Free Will: Talking about Firefly and Eugenics October 18, 2008
Posted by ymarsakar in Philosophy, TV.2 comments
[Made a couple of revisions for clarity and added in Book's link]
In the wake of Sarah Palin’s appearance on the national political scene, some Obama supporters made some pretty deranged statements about the Palin family decision to go ahead with a pregnancy when they knew that the baby would have Down Syndrome. There was a lot of eugenics-type talk about the social utility of handicapped children (none) and the societal wisdom of destroying them (huge).
To those of us who have been paying attention for periods longer than this political season, these ugly outbursts weren’t surprising. After all, Pete Singer, “dean” of American ethicists (with a chair at Princeton), and founder of the American animal rights movement, has long advocated that it is ethical to give parents a 30 day window after a child’s birth within which to destroy the child should the parents deem it defective. Singer, like others with his statist views, have a peculiarly Utopian view of the perfectibility of humans, one which depends, not on moral growth, but on government force.
And yes, you’re not imaging it — Hitler did in fact put this ideology into effect. Aside from trying to kill entire races he deemed defective, such as Jews and Gypsies, he was also big on genetic management, which involved prostituting German women to SS forces to make “perfect” Aryan babies and, on the flip side, killing those Aryans he deemed defective. My uncle on the Christian side of the family was gassed because he was a manic-depressive. This is what happens when the state makes decisions because, as I’ve said before, the state has no conscience.
Source courtesy of Shrinkwrapped
Y’all got on this boat for different reasons, but y’all come to the same place. So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.
Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) Serenity
I can’t say much without spoiling the movie for others, but folks here who have watched Serenity knows.
Another of Shrink’s post on Firefly, you should read for background either now or later.
This relates to some of the things I’ve written about ethics, free will, and macro scale planning. To a certain extent, “perfectibility” is a bad state to be in. In the universal laws of physics, the “perfect” is the unchanging and the static. The static is the stagnant and the stagnant is the dead or soon to be dead and replaced.
Once the nuclear fusion inside a star goes out of balance, meaning the pressure coming in exceeds the pressure going out from the fusion, the star collapses and dies until a new equilibrium is reaches. The key note here is “equilibrium”, “balance”, and “harmony”. These things are not the same thing as stagnancy, static things, and perfect things/states.
If you recognize the free will of each individual, you can reach a state of harmony but not a state of perfection. A star does not collapse because of its mass due to the fact that its fusion provides a counter-balancing force against gravity’s pull. But once things are made “perfect” and unchanging, then it will collapse. It has to. That is why the longer lasting the star is, the more it tends to produce less energy. Static states of equilibrium tends to stay longer if it uses less energy. “Perfect states” only exist for the dead. Once a star’s material is dead and unable to initiate fusion of iron or fall inwards to form a black hole then it can be that way for almost forever.
The same is true of human hierarchies and weather patterns (Chaos Theory’s butterfly effect). The Left believes the optimal state of things is reached by forcing people and things to their will. People like me believe that the optimal state of things for the human species is reached through the competition of people’s free wills. The goal is similar, in that I want a state of constructs that operate more efficiently than the sum of its parts. But my way does not require the “perfection” and stagnancy of each individual component in that super structure. I don’t need to increase the endurance by decreasing the power and vitality of people. THe Left doesn’t know how to compete fairly so they jack the system up by cheating, by making their individual units “perfect”. Redistribute the wealth will certainly make the poor last a whole lot longer.
But it doesn’t work. You cannot create harmony or any great super structure more effective than the sum of its parts by locking in stasis the state of every component. That’s not just me, as a single human, saying that. Those are the laws of the universe itself. You cannot have “stuff” going on in the universe, planets, stars, and galaxies without things that change: often they change unexpectedly along unpredictable routes. Quantum theory even posits that things change based upon perception, not just luck. Evolution also demands that cells cooperate together. There is no such thing as a “super cell” that can’t get any better cause it is now godlike”. There is such a thing as symbiosis, cooperation, and competition between cells, however, that create higher level organisms and species.
