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Olga

Three passions have governed my life: The longings for love, the search for knowledge, And unbearabl

My Interests

I'd like to meet:

"By whose side would I like to sit over dinner someday?" - I'd venture to say: Keith Olbermann, Barack Obama, Maureen Dowd, Harry Belafonte, Arianna Huffington, Gore Vidal, Salman Rushdie, Randall Robinson, George Balanchine, Taylor Branch, Damien Broderick, Stanley Crouch, Donna Leon, and Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz.I would love to have crossed paths with: Thomas Paine, George Sand, Mary Shelley, Robert G. Ingersoll, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Susan Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paul Robeson, Hubert Henry Harrison, Zorah Neale Hurston, Philip K. Dick, Vashti McCollum, and Octavia Butler. So many people, so little time and space for me to name them all.(and that up there should be WHOM I'd like to meet. Rrrrrrrrrr ...)

Movies:

Too many to mention, but some of my favorites: Metropolis (1927); The Miracle Woman (1931); Wuthering Heights (1939); Cat People (1942); Ivan the Terrible (1942); Double Indemnity (1944); Mildred Pierce (1945); Green Dolphin Street (1947); Song of Love (1947); Hamlet (1948); The Third Man (1949); Alice in Wonderland (1951); Hans Christian Andersen (1952); Wee Geordie (1955); Night of the Hunter (1955); Forbidden Planet (1956); Tea and Sympathy (1956); Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); Island in the Sun (1957); The Nights of Cabiria (1957); Vertigo (1958); South Pacific (1958); Black Orpheus (1959); The Nun's Story (1959); The Five Pennies (1959); The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1959); The Manchurian Candidate (1962); Children of the Damned (1963); A Patch of Blue (1965); Seconds (1966); The Producers (1968); Women in Love (1969); Death in Venice (1971); McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971); Nicholas and Alexandra (1971); The Devils (1971); Last Tango in Paris (1972); Sunday Bloody Sunday (1972); The Godfather (Trilogy); The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976); (Bergman's) The Magic Flute (1976); The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); Don Giovanni (1978); (Frank Langella as) Dracula (1979) The Hunger (1983); Choose Me (1984); The Brother From Another Planet (1984); Trouble in Mind (1985); Blue Velvet (1986); The Dead (1987); At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991); (Coppola's) Dracula (1992); Blade Runner (1992); Groundhog Day (1993); The Shawshank Redemption (1994); Strange Days (1995); Before Sunrise (1995); Lone Star (1996); Gattaca (1997); Matrix (1999); Fight Club (1999); The Ring (Trilogy); Vanilla Sky (2001); Before Sunset (2004); Borat (2006)

Television:

History Channel; Discovery Channel; Star Trek; Eyes on the Prize (14-part PBS series); Prime Suspect (1991-2006); MythBusters; Penn and Teller's Bullshit!; HGTV; Nip/Tuck (my guilty pleasure); otherwise, TV is used mostly as a DVD decoder.

Books:

Richard Fortey (A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth); Mary Shelley (Frankenstein); Carl Sagan (The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark; and other works); Forrest G. Wood (The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century); Annie Laurie Gaylor, ed. (Women Without Superstition); Vashti McCollum (One Woman's Fight); James Forman (The Making of Black Revolutionaries); Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene; other works); Michael Shermer (Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time); Ed Regis (Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition); Damien Broderick (The Spike; other works); Philip K. Dick (everything)

Heroes:

"Our heroes are our sons and daughters, who taught us what it really means to be human and to care for each other." - Katie Dolan (1924-2006), Seattle activist

My Blog

Thomas Jefferson  No Hero of Mine!

I'm still recovering from some of the responses in the last blog I wrote.    And recently, because a few of my friends have "tagged" me, I thought I might take some time and write something...
Posted by Olga on Mon, 19 Feb 2007 06:19:00 PST

I Am a Speciesist

Since I came to MySpace a few months ago, I have run into several blogs where people have intimated that in many ways they prefer animals over people.  But it is human animals  Homo Sapiens  wh...
Posted by Olga on Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:07:00 PST

Let's Show Chi Brown Some Love

Friend Chi Brown is about to start a series of treatments in his fight against Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  I thought he could use a showing of some love and support. www.myspace.com/chi_o_k Take a look ...
Posted by Olga on Thu, 08 Feb 2007 01:45:00 PST

Monkeys, Gorillas and Us, Oh My!!!

Still celebrating Darwin Day here.  So I thought I'd bring along a couple of party favors.    The next links are to some interesting videos  you may take the first two (which are actu...
Posted by Olga on Sat, 03 Feb 2007 11:33:00 PST

The Paragon of Animals

Charles Darwin as a Symbol for the Celebration of Science and Humanity   I am happy to be a secular humanist.  I am curious by nature, and through the years I've found objective facts to b...
Posted by Olga on Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:55:00 PST

Documentary That Needs No Words

Friend chi's (http://www.myspace.com/chi_o_k) newest blog contained this video of a 17-year-old young student filmaker's documentary.  It is, indeed, stunning, especially because the same ex...
Posted by Olga on Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:14:00 PST

Shill-via Browne Doesn't See Dead People

Even as a child I've loved movies, especially mysteries and detective yarns with good, satisfying plots.  But one does not live by hale and hearty films alone, so I've watched (and enjoyed!) my s...
Posted by Olga on Sun, 21 Jan 2007 10:27:00 PST

One Moment in 1967

It was exactly forty years ago, just a few days before the Blizzard of 1967, when I arrived in Chicago for my pre-induction process into the Volunteers In Service to America (VISTA).  VISTA was a...
Posted by Olga on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:17:00 PST

Homophobia

This was originally posted by Nils' friend Rich (and I am reposting from my friend Nils' blog): ***We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she foundout we wanted to rent a one-bedroom...
Posted by Olga on Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:53:00 PST

My Favorite Gadfly - Robert Green Ingersoll

Robert Green Ingersoll is one of my favorite American historical figures from the past.  Sadly, not too many people have heard of him these days, but, luckily, his words and thoughts are availabl...
Posted by Olga on Mon, 01 Jan 2007 03:30:00 PST