I mean really serious.

Because in case you have heard, the most credible believer in alien/human encounters since Dennis Kucinich has been recently thrust into the public eye. Actually, as an Apollo 14 spacedude who chilled on the surface of the moon for nine hours, he is a helluva lot more credible than Kucinich on these issues. His name is Dr. Edgar Mitchell. Here’s what he has to say:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtUe8f9L0_o]

Oh yeah by the way he grew up in Roswell, NM. Oh, and he’s also into some far out stuff, like dyadic models of consciousness. At any rate, after Mitchell recently renewed his claims that folks within the government were secretly covering up over 60 years of extraterrestrial contact, NASA released a delicately worded statement lauding Mitchell as a great American and “disagreeing with his opinions.”

A little more context - some of the more credible (eg less easily explained) UFO sightings in recent memory occurred over Texas earlier this year, with all the fanfare and t-shirt sales you might expect from a small town’s encounter with Aliens/international media.

So what’s up? Because talking about aliens in a serious way is so deeply coded to mean you are crazy (which is why asking Denny K the question during the presidential debate was a way to de-legitimize him), I almost hesitate to continue. But since the New York Times broke the ice today with a pretty rational, national security-related argument for investigating UFOs, perhaps the time is right. more »

Well, I’ve been waiting for a story ridiculous enough to make me come out of hiding, and here it is. An Illinois man, for some reason deemed ‘artist’ by the AP, has legally changed his name to “In God we Trust.” The New Haven Register reports:

A school bus driver and amateur artist from the Chicago suburb of Zion has legally changed his name to “In God We Trust.” A Lake County circuit court judge approved Steve Kreuscher’s (CROY’-shirz) name change petition on Friday. The 57-year-old’s first name was changed to “In God,” while his last name was changed to “We Trust.” He says the new name symbolizes the help God gave him during tough times and says he can’t wait to begin signing his artwork with the new moniker.

In other news, I’m changing my name to “Barack Obama.”

call mother

On Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, James Carville recently quipped: “If she gave him one of her cojones, they’d both have two.”

It was far from the first time that a political pundit used testicles as a metonymy for power, courage, boldness, or guts. In fact, Hillary’s “balls” have been the subject of much praise (and disdain) throughout the course of this exhausted Democratic primary.

Introducing Clinton at a rally in Indiana, Paul Gibson, president of a steelworkers local union, proclaimed that the nation needed a leader like Clinton with “testicular fortitude.” Clinton thanked him for the compliment, though she did note that women, too, can have fortitude.

Reporting on the incident, Salon editor Joan Walsh wrote, “Clinton does indeed have … fortitude. Hell, she has balls.” Walsh says that Clinton handled the situation as best as she could and did not employ a double-standard by accepting this incredibly sexist “compliment.”

more »

April is my birthday month, and I’m pretty excited about being way on the other side of 25.

I’ve weathered the “quarter-life crisis” that Oprah started talking about just as I graduated from college. I’m done with it!

Now, according to the London Times, another miserable period of malaise awaits me around my 35th birthday.

The cleverly descriptive buzzword: the thrisis.

If you’re in your mid-thirties, hassled by the dramas of juggling work and family, doubting decisions you’ve made professionally and personally, panicked by the aging process and dismayed that your years of snogging in nightclubs are behind you, then you’re probably in the grip of an early midlife crisis – otherwise known as a thrisis.

Okay, so, I can’t look forward to my 30s, or my 40s…Um, can I be happy in my 70s?

How about we create a buzzword for all the joys of old age? I need something to look forward to.

If you blinked you missed the first run of this movie but it’s coming back to the Cable Car Cinema, “The Theater With the Couches”. You pretty much know by now whether you like Gus Van Sant movies, and I do. This is the same ol’ youth, longing and death (now with 30% more skateboarding!). Director Gus Van Sant went to RISD and I’ll bet he sat on one of those couches at some point, wondering, just how many verses are there to ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’?

God bless directors who can bring a movie in under 90 minutes. Nothing is missing here, it’s disturbing and unsettling and beautiful — The New York Times liked it as well. (A theme seems to be developing here. I suppose my next movie post should be a little less gay. Iron Man looks good.)

Rated R/Cable Car Cinema/204 South Main Street

This is why you read the Dose, after all — cutting edge info on the search for extra-solar life. This is from friend-of-blog Steve, who’s in charge of figuring out which asteroids are dense enough to be blown up, Armaggedon style.

MEDIA ADVISORY: M08-058

HUBBLE DETECTS ORGANIC MOLECULE ON AN EXTRASOLAR PLANET

WASHINGTON - NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, March 19, to report on the first-ever detection of the organic molecule methane in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star.

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Which one is Ben Stein?  Here he is in the Projo, going off on Darwinism. And here he is on O’Reilly:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWMGD1Dg6L8]

Stein gets this right (while taking on the tone of the godless evolutionist Christopher Hitchens):

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

But how does that jibe with broad assertions of Creationism, predicated on nothing?

To all of our super-decadent Modern Culture and Media majorer readers. Top the shit that Bowie was doing when he was 21, 40 years ago:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D67kmFzSh_o]

I picked up the new Psychology Today on Monday in an effort to finally figure out what women find so repelling about me and I think I found it: I don’t stink enough! Seems that back in ancient times, I’m guessing the 50’s, before people bathed and all that, women picked their mates by their smell, as your sweat contains a smellable map of your DNA, hence your genetic strengths and weaknesses. In our modern go-go society, where humanity’s natural reek is washed away by soaps and scrubs and covered up by perfumes and full-body colognes people are making more and more horrible relationship decisions because our genetic compatiblity is being obscured by our obsessive cleanliness. Ladies, I am back in the game and this time you’re gonna smell me coming!

