Notebook entry, December 25, 2004

Today is the Christmas day and the world is still not at Peace. Once again the old Pope in Rome struts out onto his balcony surrounded by wealth in artifacts and paintings that is beyond imagination while most of the world is seeped in poverty and he prays for Peace. How come no one "gets" the connection between wealthy elites, poverty, and social unrest?

I am losing faith in my religion that I was raised in as a youth. They were very vocal in national politics here in America concerning the issue of a women's right to choose in the 2004 election but silent on the issue of GW going to war to kill innocent children as collateral damage last year. This support of a religious organization that supports a political organization that fosters war will not stand.

Supporting the present administration is clearly to return to Greek and Roman concepts of discipline and Macavillian politics dominated by violent males in order to "maintain order from chaos." The result is that light disappears and we return to darkness of the mind. I fear that dark days are ahead.

It seems that we are on a path to male dominance that will destroy our world in order to save it.

****

To update you on my film-making progress: slow to steady. I am mostly working on a "script" for my first political DVD that I will present to a Colorado State Senator whom I consider a friend. It will focus on my attempt to "restructure" the Democratic Party along a historical timeline line with progress "going to the right" while reversing the description of being "lefties" -- dwelling in the past and "reattaching" the label to conservatives who want to return to the jungle days of Alpha male dominate days.

As for the hardware, I still have to capture the video from my camera to my laptop before I can begin shooting. I hope to begin filming around Jan 10th or 15th.

Notebook entry, December 13, 2004

It's getting close to Christmas here in America. The volume in the Post Office is starting to soar and the days are still getting shorter. I leave for work in the dark and return home in the dark. To quote GW in the Presidential debates: "It's hard work."

I'm still working in the background on political essay in preparation for putting everything together in film pieces. Right now, I have to wait until I get a video capture card in order to get the information from my digital video camera to my notebook PC. After that I have to order a 300 gigabyte hard drive to store the data on and another monitor to work on the new software that I most likely will purchase, called Adobe Premiere 8 -- a film editing software. No one said that being is visionary in a new genre is cheap, but I am thankful that I am in a position to be at least able to purchase that equipment without going into debt to do it. I have much to be thankful for this holiday season, and having a job that pays more than a subsistence wage is one of them -- even if it slowly tears at my body through physical abuse.

In another note: They New York Times has an editorial this morning on "The Feminization of AIDS." Based on a report from the World Health Organization reporting that rates of HIV AIDS is soaring in younger women who are powerless and poor -- and very open to sexual exploitation.

Not only are these women at risk because of the legalization of prostitution, but that a staggering number of women reported that their first sexual experience came as a result of rape. "Marginalized in the economy and under the law, women in developing nations are often left with sex as their only marketable resource....sex education is crucial in fight the epidemic. But information alone is not enough. Countries with entrenched epidemics need to enhance women's right under the law and end retrograde traditions that make them second-class citizens. Only then can women hope to protect themselves.

In another OP-ED piece in The New York Times, of the same date, Gene Robinson, the director of the Neuroscience Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, writes us a small piece titled: "The Behavior of Genes." Basically, its a piece for the common person that tells us: "But as much as people like to divide themselves into nature or nurture camps, what genes actually do in the brain reflects the interaction between hereditary and environmental information." What our esteemed colleague is telling us in simple language is that nature (genes) and nurture (culture, teaching) combine to make human behavior.

"The concept of "DNA as destiny" - that is not just inherited but is also environmentally responsive -- that we will understand better how genes influence behavior."

I think that the debate that nature and nurture work in combination is now won by the middle camp and will now shift to how due the two combine.....at that my friends is where Evolution's Voyage has been waiting for the past nine years. Welcome to my world view.

Notebook entry, December 7th, 2004

My dad's birthday is today. He is 93 and still kicking. I guess that means with proper lifestyle, food intake, disease avoidance, and luck I'll survive until 103....geeech.....I don't think I want to live that long....but then again, who knows.

Today I received a new shipment of books from Amazon.com. The reason that I mention this to you is that it represents a shift from my previous path. Normally, I have been reading and writing about an evolutionary theme (in the past year, female psychology and gender issues). But this batch is about women in movies and politics in general. Basically, they represent my new interests that I will pursue in the coming months, (and I suppose for the rest of my life...say, the next forty or fifty years). These interests again are: Politics, Evolution (with major emphasis on evolutionary feminism), and Film-making. I don't know if I will do book reviews on these books or not....I'll have to see how I absorb them into my thought process.

The film-making process right now is mostly in the editing stages, and next will be hooking up my computer with the camera so that the notebook PC acts as an inexpensive teleprompter. I am also writing a script for a political DVD concerning the restructuring of the Democratic Party based on a timeline of evolution (the left as the past -- the right as the future). I hope to present the DVD to a local state senator. I hope the project to be up and running by the spring of 2005.

The books purchase were: