanish when the violators of human rights are none other than the Yanks and the Brits themselves. Take the case of Diego Garcia.
About 30 years the Americans were looking for an uninhabited island on which to put a military base primarily for their long-range bombers. They asked the British if they had anything left in their colonial grab-bag that might fill the bill. Yes, came the reply, Diego Garcia in the South Indian Sea.
There was just one small detail. The island was not uninhabited. It was populated by several thousand people who had lived there for 200 years and had a pleasant, perhaps idyllic, life fishing and raising coconuts. One day British ships arrived, rounded up the people, gave them permission to take with them one suitcase meaning none of their furnishings or tools or other valuable belongings, and chucked them into the slums of Mauritius, with no money, no help, no skills to make a living, and no hope. The Americans then took possession of the island, cleansed ethnically and every other way, and paid the British billions of dollars in armaments for the favor.
Three years ago the long-suffering exiles won a moral victory in a British court which agreed that they had been done wrong. But the court offered no remedy, not compensation and certainly not the right to return, even for those seeking to work at the military base -- the recruiters of foreign workers have long-standing instructions, take anyone except the Diego Garcians.
As far as the British go the whole thing reminds me of the expulsion of Acadians from Nova Scotia some 250 years ago. Many were taken to Louisiana where they are called Cajuns and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem "Evangeline" is about that sorry episode. Who will write the sequel?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/12/60minutes/main558378.shtml
http://www.cosmos.ne.jp/~miyagawa/nagocnet/data/diegogarcia1e.html
FOLLOWUP: The Chagos continue to be dragged slowly, slowly through the UK court system. Next stop the House of Lords.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GILLIGAN?
Remember Gilligan's Island (or discovered it on the reruns) and want to know what happened to him? Well going by this book he's in a mental ward with Holden Caulfield (of "Catcher in the Rye"), Edsel Ford, and a pregnant Richard Nixon. This is an entertaining new novel entitled Gilligan's Wake by Tom Carson.
THE MOST ORIGINAL OPENING PAGE ON THE WEB
I somehow stumbled onto this page and then shouted to my son, "Come here and see this. It's the most original opening page on the web." He next shoved me out of the chair and when last I looked an hour later he was still there having a whale of a time.
Here's what one reviewer said about this site and I second everything he wrote.
"The great thing about the Internet is that anyone on the entire planet has a platform to showcase their views, interests, and creativity to a worldwide audience. Along those same lines, the worst thing about the Internet is that anyone on the entire planet has a platform to showcase their views, interests,and creativity to a worldwide audience. There is no screening process or quality control when it comes to the Internet. As far as content goes, the bad pretty much outweighs the good. But if you look hard enough, between the fansites dedicated to Jennifer Lopez's posterior and the endless nonsensical ramblings by world-renowned web columnists, you can occasionally find that hidden gem. A website that lies off the beaten path. A place filled with interesting and entertaining content that demands you email your friends about it, so they can enjoy it too. I've found one of those sites. It's called Homestarrunner.com.
"It's difficult to exactly classify what this site is all about. Essentially it's a website dedicated to the trials and tribulations of these fictitious characters that only exist within the realm of this website. All of the content is masterfully created in Flash by brothers Mike and Matt Chapman, the creators of the site. By thoroughly exploring the site you will not only realize how much solid, entertaining content it contains but you will also slowly begin to understand the world of Homestar Runner. And it's definitely an unusual world."
Word of advice. Give the page a moment or two to warm up.
http://www.homestarrunner.com/systemisdown.html
FRED DEMARA -- THE WORLD WAS LITERALLY HIS STAGE
One of the most fascinating news stories to surface when I was growing up in New Brunswick in the 1950s was the story of Fred Demara, later the subject of a 1961 movie, "The Great Imposter," starring Tony Curtis.
Demara was not a Canadian, but of French-Canadian stock, his father having migrated from Quebec to Massachusetts. One day in 1951 he stole the medical credentials of a northwest N.B. physician, one Dr. Cyr, and went to Saint John to enlist in the Navy. There was a war on in Korea, the Navy was short of doctors, so they took him pretty well no questions asked. Commissioned as a surgeon-lieutenant, he was sent to the war zone on the HMCS Cayuga.
All went well, but then too well. Three badly wounded South Korean soldiers were brought aboard, one with a bullet in his chest, another with a mangled foot. The surgeon-lieutenant cooly operated and saved all their lives. The deed was publicized far and wide and unfortunately for Demara the mother of the real Dr. Cyr read a report and notified the authorities. Demara was of course drummed out of the Navy and also kicked out of the country, but the Cayuga was only one performance in a series of various roles Demara gave himself in life apparently taking literally Shakespeare's famous line, "All the world's a stage."
The reason I bring this up now is that I've discovered a site that has kindly posted the first 10 chapters of Robert Crichton's 1959 book on Ferdinand Waldo Demara's life and escapades.
http://www.anexx.com/AnEx/greatimpostor/
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, DOM DIMAGGIO?
Tragedy is defined as a fall from a high estate to a low. If that's the case it's hard to imagine greater tragedies among baseball stars than those that enveloped Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers, the last pitcher to win 30 games, and Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, the last batter to hit .400. McLain has been in deep trouble ever since he slid out of baseball and is now coming towards the end of another eight years of hard time. But Williams's end is downright ghoulish. Instead of being cremated as per his request and allowed to RIP in waters he so loved to fish, his head was cut off, holes were put in it, and his body placed in liquid nitrogen. People do this sort of thing for the same reason the ancient Egyptians mummified themselves, in the hope of resurrecting. But unless Ted is going to come back as the Headless Horseman, his state makes no sense at all. What has Dom Dimaggio, who played alongside Ted on the powerhouse Sox teams of the late 40s, got to do with this? Nothing, except that he represents sense.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/news/2003/08/12/williams_si/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Williams_(baseball)
RARE TREAT FOR VELIKOVSKY AFICIANDOS
If you are an aficiando of Immanuel Velikovsky you are in for a rare treat here. You can watch a documentary film by Henry Zemel telecast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1972 featuring interviews with the magnificent guru himself.
http://www.varchive.org/bonds/bondsrp.htm
THE MOST GLAMOROUS THING ABOUT HEDY LAMAR -- HER INVENTION
In her day actress Hedy Lamar was one of the world's most beautiful women, but she'll be remembered in the distant future as inventor.
http://www.inventions.org/culture/female/lamarr.html
