I am not a physicist, but you hear things, you know. . ?
I'm not altogether clear about all this talk regarding so-called, Quantum Entanglement. It doesn't sound as though there is anything being transmitted at all.
Or, just blowing smoke off the top of my head. . , what if two points on, say, a 10 dimensional object appear in our space to occupy two distant locations, but which are in fact part of the same object. If you move one point, the other moves instantaneously. Information could be transmitted like this, and it would appear to us as though it were traveling a great distance.
Or something like that.
Like I said. I am not a physicist, but you hear stuff, you know? And one of the things I've heard is that Einstein's theories were furthered but kept very quiet. There have been some very weird deaths among physicists.
I have to ask: Why does it pain you to side with the authorities?
Because I've been in a pattern of responding with something ranging between annoyance to outrage to the stimuli offered over the last decade, and pattern behavior takes energy and effort to break out of.
Though, given that the pattern of insane authoritarian action on the world stage continues to be what it is, I doubt I'll be needing to stretch a whole lot on that count.
While people certainly do blow up buildings and airplanes, they are not frustrated nobodies blowing off steam on social networks. They are, by and large, black-ops spooks and their puppets.
Although, I would agree that the guy who posted his mock bomb threat was being foolish. Twitter creates some untested landscape; we long ago decided as a culture that it's not okay to joke about bombs at an airport; it creates needless static and stress for the security staffers to work through and that by itself creates a hazard. This is a test of that same social agreement, and as much as it pains me to side with the authorities, frankly, I think cracking down on idiots joking about bombs in public places is probably a wise measure.
But we should also not be over-reacting. If this guy ends up with his house torn apart in a futile search for non-existent bomb-making materials, or if he finds himself in the lock-up or whatever, then that would be stupid. All things in measure.
You are quite an optimist. I don't know why. [. ..] Whatever you read should be considered an outright lie. The only good to be gleaned from this lie is to figure out who it benefits,so you can speculate on what really happened. Then keep your eyes and ears open for any supporting disinformation.
Really?
Amy Goodman strikes me as somebody who has made difficult and earnest choices in order to report as accurately as she is able. Like everybody, she and the rest of her team are subject to the same and various mind-control techniques visited upon the world by those who waves such wands, but at least their intentions appear to be coming from a place of practiced integrity. --And such integrity allows one a degree of protection against the mind/perception warping forces arrayed against us. It's not zipped up by any means; you're not going to see, for example, Richard Dolan invited on as a guest or see psychopathy discussed openly, or any other such people or efforts which press as far against the veil, so you are right, such 'news' is leaving out the truth. (Though I'd question if it is just more dissociative sleep-walking and not a tactical decision given that we ARE dealing with a skittish public. Getting Goodman's private views on reality would be fascinating.) In any case, it's better than the outright conscious complicity with psychopathic leadership that is practiced by virtually everybody else on the news spectrum.
It's important to remember that approximately half the people out there, if given the choice on a soul-level, would choose love & enlightenment over fear & sleep. It's simply the ignorance, control measures and general confusion which prevents delineation from being altogether clear and the news from being entirely valid, but the intentions do manifest in the ways they are able. That, based on my years of seeking, appears to be an objective truth, so optimism and pessimism really have no place when making such calls.
Well , their suicide sets a good example for a dated corrupt media. A good idea defended by the founding fathers and others was reduced to a shallow meaningless lie of propaganda for government, liberal causes and big business. What doesn't evolve as necessary, dies as superfluous tripe. It won't be missed.
It won't die. It's too important to the ubiquitous propaganda effort required to keep Objective Reality subdued down to a mere nagging thought at the back of everybody's mind. My guess is that this NYT thing is a ploy which fits somehow into the whole internet crackdown which has been brewing in the wings. (The Obama White House, being just one player, is preparing some pretty crazy legislation to be unleashed on the world stage.)
Somewhat more real news comes from places like http://www.democracynow.org/ --Which while it doesn't touch certain things, is a helluva lot less doped up than the NYT.
