Mother of all Web link lists:
The link below will take you to the C-SPAN web resources page. It is the most extensive I have seen regarding public interest/political sites.
C-SPAN.ORG
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Democrat hubris:
The article linked below makes a good case. I wonder how long the link will be valid? That is, how long do web sites keep this stuff?
The 'We're Smart, You're Dumb' Principle
The article linked below makes a good case. I wonder how long the link will be valid? That is, how long do web sites keep this stuff?
The 'We're Smart, You're Dumb' Principle
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Monday, April 25, 2005
Muslims Murdering for Allah:
It is awful how the insurgents are killing Iraqis. This is Muslim murdering Muslim. If you include the nine year Iraq-Iran war and the Iraq invasion of Kuwait the slaughter of Muslims by Muslims in recent times is huge. Bin Laden pretends he is concerned about Americans hurting Muslims while his hands are covered with Muslim blood. The radical Imans and bloodthirsty insurgents slaughter their fellow Muslims like they are cattle and then piously praise Allah. It is disgusting and primitive.
It is awful how the insurgents are killing Iraqis. This is Muslim murdering Muslim. If you include the nine year Iraq-Iran war and the Iraq invasion of Kuwait the slaughter of Muslims by Muslims in recent times is huge. Bin Laden pretends he is concerned about Americans hurting Muslims while his hands are covered with Muslim blood. The radical Imans and bloodthirsty insurgents slaughter their fellow Muslims like they are cattle and then piously praise Allah. It is disgusting and primitive.
Why Poverty?
According to the World Almanac 2005 – which now lists illegitimate birth rates under the politically correct heading "Nonmarital Childbearing" – nearly 70 percent of black children are born outside of wedlock. With Latinos, the rate is almost 45 percent, whites nearly 30 percent, and Asians 15 percent. Overall, about 34 percent of America's children today are born outside of wedlock.
Bearing and raising children has a big economic impact on any normal family of two married people. Out-of-wedlock births to a single mom are devastating to the chance of escaping poverty. We are not talking about mature women with good jobs deciding to have a child that they can support and raise. We are talking about mostly teenage girls who are clueless about work and responsibility and welfare queens having multiple children. This is the largest single factor in family poverty statistics. In the black community, especially, leaders we see or read in the media seem to be in total denial about this.
According to the World Almanac 2005 – which now lists illegitimate birth rates under the politically correct heading "Nonmarital Childbearing" – nearly 70 percent of black children are born outside of wedlock. With Latinos, the rate is almost 45 percent, whites nearly 30 percent, and Asians 15 percent. Overall, about 34 percent of America's children today are born outside of wedlock.
Bearing and raising children has a big economic impact on any normal family of two married people. Out-of-wedlock births to a single mom are devastating to the chance of escaping poverty. We are not talking about mature women with good jobs deciding to have a child that they can support and raise. We are talking about mostly teenage girls who are clueless about work and responsibility and welfare queens having multiple children. This is the largest single factor in family poverty statistics. In the black community, especially, leaders we see or read in the media seem to be in total denial about this.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Satellite stuff
(Click to enlarge pic)When you put up a satellite dish on your house in Indiana you’re required to point it to the South West. The reason for this is television satellites must be in an orbit over the equator and they are roughly centered on North America. Therefore we need to point our dish south and west. The only way an orbit can be synchronized with the rotation of the earth so that the satellite appears to be stationary overhead is with the equatorial orbit at an altitude of about 23,000mi. There is no other orbit which can achieve this apparently stationary antenna effect.
Once a satellite is put into orbit it must be maintained in that orbit by the use of small gas jets on board. Orbit’s can decay over time and the satellite must be steered back into its proper position and attitude (pointed correctly). Interestingly, running out of gas for the jets is frequently the cause of death for the satellite. This can occur perhaps after eight or ten years. Note that the space shuttle can only reach low earth orbit and therefore can not reach Geostationary satellites to repair them.
The global positioning satellite (GPS) system requires three satellites be in view to an earth observer in order to calculate location. Therefore many GPS satellites are used in many orbits. Spy satellites like to fly low to take detailed pictures and frequently use an elliptical orbit so that they are quite low on their nearest approach. But when they are out on the ellipse they are useless and you must wait for them to swing back. By using control jets orbits can be modified so that the satellite can take a different track. If your orbit is north-south (polar orbit) the earth will rotate underneath the satellite and different areas of the earth will be in view on every pass.