The Left cannot tolerate how human beings can change their mind and decide to do things contrary to this perfect ideal of utopia held by the state or Great Leader. They see this as an obstacle to perfection and stasis. I see it as the requirement for a healthy and vital system of interlocking parts.
The Last Samurai: Social, political, and military analysis October 16, 2008
Posted by ymarsakar in Culture, Politics, TV, War.Tags: Japan, movies, samurai, Tom Cruise
add a comment
I just finished watching the Last Samurai for the first time. While I wanted to see Tom Cruise kill himself at the end, still, it wasn’t that bad even though the plot and context were typical of Hollywood: Leftist Hollywood but perhaps that would be redundant a characterization.
I went and saw it not because I love Tom Cruise but because I have just finished reading Shogun by James Clavell primarily due to Soob’s listing of that novel in Quantum Library. One of the reasons (okay the only reason) I hadn’t seen it yet, even though I knew about it and heard the name often, was because of the star actor, Tom Cruise. I had seen him in other flicks like Mission Impossible I and II and I wasn’t impressed. Unlike many people who criticize a movie or book by its plot, excitement, lack of it, slowness, or lack of “authenticity” or “acting ability”, I didn’t like Tom Cruise because I didn’t like Tom Cruise’s actions. Not the “authenticity” or “acting ability”, you understand. I am concerned with the ethics of what the producers, writers, and directors have their people do in a film and I am concerned with the type of actors that agree to accept a role in such scripts.
To start off with some relevant details about me, I am a student of the Art of Propaganda as well as the Art of War. What this means is just that these topics are not typically entertainment value to me. They are interesting, yes, but they are interesting because they have real consequences to real people not because they look good on film or because it is an exciting thing to read about. Or rather, not solely (or even primarily) because it is an exciting thing to read about.
The Last Samurai is a proto-typical Hollywood construction made out of equal parts political entropy (corruption), black vs white characterizations, and the white guilt desire to resolve things through war and death (revolutonary means).
Evidence for my first claim, political entropy, can be seen in how the movie portrays the Emperor Meiji (the movie may or may not call him that but that is the name of the Emperor ruling over that specific time period the movie wants to highlight) as a uncertain youth that gets manipulated by his advisers (oil and railroad tycoons, robber barons, and Dick Cheney look alikes) into sending conscripts, downtrodden blacks and minorities, into a war for exploitation (war for oil, blood for oil, etc). A pretty concise overview, eh? I thought so.
Generation Kill Comments July 23, 2008
Posted by ymarsakar in TV.add a comment
I was posting some comments over at Cassandra’s place and the blog said “my comment was denied due to questionable material”. This is the section that I couldn’t figure out on how to bypass the spam filters. I tried to shift some of my comments around, so the ones at Cass or here don’t actually follow my “read a line and respond to it” format. Mostly it does, but even I don’t remember in what order it should have gone by now.
Yet here comes Generation Kill and …. silence.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Jeffrey, Generation Kill is an… entertainment program. It’s not Haditha, it’s not Abu Ghraib, and it definitely ain’t the Fall of Saigon. Why should serious people treat that on par with gross media distortions and lies?
You might think it’s a good thing to waste their time on Hollywood entertainment, rather than the real issues facing America, but that’s not exactly going to be convincing to the Milbloggers.
What does that do to your theory?
That wasn’t his theory. He probably borrowed it from the intellectual masters of “the military will only heal once we beat it to a pulp with criticism”.
It does nothing to my theory.-Jeff
That’s not too surprising, is it Cass. After all, it was never his theory to begin with so how can you “do” anything to it?
As to false information and the twisting of statistics, everyone is susceptible.
Susceptibility and enemy action are two different things.
I’d still trust the NY Times and the International Herald Tribune to get the facts straight over most bloggers
*thud* Did ya hear that loud crash sound Bill and Cass? That’s the sound of what’s known as “dimensional rift predictability”. Where once you keep punching holes into reality to get into the sweet nectar of fantasy la la land, the holes eventually start making these sounds when they open up in a different location.
Bill, stop distracting me with your thong..
