Good Addictions to Inconvenient Truths

All right! Yesterday, I got the most hits to my blogs since I've been recording. I have the feeling that most of those hits have come from the Stephen Colbert speech at Knox College that I posted at my Soulcast blog along with the updated news and political commentary I've made throughout the day there that I eventually posted at The Lextopia.

Either which way, I celebrate the increased hits.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Saw An Inconvenient Truth last night. Turned out quite a good film. It overwhelmed me with information that I both knew and didn't know already.

It also highlighted some arguments made by the ultraconservative Right, used in attempts to debunk the Greenhouse Effect and Evolution. Basically, the Right attempts to argue that both of these phenomena are just another theory instead of phenomena based on gathered facts.

Gore even brought up some interesting facts that somewhat surprised me. I can only remember one of them that really really strikes me: Since the Baby Boomer generation to the present day, the world population has tripled from approximately 2 billion to 6 billion (Gore got more specific with the numbers).

This fact encourages me, once again, to try promoting Terence McKenna's argument that at this time, reproductive couples should only really have one child instead of more. Having this many people on Earth simply puts too much of a burden on it.

Probably the most striking and most endearing rhetorical device used in An Inconvenient Truth: Gore uses many anecdotes from his own life, including how the death of his sister from lung cancer was the final straw that pushed his father to stop growing tobacco. Around that time, the scientific community had established a clear connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. This evidence and consensus didn't stop Gore's father to stop growing the tobacco. When the death of his daughter showed him the truth, however, Gore's father had to finally accept the facts and decided to stop growing tobacco.

Gore and the movie tells the story much better and with better effect. He will also tell you the point he makes by bringing up this distressful part in his life. These stories, however, do bring the points he makes closer to the heart and shows Gore's sincerity for the points he makes. He doesn't make this movie for political reasons, not for garnering power, but to act out a sincere moral imperative that he feels in the pit of his soul. And unlike many people who try arguing their moral imperatives, Gore presents his argument with proven facts that are truly hard to deny or ignore. If done so, the human species could seriously see its last days in the next century or so.

And as Roger Ebert says about the movie: "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see An Inconvenient Truth. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."

ANOTHER PERSON'S GOOD, WELL THOUGHT OUT REACTION TO THE ZARQAWI ASSASSINATION

The Last Visible Blog: Mercy for the heinous

DID GORE GET THE SCIENCE RIGHT?

Well, did he?

According this article, he did. The inaccuracies mostly just occurred to simplify the matter for the general public.

A BLOG FOR GOOD

Changes for Good: A budding blog looking to bring about positive change in the world.

ADDICTED TO BLOGGING?

Have I found another form of constructive procrastination? With all these interesting new blogs that I've found and keep finding, I can spend a good amount of time reading them, commenting and sometimes setting up a link to them from this site, am I spending my time productively. Then there's the new e-mails that I get and feel that I have to post on The Lextopia and my Soulcast blog.

Do I make procrastination and addiction worse on some kind of value system because I have a job search to do or whenever I see an inspiring performance or movie like An Inconvenient Truth, I keep telling myself that I need to finish my bachelor's project or get myself a job so I can move onto making amazing and inspiring works, myself.

It's a big question. . ..

DOING GOOD

Our friend, who came back to Chicago with us, talked about a community project she did with these women to better organize themselves and get their lives into a better place. Hearing about these things that this person did really impressed upon me the good things that we can do in the world, how that makes for an interesting character make up for a person who does them and how I'm not really doing good stuff like that, even though I keep talking about the need for more people to do good in the world.

I'm concerned and inspired at the same time. . .but yet feel stuck in my forms of constructive procrastination and commitments that I've made. There's also the matter of feeling that I need to have a job for survival.