Michael Douglas spot on Jimmy Dore plumbs new depths.

Radio host Jimmy Dore did a bit on his show on Public Reality Radio during the 5pm ET hour that was probably in the poorest taste I've ever read or heard anywhere before.

The skit involved a Michael Douglas imitator calling in about his throat cancer and for 3-5 minutes we were treated to the fake Douglas choking on pubic hairs and making other jokes so foul they had to be bleeped.

I have no problem with pubic hair jokes, but the utter disregard for another human being's very real suffering, just because he was famous and associated with a sexual act, plumbed new depths.

When I started listening, WPRR in Grand Rapids (on 1680AM and 95.3 FM) was devoted to thoughtful atheism, skepticism, gay lifestyle, alternative news (like Al Jazeera), and some (if limited) liberal theology.

I get embarrassed for people in struggling media or with declining careers in the public spotlight trying to get attention. Commercial radio is rife with it right now, but not since Howard Stern moved to satellite has anybody cared.

[2013-06-14]

 

c0

Say something else in that ear.

"Occasionally "liking" someone on Facebook without ever getting a like back is sort of like one hand clapping and the other hand saying "shush." "
--Clarence 0ddbody

[2013-06-14]

 

c0

The world jumped the shark over the weekend.

Click to enlarge: Storm chasers Carl Young, Tim Samaras, and Paul Samaras.

Storm Chasers Die in Tornado

"Renowned researcher and storm chaser Tim Samaras, 55, his son Paul Samaras, 24, and his chase partner Carl Young, 45, passed away after they were overtaken by the multiple-vortex tornado, which appeared to be in the midst of a sharp change in direction." Source >

I mean no disrespect for the dead, but if you drive into tornadoes enough times, your luck will run out.

Sadly interesting how the news scavengers were picking at the storm chasers' bones before they were even buried. The same people that pay guys like this for storm video doubled their investment with their deaths.

I have no objection to scientists doing dangerous science. I object to the media circus this sort creates.

[2013-06-04]

c0

After watching a nude guy try to commit suicide on Tosh.0 and being ridiculed for the size of his schlong, I think I will now be sticking to NPR, WPRR, audio books, my Nook, and a few old-fashioned printed books, among them my uncle's Good News for Science, which I've been enjoying (but must wrestle with reading glasses to make progress, sorry Uncle Dave).

The world jumped the shark this weekend.

[2013-06-24]

c0

Clarence's schedule during July (and how to subscribe to Clarence by email).

This month is keeping me busy, so I've been writing ahead.

I may not always get a chance to tweet for "like" my own posts (for those that get updates that way). If I'm MIA, it's likely not because there's nothing to read.

The best way to get every update I post is to subscribe by email. I cannot see who is subscribed, and if there is a way to know how many, I haven't found that out, either. I know there are a few who read me only that way, and that is great IMHO. I also follow a number of online writers by RSS and email only.

 

c0

Ideas have DNA (give me those old time lady preachers).

Click to enlarge: This is my Grandpa Cairns (my dad's dad) in 1975 on his birthday. I am immediately to his left, partly hidden by my brother Tom. Of course, that's Grandma (Geneva Cairns, née Bauer) next to Grandpa.

As you may know from reading me, my Uncle Ken[1] and Aunt Dorothy and their kids (Carolee, Dee Dee and Tom Tom) were missionaries in Kinshasa.

It occurred to me that we leave much more behind than our DNA, we leave ideas, which have something like DNA also.

How many people in Kinshasa today are Christians, or just better people, because my uncle and his family were there? Most of them have no idea who Uncle Ken is.

My Grandpa Cairns was saved (that's evangelical lingo for "became a Christian") by a lady preacher at a tent revival. There's no way I'd be here without him, and there's no way Grandma would have dated him if he hadn't been a Christian.

Click to enlarge: This is the front and back of the same photo showing (I think) Grandma's handwriting.

Grandpa never mentioned that lady preacher's name, but he mentioned the event a few times, usually when everyone else was talking about Baptists ordaining women. He had an opinion but stated it obliquely. My guess is he liked the idea.

We leave behind idea DNA just like we leave behind our physical DNA.

Both good and bad.

c0

[1]
Ken is Dad's brother. Ken was a cook in the army and still enjoys cooking to this day. He made a couple or three Thanksgiving dinners I enjoyed at his house when they lived in Holly. 

c0

Ten unpublished Michael Crichton titles coming (a real treat, or for die-hards only?)

Open Road Media is releasing ten unpublished Michael Crichton stories as e-books on July 23. For a Crichton fan like myself (I stood in line to buy everything after Jurassic Park), this will be a real treat, and possibly, in some small measure, a disappointment. They were written while Crichton was in med school and using the pen names John Lange, Jeffery Hudson, and Michael Douglas.

I'm also a Truman Capote fan (actually more than a fan, but that's for another time), and when his Summer Crossing was released in 2005 (in a "slim volume" as they say), I of course got a copy and enjoyed it, but it was sort of like eating the first batch of cookies from your eager tween daughter destined for Le Cordon Bleu - shows promise, tastes good, will get better.

That's (usually) the only promise of early posthumous works.

Short Crichton news story >
Open Road Press Release >

c0