Thrilla in Manila (Et. Al.)

Jeff Winkler | April 22, 2009

It's Earth Day (hooray!). Many people are celebrating, including filmmakers. If you don't get a chance to smoke some of nature's finest and watch Disney's new documentary Earth, at least check out this (almost) funny video via Mental Floss. The odd thing about this two-minute ode to Mother Earth is that it was made with help from Ecogeek and...Absolut vodka? Meh. Enjoy:

After the video, check out Ron Bailey's thoughtful Earth Day coverage near, dear and here; and a 1999 piece by Reason Contributor Tama Starr, in which she called Earth Day "a designer holiday crafted to dramatize the ascendancy of style over substance." Then take off the kiddie gloves and have at it in the comments below.

Comments

Xeones|4.22.09 @ 10:43AM|#

SugarFree, here's your damn post.

|4.22.09 @ 10:44AM|#

Wikipedia on Earth Day

Someone managed to slip this reference to old Scientific Consensus That Must Not Be Named before they locked the page for editing:

Five months before the first April 22 Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the rising hysteria of "global cooling".

And I bet this will go down the memory hole soon as well:

In September 1969 at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin announced that in spring 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. This occurred during a time of great concern about overpopulation and when there was a strong movement towards "Zero Population Growth."

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 10:45AM|#

Jeff,

You forgot to mention the Commie birthday that Earth Day was made to celebrate.

Xeones,

I let him know on the Nick rant thread. He should be here soon.

|4.22.09 @ 10:46AM|#

Also:

The idea that the date was chosen to celebrate Lenin's centenary still persists in some quarters, although Lenin was never noted as an environmentalist.

Yes, because that would be the only reason that Lenin and Earth Day could possibly associated.

Happy Watermelon Day, everybody.

Xeones|4.22.09 @ 10:47AM|#

Mmm... watermelon...

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 10:51AM|#

Happy Watermelon Day, everybody.

Thanks for invoking the Green Party. Now I can skip lunch.

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 10:52AM|#

SF,

How is Feministing celebrating Earth Day?

PantsFan|4.22.09 @ 10:53AM|#

Surely I'm not the only person who responds to actions of smug eco-nuts with overtly earth-unfriendly acts borne purely out of spite?

Seward|4.22.09 @ 10:54AM|#

Master of natural disaster? Does that mean that man is a master of natural evil? You know earthquakes? Hardly.

|4.22.09 @ 10:54AM|#

Oddly silent. I think they are still fuming about The Boob Machine.

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 10:55AM|#

I wish I could get my heat pump to run both heating and cooling at the same time on days like today.

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 10:55AM|#

The Boob Machine?

|4.22.09 @ 10:56AM|#

PantsFan,

I left my car running while I'm a work today. And my car only runs on whale oil.

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 10:57AM|#

And my car only runs on whale oil.

Organic or free range?

|4.22.09 @ 11:01AM|#

The Boob Machine

And it triggered the hilarious following exchange at The Outrage Factory:

jjgirl23 said:
I thought it was funny then and I still think is funny now. I have a hard time being offended by what look like funny bouncy balls. If I was there with my friends I might buy one as a joke and play with it haha!

Miranda replied to jjgirl23 :
I don't find this funny at ALL. In any way.

jjgirl23 replied to Miranda
Really? I think they'd be a hilarious gag gift. I can see Jim on the Office putting it in Dwight's desk drawer next to his beets. I would totally laugh if this came out of my Christmas stocking.

Okra replied to jjgirl23 :
Right. And a lot of Jim and Dwight's interplay is heterosexist. Many people, like you, most likely find it funny...that's the problem with it. Heterosexism is funny in our (and many) societies.

PantsFan|4.22.09 @ 11:01AM|#

SugarFree | April 22, 2009, 10:54am | #

Oddly silent. I think they are still fuming about The Boob Machine.

I'm intrigued.

PantsFan|4.22.09 @ 11:06AM|#

Just missed it

|4.22.09 @ 11:10AM|#

The best thing about Earth Day when I was a kid was the opportunity to play with The Earth Ball. (It might not have been called that yet, or painted like Earth.) We'd also plant a tree, but I had my fill of that at home.

I also loved the days in gym when they brought in a parachute.

|4.22.09 @ 11:10AM|#

If you don't get a chance to smoke some of nature's finest and watch Disney's new documentary Earth,

Isn't that just a heavily edited version of the utterly awesome BBC documentary Planet Earth?

Get the original BBC version, with the plummy Brit narrator, not the American release with Sigourney Weaver, and for God's sake get it on Blu-Ray.

¢|4.22.09 @ 11:13AM|#

I pooped on Earth today.

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 11:16AM|#

heterosexist?

Those crazy college kids can come up with the oddest words!

Better hip your Ninja chick to that one. It might be popular in the future.

|4.22.09 @ 11:29AM|#

Civilized humans who think they love nature don't understand that the nature they love, in a park or a civilized national park, are seeing nature in chains. Because they live in civilization, they have never seen nature free. Nature in a free state is a very scary thing.

Xeones|4.22.09 @ 11:30AM|#

John, have you seen Grizzly Man?

Funniest. Movie. Ever.

|4.22.09 @ 11:37AM|#

Reminding everyone to listen to Devin Townsend's "Earth Day" today, which has to be the greatest Earth Day song ever. Mainly because it rocks super hard and it's very weird, but partly because I have no idea what it actually has to do with Earth Day.

|4.22.09 @ 11:38AM|#

Heterosexism is funny in our (and many) societies.

