A random thought about the space program

The Universe: Congratulations, humans! You have evolved! You use tools and forge things out of metal and soon will invent even more wondrous things, like the internet and that weird nacho "cheese" that they put on your chips at the movie theater! Well done!

Humanity: Yeah, but I kind of feel like something's missing. We still haven't done everything we can with the technology we have.

The Universe: Well, you've pretty much been everywhere there is to be. You've explored pretty much all of all seven continents. You've been to the south pole. You've been to the north pole. You've even, however briefly, descended to the very deepest depths of the ocean! What more is there to explore?

Humanity: *looks up at the heavens* Y'know, I've always wondered what it's like up there.

The Universe: Don't be silly, humanity! Space is incompatible with life. There is, for starters, a fundamental force that effectively pins you to land, making it quite hard to go up. And even if you could, there is a distinct lack of things like air and water and everything else up there, which present some significant obstacles to squishy little things like you.

Humanity: *thinks for a moment, then shrugs* Let's get building, boys.

Humanity proceeds to build a series of rockets that are strong enough to overcome a fundamental force of the universe, yet gentle enough to safely carry humans, and then goes and does a couple loops around the planet.

The Universe: Well done. I'm impressed.

Humanity: Oh, just you wait. *lands on the moon*

The Universe: Very nice, guys.

Humanity: And how about this? *shoots several probes off in various directions, receives data for thirty some years* And this? *builds robots, sends robots to Mars* *builds another robot and sends it to the surface of Venus*launches satellites to predict weather* *launches satellites so someone can watch TV broadcast from the other side of the planet* *launches satellites that can take pictures of your license plate*

The Universe: Sweet.

Humanity: *builds manned space stations* *puts up some satellites so that anyone can precisely pinpoint exactly where on earth they are* *builds reusable spaceships to ferry supplies and people back and forth* How 'bout your fundamental forces now, Universe?

The Universe: I stand corrected, guys. You all are pretty good at finding new frontiers to explore.

Humanity: *looks at thirty years of data from Voyager 2, six years of data from two Mars rovers, and twenty years of pictures from the Hubble telescope* Man, this is expensive and boring. Let's go drill for oil! *abandons manned space exploration*

The Universe: ...what the hell?

How you know you work with an older demographic

From my workplace's monthly newsletter: "It's easy to log on to the website - simply google .org, and click on "Welcome to ".

Movie review: The Karate Kid (2010)

To begin with: I'm a shameless fan of the original film, so a remake already has tremendous shoes to try to fill. I'm biased and will freely admit it. The original is so perfect in it's cheesy 1980's glory. On the other hand: I'm a shameless Jackie Chan fan. I've become less a fan of his more modern (and horribly over-commercialized) work, but still - the man knows how to put together a fight scene.

The good:

*Jackie Chan did not disappoint. Again, he had tremendous shoes to fill here, and he stepped up to it. Is he Mr. Miyagi? No. Does he take the role, make it his own, and create something surprisingly good? Absolutely. This version of Mr. Miyagi being drunk and sad is surprisingly well-done. There's some emotional depth that I think Chan doesn't normally get to go into in his typical roles, but he certainly can do it.

*I won't spoil anything, but there's a whole sub-plot involving cars which is a surprisingly subdued and clever hommage to the original. We do see a car being waxed, but it's not just a shout-out, it's truly a new little story, which I was pleasantly surprised by.

*Some of the fight and training scenes are pretty decent; at least one of them was obviously highly influenced by Chan's style, if he didn't choreograph it himself. Some nice creative use of scenery, harsh enough to be interesting but clever enough to not be too scary for kids (or adults).

*Similarly, I was pleasantly surprised by how some of the kids pulled off their fight scenes.

The bad:

*C'mon, the kid's 12. You don't need a love interest.