I find this kind of awareness experiment absolutely fascinating! -I think it is deeply related to many things in our reality, and the ability of people to ignore changes in order to exist within a logical continuum is what is meant by being Asleep versus Being Awake. There are SO many things in 'official' reality which don't add up and which take a form of cognitive dissonance, (the term people studying this stuff have come up with to explain the general insanity of people's lack of reaction to weirdness in the world), to live with.
Here's the study I think you are referring to. . .
And here's a treat: some videos of "Change Blindess" experiments.
Here is what I got out of this whole thread...The US should: 1. Educate all poor people of the world. 2. Dismantle some, most, all of our intelligence agencies. 3. Fire all politicians. 4. Don't fear or worry about terrorism. So what planet do you guy live on? Great ideas but how do you make them happen. How about some solutions that we can actually do in the next 10 years.
1. The US is just a name for a big whack of people living in one place with an out-of-control government. It's not obligated to, and probably can't do anything cohesive or useful. Which means. . .
2. People have to educate themselves. This becomes more possible for more people with each step forward YOU take as an individual person. You are part of a greater whole and your impact upon that whole happens in ways which are non-linear. So educate yourself and you'll be doing your bit. The rest happens pretty much on automatic so long as you obey your inner drives and do the right thing, whatever it happens to be in any given moment.
3. Intelligence agencies are the enemy, and you can't dismantle them. So you'll just have to operate along your own path and let them do their thing along theirs. In the end, so long as you continually absorb knowledge, they can't stop you or anybody else from growing powerful. You might die a few times, but those are just blips in the overall scheme of things. In the end, those who seek to control out of and through fear and insanity undo themselves. It's a universal truth.
4. Politicians are just puppets and villains. You can't really fire them or even replace them particularly well because the system is so utterly corrupted from within. (The more you learn about it, the more hopeless you realize it is). Again, the solution is to just get on with your own learning and step around their boundaries when they put them in front of you. In the end, the only power they hold is that of withholding knowledge, so the more you learn the weaker their hold over you becomes. And it's geometric in growth. The more you learn, the faster you learn. It's those first starting steps which are so difficult, and where the fight is taking place. It's easy to keep people ignorant if they don't even realize that they are ignorant.
5. Other people who are on the same path; when you start to get into a groove with others and network and criticize with an aim to overcoming ego and false knowledge, then the strength of that signal increases, again, geometrically.
That's how it's done, and now is as good a time as any to begin.
The public is persistent and scrappy, and they refuse to let up. More information keeps cropping up and the threads keep expanding and the picture gets more and more clear. So any beliefs one might have settled on last year or three years ago or earlier based on the available information and spin at the time always need to be updated. That's the way of knowledge; Love it or lie to yourself, (and pretend that Popular Mechanics isn't run by cherry-picking true-believers of God and Country). Anyway, this latest has been put through the crucible since November of last year. ..
Pilots for 9/11 Truth has reported that the data stream from the flight data recorder (FDR) for American Airlines flight 77, which allegedly struck the Pentagon on 9/11, shows that the cockpit door never opened during the entire 90 minute flight. The data was provided by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which has refused to comment.
The FDR is one of two "black boxes" in every commercial airliner, which are used after accidents to help determine the cause of a crash. One black box records flight data, the other records voice data (everything said in the cockpit during the flight). With those two sets of data, NTSB investigators can usually piece together the events that led to a crash. The status of the door to the cockpit is checked every four seconds throughout a flight and relayed as a simple 0 or 1, where 0=closed and 1=open, with approximately 1,300 door status checks performed during AA77's 90 minute flight. Every one of those door status checks shows as a 0, indicating that the door to the cockpit never opened during the entire flight.
The forum at "Pilots for 9-11 Truth" is worth lurking in if you want to understand how the flight data recorder info has been examined and what juicy details it has revealed. (Basically, that the government story is complete horsepoop.)
So this whole question of so-called "terrorism" is really a big, bad and messy joke.
