Practical Humanism

Just announcing two new essays I wrote for the Central Ohio Humanist have now been posted to my iHumanism website. They deal with the practical application of the Humanist philosophy in one’s every day life.

Practical Ideas About Humanism: First, the Basics — The first in a series about the practical application of Humanism. This essay sets some basic assumptions that will be the back bone of following essays.

Practical Ideas About Humanism: THINK! — The second in a series about the practical application of Humanism. This essay highlights Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit” for use by Freethinkers.

Update to Famous Findlayians

I just updated my “Famous Findlayians” page on my website. That is where I list some collected info on famous people who either were born, lived, or worked in my hometown Findlay, Ohio.

A couple of web visitors pointed out a few more people I failed to mention in the first edition. People like C.J. “Pappy” Hart who was one of the “fathers” of the sport of Drag racing and Howard T. Ricketts, who helped isolate the bacteria that causes Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

I also tweaked some of the photos I included on the page and updated some of the text. Looks like I will have to tweak the layout some more later.

“Famous Findlayians”

Thank You Kevin Smith

Back when I was wee lad I saw a Disney movie staring kid actor Johnny Whitaker (of Family Affair fame). It was called “Mystery in Dracula’s Castle”. In the film Whitaker and his friend use a Super 8 movie camera to film a horror movie at an old light house. They stumble on some jewel thieves and the high jinks starts.

What I loved about the movie was it sparked an interest in making my own movies. I went to the library and checked out any book I could find about filmmaking. I wrote some scripts and even did some crude story boards. My problem was that I didn’t own a Super 8 camera. Our family couldn’t afford one and one I did scrounge from my grandma didn’t work AND I couldn’t afford the film.

A few years later I got the bug again but this time I had some money and a local camera store rented movie cameras. It was like pulling teeth getting my mom to rent the camera for me. My first film was a simple 3 minute and 21 second story of a cola test that goes awry and Superman has to save the day. Having no editing equipment I shot the film in sequence at the end of one of my Boy Scout meetings using my troop as the cast. It took like 2 weeks to get the film back from processing and when I saw it for the first time my heart skipped a beat. The focus was a bit dodgy especially in zoom ins but it wasn’t bad.

When I got to Ohio State I found out they had a film department (this was in the mid 80’s). I took the beginning film class and we watched great films and planned to make our own 5 minute film as the final. By now I owned a Super 8 that I bought through a discount catalog so making my project was not a big deal. The film was about a killer issue of TV Guide and the cast had my friend Dave as the hero and girl I liked Heather who played the damsel in distress. The twist was she saved the day by setting the magazine on fire. Hearing my classmates applaud after showing the finished film to them filled me with joy. I knew it was something I had to do – be a filmmaker.

Life led me in another direction and while I continued to write my short stories and enjoy watching films and the process of filmmaking, I didn’t think I would get the bug again. That was until I met director Kevin Smith – again.

Smith wrote and directed the film Clerks. (1994) about a day in the life of a convenience store clerk and his slacker buddies. It was funny and crude. He shot it for $23,000 and change with one 16 mm camera and on black and white film. He sold it at the Sundance Film Festival for about $200,000 to Miramax Studio and it was one of the films that started the independent film craze of the 1990’s (along with Slacker and El Mariachi).

On a lark I bought the 10 year Anniversary DVD of Clerks a few months ago and the parts I loved is the behind the scenes stuff especially the commentary audio. I learned that Kevin was a lot like me growing up wanting to make movies for the passion of making them. He decided in 1993 to do it and he did.

Smith describes himself as a media whore and that is why I like him. He interacts on a daily basis with his fan base and tries to include them on his filmmaking journeys.

This year he started a blog called simply “My Boring Ass Life” where he details, as much as legally possible, his daily life. He writes of going to the bathroom, playing house with his young daughter, having sex with the wife, and the various goings on in Hollywood.

This week he has started filming the sequel to Clerks. called right now “The Passion of the Clerks”. Don’t think it will be a spoof on Mel Gibson’s “Passion of The Christ” but the title is a nice dig on that film.

As Smith says, Passion is a return to the well. I think he is at a point in his career where he wants to revisit the time when he had the most fun making movies. He gave up writing and directing two big films to do the sequel and he brought in the two main actors to reprise their roles from 1994.

He also started a blog detailing the “Train Wreck: The Making of The Passion of the Clerks” where in video entries he gives his fans a sneak look at the making of the film as it is being filmed. I’m sure a lot of the material will show up on the DVD but it is thrilling for me to come along for the ride as if I am on the crew. One entry showed Kevin being fitted for his Silent Bob mullet and another had Dave Klein, the Director of Photography telling about the 4 day camera prep the crew was doing last week to get ready for filming this week. Dave was also the DP on the first Clerks.

Of course being Kevin Smith, he has included a couple of funny fake trailers and spoofs of Hollywood.

The video blog, I’m sure will influence another future filmmaker just as Smith caused me to finally write and finish my first screenplay “Kindred Revision” and enter it in a contest.

New blog about the Secular Left

Once again, proving I have no active social life, I have spent my holiday weekend creating another project where I can rant.

It all started when someone posted an article about a term called “Secular Left” that conservatives and the religious right are now using in their name calling program for those who disagree with them.

In the article called Sticks and Stones and the “Secular Left”, author David Benjamin comments about the first time he heard the term while watching “Meet the Press” on May 8th. Conservative talking head Mary Matalin used the term in describing the opposition during the manufactured filibuster crises over Bush’s judicial nominees.

Benjamin wrote:

“Civil liberties,” a term that embraces such basic American prerogatives as privacy, consumer rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and, yes, freedom of religion, are seen today as the purchased privileges of a “liberal elite.” This distortion is the linguistic legacy of the same American right wing that now cubbyholes its foes as the “secular Left,” and seems happy to gather at the river under the big (revival) tent of the religious Right.

“Secular Left.” Yeah, maybe it’s just a couple of words. But it’s coming from the people who today, in American politics, get to make up all the words, and then make everybody else repeat them endlessly, like “Hallelujah,” and “Praise the Lord.” And the only opposition is a tongue-tied cluster of Democrat/ liberal/ progressives whose only articulate utterance in the political and semantic struggle of the last decade has been a strangled bleat that sounds a lot like “Uncle!”

I agree with him and I decided to do something about it.

Using a portion of my meager salary I purchased the domain secularleft.us and put up a blog to defend not only secular humanists, and atheists, but also anyone with a secular bent who disagrees with the conservatives and their buddies the religious right on matters of church vs. state.

Opening today http://www.secularleft.us will be a counterpoint to the shrill sounds of the right. I intend to expose the lies and myths they express about those who choose the secular path and I don’t plan to be nice about it.

Today’s entry deals with the ruling the US Supreme court made today regarding religious practices in prison.

Feel free to stop by for a visit.

Secular Left