The thong’s the strangulation take down tool. Bill’s wit and charm is the distraction.
I simply stated my opinion based on my experience as a consumer of different types of media.
Actually, Jeff, what you did was go in a round a bout way using way too many words in order to purposefully obfuscate the issue and then have to correct yourself after the fact.
Your sampling of different types of media perhaps gave you a clearer grasp of contradictory beliefs, but it didn’t do too well for your ability to communicate truths.
The Times and their anonymously sources stories in particular don’t engender trust.
Maybe that’s why they outed retired CIA interrogators, Cass? They wanted to show the public that you can trust the NewYorkTimes… to sell you down the river if the price is good enough.
And yet you trust them? Why?
Got to trust somebody, Cass. Might as well be their propaganda masters and spiritual leaders.
And I allow comments on my posts, so readers like you are free to disagree, or fire away at anything I’ve said in real time.
I would never dare to fire away at the Mistress of Statistics. I might get strangulated by the numbers afterwards…
Food for thought. Some of the original sources the news outlets use *are* blogs.
Most of those “original sources” are from the government and military. So if somebody doesn’t trust the military or the government, yet trusts the media, when the media is only as good as their sources inside the military or gov… one wonders what happened to logic after Socrates died by a democratic vote.
I don’t trust the Times because I’ve caught them out one time too many on subjects where I happen to know something about what they’re reporting on.
Well, that’s their fault then, Cass. They didn’t reprogram you in time.
They have on many occasions grossly distorted easily verifiable facts.
They reported that the miners trapped in the tunnels were alive, when they were dead and they would have known this if they had listened to the official PR officials.
The media loves tormenting the powerless and the weak, calling it “straight down the middle news” after their torrent of devastation has passed. Katrina people eating each other.
What the Mass Sepsis Mind, aka Main Sewer Media, reports is what they want to be true. And if you let them get away with it, it will become the de facto as well as de jure truth. Given the world of the MSM is so cruel and barbaric to innocents, that’s not something most people on the side of Good and Light will tolerate.
And while the editing cycle at a mass media outlet isn’t perfect, it’s frequently better than the hit and miss self-editing that I’ve seen on many blogs. For every Villainous Company or Zenpundit (who does a fine job even though I disagree with Matt politically) there are 50 slop troughs masquerading as “news and opinion” blogs.
The difference is, the media has all of those 50 people as well, they just happen to be editors, publishers, and the executives in charge of overall policy in addition to what news will or will not be printed or reported.
In the blogosphere, those 50 people are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, not at the top. Except for Daily Kos, of course.
Especially since I came back, I really regret that I don’t have time to do the kind of job I would like to do.
Then just sit back and read the comments, womyn!
Never could unnerstand why the PX carries those durned thongs. Distracting, they are.
I speculate that it is for heat dissipation.
Batman: The Dark Knight July 22, 2008
Posted by ymarsakar in TV.add a comment
[I'll tell you flat out when I'll utter a spoiler, But mostly I'll tell a story and describe things, but you'll never really know whether they are part of movie or not, unless I spell it out directly. If you don't want to hear about the character developments in the film and want to go into the movie without any preconceptions, then don't read on. If you have seen the film or even if you haven't, and just want to talk philosophy and ethics concerning issues derived from the issues Batman: Dark Night raised, then keep reading.]
Batman: The Dark Knight is a very dramatic, thrilling, and captivating film.
It is normal fare for what Hollywood uses as their conscience, capacity for logic, and ethics. Meaning, the use of logic, correct ethics, and conscience is reserved solely for the good guys, not the villains. The good guys have logic gaps as well, since after all, the same guys who set them up also set up the villains. But you don’t notice it unless the villain’s bad logic is already playing out on screen.
As for ‘conscience’, that is normal Hollywood fare in that only good guys have consciences. Bad guys aren’t always that way. If they were, then we couldn’t kidnap and threaten to execute the family members of ‘bad guys’ to force them to do things our way. If they were bad, and if bad people never have conscience pangs for their actions, then why would bad guys care for their families?
