If you took one photo of yourself each day for three years, and then you compiled those photos into a video with its own original soundtrack, you’d have something like this: Me.  It’s quite interesting to watch, and not just because the original score by Nathan Melsted is so captivating.  Watching Ahree Lee’s self-representative visual of more than 1,000 photos meshed together so eloquently is intriguing in many ways.  I recommend you go watch it, and then I recommend you visit Nathan’s site to hear “Soundtrack for Me” (the original score for Ahree’s video) in addition to other works he’s composed.  In ways not too dissimilar from Lee, he too is a brilliant artist.  [via Mark at Biomes Blog]

White separatists don’t like it when others practice free speech.  A family of them moved into a community that, upon learning who they were, organized a compaign to make it clear: “No Hate Here”.  Unfortunately, the separatists complained to the police saying they felt harassed by the solidarity against them.  Amazing that free speech is only good when it applies to the hate, but suddenly it’s not acceptable when it goes the other way.  When neighbors “printed information sheets about the family and distributed them door to door”, “…the Kalispell Police Department … heard from the family. […] In an irony not lost on many in the community, the officers had to explain that the neighbors’ free speech rights made the fliers perfectly legal. Just as legal as the free speech rights afforded…” to the family and their white separatist music (which you can find under the family’s band name of Prussian Blue).  [via Coturnix]

More fallout from the Pope’s latest hate diatribe against Muslims.  While firebombing an Anglican church and Orthodox church sort of missed the mark (neither is Catholic), this time Somali gunmen killed an Italian nun in northern Mogadishu.  “The nun’s bodyguard and a hospital worker were also killed, doctors said.”  Again, isn’t it funny in all the wrong ways to see Muslims showing they aren’t violent and don’t appreciate being called violent by being violent?  Yet more religious hypocrisy in action.  While the papal Nazi did finally apologize in person — days later — I wonder if he’ll still be visiting Turkey in a few months now that he is seen for what he is: a hateful politician wearing the cloak of a spiritual leader.

Don’t miss Carnival of the Godless #49.

Ever wonder about movie ratings?  Like what warrants an R or a PG-13 or the dreaded (and was once called X) NC-17 rating?  Or like why a scene of gay sex can earn a movie an R rating when the same scene with a heterosexual couple would only get a PG-13?  Or even why you can’t know who makes the ratings or what criteria determine which one a film gets?  Wonder no more.  And it’s not pretty.  Even this film will not tell the whole story because it’s so shrouded in secrecy and its participants protected at all costs — because it’s a biased process with subjective reasoning.  I intend to see the movie even though it could not penetrate all the obfuscating layers of this clandestine organization.  Don’t you want to know who and what determines what’s acceptable for us to see?

I’d never before seen this video of a weatherman — a weather-man — having two on-screen encounters with a cockroach, one three hours after the first.  It’s hysterical.  All I have to say is look at Miss Thing go.  She is not happy about that bug.  And she is such a drama queen.

Inverting the blogosphere into a kind of anti-beauty contest gives me hope.  Fucking amusing!  It’s short and will entertain even those who don’t get all the blogospheric jargon.

Can you tell me you don’t smile when you see this picture?  Come on.  Tell the truth.  You smiled, didn’t you?  Of course you did, but only after the “aaaaaawwwwww…” that dripped from your lips like cold honey.

Thinking About The God Delusion is a discussion about a book, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.  You must go read what John has to say.  Whether a Christian or Jew or Muslim or atheist or agnostic or the follower of some obscure Pacific island religion or any other belief system, he discusses the idea of “god” versus “religion” versus freedom, and he does it with logic and clarity that should fully engage everyone.  It’s a must read.

More on the Republicans eating themselves.  Excellent piece of work on the new save-the-GOP strategy:

I can’t help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political lives. After all, it must be tough explaining to voters at their local Baptist church’s Keep Congress Conservative Day that it was their party that took a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a record-setting $400 billion deficit.

How exactly does one convince the teeming masses that Republicans deserve to stay in power despite botching a war, doubling the national debt, keeping company with Jack Abramoff, fumbling the response to Hurricane Katrina, expanding the government at record rates, raising cronyism to an art form, playing poker with Duke Cunningham, isolating America and repeatedly electing Tom DeLay as their House majority leader?

How does a God-fearing Reagan Republican explain all that away?

Easy. Blame George W. Bush.

He should have seen that one coming.