Move over Barack… there’s a new Rock Star in town, and he’s got my vote!
That’s right… though presidential candidate Barack Obama has in this US election season become a face synonymous with American ideas and “positive change”, similarly the images of this Bigfoot laying in a cooler down in Georgia have quickly made Bigfoot the USA’s posterchild in the last 24 hours; in media sources both homeland and international.
Over at the Space.com blog, Seth Shostak has written an interesting piece that I must say I can relate to quite well: The issue of extraterrestrial intelligences visiting Earth, and how the “lack of civilized discourse” on the subject smacks of the various kinds of quackery surrounding the study of UFOs. Shostak isn’t criticizing the crazy guys out there who claim that aliens have been disassembling them and reconnecting their tissues every night with purple goop, though. Instead, he’s going at the folks who seem to think that the best way to win an argument is to tear down anyone who suggests anything outside their own personal beliefs. Read the rest of this entry »
I would like to wish a very happy Independence Day to everyone, both here in America and abroad, as I know we have many international regulars here at The Gralien Report. May the spirit of peace be with you, and may liberty’s little flame keep burning inside you all your days.
I woke up this morning feeling rather patriotic, for obvious reasons aforementioned, and instead of donning a star-spangled necktie or slicing into a big slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie (yet, anyway), I felt the urge to see what other Americans are doing to celebrate their independence. What I found was more than a mere hint of urgency, and maybe even a bit of a preoccupation, with economic and environmental concerns; a kind of “neo-patriotism” for the modern era. In the midst of celebrating this patriotic holiday, folks are nonetheless keeping their minds wrapped around rising fuel costs, global warming, and personal sacrifice. I’ll have to share a few of these with you, and then finally we’ll take a slightly paranormal look at the lovely lady of liberty to whom I’ve already alluded.
Always with one eye kept toward the energy crisis, and even in the “heat” of the political season, Time Magazine’s Joe Klein has decided he’ll show his patriotism by cutting off his air-conditioner. “For the good of the country, we should be sweating,” he said in an editorial this week, where he tosses attractive numbers at us like a savings of 20% on your air conditioning expenses by raising your thermostat a mere five degrees. He goes on to later describe President Bush’s failure to address energy and fuel conservation “one of the great failures of his presidency,” and notes that Barack Obama and John McCain have both addressed the matter in recent campaign stops. “I’d like to see both candidates call for an immediate 5 degree F adjustment,” Klein says, “just to get the conservation ball rolling – and because it would be a ‘personal virtue’ for each candidate to ask it of us.”