Seems Fairly Straight Forward To Me

Conditions: Warming. Maybe.


On A Boat, Mother & Father

It seems to me that parenting consists of two levels. The level of watching out for your kid, and the level of trying to get it to be smart, happy and independent. Now the second level is a tough one. Raising your kid in such a way that they grow into a well-rounded adult is no easy task. Probably why there's so many books on the subject. But the first level is, I submit, an amazingly simple proposition. You have a kid. He or she is a little dumb, a little inexperienced, a little ...small. So you watch out for them. Easy. And so it is with much surprise that we've found out about a couple in the Netherlands who are quite happy for their 13 year old daughter to go off sailing around the world, on her own.

This, frankly, looks like a failure of parenting, and thankfully the Dutch courts have stepped in. But they haven't stepped all the way in.

A 13-year-old girl's plan to sail solo around the world was called "undeniably daring and risky" by Dutch judges Friday. They refused, however, to scrap the venture in a high-profile clash between child care authorities and liberal Dutch parenting.

The three judges at Utrecht District court ordered authorities to take temporary guardianship of Laura Dekker, delaying her plan to set sail next week on her 26-foot yacht Guppy in her bid to become the youngest person to sail solo around the globe.

"I wouldn't go if I or my boat wasn't up to it," Laura told Dutch national broadcaster NOS."So things have stayed the same, except it is going to take a little longer."

The court appointed a child psychologist to report on her capacity to cope with the risks and possible harm of two years of isolation.

A child psychologist? Really? We need a shrink to tell us whether letting a kid sail herself around the world for two years is a good idea or not? Are we that dumb?

While the judges ordered child care workers to take responsibility for Laura, they stopped short of removing her from her father's home. They acknowledged he had tried to stop the trip and then to make it as safe as possible.

"This case is about whether the government ... can restrict the broad freedom parents have in bringing up and caring for their children," presiding judge M. Oostendorp said. She added the court does not believe the father can be "accused of serious neglect."

- google.com/

Well, I guess we'll be revising that opinion when Laura is never heard from again somewhere past the Cape. And let me get this straight: her father has "tried" to stop the trip? Of his 13 year old kid. Sailing around the world. He tried? Really? Did he try sending her to her room? Did he try chopping her boat into matchwood? Did he try just flat out telling her "No! You're staying in school, and that's final!" Yeah, he "tried". Right. Is this what modern parenting has come to, an inability to make the most simplistic of decisions?



Film Review: District 9

The best Sci-Fi is that which uses the convention of the genre to amplify and reflect back to the audience the human condition. In this sense District 9 is a triumph, a powerful and emotional film that uses the ideas of aliens and spaceships and technology to tell a very human story about society. Set in Johannesburg in the 80's, District 9 is basically a story about racism and intolerance. When a vast alien ship suddenly arrives over the city containing around a million starving and abandoned alien workers, the world is at first astonished. But as the aliens are moved to a giant shantytown, and violence between the aliens and the humans starts to break out, a government plan is put into affect to shift the aliens out away from the city, by force.

The underlying plot is that the powers that be are frustrated at being unable to use any of the alien technology, as the weapons are DNA encoded to the aliens, and the ship is missing it's command module. The aliens themselves are basically worker-bees, more cargo than crew, and so are unable to teach anybody anything. The plot revolves around the rather odd Wikus, appointed by his powerful father in law to head up the relocation mission. He's essentially a nice guy, but like everyone else considers the aliens a sub-species, who only respond to threats and force. The film really comes alive when Wikus suffers an accident while carrying out the eviction, and starts mutating into an alien, which gives the corporations a fantastic chance to understand how the alien weapons systems work. The focus is on Wikus slowly, gradually, eventually, realizing how inhuman he's been acting, now that he's becoming one of them.

It's a brutal and harrowing film, violent and difficult to watch at times. There is a hero's journey here, but hung around the neck of a very flawed character, who learns the hard way about empathy. It's sci fi, it's an action film, it's a drama, the director has done a pretty good job of putting together a compelling film. However, the one giant fly in the soup is the constant use of shaky cam. The film is shot mostly documentary-style, even when there isn't a reason to do so, which means the camera is constantly shaking about intolerably. It really hurts the film, interfering with the story and characters. The strength of what's happening does shine through, particularly the brilliant, cathartic and exciting finale, but one feels it could have worked a lot better if some more time was spent on shooting it properly. Nevertheless, a brave and entertaining film about difficult subjects and characters. Four alien roosters out of Five.


- Peace out