Its the Thank-you season: Cheers to Google

Its Google's 13th birthday. I wonder how I ever got along without it. Used Google Search at least 25 times today. Used Google Maps, the Gmail, the Google talk and the blogger all within the last hour. It's so talented!! To think that communication before Google was only through a rotary phone that entertained us by dialing wrong numbers. Now, we have Google's Youtube to do the entertaining. We have with Google a window that opens into the world.

Sunny Day, Sweepin' the Clouds Away...

This is how to get to Sesame Street

Kermit with Old MacDonald




I love this one!!




Let the Ham soliloquize..,




And finally this one...


Monsterpiece Theater

Jim Henson

I couldn't possibly say it better than Kwame Opam of Gizmodo:

"Happy 75th Birthday, Jim Henson. And Thank You

Today is Jim Henson's 75th birthday. And in my mind, there ought to be parades to honor this man's legacy. Because, as a filmmaker and innovator, he did it all. Whether you're a kid or an adult, he touched us all. So celebrations are in order."

As a part of these celebrations I present to you my favorite Sesame Street/The Muppet Show videos

Harry Belafonte-- Day O

and

Ernie and Bert

also

Cookie Monster

Will post some more tomorrow. Also read Jim Henson's son's post -- a tribute to his father in the Official Google blog.

Wanted Dead or Dead

The death penalty is plain wrong.  When a man is behind bars anyway, serving time for a crime he may or may not have committed, why in the world should he be executed?  Is the prison too "free" for him?  Or is it the fact that it is he and not the victim that walks alive that makes it unbearable for some to see?

Troy Davis maintained till the very end that he was innocent.  Pleas to save his life were ignored even though Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Pope Benedict XVI, Harry Belafonte, Jimmy Carter, Amnesty International and the European Parliament all campaigned on his behalf.

Dr. Allen Ault, retired Director of the Georgia Department of Corrections and former Warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison where he oversaw executions for the state  told Rachel Maddow (The Rachel Maddow Show: Sept 21, 2011 )

"When you're in the death chamber ordering an execution, and even if in your mind, if you're a man of conscience, actually believe somebody is guilty, it's still a very premeditated murder. I mean, it's scripted and rehearsed. It's about as premeditated as any killing that you can do. And then when there is doubt, either way it exacts a heavy toll on those who are charged by the state to execute somebody."

 

The MacPhails, the relatives of the man Davis allegedly killed, talk of closure.  Dr. Ault said in that same interview with Rachel Maddow that the sense of relief felt by relatives of victims at "justice" being done is, at best, fleeting.  Of course it is.

In the end, we are a bloodthirsty species.  Hammurabi is still alive in us. Just look at him--I can readily believe this is the man who demanded an eye for an eye. 

It seems, that even the makers of sodium pentothal ( the drug used at executions) do not want their name tainted with this practice.