Policy decisions at the organizational, corporate, and governmental levels should be more heavily influenced by issues related to well-being — people's evaluations and feelings about their lives.

Beyond Money: Towards an Economy of Well-Being from American Psychological Society.

Gael Garcia Bernal, star of Motorcycle Diaries, vents some frustration in an article in the Detroit Free Press.

What does that mean, 'art house hit?' Nothing. It still means that most people in your country will never even consider seeing them. These films do not get the chance to compete with the Hollywood films. They get tossed off as foreign and independent films like they are somehow not ready to compete with all that crap that Hollywood produces. Hey, where's my action figure?

That's how I will know we are taken seriously, when I get an action figure.

Jim Gilliam has an extract from a recent Bill Moyers speech. He quotes a huge chunk about the power Dispensationalists have been able to amass. Bill Moyers doesn't use that term in his speech but he's talking about Dispensationalism. It's a way of looking at Christianity from the back-end. Start at the Rapture and work your way backwards to figure out what you're supposed to be doing now. Based on hermeneutic study this means supporting the state of Israel so it can be destroyed and thus bring about the Second Coming, the Rapture, the Tribulation and so forth.

I don't understand how an apocalyptic cult counts House Majority Leader Tom Delay, Senator James Inhofe and others as members. These people want to sacrifice Israel to the Anti-Christ in order to bring about the Second Coming. All personal religious beliefs aside, because there is certainly wackier stuff out there, this is a disregard for the majority of Americans that don't believe in this stuff. They build policy based on their dispensational beliefs.

Tom Delay has no room for non-Christians as he has previously stated:

Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world—only Christianity.

Inhofe characterized the battle for the end times with these words:

This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.

If you were unclear as to why we went to war in Iraq President Bush has said

God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.

Apparently he misheard God about solving the problem in the Middle East because he backed out of the road map when it angered Dispensationalists according to Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton:

Within a two-week period, getting 50,000 postcards saying the exact same thing from places all over the country, that resonated with the White House. That really caused [President Bush] to backpedal on the Road Map.

I don't think President Bush is a Dispensationalist since he's a Methodist. I personally disagree with his overt mixing of religion and politics but I don't think he wants to destroy the world for God. The two Congressmen I mentioned do believe in it. It's fine to believe this on your own time, but they create foreign and domestic policy based on these doomsday beliefs. Moyers is right "the delusional is no longer marginal."

Picture taken in February 2004.

The Place dJemaa el-Fna is one of the most amazing places I've ever been. I had always heard about the medinas of Morocco but this is the place that blew me away. At night the square fills with vendors, story tellers, snake charmers, pick pockets, drug dealers, acrobats and all sorts of other folk. The atmosphere was intoxicating and I meandered in open-mouthed awe around the square. I was lucky to be there right after the Moroccan soccer team had won second place in the Africa's Cup. The whole country was going nuts, and especially in that square.

This picture was taken by a snake charmer. I have a small snake in my hand and they have numerous cobras spread out around them. Shortly after this he wrapped a cobra around my neck and showed me off to the crowd. I was left clutching at the snake's head wondering if it was poisonous. They took more pictures of me with the cobra on. Shortly after that he clandestinely hit me up for 200 dirham, or about $20. This was still early on in my trip and I hadn't really grasped that everything has a price, or the importance of setting that price beforehand. I didn't feel in a position to bargain with him so I quietly dropped some money down for him and walked away.

I've been trying to come up with a way to solve two problems to this bus adventure. Where can I keep my backpack, and where can I sleep? I haven't been able to find places to store stuff, especially big things like backpacks. I haven't been able to find urban campgrounds either. I don't want to hide out in hotels.

It looks like I'm getting an Hostelling International card.

I have a feeling I'm not being creative enough. At any rate the hostelling thing is new to me, and it should afford opportunities to get more perspectives on the country.

Charles has a nice summation, cribbed from elsewhere, comparing and contrasting the handling of intelligence by President George W. Bush and CBS News anchor Dan Rather.

Does Netflix penalize frequent renters?

I went up to Nashville tonight and caught a showing of the latest anime, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. As the story lines in anime are not very diverse you can probably guess what the movie is about by imagining a movie with a mix sci-fi/cyberpunk/police/megacorp elements. Like many anime series and movies, most notably Lain, it provides a philosophical look at humanity by building stories and observations around humans replacing body parts with mechanical enhancements. I was not a big fan of the original and was quite surprised by the huge following it developed. While the visual look was a stunning blend of 2D/3D techniques the story was obtuse and full of the overplotting so prevalent in the genre.

I found the sequel to be the rare offspring that outshines it's predecessor. The story is a relatively straightforward investigation of a series of violent murders by broken robots. The dialogue is full of quotes from the Bible, Milton, Confucious, Shakespeare, and other luminaries intermixed with exposition to explain what's happening. It can be tough to keep up with because they'll throw out some pretty complicated concepts in the quotes and race ahead. I congratulate the translators on tackling some of these concepts in a two line sentence. Also I am grateful to Go Fish (Dreamworks anime division) for having the guts to release this with subtitles instead of dubbing. I enojy the Miyazaki stuff but Disney/Miramax manages to always find an actor that makes me cringe when they dub.

