The Odyssey

Helen (first from the left) and her second husband, Paris of Troy (right) - from Pompeii

I'm not referring to the book by Homer, but the film by Christopher Nolan. I haven't seen it yet, of course ... it can only be properly viewed in IMAX and there are apparently only about 40 IMAX theaters in the whole world! There are a number of them here in California, though, so if I decide to go it won't be a problem.

But will I decide to go? Probably not. From what I've read about the movie so far, it has a lot of flaws.

My very first philosopjy class at college had us reading the Iliad and the Odyssey. The first book tells of the last year of the Trojan war, with the Greeks outside the walls of Troy, all supposedly to get back Helen, daughter of Zeus, the person who was so beautiful that her face had launched 1000 ships when she married Paris of Troy.

But anyway, the Odyssey starts at the end of the war, where Achilles had killed pretty much everyone, but the city still hadn't fallen. It is Odysseus, who finally brings down Troy, not by his bravery in battle, but by his stealth and guile in the creation and use of the Trojan Horse. He was, well, sneaky. And I think his questionable character was further revealed by the way it took him 10 years to then get back home to his wife and child, who really needed his help, because he was basically screwing around along the way.

But apparently, Nolan wants to somehow make Odysseus a real hero. A hero for the manosphere, a hero for the bros.

I would recommend instead a tv miniseries - Helen of Troy, 2003. I think you can find it on Youtube.

But, here's a bit from a review of Nolan's movie in TIME ...

The Odyssey Is Just Another Reason for Despair

[...] The Odyssey ends up being just another reason for despair. In the runup to its release, The Odyssey seems to have inspired more anxiety than actual anticipation. Lovers of classical literature have been asking, Will it hew close enough to Homer’s vision? Or, perhaps more accurately, Will it hew close enough to their vision of Homer’s vision? On the right, pundits have bemoaned what they see as the pure fact that you simply cannot have a Black Helen of Troy (she’s played in the film by Lupita Nyong’o), though it’s hard to fathom that the most controversial trait of a woman who’s been hatched from a swan’s egg should be the color of her skin. The Odyssey has already inspired so much chitter-chatter that its actual release was poised to be a letdown in comparison. But just wait till you actually see this eye-glazing dud of a movie.

Matt Damon, earnestly bewhiskered, stars as Odysseus, the King of Ithaca and a revered warrior, who’s working hard—or so it seems—to get home to his wife, Penelope (a reasonably dignified Anne Hathaway), and the grown son he has never gotten a chance to know, Telemachus (Tom Holland, so bland he’s practically unreadable). Odysseus has been gone for 20 years: The first 10 of those were eaten up by military exploits, chiefly the Trojan War—Nolan’s movie, like Homer’s tale, begins at the end of that war, with a giant wooden horse half-sunk in the sand, a pretty direct reference to the beached and forlorn Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes. Throughout The Odyssey, we’ll get flashback glimpses of just how violent the sack of Troy, led by Odysseus, was. The suggestion is that he has done some Really Bad Stuff, though the battle scenes, while elaborate, are so tastefully un-bloody that it’s hard to feel there’s anything at stake ...

Ask Haviv anything

As the midterm elections get closer, Democratic politicians are working overtime to put distance between themselves and Israel, all to please their most left-leaning voters. I find this so disingenuous. Makes me think of that description of prostitutes = people who will assume any position if you pay them enough. But anyway, Rahm Emanuel, who is Jewish, is no exception.

Someone asked Haviv Rettig Gur what he thought of what Emanuel said ...

How to make a buck

US cancels automatic protections for imperiled animals as critics warn of extinctions

Trump rolls back protections for threatened species and habitat for endangered species

President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act in 1973, back when even Republicans like him were still actually conservatives .... protectors of our planet and its creatures.

But theTrump administration sees our ecosystem as just something to be plundered for financial profit. Everything they do is about how to make a buck.

T testing

Right. Testosterone testing for our "war fighters". The women too?

Election integrity speech

Lawrence and Congressman Jim Hines talk about the speech.

Fact-checking Donald Trump's national address on U.S. election integrity

STOP Buying Bagged Salad

Oh no. I just had a bagged salad for dinner :(

Sam Neill

Sam Neill, actor known for ‘Jurassic Park,’ dies at 78

Actor Sam Neill has passed away. Even though I've just seen a fraction of his films, I especially liked two of them. One was Jurassic Park (1993). He played the role of Dr. Alan Grant, a paleontologist invited to see the park. Having read the book, I can tell you he did a great job as that character ...



The other role I liked him in was that of Merlin in the tv miniseries (1998) of the same name. If you know the story of King Arthur and Merlin, you know things went terribly wrong at the end for most of the characters. In this movie version, at the end, Merlin is old and has been separated from his true love, Nimue, for many years. He's lost most of his magic and survives as a traveling storyteller. But one day he meets an old friend (Martin Short) who tells him where he can find Nimue ...



Sad he is gone.