*Jaden Smith...has potential as an actor. I'm sure, given who his father is (it may be an unpopular opinion, but Will Smith can give a decent performance), he can get all the coaching he needs. That said, he's young and I didn't for a second feel that he was talented enough to carry a film as a lead. A minor player? I think he'd be perfectly respectable. If he keeps at it, in five or ten years? Sure, seems possible. But I just didn't find him convincing for most of the movie.

*Beyond the fact that a story about preteens does not need a love interest, the whole girl subplot was just kind of...lame. It basically just spat out some stereotypes for us and gave us a montage of two kids running around Beijing. The whole story could've been cut and the film would've been better overall.

*I have no first-hand experience with Kung Fu, no with recreational martial arts in China, but, uh...a youth tournament attracts such a crowd that it fills up what looks like a very large gymnasium? Really? Hundreds of spectators, an MC, big flashy video screen displaying custom graphics? TKD matches at the Olympics barely attract crowds like that.

The ugly:

*Speaking of the tournament...okay. Again, I'm not terribly familiar with kung fu, and certainly not the sport aspect of it in China. But the tournament appeared very much to be a no-holds-barred type affair. With - well, okay, I'll be generous and just say one great big under-18 division. And they wear absolutely no protective gear. And one competitor repeatedly during one match needs to be physically dragged off his opponent after the referee calls for them to break, and he gets...a warning? And then later disqualified for injuring his opponent with an illegal move, when the score is tied, so the injured opponent...loses? And kicks to the head, knee and back are all legal? And did I mention the part where you have 12-year-olds fighting in a full-contact match with no protective gear? Reeaaally? Willing suspension of disbelief will maybe deal with the enormous crowd of devoted fans, but come on. This is some sort of youth TMA tournament, not an MMA cage match.

*Overall, I got the feeling that the creative team couldn't decide whether they wanted to be a new film which paid tribute to the original, or simply a remake.

*Pleaaaaaase stop conflating various martial arts. Karate is not kung fu. I'm not demanding any real accuracy about the actual style, but please please please make some teeny tiny little effort and get the name right.

Overall conclusion: It's a summer movie. Jaden Smith has potential, but isn't there yet. I kind of wish I'd waited and seen it on dollar day, rather than at the regular $3.50 price. Were it not for it's namesake, I think it would've been a total flop, but there's enough references in there to keep it from being a total flop. I've seen worse, but they could've done much better.

"It's only rape if he's not my religion"

I might write more about this later - once I've had time to let it settle in my brain and I stop with the mindless exclamations of "No, seriously, what the hell?", but for now I'll just leave this here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/21/arab-guilty-rape-consensual-sex-jew

So a nice Israeli Jewish lady meets a guy who introduces himself, at least by name, in a manner that implies that he is a nice Jewish boy, and he's looking for some love. They go off together and have sex and, I assume, a good time is had by all. Then he reveals that actually he's not Jewish. Since she's now sullied herself with gross non-Jew bodily fluids, our young lass does the only reasonable thing: accuses him of rape. And the jury does the only reasonable thing: finds him guilty. He's off for an 18-month stay in prison.

So, uh...as I said, I'll try to come up with some more cool-headed thoughts later, but for now: seriously, what the hell?

At last, our long national nightmare is reaching it's middle

11 deaths. 86 days. Up to 9,000 square miles. Up to 8,600,000 gallons of crude oil.

It's stopped. Probably. Temporarily. It won't really be fixed, truly for-good fixed, until they finish drilling relief wells and plug it from the inside, which won't happen for quite a while now. So there'll probably be more crude oil spilling into the Gulf yet. And if we continue living the way we have, it's really just a matter of time until there's another offshore drilling accident just like this one.

In other BP news, they've admitted that they strongly lobbied for the release of the guy who blew up a commercial airliner in 1988, because he was Libyan and the Libyan government wanted him released, and BP wanted to drill for oil off the course of Libya. The bomb this guy planted killed 280 people.