Please explain what value Wired gets from my time and attention unless I click on ads, subscribe to printed magazine and so on?
Well that's a rather rhetorical waste-my-time kind of question. Surly you grasp that "eyeballs" are bought, sold and generally coveted in the ad industry. You don't have to act directly on an advert for you to have delivered your value simply by seeing it. --By increasing the percentage of possible click-throughs an ad may receive, your presence increases the value. There's a reason ads during the Superbowl cost a gazillion dollars and late night ad spots on local cable channels are as little as a few hundred bucks.
But static eyeballs are one thing; they have even more valuable if they can be labeled and tracked. If somebody knows your psychological profile, income level, cultural background, sex, education and general interests, etc., then the value of your eyeballs increases. But you know that already.
If I post a portion of their article on a blog without attribution, they are deprived of this possibility for a portion of readers of their work.
"Deprived?" Seriously? You're trying to make them sound like victims because the knowledge they put into the world happens to spread according to the naturally efficient systems developed through evolution over millions of years? Why is it that conservative business types seem to be locked in a permanent pitted battle against the very backbone of reality? (Actually, I know the answer to that, but it may be something for you to ponder between prayer studies.)
Okay. . .
First of all, this is just another banal argument in favor of locking down the flow of knowledge and information, keeping poor people uneducated and various other nasty things. I have little patience for anybody who has chosen to fight for a world where greed and fear of want trumps human awareness. The more we know, the stronger we are as a species, whereas the dark side wants us to remain stupid and easy to manipulate and generally enslaved. Intent is the key here, and every argument which INTENDS to increase slavery is just a semantic bit of bullshit which adds to the pile of human misery. To make such an argument, in essence, declares that in order to avoid the fear (just the FEAR) of not having enough for the self it is okay to make sure that others live in deprivation. This is the essence of reptilian brain thinking versus the higher brain functions we are capable of as a species. Those who want us to go back to sleep versus those who want us to wake up as fully as possible.
Secondly. . , Wired is, without asking permission, selling knowledge of you to advertisers. Why is it okay for them to do this when it is not okay for you to share the knowledge you glean from them?
Thirdly. . , your example is just plain silly. It has no bearing on anything. If information is cut and pasted from an on-line magazine and re-published whole cloth in a blogging effort somewhere, then for that information to hold validity, the blogger is going to add a link back to the source in order to be taken seriously. Heck, if it doesn't contain a link, then it is plagiarism and there are a whole set of laws which come into play during such an event. It is simply not the issue in question.
And finally. . , if you REALLY have to ask how tracked data can be used to cause harm, then you have been living under a rock for more than a decade. Please don't waste my time with such deliberately ignorant questions.
1. You get to read wired for free 2. You get to copy sections of their articles and post them to your own blogs 3. All wired gets is increased chance of attribution (you could still delete the link after pasting) and anonymous statistics on which portions of their stuff people found interesting.
You have it all backwards. Yes, industry (and slave-masters) would very much like everybody to think that way, but really it works like this. . .
1. Wired is able to exist because your attention holds value. They OWE their entire existence to you. You are the prize, not them. 2. The material they give you is payment for the time and attention they extract from you. 3. By controlling and tagging your time and attention, they are attempting to increase the value they extract from you without increasing the value of the material they offer in return. Since they do so without your consent, (and why should they? The web is free range, after all.), then there is no reason to feel any sort of guilt in disabling their little tracking device in order to protect your value.
You owe them nothing, but they are the honey trap; just showing up is payment enough. And you cause no danger to them in showing up, where by contrast, tracked data can be used to cause harm in a very real way.
The opt out process is very simple -- if you don't want to view wired's website under wired's conditions, then don't visit their website. Having an internet connection does not automatically entitle you to free access to everything you want on your own terms... (Yes, doing stuff like this might turn their readers away, but that's their choice, not yours)
Entitled or not, a Cat, as they say, can look at a King. And it works both ways; If Wired doesn't want Joe Public to visit their site, then they don't have to put content out on the vast internet commons.
