(no subject)

I went to see a late night showing of The Order. This movie was originally going to be called The Sin Eater, and actually this should have remained the title, because the new title is misleading and inaccurate. There is no "Order" in this movie, except tangentially the main character's order.

This could have been such a better movie -- not by adding things in, but by leaving things out. Certain rather cheesy scenes which don't advance the plot at all were included that have the effect of damaging the movie considerably. I mean, priests in movies shouldn't confront unholy terrors and then exchange idle banter immediately afterwards, right? Most uneven movies start off excellent and get bad at the end; this movie does the exact opposite, with the first 30 minutes being awful, and the remainer being quite good and thought-provoking.

I have no idea whether or not Catholics will find this movie disparaging. It shows the Catholic Church as being rigidly dedicated to its teachings and sternly unforgiving towards those who have been excommunicated -- but then, isn't it?

( semi-spoilers that can be found in any review )

(no subject)

Last night's dream was one of those rare coherent and profound dreams that has me thinking a lot today.

In a military conflict between factions within the church, one side had finally become predominant. Its military victories were largely attributable to the presence of a particular Captain of the guard. It was revealed to me, though, that at some point the real Captain had been slain and his suit of armor filled with chips of wood and then animated. So the "Captain" was now unkillable and unstoppable. It had simply escaped everyone's notice that the Captain never ate, slept, or took off his armor. More ominously, now that the interfactional warfare had been finished, the Captain now intended to devote his energy and attention to conquering infidels.

In the tone of the dream, what the Captain had accomplished within the church was good and right (even though it had involved warfare) but of course what he was intending to do from that point on was ominous and evil.

Upon reflection, I took the moral to be this: that a machine could not be programmed to do that which is "righteous," because an action that is good and right in one context could be ominous and evil in another. It is not that I am a "moral relativist," but I am an ethical consequentialist, which means simply that I believe that no ethical principles are absolutely predominant, or in other words, no one ethical principle "trumps" all others in every situation.

(no subject)

Well, it says something I think about the voting public in California that Arnold Schwarzenegger managed somehow to avoid a political quagmire over the meeting with Ken Lay (and its potentially far-reaching political implications), but has become entangled in questions over a stupid interview with a skin magazine 25 years ago, which ultimately says nothing about his ability to lead in government.

Now that he has claimed he made up the story he told then about taking part in a locker-room gang bang, the voters of California have to ask themselves which would be worse: (a) the thought that Arnold did those things many years ago and is lying now to cover it up, or (b) the thought that he lied all those years ago.

Perhaps he should have instead taken a page from the Bill Clinton book on politics and said, "Yes, I did take part in that, but I didn't come."

Quantum Qi?

In this 1997 article, Stuart Hameroff describes a notion he calls "quantum vitalism," or the emerging idea that some form of "vitalic energy" or "qi" does exist and can be accounted for with quantum mechanics.

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