Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 169 – Mashed Potatoes Without the Gravy

Mashed Potatoes (No Gravy)

Billy Bob Thorton acted like a petulant, spoiled child on April 8 during a CBC interview with Jian Ghomeshi to promote his new band and musical venture the Boxmasters. Or is that the Mixmasters?   Boxmatches?  Boxcutters? I don’t know.  In any case,   for whatever reason,  Thorton seemed to be overestimating his importance and talent in the matter.  I think that he fancied that he was punishing someone by checking out of the interview.  It has been a long time since I have had the misfortune to witness such arrogant self-importance.  If you haven’t seen or listened to this insulting train wreck of unfathomable immaturity, you can catch it on at this youtube link: Jian Ghomeshi interview with Billy Bob Thorton.   Special K and I deconstruct his behaviour and then move on to discuss two movies about political figures.   It’s been 30 years since the White Night Riots after the city politican and gay activist Harvey Milk was murdered by Dan White.  We talk about the movie and how we feel about what happened during that time in gay history.  We move on to explore our reaction to a movie very difficult to make since it focused completely and solely on a conversation and a very difficult one at that.  We discuss the portrayal of David Frost and Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon.

And finally I give you my first and original mashup of Billy Bob Thorton’s most annoying utterances from his April 8th excuse of an interview on CBC radio.

Harvey Milk - Gay Pride 1978 - Photo by Terry Schmitt

Listen to the show

• HotFRM 169 Mashed Potatoes Without the Gravy (24.7 mb)

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 168 – San Diego Equality Campaign

On May 4th Ninja interviewed Sara Beth Brooks the Executive Director and founder of San Diego Equality Campaign , an organization fighting to legalize same sex marriage and civil rights for LGBT people.  Sara talks about California’s Proposition 8, Camp Courage, and Join the Impact.   You can follow her on Twitter at:   http://twitter.com/sarabethbrooks.

Other Links: San Diego Equality Campaign on Twitter, Day of Decision, Gathering Storm,  PROP8 – The Musical,

• HotFRM 168 – Day of Decision Hope (36.3mb)

Take Up the Idaho Challenge

“Peace Is a Resistance to the Terrible Satisfactions of War” – Judith Butler

On Sunday Morning the weekly CBC televsion newsmagazine, a Montreal actor and dubbing director, Michael Rudder, was interviewed from his hospital bed in Bombay.  He’d been shot at least four times last week in the Mumbai attacks.  He was shot in the arm, the leg, the buttocks and as of this writing, there is still a bullet lodged in his stomach.  Eating in the Oberoi hotel restaurant, he had heard shots and asked about them.  He was told by restaurant employees, that it was only gangsters.  A strange remark indeed.   (As strange as the remarks made during a Mexican murder aftermath in 2006.  Then, Mexican officials publically declared that an Italian couple killed in a resort near Playa del Carmen was the work of Canadian mobster hit women from Thunder Bay. That murder is another act of violence that outrages me.) Rudder doesn’t understand why, but assumed he and his party were not in danger.   Moments later he and the patrons found themselves in a hailstorm of bullets. He believes that extremism is on the rise. I think that this is nonsense. Extremism just is and sometimes it causes loss of life.

With innocence still and perhaps naivety Rudder continues in the interview, ” ...as long as people think that their hatred is more powerful than the wisdom that their mothers’ would have taught them…they will respond in such ways.“  This sentiment, of course, assumes that their mothers have a wisdom that prevents hatred. In my skepticism, I am not so sure that is true.   I could exercise a generosity of interpretation and suppose that “mothers’ wisdom” is a symbol for an attitude of peace, love and nuturance. In that case his statement is very much worth thinking about. But who is teaching the attitude?   I am not sure that human nature has changed in all of recorded history and I fear that the chance of that happening is very slim.  Every second a new baby on this planet is born, a stranger in a hostile land, a tabula rasa that his or her culture and economic position will imprint itself on, forever repeating the same patterns be they for good or ill.

Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That’s humanity.  That’s what we do generation after generation. We hate and fear the other and seeking vengence for real or perceived affronts is very human.   The philosopher, Judith Butler, discusses revenge in a 2003 interview in The Believer Magazine.  She says that when choosing non-retaliation: “Many people consider that refusing to strike back is a masochistic way of handling oneself when one is in a condition of injury, or that such a refusal is tantamount to political paralysis, but I actually think it is an adamant and vigilant stand, a difficult stand against violence itself.“  She reminds us that:

“War begets war. It produces outraged and humiliated and furious people…it is precisely because we’re constituted with aggression, it’s precisely because we are capable of waging war, and of striking back, and of doing massive injury, that peace becomes a necessity…[Peace] is a commitment to living with a certain kind of vulnerability to others and susceptibility to being wounded that actually gives our individual lives meaning. And I think this way of viewing things is a much harder place to go, so to speak. One can’t just do it alone, either. I think it needs to be institutionalized. It needs to be part of a community ethos. I think in fact it needs to be part of an entire foreign policy.“

I think these are the things we should be teaching our children.

In My Next Life I Hope I am a Hacker

From the website saveournet.ca

Put simply, net neutrality means non-discriminatory treatment of traffic. That is, outside of limited exceptions such as spam and known viruses, the companies that deliver information over the internet have treated all information the same, delivering each package of information as quickly and efficiently as possible (often referred to as the “best efforts” internet). Under this regime an internet user is free to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. Network neutrality means that the network provider’s only job is to move data – not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.

Legislation against net neutrality is not as simple as censorship if governments get their way.  Censorship is just an evil by-product.  It’s all about making a buck.  The less net neutrality we have, the more ways to charge me for use of the web.  But since there is more than one way to solve a problem, I shall just wait for the hackers to get around it.  And get around it they will.   In the meantime – please help save our net.

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 157 – Autumn GeekFest

On October 18, Toronto hosted another podcaster’s meetup.  Things got pretty meta with Omar Ha-Redeye (Law is Cool), Connie Crosby (Community Divas) and Shadow and James. Ninja is surrounded by lawyer types.  We talk about Omar’s voice, podcasting, podcamps, twitter and finally politics.

• 157hotfrmautumngeekfest · 26.51 MB

Are Americans Ready for Sixteen Years of Democrats?

The rest of the world is. This last weekend I interviewed my neighbour, whose political views are informed and well thought out. My neighbour is a Canadian Vietnam veteran. He served as a volunteer for the Americans some 40 years ago. For most of his life he has leaned to the right but recently and because of what he sees as the Republican party character and mistakes of the current and past administrations, leans more and more left of centre in recent years. In my interview, he looks critically at the Democratic presidential nomination race and what it would mean for America and the world if the Democrats win the presidential race in November. If you’re an American and haven’t made up your mind, then Mike’s thoughts will hopefully help you make that decision. It might motivate you to respond or do your own further research on the matter to make the best informed decision you can. Enjoy the interview and find out who Mike would be voting for in November if he were an American and why.

Some of the ambient hiss you’ll hear is his refrigerator and furnace and oh, yes: In the background you will hear enthusiastic shouts and laughter of his family and Special K playing with the WII.

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 132