Hollywood also scales it by degrees. Some people inadvertently helped the bad guys, but they themselves see themselves as good people who are just forced by circumstance, whether that be blackmail, greed, bribery, or threats against family members, to go up against the Status Quo order, which in this case is Gotham city and its protectors. This still reinforces the Hollywood paen to the soul of badness that bad guys don’t have a conscience. That’s not actually necessarily true. In most cases, what people see as a “lack of conscience” is actually a different in moral standards.
The third aspect I introduced, ethics, is probably the most important of the three. Ethics has to deal with what is always right, if not always true. And what is “right” is determined in this fashion. What is right is choosing the best course which will lead to the best conclusion, so far into the future that you cannot even imagine it.
The FOunding Fathers did the ethically correct thing and thus we have what we have. If they went down a different path, if they chose the ethics of Hollywood, if they betrayed their nation for petty funds and convenience, then things would be different.
The Dark Knight, in this instance, actually does a very good job illustrating different ethical standards. You have the police, or the side of the good, fighting crime the “right” way, by putting them in jail. Again, that’s a Hollywood thesis, but not exclusively. It’s also a Western decadent sheep idea. Next you have the bad guys, who are alternatively nihilists, useful idiots, or mobsters interested in greed.
Then you have Batman, who is supposed to be inbetween the two. The Dark Knight, the savior of the city, with no limitations, jurisdictins, or petty legal lawfare red tape to prevent him from getting the job done. But that’s not actually true, in the movie at least. Batman will not kill. Batman will arrest people and give them to the police rather than ripping their innards out, filming it, and hanging the pieces of meat, complete with video footage, in the public square so that both criminal and law abiding citizen may witness the price of going against order and peace.
For all that the film tried to deal with the dichotomy between “vigilante” and “law abiding systems of justice which the police uphold”, in the end, Batman and the police are one and the same. Bruce Wayne just has more wealth and power, and because he has no direct hierarchy to answer to, his actions and responses are much faster than Gotham’s police department. Nor can Bruce be swayed by greed or ego trips or corruption, cause he did not become Batman cause he needed money, power, or fame.
Because Hollywood chose that particular brand of ethics to deal with, they couldn’t create an ending that satisfied people like me. If they watered down the morals (diff from ethics) of the villains as much as they watered down the faith and capacity for violence of the ‘good guys’, then that would be an entirely different story. A Batman that refuses to kill villains that aren’t really villains, can be a good story about redemption and use of auxiliary counter-insurgency forces. A Batman that kills everyone, when everyone may not necessarily be guilty or in need of killing, is not a good thing. But a Batman that lets people like Zawahiri or Zarqawi live in jail and then get released later on, is worse than “not a good thing”.
Hollywood and most of America still thinks fighting evil consists of “laws” and “police regulations”. Laws are only as good as they are effectively enforced. If it takes a year to execute a mass murderer… the law just became ineffective. Especially when the buddies of that mass murderer is holding people hostage and executing them to release their leader.
But, and there is always a but, when all is said and done, the producers and writers of the film did NOT water down the actions, evil, or morality of the villains in this movie. Chiefly, the primary villain. The Primary Antagonist is one of the most well done villains I have seen yet, on the scale of sheer sadism, nihilism, self-destruction, and moral justifications. This is a serial killer that is totally amoral, yet likes to pretend he has morals and even “ethical standards”.
For any other villain, Batman’s “morals” about refusing to kill criminals in the process of burning down the city and killing people, could have been tolerated and accepted by me, even if it was rather ridiculous or ineffective in my world view. But given the primary villain in Batman, that little weak and pathetic “standard” about not killing just went down the toilet where it belongs.
Here comes the spoiler section, so stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie.
