Avatar: Meh

Films don't often inspire me to write, but Avatar is an exception. As a visual experience it is fantastic, stunning, vibrant, inventive. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything else particularly interesting about it.

The premise -- obvious from the trailers -- is that there's some military-ish group of humans on some extra-terrestrial world, and they have some way of taking on bodies that match the indigenous people. Now that you know the premise, you're all set. Imagine the story you would expect to be told based on that premise, and imagine the characters you would expect to meet. Imagine the character arcs intersecting with all the main plot lines at all the major plot points. Yep, that's the movie. And the experience of your expectations being precisely met doesn't end with this exercise -- it continues in much greater detail through the entire film.

Titanic didn't tell a daring story, either. That's probably why I only saw it once. I'll want to see Avatar again in the theater, definitely in 3-D (again). But after that, I don't expect to maintain any lasting interest in the film. This is obviously a case of high expectations being dashed -- if only I hadn't expected a daring film, I might be going to sleep right now thinking about how gorgeous it was. But I had hoped for more than a retread of the stereotypes, clichés, and Messages ("war is bad (but using LOTS OF GUNS to illustrate this is entertaining)" and "yay for the environment!") that I've gotten from Cameron before.

Avatar's timid story has really distracted me from how great it looks, and that's a shame. It's just worth seeing, just for the seeing.

Wishing for Truth in Politics

On the way home from work today, I heard an NPR story about the Stupak Amendment to the health reform bill that just passed by a narrow margin in the House.

NPR read the text of the Stupak Amendment after "translating it into plain English" in order to clear up apparent confusion about what the amendement actually does. Bart Stupak claims that it merely applies the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prohibits using certain Federal monies to pay for abortions, to the new health reform bill.

When I arrived at home, one of the emails that greeted me was a statement by president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) Terry O'Neill. It contains a few short paragraphs, but the meat of the email says that "The Stupak Amendment, if incorporated into the final version of health insurance reform legislation, will:

• Prevent women receiving tax subsidies from using their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;


• Prevent women participating in the public health insurance exchange, administered by private insurance companies, from using 100 percent of their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;


• Prevent low-income women from accessing abortion entirely, in many cases."

I suppose NOW is very concerned about getting attention, and, unfortunately, not very concerned about telling the truth in this case. The actual text of the Stupak Amendment (IANAL) directly contradicts the first two points, which are the meaty ones (casting aside the unintentional meaning of "100 percent of their own money"). Here's what the bill says:

Nothing in this section shall be construed as prohibiting any nonfederal entity (including an individual or a State or local government) from purchasing separate supplemental coverage for abortions for which funding is prohibited under the section, or a plan that includes such abortions, so long as--

...and then there are some stipulations. But the stipulations appear merely to pedantically establish that this document is consistent with itself. The freedoms granted for individuals and States to purchase abortion coverage simply cannot be exercised with Federal money, which is the whole point (IANAL) of the amendment in the first place.

I really felt like I should be able to respond to the email's senders and point out the obvious untruth of the claims being made, but I know there would have been no beneficial result. At least now this is off my chest.

Skim Once and Move Along

In tangential response to Is Google making us stupid?:

I used to be able to romanticize the past like nobody's business. These days I can't even get a good reminiscence going. *sigh*

One of the coolest moments ever. Sort of.

Mark your calendars, because Fri Feb 13 23:31:30 UTC 2009 is on its way. Run

date +%s -d 'Fri Feb 13 23:31:30 UTC 2009'

if you want to know why that's interesting. (Ah! Or you can google it instead if you like.)