Doug Ireland wrote today that Scorsese’s The Aviator deified Howard Hughes while leaving out some key aspects of the entrepreneur’s personality, especially his strong hatred for communism and unions. In The Howard Hughes Scorsese Doesn’t Tell You About, Ireland posits that Scorsese, who previously made movies hailing the Hollywood-blacklisted communist, has gone establishment and now romanticizes the eccentric inventor whose efforts were thwarted at every turn.

“It is Hughes’ role in the blacklist and the anti-Communist witch-hunt that is the most shameful–as is Scorcese’s silence on the matter in his cinematic hagiography.”

While it is our right to call bullshit wherever we see it, it is also in our best interest to look for the most admirable in ourselves. Ostensibly, Scorsese’s biopic of Howard Hughes sugar-coated the inventor as a misunderstood crackpot, but if all we do is pooh-pooh our founding fathers for owning slaves while overlooking their feats of nation-building, it makes us very myopic people indeed. Ireland’s perspective is valid, however. Come on, someone had to say it.

This was my response to Ireland:

“It has occurred to me that quite a few innovators and businessmen back then saw communists as being against Yankee ingenuity, the true spirit of capitalism (not the uninspiring corporate fascism that calls itself ‘capitalism’ today). Also, not cooperating with HUAC meant jeopardizing their projects and need for invention.

“Not that I sympathize, but I see where they were coming from, as I see today why a lot of businesspeople (especially immigrants) vote for the Republican party. They hate the conservatives’ foreign policy and racist tendencies, but when it comes down to it, the business rises above all else.

“As a staunch supporter of Yankee ingenuity, but not what parades for capitalism today, I wish there were an American political party that supports innovation, free enterprise and the true movers and shakers, while preserving humanity and respect for others that the Republicans obviously do not possess.”

The unusual, hilarious and morbid-creative out of Accra, Ghana. Check out the BBC slideshow.

Now that we have a neocon government bent on empire, how do we go about getting rid of them? Obviously not by sitting around in blogs and exhorting. Here is what I wrote on The Progressive Blog Alliance forum:

“The ineffectual Kerry campaign, some relevant new articles and personal meditation reveal that a revolution is necessary, but it has to be one that comes from outside the status quo. A great interview in Alternet also puts forth some of the same worries and ideas I have been entertaining in this vein.

“There are three interrelated things going on here:

“1. We cannot fight on the government’s terms. After 9-11 and the announcement of the war on Iraq, our “progressive” representatives …

Continue reading “Revolution From Without”

Update: John over at By The Bayou explains this much better than I ever can.

Music purchasing just gets easier and easier. The following artists have joined the fight against music piracy: the Eagles, the Dixie Chicks, Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Nicks, Tom Jones and Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson. Oooh, I’m scared.

Don Henley, the voice that brought you All She Wants To Do Is Dance says, “There is no more important case for the future of our business. These systems promote copyright violations on an unprecedented scale.”

Stop. There is no more reason to buy your music.

Does this mean big business conservatives like the Dixie Chicks now?

Why do people give me funny looks when I say that more kids should be like this? There is nothing wrong with precocious brightness.

Lucian disputed the whereabouts of the Polish part of the Belovezhskaya Forest. According to the encyclopaedia, it lies in the Bialystok, Suwalki and Lomza provinces. But Suwalki and Lomza provinces have not existed since 1998. And, even when they did, the whole Polish section of the forest – which extends into Belarus – was in Bialystok.

… Another of Lucian’s bugbears was the terrain of the European bison. He argued successfully that it encompassed parts of Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Belarus – not just Poland.

After Lucian had written to the encyclopaedia with his complaints, senior editor Anita Wolff, based in the US, revealed that a geography specialist was working on a “major revision” of its Polish coverage.

As for the EB, it contains Madonna now, so we shouldn’t be too surprised about dropping standards.

According to The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey released recently, “only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements.”

While D argues that most people don’t know how to use search engines because they aren’t all that computer-savvy in the first place, this is great news for my non-profit, anti-Google search engine that will take you to unbiased search results (based not on how many hits it gets, but on how well it fits your query) and weigh/normalize various other results as you refine your search. Coming to a computer near you in full color, 3D and surround sound.

Don’t know how I’m going to to do it, but I will.