Copy, paste

The NY Times has an article (found here*) about plagiarism. It is quite a bit "Kids these days!", but also raises some valid points: one of specific interest is that it's been shown that students who cheat don't learn as much and/or don't retain knowledge as well.

Which - well, of course. If you're not actually working with the assigned material, you're not going to learn it as well. If I'm told to write a paper on, say, Hamlet, or on the theory of general relativity, I can do one of two things. Option A is to sit down, and read through Hamlet or Einstein, take notes on important points and themes, find a core idea, and work things into that while writing a paper, turning the ideas around in my head and toying with them until they fit. Or, I can take option B, and buy a paper from the internet, put my name on it, and turn it in.

Now, I never even tried to cheat during college. I say this not out of some sense of moral superiority, but if nothing else, there was the fact that you really couldn't cheat at St. John's. I'm sure you could try - I could have downloaded a paper on Dante instead of writing it myself. But those papers are turned in after months of sitting in class discussing things. You're actively engaged with the material long before any papers are due, so if you suddenly hand in an essay that sounds nothing like the way you speak, nor anything close to the ideas you've discussed in class, your professor will notice.

So that's where I'm coming from, and that's why I find it a little baffling that the professor referred to in the article is resorting to in-class writing assignments, so that he has a baseline to compare later papers to, so as to better look out for plagiarism. Wouldn't that time be better spent just discussing the material with the students? Surely "I know that Student A has a great eye for picking up on the broad themes in a given work, and Student B tends more to pick at little details, trying to find great meaning in the flourishes" is just as effective, if not more than basing your judgement on a handwritten essay forced out in a 60-minute class session?

*It has occurred to me that Facebook doesn't import links in notes, so if you're reading this via Facebook: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/opinion/13tue4.html?ref=opinion

Ye olde bigge toppe

Growing up, one of my absolute favorite movies was Dumbo. It was one of the VHS cassettes I probably just about wore out (along with The Land Before Time, and an old recording of episodes of Winnie the Pooh). I was always totally freaked out by the pink elephant scene - which I'm pretty sure is justified because even as an adult my reaction is pretty much "Man, what the hell?"

Also as an adult - it's a great film. It's touching and the music is great and the animation! God, they don't make cartoons like they used to. And brief foray into LSD-induced nightmares aside, it strikes a great balance between silly fun and scary for the kids.

But.

So there's the obvious thing where all the crows sound stereotypically black and the uncomfortable part where the main crow? is named Jim Crow. So...yeah. But further? Early on there's that scene where the circus train pulls up and they're all setting up the tent, which is primarily set up by a bunch of "roustabouts", who are portrayed as decidedly dark figure lacking in any clear features, which is...well, okay it was made in 1941, and maybe it's a stylistic decision? It's during a rainstorm after all. And since it's a Disney movie they sing a fun little song. In which they describe themselves as happy-hearted roustabouts. Who never learned to read or write, who "slave until we're almost dead" (yeah), and don't know when they'll get paid, but it's fine because they'll just toss it away when it comes.

So...yeah. Great movie, but a little bit cringeworthy at points.

Dear gas-guzzling morons:

Putting a bumper sticker on your car saying "Slow down, save gas, reduce oil profits" will do precisely nothing to reduce oil profits (or, for that matter, to reduce the degree to which oil companies rape the planet).

You know what will help to reduce oil profits?

STOP DRIVING YOUR RIDICULOUS FULL-CAB, EXTENDED-BED PICKUP TRUCK. ALSO YOU JUST RAN A RED LIGHT AND NEARLY HIT ME SO MAYBE DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE EITHER.

Seriously - you want to reduce your carbon footprint/stick it to the man/etc? Buy a bicycle and/or a bus pass! You can't - I repeat, *can't* - claim to be making any sort of meaningful effort to reduce your oil consumption if you drive. It's not a priority in your life? Fine. I personally think you're at best a short-sighted dick if so, but fine, it's your choice. If that's the case, stop with the stupid bumper stickers and t-shirts and slogans. Shut up or step up.

