Maritime Monday for September 16th, 2013: Movies About Sailors, Part III

Maritime Monday for September 16th, 2013: Movies About Sailors, Part III; Man the Laff Boats! | gCaptain

Here’s part III in Monkey Fists’ series for gcaptain on movies about sailors. This one looks especially good cause there are so many comedies. I LOVE comedies! Especially ‘stupid’ funny, like the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, “I Love Lucy”, etc.

There are a couple of movies by Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy, and even a little history on Popeye at the end. Its not all about the comedy tho, there are some pretty interesting other films in this one too. Try “John Paul Jones” starring Robert Stack, “The Lady from Shanghai” starring Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, “The Last Detail” with Jack Nicholson.

It looks like a lot of really good choices this week. Good way to spend a rainy day, Maritime Monday Movies. 😉

Lecture Series | Mariners’ Museum

Lecture Series | Mariners’ Museum.

I only just found out about this lecture series when I read the link on my earlier post on The Project. It will be part of this Lecture Series. It sounds like a pretty cool thing to do if you’re in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.

Each lecture has a presentation by the author and a Q & A session afterwards. They have them almost monthly and they pick some good ones. The Project about pirates sounds great. They have one on sea monsters coming up Oct 10 that sounds good too.  🙂

Check the link for more information. The website for the museum is www.marinersmuseum.org . Its FREE! 🙂

The Project: Award Winning Documentary on Somali Pirates

http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/Emmywinning-Filmmaker-Screens-Documentary-on-Somalian-Pirate-Hunters-2013-09-11/

Here’s a new movie coming out that looks pretty interesting. Called ‘The Project’, and directed by Emmy-award winners Shawn Efran and Adam Ciralsky. Hopefully it will bring some attention to a serious issue the worlds seafarers have to deal with.

If you happen to live in the Hampton Roads area (VA), it’s going to be shown for FREE. At the Mariners Museum (www.marinersmuseum.org). Thursday, Sept 19, 7:00 pm, followed by a Q & A session.

If I was home, I would definitely like to go see this. Pirates are a serious issue to all mariners. We may or may not know where we’re going. We’re not allowed to have any sort of protection against these thugs. Our companies expect us to run and hide in a ‘citadel’ onboard til the pirates decide to just leave. Yeah, riiiight, that works SO well…

There are thousands of seafarers injured and traumatized for life because of this. It seems it’s only when an American vessel gets attacked that there is even any publicity.

Pirate attacks happen almost daily on both the East and West Coasts of Africa. There are also attacks in the Malacca Straits, in the South China Sea, all over India and Pakistan, and yes, they still have pirates in the Caribbean  🙁

Too bad they’re not really at all like Johnny Depp.

One Weird Trick to Fix Farms Forever

One Weird Trick to Fix Farms Forever | Mother Jones.

One weird trick? Seems like this ‘trick’ has been around forever, it’s just our modern factory farming techniques that tend to overlook it.

I don’t really know enough about farming to say with a definite yes or no to any of this stuff. I have been learning more about it lately and I’m coming to find out that contrary to what our government schools are telling us, that no, factory farming is NOT necessary to feed all the people on this planet now.

I always thought that because of the humongous amount of people running around and needing to be fed, that factory farming was the ONLY solution. Now, I’ve been learning, it isn’t. In fact, it is causing a lot of harm. Not only to the animals, but to the water, to the soil, to the plants, to the people involved in the farming, AND to all the rest of us.

