dimland radio 4-22-17 show notes

My Wife Should Take Your Next Selfie

My wife is an artist and she has a particular talent for taking selfies. She's done many of them, but she doesn't show them off. She's barely shown me any, but what I have seen are brilliant. The images are well composed, hard to tell they are selfies, and she looks great in them.

 

The other day, she was in the bedroom taking a few selfies, when I came in to give her a little cuddle. I suggested she do a selfie of us. She snapped a few shots and below is the best of them.

 

Yep. It's a selfie.

I compared this picture of the two of us to the work of two photographers who worked with The Beatles very early on. Astrid Kerchherr, a photographer, was the girlfriend of Stuart Sutcliffe, an artist and very early member of The Beatles. He left the band to pursue his art. However, he died young of a brain aneurysm, the cause of which is unknown, but it is believed by some to have come from a head injury suffered in a fight after a gig with the band. Kerchherr was one of the first photographers to document the Fab Four (five in those days with Sutcliffe) in their period before Brian Epstein and Ringo Starr.

 

Kerchherr in a self portrait with Sutcliffe.

Robert Freeman is the photographer responsible for the photograph used on the cover of The Beatles' second album: With The Beatles (or Meet The Beatles for the American version). The black and white image of the four mop tops is iconic. I think the image my wife made of us is a kind of combination of both those two photographers' work.

 

The iconic cover by Freeman.

If you're considering doing a selfie, you should have my wife do it for you. Of course, she'll have to be in the picture with you.

Memorial Service For Ed

Two weeks ago I talked about the loss of a distant family member. Ed was just 44 years old, when cancer took his life. On this show, I talked about the Celebration of Life service, which was very well done and so very moving. Ed's friendship and loyalty and good nature really touched many people deeply.

 

I also made sure to mention the friends and family who have helped Ed and his wife Dawne through the final stages of his life. They really stepped up and went all out for Ed and Dawne. I was so impressed by their efforts.

 

United Airlines Had A Little PR Problem

 

Of course, you've all heard of the fellow forcibly removed from a NOT overbooked United flight. It was a full flight in which some customers had to eventually randomly "volunteer" to give up their seats to four United Airlines employees. One of the four passengers, David Dao, refused and we all know how that went. Dao has a pretty strong case against the airline.

 

United Airlines is changing their current policy that customer is always expendable. We'll see how that works out.

 

But, I started to go on a rant about the amateur video of the incident. I think two videos surfaced and were featured on the news and both were in the foul, disgusting, awful, sickening, disorienting, frustrating portrait (vertical) format! Yes, I started to rant, but I stopped myself. Listeners have heard this rant before and I realized that my beef isn't with the amateur videographers. (Well, some of it is. I mean, it's not that difficult to turn the smart device 90 degrees, so that the video is in landscape.)

 

My beef is with the designers of those smart devices. I know there are apps that people can use that formats video in landscape no matter what angle the camera is held. But, we shouldn't need an app. These devices ought to be set with video being in landscape by default. If a person wants to make in vertically formatted video (why would anyone want to?), they would need to change the default setting.

 

So, Apple, Samsung, Sony, and all the rest of you smart device designers...I'm talking to you. Get on it!

Alex Jones Is A Performance Artist?

 

Alex Jones, internet sensation whose syndicated radio show is on Z Talk Radio (check the show schedule page), is a apparently performance artist. This is according to his lawyer, who is trying to win a child custody battle for the false flag-claiming, conspiracy theorist, bag of hot air. So, does this mean Jones is full of shit? Well, we already know that.

 

But is he admitting it now? Well, not on his show, he isn't. Apparently, only in court.

 

Steer Clear Of Demonic Knick-Knacks

 

According to former New Age/Hindu dude turned Christian evangelizing YouTuber, Steven Bancarz, people should remove all demonic symbols from their houses. This includes crystals, tarot cards, and other fairly obvious items. But, your house should also be rid of any yoga related material: books, mats, videos, exercise equipment, and, I suppose, yoga pants. (Mmmmm yoga pants.) And all items that are related to Hinduism have to go, as well.

Why? Well, these items are all portals through which demons can move into your place of dwelling and mess with your life and, presumably, property values.

I have a demonic item in my house (probably a lot more than just one). My demon statuette stands on a shelf in the living room. So far, he's been an ideal guest. We don't even have to feed him.

 

Your show host and his demon.

 

 

 

Talk About The Ten Commandments

 

I talked about both the 1956 classic film and the rules that Moses...er...God wrote. Well, neither of them wrote them, as the whole Exodus story never happened. There were no Hebrew slaves toiling away in Egypt, so there was no great purge of a massive labor force, no walking through the Red Sea, and no wandering around the wilderness for 40 years.

