Where's the Outrage?

This really is one of the best shows. In it, I review the polls and look at this race as any other thoughtful person would. Obama had substance, where McCain relied on personal attacks. Mark Karlin from Buzzflash.com stops by. Karlin is based in Chicago and has followed Barack Obama from early in his career. Senator Claire McCaskill…that’s right , Senator…was in North Carolina earlier this week and we talk about the election. We both are hoping that North Carolina and Missouri will turn Blue!

The Errington Thompson Show - 11-01-08 [ 38:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Election 2008, Party Politics, Podcasts by ecthompson md
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I love Sting. I could listen to him almost every day.

Tags: Fun, Music by ecthompson md
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Here are Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock playing with and around – Watermelon Man. An absolutely great performance…and a great clip for a Saturday night.

Tags: Fun, Music by ecthompson md
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I recently read the following about the State of Virginia in Vernon Parrington’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Romantic Revolution In America 1820-1860—” The navigable rivers of the tidewater region were favorable to the development of a decentralized economics, and despite royal commands to create adequate seaports and heavy taxes….trading towns did not prosper. For two hundred years Virginia refused to create a native middleman group to handle its staples….Each planter insisted on putting hogsheads of tobacco aboard ship at his own wharf, and receiving his merchandise direct from London.”

You can look at the above image of Virginia and see the many rivers on the right hand side of the map. They flow into Chesapeake Bay. Each of those rivers has many inlets and tributaries and this allowed people to set up farms and plantations on navigable waterways. So located, plantation masters could bypass cities and do business for themselves.

However, when I look at the many rivers of Eastern Virginia, what I see is that these rivers flow into the same place. Right into Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Beyond that, the fact is that the distinctions between oceans are man-made, and that all the world’s salt water is connected. Look at this map and you’ll see what I mean.

When folks wanted to protect ill-gotten profits and defend slavery, they saw the world as disconnected. When we are looking for brotherhood and sisterhood, we see that all rivers flow into the same sea.

Tags: Books, General by Neil Aquino
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A NASA probe says the planet Mercury is more lively than people imagine.

It’s more than just a dusty black and white place. That’s been the image of Mercury over the years. Now we know that there is blue stuff (Above) on Mercury and that it was once a volcanic hotbed—

“Astronomers used to dismiss Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, as mere “dead rock,” little more than a target for cosmic collisions that shaped it, said MIT planetary scientist Maria Zuber. “Now, it’s looking a lot more interesting,” said Zuber, who has experiments on the Messenger probe. “It’s an awful lot of volcanic material.” New images of filled-in craters — one the size of the Baltimore-Washington area and filled in with more than a mile deep of cooled lava — show that 3.8 to 4 billion years ago, Mercury was more of a volcanic hotspot than the moon ever was, Zuber said. But it isn’t just filled-in craters. Using special cameras, the probe showed what one scientist called “the mysterious dark blue material.” It was all over the planet. That led Arizona State University geologist Mark Robinson to speculate that the mineral is important but still unknown stuff ejected from Mercury’s large core in the volcanic eruptions.”

Maybe as we learn that Mercury is more than we imagined, there are people in our lives that we need to reconsider. People may have previously unknown talents or insights that we have missed over the years.

Think about somebody you know and give them a new look. 

Here is the web home of the Messenger mission to Mercury. 

Here is information about Mercury.

Tags: NASA, Science by Neil Aquino
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Saturday Night Evening Roundup

The right wing is in complete disarray. Besides trying to decide what their core values are, since those values have been wholly rejected by the American public, they’re trying to find someone like Ronald Reagan to lead them in a new direction. Robert Novak believes that that person is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Personally, I believe that Republicans need to look for a new face with new ideas.

My father used to repeat an old saying. “It is better to be quiet and let people think that you’re a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” I’m guessing that Sarah Palin’s father did not tell her these thoughtful words. She held a press conference yesterday for reasons that are unclear. She brought up several points that were somewhat mind-boggling (see video below). She also decided to discuss race relations in Alaska. Did you know Alaska is the land of equality? Yeah, I didn’t understand that either. There must be five or six black and Latino folks in Alaska, right?

NBC has found an interview with Senator John F. Kennedy. Yes, that’s right — Senator. It was taped before he was elected president.

Yesterday, I mentioned that Senator Joseph Lieberman was in jeopardy of losing his chairmanship of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Today, Senator Harry Reid made his intentions clear on CNN, stating that what Joe Lieberman did “was improper, wrong.” I guess Joe is going to have to do some fast apologizing in order to save his chairmanship.

In Germany, original plans were found for the construction of Auschwitz.  About a million Jews died in that awful place.

We’ve been in Iraq for what seems to be an eternity. Still, after all this time, it is hard to decide why we went to war. It is my personal belief that it was a combination of things — weapons of mass destruction, spread democracy, to show the world the consequences of defying the US and to increase our supply of oil. It appears that Royal Dutch Shell has signed an agreement with the Iraqi Oil Ministry, giving Shell Oil a monopoly on Iraq’s natural gas. Maybe everything else was a smokescreen and we went to war for oil and oil alone. It sure is beginning to look that way.

Tags: Election 2008, Foreign Affairs, Iraq by ecthompson md
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