dimland radio 6-15-19 show notes

All Quiet In The Neighborhood

It's been quiet. Maybe a little too quiet.

Going To California

There won't be a new show next week, because I'm going to California to meet up with a couple friends I've only known online. It should be interesting and a lot of fun.

 

Unless they turn out to be serial killers. Then it would really be interesting.

Weren't The Confederates The Bad Guys?

I recently watched the 1940 Western Virginia City. It stars Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott, Miriam Hopkins, and Humphrey Bogart. There's a decided sympathy shown to the Rebels who were trying to get $5 million in gold from Nevada to the Confederacy, so the the War for States Rights could continue.

 

Yep, the War for States Rights. States Rights to keep slaves

 

The film even starts with a dedication to the Rebels. That indicated to me that this movie might have been based on actual events, but I couldn't find anything that confirmed this story was true.

 

Why would Hollywood show sympathy for the South when it comes to the Civil War? There was The Birth Of A Nation (1915), The General (1926), Gone With The Wind (1939), and other films that all overlooked the fact the war was about whether or not rich Americans could own people. I guess the studios didn't want to alienate Southern movie-goers.

 

There's also a horse falling stunt that made me recoil. Errol Flynn's character, a Union captain, is being chased on horseback by a group of Confederates, when he comes to quite a steep drop. It's almost a cliff it's so steep. He decides to attempt the decent, but midway down the horse he's riding starts falling head over hooves.

 

It was an actual horse doing the roll. It's very difficult to watch, but the horse appears to survive the fall as it immediately jumps up on its "feet". Yikes!

 

During my talk on my shock at the treatment of that horse, I was reminded of The Godfather and the infamous scene with a horse's head (a real horse's head) being left in the bed of a Hollywood studio executive. That's shocking enough as well, but what's even more shocking is that I am now older the actor Abe Vigoda was when he played to role of Salvatore Tessio! How is this possible?!

 

Abe at 50.

 

Me at 54.

 

The Valsalva Maneuver

 

No, that's not what they call that horse stunt in Virginia City. It's something one can do to equalize the pressure in ones ear as one is flying in a pressurized cabin.

 

I haven't flown very often, but the two occasions I traveled by air I suffered quite the sharp pain in my ears. The first time it happened I marveled at the prospect that everyone who flys experiences such pain, but they all seem to take it in stride.

 

Well, that can't be. I learned that some air travelers are susceptible to this discomfort and, obviously, I'm one of them. So, when you fly chew gum, yawn and swallow, or try the Valsalva Maneuver when you feel your ears plugging up, especially as your flight descends.

 

The New Documentary Always Amazing And The Justification Of Belief In Magic

 

A brand new documentary that follows the life, career, and friendships of magician/comedian The Amazing Johnathan is available on YouTube. It's an entertaining and truly touching look at this nutty performer's rise in the world of entertainment, an unexpected friendship, and dealing with a terminal diagnosis. It is well worth a watch.

 

Something is said in an outtake interview clip played during the end credits that sparked a topic for the show. It's the notion that those who want to believe magic is real cling to in their justification of their belief. They point to all that is still unknown to science. It's in there, they believe, that magic could exist.

 

That might be true, but, so far, of all the things that were unknown and are now known because of science, none can be attributed to magic. To quote Tim Minchin: "Throughout history, every mystery ever solved, has turned out to be not magic."

 

Here's Tim Minchin's Storm and a bit on magical thinking and the media's obsession with balance by Dara O'Briain. Both were referred to in my talk.

A Dimland Radio Science Zero: WHO

No, not the greatest rock band ever, but the World Health Organization. Normally, the WHO would be consider a Dimland Radio Science Hero for all the good work it does to fight the spread of disease and the keep the world population in good health, but recently the WHO has given promoters of alternative medicine something to point at as legitimizing their use of medicine by magic.

 

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is being included in the WHO's medical diagnostic guidelines. TCM is not science-based. It medicine by magic. And it's inclusion in the guidelines is, according to Dr. Steven Novella, " a full-throated endorsement of pseudoscience in medicine."

 

For that, the WHO is a Dimland Radio Science Zero.

 

Learn more here.

 

One Creepy But Cool Thing: The Dancing Pig (1907)

Little is known about this short film from 112 years ago. It's called The Dancing Pig and it shows a young woman being harassed by a man-sized pig in top hat and tails. Then the young woman turns the tables on the pig and gets it to dance with her. The film lasts about two minutes and ends with a closeup of the pig making faces and sticking out its tongue.

 

It's pretty creepy, but it's also pretty cool. The image of the pig smiling has been grabbed as a image from popular internet memes, so it might be familiar to you.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Highwayman' by The Highwaymen & 'Talking Doll' by The Screaming Blue Messiahs

Second ad break bumpers: 'In Between Days' by The Cure & 'Destination Unknown' by Missing Persons

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.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 11-18-17 show notes

I Turned 53 This Week (Astrologers, Put Your Charts Away)

I call it a milestone age: 53. I explain why after talking about the TV comedy Barney Miller. The show was pretty damn good and still is.

