A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: As we approach the end of the this first decade of the 21st century, let’s take a look back at the progress of the past two hundred years, illustrated by the progress of a single graph and animated in a way you’ve never seen before.
An evening pause: Scrooge awakes on Christmas Day. From probably the best movie version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1951), starring Alastair Sim in an astonishing performance.
An evening pause: The Christmas eve telecast by the Apollo 8 astronauts from lunar orbit, December 24, 1968, probably the most listened to space telecast in history. The story behind how and why these men said what they did is the central theme of my first book, Genesis, the Story of Apollo 8.
An evening pause: For those who remember the 1969 Miracle Mets (Happy birthday Lloyd!), here is a tribute compilation of newsclips, celebrating Tom Seaver’s Hall of Fame career. Ya gotta believe! (Though Tug McGraw said it, it was Seaver more than anyone else who made it happen.)
An evening pause: The reaction of the ship captain in the opening section of this clip from the movie A Night to Remember (1958) exemplifies better than anything I have ever seen the clarity and courage of an open mind, willing to face new facts instantly and to react correctly, even if by doing so you risk failure and disgrace.
If only our leaders today had as much courage.
An evening pause: The central scene from the 1976 television production of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, starring Alec Guinness and Genevieve Bujold.
[The uproar in the streets again reaches them.]
Caesar: Do you hear? These knockers at your gate are also believers in vengence and in stabbing. You have slain their leader: it is right that they shall slay you. If you doubt it, ask your four counselors here. And then in the name of that right [he emphasizes the word with great scorn] shall I not slay them for murdering their Queen, and be slain in my turn by their countrymen as the invader of their fatherland? Can Rome do less then slay these slayers, too, to show the world how Rome avenges her sons and her honor. And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race than can understand.
An evening pause: What do you do when you know that you only have a few more weeks to live? From On the Beach (1959), one of the greatest end-of-the-world films ever made.
An evening pause: Deep Space 9, “The Quickening.” The entire population of a planet has a disease that kills all, horribly, but only after many years. No one believes a cure is possible, except Julian Bashir.
An evening pause: This newsreel, made shortly after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, gives an honest sense of the rage felt by Americans following the attack. Or to quote the words placed in the mouth of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto from the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!:
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Though it is not clear that Yamamoto ever actually said this line, it encapsulates the consequences of Pearl Harbor quite concisely.
More nations certain to follow! Because of onerous TSA regulations, the Japanese postal service has ended airmail shipments to the US of any package weighing more than a pound.
Meanwhile, the political negotiations in Cancun continue: Britain and Brazil are going to try to break the deadlock between first and third world nations over extending the Kyoto climate protocol and thus prevent a collapse of the Cancun talks. Key quote:
Japan, Russia and Canada have been adamant that they will not sign an extension and want a new, broader treaty that will also bind emerging economies led by China and India to act.
Note that nothing going on in Cancun has anything to do with climate science. It is politics, pure and simple, rules and regulations created by a bunch of elite intellectuals and UN apparatchiks to be imposed on everyone else — while they play in the sun and fly on their jets to and from climate conferences.
An evening pause:
We came on a ship they called the Mayflower
We came on a ship that sailed the moon
We came in the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune.
An evening pause: As it is Wednesday and I am at the gun range, competing in bullseye pistol competitions, let’s look at some Hollywood shooting action.
An evening pause: The first Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, The Mad Scientist (1941), from a time when Americans believed that all things were possible, and that our nation stood for the best of those possibilities. When evil men try to destroy skyscrapers and kill innocent people, you don’t stand idly by, you fight them, and stop them.
