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You are completely missing the points.

1. Quantity != Quality.

McDonald's serves BILLIONS. Does that mean they serve gourmet food? No, just cheap, popular, crap.

2. Avatar was a formulaic, rip-off of "Dances with Wolves" in space, which Cameron even admitted.

Yes, exactly, it is very much like that. You see the same theme in "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" and also "The Emerald Forest," which maybe thematically isn't that connected but it did have that clash of civilizations or of cultures. That was another reference point for me. There was some beautiful stuff in that film. I just gathered all this stuff in and then you look at it through the lens of science fiction and it comes out looking very different but is still recognizable in a universal story way. It's almost comfortable for the audience â" "I know what kind of tale this is." They're not just sitting there scratching their heads, they're enjoying it and being taken along. And we still have turns and surprises in it, too, things you don't see coming. But the idea that you feel like you are in a classic story, a story that could have been shaped by Rudyard Kipling or Edgar Rice Burroughs.

"Going native" is not a new thing. i.e. Pocahontas and Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest which shares themes with Avatar has been done for ages, and will continue to be done in the future.

The GP is just pointing out he found Avatar far too derivative -- probably because he remembers these other movies.

Personally, I'm still going to enjoy the visuals of Avatar on my BluRay regardless of how formulaic and copy-cat it was. But I'm also not going to bury my head in the sand saying it was "original". I will recognize that it snuck in the out-of-body experience (OBE) and consciousness transference in a accessible way. The joke about unobtanium was a good social commentary and parody of how we have become dependent on oil. Avatar has some deeper themes if one so wishes to pursue:

* Avatar: A Multi-Dimensional Pop Parable for Ascension
* The Theology of Avatar

Was Avatar well executed? Yup.
Was Avatar original? Nope.
Was Avatar good? Good is relative to what the view has already seen.
WHY was Avatar popular? Ah, now THIS is probably the better question to ask but that is a discussion for another day.

> Avatar came out in 2009, 8 years ago. You could argue there are some derivative ideas in it (as you could argue for any other work of fiction these days), but it was not a remake, not a sequel/prequel, and not a spin-off.

Avatar was a 100% remake of "Dances with Wolves" -- and I'm saying that as someone who bought the BluRay the instant it was available AND The Ultimate Fan's Guide to Avatar

You might enjoy these reads:

* Avatar: A Multi-Dimensional Pop Parable for Ascension
* The Theology of Avatar

What makes Avatar so good is that it is layered -- you have dumb action at the lowest level and interesting perspective/philosophy at the top. It brings the Out-Body-Experience to the forefront of mass consciousness. It hinted that plants were conscious. Lots of interesting questions for the layman to think about.

The secret died with Stanley Kubrick.

http://realitysandwich.com/232...

Yep, the government is completely useless at space and these guys are just trying to hurt SpaceX because they know that private companies can do everything better than govermint faster and cheaper too.

But don't be surprised. NASA has always been all about stealing taxpayer money to give it to left wing scientists to research things like "evolution" and "global warming". Remember, folks, this is the same big government department that burned through hundreds of billions of dollars trying to build a system to go to the moon and then just ended up faking it to save face.

This covers a span of some 16k years post-apocalypse: The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse. Not perfectly executed but I turned the pages anyway. Also recommended in the same vein: Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, set in an Iron age Britain some 2000 years from now, and rendered in an almost-unintelligible Late English. This also qualifies more as forgotten, or some what so anyway; after all I'm linking to a tribute page for it. The Great Bay's only a year or two old now; thought I'd throw it in to keep company with Leibowitz etc.

The reason wealth concentrates more and more is because of the Federal Reserve system, where the banks (NOT the government) create the money supply by making loans.

And now "Deficit Terrorists" are campaigning to slash federal spending. The real reason the federal debt is skyrocketing is because the banking system can't make loans like it used to, so the Federal Government has to be the "borrower of last resort", taking out loans from the "lender of last resort" (the Fed) and everyone else.