 

Be that as it may, there is a movie (more than one) of this nonexistent historical event. Cecil B DeMille's epic classic The Ten Commandments stars Charlton Heston, Yul Brenner, Yvonne DeCarlo, Ann Baxter, Edward G Robinson, and Vincent Price. The production, set design, and cinematography are beautiful. The music by Elmer Bernstein is powerful. And the special effects are pretty good for 1956.

 

The dialogue is...ridiculous! The way the characters talk in the film is so pretentious in its poetic nature. Every character is a poet, from Pharaoh on down to the slave walking straw into the mud pits to make bricks. It's so over the top and so not the way human beings talk.

 

I love it!

 

I mention a few of the more ridiculous moments in the film. Especially good, I think, is the reaction of a group of sisters when they see Moses sleeping in the bushes. "A MAN!"

 

I also talked about the Ten Commandments themselves. I noted the first four all pertain to God. That seems a bit needy to me. I suggested swapping three of those four out for the following:

Thou shalt not own slaves.

Thou shalt not rape.

Thou shalt not abuse children.

 

Those seem fairly obvious to me, but they didn't occur to God.

 

Movie Recommendation: The Ten Commandments (1956) & Secretary (2002)

 

 

 

What other movie could I recommend after having so much fun with it on the show? 

 

Weeeeellll, I did mention a little BDSMish film starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. This 2002 film is pretty saucy. I fondly recall a certain spanking scene. Now I'm not necessarily into that kind of thing, but the scene was rather...enjoyable. From what I hear, having not seen it myself, Secretary is far superior to that 50 Grey Shades movie.

 

 

 

So, depending on your mood, these could make for an interesting (and long) double feature.

 

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Buck Hill' by The Replacements & 'Raspberry Beret' by Prince

Second ad break bumpers: 'One Step Ahead' by Split Enz & 'War Dance' by Killing Joke

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

dimland radio 4-15-17 show notes

Not Talk About Meh Beer On This Show

I started the show by promising I would not mention the whole beer thing again. No mention of Rolling Rock or pilsners or Summit Extra Pale Ale or my boss getting me meh beer. That was my promise to my listeners and, to my readers, I make the same promise:

There will be no mention of the things I mentioned in the preceding paragraph anywhere in this entire post. No one mention.

This space has been intentionally left blank. 

A Sliver Of Slack

Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary, suffered "foot in mouth" disease when he mentioned Hitler and chemical weapons when saying what a bad guy the President of Syria is and that Russia shouldn't align themselves with him. But he made the mistake of bringing up Hitler and he was wrong. Hitler and the Nazis were using chemical weapons in the genocide attempted during the Holocaust.

My slack was given because Spicer was right to shame Russia for backing such an evil guy. But, as I said, just a sliver.

Why Didn't Hitler Use Chemical Weapons In Battle? 

Well, there is some indication there was, at least, one use of chemical weapons against Soviet troops and civilians in 1942. But why didn't the Germans use chemical weapons during the Allied Invasion on D-Day?

According to Hermann Goering, it was because of horses. The Germans used horses extensively to transport equipment. This was due to the low supplies of gasoline. The Germans couldn't come up with a gas mask that the horses would tolerate, so they didn't use chemical weapons on D-Day.

This means that had the Nazis figured out how to make a gas mask that horses didn't mind wearing, the invasion would have gone much differently, possibly even fail.

There are other speculations about the Nazi's reluctance to use chemical weapons in this interesting article on FactCheck.org.

 

SNL, Louis CK, Tig Notaro, And A Party Clown

 

A recent episode of Saturday Night Live had host Louis CK in a skit in which he hires a children's party clown to come to his house and entertain him. Just him. That's the first joke of the skit and I just ruined it for you. Sorry.

But, fellow comedian Tig Notaro had already made a short film using the same premise. And in her earlier version, she too ruins the first joke by saying upfront to the clown gig booker that the clown is just for her.

Notaro's version is much longer than SNL's by about 10 minutes. Still the similarities are undeniable. The material does appear to have been ripped off by SNL. However, I think SNL's is the funnier of the to sketches. 

This site has links to both sketches. You decide which is funnier. 

A Modern Pterosaur Expert?

 

Pterosaurs were flying reptiles from the age of dinosaurs and have been extinct for tens of millions of years. But there is a modern pterosaur expert who has taken to the internet to expose the truth that the beasts yet live! Well, they did during the American Civil War anyway.

Now, I'm not certain if this fellow is a Poe and is putting us all on. He seems to be on the level, though. His website has an "Official Announcement of a Joint Declaration." He, a modern pterosaur expert and a missile defense physicist agreed, by phone, that an old photograph of Union soldiers posing with a dead pterosaur is authentic.

The "expert" says another photograph alleging the same think is a hoax, but the one he touts is the real thing.