And anyway, what the hell. . ??
I simply cannot understand why anybody would suggest that individuals ought to shut up and let large bodies mistreat them.
Is that what you were taught about your own value as a human? That you are a disposable worker ant and you should bloody-well take crap when it is served to you? I'd like to submit the possibility that you have been lied to. You are worth more that that.
For my part, I've already installed the little pac-man ghost on my browser. Entitled or not, fair or not, whatever the clever argument about justice, (and there always is one), I do not care. I simply will not submit like a good little cog, comrade, citizen or whatever. But feel free to allow yourself to have your earlobe tagged and your hind leg branded. If you want to play cattle, then that's your business. Just remember what happens to cattle.
I'm not altogether clear on what you were saying with much of that except to say you appear to consider cynicism a valid response to life.
I suppose definitions are in order, because perhaps you mean something I am not grasping. From my personal dictionary, "Cynicism" presupposes negativity and banality in all things, and actively warps observations until they fit this preconception. Objective observation, by contrast, requires that one take the bad with the good. (And vice versa, in this case.)
Blind cynicism is as silly as blind optimism. Both entrap and fail to report on reality in a useful manner.
People who say their are objective are usually full of shit. They are objective when it suits them or when they have no personal involvement. We all have strong opinions on things and trust me, people are rarely objective.
Trust a cynic? That's rather paradoxical. Still, you are right. Objectivity is not the first or natural response one sees most often.
You live long enough and you will see enough bull to make you a cynic. Listen to the media long enough and you should become a cynic.
Well, the objective truth is that the media is full of falsehoods. I accepted that long ago. Cynicism however, according to my definition, would require that I give up from seeking knowledge altogether, and further, (though less obviously), that I abandon my sense of joy. "Media" is a big word and it includes materials far away from TVs and newspapers. There's plenty of knowledge and truth out there, but it cannot be found when one's eyes are clouded over with bitterness.
I'm far from fault free on that point. I have tended at times to grow angry with people for not learning more quickly, but that doesn't help me one bit. Impatience is the first cousin to cynicism.
So these days, in order for Steve Jobs to to market effectively, he needs to. . .
1. Sit down and really think before jumping. 2. Repackage old technology with sensible user interfaces and thus change the world. 3. Do nothing new for a few years. 4. Announce nothing. 5. Let the world speculate with wet-dream anticipation until it infects even a decidedly biased anti-Mac forum like Slashdot. 6. Do nothing. 7. Do more nothing. 8. Release some more old technology with a sensible user interface and make everybody orgasm. Again. 9. And yes, Profit.
The man is either brilliant or the rest of us are just really slow.
And while I admire Jobs for being able to see, I can't stand Apple stuff. It's all designed for pod people. The part I can't reconcile is that he sees that people really ARE from pods and rather than swim against that tide, instead makes baby toys and rakes in the 'Wow'.
Once you remove the trolls, flames, childish sniping, political rants, and ravings of amoral anarchists, the remaining 1% is just plain wrong.
I think that percentage varies depending on the subject and quantity of knowledge surrounding it. China represents a fairly dark spot on the public awareness.
In any case, the idea is that when you have information that others do not, you share it so that everybody is able to step out of the mire of ignorance if they choose.
But it doesn't work if you don't participate.
Yes, there is a lot of fluff and uneducated opinion around here, but there is also a hunger for hard information. The only real trick is navigating all the ego traps; Egos do not like to think of themselves as lacking, but so what? That's a pandemic situation across all of humanity.
So put your cards on the table. What's the situation with China wrt Google and the internet as you see it?
Some of the criticisms in this analysis are spot on, while some are just dumb and deliberately fail to see why the points being criticized do in fact work.
EVERY movie Cameron has ever made has been formula to the bone. This one is the same. Its only two crimes are A) It was a 20 year old script which wasn't quite tight enough. And B), It criticizes American values and pits love and spiritual awareness directly against technology and human colonial expansionism.