Where the movie truly shines is again the visualization and the animation. The world is amazing to behold. The scene with the detectives flying into the northern region gave me goosebumps. It's been the better part of a year since I've had a moment like that in a movie. I was drawn in and felt as though I was gazing at an enormous monument to human ingenuity, both in the city conceived in the movie and the computer effects. The environment, animals, buildings and vehicles were rendered with that special brand of realism that is at once compelling and believable but only in the future world depicted in the movie. I have no doubt that if I lived in that world it would look just like that. The people are mostly 2D and I still find that 2D conveys human emotion better than most 3D attempts I've seen.

Visuals alone don't do it for me. What sold me on the visuals was the animation. In particular the scene where the cyborg, Bateau, is at home playing with his basset hound. It's a remarkably tender, honest scene that could stand on it's own as a short film. It's the little things like the way the dog falls out of the chair when he hears Bateau, or the way Bateau keeps the dog's ears from falling into the food bowl when he's eating. They create a warmth and sincerity that's typically sacrified to cute and funny in most animated features with animals. The use of the dog in the trailer and poster had me cringing going in with the expectation that I was going to be manipulated, but that was not the case at all.

I will have to see it again some time. Also it's made me want to watch the original again, maybe I was too harsh on it. The ideas about human souls, mechanization, dolls and golems, reality vs. illusion were too much to absorb during the movie. It has some really neat ideas about hacking reality that I'd never really thought about. The way viruses could be transmitted wirelessly into people's minds to override perception and alter their actions in the real world is something I'd never really thought about before. Overall, a very enjoyable experience. Also the story represents a maturation that I hope takes hold in the genre. It's about time the story caught up to the visuals.

The Rapture Index tracks all the signs that precede the Rapture. An index over 145 means Rapture is rapidly approaching. We're at 151 - fasten your seat belts.

wow. Planned Parenthood's "I had an abortion" t-shirt.

I hate life.

I'm talking about love. You know it probably started out as this great idea in someone's garage. You know God was outsourcing that shit in the beginning. The little angel/architect/whatever put it out there and people couldn't get enough of it.

At first it was this underground thing that the cool people knew about. Then there was the backlash and someone came up with hate. Then God's little bureaucracy came along and unleashed a committee on love. Only a committee could fuck it up and add jealousy, longing, a watered-down version called like, unrequited love and all the other little baroque accoutrements that have come with love ever since.

And I hate love.

Began building out a new section on the site for the Greyhound bus trip across America.

I don't have dates yet, but each city is roughly a day in the 30 day trip. Right now I think I have 5 days of play to use when I want to stay somewhere longer. This is just a tentative route.

1. Knoxville, TN
2. Asheville, NC
3. Washington, DC
4. New York, NY
5. Bar Harbor, ME
6. Boston, MA
7. Toronto, ON
8. Pittsburgh, PA
9. Ann Arbor, MI
10. Chicago, IL
11. Des Moines, IA
12. Minneapolis, MN
13. Bismarck, ND
14. Billings, MT
15. Denver, CO
16. Salt Lake City, UT
17. Boise, ID
18. Seattle, WA
19. Portland, OR
20. San Francisco, CA
21. Los Angeles, CA [via Amtrak]
22. Las Vegas, NV
23. Albuquerque, NM
24. Oklahoma City, OK
25. Memphis, TN
26. Huntsville, AL

I'm still working on public transportation information for the places that have it so I can get around. I'm also building a list of places I need to see on my tour of America. I'm disappointed the bus doesn't stop in Moab, UT. This is more planning than I think I've ever done for a trip.

This picture was taken 9/11/2004. I'd gone downtown to read in the park. As the sun was setting I ran up a municipal parking garage to get to the top and take the picture.

I've found Big Spring Park to be one of Huntsville's greatest assets. It's one of the few parts of the city that betrays the "cheaper and ugly is best" ethos. When I say that I'm talking about the over abundance of engineers in Huntsville. Engineers want to spend as little money as possible, and do not see asthetics or culture as worth paying extra for. Huntsville has paid the price as things have been maintained at just the base level.

Big Spring park was a lot more of a cesspool when I was growing up but it's improved a lot while I've been gone. The city has an ambitious plan to revamp the whole downtown area. If there's any hope for Huntsville I think it starts in this park. It's a powerful testament to the importance of beauty, public commons, and utility.

This picture was taken on a 8/12/2003 during a trip through North Dakota and Montana. I'd gone up there to take pictures of locations used in the movie Northfork. I found this field when I was driving a backroad between Pompey's Pillar and the Battle of Little Bighorn Monument.

I wish I could have captured the fields swaying in the wind. It looked like waves on an ocean. This enormous, empty field is full of so much promise. Anything can happen there. That's one of the things I really like about the West. No matter how messed up things get I always feel like there's a fresh start waiting just in case I need it.

The Great Sand Dunes have joined the A-List of the National Park system by dropping the Monument designation and becoming the newest National Park. The Interior Secretary had a ceremony for it September 13th, 2004. President Clinton had signed the bill in November of 2000 authorizing the designation.

