Author: andy

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Context

So, typically at church on Sunday mornings, the scripture lesson will precede the sermon. Today, the lesson was:

4 The word of the LORD came to me, saying, 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you  were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Now, reading through that lesson, one would have to ask themselves, “hmmm…how’s Pastor Scott going to discuss abortion?”

He didn’t talk about it at all.  Didn’t come up once.

In fact, Scott talked about having purpose in your life (the sermon title was “Motivation for Life”).  He specifically discussed how the prophet Jeremiah was around 16 years old when God talked to him, and even at that young age, he had meaning in his life and was motivated to continue along the path put forth in front of him.  The verse talked about how Jeremiah, specifically, was called to preach God’s Word to the masses.

So, I sat there thinking: “how could two so drastically different messages come from the same verse?”  What Scott talked about was a motivation, a purpose, for all our lives and how we can do good with them.  Instead, there are other voices that stop after the word “apart” midway through the 5th verse.  These voices disregard the context in which the words were written, inserting their own meaning.

I realize we live in a world of soundbytes now, when a politician’s words can be cut and cropped to make it sound like they said something when they really didn’t.  Largely, I think this occurs because people are generally lazy and don’t care to listen to the full series of phrases, let alone the entirety of a single Bible verse.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that all of the world’s religions are guilty of the same mistakes…

…but I’d like to think we were smart enough now to know better than to accept the easy answer.

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Review: The Book of Eli

This time of year, there usually isn’t much coming out in theaters, but Denzel Washington‘s new movie, “The Book of Eli,” looked interesting.

The movie centers around a “wanderer,” of sorts, crossing the U.S. by foot ~30 years after a nuclear holocaust. He’s a survivor, doing what he must to get his book across the country for initially unknown reasons. The world is a wasteland, with people fighting over things that we take for granted now (alcohol wipes, shampoo, water, etc.). The film makers also do a good job of making the color palate somewhat “bland,” where parts of the movie seem almost “black and white,” even though it’s in color. The muted colors really give it that “western movie” feel, with the lone fighter crossing the frontier, reluctantly helping those that need it.

The story itself is rather interesting, and while it seems to move slowly at parts, it’s still an fascinating and “different” concept for a film. As you may guess, the book that Washington is carrying across the country is the Bible, presumably the last one in existence as all of them were destroyed following the nuclear holocaust (which, we find out, was at least partially caused by the religious differences between cultures on Earth). The primary bad guy, played by Gary Oldman, wants to get a copy of the Bible so he can use it’s “power” in order to coax people into following him, in the process explaining that the same thing had been done many time before (i.e. bad people doing things “in the name of God,” and those people convincing others that they hold “The Truth” of existence). Washington’s character, Eli, was told in a vision to take the book west, where it would be safe, and on this trail, it certainly appears that he is protected from On High, especially against Oldman’s forces. The movie basically centers around this conflict, although the mythology they lay out helps to “fill in the gaps” of the reasons for the nuclear war, and what has transpired in its aftermath.

Usually, I try not to explain such details of a movie like this, but it was very unexpected and I think it really heightened my enjoyment of the film. It is one of those rare cases where the movie I expect to be completely sci-fi oriented was actually not very “sci-fi” at all, but instead somewhat thought-provoking in the ideas it’s putting forth. It provides an interesting take on some of the forces at work today, when there are those out there that use the Bible and its teachings for their own ends.

(as a brief aside, Mila Kunis‘ character asks Eli what he has gotten out of reading the Bible every day, and he responds: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” If I were asked the same question, I’d have the same answer. Many would say “the point” is more along the lines of John 3:16, but I’d go with the Golden Rule, personally.)

“The Book of Eli” probably won’t go down as one of 2010’s greatest movies, but I think it was a surprising gem that is well worth renting, if not checking out in theaters.

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Getting “Lost” in Netflix

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Brooke and I got into Lost awhile back after hearing things about it from a variety of people. Obviously, it’s a show that would appeal to me due to its many sci-fi elements, but Brooke had heard other people she knew that enjoyed it as well. I downloaded the first few seasons and we watched them in a few short months, in time to watch the 5th season last year as it was shown on ABC.

Well, the 6th and final season is set to begin February 2nd, so we thought we should watch it all again before the next season begins, especially while there’s mostly nothing on TV (due to the Olympics, primarily). We were able to watch some of those previous seasons on ABC.com, as the entire series is (kinda) available for free. I say “kinda” because we tried to watch them and, while the site says they’re available, they apparently aren’t working. Rather than download the episodes illegally, we decided to give Netflix a try.

