Xmas Viewing

Conditions: Annoyingly Overcast.

Film Review: Avatar

Technology is a funny beast. Allowing the creation of wonderful things, but also able to become a great distraction in it's own right. To what extent does a new technology serve itself at the expense of what it was meant to serve? Here James Cameron has invented a whole new way of shooting a movie with digital characters in three dimensions, and he combined this new technology with a story set in the future, about a clash between advanced and primitive cultures. And ultimately the film both demonstrates and embodies the conflict inherit in story telling: that between style and substance. Avatar is an intense film about humans doing what they do best: screwing everything up in order to get what they want. It centers on a crippled ex-marine who, through the Avatar program, gets the chance to walk again on planet Pandora, as an emissary between the corporation who are mining the planet and the Na'vi tribe who live above a huge deposit of the precious ore. Through circumstance he bonds with the native Na'vi, and becomes the chosen one who will ultimately unite the tribles and lead the resistance against the human armed forces. We're running the full gamut here from science fiction-y spaceships and robots to fantasy creatures and the spirit of the planet herself, with a bit of Romeo and Juliet thrown in.

It's been over ten years since Cameron shot Titanic, so a lot more since his last action film, but he doesn't disappoint on any front. The slow parts are full of meaning, the fast parts are visceral and intense, and the pacing is perfect. In fact, although the film is over two and a half hours we could easily take more time on Pandora. Ultimately, though, the film lives or dies on it's digital creatures and it's 3D portrayal and while the creatures are fantastic, I have to express reservations over the whole 3D thing. It's not as though the 3D effects are bad, in fact the 3D in this film is easily the best I've ever seen, seamlessly projecting the depth of objects without the awful "cardboard cutout" effect I've seen on other 3D films. No, the problem simply comes down to one of distraction. Every time something sticks out of the picture, you're reminded again of how cool it is to be seeing something in 3D. And every time you do that, you're a little bit distracted from the film itself. And since the whole point of why we're here is to watch a film, unfortunately I have to conclude that the 3D effects detract from the movie-going experience, instead of enhancing it. 3D is best left to other things that don't include character or story elements. I believe the best way to watch this film is in 2D first, then if you like you can see it again with the glasses.

The story itself is a strong one, centering on a broken soldier who is brought to another battlefield, given another chance, and looks at it through new eyes, falls in love with the other side and decides to fight against his own species. There's a lot of subtle details going on amid the Alien jungle and fearsome beasts. While the characters are computer graphics, they've been hooked up to the actors performace so well that you immediately accept them as completely real, as if the actors are just wearing a lot of blue makeup. This allows some great performances from Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana to shine through. It's astounding to think how much work must have gone into that, and it's a credit that the audience accepts it completely, and that the characters give fully-dramatic performances. And while the story could be compared to Dances With Wolves, and there are obvious references to the great American Iraqi adventure, I believe the film stands up on it's own, or at least that it would if it were not so obscured by the 3D glasses. Has the technology gotten in the way of the meaning? It's ironic that such a question is asked in the film itself, as well as laying at the heart of many of Cameron's previous films. Will we focus on the important yet subtle details, or pursue the flashy path to self-destruction? Four Beasties out of Five.


- Peace out

No Consequences

Conditions: Windy

Just Business.

Timing is everything in business, which is why that right now, in the middle of an enormous recession, and in the heart of an apparent ongoing environmental crisis, Richard Branson has announced a new venture aimed at taking people into orbit and back.

LOS ANGELES (Agence France-Presse) — Richard Branson, the British billionaire, will unveil a craft on Monday that could soon carry tourists on a trip into space for $200,000 each.

The craft, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, will make its debut on the moonlike landscape of the Mojave desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

SpaceShipTwo, which can carry six passengers and two pilots, is scheduled to begin test flights next year and start commercial flights in 2011 or 2012.

Virgin Galactic, owned by Mr. Branson’s Virgin Group and Aabar Investments of Abu Dhabi, says about 300 people from around the world have paid a total of $40 million in deposits to guarantee spots on the carbon composite aircraft.

Seriously? In this day and age, people are willing and happy to pay a fortune to be ferried into orbit for a few hours. I really can't help but feel this world has it's priorities seriously screwed up. I mean, kudos to Brandon for identifying a market and selling to it, but what is up with wanting to spend 200 large for a ride up and back?

“First a few will go to space, but ultimately, over the next hundred years or so, spaceflight will become commonplace,” said Charles Chafer, chief executive of Space Services, a Houston company that specializes in space funerals.

In 2007, the company released into space the ashes of the actor James Doohan of “Star Trek.”

A Space Services spokeswoman, Susan Schonfeld, said the company now takes the ashes of hundreds of people at a time into space, compared with 27 people in 2007.

“Through the years, I have had the opportunity to speak to hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the world,” she said, “but 99 percent of the people are everyday people like myself that have a very deep sense of exploration I do believe is in all of us.”