Planet of the Humans

I just deleted my earlier post of Ezra Klein's podcast with Bill McKibben on clean/green energy. Why? Because it had nothing at all aboit the downside of that kind of energy - not just solar and wind but also the burning of biomass (indlufing forests) and solid waste.

Looking up more on the subject, I came acoss a movie by Michael Moore from 2020 - Planet of the Humans. I recall when it came out that it was controversial and really upset supporters of clesn/green energy, but I never watched it.

Well, tonight I did. And it made me feel literally sick. If you look at the Wikipedia page for it, you will see all the criticisms of it, but I looked up a lot of info as I watched it, and there was enough was correct to be shocking - I had to stop before the very end when they showed living animals being crushed into "biomass" for "clean and renewable" energy.

At the end of the day, I think most people who consider themselves environmentalists, like me, will decide the movie is full of poop. Because if it's not, then God help us all. I can't convince myself of that. If anyone cares enough to give it a try, it's free to watch the whole thing on Youtube.

The strategy

Here's a clip from The Wall Street Journal's interview with the Democratic stategists who chose Graham Platner. You can watch the whole video here.



So, is it only me whose skin is crawling?

The "new" Democratic movers and shakers, the ones who have recently chosen Democratic Socialist candidates, would have you believe that their strategy is groundbreaking and unique.

But it isn't new at all. This is how Trump got elected. He was raw, he was real. So he had a few quirks that appeared to be flaws ... like racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and being a liar ... but actually those were his strengths! They made him dangerous and powerful. A real man. Right?

And isn't that a description of Graham Platner?

God help us all - the Democrats have figured out another way to fail their voters and the country.

Project Hail Mary (film)

I finally saw Project Hail Mary ...

a 2026 American epic[a] science fiction film .... based on the 2021 novel by Andy Weir. It stars Ryan Gosling, who also produced the film; Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, and Lionel Boyce appear in supporting roles. The story follows Ryland Grace (Gosling), a middle school teacher who awakens aboard an interstellar spacecraft with no memory of how he got there.

I had read the book some time ago and thought it was really good. The film is pretty faithful to the book - just a few changes - but the book has a ton more detail and complexity. The important part, the relationship between Ryland and Rocky, still comes across well in the film ...



I liked it! Must read the book again :)

Don't Dream It's Over

Crowded House - Don't Dream It's Over.
(1986) pic.twitter.com/yELZElI2Od

— DEDÉ DE TONÍ (@JOSFFOLIVEIRA) July 5, 2026

By the Australian/New Zealand band, Crowded House, 1986

Platner gives up

Graham Platner says he will leave the race. In the video, he was at times angry, blaming everyone else for what had gone wrong, still refusing to take any responsibility. It was all about him - how he had been unfairly treated, how the party rulers were out to get him, how the claims against him were all false, and how he was really the only person who could rightly represent Mainers.

What struck me was how much he reminded me of Trump. Different politics, yes, but the attitude ... currents of antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and seeing himself as a victim of conspiracies ... was the same.

Saw this in The New Republic today ...

Trump Struggles to Form a Single Coherent Thought About Graham Platner

In the drawer

MESMERIZING: Broadclub cuttlefish can change their color and pattern at will!

Learn more about these masters of disguise: https://t.co/kuuxOOekMG pic.twitter.com/sgvfuTusgf

— Oceana (@oceana) July 5, 2026

I do like cuttlefish. Here below is a photo I took a while ago of some of my little rubber fish ...

Lawrence on Platner

Lawrence O’Donnell gives his opinion of the Graham Platner situation, revealing some detail about that candidate that I was not aware of, like that he comes from a wealthy family, with a mom who buys his oysters for her restaurant and a dad who bought him his home.

Stupid

Washington records world’s worst air quality for a city after 850,000 Fourth of July fireworks

Along with killing birds, terrifying animals, and causing brush fires in a drought, fireworks ruin air quality. Who didn't see this coming? It's not that any of this is unforseen, it's that people just don't give a poop. They have to have their fun.

Platner, again

More bad stuff comes out about Platner.

Who to blame? I think this is the fault of Morris Katz, the political operative behind Fetterman and Mamdani, and the man who chose and groomed Platner (These People Handpicked Graham Platner. He’s Now Democrats’ Biggest Risk. ... Top Graham Platner adviser threatened former aide over sexting stories).

But even more so, this is the fault of the far Left in the Democratic party, who have thrown traditional values under the bus in order to appeal to young voters, from misogynists to pro-Palestinian protesters

Communism

He gave a similar speech touching on the evils of communism on the 4th too. In both speeches, he aims to link the idea of communism to the Democratic Socialists who won seats in Democratic primary elections recently.

I've just got to ask ... does he even know what communism is? Does he know communism and socialism are not the same thing? Does he realize that two of the world leaders he loves and has priased the most ... Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un ... lead communist nations? I mean, has he ever even watched Doctor Zhivago?

I'd like to say that voters won't fall for this bait and switch, but I don't have much confidence in that hope.