We had been talking about trying Netflix for a few months now, mostly because many of our friends have it, but also because once we move, we we have toyed with the idea of not getting cable TV again. Netflix costs $9/mo and has a lot of material available. The real benefit of the system is that they added “Netflix Streaming” awhile back, making quite a few television shows (like Lost) available on-demand so we don’t have to wait for a disc to arrive before we can watch them. It works on Windows or Mac OS platforms, but in our case, I’m using it on my PS3, streaming the shows (or movies) in near-HD quality to the PS3 so we can watch them on the TV. I imagine we will use mostly Netflix Streaming, but it’s nice having the added catalog of DVDs (Bluray rentals cost $2 extra per month).

So yeah, Netflix appears to be a very worthwhile service, and it’s feeding our addiction to Lost. Win-win, eh?

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Crunch Time

December was a pretty crazy month, for many reasons, but I can already see time getting the best of me here in the new year. I’m working on getting things scheduled for graduation, as there’s a timeline of sorts that I have to follow, and I’m getting ready to get this dissertation written. I’m going to turn in my “letter of intent” to the Graduate School at SLU this week to get the proverbial ball rolling, and I have my last committee meeting scheduled for next week to get a date set for my defense. Theoretically, we’re shooting for April to get the defense taken care of, as that should be late enough that I can get everything done (amongst other things…more on that in two paragraphs). I have one paper published and another one ready to go, once I get one last pretty picture of my cells (the microscope I’ve been using is down, so I’m waiting on repairs). Having two papers published should help get the dissertation written almost on its own, so I’m not too concerned about having much writing to do…yet I’m sure the process will be more time consuming than I’m planning for.

I do, however, have a job lined up in Iowa City at the University of Iowa, College of Pharmacy, in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products. Brooke and I both went up in December so I could interview with my new boss, Dr. Jonathan Doorn, while she drove around town seeing if it was a place she’d like to live. The projects running in the lab, the people working there, and the environment in general are quite appealing, and seem like they’ll be good for my career. Brooke has already started looking for jobs up there and has found a few that interest her, so getting this extra time to send out applications and look around at places to live is very, very helpful!

At the same time, Brooke is due to deliver our kid at the end of February, so that is seeming more “real” every day. Dr. Macarthur, my adviser, was also due to deliver her first child on the same day as Brooke, but she went into pre-term labor on December 23rd and now has a son two months early (both Mom and Ian James are doing well)! Ian’s early arrival puts things in perspective, as Brooke could, conceivably, go into labor in less than a month and not be all that early. Or, of course, it could be later as well. In either case, the whole “I’m going to be a Daddy” thing is starting to set in pretty thoroughly, amongst all the other changes that we have in store.

So yeah, basically, everything is getting wrapped up between now and April. In many ways, it feels like graduating from high school or from college where, in that last semester, you feel slightly overwhelmed and unsure of what the future will bring. The addition of a baby into the mix, however, creates a different perspective to work from as, now, child care is a factor, school districts must be considered, doctor’s appointments have to be scheduled, etc.

It’s going to be an interesting semester!

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Review: Avatar

There is a concept in video games, robots, and digital media in general known as “the uncanny valley,” which states that as facsimiles of humans get closer to looking like actual humans, people revile them. When I think about movies like “The Polar Express,” where you know you’re looking at Tom Hanks, but his mouth isn’t moving quite right, or isn’t wincing just right, you can tell. You know that it’s him, but the mannerisms just don’t connect and it draws you away from the overall experience: you are fully aware that you are watching a digital film, and not reality.

Thus, “Avatar,” seeks to change all that, and in many, many ways, it succeeds.

The story centers around a dystopian future where the resources of Earth are dwindling and more are needed. The distant planet, Pandora, has a valuable mineral Earth needs, but of course, much of the planet must be strip-mined to get it, disrupting all the native life on the planet. The Na’vi, a peaceful race of blue humanoids are “in tune” with all of nature on the planet, so humans have tried to communicate and reason with them in order to move them to other locations in an effort to get the mineral. Of course, as humans tend to do, they get impatient and decide to go the “forced relocation” route, a la American Indians, amongst other populations throughout history. The “avatars” themselves are human/alien hybrids that look like the Na’vi, but can be controlled remotely by an interface that looks kinda like an MRI machine.

