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You Can Call Me Bill
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 176
A documentary on William Shatner, cultural Icon. When I was a child I too wanted to "go Boldly where no man has gone before", discover new worlds, so - realizing as I got older his failings - first as an actor, and - really, what does it matter the rest?
It was time to put childish things behind me and while I respected his "accomplishments" - never so much the quality of his work but the breadth of his career, and how much his roles influenced the cultural landscape, I was never really a "trekkie" or a fan of his acting style.
But this documentary, kind, warm, revealing, it was good, and a fair send off to one who is still able to realize that he is soon to set off on journey where every man has gone before and none have returned. And his thoughts upon the planet, mortality, and what is truly important.
Proof that one can become more than the sum of ones parts. Very worthwhile.
Rocks, Identified
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 122
Finally, to the experts with this seasons share of hopeful rocks.
1 - the lamproite/diamond - Geologist #1 a bit stumped, #2, the old timer, declares it to be slow-cooled basalt (possibly still lamproite) and what I took to be a diamond is in fact a ruby. This I would not have guessed, the crystal is dark against a dark background, but he seems certain, has several just like it, a jar full. Doing some research later at home later I find that the Montana Sapphires were hosted in lamproites, so it's not an impossibility. Definitely worth returning and breaking some more rocks. And there are enough lamproites around the Kootenays that I should at some point find a sapphire/ruby deposit...
2 - the blue kyanite (I thought). Pale blue, bladed texture, in pegmatic granite, some thin sections resembling aquamarine. I could get no consensus - Geo #1 thought it was beryl, #2 Slick & Slide (not).
3 - Serpentine - an attractive dark water worn rock picked up on Balfour beach. Dark green with black spots. Confirmed as serpentine.
4 - red/pink tourmaline crystals in host feldspar, again picked up on beach, lake tumbled. Identified as red/pink tourmaline crystals in host feldspar. Now, the hard part, figuring out where it came from, surely closer that Mt. Begby...
5 - dark black crystal, rusty setting, from pegmatite in Revelstoke. Remains unidentified.
6 - black slag looking piece, with vesicles and small crystals. Google lens identifies it as meteorite, but it's not (meteorites don't have vesicles), geologists agreed it wasn't slag...
And so here I am at the point where I have to figure things out for myself, because bloody hell I'm not getting a whole lot of help. That said, these old timers, if they're the competition it explains a lot...
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 101
Charles Fort, the original anti-science skeptical-of-everything and at the same time too-credulous collector of strange facts and events, I've a long time kept an eye peeled for his works, none forthcoming, and so finally read his "Book of the Damned" online at Project Gutenberg. Link provided at the end.
Now this, a list - long, with notes as to sources, with everything that (in his view) flies in the face of science. He refutes any attempts to explain away unusual events by science, instead preferring to come up with even stranger and more imaginative explanations of his own - for example, Star Jelly - of which he gives numerous examples (a strange jelly like protoplasm sometimes found falling or upon the ground after meteoric events), and any odd sky-falls - large hail, rains of fish, frogs, what nots, on an adjacent place near to the earth but invisible, the "Super-Sargasso Sea" or Genesistrine, and while a good many of his sources do demand extraordinary explanations, a great many do not.
While he himself is positively feverish with imagination he doesn't allow that other people may have been as well.
There's the impossible rains and sky falls, atmospheric phenomena, thunderstones and thunder-axes, sky arrows, sky axes, thunder-teeth, Nostoc, all the craziness reported throughout human history, impossible rains, atmospheric phenomenon, thunderstones, thunder-axes, sky arrows, sky-axes, thunder-teeth, Nostoc, the IYNKICIDU of Philadelphia, Cyclorea, his confusing of staurolites, a mineral, as evidence of a tiny race of fairies, Monstrator, Elvera, the Vitrification of Ancient Forts, extra-telluric, marvelling over extreme weather events (now becoming commonplace), hailstones nucleated on frogs, Algol, Planet “Neith”, Melanicus, celestio-metathesis, his “other worlds” hypothesis, quake lights, Super-Tamerlanes, bird-falls from the sky (poisoned food, now largely attributed to glass skyscrapers), blood rain, Stone of Tarbes, the wheels of light and spokes seen upon the sea by captains and sailors, sea monsters, recalling: “those who go down to the sea in ships”; otherwise extraordinary events now made explicable, but we have our own inexplicable dark matter, quantum action at a distance, light discerning the slit, etc.
"Still the Dominants are suave very often, or are not absolute gods, and the way attention was led away from this subject is an interesting study in quasi-divine bamboozlement.”
His prose style, well, somewhere between incredulous, manic, rattling a fist against an establishment (science), world (god) that he can make no sense of, no an easy read, but filled with interesting ideas, and some worth more considering...
Oh, and if you ever have heard the term - "Fortean", it derives from him, applying to situations, events, objects, that in themselves appear inexplicable.
A short bio: https://skepdic.com/fortean.html
read online here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22472/22472-h/22472-h.htm
August 2024
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 116
So, in the news lately - Kamala Harris takes over the candidacy for Biden - finally, the right move, and then - an even better move making Tim Walz her running mate.
Good news for a change, they both seem nice, and what a change in focus from the Trump/Biden shitshow it was the past few months. And - the news that JD Vance is Trump's running mate?
Well, never a better contrast in choices.
***
Other news of the world, the fact that Disney is trying to use a loophole - because a former customer once signed up for Disney+ they can't be sued for poisoning one of the customers (anaphylactic shock, waiter assured customer the food was allergen free, it wasn't, customer died) - which goes to prove quite literally what an evil company Disney has become.
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/15/disney-wrongful-death-lawsuit-dismissal
And then there was the Elon Musk/Trump interview on "X", which - well, I've never been fans of either of them. For a time it seemed with the electric car and such he was possibly brilliant, but - the company he keeps, his views, he's easily every bit as evil as Trump.
Then there was the article quoting the UN stating that Canada's foreign worker policy is no better than Slave Labour. Of course, I've known this for a while, as have many others, but having it said out loud by a body that has some clout with Trudeau might mean a long overdue reflection and revamping of it.
Link: CBC on UN report
And that's the news that I've been following, the rest, well, it comes and goes. It finally seems that capitalism is in it's final death throws, the world is heating up and - for the moment that's all. I've started looking forward to the US election...
***
More news, ridiculous, that Trump is now more popular in Alberta than he is in the US, and, sorry Alberta, but this can be no surprise, that Barron Trump's nanny has spoken to the press and revealed that while in school he tortured and killed animals as well as assaulted various classmates. So the apple never falls far from the tree...
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