Congratulations! It's a representative democracy!

Well, it's that time of year again: time to cook some dead animals over open flames, drink beer, and then maybe watch some things blow up in the sky.

It's been a rough year for you, America. That's inevitable, I suppose, when you're a nation founded on the idea that every man has the right to stand up and speak his mind, and every man has the right to seek his own fortune. Now don't get me wrong - a dictatorship might look tidier, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Recently I've been reading a bit about America's western expansion. An odd time in our history, wasn't it? On one hand, it was a time of pure possibility: there was a hell of a lot of country out there, and if you could gather your things up and get a horse, well - go find your slice of it! But at the same time, amidst all this passion and hope and enthusiasm, it was at best overlooked that there were already people living there; at worst they were forcibly relocated, starved out (intentionally or not), or just plain killed.

So we've kind of always been a nation of mixed messages - we are all Americans! every man for himself! - and this year has been no different. Right now, of course, one of the biggest stories is the BP oil spill in the Gulf, which is the largest accidental oil spill in history and unquestionably the worst environmental disaster in American history and quite likely in the world. We've got people drawing Hitler mustaches on pictures of the first non-white president (which is...uh, logically questionable), shouting that we can't possibly offer some sort of state-run health insurance (other than Medicare, Medicaid, the Indian Health Service, the VA, health care for active-duty military members and their dependents and SCHIP), and pulling over brown-skinned people and asking for their papers (not to mention what happens if you're a different shade of brown and try to get on an airplane). And our economy, of course, is still somewhere south of awful, with no meaningful recover on the immediate horizon.

So, yeah, a rough year. And that's part of why I tend to have a kind of hard time with the 4th of July as it's celebrated. Celebrate our freedom, sure. Commemorate both the political minds who had the audacity to declare "Sorry, George, we're a free and independent nation" and those who fought on the ground for it. And enjoy and use that freedom that people fought for: have fun, take a day off work, say what's on your mind. But don't forget that we're not perfect, and to claim we are leads down a dangerous road.

And yeah, we've got some good stuff going for us. We've got a non-white president, and no matter what: we've got the freedom to draw a Hitler mustache on a picture of him, and we've got the freedom to tell the mustache-drawers that their thoughts are moronic. And when it comes down to it, today is a holiday because 234 years ago, a group of men sat down and said, "Our government has failed us, so we no longer recognize them as our government. We tried to reconcile things peacefully, and that didn't work, so we're taking matters into our own hands." No colony had ever declared themselves to be an independent state before, and certainly no rag-tag band of thrown-together militias had ever dreamt of successfully taking on the British forces. But they did it and - god almighty, it worked. I grew up less than ten miles from where Mr. Jefferson took Mr. Locke's philosophy and turned it into something real, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

But here's my other problem with celebrating the 4th of July the way we do: when those 56 men signed that piece of paper, they were committing treason and effectively declaring war against the greatest military force in the world. When George Washington had the Declaration read to his troops in New York, there were British forces camped within sight. Imagine that: you're a soldier in the Continental Army in 1776 - which quite possibly means you were no more than a teenager. There you are, in a scruffy uniform, camped in the oppressive New England summer in New York, and you can see the greatest military force in the world, right there, waiting. And then here comes your general, and he reads out a document that declares that this is not some little uprising, and this will not be just a series of small skirmishes. This is war, and not just that but a war of ideas. This is about liberty and freedom and self-determination; this is about the fact that we will not yield to your tyranny.

And then the British responded: we will not leave. We do not accept your declaration.

And so they fought. 25,000 American soldiers died. 20,000 British sailors died. 7,500 Germans died. Some of those soldiers died in combat. More of them died from illness - from cold, from starvation, from scurvy and smallpox and pneumonia and everything else that thrives in big groups living in close quarters, in the cold, with no clean water, under tremendous stress. Over fifty thousand people - almost entirely men, mostly young - dead. Because of what was written on a piece of paper and signed on July 4th.

