Secular Café Archive

For fans of décolletage I recommend Basketball Wives and Real Housewives of _______ where the blank is filled in by a variety of place names.

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I caught the last part of an episode of American Greed on the Indianapolis explosion I had started thread on.

One of our Leftist members predicts the US will fail due to capitalism. I just watched National Geographic TV programs on the deterioration of Nashville and Houston due to meth, marijuana, and opiates. I'll agree with the member on the impending failure of this country, but not on the reason for it.

PBS is running a series on the Vietnam War. I've just caught pieces of it here and there. They show film footage taken at the time, and interview some of the combatants on both sides years after the war. Some young Americans had a glamorized idea of war, probably from hearing heroic stories about situations in WW II, but of course they became repulsed by what they saw first-hand at the line of contact with the enemy.

[quote=""Tharmas""]We watched the movie Hidden Figures last night. I somewhat cynically expected merely a feel good Hollywood movie, and I was pleasantly surprised (although it did make me feel good, too).

The story is about three African American female mathematicians who earn significant roles at NASA during the early years of the Space Race. Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) is the central figure, who calculates John Glenn’s orbital trajectories. The other two lead roles are Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae). Supporting roles are played by Kevin Costner and Jim Parsons, among others. (Jim Parsons stars in a sit-com called “The Big Bang Theory” - which I’ve never actually watched).

The action takes place in the months between the Soviet Yuri Gagarin’s first orbiting the earth, in April 1961, and John Glenn’s first American orbits in February 1962.

The three women are employed by NASA as “computers,” women who perform the actual complex computations to support the rocket flights. Negro computers are segregated. During the course of the film, Dorothy Vaughan becomes a supervisor, who teaches herself Fortran, and then teaches her “computers,” so that by the film’s end they have all graduated to becoming programmers of NASA’s new IBM mainframes. Mary Jackson becomes a certified engineer, and Katherine Johnson pioneers the application of Euler’s Method to calculating complex orbital trajectories. In the end she supplies the correct figures as Glenn waits on the gantry in his space suit, ready to blast off.

The film deals with racism and sexism, both overt and institutional, as well as white privilege to an extent. The climax is Glenn’s dramatic flight.

Tubby, you’d appreciate the soundtrack.

Here is the trailer:

(View video on YouTube)[/quote]

Agreed. This was quite good. My 11-year-old couldn't wrap his head around why the "need" for separate bathrooms. This was even after watching The Help, a movie which he really loves, although again, the racism really irks him.