Discredited theories.
Freud’s theories have now been mostly discredited by new knowledge about the effects of chemicals on the brain, genetics and culture. Freud made up names such as ego, superb ego and id to create a theory of behavior. This is not science, this is fantasy given undeserved credibility by impressive terms that sound scientific. Marxs, Engels and others created a phony scientific aura around communism by making up and defining terms like proletariat, bourgeois, etc. We need to remember these theories were put forth in a more primitive era (both men were born in the early 1800’s). It has always been more difficult to be truly scientific in the “soft” sciences like Society and Economics. Many people feel qualified to expound their theories in these areas simply because, after all, they are a member of society and part of the economy.
Fanatical and ruthless men such as Lenin used Communist theories to justify revolution. I saw a biography on the History channel on Lenin. An anecdote...He loved listening to classical music but denied himself that pleasure in order to focus on his ‘work’. He also wrote furious telegrams to his field commanders asking how many people they had executed and demanding that they increase the pace of killing. The Britannica encyclopedia once had a dissertation by him on propaganda. He noted that there needs to be a obvious, crude type aimed at the lower (presumably ignorant) classes and there is need for a more sophisticated type aimed at the educated. A very cynical guy and a bloodthirsty fanatic responsible for countless deaths.
Even today there are still many regimes propped up by these theories. Of course, they also use relentless propaganda to give a false credibility to their fantasies. Advances in Economic science and the success of free enterprise have discredited Communism for most observers but nevertheless the appeal is still strong for many. Lest we think of this an academic argument consider “The Black Book of Communism”. This book claims Communism has caused 100 million deaths.
The following is from the Amazon.com website book description:
Amazon.com: Books: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
When it was first published in France in 1997, Le livre noir du Communisme touched off a storm of controversy that continues to rage today. Even some of his contributors shied away from chief editor Stéphane Courtois's conclusion that Communism, in all its many forms, was morally no better than Nazism; the two totalitarian systems, Courtois argued, were far better at killing than at governing, as the world learned to its sorrow.
Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims. This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident, but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them. Courtois and his contributors document Communism's crimes in numbing detail, moving from country to country, revolution to revolution. The figures they offer will likely provoke argument, if not among cliometricians then among the ideologically inclined. So, too, will Courtois's suggestion that those who hold Lenin, Trotsky, and Ho Chi Minh in anything other than contempt are dupes, witting or not, of a murderous school of thought--one that, while in retreat around the world, still has many adherents. A thought-provoking work of history and social criticism, The Black Book of Communism fully merits the broadest possible readership and discussion. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly:
In France, this damning reckoning of communism's worldwide legacy was a bestseller that sparked passionate arguments among intellectuals of the Left. Essentially a body count of communism's victims in the 20th century, the book draws heavily from recently opened Soviet archives. The verdict: communism was responsible for between 85 million and 100 million deaths in the century. In France, both sales and controversy were fueled, as Martin Malia notes in the foreword, by editor Courtois's specific comparison of communism's "class genocide" with Nazism's "race genocide." Courtois, the director of research at the prestigious Centre Research National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and editor of the journal Communisme, along with the other distinguished French and European contributors, delivers a fact-based, mostly Russia-centered wallop that will be hard to refute: town burnings, mass deportations, property seizures, family separations, mass murders, planned faminesAall chillingly documented from conception to implementation. The book is divided into five sections. The first and largest takes readers from the "Paradoxes of the October Revolution" through "Apogee and Crisis in the Gulag System" to "The Exit from Stalinism." Seeing the U.S.S.R. as "the cradle of all modern Communism," the book's other four sections document the horrors of the Iron Curtain countries, Soviet-backed agitation in Asia and the Americas, and the Third World's often violent embrace of the system. A conclusion "Why?" by Courtois, points to a bureaucratic, "purely abstract vision of death, massacre and human catastrophe" rooted in Lenin's compulsion to effect ideals by any means necessary. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Freud’s theories have now been mostly discredited by new knowledge about the effects of chemicals on the brain, genetics and culture. Freud made up names such as ego, superb ego and id to create a theory of behavior. This is not science, this is fantasy given undeserved credibility by impressive terms that sound scientific. Marxs, Engels and others created a phony scientific aura around communism by making up and defining terms like proletariat, bourgeois, etc. We need to remember these theories were put forth in a more primitive era (both men were born in the early 1800’s). It has always been more difficult to be truly scientific in the “soft” sciences like Society and Economics. Many people feel qualified to expound their theories in these areas simply because, after all, they are a member of society and part of the economy.
