Friday morning Hayden and I were walking to the bus stop, which is only a block away. A third of the way there, I realized we forgot Hayden’s water bottle. I heroically ran back to the house and part of the way back to the bus stop. I was way too winded to run the entire way. I did catch my breath fairly quickly and I didn’t die. Felt close, though.
Hayden’s teacher has assigned her students to argue a topic. They are supposed to write an essay on their argument and present it to class. My son picked atheism for his topic to argue in favor of. Amy and I hope his class can handle it and Hayden doesn’t suffer any push back by the religious members of his class.
Fifth grade and he’s tackling atheism.
Atheists On Television
Another bit of meme talk. This time I spotted a meme featuring six TV characters who are atheists (see above). The meme is complaining that the portrayal of atheists tends to be negative. I gave my opinion and read a list of the top ten atheist characters on TV pulled from AmericanHumanist.org.
Here is also a list of atheists and agnostics in fiction from Wikipedia.
The Film Vault is a weekly podcast featuring a Top Five list related to movies. The hosts “Bald” Byran Bishop and Anderson Cowan recently did a show on their picks for the Top Five racist characters in film. Byran chose Charlton Heston from ‘Bowling For Columbine’ and Anderson agreed.
First, ‘Bowling For Columbine’ is a documentary, so Heston was not a character. Second, it’s a documentary by Michael Moore and Michael was never one to let the facts get in the way of his agenda.
Heston was asked why America was so unique in its gun violence. Canada has high gun ownership, but not high gun violence. Why? Heston said the US has a more mixed ethnicity, but he also said he didn’t believe that was the reason. He mentioned having “enough problems with civil rights in the beginning.”
I know that sounds damning. Sort of. But what Moore and The Film Vault boys didn’t tell their audiences, was that Heston knew about those civil rights “problems” because he was there. Standing up, in the early 60s when most of Hollywood didn’t want to get involved, to be counted in the fight for civil rights for all Americans.
Heston was old, probably suffering Alzheimer’s disease, and being ambushed by Michael Moore. He may have moved more to the right as he got older and began to fight for Americans’ Second Amendment right, but he was never a racist.
This was the topic of the roundtable discussion I was a part of on Assault of the Two-Headed Space Mules. We did talk spoilers about this pretty entertaining monster flick. Not perfect, but very good. So, watch the movie if you plan on listening to that podcast. You wouldn’t want it ruined for you, would you?
Second ad break bumpers: ‘Coming Up‘ by Paul McCartney & ‘Close (To The Edit)‘ by Art of Noise
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook’ by $5 Fiddle