of work and play
I guess it has been awhile. After a minor complication, I got to take my trip to Burlington and spend some time with my bro and friend. We toured a corn maze and went apple picking. Fun times! I'm hoping my next trip will be to Paul Smiths in the very near future. There is talk of going out to lunch with a couple of my ex-professors. I would love to, but at the same time I am nervous. We'll see if it works out.
I have been doing some movie watching as of late. I finally saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I watched Seven Pounds via Netflix. I also went and saw both 9 and Surrogates at the theater. Here are some brief reviews and thoughts:
Benjamin Button was good however I found it to be unremarkable for all the praise it received. Perhaps this is due to my odd taste in wacky, intellectual, mind trippy movies. I don't know. Seven Pounds was also good. Said that someone thinks they did something so horrible that he needs to kill himself to make up for it, but it does make the point that death often leads to new life and that even if we can't be selfless, we can at least be extremely giving regardless.
9 was weird. I don’t think I recommend anyone go out and see it immediately. It was fun, but I don’t think they did a very good job of explaining what the function of the 9 robots actually was.
Surrogates, on the other hand, I enjoyed very much. Sure they could have done a lot more with the concept, but they did a decent job with it for a feature film. A bit too optimistic about the speed of advances in technology, as are many real-world sci-fi films I think, but I do believe we could get there someday (if we ever get our economy back on track).
Those issues aside, I love the moral questions the film brings to light. I find myself dealing with cultural and moral/ethical relativism again. If anyone could have a surrogate and essential be whoever they wished to be, is this a good thing? It’s important to remember that many inventions originally intended for good, often end up doing a lot of harm and clearly things got out of hand in the reality of the movie. When everyone was allowed to have a surrogate, no one was interacting directly anymore. Things may have seemed better on the surface, but being allowed to escape from reality in such an extreme is unhealthy. Yes, it would be good for people with disabilities to be able to lead normal lives. But what qualifies as a disability? Do we count mental disabilities too? Is being a socially-anxious shut-in a disability? Is being ugly a disability? Where do we draw the line? Who decides where we draw the line?
There are those who seem to think we should not question or experiment; we should draw the line at our current state and not go any further. But where does that leave progress then? We cannot progress, cannot improve, if we are not allowed to try new things and risk failure. It brings up the weaknesses of freedom of choice and culture. This is not to say that we should not be allowed to choose, but it is dangerous to let popular culture have too much influence on our choices. We need to be educated and fully aware of what our choices are doing to us and those around us. Perhaps most importantly, we should remember that sometimes we need to take a step back and remove ourselves from the situation to really see what is going on.
I’m debating whether to go see the Toy Story double feature in 3D. If there weren’t so many other good movies coming out soon, I would be much more tempted. We’ll see. There’s not a lot else to do around here when the weather is bad.
In non-movie news, We were very short handed (or short legged) at work for the last couple weeks. We fired a walker who failed to show up twice and did not contact anyone before or afterwards with an excuse and the supervisor’s left to support her fiancé who had a medical emergency. Said supervisor is back for a couple weeks, but is then leaving again for her wedding and won’t be back for the rest of the season. Luckily, we have found two other people to fill in.
I saw a cute and curious little ermine while walking a site the other day. It would run off a ways if we approached it, but it kept coming back and peeking at us from behind a rock. My arch nemesis (okay perhaps that’s a little exaggerated) the american dagger moth caterpillar (Acronicta americana) is all over the place right now; everything will be fine so long as none of them crawl on my bare skin. I got a nasty itchy rash and little purple blood blisters all over my ankle last time I crossed paths with one. I also spotted a beautiful Northern Harrier in a field while checking scavenger animals yesterday.