 

The connection of the show and my age has to do with the actor Abe Vigoda.

 

Pedantic Moment: Geico Casual Friday At Buckingham Palace

Geico has about three or four dozen ads on radio and TV, some of them are pretty clever. But there's one that shows one of those Buckingham Palace guards (you know the sort: Big furry hat, stand absolutely still, shows no emotion, etc) being relieved by a rather sloppily dressed fellow. You see, it's Casual Friday.

Funny, right? Well, not to this pedant.

There Is That Funny Ad By Progressive

Much like Geico, Progressive Insurance has many, many ads. Geico and Progressive must have massive advertising budgets. They might be able to charge lower premiums if they weren't spending so much to advertise.

 

There is one ad in particular that is very funny. It's the one that plays like a soap opera featuring Susan Lucci.

I'm Done With Sargon Of Akkad

There's a whole lot of difficult people on the internets. Trolls and others who just can't play nice with others. I try to stay out of the fray between YouTube atheists and skeptics over social justice and feminism and anti-feminism that has been boiling away for quite some time now.

 

I've watched videos, read opinion pieces, and listened to both sides SJW/Alt-Right/Nazi/Feminist arguments. I find reason and unreason on both sides. I try to side with the facts and treating people with respect and kindness.

 

Sargon of Akkad has been one of the more visible and controversial voices tending to call the SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) on what he thinks is their bullshit. I haven't done a deep dive on his stuff, but I've watched a few of his videos.

 

I might agree with him on this, disagree on that, but I haven't heard anything that I've thought crossed the line. He gets close, but nothing I'd heard him say made say, "That's it, pal. We're done."

 

Then came Mythcon a convention held earlier this year. I'm not exactly certain what Mythcon is, but it's a convention and it raised a few eyebrows by inviting Sargon and others in his camp to appear. Speakers decided not to attend due to how controversial these fellows (they are mostly middle-class, white males) are.

 

Sargon was interviewed before an audience that contained more than a few of his fans. The interviewer was Thomas Smith and he asked Sargon to confirm his statement made to a politician who is a woman who had been sexually assaulted. The statement to her was, "I wouldn't even rape you."

 

That's when I said, "That's it, pal! We're done!"

 

I go into a little more about my reaction to Sargon's assholery.

Top Three Cool Things Of The Week

Here are the Top Three Cool Things from this week.

3) Sure, I turned 53. Yep. Same age as Abe Vigoda at the premiere of Barney Miller. That's right. I'm old. But it's a birthday. A trip around the sun completed, another begun. That's cool.

2) At the Stuck in the 80s blog it was XTC week. I got to promote one of my favorite bands for a whole week. Somehow the first and last installments didn't get posted, I wrote six in all, but still. Four is pretty cool.

 

I wrote about the following songs:

Love On A Farmboy's Wages

Grass

Towers Of London

Senses Working Overtime

 

1) I will be the guest on Minnesota Atheist Talk Radio. My friend Maddy will being interviewing me. It should be pretty cool. And fun.

 

 

Movie Recommendation: The Iceman (2012)

 

Millennium Entertainment

Based on a true story, The Iceman introduces us to Richard Kuklinski (played by Michael Shannon), a quiet but menacing man who has no qualms about killing. He becomes a hitman for a local mob boss (Ray Liotta), a job he keeps from his wife (Winona Ryder) and their daughters.

 

It's a fascinating looks at a man's violent life. The film gets a bit violent, of course, and there is a scene showing part of the process of dealing with dead bodies that fairly disturbing. It may be on the brutal side, but if you enjoy true crime movies, I recommend this one.

 

It is streaming on Netflix.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Earn Enough For Us' & 'Dear God' by XTC

Second ad break bumpers: 'I Bought Myself A Liar Bird' & 'No Language In Our Lungs' by XTC

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 3-5-16 show notes

An Original Pic Of Re-Enactors

Are these the actual Earp brothers and Doc Holliday?

A Facebook friend shared a photo (above) that was said to be an original pic of Doc Holliday, Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil Earp. Weeeeellll. Not so fast there, Spanky.

 

To my somewhat trained eye, the photo looked too modern. It didn't look like the kind of photographs taken in the late 19th century. In fact, it looked more like a color photo that had been grey scaled. I was skeptical.

 

The real Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp.

 

 

 

The real Doc Holliday.

I looked for what I could be reasonably certain were actual photos (above) of the four men in question. Those men didn't quite match up with the four fellows that my friend shared. And the photographs look much more as though they were taken in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. In fact, Wyatt's and Morgan's photos appear to have been taken earlier than Virgil's.

 

I continued my search and found a color photograph of four re-enactors from present day Tombstone, AZ. Surprise! Surprise! Two of the men in the color photo are also present in that "original pic of Doc, Wyatt, and his brothers".

 

Compare the two on the left in this modern image to the two of the left in the picture of the alleged real lawmen.

That sealed it. However, my FB friend didn't care, because the image was romantic. Well, she should care. The internet is full enough of misinformation. She and the rest of us should all do our best to not add to the bullshit.

