prepare for your morning buzz-kill

make sure you haven't just eaten, you're sitting down and you haven't just puffed the magic dragon, cause this is gonna bring you down like a tonna.

make with the clicky

the global warming debate

Ad Nauseam, I know. This one's been flogged like a dead horse and, depending how cynical you're feeling, could be the latest straw man of imminent doom. But, this video I'm linking to asks not are the enviromentalists or are the wait-and-see-ers right, but what's the best worst case scenario for taking action or not taking action. Basically suggesting what we would reasonably conclude, that if the warming is not man-made and we take action, we're courting economic recession on a massive scale and if we don't take action and the warming is man-made we can expect catastrophucks on a biblical scale. So, really, the question becomes what's the best worst case, depression or cataclysm?
We can recover from a recession, but not from a cataclysm.

Obviously, the video is quite simplistic, but I think the point it makes is still very valid.

This weekend I took in Sweeney Todd staring Mr. Johnny Depp and I've been trying to form a firm opinion about it since. It's both good and bad, tacky (in the best ways possible) and polished.

Firstly, it's a musical, in essence that's the framework the entire film rests on. It's by Steven Sondheim, a 20th century American composer that I'm not all that familiar with. I had to say that as some one who does enjoy properly executed musical theatre I found the lyrics average at best and the music hardly memorable. Maybe Sondheim was going for an effect that completely passed me by but I found the libretto completely subpar.

Aside from the score, I did enjoy the story and felt it was reminiscent of Verdi's opera Rigoletto, which everyone knows at least one song from. Click here to hear the song you no doubt know. But the similarities do no continue on into the score. Rigoletto, the main character of Verdi's opera, is the hunchbacked jester to the duke of Mantua. There are many stereotypically operatic twists, but needless to say that Rigoletto ends up killing his daughter in a case of mistaken identity as he tries to exact revenge.

In Sweeney Todd we've got a main character who has returned to London after being falsely imprisoned, who's daughter is kept captive by the judge who framed him. He forms an elaborate revenge plan, assuming a new identity. The wife he believed to be dead is a half-mad begger, which is only revealed after Todd kills her, after which he is promptly killed.

The plot is an operatic stereotype but it's great. It's an operatic stereotype because it works so well.

So far we have a subpar score balanced by a fast paced and violent plot. The opera is not one of deep moral questions, it is a revenge tragedy, but the real redemption of the entire undertaking comes from the director and the cast.

Tim Burton brings his unique talents to this story with brilliant effect. I would submit that there is no deep philosophy to what Burton is doing here, but what he does is beautiful. It's bloody, it's dark...it's what we all think Victorian London as being like at it's most Gothic and terrible. The plot, as I said earlier does not complicate itself with motivations, but rather the unfolding of revenge. Burton is in his element, he makes the backdrop a beautiful dark tableau of Todd's black soul that has been consumed with revenge. It's a visual spectacle.

Now, add in Johnny Depp, someone Burton is quite comfortable collaborating with I'm certain given their previous collaborations and does a brilliant job in the lead. But the strength of the cast goes well beyond Depp, including Hellena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman. And a special treat as Sasha Baron Cohen (Borat, Jean Girard from Ricky Bobby) appears in a minor role as an Italian dandy.

The movie is fantastically executed, but I can see going to see it preformed on broadway and being quite underwhelmed.

climbing back up onto the soap box

I should probably preface this entry by saying that I have not read "The God Delusion" but have only heard the author speak on its subject and read reviews. That being said, I greatly disagree with the crux of the argument, equally as one with religious convictions, as one who despises fallacious arguments.

Mr. Dawkins is immensely popular at the moment on campuses and in the intellectual community at large, not so much because of the argument he has put forth, but rather because he has lead athiests out of the proverbial closet, empowering them to embrace their beliefs. That in itself is a noble ambition, but there's a reason he's dubbed Darwin's rottweiler. Dawkins has what can be described diplomatically as an abrasive and direct manner of discourse. His book centres on the ridiculous axiom that the owness of proof is not on athiests but on religion. That faith demands proof.

Just let that sink in for a second. It's like having a debate where the two sides can't agree on the definition of the terms. Faith does not require proof, if it did, it would not be faith. But, this is the statement upon which his book rests.

To paraphrase him; he claims that most theists are partial atheists as they have already denied all other Gods but their own, he is simply taking it a step further and adding one more God. This is such a ridiculous over simplification, and is on par with that thought you had as a child, "if my religion is right then aren't all the other gods wrong?". Dawkins is a scientist, an empiricist, and a very linear thinker. Monists believe that god is unknowable and we only see him though facets of our own lives, I myself adhere to a form of monism, would Dawkins deny me this view? probably.