Scents and Sensibility, Psychology Today

Tom Brady may really love goats, but Jack Groh might be the most important participant in this weekend’s festivities. Groh is the NFL’s environmental czar and it is his job to minimize the Super Bowl’s carbon foot print. His goal is to make the event carbon neutral. But as numerous people point out, buying offsets and planting a few trees does not a footprint neutralize.

Still, the greening of the sports world now has some inertia behind it. The Kodak Pro Cycling Team, surfing, the World Cup, even the NHL have all publicly stated their intentions to “greenwash” their events. My Philadelphia Eagles, in fact, were the first American pro sports team to begin greening their business. The idea has even started to trickle down to the apparel and equipment world.

Still, this smacks of a public-relations greenwash to me. Let’s see the NFL use its 100 million-strong, international audience to deliver a message of sustainability and consumer responsibility instead of, well, this.

The worst is yet to come. Though I’m a weirdo, so I like to think I hit rock-bottom years, or at least weeks, ago:

The British and U.S. researchers found that happiness for people ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe follows a U-shaped curve where life begins cheerful before turning tough during middle age and then returning to the joys of youth in the golden years….

“In a remarkably regular way throughout the world people slide down a U-shaped level of happiness and mental health throughout their lives,” Andrew Oswald at Britain’s Warwick University, who co-led the study, said on Tuesday.

But, then things get way better:

One possibility may be that people realize they won’t achieve many of their aspirations at middle age, the researchers said.

Another reason could be that after seeing their fellow middle-aged peers begin to die, people begin to value their own remaining years and embrace life once more.

Booya, cynicism.

Stunned snark-less:

BY SPENCE AT 09:32 PM

This could be really, really bad for Wonkette readership. I feel my cynicism dying. We all know that after the cynicism goes the ability to snark soon follows.
Come on Barry, break my heart!

BY JIMNEWELL AT 09:35 PM

Whatever happens to Barry, I will remember his candidacy for that one time it even brought half a tear to the eye of [former editor] Ken Layne.

Shit, he was too good! Can we still do children’s treasuries of overblown lefty blog reactions?

Oh god, it’s John “fuck trade” Edwards talking now. This will bring my cynicism back. Phew.

When Hillary rolled out her new slogan, “Ready for Change,” she and her team sought to undermine what has long been apparent–that Obama’s fresh face, honest politics, and determination to shake things up were captivating voters’ attention. Ever since H-bomb kidnapped the rhetoric of change, the candidates have engaged in a bitter duel over the meaning of change, the value of experience, and the worth of eloquent promises.

Earlier in the year, I might have nodded vigorously while reading this Rolling Stone article in which Matt Taibbi condemns the American electoral process. Nowadays, while I agree with Taibbi’s rejection of the media-incited catfight, I resent statements like this:

I mean, is this a joke, or what? What the hell is the difference between “working for change” and “demanding change”? And why can’t we hope for change and work for it? Are these presidential candidates or six-year-olds?

In my humble opinion, there is an immense difference between Obama’s outsider vision and consistent refrain of “Hope, Action, Change,” and Hillary’s feeble, last-minute attempt to shed the skin and scales that have traveled with her since her first eight years in the White House.

more »

As everybody knows, the state budget is a mess. But one glimmer of hope as the session gets underway: A ton of Reps and Senators (Dems and Repubs) have been approaching me about various posts on this blog and rifuture encouraging the vigorous development of renewable energy in Rhode Island, and suggesting that we position Rhode Island as a national leader in this arena.

The specifics could, and would need to, take a variety of forms. But as we look for a way to create jobs — and ideally jobs that fill real needs — Rhode Island is especially well positioned to exploit its long coastline and ample wind energy. (Solar, hydro, and wave power should be explored too, of course.)

As I’ve mentioned before, the first thing that we need to do is allow for net-metering — basically to let entities that put up renewables installations get paid for all the electricity they produce. (The alternative is for anything they produce above what they use to be pumped into the grid — essentially handed over to the utility — with no financial reward going to the producer.)

Deeper net metering would do away with a tremendous barrier to renewables production, and cost taxpayers NOTHING. Also crucial are a variety of targeted incentives, streamlining of permitting, and the creation of the Power Authority that died at the end of last year’s session.

(The other hopeful news is that we finally have labor advocates and environmentalists meeting to try to push a green jobs program. More on this as we move forward.)

Well, as I mentioned yesterday, my holiday dinner included a close encounter with New York’s “Littlest Hustler.” The kid’s an experience. A unique mix of precocious and childish, playful and mean — In other words, incredibly manipulative. But he is somehow such that it almost feels reasonable that there’s a 3,000-word profile about him in that rag.

(Anybody who knows me well knows that I’ve been engaged in an ill-advised beard-growing foray, and have been left with a mild bout of folliculitis. Alex promptly and gleefully made sure I knew that I had “an ass disease on my face.” Then he made me a sandwich.)

I went to the comments section from the NYMag article for help articulating my ambivalent reaction. I think this one might come closest:

What the fuck is happening to New York? Gettin soft? 15 years ago that kid woulda been popped in the mouth and had his sneakers jacked. Can’t hate on the little bastard though, just taking advantage of the opportunities presented to him….parents who don’t care, a city where individuals get lost in the mayhem, and a look that begs for people to shower him with empathy….SHit, I’m just jealous cuz I gotta wait in line at Supreme and then have to pay stupid amounts for hoodies and t’s…