Fanatical and ruthless men such as Lenin used Communist theories to justify revolution. I saw a biography on the History channel on Lenin. An anecdote...He loved listening to classical music but denied himself that pleasure in order to focus on his ‘work’. He also wrote furious telegrams to his field commanders asking how many people they had executed and demanding that they increase the pace of killing. The Britannica encyclopedia once had a dissertation by him on propaganda. He noted that there needs to be a obvious, crude type aimed at the lower (presumably ignorant) classes and there is need for a more sophisticated type aimed at the educated. A very cynical guy and a bloodthirsty fanatic responsible for countless deaths.
Even today there are still many regimes propped up by these theories. Of course, they also use relentless propaganda to give a false credibility to their fantasies. Advances in Economic science and the success of free enterprise have discredited Communism for most observers but nevertheless the appeal is still strong for many. Lest we think of this an academic argument consider “The Black Book of Communism”. This book claims Communism has caused 100 million deaths.
The following is from the Amazon.com website book description:
Amazon.com: Books: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
When it was first published in France in 1997, Le livre noir du Communisme touched off a storm of controversy that continues to rage today. Even some of his contributors shied away from chief editor Stéphane Courtois's conclusion that Communism, in all its many forms, was morally no better than Nazism; the two totalitarian systems, Courtois argued, were far better at killing than at governing, as the world learned to its sorrow.
Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims. This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident, but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them. Courtois and his contributors document Communism's crimes in numbing detail, moving from country to country, revolution to revolution. The figures they offer will likely provoke argument, if not among cliometricians then among the ideologically inclined. So, too, will Courtois's suggestion that those who hold Lenin, Trotsky, and Ho Chi Minh in anything other than contempt are dupes, witting or not, of a murderous school of thought--one that, while in retreat around the world, still has many adherents. A thought-provoking work of history and social criticism, The Black Book of Communism fully merits the broadest possible readership and discussion. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly:
In France, this damning reckoning of communism's worldwide legacy was a bestseller that sparked passionate arguments among intellectuals of the Left. Essentially a body count of communism's victims in the 20th century, the book draws heavily from recently opened Soviet archives. The verdict: communism was responsible for between 85 million and 100 million deaths in the century. In France, both sales and controversy were fueled, as Martin Malia notes in the foreword, by editor Courtois's specific comparison of communism's "class genocide" with Nazism's "race genocide." Courtois, the director of research at the prestigious Centre Research National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and editor of the journal Communisme, along with the other distinguished French and European contributors, delivers a fact-based, mostly Russia-centered wallop that will be hard to refute: town burnings, mass deportations, property seizures, family separations, mass murders, planned faminesAall chillingly documented from conception to implementation. The book is divided into five sections. The first and largest takes readers from the "Paradoxes of the October Revolution" through "Apogee and Crisis in the Gulag System" to "The Exit from Stalinism." Seeing the U.S.S.R. as "the cradle of all modern Communism," the book's other four sections document the horrors of the Iron Curtain countries, Soviet-backed agitation in Asia and the Americas, and the Third World's often violent embrace of the system. A conclusion "Why?" by Courtois, points to a bureaucratic, "purely abstract vision of death, massacre and human catastrophe" rooted in Lenin's compulsion to effect ideals by any means necessary. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Honesty: (article from the net)
We certainly hear a lot about thieving CEOs and corrupt politicians but sometimes the public has dirty hands as well. Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly.
It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number for each child. Suddenly, seven million children-children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year's 1040 forms-vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States. As the inimitable Will Rogers put it, "The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than the game of golf has."
We certainly hear a lot about thieving CEOs and corrupt politicians but sometimes the public has dirty hands as well. Consider what happened one spring evening at midnight in 1987: seven million American children suddenly disappeared. The worst kidnapping wave in history? Hardly.