Touchy-feely is good in a sinking-ship movie because the 15 year-old girls watched it three times each, (minimum!). But here, where the core appeal is to Sci-Fi hungry guys, such a message is simply not going to be received without some murky looks and grumbling. -Ego-related discontent to be later masked beneath, "Legitimate Critical Analysis." -You know, because every big film with plot holes gets this kind of treatment. (I didn't see anybody pull apart Star Trek or the last Batman like this. . , and neither of them were anywhere near perfect.)
Also. . . This may be a false reading, but it seems like it was it that creepy narrator guy who did a Phantom Menace analysis who inspired this. Monkey see, Monkey do. If you're going to be a movie critic, at least do it for the right reasons.
Being cynical is not cool. Being objective is cool. There's a difference.
Also some other tests were done about effects on humans, but with no results. Kwon, Myoung Soo: Effects of mobile phone electromagnetic field: behavioral and neurophysiological measurements, PhD thesis.
A look at the other publications by Kwon M.S. and the odd writing style in the introduction indicates a rather enthusiastic (read: "Rabid") supporter of the cell phone industry. It smells off. Given that other researchers have found entirely different results, I'd be surprised if this wasn't an example of one of the hundreds of industry PR attempts masked as science.
So, a grain of salt here.
The best thing to do in this whole case is to read a lot of different authors and papers and look for patterns. When medical companies are selling products which can directly stimulate the brain with directed EM, it is logical to conclude that the telecoms are not being entirely honest in their claims that nothing is going on. When one digs, one finds that the can of worms is very deep indeed.
I have a very difficult time understanding why people are so downright eager to trust giant corporations with their health and well-being. It's like geeks, the smart kids, lose their minds to some manner of Pavlovian programming when authority figures in white lab coats walk on the scene. But when geeks wake up, it's also a very powerful thing; they are well-suited to using their built-in skills of observation and critical analysis to actually build non-insane pictures of reality for themselves. The first step, though, is realizing that one has been programmed since birth; that's a tough one to accept because the ego jumps in and cries, "NO! Not me! I'm smarter than that! I would have SEEN!" --Which is, of course, totally false. We've ALL been clobbered since we were kids with teachers handing out love and approval in the form of little check marks and gold stars in environments where competition for social approval is vicious among the kids, largely due to age segregation among mammals which instinctively need to know the power order in the pack.
The signs are all there for anybody to read, but part of the programming is to make people look away and feel uncomfortable when they see the edges of the illusion peel up. Bring up taboo subjects among geeks, and their nostrils flare and they start to puff. It becomes obvious what is happening when one looks at this behavior through the lens of social programming. High emotion is a great means of blinding people to reason.
I am the person I am, and my clothes are just bits of cloth. Fashion is for people who are willing to judge people on the superficial!
I had a HUGE problem with that concept for years and years. consequently, I dressed like a highschool geek; conservative clothes I hoped looked professional enough to not get laughed at. I'd never want to wear anything remotely out-landish or 'cool'. Clothes had to work properly and protect me from the elements. That's it.
Then I realized: "NO! The body is like a canvas. Who wants to look at boring paintings? Fashion is fun! It affects how people react to me! Neat-o!"
Actually, that was more a forced recognition after one girlfriend had had enough of my bland & safe attire and insisted that I look cool in the clothes I wore. The thing which was so difficult at the time is that the entire world started to treat me with a LOT more respect when I dressed as directed. The fact that girls took a great deal more interest in me was not an insignificant factor my being willing to explore the whole thing further. Heck, peacocks have those ridiculous tails, right?
The big problem was overcoming the inherent shallowness of it all. My original position was that clothes, beyond their protection-from-the-elements aspect, are a lie, at best an effective tool to manipulate people. But then I realized, yeah, they're a lie, but they're also Body Art! And that's great! You don't need to shop at the popular stores; you can outfit yourself just as effectively, (if not more so), at the Salvation Army center. And if I walk around with the intention of trying to bring a fun and bright piece of visual appeal into the world, then I can live with the whole clothing-as-manipulation thing quite happily. And then a curious thing happened; I realized that it was not a manipulation at all; I really did feel like the clothes reflected who I was.
