The Binary Circumstance

If you would like to get your mind off of self-important politicians and the nonsense that they spout to win elections, I would highly recommend StarGaze: Hubble’s View of the Universe, a DVD that consists of awesome pictures taken by the Hubble space telescope set to music.

I found it necessary to watch it twice, because when the subtitles are displayed, I wasn’t focused on the pictures. But to really see the pictures in their full glory, it helps to turn off the subtitles. The subtitles have a lot of interesting information in them, so they are well worth reading. The are available in several languages.

The main menu didn’t come up when the DVD started playing. I didn’t realize that there’s also a voice-over narration on the DVD which allows you to see the pictures without having to read subtitles. To select the voice narration, I had to do into the audio selection menu, selecting “English narration” from the subtitle menu just gave me subtitles. I thought this was a shortcoming of the DVD.

The film is only about 50 minutes long and gazing at the universe through Hubble’s eyes really puts everything that happens on this planet into perspective.

It also makes you wonder how anybody could think that the Biblical story of creation has any truth to it. If the Hubble is collecting light from billions of years ago, how could the universe have been created just a few thousand years ago? When you see on the unfathomable vastness of the Universe, how could any human think the whole thing was built for him?

The film is available from Netflix:

NASA’s Hubble Telescope focuses its lens on amazing celestial images in this captivating documentary, which puts viewers in the astronomer’s seat. The star of the film is Hubble’s astounding footage of galaxies, supernovae, stars, planets, gaseous clouds, nebulae and other out-of-this-world sights, accompanied by a narrative detailing Hubble’s history and NASA’s mission to use the telescope for documenting cosmic events and objects.

It can also be purchased from Amazon.com.

From the Boston Globe:

Toward the end of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” a CIA officer played by the pitch-perfect Philip Seymour Hoffman cautions the Wilson character (played by Tom Hanks) not to be too sure they have done something glorious. To make the point, he tells the story of a Zen master who observes the people of his village celebrating a young boy’s new horse as a wonderful gift. “We’ll see,” the Zen master says. When the boy falls off the horse and breaks a leg, everyone says the horse is a curse. “We’ll see,” says the master. Then war breaks out, the boy cannot be conscripted because of his injury, and everyone now says the horse was a fortunate gift. “We’ll see,” the master says again.

I really enjoyed this movie and this review does a great job of capturing my own impressions.

The real star of the film is the script. That [Aaron] Sorkin managed to tell so serious a story in so entertaining a manner should earn him a number of awards.

The actors deliver the goods as well. Hanks’ comic timing is as brilliant as ever. Roberts is indeed, as Wilson calls her in the film, “Helen of Troy,” inspiring powerful men through her beauty and–shall we politely call it–“southern hospitality” to get with her program of freeing the Afghan people from the godless menace of the communists.

But it is Hoffman’s spot-on portrayal of the quintessential CIA operative, half crude bluster and half savvy erudition, that steals the show, and should earn him an Oscar. He storms into the film like an angry elephant, and when he’s in a scene, it’s difficult to put your attention anywhere else.

There’s a serious set of lessons to be learned behind all the hilarity, however.

The first is that, when covert actions are authorized and paid for in secret, we’re not really functioning as a Democracy. The public didn’t know what Charlie Wilson and the CIA were doing, so they had no way to vote people into or out of office to shape that policy.

And if supporting the Afghans was so clearly the right thing to do, why did it have to be done in secret? We went to war in Iraq for far less, overtly.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both paid visits to Seattle to drum up support for the caucuses on Saturday.

Clinton promoted her vision of mandatory universal health care.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton jabbed at President Bush and issued a detailed call for universal health care Thursday night as she sought to draw distinctions between herself and Sen. Barack Obama, her Democratic rival.

She told an enthusiastic crowd of thousands in Seattle that if they believed like she did and wanted mandated health care for everyone, “I’m the only candidate on either side that you should come out and support on Saturday.”

I guess she sees herself as the one, true candidate just like religious people view their God as the one, true God.

Having watched Julian Schnabel’s remarkable film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last night, I’m more sensitive than usual to the possibility of being trapped into a health care environment that I don’t want and can’t control.

Obama’s rally drew a crowd about four times the size of Clinton’s. It sounds like a revival meeting that bordered on a riot.

Officials closed the entrances to KeyArena at about 11 this morning, turning away thousands who had gathered to hear presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama speak at noon.

Doors were locked after KeyArena reached its capacity of about 20,000, officials said. Those who made it inside were not allowed to leave because police wanted to keep those outside from pushing through the doors and forcing themselves in. People outside were banging on glass doors and windows of the arena, as police were trying to maintain peace.

Police sent officers outside into the crowd to push people away from the doors so that no one would get crushed or trampled.

Kathryn Hughes, a senior at Gig Harbor High School, got inside while her friend Hunter Burton, also a Gig Harbor senior, was outside, pressed against a KeyArena glass door.

Burton said he was “furious beyond words. Democracy should not be limited by a stadium’s capacity.”

In addition, Gov. Christine Gregoire endorsed Sen. Obama.

Being that I write all the time about the difference between fantasy and reality and the importance of knowing the difference, I found this documentary Guys and Dolls absolutely fascinating.

It’s about men who have relationships with life-like female dolls that include emotional attachment and sex. Also of interest are the people who design, make and repair the dolls.

Everyone in the film is smart, emotionally literate, articulate and vulnerable. Everyone knows the dolls are fantasy, but it’s a fantasy that seems to bring these men closer to the reality of who they are, something they haven’t found with real human companions.

It made me think of all the human relationships between real people that are really based on fantasy, far more delusional than the relationships these men have with their dolls.

It’s a really brilliant documentary.

I’d love to hear your impressions.

47 minutes. (Warning: doll nudity. NWS)