So what is Democratic Socialism? I like to think of it as aspiring to the Nordic Model, but here's a simpler explanation ...

1,000 days

Israelis join protests and memorials to mark 1,000 days since October 7 Hamas attack

Israelis called on Thursday for a state commission of inquiry into Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack, as the country marked 1,000 days since the deadly assault that triggered the war in Gaza. A series of sombre commemorations were held across the country, as well as protests against the government's handling of events during and after the attack ...



People seem to have forgotten, or just don't care, why the Gaza situation is as it is now.

The Bicentennial

People Magazine: See How America Celebrated Its 200th Birthday in 1976 as Trump's Great American State Fair Takes to Washington 50 Years Later

I was here then - I was 24 at the time of the Bicentennial. But actually, my family went on a tour of Europe in July of 1976.

It was a tense time to take a plane trip to Europe. There had been hijackings almost every year of the 1970s. In fact, it was Just days before we left on our trip that the Entebbe raid took place - passengers kidnapped by Palestinian and German terrorists were saved by an Israeli operation. When we got off the plane in Athens, I saw guards on the tarmac with macnine guns - maybe that's why.

But anyway, off we went. Here are some old photos and things we saved from the trip, which started in London, then we flew to Greece, took a boat to Italy, and spent the rest of the trip on a big tour bus, driving north to finally end in Paris.

We picked this up in the London Underground. I actually saw that movie, but back home ...

We took a train from London to Oxford and visited the famous Blackwell's bookstore there. Here's a photo of me in Oxford ...

Took a plane to Greece next. We did visit the acropolis, of couse, which was being renovated then, but also went other places, including Olympia. This was our hotel ...

We took a boat to Bari, Italy, and then on to Rome. Here's my sister and mom outside the Vatican ...

And this is me in the Vatican museum with a bust of Julius Caesar ...

From there we visited a lot of countries pretty quickly. Some of our hotels and bits of detritus ...

Finally we ended up in Paris, where we rode the Metro, ate french fries at our hotel restaurant :) and visited the Louvre. Wish we could have spent more time there, as I only later learned about the Paris Catacombs. But we did visit the Eiffel Tower. Here's my mom with the tower in the background ...

It was a fun trip but I was pretty homesick by the time we came home. Anyway, I have a feeling the Bicentential was probably more fun than this 250 celebration will be.

Excommunicated!

To understand why this is a big deal, you have to know a little about the SSPX and hence about why excommunicating them is Pope Leo taking a stance that Pope Benedict (and Pope Francis) wouldn't.

The SSPX is traditionalist and when that term is used, it means antisemetic. Those in the church who want to dump V2 resented the changes that tried to get some of that antisemitism out of the liturgy. B16 was quite sympathetic to the SSPX and their views and tried to reconcile them. Here's the beginning of a 2009 article in The National Catholic Reporter ... Lefebvre movement: long, troubled history with Judaism

When the Vatican lifted the excommunication of four traditionalist Catholic bishops Jan. 21, it’s entirely possible Rome was unaware that one of those bishops, an Englishman named Richard Williamson, had just given an interview to Swedish television in which he denied that the Nazis had used gas chambers and asserted that no more than 200,000 to 300,000 Jews had died during the Second World War.

In retrospect, however, it would be disingenuous for anyone to feign surprise.

A troubled history with Judaism has long been part of the Catholic traditionalist movement associated with the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre — beginning with Lefebvre himself, who spoke approvingly of both the World War II-era Vichy Regime in France and the far-right National Front, and who identified the contemporary enemies of the faith as “Jews, Communists and Freemasons” in an Aug. 31, 1985, letter to Pope John Paul II.

Reacting to the furor over Williamson, the Vatican has stressed that lifting the excommunication is not an endorsement of his views on the Holocaust, and has repeated its firm commitment to Catholic-Jewish dialogue and to combating anti-Semitism. The pope’s outreach to traditionalists should instead be seen, spokespersons said, as an “act of peace” intended to end the only formal schism in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) ...

So, long story short, Pope Leo excommunicating the SSPX guys says most of all, the Catholic church should not be antisemetic. Good.

If you want to know more on this subject ... the SSPX and antisemitism, Vatican II and Nostra Aetate and the Jews, Pope Benedict and how his views affected his stance with the SSPX, I have a lot of old posts that have many links. Here are just a few ...

The Mid-East Synod, Maximos IV, and Nostra Aetate ... The pope, his book, and the Jewish people ... SSPX and Vatican II

Regime Change

I haven't read the book yet ... Regime Change ... but here's a discussion of some of what's in it ...

Old photo

I found an old purse of mine in a drawer. Nothing inside but a make-up bag containing a small circular mirror. On the other side of the mirror was a photo of me. I think this photo was from when I was visiting my sister in San Diego around the time I was getting divorced. Maybe that's why I look so grim. I'm 30 here. Can't remember why the photo got made into the mirror thing ...