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
*******
Let’s cut to the chase here. When Harvey Dent started talking about luck and chance and how that was all “she” got, that chance was the only thing that lead to her death rather than his, is complete and utter baloney. The Joker was the one that lied to Batman and told him the location for the girl, thus leading to Batman’s decision to save her rather tahn harvey. Batman let Gordon take care of that. Gordon failed. Batman succeeded. Except… Batman saved Harvey. Ahhh, chance was it? No, not chance. It wouldn’t even be chance if somebody else had created this “mastermind” plan to set up this Catch 22 situation. For Harvey to be convinced by the person who murdered his fiancee to go killing off his former allies is… retarded. Not just for someone in the audience that’s supposed to just sit there and accept this fact, but for Harvent Dent himself, who as a prosecutor, certainly knows how to MANIPULATE people.
And the fauking Joker, now he’s one carefully constructed psychopath. Almost as good as Zarqawi in his prime, before we jellied his brains with a couple of bombs. Batman refused to kill the Joker’s arse when the Joker let him run him over with the bike. What was he thinking? That more good would come if he followed the “plan”, with the plan saying “give evil another chance”? Yeah, that’s a good plan. That’s a good “system” of justice.
Concerning Z-Man, we killed his ass and got what we needed to wipe out his other sonsobitches, leading to the Sons of Iraq after awhile. We had our cake and ate it too, people. Why? Because we did the right thing. We did the ethical thing and the best ethical system will provide you better long term results than any “moral code”. By moral code, I obviously mean the relativistic standard of right and wrong that changes from city to city, nation to nation, culture to culture, and religion to religion. Ethics never changes, because the best and right course is the best and right course, regardless of who you are. Ethical standards are ideal and may never be possible or even feasible to follow all the time. nut if you can, you should, for you will benefit much from it: not to mention the good it will do the rest of the world.
Let’s look back, again, at the movie’s plot. Batman refuses to run Joker down. Joker gets captured and put into prison. Batman’s love and Harvey’s love gets snatched by one of Gordan’s corrupt cops and Harvey was as well.
He then uses a useful idiot sucicide bomber that blows out Gotham’s holding cell, after Joker goaded an officer, who was INSIDE the fauking room with Joker, to get close and get taken hostage. The bomb was set off by a call from a cell phone, which any person that have seen how iEDs work, would have guessed long ago. Giving a violent psychopath a phone which he can call anybody and give out any orders… real smart dumb arse Gotham police. All you guys are good for is coming afterwards to clean up the bodies on the pavement.
The reaction of US military personnel to terrorists using human shields? Shoot the human shields and kill the terrorists, but whatever else you do, don’t make human shields more valuable to terrorists in the future. That’s the ethical thing to do. The “moral” thing to do is to save your fellow officer by giving the Joker a cellphone and thus preserve JOker’s civil liberties and the life of a cop, but this has the annoying consequence of killing dozens of officers in the long term. That’s the difference between “ethics” and “morality”.
Also, Harvey has got to be the world’s biggest idiot if after hearing how JOker wanted Harvey to fall and thus ensure that Joker wings, to believe that Joker killed Harvey’s girl because it wasn’t “personal”. Oh, yeah it was. Trying to make someone good into evil by setting it up so his fiancee is killed with the help of the police Harvey was supposed to work with, is not “personal”? If that’s not personal, I don’t know what is.
Unlike the Left and pacifists, I actually have a valid alternative when I see something I don’t like or hate. The plot in Batman: Dark Knight is solid and very dramatic. What needs to be changed is not to make Batman kill the joker first off and thus prevent the Catch 22 decision between the lovable girl and the crime fighting prosecutor. All you need to do is to alter the sequences to the ending.
Harvey can still go crazy. Batman can still have let JOker live and thus personally allowed the deaths of many more individuals. Batman once said that he would turn himself in because he didn’t want anyone else to die because of him or because Joker’s using him as a justificatin. But Batman values his morality about not killing more than he values the men, women, and children that will be killed when he lets Joker live? That’s not ethical, but it is moral, to Batman at least. And I believe it is also moral to Hollywood. So long as your conscience is free, who cares about the long term consequences that ethics warns against?
However, the difference is here. Batman has to fight Harvey first, than the final fight with the Joker. Batman has to convince Harvey that this flipping coins BullShit is pretty ineffective and how he’s been brainwashed by the Joker.