It was the night of April 15, and the Internal Revenue Service had just changed a rule. Instead of merely listing each dependent child, tax filers were now required to provide a Social Security number for each child. Suddenly, seven million children-children who had existed only as phantom exemptions on the previous year's 1040 forms-vanished, representing about one in ten of all dependent children in the United States. As the inimitable Will Rogers put it, "The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than the game of golf has."
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Friday, April 15, 2005
Lee Hamilton is a former congressman from Indiana who served 29 years in Congress. He was also was co-chair of the 9/11 commission. I went to a talk he gave at the Indiana University Law School. He has written a book about how Congress works and was promoting it. I bought his book and had him sign it. He’s a very good speaker. He talked about a loss of civility in the Congress which he says is very noticeable from the time he became a congressman until now. There are now senators who will not talk to each other. He said that consensus is needed for Congress to be get anything done but civility is part of what is needed for that. He said “anyone can blow up a meeting but it takes real political skill to pull together a consensus”. He said lack of consensus building is the most serious problem in congress today. I watch C-SPAN some and have seen some nasty speechmaking. Right now feelings are running hot over the Tom Delay ethics issue and filibustering. Nancy Pelosi is the Dem minority leader in the House and frequently 'demonizes' the Republicans in her speeches. Reluctantly, I have to admit she is very good at it. When you verbally put horns and a tail on the opposistion it will make consensus difficult.
Mr. Hamilton also said there are about 20,000 registered lobbyists in Washington. He feels they are a necessary part of the system. He pointed out the most of us in the room are represented by lobbyists even if we don’t realize it. If you are a union member, belong to a church, work in education, and so on there is likely a lobbyist working for you.
Mr. Hamilton also talked about using your access to your congressman as a way of reaching your government. He pointed out that if you asked to speak to the president, the vice president or a cabinet member or even a deputy secretary you would not get access. But you can speak to your congressman at various town hall meetings, political breakfasts and so on. What I find is that if you have some personal problem with the bureaucracy the congressman may be able to help you. If you are just unhappy with what Congress is doing your congressman (or his staff) will perhaps politely acknowledge your complaint but as one of 535 he’s not going to be able to do much of anything.
A man stood up to the make a comment in the Q/A session and who is a former state representative in Indiana. He remarked about how all uncivil the public can be with their representatives. He talked about people feeling they had the right to call him names and grab his arm...things they would not do to their neighbors. I know this happens at every level…ask someone who is a school board member. You have to be fairly tough to serve in these jobs and be able to take heat.
I got up nerve to ask a question. I first complimented the congressman on the 9/11 report which I had checked out of the library. I expected a typical unreadable government report but was surprised to find it was very readable and I read most of it. One of the prior questions from the audience was really a complaint about tax cuts for the rich. This a hot button for me (see my archives) and prompted me to ask a question regarding the entitlement part of the Federal budget which has become very large and threatens to consume the whole budget. I asked what the Congress will do about that. Mine was the last question in the session and obviously requires a difficult answer. The congressman politely blew off the question. What I should have asked is the following: It is very hard for the public to focus on the Congress or understand how it works. After all, a group of 535 people all working on various committees is a hard thing to focus on. Bills get changed in conference behind closed doors. Appropriations are lumped into massive omnibus spending bills at the last minute so that most congressmen are voting blind. Where do you put the blame or the praise for the results? Is easier to blame or praise the president. He is one man and we can listen to his speeches and read about his activities and make our judgments. But the Congress is such featureless body that I give up trying to deal with it. Another interesting topic I might ask about is why almost all democracies have taken on the parliamentary style of government rather than the U.S. model. I would like to hear the congressman’s opinion as to the relative merits of the two systems.
.
Mr. Hamilton also said there are about 20,000 registered lobbyists in Washington. He feels they are a necessary part of the system. He pointed out the most of us in the room are represented by lobbyists even if we don’t realize it. If you are a union member, belong to a church, work in education, and so on there is likely a lobbyist working for you.
Mr. Hamilton also talked about using your access to your congressman as a way of reaching your government. He pointed out that if you asked to speak to the president, the vice president or a cabinet member or even a deputy secretary you would not get access. But you can speak to your congressman at various town hall meetings, political breakfasts and so on. What I find is that if you have some personal problem with the bureaucracy the congressman may be able to help you. If you are just unhappy with what Congress is doing your congressman (or his staff) will perhaps politely acknowledge your complaint but as one of 535 he’s not going to be able to do much of anything.
