Undaunted, the pandemic can’t stop the Pan African Film Festival and in that immortal show biz tradition, the show must go on! Albeit virtually, as this year in order to stay cinematically safe, America’s largest and best yearly Black-themed filmfest since 1992 is moving online and starting later than usual, kicking off on the last day of Black History Month. 2021’s 29th annual Pan African Virtual Film + Arts Festival is taking place from Feb. 28 – March 14.

Director/co-writer Lazaro Ramos’ award winning Executive Order exemplifies what I love most about PAFF: This festival gives movie buffs the opportunity to see films – often from far-flung destinations around the globe – that we might otherwise never have the chance to watch. Often these are worthy, well-made productions that PAFF is also giving access and a foothold to at Los Angeles, arguably the world’s capital of cinema (although not necessarily the capital of “world cinema” per se).

A report advocating rocket propulsion by nuclear power for U.S. missions to Mars, written by a committee packed with individuals deeply involved in nuclear power, was issued last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

The 104-page report also lays out “synergies” in space nuclear activities between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. military, something not advanced explicitly since the founding of NASA as supposedly a civilian agency in 1958.

The report states: “Space nuclear propulsion and power systems have the potential to provide the United States with military advantages…NASA could benefit programmatically by working with a DoD [Department of Defense] program having national security objectives.”’

The report was produced “by contract” with NASA, it states.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) describe

themselves as having been “created to advise the nation” with “independent, objective advice to inform policy.”

https://www.nationalacademies.org/about

This column was published as a Duty to Warn column in the Duluth Reader on April 17, 2014. I came across a copy of it recently and thought, given the impeachment trial of the demagogue Donald J. Trump and the frequent mention of Big Lies in the press, that it should be re-published.

The information has a lot to say about America’s on-going right-wing extremism and the repeated attempts of these groups to usurp American democracy. Examples include the Ku Klux Klan and the related White Supremacist groups that include Anti-Semitic, Racist, Anti-immigrant and Homophobic groups, all entities that have never really disappeared from the scene.

Pardon me while I break the fourth wall.

I’m in the human stew right now, you might say: drowning in politics, technology, the weather and my own crazy ego. I’m trying to write a column.

What makes this one different . . .well, I’ve been forced today to set aside my certainties, norms and expectations — virtually all of them. Certainty number one: that my computer will keep functioning as I write.

This morning — a dozen or so hours ago — I sat at my machine and it was working fine except for one thing: letters didn’t appear on my screen when I hit the keys. This is called writing. I’m an excellent writer, or so I tell myself, but my computer pointed out to me that if I can’t create letters and form them into words, then I can’t write. This was certainly an infuriating mystery, but I still had a few possibilities I could access to maintain situation normal. Well, I had one possibility. Call Geek Squad.