Abe Vigoda's Oscar Snub

His daughter called it an injustice. I don't think it's quite that, but I was disappointed to find out the producers of this year's Oscar ceremony didn't think to include Abe Vigoda in its In Memoriam segment. I guess they must have thought Vigoda was more TV than movie. More Fish, less Tessio.

 

Perhaps. That was the same reasoning when Farrah Fawcett wasn't remembered after she had died. But both Farrah and Abe had made movies. And Abe was in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, for crying out loud! I mentioned it would have been very poignant to show the scene in which Tessio realizes he won't be returning from the ride he's about to take. "Tell Mike it was just business." How great would that have been?

 

Vigoda wasn't enough of a movie guy, eh? How much of a movie guy was David Bowie? Do you think of Bowie as a movie guy? He does have more than 20 films to his credit, but so does Vigoda.

 

I looked back at past In Memoriam segments. I was looking to see of Johnny Carson had been included after he died. I looked for Carson because someone on Facebook suggested Vigoda might be like Carson - too TV. But Carson had hosted several Oscar ceremonies, so I thought it might be possible he was included. He wasn't. But! I saw that Jerry Orbach was.

 

Jerry Orbach had made some movies. He was the voice of the candelabra in Beauty and the Beast and he did put Baby in the corner in Dirty Dancing. But, come on! Most everyone who remembers who he was identifies him as Lenny Brisco, the police detective on TV's Law & Order.

 

Well, someone always gets missed. Abe Vigoda should have been included. The Emmys will likely remember him, but I don't ever watch the Emmys.

 

Maddy Love Talks About Being A Skeptic

 

I have been trying to listen to more of the local skeptical podcasts lately. One of which is the MN Trans-Atheist Podcast hosted by Maddy Love. I haven't gotten to listen to much but on a recent show Maddy gives a six minute talk addressing what it means to be a skeptic. She uses some ideas gotten from the awesome Carl Sagan, but she weaves in plenty of her well-focused ideas. She says in six minutes what I've been trying to impart in six years of doing Dimland Radio.

She graciously gave me permission to use her talk on my show. She even linked me to a nicely set-up mp3 version that I could easily play for my listeners.

 

Thanks, Maddy!

The Return Of Never Found Live Bonus Week

My Never Found in the 80s segments on the Stuck in the 80s blog had been dormant since last September. So, with Steve Spears and Brad Williams (hosts of the Stuck in the 80s podcast) heading out on the 80s Cruise, I thought I'd help Steve out with the blog by providing five more live clips of 80s alternative bands.

 

The acts I covered were: The Replacements, Let's Active, Cocteau Twins, Killing Joke, and Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians.

 

I talked about how the song by Let's Active (Blue Line) had an opening that was very similar to an REM song. I told how I had difficulty figuring out which REM song it was. Finally, I figured it out. It was Kohoutek from their album Fables of the Reconstruction. Phew! You can compare the songs using the links. Let me know if you think I'm right... or wrong.

 

I also noted the fan made video for REM's song Green Grow The Rushes was nothing but anti-capitalism images. I found it ironic as REM has made millions and millions of dollars through the capitalist system. I guess it's OK for your favorite band profits from capitalism, but not Coca-Cola.

And speaking of Robyn Hitchcock, I told the story of when Amy (my wife) and I were dating. We both had tickets to see shows on the same night. She had tickets for Joe Strummer, I had tickets for Robyn Hitchcock. We saw Hitchcock. Amy had never seen Strummer, I had. Amy would never see him. Joe Strummer died not long after that show.

I have regretted not going with Amy's tickets, instead of mine.

Someone Send Megan Fox The Demon-Haunted World!

 

 

Megan Fox has once again been photographed in public carrying a book written by my friend Scott Roberts. Scott is pretty much at the opposite end of the skeptical scale from me. Oh, he has his moments, but overall he tends toward the paranormal. I don't.

 

There's his name: Scott Alan Roberts!

In May 2015, Ms Fox was seen with Scott's book about giant angels. This past February, she had Scott and his co-writer's book on the Exodus (which didn't happen). Jeepers! It's good for Scott. I'm happy for him. It's just not so good for rational thought.

 

I wonder if I can figure out how to send her Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World.

 

Movie Recommendation: Breaking Away (1979)

 

20th Century Fox

A little sleeper hit from 1979 about four young men coming of age. They are called "Cutters" by the college students after what used to be the main industry of the town: Stone-cutting. "Cutters" is meant to be an insult when used by the students. Our four friends don't much care for those college kids.

 

There's Dave. He is the focus of the film. He is adrift like his friends, but he has cycling. And he's very good at it. He fancies himself Italian because he so admires the Italians' cycling skills. But reality hits him hard.

 

The conflict with the college students leads to the college allowing a team from the town to compete in the big cycling race to be held on campus. Dave and his friends enter that race to prove "cutters" are just as good as any college kid.

 

If you haven't seen this, put it in your queue!

 

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'Blue Bell Knoll' By Cocteau Twins & 'Every Word Means No' byLet's Active

Second ad break bumpers: 'The Wait' by Killing Joke & 'The Man With The Lightbulb Head' by Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians

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
 
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.