A man stood up to the make a comment in the Q/A session and who is a former state representative in Indiana. He remarked about how all uncivil the public can be with their representatives. He talked about people feeling they had the right to call him names and grab his arm...things they would not do to their neighbors. I know this happens at every level…ask someone who is a school board member. You have to be fairly tough to serve in these jobs and be able to take heat.
I got up nerve to ask a question. I first complimented the congressman on the 9/11 report which I had checked out of the library. I expected a typical unreadable government report but was surprised to find it was very readable and I read most of it. One of the prior questions from the audience was really a complaint about tax cuts for the rich. This a hot button for me (see my archives) and prompted me to ask a question regarding the entitlement part of the Federal budget which has become very large and threatens to consume the whole budget. I asked what the Congress will do about that. Mine was the last question in the session and obviously requires a difficult answer. The congressman politely blew off the question. What I should have asked is the following: It is very hard for the public to focus on the Congress or understand how it works. After all, a group of 535 people all working on various committees is a hard thing to focus on. Bills get changed in conference behind closed doors. Appropriations are lumped into massive omnibus spending bills at the last minute so that most congressmen are voting blind. Where do you put the blame or the praise for the results? Is easier to blame or praise the president. He is one man and we can listen to his speeches and read about his activities and make our judgments. But the Congress is such featureless body that I give up trying to deal with it. Another interesting topic I might ask about is why almost all democracies have taken on the parliamentary style of government rather than the U.S. model. I would like to hear the congressman’s opinion as to the relative merits of the two systems.
.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Wal-Mart:
The LA Times won a Pulitzer for a 2003 series on Wal-Mart. Very good stuff! To read the articles click on the link and then select 2004, National Reporting, Works.
The Pulitzer Prizes
The LA Times won a Pulitzer for a 2003 series on Wal-Mart. Very good stuff! To read the articles click on the link and then select 2004, National Reporting, Works.
The Pulitzer Prizes
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Friday, April 01, 2005
Grandchildren and old movies.
A Grandchild story:
Grandson Eli, who is 5, likes a book I have about movie bad guys (The Bad Guys, by William K. Everson, Cadillac Publishing Co.) It is full of interesting old movie stills and actor portraits focusing on movie villains. The old silent era stills are especially dramatic with the over-the-top expressions and makeup of that era. As a fan of old movies for years this book is one of my favorites too. In the movie "Sunset Boulevard" the Norma Desmond character is a former silent film star who quit when talking pictures took over. She expressed her feeling about sound by saying "Voices! We didn't need voices! We had faces!"
I have often felt that the villains and character actors in these films were the most fun part of the movie. You can’t have a hero without a nasty villain and it takes good character actors to flesh out a film.
Eli brings the book and climbs into my lap and we start looking at the pictures. He knows the captions are words and he wants to know what the words say. Early on, I found that the actual words (actor names , name and date of movie, etc) were not that interesting so I began to make up dialogue for the pictures like: “drop that gun mister” or “let that girl go”. Soon, Eli insisted on hearing a mini-plot and dialogue for each picture that caught his interest. He points to someone in the picture and asks “what is he saying”. It strains my creativity making up dialogue and mini-plots. Eli keeps asking “and then what happened?”. Off the cuff story telling is hard. It is in our genes to like stories and we all want to know “what happened next?”. Nevertheless, it is a joy for me to have a comfortable chair, a child, a book and some imagination.
Grandson Eli, who is 5, likes a book I have about movie bad guys (The Bad Guys, by William K. Everson, Cadillac Publishing Co.) It is full of interesting old movie stills and actor portraits focusing on movie villains. The old silent era stills are especially dramatic with the over-the-top expressions and makeup of that era. As a fan of old movies for years this book is one of my favorites too. In the movie "Sunset Boulevard" the Norma Desmond character is a former silent film star who quit when talking pictures took over. She expressed her feeling about sound by saying "Voices! We didn't need voices! We had faces!"
I have often felt that the villains and character actors in these films were the most fun part of the movie. You can’t have a hero without a nasty villain and it takes good character actors to flesh out a film.
