Mind Wipes

Apparently there is a new method to prevent people from remembering stressful events and having PTSD afterwards. I find this troubling coming as it does after doctors have found a way to remove painful memories. After all if the concentration camp guards can't remember shoving people into ovens, and shooting the children, how can we ethically punish them? What if we can't remember it even happening? Imagine this technology gradually perfected. The government could commit any horror and make the public forget. This is a slippery slope at the bottom of which is the annihilation of nothing less than the human soul. People need their pain, their fear, their guilt and trauma. Otherwise they aren't people any more.

Lost Premier

Apparently a TV show (LOST)is more important than good governance. Folks you can't make this stuff up. Where are all the adults?

Avatar - B

== SPOILER ALERT ==

10' tall blue smurfs and floating mountains. It was Pocahontas with aliens complete with singing. The corporate human enemy (thank God they weren't wearing US flags on their uniforms) are there to get a mineral they can't find elsewhere and the smurfs are sitting on top of it. I found the plot recycled, and not a single new idea in the whole film, with one dimensional enemies (Mr. Hard Case Soldier, and Mr. Evil Corporate Exploiter made an appearance). Unless you consider golfing into a coffee cup, and a brief I'm a veteran, you're a veteran of such and such back stories. That said the film was visually stunning, probably one of the top 5 films I've ever seen as far as visual spectacle was concerned. The visuals didn't REALLY get in the way of the story, but the floating mountains were a bit hard to take (given the mineral, I'll give that a physics pass, but barely).

If you are bothered by physics or time-lines, 2154 is probably too soon for spaceships with NAFAL to get anywhere except the closest star systems. Given the evident mass shipping of materials too and fro, even granting the base shown was built locally the actual level of technology in the film was disappointing low. We'll assume the corporate types had access to the military equipment of contemporary Nigeria say, but if the mineral is that important, why is there no government oversight?

The biggest problem with the movie is the anti-capitalist anti-corporate anti-technology pro-noble-savage view of the world. Savages are savage. The smurfs don't even use fire. Given the importance of the mineral, the next contact the aliens will have with earthlings is likely to be a few dozen high-yield Cobolt-60 dirty nukes launched from orbit to sterilize the planet, or at least a large swath of it. Hard for flying smurfs to deal with fallout and gamma rays. Of course killing the natives is supposed to "look bad", so perhaps there is oversight after all.

Realistic? Sort of given the content of the movie, and our past contacts with native peoples. Depressing view of mankind, technology and progress? Oh God, yes. That said, the built in neural interfaces for all the critters was cool. I don't plan on unplugging my refrigerator and air-conditioner any time soon, or going to live in the jungle in harmony with the animals. It was a cool view of an alien world, but it was also very preachy.

Festival of Hate

ABC reports that President Obama Names Transgender Appointee to Commerce Department. Now usually this sort of thing would cause me to just roll my eyes and mutter something about the democratic party being a freak show, but I was unprepared for the explosive vitriol heaped on this unknown and apparently hard working (if perhaps regrettably interesting) person. One person shared my view calling it a "festival of hate". It reminded me of the way Jews, Roma and Poles were treated by Nazis before WWII.

"...I can tell you that person who think that their thinking is the only way are doomed themselves to eternal damnation. God created all of us. Not one or the other is inferior...." (quoted in part from Dolores Jones).

My view:
Dolores Jones, as a Christian and a father I can only hope my fellow Americans are as tolerant and open minded as you are. If you believe in liberty you can see that people who embrace others however unusual they are, who are DOING NO HARM are on the right side of history. Angry prigs and psudo-christian-faschist-cum-flag-waving-partiot-wannabees obviously don't know what freedom is FOR, or WHY it's worth defending. What if it was your child? You'd disown them for your religion; you really think that's what a GOOD GOD - THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE wants? Idiots.