Gay Marriage Bans and Interracial Marriage Bans: are both arguments bogus?

In the debate above between Ted Olson and Tony Perkins, Mr. Olson (an Ellison Bay, WI neighbor of mine, Solicitor General during the Bush II administration, a voice of sanity in the GOP and a great potential candidate for US Attorney General), finally gets to make the point that the Right Wing ban on Gay Marriage is completely equivalent to the earlier Right Wing Ban on interracial marriage. Anti-miscengenation laws in the US were found illegal in 1967 by the US Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia as an obvious matter of civil rights. Mr. Perkins makes all the same arguments about Gay Marriage that were made about interracial marriage. The arguments were bogus in the 1960s and are still bogus today.

Lady with Weasel

Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, was a serial philanderer and patron of Leonardo da Vinci. Ludovico's favorite mistress, Cecilia Gallerani, is painted above with Ludovico's heraldic animal, the weasel. From spectral analysis, it has been determined that Leonardo had to redo the painting many times to get the weasel to look as much like Ludovico as possible. It certainly must have been a great life to be a court painter.

The Final Years of White Dominance

Simplest way to explain all the cray stuff going in US polities right now.

White Sands: A Great Little Know Movie

Set in New Mexico, White Sands is a murder mystery not particularly well-liked by the critics and as a result not very well known. But the setting and the filming are gorgeous (if you like the US Southwest), and the film is full of great characters: M. Emmet Walsh as coroner Bert Gibson, Samuel L. Jackson as corrupt FBI Agent Greg Meeker, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as socialite Lane Bodine, Mickey Rourke as CIA Agent Gorman Lennox and Willem Dafoe as Torrance County, New Mexico Deputy Sheriff Ray Dolezal. Here's the full movie; enjoy the scenery and don't get hung up on the details!

The Successful Career: Start Out as a Fly, End Up As a Star

Jeff Goldblum has had a great career as an actor, comedian and Jazz musician (in 2014, Goldbum's group, the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, did a run at the Carlyle Hotel in New York). His latest appearance was this great "Enhance Your Lighting" commercial from GE above. In the video, Goldblum plays a nauseating super star with a full mane of perfect hair, a perfect house with combined music room/hot tub, and the perfect reactions to his collection of toadys. It's a great send up of our star-struck culture and obsession with success.



In 1986, Golblum received the Saturn Award for Best Actor in The Fly. In the movie, he plays a brilliant scientists who conducts an experiment on human teleportation which goes wrong when a fly gets into his teleportation chamber.


In 1993, Goldbum received another Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor when he played another scientist studying Chaos Theory (a Chaotician) in Jurrasic Park.

Power Outage? This is helpful!

The power is out. What should you do? Tucson Electric Power (TEP) suggests that you log on to https://www.tep.com/outage/. After you realize that your internet connection is also down because your modem is plugged into the electrical outlet that isn't working and you forget to get an expensive battery backup system for the modem, your next stop should be your smart phone, if you have one.