I don't remember the exact figure, but 40-50% of the Federal Government's debt is either held by the Federal Government (in the Social Security "trust fund"), or by the Federal Reserve (which is held to "back" the money supply). 100% of the interest paid to the ss trust fund is returned to the government, as are most of the Federal Reserve's profits (after operating expenses and a fat dividend to its owners, the private banking system).

If the debt were to be instantaneously paid off, all money would instantly vanish from the economy.

If the federal reserve system was nationalized, and the Department of the Treasury could issue debt-free "greenbacks" (like Abraham Lincoln used to pay for the Civil War), wealth would be much less concentrated that the current status quo.

Required reading:
Money and the Crisis of Civilization
A Bailout for the People (pdf).

The only state that's NOT having budget problems is North Dakota. Ellen Brown says North Dakota is sitting pretty because they own the Bank of North Dakota.

See How the Nation’s Only State-Owned Bank Became the Envy of Wall Street.

All the other states are slaves to their financiers on Wall Street. For example, the City of Phoenix (Arizona) borrowed a billion dollars over the past 5 years to build out the water system. Now the water department wants to raise an extra $24million a year by raising water fees... 'Cause the usury always gets paid first.

I calculate that the interest charge on a billion dollars a year (at 5%) is $50million. If Arizona owned a bank like North Dakota, the Bank of Arizona would have financed the Phoenix water expansion (at, say, 3%). Most of the $50million the city is now bleeding out to Wall Street would instead be flowing into the state's treasury.

The financial crisis is easily fixable, with the right solutions. Money and the Crisis of Civilization, and ... Richard Clark's A Bailout for the People are also on my recommended reading list.

Companies have been running our government(s) for a while now. The natural result is that the government and the laws it enforces are creating conditions pushing the people into the role of servants / slaves of the companies. It is true that companies are also made of people, too. So, we see different conditions for the people who stay on top of the companies.

The superrich live in a world of incredible healthcare, luxury, super high quality products, food, services. The rest of us fall towards slavery, pollution, bad or lacking healthcare etc.

You get the picture. Tendencies haven't changed since the Roman Empire, or earlier.

What is different now is that never have we been so well informed or educated. I think we have a chance to enforce change in these tendencies, once and for all. Changing Money from a tool for enslavement to a measure of gratitude could be a good beginning.

Good points, all. I just have a short comment.

NAFTA and treaties with various third-world countries have destroyed the American manufacturing base.

You're surely talking about the massive loss in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. over the past 30+ years. While many of these job losses are due to so-called "free trade" treaties, automation via computers has also taken many jobs. Cool stuff is still made in the U.S., just not a whole lot of consumer-grade stuff.

For example, I met a man about 6 months ago who has a machine shop that makes tubes for telescopes and other similar projects. IIRC, he employed himself and his wife. 25 years ago, he would have needed a machinist for each machine in his shop...

The American economy will not recover until those treaties are abandoned and manufacturing comes back to America.

I think the problem is debt. The American economy will not recover until the debt problem is resolved. Once that's accomplished (possibly via state-owned banks), the economy will quickly take care of itself.

The natural tendency of Money + Usury = monetizing everything.

Check this essay on the nature of current money implementation, how it robs humanity of true value and alternatives:

http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_a_new_beginning

Corporations turn town into a toxic sludge dump.
Taxpayers pay for people to relocate.

=> Free Money solves the pollution problem!

By converting the planet's natural resources into limitless virtual symbols for value, we are approaching a point when we'll have to eat, breathe, and drink money.

I think it may be time to reform money: http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_a_new_beginning

There's no way to revive it. As REM had foreseen, the world we knew has ended, and now we're just drifting until a new wind catches our sails.

If the Federal government would just fix the debt problem, all these other problems would rapidly fix themselves.

