Bionic Woman - Second Episode Reveals Great Show

Ok, I admit I've developed a love for the show Bionic Woman. It's sexy, smart, hip, and thick. It's got interesting characters and being a kind of sci-fi geek, I'v always found the subject of bionics fascinating. But all that aside, Bionic Woman has the makings of a classic show.

It certainly started off with a bang, the first pilot episode got ratings not seen by NBC since "The West Wing." But can it continue? I think it's going to go beyond it. Why? Well, the technical issue of the pacing I pointed out is gone this time.

But more to the point, the writers and director really get the idea of this normal person trapped in an extraordinary situation, but unable and unwilling to totally lose herself in it and give up her normal life.



Michelle Ryan's doing an excellent job not just playing stranger in a strange land, but with a glint for the dangerous. My favorite scene being a bachelor was when she pulls this guy into a bathroom and starts making out with him, only to break his ribs. I wished I were him, even with the rib problem!

But the whole scene segment was so real and that's what I like about the Bionic Woman. It is grounded in the now and so we have many cultural reference points to draw from, and not get lost in the "super woman" aspect of the program. If the makers of the show can keep that balance, they've got a cult hit on their hands.

Michael Vick Takes PETA Course in Respect for Animals

This article was obtained from www.peta.org

In August 2007, NFL quarterback Michael Vick pleaded guilty to federal dogfighting charges. The 18-page indictment gave gruesome details of the operation, which shocked the nation.

Vick Meets With PETA President

On September 7, 2007, Vick made an arranged visit to PETA's headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, for a private meeting with PETA president Ingrid Newkirk. Newkirk told Vick that PETA advocates an end to all exploitation and needless violence based on prejudice, including the prejudice against other species, and that PETA believed that arming himself with information and materials would allow Vick to better live up to his responsibility to counsel children not to engage in cruelty to animals. Newkirk also explained that although PETA realizes that it is in his legal interests to take PETA's course in basic animal empathy, our position that he deserves jail time and a lifetime ban on animal contact remains firm. During their meeting, he expressed his willingness to learn and his belief that everything in life happens for a reason, and he offered an apology to PETA and to "everyone" for "what I have done to dogs."

Initial Lessons in Empathy

Vick left PETA that day with some initial reading materials for empathy development, including Animals, Nature & Albert Schweitzer, edited by Ann Cottrell Free, which contains a particularly moving passage from the kind doctor:
I must interpret the life about me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mind. And not only other human life, but all kinds of life: life above mine, if there be such life; life below mine, as I know it to exist. Ethics in our Western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relations of man to man. But that is a limited ethics. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also.

Vick Returns to PETA for Basic Course

On September 18, 2007, Vick returned to PETA to take the "Developing Empathy for Animals" course, a one-day seminar including who animals are, alternatives to cruelty, animal protection philosophy, and humane lesson plans. PETA has now made the course available online, in the hope that it will be adopted by the NFL for all players to take and used as a means to teach children across the nation the values of empathy, compassion, and nonviolence.

Continuing to Stop Violence

Although the Vick story served as the first glimpse for many people into the gory details of dogfighting, the abuses detailed in Vick's indictment are as widespread as they are horrific. In the last year alone, PETA has responded to more than 14,000 calls and e-mails regarding other dogfighting and individual cruelty-to-animals cases. The crucial step now is to urge policymakers and law enforcement officers to treat all cases of dogfighting and cruelty to animals the same way that they prosecuted Vick's high-profile case. To that end, please join PETA and ask the NFL to require all its players, some of whom have been involved in a series of cruelty-to-animals cases, to attend PETA's "Developing Empathy for Animals" course.

Clinton Cackle Annoying This Four Year Old Kid - No Kidding

I saw this over at the blog Wonkette :

BY SEANIBUS AT 10/01/07 07:30 PM
I just played Slate's recording of the laugh and my four year old came tearing over to my desk and said "Please don't play that Ha Ha Ha thing again, daddy. It is annoying me."
I am not making this up.

Hillary Clinton - Clinton Cackle? - Cackle Can Lose Elections

Barack Obama does not cackle, he's too presidential for that.

Ron Dellums Endorses Sen. Clinton - After The Mayor Gets A Bone From Her

Mayor Ron Dellums made the massive error of backing Senator Hillary Clinton in the Presidential race, a sure sign that Barack Obama will win the nomination.

Of course, this didn't come as just a simple endorsement -- it came as yet another Clinton deal. In this case, Hillary placed Mayor Ron Dellums in some role in her campaign.

How many times she's done this in some form makes one dizzy. But what's really wild is that Dellums would back someone who's flipped-flopped on so many issues and supported the Iraq War that it's not funny.

Plus, Dellums apparently can't bring himself to back a young Black Senator named Barack Obama. It's funny with some older African Americans in Oakland. They're so afraid of anyone Black who can be in charge that they'd back someone White. I'm serious about this, and would not write it if it were not true.

The real mental slaves are those who say to me -- who are Black -- that Barack can't win because he's Black. I tell each person that they're afraid of Black success. They're not comfortable. They're also some of the same people who gave me problems when I worked to bring the Super Bowl to Oakland.

Former Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb said it best to me in 1999: "Oakland is a crab-barrel city. You (speaking to me). You're young. Black. Smart. You're a threat."

I guess the same could be said for Barack Obama, which makes me fight harder all the more for him. Dellums will wind up on the wrong end of this race, because we're going to win.

But the message Dellums is sending is one I find terrible. It says the endorsement Oakland's African American leaders can be bought and that's a terrible sign. I say to anyone young and Black, pay this no mind, and continue to back Barack Obama.

Dellums Endorses Clinton - After The Mayor Gets A Bone From Her

Mayor Ron Dellums made the massive error of backing Senator Hillary Clinton in the Presidential race, a sure sign that Barack Obama will win the nomination.

Of course, this didn't come as just a simple endorsement -- it came as yet another Clinton deal. In this case, Hillary placed Mayor Ron Dellums in some role in her campaign.

How many times she's done this in some form makes one dizzy. But what's really wild is that Dellums would back someone who's flipped-flopped on so many issues and supported the Iraq War that it's not funny.

Plus, Dellums apparently can't bring himself to back a young Black Senator named Barack Obama. It's funny with some older African Americans in Oakland. They're so afraid of anyone Black who can be in charge that they'd back someone White. I'm serious about this, and would not write it if it were not true.

The real mental slaves are those who say to me -- who are Black -- that Barack can't win because he's Black. I tell each person that they're afraid of Black success. They're not comfortable. They're also some of the same people who gave me problems when I worked to bring the Super Bowl to Oakland.

Former Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb said it best to me in 1999: "Oakland is a crab-barrel city. You (speaking to me). You're young. Black. Smart. You're a threat."

I guess the same could be said for Barack Obama, which makes me fight harder all the more for him. Dellums will wind up on the wrong end of this race, because we're going to win.

But the message Dellums is sending is one I find terrible. It says the endorsement Oakland's African American leaders can be bought and that's a terrible sign. I say to anyone young and Black, pay this no mind, and continue to back Barack Obama.