Eli brings the book and climbs into my lap and we start looking at the pictures. He knows the captions are words and he wants to know what the words say. Early on, I found that the actual words (actor names , name and date of movie, etc) were not that interesting so I began to make up dialogue for the pictures like: “drop that gun mister” or “let that girl go”. Soon, Eli insisted on hearing a mini-plot and dialogue for each picture that caught his interest. He points to someone in the picture and asks “what is he saying”. It strains my creativity making up dialogue and mini-plots. Eli keeps asking “and then what happened?”. Off the cuff story telling is hard. It is in our genes to like stories and we all want to know “what happened next?”. Nevertheless, it is a joy for me to have a comfortable chair, a child, a book and some imagination.
Movie stuff:
My favorite westerns are "High Noon", "The Shootist" and the Clint Eastwood movie “The Unforgiven”. I would give honorable mention to "My Darling Clemintine" and "The Big Country". In "The Unforgiven" the kid (wanabee gunfighter) remarks to Eastwood’s character (old, hardened gunfighter) that some guys they had shot “had it coming”. Eastwood replied “We all 'got it coming' kid.”
I saw an interview with Clint in which he was asked if he realized his films were seen all over the world. He said he was once on a street in some remote corner of some 3rd world country when people recognized him and began calling out “Cleent! Cleent!”. I have come to realize that American films and TV are seen everywhere and our stars are as well known overseas as they are here. Unfortunately, a lot of films put the U.S. in a bad light and probably account for some of the anti-American feeling abroad.
Saw a biography and interview of Charles Bronson. He was an old man at the time. In a discussion of his ‘tough guy’ image, especially in the “Vigilante’ films, he took pains to point out he was just playing a role. He said “I’m not like that. It was just a part I played." The young or unsophisticated audience confuse actors with their roles. I guess this is part of the fun of being a movie fan for some. Charles Bronson did a workmanlike job. He had the good fortune to have interesting looks and the determination to develop his physique and his craft. Interestingly, at one point Bronson was the most popoular film star in the world outside the USA. He was asked how he made it out of the small coal mining town in Pennsylvania where he was born. He said he made good choices.
I now realize that film makers are in the business of telling a story and an actors job is to assist in that. A good film that can pull you in requires a good story, script and character actor support as well as lead actors. To be a good actor, it has been said, means remembering your lines and not bumping into the furniture. Director Ridley Scott, well known for films like ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Gladiator”, said he is in the business of ‘creating other worlds’. I enjoy these ‘other world’ epics the most of any type of film.
My favorite westerns are "High Noon", "The Shootist" and the Clint Eastwood movie “The Unforgiven”. I would give honorable mention to "My Darling Clemintine" and "The Big Country". In "The Unforgiven" the kid (wanabee gunfighter) remarks to Eastwood’s character (old, hardened gunfighter) that some guys they had shot “had it coming”. Eastwood replied “We all 'got it coming' kid.”
I saw an interview with Clint in which he was asked if he realized his films were seen all over the world. He said he was once on a street in some remote corner of some 3rd world country when people recognized him and began calling out “Cleent! Cleent!”. I have come to realize that American films and TV are seen everywhere and our stars are as well known overseas as they are here. Unfortunately, a lot of films put the U.S. in a bad light and probably account for some of the anti-American feeling abroad.
Saw a biography and interview of Charles Bronson. He was an old man at the time. In a discussion of his ‘tough guy’ image, especially in the “Vigilante’ films, he took pains to point out he was just playing a role. He said “I’m not like that. It was just a part I played." The young or unsophisticated audience confuse actors with their roles. I guess this is part of the fun of being a movie fan for some. Charles Bronson did a workmanlike job. He had the good fortune to have interesting looks and the determination to develop his physique and his craft. Interestingly, at one point Bronson was the most popoular film star in the world outside the USA. He was asked how he made it out of the small coal mining town in Pennsylvania where he was born. He said he made good choices.
I now realize that film makers are in the business of telling a story and an actors job is to assist in that. A good film that can pull you in requires a good story, script and character actor support as well as lead actors. To be a good actor, it has been said, means remembering your lines and not bumping into the furniture. Director Ridley Scott, well known for films like ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Gladiator”, said he is in the business of ‘creating other worlds’. I enjoy these ‘other world’ epics the most of any type of film.
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