- www.nytimes.com/

Exploration? Where is there any sense of exploration in the concept of being cargoed up to orbit and back? There's nothing exploratory about it. It's mundane and commonplace, and about to become even more mundane and commonplace. Suck on that, mother nature.



The Magic Number

In the war on terror, perception is everything. Which is why such importance is on casualty counts of any action against "the enemy". And so, inevitably, the count itself becomes the battle.

On Monday, the anonymous blogger Security Crank noticed something interesting: all the U.S. and NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan seemingly kill exactly 30 people every time. How can that be?

Security Crank documented no less than 12 occasions in which news reports, relying on field commanders' estimates, noted that exactly 30 suspected Taliban were killed in airstrikes and, occasionally, artillery attacks.

The point Security Crank is making is that how can we really have any freaking idea of how the war is going if we can no longer trust the amount of casualties being produced by it?

So, why is it always 30? Do thirty casualties seem like enough to justify a military attack, or few enough to not attract too much attention to an incident?

Another blogger, Joshua Foust of the Central Asia blog Registan, seemingly stumbled upon the answer.

- alternet.org/world/144509/

He found an article in the LA Times from last July by Nicholas Goldberg, that noted:

In a grisly calculus known as the "collateral damage estimate," U.S. military commanders and lawyers often work together in advance of a military strike, using very specific, Pentagon-imposed protocols to determine whether the good that will come of it outweighs the cost.

We don't know much about how it works, but in 2007, Marc Garlasco, the Pentagon's former chief of high-value targeting, offered a glimpse when he told Salon magazine that in 2003, "the magic number was 30." That meant that if an attack was anticipated to kill more than 30 civilians, it needed the explicit approval of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or President George W. Bush. If the expected civilian death toll was less than 30, the strike could be OKd by the legal and military commanders on the ground.

- latimes.com/2009/

So, there we go. The pentagon has determined that if less than 30 people die in a military attack, even if they're civilians, then the public won't care. And so this has inevitably trickled up to the military commanders on the ground, who unsurprisingly then tailor their tallies in order to to not stand out in the river of statistics that is modern warfare.



Quick Release

With little fanfare, one of the true victims of Bush's war on terror was release and sent home last week.

The long ordeal of Fouad al-Rabiah, an innocent man and a 50-year-old father of four, who had been in US custody for almost exactly eight years, finally came to an end today, when he was flown back to his homeland of Kuwait from Guantánamo, where he had spent the majority of those lost years, after several brutal months in US custody in Afghanistan.

Until the moment of his release, everything about his treatment at the hands of the US government was shameful.Twelve weeks ago, when District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted his habeas corpus petition, and ordered his release, she revealed the most extraordinary - and extraordinarily depressing - story. This shone the most unflinching light on Guantánamo as a place where men, who were rounded up for bounty payments by the US military's allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and were never adequately screened on capture, were then sent to Guantánamo. Once there, in the absence of any information to back up the administration's claims that they were "the worst of the worst," they became the victims of false allegations made by other prisoners (who were either coerced to do so, or were bribed with the promise of improved living conditions), and were then tortured and abused to make false confessions.

- truthout.org/1210093

Film Review: Zombieland

It's not every day you can combine a Zombie film with a Road Trip movie. Actually, scrap that. Virtually every Zombie movie is a road movie, it's part of the charm. But not every Zombie movie is a slightly sweet coming-of-age comedy, a feat pulled of here with Zombieland. Jesse Eisenberg stars as Columbus, a nerdy shut-in who ironically is released by the end of the world as we know it. Being obsessive, he mocks up a series of rules to live by in the Zombie world, in order to stay alive. Things like staying fit and smart. To that end he meets up with Woody Harrelson, in full cartoon mode as a Zombie killing cowboy-type, and they head off roughly south west, looking for any other survivors.

They quickly run into a pair of sisters who don't trust anyone and are heading for an amusement park in California. So eventually they all go there, and end up having a massive shoot out with Zombies. Apart from a pretty good cameo, that's basically it. So the plot is kinda weak, and it's really up to these characters and their dynamic to engage us. And to a certain extent they do, all coming out of their protective shells to a certain extent and growing into a family type unit.

Of course this would all be terribly boring if not for the whole Zombie angle, and a fair dosage of quips, one liners and Woody Harrelson offing zombies with various gardening implements. So it really is fun for the whole family, with an overriding message of learning to come out of our caves and interact with each other, before it's all too late. How sweet. Three Braaaiiins out of Five.


- Peace out

Controversy Ahoy

Conditions: Overcast.