The Great Sand Dunes now stand alongside Colorado's other National Parks Mesa Verde (1906), Rocky Mountain (1915), and Black Canyon of the Gunnison (1999). Since 1980 only nine areas have received the National Park designation. Cuyahoga Valley NP in Ohio is the only other designee from 2000.

The National Park Service (and I'm including their excellent battlefield monuments) is one of America's great accomplishments. I've been to many of the National Parks outside of Alaska and Hawaii and the Great Sand Dunes deserve their elite designation. I still remember the last time I was at the Great Sand Dunes when I finally climbed the big dune.

Salon has created a new award for the most unjustly ignored TV show...The Buffy. Unsurprisingly the first award goes to The Wire. Thankfully a new companion guide to the show has been published for those lost in the dense material. Also the episode guide can be critical if you get a little lost.

The article cites the scene that got me watching the series. Bunk and McNulty investigate a crime scene. It has no dialogue except for the word "Fuck" repeated in various ways. (At the time this was about the only dialogue I understood!) The story elements are revealed through different camera angles and movement. I was surprised that the series would take a risk on losing the audience like that. It's a complex scene and turns out to be pretty crucial to the series. Six episodes later they provide the conclusion for the scene during an interrogation of D'Angelo. The detectives utter the word "Refrigerator" and everything clicks into place for the audience.

The Kazakhstan Embassy press secretary clears up some misconceptions created by Da Ali G Show.

Women are not kept in cages. Wine is not made from fermented horse urine.

DART to begin free concerts at rail stations every Thursday with a national and local band. Sloan and Chris Megert are kicking it off.

An angry father of a soldier in Iraq vents his rage and pain at the man who put him there. The picture of the Bush supporter covering the father's mouth really captures the essence of the Bush presidency for me.

Ebert saw filmmaker David Gordon Green at the Toronto film fest and had this to say And then he showed us "Undertow," and this film is a masterpiece.

'I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry.' Moulton, Alabama woman fired for Kerry bumper sticker on her car.

You're soaking in it. -Palmolive Ads

I've been missing some functionality in gnumatt.org for awhile. I've wanted to hold more posts on a page. I've wanted a separate area for quick notes. I've wanted a place to post pictures I take without having to build some photo gallery since I rarely have more than one worth keeping.

I've been inspired by all the pretty sites on cssvault to redo gnumatt.org. I spent time working on a redesign this weekend instead of helping other people out. I feel sorta guilty about not helping, but I'll get to them.

There is still much to do. I want sub-navigation items for the archives. I need to link the new category archives to real pages. I need to fill out the projects and about me pages. I need to build a headline image archive (I've got about 20 more to add). I need to get trackbacks up and working 100%.

Oh and this page validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict last time I checked! As porovaara would say UNH!

Sorry for dumping all that crap into the RSS feed that Livejournal picked up.

I took that picture at a graveyard in the Battle of the Little Bighorn battlefield. The story seems to have a special resonance with me on this anniversary of 9/11.

An engagement between the non-treaty Indians, the Lakota-Cheyenne, and the 7th U.S. Calvary occurred there June 25th, 1876. General [a breveted rank from the Civil War] Custer, who had lived among the Cheyenne and considered them the finest light calvary in the world, died fighting along with 210 other men under his command. It was the high watermark of Indian resistance to American expansion. During the fighting Custer's body was guarded by Cheyenne warriors from scalping and looting as he had been considered a friend to the indians.

I find some comfort in the idea that 9/11 will be a high watermark of Muslim fanaticism. Like Custer's Last Stand, 9/11 has galvanized popular support against a group of people. Unfortunately I wonder what role the Sykes-Picot agreement, Open Door policy, the CIA backed Shah of Iran, American support for Saddam Hussein, American support for Israel, and so forth had in fomenting fundamentalist anger at the American government. I hope someday that we, the citizens of the world, find some other way to settle our differences.

Third season of The Wire starts 9/19. This excerpt from the show bio is music to my ears.

In its third season, the drama will continue to expand its sociopolitical desciption of a fictional Baltimore by examining the city's political component and its relevance to the problems confronting a post-industrial city.

That picture with Kima and McNulty looking out a car window, with Stringer and some new guy in the reflection is a classic moment from the series. The two warriors are getting ready to face down again.

But why aren't people watching it? It's written by top selling crime authors (recently added the author of Mystic River). It's won some important awards. It has HBO's endorsement. It has a very compelling and relevant story. While the show transcends genres it has plenty of police procedural elements, and those series own the network ratings. What stops it from being an HBO powerhouse?

It does not simplify the dialogue, and sometimes an episode ends without any resolution. These are points that I think are outside the mainstream and I wonder if that hurts the series.

I continue to be amazed at the uses people keep finding for the Internet. Right now I'm listening to an mp3 stream of live coverage of protests at RNC-NYC put together by anoise.

People call in by cell phone live from rallies to give updates on what's happening. The show hosts coordinate all the information together to give a bird's eye view of what's going on. The segment I've been listening to has a lawyer making sure the callers are taking the right legal precautions. The whole thing seems to be put together with commodity technology.