The music group OK Go is known for its highly choreographed videos done in just one take that depends upon carefully timed movements that must require plenty of rehearsing. Sometime ago, I linked to one that had a large number of dogs involved. Their latest one seems to exceed all their previous efforts and involves a ton of paint. I felt sorry about all the guitars, though.
First you can see the video.
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Gilliam is one of the members of the Monty Python troupe, not as well known as the other five because he was rarely seen in the TV series and films. His main role was providing the animations that provided the transitions between sketches and scenes. After the Python era ended, he went on to become a successful director. In a recent interview, he gave his opinion on the recent exposes of predatory sexual behavior in the entertainment industry and said some appalling things, among other things comparing the #MeToo movement to mob rule.
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You have got to hand it to the Saudi Arabian regime. They have figured out how to get really good press in the US despite presiding over one of the most appalling governments in the world when it comes to both domestic and foreign policies. They have realized that as long as they are supportive of US and Israeli goals in the Middle East, the US media will have an immediate bias in their favor that will cause them to find any reason to ignore their appalling record, such as the horrendous amount of suffering they are causing to the people of Yemen, their breeding of extremist Islamic ideology, and their appalling record of human rights at home.
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The vice-president is a notorious homophobe and that is just one of his many awful qualities as John Oliver points out. But after documenting how awful Pence is, Oliver reveals that Pence is releasing a children’s book about their pet bunny named Marlon Bundo and then springs a surprise.
That the Donald Trump administration is corrupt is old news. What is incredible is how far down the corruption extends and how even low-level grifters seem to have been able to find a home in its various niches. Ben Carson has already been in trouble because of his willingness to cut programs that benefit those who lack adequate housing while spending money on expensive furniture for himself. Now comes reports that one of his advisors Naved Jafry has resigned under a cloud.
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Last week saw students in schools around the nation stage a walkout to protest the lack of action by the government to the easy availability of high-powered guns that have been used in so many mass killings. In general, school authorities and local communities have been supportive of these actions, or at least tolerated it and did not punish students for the walkouts. Some universities have even said that a suspension for such an action would not adversely affect a student’s application for college admission.
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Some time ago I wrote that the neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, white supremacists and the various assorted fascistic-minded types were using ‘lulz’ i.e., mocking humor and irony, to draw in new recruits, forgoing the old skinhead, tattooed, tough look for the clean cut boy next door image. And it seemed to be working. But then they encountered the antifa movement and Natasha Lennard writes that now some are discovering that there is a tangible cost to spreading messages of hate .
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Robert Wright writes that the lack of cognitive empathy is one of the major drivers that leads Americans to support one disastrous war after another. He distinguishes cognitive empathy from the more familiar emotional empathy and says that some so-called ‘think tanks’ in the US and major media like the New York Times are undermining whatever minimal cognitive empathetic impulses people might have and are thus making wars more likely
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Galileo used the newly invented telescope to persuade people that the moon was not a perfectly smooth sphere, as all celestial objects were believed to be at that time, but had mountains and valleys and craters that made it seem just like the Earth. This caused considerable consternation at that time with some denying what they saw, saying that it was the telescope that was creating those blemishes.
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I have written many times before about one of the greatest atrocities of the Vietnam war, a war that was itself a monstrous atrocity at every level. The My Lai massacre was notable because the appalling facts eventually came out (although more than a year after the event) and were undeniable and yet president Nixon excused the actions of the murderous soldiers and the officers who ordered the attack in which the people in a hamlet were ordered into a ditch and then were ruthlessly gunned down.
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