It would be better for Batman to deduce the ultimate goals of the Joker, rather than have the Joker tell the Batman at the end and boast about his “victory”. Then, Bruce can convince Harvey of such things. Harvey can then turn a new leaf and volunteer to entrap the Joker so that he can be arrested. Batman agrees, on principle, but wants to use himself as bait, with Harvey the one going to deceive the joker about a full proof ambush of Batman. Since the Joker doesn’t want to kill Batman, the most plausible scenario for why Batman should be attacked is if he has the wife and child of Gordon with him. You see, Harvey had failed to kill them and teach Gordon a lesson, so he is now asking the Joker for help. This makes perfect sense since the insane Harvey was going to do exactly that, until Bruce stopped hm.
Joker sets things up in the perfect fashion that he always has, except this time, the occupation forces( Coalition, Police, and Local Auxiliaries) know exactly where, when, and how the terrorist/insurgency will attack.
The advantage of the attacker, meaning the Joker, has always proven too much for Bruce and Gotham. But now it is Bruce and Gotham that has the upper hand on the Joker. And all becaue the JOker believed that anyone could be corrupted, that anyone, deep down inside, will sell each other out if it means lasting a few more minutes.
You will have taken down the villain by using his own beliefs against him. What is more just than that?
But as for the specifics, Harvey sets up the ambush with Joker and sets up the counter-ambush with Batman via that secret communications thingie they have.What they don’t have one? Then make one up. When Joker attacks, Harvey backstabs the Joker, but keeps him alive because he has returned to his old prosecutor and lawyer self. Batman, however, has different ideas. The vigillante that he is and the person who allowed Joker to live and thus be freed to kill more people, now realizes that it is far better to kill evil people than to let them use the “justice system” to kill justice and the people fighting for justice. How is a system of justice going to work when all the people for justice are dead? Are good people born automatically or something from a dispenser every time you lose one to the Joker?
Harvey, however, disagrees, and in the process of arguing with each other over who is more moral or more ethical, the JOker springs out one of his numerous surprises. Harvey commits an act of self-sacrifice and takes the knife for Batman. Joker takes that time to escape on hands and knees.
Batman: Why did you stand in front of me? I am the one wearing armor.
Harvey: I guess it was just… instinct, after so many have died to protect me. Given what I have done, this is the smallest price I could ever pay.
Batman: Then it looks like I’ve won the argument. I’ll take care of the trash from here on out.
Harvey: Good *grins* luck, Batman.
Batman: It’s Bruce, and she would have been very happy with you by her side. Go and give her my love.
And thus the Dark Knight is born.
***********
Final Encounter with the Joker
Usually it goes on like. Joker says “you can’t kill me, you need me alive for your precious *contempt showing* order and schemes. Batman says “you may need me, for without me, your precious chaos will be just another type of order and scheming. How do you think you have gotten so far against me and my allies? It was due to your schemes, not due to your impulsive “rash” actions. You are a schemer, and you know this deep within your twisted little mind. If you ever killed me, you would be left with the position of most powerful man in Gotham. You could then no longer deny that you have become a servant of order, a protector of the status quo, after my death. You cannot kill me. But I can kill you”
Batman: Why are you wondering, why have I changed my mind? Because I have finally realized, after being taught many lessons by you, that chaos needs to burn and destroy but the same is not true of those fighting for Light and Order. We do not need people who excel in chaos. In some respects, Gotham needs you like they need me. We are both men of chaos, we just simply use our powers and preferences for opposite ends. But my end goals do not require your continued existence. But yours require mine.
The Joker’s reaction to that may be manifold. Psychosis, denial, scorn, disgust, fear, etc. Any reaction will be very satisfactory to the people in the audience like me. For while the JOker still has many options, given he is still alive although not for long, the Joker has been pinned into an insupportable position by his own beliefs and by the strength of the people he wished to torment and destroy. The Joker has options, but none of them will save him or cause any more grief to any more others.
Batman will end this, finally, and if Bruce likes to add in some crucifixion, impalement, amputations of limbs, and destruction of taste, tongue, sight, fingers, and feet… well, they don’t call him the Dark Knight for nothing I suppose.
