…those of you on Technorati, I totally forgot that I occasionally contribute to the “Where’s The Fire” feature. You are more than welcome to check out the posts I’ve put up there and vote for me; they’re a bit self-promoting, but I do sum up my stances on things in those entries. Here’s the link:

akarra’s WTF page

Thanks so much, and do let me know if you vote. I’ll definitely feature posts of yours in future ones I create.

Edit: Also, for the few of you who don’t know, I’ve been guest-blogging at Westminster Wisdom recently, please check out that blog.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I’m sitting in front of the computer with a t-shirt on and some sweatpants and I’m about to break into a cold sweat. I was cold earlier this morning – it wasn’t quite chills and shaking, but it was annoying.

Eyes are clear, phlegm is clear (!), but lungs feel like they’re in a vise. I have this hacking cough that is always trying to throw something out of me. I can’t walk very far very well, and I feel light-headed.

Drinking tons of water and orange juice and taking Vitamin C supplements. Using tea here and there to sip on so as to melt whatever decides to sit around in the nasal cavity. Taking Allegra and nebulizer treatments in order to prevent the asthma from getting worse, but definitely making sure the vitamin C gets in, just in case this is a cold.

I feel like crap right now. I woke up and felt beaten, and I had a fitful sleep last night.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I’ve got nothing to blog about, so I might as well report that I’m sick. There’s an awful lot of tightness in my upper chest and it is difficult to speak with any power. There’s occasional coughing and some rather annoying phlegm.

It could be worse, but I’m ticked: Who gets sick during the summer? This has never happened to me before, and I’m wondering if there was some incident that occurred where I could pinpoint this happening…

Powered by ScribeFire.

One of the dangers of posting things dependent on prior knowledge of a subject – i.e. poetry – is that every moron who thinks he knows something comes out and says stuff that sounds very smart, and when you try to reconstruct their argument you realize it’s nothing but the insinuation that you’re wrong.

For obvious reasons, such comments get under my skin, even though I know full well the commentators have no real knowledge of how to be intellectually honest. What we’ve “learned” from this media-saturated age is that however you make an impression doesn’t matter, as long as your impression is effective.

Being “intellectually honest,” then, is reduced to mere participation in debate, and the possibility that someone else might make you look bad for saying something. The truth is that being intellectually honest is really putting forth an argument where you publicly assess other arguments that might defeat yours, and keep open the possibility that you yourself might be wholly wrong, not just the guy you’re railing against.

I guess I’m asking for practical advice here. There are two comments on my work that just flat out offend me because of the lack of argumentation and thought, and I want to delete them. This is my blog, not theirs, and the two commentators in question left no way of getting in touch. But the comments didn’t mean to offend, and quite frankly, only a total idiot would buy their “argumentation.” I guess I can’t be petty that I didn’t persuade wholly.

The big question: Generally speaking, how can we encourage comments that respond thoughtfully and openly, not merely cleverly? For my part, I’ve just decided I don’t really care about the comments people leave. My work stands on its own, and those who read enough of it will see how to object properly, and not just nitpick.


Technorati Tags: comments, argumentation, blogging

Powered by ScribeFire.

Couldn’t say it much better myself, but I’ll try:

The opening scenes of the movie seem to be archival footage taken from a bombing pilot’s cockpit. We watch huts explode slowly, almost rhythmically, as the plane flies by. At first, one thinks “wow that’s beautiful,” and the music reinforces that sentiment.

Then one has to ask: What kind of sick people are we that we can watch explosions knowing others are burning alive down there, and say that such a thing is beautiful? We should be quaking, knowing the same could be done to us, wondering how we have the capacity to do anything like that to another. The archival footage ends with being on the deck of a carrier over the ocean, presumably safe.

That tension between comfort, fear and survival evident in the mere viewing of the opening continues throughout the whole movie.

Our hero is a German, now American, who as a child saw an American pilot fly and shoot at him, and somehow “wanted his job.” He says he will be forever grateful to the country which “gave him wings” (he says this, btw, to the actor who played Vagabond in the Wing Commander PC game series, and I wish I saw more of that actor, because he was badass in the games). A refusal to renounce his country lands him in prison camp.

In prison camp, he meets Dwayne and Eugene. Dwayne has something in common with our hero: both men, at various points in the movie, literally shit their pants. I use the cruder phrase because it’s the one the movie uses, but as corny and vulgar as this may sound, the phrase has significance. Pajiba’s review talks about our hero always being hopeful. That’s true, but hope doesn’t mean fear magically dies.

It is tempting to say that Christian Bale’s character is hopeful to the point of not fearing. Contrast him with Eugene, who is scared for his life and “hopeful” about coming peace talks that’ll free him. Eugene threatens to squeal when Bale’s character, Dieter, plans an escape. In the end, Eugene gets on board with the escape but doesn’t follow orders – he steals some of the stuff the prison guards had while Dieter and Dwayne do the work of rounding up the guards, and the last we see of him is his moping “what do I do now,” as if prison was all he could conceive, a mental comfort that can only be added to by physical comforts.

If Eugene represents a mind trapped by the order that society imposes, then his fear is linked to the fear society uses to keep us in line. It is a fear that has a hope purely contingent on what another does. The hope involves no “flight,” no believing in oneself, and ultimately no fraternity.

For Dwayne’s fear – a fear centered on survival – ultimately turns into a gratefulness for those who make life better. Dwayne moves from hope for survival to hope for freedom as he attaches to our hero. What is key for one who wants to survive is not that one survives merely, but that the will survives. A will is only something if it embraces freedom in the deepest sense (those of you who know me know there is a very biting critique of libertarianism here).

Ultimately, the movie brings out a Rousseauian worldview that is gorgeous to behold and maybe even true. Man in regressing just a bit to his animal self – in finding ways to survive and bonding with others to survive – might open up more possibilities for friendship, love and even duties worth executing than man who is bound entirely by convention. “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains” – well, that’s all contingent on “everywhere.” The true promise of being an American is that we are born free, and can stay free, as long as we see our fellow Americans and fellow humans as they truly are.


Technorati Tags: rescue dawn, movies, film, herzog

Powered by ScribeFire.