The plot is mostly predictable, as a small band of humans realize what they are doing on the planet is wrong and must be stopped, so they join forces with the Na’vi to fight back. The acting is pretty good, but nothing particularly Oscar-worthy.

As most people know, the real “star” here is the CGI, much of which had to be invented just to make this movie. I saw it in digital projection 3D, and while it was a few bucks more expensive, it was well worth the money and should be experienced. The 3D itself was more subtle than I expected, simply adding more depth to scenes and making a few things “pop” a bit more. It certainly wasn’t headache-inducing or anything, and really did help immerse you in the movie.

Back to the “uncanny valley,” though. This is the first movie I’ve seen where the CGI was so integrated into the environment, you could hardly tell it wasn’t being filmed with a camera on location down in the Amazon. James Cameron invented a motion capture camera that is worn on your head, tracking your mouth movements, the wrinkles of your nose, how your eyes move, etc. It then maps these movements onto a digitally-created humanoid and integrates the actor into the environment. Of course, more conventional methods are used for the human actors on green screens, but again, the majority of sequences with the Na’vi in the jungles are all digitally created, and you frequently forget that you are watching something made on a computer. It makes it look like Sigourney Weaver is acting with blue facepaint on, when she really isn’t. Her words are perfectly matched with the sound. Her facial expressions look like it’s really her.

So no, “Avatar” won’t be remembered for its compelling story or acting, but it will probably be remembered as the first movie to integrate CGI so seamlessly into a motion picture (with the help of some 3D “tricks”) that you forget what you’re really experiencing, and that technology is going nowhere but “up.” While it may seem a bit “over the top” to say, I fully believe “Avatar” is on-par with “The Jazz Singer” (the first “talkie”) or the introduction of color in movies.

This Christmas break, do yourself a favor: find this movie in 3D and drop the cash on it. You won’t be sorry. Unless you hate movies.

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The Loss of a Friend

Colette Anderson, our long-time family friend from St. Andrew’s in Columbia, was the kind of person that I only knew peripherally growing up, but around the time I hit college, it seemed like she and my Mom became really close. I can remember back to Freshman year when I’d go out to my car after church and find a case of Mountain Dew in the back seat, or I’d shake her husband, Chuck’s, hand after playing drums for the service, ending up with a $20 bill in return. They were both great people that I am happy to have known, and I am certainly changed by their influence and generosity.

Both Chuck and Colette actively attended St. Andrew’s Saturday Evening Service, one we started over a decade ago focused on contemporary music. They both appreciated my contributions to the service in playing drums (and later guitar), and of course, supported all of the other people that came through the service over the years, always coming up after the service to thank us for the work we had done (even when we screwed up royally…which happened on many an occasion…). In many ways, they were “honorary members” of the band, frequently joining us for dinner after church or at our various social gatherings.

Chuck passed away, unexpectedly, on December 21, 2002. I don’t think Colette ever fully recovered from the loss, but did her best to move on and devote more of herself to her family (including new grandchildren) and her “church family.” Earlier this year, however, she was diagnosed with cancer and lost her battle with it this past Wednesday, December 16th. I made the trip to Columbia for the memorial service, held yesterday.

I guess I felt it necessary to make particular note here of the way both of their memorial services were held. Rather than focusing on their lives and the things they had done, these services were designed in celebration of what they stood for and how we can all better ourselves by looking at their examples. For both services, I was honored to participate in playing drums, along with others playing guitar, piano, and singing. Colette chose the songs for Chuck’s memorial service, and was able to choose many of the same ones for her own service. She was sure to pick upbeat, yet meaningful, music to set the tone that she wanted: not to dwell on the loss of her, but as a reminder of the life she led and how we can incorporate her ideals into our own lives.

She would tell us how Chuck frequently hummed “Come, Now Is The Time To Worship” on the way home from church anytime we’d play it. Colette chose that song to be played at his service, and also wanted it played at hers. It was an inspiring experience to play that song just the way we’d always done it (fast and loud!), and once the clapping started during the tune, many of us cried. It may be the best we’d ever done it. “Trading My Sorrows” was another one the family requested, and even though we had only played it together as a group once before (some of us had never played it before that day), it turned out perfectly.

It was probably the best memorial service I’d ever gone to, and I hope mine is similar someday (preferably a long time from now, of course). Colette and Chuck will certainly be missed, but their inspiration and legacy will live on for years to come.