 

Well, I went over a few problems I had with his real thing. 

Movie Recommendation: Fail Safe (1964)

 

  

With the recent bombings carried out by the Trump Administration and everyone on edge about the impending nuclear war, I thought a nice movie about a miscommunication between American Strategic Defense and a US Air Force bomber squadron, leading to the President and the US Defense Department's desperate attempt to avert an unintended nuclear attack against Moscow would put my listeners' minds at ease. I'm such a stinker.

Directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda as the President, Fail Safe has many similarities to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. However, Fail Safe isn't a satire. It's deadly serious. And very thought-provoking.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Let's Go Down To The Woods' by The Screaming Blue Messiahs & 'Vanishing Girl' by The Dukes of Stratosphear

Second ad break bumpers: 'Into My Hands' by The Church & 'Ace Of Spades' by Motorhead

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

dimland radio 4-8-17 show notes

Meh Beer Days Continue And Almost Get Worse

The boss attempted to give me another 12-pack of Rolling Rock. This time I couldn't be adult about it and just accept the generous offer. I mean, had I accepted it without cluing him in on how meh I think that beer is, I might be getting Rolling Rock every time he feels generous.

 

So, I leveled with him and he exchanged it for the beer he used to get me: Summit Extra Pale Ale.

 

Phew.

 

Sad News

I broke from the lightness of the beer topic to mention that my extended family got a little smaller Friday morning. My brother-in-law's brother-in-law (not me, obviously) or my wife's brother's wife's sister's husband, Ed, died after a 14 year battle with cancer. I hope I don't sound too glib with my description of his relationship to me, but Ed had a pretty good sense of humor and I think he would have appreciated it.

 

He was a good guy. I liked him right away. He was a sports fan (he liked the Detroit, his hometown, teams) and he liked Star Trek and Star Wars, so what's not to like about the guy?

 

He was 44. Much too young.

A Little Evolution Talk

 

"If [humans are] from apes, why are the apes still here?" ~ misunderstander of the Theory of Evolution, Stephen Baldwin

 

It's a very common question asked by people who don't have an understanding of the basics of evolution. In short, humans are apes. We and the other Great Apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) are all cousins. We all came from a common ancestor.

 

Actually, along the twisting branches of evolution, there are several common ancestors as we make our way back to the main common ancestor to all of the Great Apes. Chimps and bonobos are the most closely related, so their common ancestor existed relatively recently. As we keep going back through the evolutionary lineage, the common ancestor for humans turns up, further back in time there's one for gorillas, and even further back is the one for orangutans.

 

Here, watch this clip. You'll hear Baldwin make the common error and then Dr. Richard Dawkins will explain why there are still apes.

 

 

Einstein, God, NdGT, And How Inquiry Stops

 

The above graphic popped up on Facebook the other day. I know Einstein has made some ambiguous statements about God, but he's never stated he believed in a god that listens to prayers, rewards with Heaven, punishes with Hell, works miracles, and fixes football games. As I understand it, Einstein's god was more like the awesomeness of nature and physics.

 

But even if he believed in an all-knowing, all-powerful, invisible man in the sky, so what? It wouldn't have lessened his contributions to science and the world. History is filled with many great scientists who also believed in some kind of god.

 

It seems the Christian types are saying, "Einstein believed in God, why don't you?"

 

Well, Einstein was brilliant, but he could still be wrong.

 

That led me to talk about a talk given by Neil deGrasse Tyson about how great scientists of the past, including Isaac Newton, carried the football of science forward until they reached the limit of their knowledge or abilities. At that point, they would appeal to God. Sort of like saying, "I can't figure this out. God did it."

 

NdGT's point was when those scientists would turn to God their work was done. The football was left on the field until another scientist with more knowledge, better equipment, mathematics, or other tools to apply science came along. That scientist picked up the football and moved it forward until their limit was reached. And so on, until NdGT got to Pierre-Simon Laplace.

 

I'll let Dr. Tyson tell the story (by the way, NdGT doesn't use the football analogy, that was my contribution):

 

 

Getting back to that Einstein quote. I couldn't determine whether or not Einstein actually said it. What I could find was a 1997 article in the Wall Street Journal written by Jim Holt. As far as I can tell, Holt is the source of the quote, even though he says the quote comes from Einstein. Hey! Cite your source, pal!

 

This link will get you to the article. Scroll down to Stefan Mertens' comment. He includes the whole text of Holt's article.

Movie Recommendation: None

  

Sorry, you are on your own this week.

 

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me' by Rosanne Cash & 'No Self Control' by Peter Gabriel

Second ad break bumpers: 'Seen And Not Seen' by Talking Heads & 'Y.O.Y.O.Y.' by Cheap Trick

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.