| open your eyes |

In 1976, filmmaker Claude Lelouch strapped a camera to his Mercedes-Benz and drove through the streets of Paris at 5:30AM without stopping. A brilliant 9-minute film entitled C’était un Rendez-vous, dubbed with engine noise from a Ferrari 275 GTB, was the result. Watch it below.

For those who can’t spend nine minutes listening to a car engine: Snow Patrol did a nice job soundtracking the same footage in music video last year. But beware, this sort of clip makes one eager to break several European traffic laws.

| it’s not the heat, it’s the humanity |

I originally planned to post a little diatribe on climate change here, but it soon ballooned into a much lengthier essay than I had originally planned. So for the sake of saving space on this page, brew a cup of your strongest coffee and click here to read it. I highly recommend it. Plus there are plenty of links and videos to make it a bit interactive, which is always a good time.

| hitchens in every home |

Recently, I was gifted with a small collection of Christopher Hitchens books which my bookshelf was sorely lacking—available space on which is similarly afflicted. While I certainly don’t agree with everything Hitchens says, I do admire his wit and appreciate him on the several levels on which we do agree. (Such as Henry Kissinger.) Among the books was a slender volume published in 2007 on Thomas Paine. It amuses me to no end that Hitchens chose to write a book on Paine only a year after I originally wrote a piece on him for our nation’s 230th birthday. Paine is an immensely important founding father who has been inexplicably shoved under the covers of American history and, I urge anyone reading this to either revisit or read for the first time my piece on Mr. Paine, cleverly titled by an editor, “No Paine, No Gain.”

| until there’s a cure |

My brother was the one who first put this thought into my head several years ago when I was surprised to learn he had “adopted” two children from a third world nation and donated to them every month through a charity. So after researching charities that would tackle some issues I felt strongly about, I quickly became a big fan of UNICEF and try to donate whenever I can. It’s not much, but it also doesn’t take much to pay for mosquito netting, vaccines, and other medical supplies. There are certainly many worthwhile charities out there, but the work I’ve seen UNICEF do around the world—providing impoverished children with shelter, food, medicine, and education over the longterm—was something I could easily support.

But another cause, if that’s the word, that I’ve always felt strongly about is HIV/AIDS awareness and research. While it may seem like an old story to some, the truth is that there are still many people at risk for the virus both in the U.S. and around the world. Over 33 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS and while it’s not quite the epidemic that was feared in the 1990s and medications have gotten much better thanks in large part to research funding over the years, there are still many misconceptions out there about the disease.

A BBC documentary I watched a few months ago, titled Stephen Fry: HIV & Me, revealed how HIV/AIDS was handled by those in the U.K. I believe a similar program would be worthwhile for U.S. audiences, but there haven’t been any recent programs I’m know of on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Despite its silly title (thankfully the brilliant Mr. Fry does not suffer from HIV), it is a serious look at the disease and public reaction to it in the U.K. in recent years. The complete 2-part doc is available on YouTube at the moment, split into 10-minute chunks.

One HIV/AIDS awareness group I have recently supported is Until There’s A Cure. They’ve essentially picked up where the 1990s’ red ribbon campaign left off and found celebrities to endorse their bracelets in an effort to raise public awareness and raise funds for AIDS research. While the phrase “raise awareness” tends to make me wary—as in the Save Darfur Coalition which uses all of its funds to simply “raise awareness” about the genocide in Darfur rather than offer aid to those in Sudan. (In the case of Darfur, a specific region in crisis, one would hope donations would at least be used to help displaced families and refugees now living in Chad. But no, Save Darfur just wants to tell people about it.) On the other hand, HIV/AIDS awareness is a big part of helping fight the disease since prevention is still the best solution. HIV seems to be seen almost like a treatable disease today because there are many drugs available to stall its progression to AIDS, but it’s far from an easy disease to live with due to its impact on the immune system and has killed 25 million people since 1981.

If there’s one good thing President Bush has done, it’s urge Congress to spend $30 billion to combat HIV/AIDS over the next five years. One little snag was when it was reported that Bush and Republican supporters wanted a third of that money to be used solely on abstinence programs. An idea that might sound nice in the pews on Sunday, but one that just doesn’t work in the real world. Thankfully, Congress said no and then upped the amount to $50 billion.

| more to come |

If you haven’t grown too bored by all this prattling, there should be more to come in the future as I once again find the energy and the interest to post more regularly. I find keeping this site updated gets the creative juices flowing better. Besides, there’s really nothing quite as depressing as an unupdated website. (That may be hyperbole.) Also, all the posts that were previously listed here have been moved into the archives section. Links are at the bottom of this page.