I prefer my ending to Hollywood’s ending.
Oh btw, had Batman killed and ripped apart the gangsters supporting the Joker, the Joker could never have done a tenth of what he actually did. A single man, without resources or great wealth, taking on both a city and Batman? Such criminal masterminds simply do not exist for long, at least in one piece.
But the idea that you take apart organized crime through prosecuting them, is wrong. You take down organized crime by turning the people in organized crime to your cause.
Harvey allowed “her” to do the exact same thing to the Hong Kong banker, after all. So why does Harvey all of a sudden scorn Gordan’s use of flawed and corrupt cops? Should have eviscerated the mobsters and all their underlings when you had a chance. THEN, you would get people that will betray the mob for you, for you will have demonstrated that your power reaches farther than the Mob’s power.
If we had adopted Hollywood or Harvey’s strategy towards gangs and criminals, we would still be fighting the Sunnis in Al Anbar.
John Hancock July 5, 2008
Posted by ymarsakar in Science Fiction, TV.3 comments
Even though I couldn’t hear 3/5ths of the words in this movie, it was still hilarious, moving, and surprising in terms of plot and characterization. Okay, maybe not so much on characterization, since movies aren’t notorious for good character building. That’s what novels are for.
All you need to know about this movie is that it is about an anti-superhero going into rehab and turning a new leaf.
The first part is comedy, in the vein of Vin Diesel. Meaning, it’s grim humour designed to favor those that like violence, sports, or various other expressions of competition. Given today’s anti-man, anti-aggression, anti-gun, anti-independence, but pro-Islam and pro-Statist dependence, it is very easy to relieve an audience’s tension by showing a character that isn’t limited by current society’s political correctness.
The second part is the meat, so to speak. It’s much more serious and consistent with the “John Hancock” title. Just look at Hancock’s signature in the Declaration of Independence.
I would have preferred that a significant villain be an Islamic terrorist, however. All these white guys are kind of PC and a sign of indoctrination. Hollywood can not do heroism until they can get the villains down right. (Seriously, they don’t even talk about why these people are the villains. They are white, so they are. TO be or not to be.)
*****
Pet Peeve time. One of my notable complaints about Hollywood’s moral midget personas, involves them being incapable of comprehending criminal psychology. A criminal does not demand that you “shoot him via execution by gun” when you have him on the ground at a disadvantage, solely to test your “moral purity” and “moral high ground”. No criminal is dumb enough to want to make the “good guy” stain his hands by killing the thug criminal. That’s not a good trade off to the thug, no matter what Hollywood wants to think in their metha-amphetamine induced party orgies.
A criminal does not, once he has seen the consequence of resistance, talk back or otherwise act tough in front of an executioner, killer, or anyone else with huge amounts of power relative to the thug.
This isn’t about the film so much as it is about Hollywood’s attempt to influence the film. These are Hollywood’s traits, and if you see it in Hancock, it is only because Hollywood produced the film.
Compared to Tom Cruise’s movies, Hancock only has one or two such moral midget moments. So you can mostly ignore them. Mostly.
Forbidden Kingdom May 30, 2008
Posted by ymarsakar in Anime, TV, violence.add a comment
I saw this movie and it was pretty funny and entertaining in a somewhat exotic and unfamiliar fashion.
It’s the usual story of an underdog undergoing a journey that changes him into something better. On that score, it’s not very special. On another score, the addition of some funny fighters and party members, along with the “Jade Empire” terminology that was better portrayed in “Jade Empire” PC Game by Bioware, such as “Golden Sparrow” or “Stone Fist” made it incredibly refreshing. Often times Chinese is translated into these flowery types of words because Chinese characters have more than one meaning and it is Chinese characters that make up a Chinese word. So there’s also a secondary meaning to something like “Sparrow” and perhaps “Golden” that you never really get just with the translated phrase of “Golden Sparrow”. All you have to define yourself with are English connotations of Golden and Sparrow, which do not match the Chinese connotations of such words in Chinese. This is usually why these translations don’t make sense. But they do paint a very nice artistic picture, you may say.