Was it worth it? As much as a death in war can be worth anything, absolutely. Had those men not died we would have no concept of political freedom like we do today; the closest anyone had come was promising limited rights to the rich elite, via the Magna Carta. If ever there was a war which made the future better, it was the Revolutionary War. But it was still a war. Young men still died. Families were still torn apart. Tens of thousands of lives were shattered.

So - keep that in mind. Enjoy what you have and celebrate that you have it. Take a look at the actual Declaration - it's truly a masterpiece and well worth reading. And take a moment, just a few seconds even, to remember that this day commemorates not just freedom, but a war. That American independence did not just happen; the British were in no rush to let it be taken. Maybe they fought because they truly believed in American independence, in that je ne sais quois that is America and not Britain. Or maybe they just knew they were asked to fight, so they did. Or maybe they were pressed into service. Or they were simply young and looking for something to do. It doesn't matter why, because in the end, they either lived, or they died. That's worth remembering, even now.

...really?

From today's police blotter in the local paper:

"Police arrested Mateo Trinidad-Rodriguez, age unavailable, 20A Sierra Place, on Wednesday and charged him with aggravated driving while intoxicated, reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident. Trinidad-Rodriguez was involved in a rollover crash on Armenta Street. The arrest was his seventh on DWI charges." [emphasis added]

Really? And he wasn't charged with driving without a license, meaning that after six DWI charges, dude's still got a valid license? Because, um. Perhaps after - well, one, in my opinion, but certainly after, I don't know, three or four or five or six arrests for drunk driving, you should perhaps not be trusted to operate a motorized vehicle anymore?

Ah, for the simple days of alien invasions

I'm working at this church, and one of my responsibilities at work is to put together the "order of service" - the little 'program' handed out every Sunday morning that tells people what songs and hymns are being sung and who's singing and so on and so forth. People email me all that information, I pretty it up and print it out.

Of course the theme this Sunday will be, well, the fourth of July. People will speak about patriots and revolutionaries from within this church and there'll be lots of terrible patriotic songs and so on. I got it early this week - I don't normally until Friday - and so I'm taking my time with it, trying to make it readable and, most importantly, hunting for some nice patriotic clip-art for the cover. It's printed brochure-style, on a legal-sized piece of paper folded in half, and the front page has the name of the church and the date and the ministers name and so on, and some vaguely-thematic picture.

So, to Google I go! "Fourth of July" gives me lots of animated GIFs and pictures of hot dogs, which aren't really doing anything for me. I tweak my search terms. I get a sudden thrill of joy...before the cold knowledge of reality smacks me down.

It probably would not be appropriate to put the movie poster from the film Independence Day - either the version which depicts a giant alien spaceship blowing up New York City, or the version which depicts a giant alien spaceship blowing up the White House - on the cover of this. Will Smith sitting on top of a smaller alien space ship smoking a cigar, having just punched an alien in the face and shouted "Welcome to Earth!", is probably also inappropriate.

Inappropriate - especially considering that the average age in this congregation is, like, 80 - yet oh so very tempting.

ETA: Further things which are probably inappropriate: Captain America, a derogatory map of "the world according to America", a picture of Mickey Mouse saluting a flag, Obama with a Hitler mustache, an image of the Twin Towers superimposed on an American Flag, an image of fireworks with the words "Armed citizens used assault weapons to fight tyrannical and oppressive government", a rather attractive young lady wearing tight-fitting jeans and an American-flag-print bikini top throwing up a peace sign while standing in a wheat field, a picture of Mario reaching the end of a level and bringing down the American flag next to the castle, an attractive young woman wearing *only* an American flag, a dog dressed as a WWII-era soldier in front of an American flag, and a kitten in an American-flag hammock. Internet = weird.

Second edit: Also, while it is vaguely thematic in that it has the Liberty Bell on it, it would probably be frowned upon if I used the Phillies' logo.