What's wrong with being heterosexy?

strat|4.22.09 @ 11:40AM|#

Thanks to the good folks at the Foundation for Economic Education, I now have one more reason, on Earth Day, to think Charles Babbage was an amazing guy.

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/saving-the-environment-for-a-profit-victorian-style/

|4.22.09 @ 11:43AM|#

Earth Day = Easter where Gaia replaces Christ, corporate CEOs replace Pontius Pilate and Rachel Carson replaces Mary Magdalene.

|4.22.09 @ 11:44AM|#

"John, have you seen Grizzly Man?

Funniest. Movie. Ever."


Yes I have. My favorite part is the Ranger speculating about why the bears didn't kill the guy for so long and saying "maybe they thought he was retarded".

PantsFan|4.22.09 @ 11:47AM|#

Maybe someone can spoof this:

Top 10 Earth Day actions

Warty|4.22.09 @ 11:47AM|#

I'm racking my brain to come up with a plausible explanation for what heterosexist could possibly mean. I'm drawing a total blank.

PantsFan|4.22.09 @ 11:48AM|#

John | April 22, 2009, 11:44am | #

"John, have you seen Grizzly Man?

Funniest. Movie. Ever."

That and "Into the Wild", altought thatwas more laughable than funny.

|4.22.09 @ 11:49AM|#

"That and "Into the Wild", altought thatwas more laughable than funny."

That movie was too sad to be funny. Sad that an obviously ill person could starve themselves to death within walking distance of civlization and then be held up by a bunch know nothing hippies as some kind of hero.

|4.22.09 @ 11:50AM|#

Warty,

I think it's something like "heteronormative."

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 11:52AM|#

Warty,

Check teh Wiki, but don't have a mouth full of coffee when you do it, unless you really need to clean that monitor and keyboard right then.

Warty|4.22.09 @ 11:52AM|#

Were the bears heterosexist when they ate Grizzly Douche? Maybe Grizzly Douche was being heterosexist when he brought Grizzly Douchette to be eaten by those sexist bears. I'M SO CONFUSED.

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 11:53AM|#

Warty,

I think that whole Grizzly Man thing was a Dolcet(sp?) scene gone bad.

Warty|4.22.09 @ 11:56AM|#

Was Alaska heterosexist when it wouldn't give Into-the-Wild guy any food? This is really tough. I need your guys' help so I can get this paper written for my Lesbian Transgendered African-American Wymyns Studies class.

The Angry Optimist|4.22.09 @ 11:58AM|#

"On Earth Day we should reflect not on the planet but on the inhabitants who can make it of value."

Wicks Cherrycoke|4.22.09 @ 12:51PM|#

And to top it all off, I received a spam email from American Greetings offering me a discount if I order my Earth Day greeting cards from them...

Earth Day greeting cards?

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 12:58PM|#

Earth Day greeting cards?

Mine are laser etched old-growth wooden shingles.

Abdul|4.22.09 @ 12:59PM|#

Say what you will about Sara Palin, but she totally would have fucked up that polar bear.

And done it heterosexistly.

Grammar Nazi|4.22.09 @ 1:20PM|#

Dear Jeff,

Et is not an abbreviation. It is a complete Latin word.

Pop|4.22.09 @ 1:23PM|#

"Civilized humans who think they love nature don't understand that the nature they love, in a park or a civilized national park, are seeing nature in chains. Because they live in civilization, they have never seen nature free. Nature in a free state is a very scary thing."

Oh, I don't know. I canoed deep in the Canadian wilderness (Bright Sands River). Not too scary.

|4.22.09 @ 1:31PM|#

"Oh, I don't know. I canoed deep in the Canadian wilderness (Bright Sands River). Not too scary."


That is an illusion. Fall and twist your ankle or get sick or injure yourself or run into the wrong bear out there and it would have gotten very scary. Not that you shouldn't have gone. Sounds like a great trip, but there were more dangers there than there appeared to be on the surface.

|4.22.09 @ 1:55PM|#

Let's remember some bumpersticker wisdom:

Earth First!
(we'll mine the other planets later)

Xeones|4.22.09 @ 2:23PM|#

I canoed deep in the Canadian wilderness (Bright Sands River). Not too scary.

Dude, it was Canada. Canada is only scary if you need surgery there.

High Every Body|4.22.09 @ 2:46PM|#

So this is a holiday that MNG keeps Holy?

|4.22.09 @ 3:41PM|#

Yeah, yeah, sure. We're raping Gaia. But she had it coming, with her prominently displayed mountains and gaping canyons.

MaterialMonkee|4.22.09 @ 5:52PM|#

"Earth Day greeting cards?

Mine are laser etched old-growth wooden shingles."

Might fire up a 2KW ND:YAG laser tomorrow just to compensate for some of the energy the greens don't use

:)

If anyones interested in alt-energy
Try reading this book

http://www.withouthotair.com/

Its basically a feasibility study of different alt-energies
It well written by a Cambridge physicist, I lost some of last Sunday afternoon on it
The book is free to download here
Takes about two minutes to download

http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html

He tries to stay away from economics and the book is generally written from the perspective that eventually we will run out of fossil fuels. There's some free-market criticism but only to the extent that he supports a carbon tax (with tax cuts in other areas) and actually gives an endorsement to the UK conservative party for having this as a election pledge.

The one criticism would be he totally misses out on solar power concentration which is the most effective alt-energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrating_solar_power

Well worth a read just for the occasional criticism of dumbass greens