SOX is a bit player in a giant swindle. The jobs problem has nothing to do with the lack of venture capital. The problem is the economy is up to its eyeballs in debt, and there's no money to pay the interest due.

This is due to the debt-based nature of our financial system. See Money and the Crisis of Civilization and I Want the Earth plus 5%.

If the congress wanted to create jobs, it would issue interest-free money (such as Abraham Lincoln's United States Notes) and spend it directly into circulation on worthwhile projects. The most worthwhile project today is renewable energy technology. Wind farms are probably the best candidate, with hydrocarbon synthesizers to use all the power generated.

R&D on cold fusion and other paradigm-busting energy technology should get some money too - a Japanese researcher held a demonstration of his Cold Fusion setup in May.

Fixing the banking system is a good first step for restoring rosperity.

People used to do most things for free. See Money and the Criss of Civilization:

... To understand it, let's get clear on what constitutes a "good" or a "service." In economics, these terms refer to something that is exchanged for money. If I babysit your children for free, economists don't count it as a service. It cannot be used to pay a financial debt: I cannot go to the supermarket and say, "I watched my neighbor's kids this morning, so please give me food." But if I open a day care center and charge you money, I have created a "service." GDP rises and, according to economists, society has become wealthier. ...

Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a "service". And we are the richer for it. Right?

Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.

In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray.

The crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money. Centuries, millennia of near-continuous money creation has left us so destitute that we have nothing left to sell. Our forests are damaged beyond repair, our soil depleted and washed into the sea, our fisheries fished out, the rejuvenating capacity of the earth to recycle our waste saturated. Our cultural treasury of songs and stories, images and icons, has been looted and copyrighted. Any clever phrase you can think of is already a trademarked slogan. Our very human relationships and abilities have been taken away from us and sold back, so that we are now dependent on strangers, and therefore on money, for things few humans ever paid for until recently: food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, child care, cooking. Life itself has become a consumer item. ...

Using inexpensive off-the-shelf gear they managed to broadcast a live video of the protest before the Chinese "People's Armed Police" caught wind of the "evil Freedom banner" they were holding and quickly grabbed them into custody. But the video had already been streamed into safety and in near real-time uploaded to various video-streaming sites.

"Jeff's wireless received the video from Shannon's camera transmission, and sent the signal through an analog-digital converter that output firewire into his MacBook computer...not much different from using a WII or Playstation or Final Cut. Quicktime Broadcaster downsized and compressed the video to a data rate the satellite connection could handle (220kbps at 15 frams/sec, compressed eventually to 100 kbps), and sent it via satellite (Inmarsat system using a BGAN Java program) to a Students for a Free Tibet computer, which was also running Quicktime Broadcaster. They immediately uploaded the three minute video to YouTube. As a backup, Flickr, YouTube, Pando and other accounts were set up on the computer to upload images and video in the event Quicktime Broadcaster failed to send video, but an Internet connection was still live".

Being protected by foreign passports the protesters had to only endure verbal threats, separation from fellow protesters, sleep depravation etc. for less then three days before being deported from the Chinese-occupied Tibet. However for the exiled Tibetan member of the crew the price of taking part in the protest was far heavier since he would now be banned from returning to his homeland... until Tibet regains it freedom, or at least until the Chinese people change their criminal and expansionist CCP regime to one which doesn't commit systematic genocide against China's historical neighbours.

For indigenous Tibetans living under Chinese oppression any action calling for freedom in Tibet will without exception result in far more horrifying treatment involving unimaginable forms of torture and years, even decades of imprisonment in one of the many Chinese concentration camps like Drapchi outside Lhasa. More than a few Tibetans - often young buddhist nuns or monks - have died in the Chinese gulags and this horror show has continued for several decades. Even people like the visiting EU Commissioner for Human Rights is denied access to these Tibetan prisoners of conscience.

More information about this Base Camp protest and the Tibetan struggle in general can be found from the Students For A Free Tibet and Phayul websites.