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Denialism

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Michael Specter
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Jon Stewart had Michael Specter on “The Daily Show” last night, a staff writer for The New Yorker who’s out with a new book, “Denialism.” The sub-title for the book explains what it’s about: “How irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives.” The interview is about 7 minutes long and covers a wide range of topics, but he mostly focuses on medicine, genetically modified food products, and vaccines.

He begins highlighting how 62 million people have gotten the H1N1 vaccine with no deaths or serious injury, despite half of American adults saying they won’t vaccinate their children or themselves because they believe it to be unsafe. Specter goes on, citing a friend of his that read the book, but still said she wouldn’t vaccinate her child for polio because “there is no polio anymore.” This is true, but only for the United States: polio is still around in other countries where airplanes travel. Similarly, 200,000 people died last year from the measles, another “forgotten disease,” and while none of them were in the United States, it’s not like it would be hard for the disease to spread here.

Specter also talked about how Vioxx “killed” 55,000 people (which, he points out, is the same number of Americans killed in Vietnam), yet Vioxx was never determined to be the sole cause of the deaths: just correlated. Those people had all kinds of other cardiovascular risk factors as well that likely contributed to the deaths. There were millions of other people that were on it and were just fine and benefited from the drug’s actions. Later in the interview, he points out that 45,000-50,000 Americans die in car accidents each year, but we don’t sue the automobile industry or stop using them like we did to Merck after the Vioxx scandal hit. He says, “We know if we lowered the speed limit 10 miles, we would save 8,000 lives, but, we want to get to the mall, so it’s something we’re willing to do.”

The whole vaccine thing just boggles my mind, honestly. A lot of it goes back to the idea of “over-parenting” (there was a nice article in Time Magazine a few weeks ago on that other can o’ worms), where we try to protect our children and ourselves from everything, when statistically, we’ve never been safer than we are now. Vaccines, according to Specter, are probably the single most important health achievement in human history next to clean drinking water, at least so far as the control of disease goes. And yet, there are people out there that continue to believe, against all scientific evidence, that they’re unsafe.

There are a wealth of other crazy beliefs that could be pointed out, of course, like those that don’t believe global warming is occurring (despite all scientific analysis saying it is)…or that mercury in vaccines causes autism, or that the Earth was created in 6 days, or that humans lived with dinosaurs, or that evolution isn’t real, or that the Earth is flat….and so on, ad infinitum…

Ignoring science certainly isn’t the answer. Humanity has developed knowledge over the generations that they’re supposed to use, preferably for the good of everyone. Picking and choosing the science you believe in is ridiculous. If you don’t believe in evolution, then you shouldn’t be allowed to use electricity: science has given us electricity and evolution, and if you won’t take one of those, you can’t have the other.

It’s a pity that rule isn’t enforced, as it would prevent all The Crazies from posting on the internet…

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Changing (because of) Babies

Well, we’re moving forward with all this “baby stuff,” especially making room for new things in our Soulard apartment. The weekend before Thanksgiving, we switched our bedrooms such that our old one will house the baby and all her stuff, and our bed got moved into what was (or “is still”) the office. The futon is in the Baby Room (“Nursery?”), but who knows if it’ll get used. Right now, we’re planning on keeping the bassinet in our bedroom with us initially, and considering that we’re hoping to move sometime in May, the baby may only ever sleep in our room with us and won’t ever sleep in the Baby Room.

Speaking of “bassinets,” we brought the Plochberger family bassinet with us from Columbia. This particular one has been passed down longer than my Mom can remember: Mom most certainly used it, and so did my eldest aunt, Doris, but we don’t know if it came from the previous generation or if Aunt Doris was the first one to use it. So yeah, the baby will sleep in the bassinet initially before being moved to the crib we inherited.

We also painted the old dresser in our room white, so it’ll match the bassinet. The crib will get painted at some point, also white.

Speaking of cribs, we’ve started accumulating various baby-related furniture items now. As mentioned, we inherited an old crib from Brooke’s co-worker that seems to be in pretty good shape (and before you post, no, I have no idea if this crib was recalled…so don’t ask!!). We had our first baby shower this past weekend with my side of the family, where we got a play pen, high chair, a travel high chair, and a stroller/car seat combo (the latter of which came from Brooke’s parents, actually, so technically, we got it before the shower).

