"Voices of North Carolina" premieres tomorrow night on NC Public TV.

Chad Austin over at Chad's Running Commentary sends word that PBS stations in North Carolina will be broadcasting the debut of a new documentary. Yah I know some people think that "PBS" means "Pretty Boring Stuff" but fact is they DO air some amazing things besides dragging Betty White and Kermit the Frog out every spring to shill for money. And if you happen to live in-state you really, oughtta, gottta watch this thing tomorrow night 'cuz we've received word that it might get a lot more crazy than PBS is mostly known for. In his post Chad writes that...

North Carolina may have the most diverse mixture of dialects of anywhere in the United States, according to NC State linguistics professor Walt Wolfram. I helped Dr. Wolfram get the word out on his new documentary, "Voices of North Carolina," which airs on North Carolina public television this Thursday at 10 p.m. Dr. Wolfram discussed his project and fielded listener calls today during an interview on WUNC radio. For those of you residing in the Tar Heel state, tune in Thursday night for an informative and entertaining look at the way we talk...

You can click on the link to Chad's blog for info on where to order VHS/DVD copies of the film and that might be wise if nothing else than to have as a collector's item 'cuz reliable sources have informed me that one of the "Voices of North Carolina" will be none other than Maggie Valley, North Carolina's very own legendary moonshiner/bootlegger/author of Me and My Likker/collector of curios/several other things that I've been sworn to silence on: Popcorn Sutton! I've never actually met the man himself but having spoken with a lot of people who do know him... well, let's just say that he's DEFINITELY a larger-than-life character whose reputation has far exceeded the bounds of not just his region or his state, but his country also. Should be a hoot to watch the guy in action come tomorrow night!

"Voices of North Carolina" airs Thursday, January 6th at 10 PM on North Carolina Public Television.

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Is it The Day After Tomorrow? Wild thing I've been wondering since the earthquake...

Little after 10 PM on an early January evening here in North Carolina. Average for this time of year for this part of the night is about 20-30 degrees Fahrenheit, and if we're getting buffeted by a winter storm that usually goes to between 5 and 20 and sometimes a lot lower.

According to the Weather Channel's website, right now it is 64 degrees. The projected low for the next ten days is predicted to be 39.

Now, we've had it be this warm before only to make up for it in spades. Twenty winters ago we had a Christmas and New Years in the seventies and mid-eighties... only to suffer through a massive snow and ice storm a few weeks later that dropped the mercury to minus-2. And that was the high for a couple of days! And this part of the state went four years or so with nary a snowflake in sight. Younger kids were wondering if older people were just making up stories about the white stuff and some of us were even forgetting what it really looked like. But as the saying goes "be careful what you wish for" 'cuz then came "the Storm of the Century" in 1993 and we didn't complain about snow for the next ten years or so.

So, weather here can be a little wonky. The thing is, it's really wonky all over the place right now: snow in Phoenix, warm rain in Michigan, unseasonably hot in places that should be freezing...

I'm just wondering: did last week's earthquake in Southeast Asia do something to Earth's climate? More to the point: could it have permanently altered the world's weather patterns?

Had a science teacher years ago who told us that there was evidence that the ice ages happened because of precession of the Earth's axis. The poles aren't quite stationary: they wobble like the axis of a spinning top that follows a circular path (here's a good site that explains it better). And the theory went that as the pole migrated a little further one way, it caused the hemispheres to either receive more or less direct sunlight than they normally got. So if precession caused the northern hemisphere to lose sunlight, it could have triggered a climate change that led to massive sheets of ice covering most of northern Europe and North America.

Scientists are now reporting that last week's earthquake shifted the North Pole by an inch or two. Doesn't sound like much. But when you consider Complexity Theory and the whole "butterfly effect" thing where a butterfly flaps its wings in Hong Kong and changes weather in New York City... well, how much more a headache would meteorologists get from an entire planet moving?

I've only a cursory knowledge of weather (sometimes wish that I'd studied it in college) so I don't know: I'm just a historian/writer/filmmaker/website designer. But it's something to consider. In light of my earlier post, thought I'd throw that theory out for public consumption.

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A "great Christian leader chosen by God"... and it ain't Bush either.

Someone sent me a link to an interesting article by Maureen Farrell titled "'God Is With Us': Hitler's Rhetoric and the Lure of 'Moral Values'". I know nothing about Maureen Farrell at all, but this is a pretty scary read in that she notes the uncanny parallels between the semantics of the Third Reich and what George W. Bush says (which his followers parrot). The gist of Farrell's piece is that anyone can say the right words and make the correct gestures and come across as a devout and God-honoring Christian. That... and also that people are foolish to blindly follow such a person without also examining his underlying character (you know: the things and beliefs that really define what a man is). The German people got hoodwinked by Hitler because of his rhetoric, and now many Americans are following suit behind another man and judging him by slick packaging, instead of taking the time to size him on their own.

I dunno about you, but I'd rather let my conscience before God and my understanding of scripture be my guide as to whether any man is worth considering as my leader. Why should I let Karl Rove be a substitute for that?

