I Have a Dream: 50 Years & Today

Today, we mark 50 years since Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic I Have a Dream speech.  Celebrations are taking place today on the Mall in Washington DC.  Presidents are speaking and the day will be covered relentlessly by the media.  What has been interesting to me this week is seeing archival footage of media coverage of that day 50 years ago.  How is was covered in print, on the radio, and on television is fascinating.  Some of the news stories bordered on poetry.  People definitely understood that they were seeing something special.

A lot has changed in America since that day.  Much of it is for the better.  Some of it is most definitely not.  And some things at their core haven't changed much at all, at least in parts of our nation.  My heart wars between hope and despair.

One of the saddest legacies of this speech is that it is not itself open and free to the world.  The King estate keeps it under lock and key, seemingly for little beyond power, profit, and prestige.  I would like to think that Dr. King would feel shame at this today, but sadly, it was he who started that ball rolling.  It does not diminish the speech, but it does diminish its legacy.

Today, however, the world will have the chance to watch the speech in its entirety on both CNN and MSNBC.  Broadcasts will happen this afternoon and again tonight.  MSNBC is airing the speech at 8:00 PM eastern time in the United States with limited commercial breaks as part of a special All In with Chris Hayes.  I have listened to the speech;  It was part of a public speaking course that I took at Stanford.  I have seen bits and pieces of the television footage over the years.  I have not, however, ever seen the entire thing.  I find that exceedingly weird and quite sad.  I have my DVR primed.  I hope that you will, too.  And make sure that your children watch it.  It may be their final chance for another 50 years.  (Well, until 2038.)

I hope that we all have a dream.  When we all actually do, the dream may finally be realized.

28 August 2013

The Land of Enchantment...

...is becoming much more enchanting.

22 August 2013

27 August 2013 Addition:  Update on goings-on in New Mexico from TPM.

Slowly-sinking Ears

Yes, apparently I have now joined the rest of the Internet in posting nothing but cat videos.



21 August 

Shark-Duck-In

This year's Shark Week took on new levels of crazy and yet nature still proves that it is THE MAN, mother though it may be.  From The Huffinton Post:

Researchers at the University of Delaware's ORB LAB posted this photo of a shark within a shark on Facebook in late July. The lab memebers were using a small fish called a menhaden as bait to recapture sharks they had previously tagged.

According to the Facebook post, a 3-foot-long shark known as a dogfish swam up and snatched the bait moments before a large female sand tiger shark swallowed the dogfish.

Awesome... unless you are either the dogfish or the menhaden, of course.

16 August 2013

Stop and Frisk... Wall Street

John Oliver explained stop and frisk as well on The Daily Show as it has been anywhere else.  And extending it to Wall Street is a stroke of genius!  Well played.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

15 August 2013

The Olinguito

New mammal discoveries are rare now.  Those as cute as the olinguito are rarer still!

15 August 2013

Addition:   As long as "cute" is one the menu today, I give you Yuan Zai.

16 August 2013 Addition: Some folks are having trouble accessing the movie above in-frame.  You can follow this link to see it.

Catfish Roomba?

While I'm not an advocate of dressing up animals in general, much less cats, this is pretty funny.


8 August 2013

Beautiful day, happy to have been here.

This is a fantastic obituary written by an author from Seattle.  Worth the read.  I first learned of it on The Huffington Post.

God speed, Ms. Lotter.

7 August 2013

House GOP: Truth Behind the Lie

There is a fascinating piece at TPM about the recent GOP failures in the House to push their supposed spending agendas and why these efforts -- or lack thereof -- signal that the emperor has no clothes.  Talk about spending is cheap, it turns out.  One can claim to want to slash spending, even to burn government to the ground.  When push comes to shove, however, the House GOP cannot ever pass bills as negotiating positions with the Senate.

The GOP is splintering.  Their share of the political pie is dwindling in the broader context and there is no voice strong enough within the party to unify behind.  This is going to get more and more ugly and it isn't good for the nation.  Within the context of a two-party system, we need two strong parties bringing their ideas to the table and then hashing out compromises using both party's philosophies.  Right now, we have gridlock in its most dangerous form.

The GOP is burning itself to the ground and there is no one to blame but the party itself.  It may take a decade or more for the party's decline on the national level to be complete, but it is coming.  History may one day decide that this time has already come.  We shall see.  I just hope something better replaces the Grand Old Party.  At this point, pretty much anything would be better.

Certainly, a part of me greets the GOP eating its young with glee.  By and large, their ideas today are reprehensible and grossly immoral.  Yet real live human beings -- my countrymen -- are being hurt economically, spiritually, and in all-too-many-cases physically.  How can anyone cheer that?

1 August 2013