To make room for all of this stuff, we cleared 20+ shopping bags of clothes, shoes, etc. from our closets and took them to Goodwill. They also take textbooks, so we got rid of those as well (apparently, textbooks are a heavy seller at Goodwill…who knew?).

So, in summary, we own too much stuff, and even when we get rid of some of it, we end up accumulating more. It’s the American way, eh?

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One more off the list…

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Brooke mentioned a few weeks ago that we hadn’t made it to a Blues game yet while living here in St. Louis. We’ve attended many Cardinals games in our years here, and one Rams game, but the Blues had eluded us so far. Really, neither of us have ever had any interest in hockey, so it wasn’t exactly a priority. Still, it’s one of those things that people tell us is fun, so we wanted to go at some point.

Well, as it happened, the Graduate Student Association at SLU (of which I’m President) was hosting a social event where we could get student rate tickets. Due to high cheapness, we got both or tickets for $30 (total), and that included a hot dog and a soda for each of us (about a $10 value). So yeah, a great deal! The seats weren’t anything spectacular, but the view was surprisingly good. It doesn’t seem like there’s a bad seat in that rink, honestly. The seats we had were something like $35 normally, so those “nosebleed” seats are still a far cry from the over $60 “nosebleed” seats at a Rams game.

A hockey game, it seems, is also tremendously more entertaining than an NFL game, as well. The action was constant, there were some fights breaking out, and overall, the speed and pace of the game was faster. Of course, the scoring doesn’t happen all that often, but with all the shots toward the net, it still gave us much to pay attention to.

Anyway, that’s another event we can cross off the list. We had a good time, but left early. Apparently, we should have stayed longer, as the Blues ended up winning (!!!!).

Maybe next time! Believe you me, I’m much more likely to go to an NHL game in the future than any NFL game.

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Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

We hadn’t seen a movie in awhile and this one caught my eye a few weeks ago when I first saw the advertisements. It’s actually based on a book by Jon Ronson about how the U.S. military so wisely spent our tax dollars investigating “alternative methods” of fighting other nations, including mind control, trying to pass through walls, and making another living being’s heart stop by staring at them (e.g. a goat). Ronson was on The Daily Show awhile back talking about his 2004 book, so I’d already been exposed to this crazy idea: then they made it into a movie. Keep in mind that the movie is based on concepts from the book, so parts of the movie are factually-based, but then there are large parts that aren’t.

The Men Who Stare at Goats stars quite a few heavy hitters, including George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, so on paper, the movie is already off to a good start. It centers around a news reporter (McGregor) that is trying to “make it” in the business by going to Iraq during the most recent Iraq War. Part-way through his journey, he comes across Clooney’s character, Lyn Cassady, who promptly tells him of a secret government program beginning in Vietnam that tried to make super soldiers, not through any genetic engineering, but through trying to get them to learn mind control techniques, amongst other things. Obviously, McGregor finds this difficult to believe in the beginning, but as the 1.5 hour long movie progresses, he begins to question the reality he knows.

I highlight “1.5 hours long” because that was a pretty good length, and I’m glad it wasn’t any longer. By the time they hit the last 30 minutes of the movie, it was getting harder to follow, and just generally more convoluted. Actually, a good 20-30 minutes of the movie really dealt with how McGregor and Clooney get into Iraq in the first place, and while it does introduce McGregor’s character to the concepts of this shadowy military troop, it doesn’t really end up being that pertinent to the story. So yes, I think “convoluted” is a pretty good word to describe this movie.

The movie is pretty funny, for the most part, but really mostly in a “chuckle” sort of way, rather than a “laugh out loud” manner. I guess I would say it’s more “amusing” than “funny,” in all honesty, and I was hoping for the film to err more on the side of the latter. In either case, it was still pretty entertaining. Certainly, the acting was as good as you’d expect from these actors, but I would have liked to see more out of Kevin Spacey. He did well for what he was given, but paying a high-profile actor like him to play this relatively minor role (compared to the other three) may have been a touch excessive.

I will say, however, that the movie did score hella points with me by playing up the fact that the military, apparently, experimented with using the “I Love You, You Love Me” song from Barney & Friends as a torture device against terrorists. I’ve always said that’d be a good idea.

In short, I liked the movie and thought it was an entertaining and amusing way to spend an evening, but I could have waited to rent it. At the very least, it makes you wonder where your tax dollars are going…