Let the Exercise In Futility Begin

At this point there is nor further debate over the whys and hows America and Britain declared war on Iraq on behalf of the rest of the world. They did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, in a combination of greed, fear and hubris. And no justice will ever be delivered to these architects, they are free to live out their lives as respected statesmen. However, for some reason a panel in Britain has been put together to go over it all once again

LONDON — A panel investigating Britain's role in the Iraq war begins questioning witnesses this week in an inquiry that critics hope will humble former Prime Minister Tony Blair and expose alleged deception in the buildup to conflict.

The investigation is the most sweeping probe yet into the war by any nation that was involved.

It is expected to consider allegations Blair secretly backed President George W. Bush plan's for invasion a year before Parliament authorized military involvement in 2003.

The panel, which opens public hearings Tuesday, will question dozens of officials over several months — including Blair, military officials and spy agency chiefs. It will also seek evidence from ex-White House staff.

Bereaved families and anti-war activists have long called for a comprehensive study to consider Britain's role in a conflict that left 179 British soldiers dead and triggered massive public protests.

But some worry the hearings will do little to answer lingering doubts about Britain's rush to join the war. Led by a panel appointed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the inquiry won't apportion blame, or establish criminal or civil liability — only offer reprimand and recommendations in hopes mistakes won't be repeated in the future.

- www.google.com/

Yeah, well, big deal. While it's always fun to dig all the old stuff back up again, and it's always fun to turn the spotlights on and watch the cockroaches squirm, it really is going to end up as another slap to the face of Iraq. They did it, there's no justification as to why, the end.



Are We Under A Cloud Or Not?

Climate Change, that long held bogey monster, has now been challenged after a series of leaked emails showed some climate change scientists had actually been cooking the data a little bit. Does this challenge the very core findings of climate change, or is this just an over reaction to some practical scientific practices?

“Climategate,” as some label the controversy, concerns at least 1,000 e-mails and files leaked or hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in Britain.

Many of the e-mails are innocuous. But others depict a small, influential group of scientists – several of whom work on global temperature trends over the past 1,500 years – trying to prevent skeptics of their work from gaining access to raw data used.

Other e-mails suggest some researchers manipulated data and tried to block publication of papers that called their work into question. One e-mail urges colleagues to destroy e-mails related to work on the 2007 IPCC reports on global warming.
[...]

Testifying before Congress the same day, President Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, told lawmakers that the science behind global warming, although “incomplete,” is sound. But he added that if data has been manipulated “in ways not scientifically legitimate, I regard that as a problem and I would denounce it.”

The IPCC chair has said the e-mails don’t undermine its reports. This is because climate-change research relies on many lines of evidence and thousands of research papers, while the e-mails relate mainly to one line of evidence and a relative handful of papers.

But the e-mails do show some scientists trying to protect a higher level of confidence in their results than the data allow, says John Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, and a target in the e-mails.

“This puts the whole field under a cloud,” he says.

- www.truthout.org/

If science really is the quest for truth, then all of this will end up for the good, as any and every theory should be challenged on a regular basis. The concern here is that if legislators, and people in general, suddenly think we've all been fooled, and we actually haven't, then getting them back on board again will be almost impossible. It's simple: the more complicated and controversial something is, the more open it needs to be in order for it to work.



The Games Afoot

In a striking example of treating the symptoms rather than the disease, Human Rights groups have criticized some video game makers for creating games that depicted war in an ungoverned and unregulated way.

Video games depicting war have come under fire for flouting laws governing armed conflicts.

Human rights groups played various games to see if any broke humanitarian laws that govern what is a war crime.

The study condemned the games for violating laws by letting players kill civilians, torture captives and wantonly destroy homes and buildings.

It said game makers should work harder to remind players about the real world limits on their actions.

War without limits

The study was carried out by two Swiss human rights organisations - Trial and Pro Juventute. Staff played the games in the presence of lawyers skilled in the interpretation of humanitarian laws.

Twenty games were scrutinised to see if the conflicts they portrayed and what players can do in the virtual theatres of war were subject to the same limits as in the real world.
[...]

The testers looked for violations of the Geneva Conventions and its Additional Protocols which cover how war should be waged.

In particular, the testers looked for how combatants who surrendered were treated, what happened to citizens caught up in war zones and whether damage to buildings was proportionate.

Some games did punish the killing of civilians and reward strategies that tried to limit the damage done by the conflict, said the study.

However, it said, many others allowed "protected objects" such as churches and mosques to be attacked; some depicted interrogations that involved torture or degradation and a few permitted summary executions.

- news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/

You have got to be freaking kidding me. War Video Games come under fire for allowing gamers to commit war crimes? This is like prosecuting Race Car Sim players for speeding and dangerous driving. I seriously doubt that there's a lack of real-world conflict and human rights abuses for these guys to be sticking their noses into. Maybe they figure it's a hell of a lot easier to go after Video Games companies than it is to go after members of the U.N security council, and multi-national corporations. And while that's probably true, it means that if you can't go after the top dogs, then you shouldn't be going after anyone at all.


- Peace Out