Check out the article, read it all the way through and even the comments at the end. If you want some more info, check out this book I read called “Genetic Roulette” on GMOs (they even made a movie out of it). We’re working on showing that one at our local (Campaign for Liberty) meetup groups movie night sometime soon. Or another movie called “Farmaggedon”. There are lots more but those are a couple of good ones that’ll open your eyes and get you started asking questions. I’ve been a fast food junkie my whole life and they did open my eyes to a lot of things. Even tho I’m still eating all the crap food, at least I’m learning 😉

Maritime Monday for September 9th, 2013

Maritime Monday for September 9th, 2013: Movies About Sailors Part II; Shape Ahoy! | gCaptain

Maritime Monday- movies about sailors part II. Thanks to gCaptain and MonkeyFist for putting all this together every week. There are lots of good old movies in the mix here. Pretty entertaining…

Coast Guard Recognizes WW II Veteran

Coast Guard Recognizes WW II Veteran.

Sure took ’em long enough! I guess they had to wait til almost all of these poor guys died??! They should have been eligible from the very beginning for all the honors and perks the military got.

I might piss off some military people by saying that, but they probably don’t know the history of the Merchant Marine. They should! The US Merchant Marine has served in every war since before this country was even formed, in fact, without their service in the time of the Revolution, we never would have been able to do squat against Britain!

The Merchant Marine has lost more men in these wars then every other branch of the military. Easy to figure out why when you realize that we were not ever allowed to defend ourselves. Oh yeah, occasionally they would stick a few marines on board with some guns as a half- assed measure of protection, but only during the major wars- WWI and WWII pretty much.

To this day, the Merchant Marine is out there supplying the troops overseas while trying to get around the pirates and they STILL get no recognition from anyone. I hope the new movie with Tom Hanks playing Captain Phillips on the Maersk Alabama gets some attention. Maybe people will appreciate what the sailors go through to get them the everyday things they need.

Here’s a link to the story of the Maersk Alabama…

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Alabama_hijacking

Here’s a link to the movie trailer, it looks pretty good…

Maritime Monday for September 2nd, 2013: Movies About #@!!%* Sailors; Part I | gCaptain

Maritime Monday for September 2nd, 2013: Movies About #@!!%* Sailors; Part I | gCaptain

Here’s another post from gcaptains Monkey Fist with a new listing of maritime movies. This series focusing on the sailors themselves. There looks to be some good ones in there… Captains Courageous starring Spencer Tracy, Captain Horatio Hornblower starring Gregory Peck, even a musical- Anchors Aweigh starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. Oldies but Goodies. Enjoy…

LoneStarCon 3 – 71st Worldcon in San Antonio, Texas

LoneStarCon 3 – 71st Worldcon in San Antonio, Texas.

Jeeze, sorry I’m so late on this one. I got the news in an email from the Advocates for Self Government but I didn’t really get around to reading it til this morning. If anyone is in San Antonio, they can probably still get there in time to check it out in person.

If I wasn’t getting ready to go back to work already, I would LOVE to go to this event. I love reading, especially science fiction! I’ve never been to anything like this but I bet it would be loads of fun. Film festival, exhibits, Hugo award ceremony, astronaut to meet, etc…  Its also being covered online so if you can’t make it to San Antonio, you can still see what’s going on.

Your Steak Is Addicted to Drugs | Mother Jones

Your Steak Is Addicted to Drugs | Mother Jones.

I’ve never liked these factory farms, just for the way they treat the animals. I always thought they were necessary in order to feed the increasing amounts of people on the planet. I saw a movie a few months ago. I think it was called “Farmaggedon”. It was talking about how organic farming is actually MORE productive than these factory type farms. I don’t know if I believe that or not yet (I haven’t had time to research it yet). If it IS true, then I don’t see any way these factory operations can be justified.

Maritime Monday for August 26th, 2013: Part VII; The Final Reel | gCaptain

Maritime Monday for August 26th, 2013: Part VII; The Final Reel | gCaptain

This is the final installation of the series on maritime movies that gcaptain has been putting out in their maritime monday emails. They have sent out a huge listing of movies with pictures and short blurbs about the movies. I’ll have to go back when I get time and post the first ones since they came out before I started this blog (or you can go to gcaptain). If you’re at all interested in film, you might want to check this out, there are some good ones in there. Enjoy 🙂