But anyhoo, after reading this and finding some photos on sites that Farrell linked to, they made me recollect a few things that I'd seen over the past couple of years. Since pictures speak a thousand words, I found the following juxtapositions to be curious, to put it mildly...

LEFT: Hitler prays at Nazi rally in Vienna circa 1940
RIGHT: Bush prays at prayer service circa 2004

LEFT: Hitler signs Bible for Christian supporter at Nazi gathering, date uncertain
RIGHT: Bush signs Bible for Christian supporter at Republican gathering in West Virginia, August 2004

LEFT: Hitler leaves the Marine Church in Wilhelmshaven
RIGHT: Bush leaves... well actually, there are no photos of Bush leaving church to be readily found. Probably because despite Christians being admonished to not forsake the assembly of their fellow believers, Bush is not known to regularly assemble with believers (whether they're his "fellows" or not is left as an exercise for the reader).

LEFT: Hitler gives the Nazi salute in front of a holy edifice in Nuremburg in 1934.
RIGHT: Bush gives an unholy salute in front of Barney the dog in 2003 (approx. date).

"Submitted for your approval."

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Trailer for Hotel Rwanda, and the first scholarly book about Oskar Schindler

This is now officially the first film of 2005 that I want to see. Last year it was Miracle and it didn't disappoint. This year it's going to be Hotel Rwanda with Don Cheadle and Nick Nolte, and I only decided that I wanted to see it this bad a short while ago when I read ComingSoon.net's interview with Cheadle and watched the trailer. I vaguely remember this, come to think of it: the hotel manager in Rwanda who turned his palatial resort into a safe haven for hundreds of refugees during that country's civil war a little over ten years ago. Here's the link to the trailer (in Quicktime format): even this short preview makes for some powerful stuff.

Kinda ironic that I'm just now finding out about this movie, 'cuz today I started reading Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind The List by David M. Crowe. I've been waiting to read this for a looooooong time: I've known Dr. Crowe for years 'cuz he was one of my history professors in college, and he told us way back in 1998 that he was working on this. There was Thomas Keneally's book in the early Eighties that led to Spielberg's movie, but Dr. Crowe's book is the first seriously resarched work (to the best of my knowledge Crowe was the last person to interview Schindler's widow before she died) to be produced. And at just 20 pages into it I think it can safely be said: this is going to raise a lot of eyebrows as word gets around about it. I'll post a review as soon as I can plow through this massive (and well annotated) tome.

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Reason #27 why Revenge Of The Sith WON'T disappoint.

The past few months I've been blissfully unaware of anything happening on the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith front. But when Ain't It Cool News screamed that they had a ton of RotS pics I succumbed to the temptation. Still don't know most of what happens in this next movie (one of the reasons I had to retire from TheForce.net: spending almost 3 years before Episode II came out and learning EVERYTHING about it beforehand lessened my enjoyment of the final product) but the below image has good vibes coming out of that ugly face...

That's the soon-to-be-Emperor himself, Darth Sidious. Doesn't look too much like Palpatine does he? Well, from what I have heard SPOILER (highlight with mouse to read) there's a "reveal" scene where Palpatine is confronted by the senior Jedi and he transforms from the smiling statesman into the prunefaced powerhouse that you see here END SPOILER. One thing I do know for certain is that SPOILER we learn MUCH more about the Sith and their history in this movie, including discovering that Darth Sidious was once the apprentice of a Sith named Darth Plagueis... whose Dark Side studies may bode ill for a certain future member of the cult END SPOILER.

What else can be said but "kewl!"

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Republican-resurrected Reich? Vox Day suggests as much.

Gotta love Vox Day: for one thing he's a brilliant Christian thinker. That focus on things from the eternal perspective makes his essays noticably bereft of the temporal goals that muddle the minds of many other essayists. He's also a published science-fiction writer, which merits his being way up on the geek totem pole of respect and awe (am trying to figure out where I fit in this scheme of things: I've written some sci-fi but haven't sought to publish it, but am almost finished making a short sci-fi film that will be distributed... so maybe I'm a "quasi-master geek" :-) And he's one of the darned few columnists that I make it a point to read every time he's got something to say: there ain't many real intuitive thinkers in this world since Thomas Aquinas back in the day, and I like to study what few masters that there are.

Well anyhoo, Day's got a new piece this week called "Anti-Christian America" and he's wondering aloud why it is that the "party of less government" is leading the charge toward turning history's most free nation into its most state-dominated. Consider the Intelligence Reform Act (that nobody can admit to reading before passing into law). Day doesn't believe the American people should yield any more of their freedoms to the government...

Well, we yielded more nevertheless, thanks to our Republican administration, House and Senate. It is clear that the American people have been betrayed with this so-called reform bill by again having their liberties sacrificed on the altar of homeland security. It stuns me that so many supposed champions of freedom support these abominable actions – I can't even imagine the howls of outrage were it President Hillary Clinton leading the charge for such a step toward 1984-style government

It's a doozy of an article. Punch here for the rest.

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Happy New Year!

'Nuff said. That and also: May the mistakes of 2004 give us wisdom in 2005.

(Hey, I can be hopeful, right? :-)

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