The other day Dawn and I were watching The Majestic with Jim Carey. I really enjoyed the movie. It takes place during the McCarthyism Anti-Communism hearings.

Watching how ludicrous the hearings and investigations were depicted it made me shake my head. It reminded me of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 America. I remember my father telling me that the real witches during those trials were the ones making the acquisitions (although not the kind of witches they were hunting for). So I figured the communists, or at least the anti-Americans (subversives, etc.) were the ones orchestrating the McCarthyism trials.

Anyway, I shook my head and thought to myself of George Santayana’s quote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Naturally I was glad that modern America is beyond that sort of stillness.

Then I started wondering if we really were. Maybe this pattern it repeating itself. Salem didn’t invent it (look at the Spanish Inquisition), so it probably won’t end with McCarthyism. So could I think of an example today? The first thing I came up with was the detention center in Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo).

Lets look at the similarities between the three: Salem, McCarthy and Gitmo:

In researching this I discovered I am by far not the first to draw these parallels which is not surprising. I was surprised to find out that considering this now makes me a Liberal Democrat. Hmm . . . interesting.

I actually enjoy Opera after discovering Amici Forever after watching their ‘Senza Catene’ video through Winamp.  I picked up their Opera Band and Defined CD’s from Amazon and love them!

So I went to checkout the video’s Nick linked to, and it was great, but one of my pet peeves about YouTube is the quality, so I popped out to Stage6.DivX.com (requires the DivX web plugin!) and I found they had the videos there with much better audio and video quality.

The first video is Paul Potts’ audition.   The great thing about this video is Paul walks out looking a little disheveled and very unassuming.  When he tells them he is going to sing Opera you can see the judges raise their eye brows in an “Oh no!”  Since Opera is probably one of the most difficult singing styles I am sure they expected a painful experience.  What I love is almost immediately, when he starts singing, you see the surprise on the judges faces.  The audience and judges reaction is great.  I’ll let you watch it.

In the Simi-finals, Paul Potts comes back in a nice suite with some obvious production value improvements to his performance.  His performance was once again amazing, but I think I still enjoyed the piece from his audition better.

When Paul was back for the finals he once again gave a great performance.   You see the audience members waving signs with pictures.

I still think his audition was the best, just because the contrast was so high between the expectation and what we got.  Plus I really liked the piece he performed.  I went out to Wikipedia and read up on Britain’s Got Talent and Paul Potts. Paul did inded win the competition, and also was signed to a recording contract and to record his debut album.

What I really love about Paul, beyond his great signing voice is he is living his passion.  He says that singing has always been his passion, and now he is living it.  I watched a couple of the other video’s from the finalists, and they were good, and passionate, but I really felt it more from Paul.  While everyone may not get to win a large sum of money or a recording contract by living your passion, I still believe that is the best way to go.

Live your passion!

Watch Apple’s holiday commercial where Mac and PC actually get along.

In an artist’s conception a cloak of invisibility is arranged against a white background. In the May 25, 2006, issue of the journal Science, researchers lay out design specifications for materials that they say will be able to bend electromagnetic radiation—including light—around space of any size and shape.

Once you have a picture in your mind of what you expect to see, take a look at the illustration.  I hope Ted Chamberlain was well compensated for his work!

One thing about Flying Pie is they have a 170+ pound foil ball. They are going for the world record, and even have a tracking number from Guinness. This really cool foil ball is made from donated foil and foil resulting from the operation of their restaurant. The foil ball has a name, Flora, and a blog.

I had the opportunity to meet a lot of really cool Boise bloggers. If I were to try to list them I would certainly miss a few. Hopefully this dinner we become a regular Boise event. Maybe we can bring Shel back again.
While we were talking Shel mentioned that his speaking engagement was in the AM, but his flight wasn’t until late, so I asked if he would be open to coming by my work and talking to our VP about internal blogging at Washington Group International. More on this later.

• Time/Date: 6:30-8:30 pm, Monday, May 15 (TONIGHT!)
• Place: Flying Pie Pizza, 6508 Fairview, Boise, Idaho
• Deal: Pizza and soda for $4.00

In addition to local blogosphere members, Shel Israel, author of Naked Conversations, will be there.

Subject Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Boise] [Idaho] [Boise, Idaho] [Dinner] [Event] [Naked Conversations] [Blog] [Blogger] [Blogging]

Robert Scoble is the other author of Naked Conversations. He linked to my BSDG blog when I posted about PDC, and then I met him at PDC 2005. I look forward to meeting Shel. Maybe I will get him to autograph my book. For some reason I am really into autographed books.

She was coming at it from a purely civilzed point of view. She is a psychologist. At one point she says:

I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others’ right to believe in it.

This really irritated Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli, who was connecting with her via satelite. He started asking if she was a heretic.

Her comments about respecting other people’s freedom to worship how they please reminded me of when I went to see the Dali Lahma in Hailey, Idaho on September 11th, 2005. His life’s message is one of compassion, but one point he made was that (and I paraphrase from memory) anyone claiming to go to war in the name of their religion was not a true follower of their religion. He said whatever religion people choose to follow is fine, as long as they follow it and don’t use it as an excuse for violence. That we should all just get along. Look for commonality – reasons to come together, not to be divided.

Wafa Sultan’s interview:

1. Video in IE.
2. Video in Windows Media Player.
3. Transcript.
4. Transcript from eariler interview.