I think my own brother put it best when we were having a philosophical argument and I asked him if he was an athiest. He said, Nietzsche waited til he was 29 before he killed God, perhaps he should wait at least that long. In other words, this isn't a simple endeavor to be dismissed as mere superstition.

However, I would not deny Dawkins his view that morality is possible externally from religion. You need look no further than Ancient Greece where schools of philosophy became the centers of moral thought, schools like stoicism, epicurianism, neoplatonism etc... These all existed alongside but separately from the polytheism of the day. Especially if you consult the works of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who declares his own uncertainty about the existence of the gods, but claims this has no bearing on his own morality. Virtue is it's own reward.

But to bring it back to Dawkins, I've heard him state in interviews that science, despite not knowing the answer to the creation of the universe, one day soon will. That science will give us the answers we turn to God for. But, even Nietzsche described this kind of scientific knowledge as surplus to requirement and irrelevant. Nietzsche, an avowed atheist (and philologist), would tell us that even though we know what fire looks like, can write a formula detailing it and can replicate it, we still cannot say what it is. "It's a chemical reaction" does not tell me what fire is. Similarly explaining to me that the sun rises because of an equation does not satisfy the why. Why is the sky blue? all these questions hold a beautiful mystery that we cannot explain. I myself, would not want the answer were it available. There is poetry and there is soul in all these unknowns.

"God is in the details" is not just some hyperbolic statement. It's a statement about the beauty in the world.

Democracy on the Move!

Russian politics is in the news once again. Last we heard Mr. Putin was very much on his way to creating his own kingdom. He was setting up a yes-man to take over from him after his term of office expires, and aledgedly apoint himself his prime minister. He's also crafted the demands of party status to the effect that no one can oppose him and have a voice in the parliament. So now, the voice of the opposition, former international chess champion Gary Kasparov has quit the presidential race due to an inability to fulfill requirements, one of which is to hold a meeting of his supporters numbering 500 within Moscow before December. According Mr Kasparov, he's booked multiple halls and payed up front, only to be canceled at the last minute by the venue.

tv comes to iTunes Canada

if you go to Apple Canada's homepage, you'll see splashed across the screen the new TV programs up for download from iTunes. Previously, TV programs have only been available from the the US and UK stores. Which might be cause for rejoicing, but the selection, while adequate, is less than stellar. And there-in lies the reason that our iTunes store even has TV programs available. NBC pulled the the plug on it's agreement with Apple, so no original NBC programs are available on the US iTunes store.

Judging from my own viewing habits, NBC accounts for a fair bit of my programming, like 30 Rock, the Office and Scrubs, not to mention that they produce the immensely popular, if over rated in my opinion, Heroes. So, if we take away that piece from the iTunes pie, it's logical to assume that it's left Jobs and Co. looking to expand their market.

So, enter the Canadian version. We've got lots of Canadian content, CBC's mercer report, little mosque, Dragon's den; CTV's corner gas, and Degrassi as well as some classic Hockey Night in Canada Stanley Cup games. Non-canadian content is limited to comedy central, which consists of south park and the Sarah Silverman program. We can only hope that this allows for the Daily Show and the Colbert Report to make their way up there after the writer's strike is resolved.

So, really Canada has ended up with a poor man's tv selection. None of my must see shows made the list, no House MD, no Boston Legal, no Dexter.

It's also worth noticing that amazon has been pushing a music store of their own in the states, underselling itunes per song, and without copy protection of any kind as well as offering a better sound quality, and they also have a service for purchasing digital tv programs and movies. Will they move up to Canada? seems like a logical progression.

for those who can't whedon any longer

I'll admit that pun was a bit of a stretch, but Joss is back in the medium!

but...and you knew there would be, it's on Fox with a 7 episode commitment. Which most likely means that it'll suffer the same fate as firefly; poorly advertised and be given an inconsistent timeslot. On the plus side, the concept sounds very cool, and with Joss you know it's in good hands. Oh, and did I mention Eliza Dushku is the lead?
The drama (...) stars Dushku as Echo, a member of a group of men and women who are imprinted with different personalities for different assignments. In between tasks they are mind-wiped, living like children in Dollhouse, a futuristic dorm/lab. They have no memories of their previous lives, until Echo begins to try to find out who she was.
from the hollywood reporter

Knowing Joss' literary pedigree, I was hoping the title was an allusion to the Henrik Ibsen play, especially considering Whedon's predilection towards exploring feminist themes. I think it would be interesting to see Joss do something outside of the scifi-fantasy genre, but having him back on TV, even if it's not long lived, will be great.