The fear and insecurity were gone, and the outward visual showed that quite honestly. Interesting!
Out of all the things in my life which were difficult challenges, this one seems particularly ridiculous, but there it is.
Anyway. . .
So yeah, every outward aspect of your being which people can see and which you have control over, will shape the reactions you receive, and an email name is the same way. A poorly selected email name will not serve you well; it's swimming against the popular tide without any need to do so. People WILL judge you either positively or negatively, and so you need to take this into account in order to be effective in the world. Rather than sweat over the unfairness of this, why not flip it on its ear and have some fun with it? You don't have to think of it as a negative thing if that isn't your intention.
In the end, clean up your innards, banish fear, and then have your outward impression express who you really are.
It's okay for painters to paint pictures which give people a positive feeling.
This could change the game for small tablets; you could hold the tablet on either side and use your fingers behind the screen to manipulate images without obstructing your view of them.
I've seen variations of such a solution which artificially create a 'finger' effect through graphics with the touch pad on the back of the device, but this would be the real thing.
Interesting.
Also. . .
People are obviously worried about the privacy factor of see-through computer screens, but I could see this being considered a huge plus in the evil corporate work environment; the drones would only be allowed to use laptops where the backside is a window to the front. A lot less Facebook and Farmville would eat into company time that way. Or at least, this may be how the pointy-haired dictator might think when placing bulk-orders for laptops.
[...]home and end keys that go TO THE BEGINNING AND END OF A LINE. LIKE EVERY SANE COMPUTER SYSTEM ON THE PLANET!?!?!?!?
Your request for options beyond the minimalist factory defaults suggests an unhealthy desire for excessive control over your environment. As everybody knows, such deviant individuals threaten our simple way of life. "Simplicity is happiness. Compliance is duty."
Now please come with us, citizen. You are overdue for your mandatory injection.
Reality is coiling up in preparation for a big paradigm shift; we've all been seeing the signs, and the collective human awareness, like a fleet of little paddle boats on the sea, is carried along with it. Those little boats which are well constructed, which are not loaded down with excess baggage, which are sensibly captained. . , these can rise with the wave. But those which are leaky and poorly held together and that are pointing every which-way, will capsize. Or so the logic runs. . .
Anyway, the collective subconscious is always many steps ahead of the Now, and is constantly sounding alarms in our conscious lives. The book which falls off the shelf at your feet is the one to read. For some reason, James Cameron is, in my opinion, tuned hard-core into this vibe. His messages have always carried a lot of metaphoric heft. The more one looks at his films, the more one sees. This is even true with a romance like Titanic! With the sinking economy and the ship of state being constantly referred to, I can't escape from the raw images of the Titanic going down with all hands despite its power and grandeur. It offers a touchstone of metaphor which I always have in my head, though I doubt he was thinking of it as such when it was created. But that's how the subconscious works. When the news tells us, "The economy is sinking!", James Cameron has provided the easy visuals for everybody to tap into.
Anyway. . ,
Avatar brings many new and sharp ideas to the surface. There's the whole UFO phenomenon which few ever want to talk about, much less study well enough to be able to talk about it intelligently should they ever choose to. Ignorance rules the day with many. (For the love of Pete, read Richard Dolan!) And beyond that, I suspect that as the finishing touches are put on humanity's complete take-over, we'll begin to understand colonialism from a whole new perspective. James Cameron is tuned right in.
And the interesting thing is that our media reflects the changes in more than just subject. As 3D beings, our ability to communicate through media is largely done by manipulating the levels beneath we have already mastered; 1D and 2D. Switching up a level of awareness will presumably allow for an expansion into power over 3D visual media. That Avatar contained such relevant messages regarding Alien invasion, colonialism, and spiritualism also happened to be wrapped up in a 3D delivery media. . , well, I find that intriguing.