The way Golden Sparrow keeps refering to herself in the second person is very funny and endearing.
I know some Mandarine as well and could follow along with the more common words like “not have anymore”. That’s actually what the word the guard used when he answered the Jade Warlord’s question about “have you anything more to tell me”.
The exact word was Mei-Yo-Ah. Yo-Ah, or whatever that translates to in terms of Chinese characters, means “I have that”. Mei means no, since technically there it goes.
Of course, my primary complaint with Hollywood movies is that they don’t show real violence. Of course, Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and (ah forgot his name) would be the first to tell you that Hollywood martial arts is for show and relies upon an extra in terms of motion and energy expended. Martial arts tends to conserve energy more and usually aren’t that flashy since flashy wastes energy and is hard to create balance while moving around like that.
If you want to see real violence, take a look at the hand to hand scenes in Legends of the Galactic Heroes. That’s the stuff I like to see. Not for your regular 13 year olds, of course. Heck, not for your regular pacifist 50 year olds either.
Back to the complaint. The main character, Jason someguy, gets his arse beat by some thugs. That’s not really a spoiler since there’s no other way for the plot to occur than to have your protagonist demonstrate his weakness by being beaten to death, only to go on a journey of self-discovery and training to get stronger.
I have no problem with Dragon Ball Z type plots like that. I actually tend to like them. However, when you come back from learning real violence, what you won’t be doing is kicking a man so he loses his balance and falls, THEN you wait for him to get up. No no, real violence is you kick a man into the ground, then you step across his throat and chest and drop your knee ontop of him with all of your body wait situated directly over that knee. Real violence is rushing forward while the first target has cracked his head and wrist on the concrete by falling down, and slamming the knee cap of the second thug in towards the ground so that it bends inwards like a dog’s hindleg. Real violence is not a “duel” where you “wait” for the other guy to “get up” and put up his “dukes” so that you may fight him once more on equal terms.
Real violence is about kicking them while they’re down and breaking organs and limbs.
Also if you know he has a weapon and he chooses to fight you with his bare fists because his pride wants to beat your arse in without knives or guns, then you had better take advantage of that situation by cracking his neck in a 180 degree angle or breaking his fingers, wrist, elbow, or shoulder. If he is dumb enough to want to hold back on you, you might as well make him non-functional so that he couldn’t use a weapon even if he got his hands on one.
Obama In Empire Strikes Back May 3, 2008
Posted by ymarsakar in TV.add a comment
Fausta has a very funny video up about that.
It goes great with the serious criticisms by David Brin on Star Wars I posted about here.
By now it’s grown clear that George Lucas has an agenda, one that he takes very seriously. After four “Star Wars” films, alarm bells should have gone off, even among those who don’t look for morals in movies. When the chief feature distinguishing “good” from “evil” is how pretty the characters are, it’s a clue that maybe the whole saga deserves a second look.
Just what bill of goods are we being sold, between the frames?
* Elites have an inherent right to arbitrary rule; common citizens needn’t be consulted. They may only choose which elite to follow.
* “Good” elites should act on their subjective whims, without evidence, argument or accountability.
* Any amount of sin can be forgiven if you are important enough.
* True leaders are born. It’s genetic. The right to rule is inherited.
* Justified human emotions can turn a good person evil.
-David Brin
Battlestar Galactica: Philosophy and Theology April 12, 2008
Posted by ymarsakar in TV.1 comment so far
This is an article about BG’s theological themes.
Here’s a comparison of the original BG and Star Trek’s reliance upon the deus ex machina of “aliens seeded our planets” theme.
Gail has a pretty funny youtube video of the new BG’s story explained in seven minutes. Funny.
New Orleans Grits November 22, 2007
Posted by ymarsakar in TV.2 comments
This video was nice, I thought, on how to make New Orleans grillades and grits dish.
UPDATE: Added the link.
People should see this for a comprehensive rebuttal against nihilism or the “I’ll blame Iraq on others because it’s easier than trying to fix it”.