But then, I'm a patterns guy. I see and read and think the stuff few people are capable of getting past their knee-jerk emotional control systems to process without feeling sick, -and who can blame them? (Other than me on a shitty day. Sorry guys.), so I get to play, "Assemble a picture from countless seemingly disparate pieces". -And then put up with the automatic abuse offered by others for not playing with my Lego bricks according to the official rules. But whatever; it's a small and ever-shrinking price to pay for an increasingly useful scope of vision.
So 3D telly in our homes? What does it mean? I can sum it up with one quote:
Not that I'm complaining. . , but this is probably total marketing at this point.
It's like not letting people into a dance club all at once. Having a group of people waiting out in the cold in their night-club gear is excellent advertisement from a variety of standpoints.
By the time Apple actually releases this gizmo, it'll be pre-sold through the wet dream factor alone. All it has to do is not suck, and if it actually happens to be cool, then it'll do very well indeed. But more than this, all this attention indicates that people REALLY want this thing. Star Trek computer GUI devices. There's always, it seems, something that the whole population is hankering for. In the past, it was movie, book and television show releases; entertainment. Somehow, ASUS and now Apple tapped into that same vibe but for a manufactured product. Before it has even left the design floor!
I guess this isn't terribly new wrt computers. I remember waiting with pent up anticipation for the first crop of 486 PCs to hit the market, but this thing has a much less geeky vibe to it. My mom would probably dig such a device.
Whatever. I won't be buying one unless because I find Apple's "Evangelism" kick creepy and patronizing. It's like they finally realized who they really are and have embraced it with gusto. Brr.
I don't know about the science behind the 3D, but the end result did look amazing and I forgot I was even wearing the glasses after a couple of minutes. From the very first scene where people were waking up in zero-G in a mile-long star ship interior, I was wowed.
It wasn't like any of the carnival 3D flicks I've seen before, and I didn't have any eye-strain. (I know what you mean about crappy 3D; but for some reason this didn't hurt my head.) Anyway, since it doesn't cost any more to see it in 3D than in 2D, I'd definitely opt for the gee-whiz version if you're going to watch it.
The film, like everything Cameron has done, was formula to the bone. The criticisms against Avatar are founded largely I think on the fact that unlike his previous fare, this one wasn't quite as tight. There were a couple of logical, "Huh?" moments for me, primarily because tree people with sticks v.s. space people with machine guns really only has one ending. But by and large it was still well worth $10. Given that the last three films I saw in theaters included, "Star Trek", "Indy 4" and "X-Files", James Cameron's latest offers by far the most entertaining and least awful Fantasy/Sci-Fi.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not a physicist, but you hear things, you know. . ?
I'm not altogether clear about all this talk regarding so-called, Quantum Entanglement. It doesn't sound as though there is anything being transmitted at all.
Or, just blowing smoke off the top of my head. . , what if two points on, say, a 10 dimensional object appear in our space to occupy two distant locations, but which are in fact part of the same object. If you move one point, the other moves instantaneously. Information could be transmitted like this, and it would appear to us as though it were traveling a great distance.
Or something like that.
Like I said. I am not a physicist, but you hear stuff, you know? And one of the things I've heard is that Einstein's theories were furthered but kept very quiet. There have been some very weird deaths among physicists.
-FL
I have to ask: Why does it pain you to side with the authorities?
Because I've been in a pattern of responding with something ranging between annoyance to outrage to the stimuli offered over the last decade, and pattern behavior takes energy and effort to break out of.
Though, given that the pattern of insane authoritarian action on the world stage continues to be what it is, I doubt I'll be needing to stretch a whole lot on that count.
-FL
While people certainly do blow up buildings and airplanes, they are not frustrated nobodies blowing off steam on social networks. They are, by and large, black-ops spooks and their puppets.
Although, I would agree that the guy who posted his mock bomb threat was being foolish. Twitter creates some untested landscape; we long ago decided as a culture that it's not okay to joke about bombs at an airport; it creates needless static and stress for the security staffers to work through and that by itself creates a hazard. This is a test of that same social agreement, and as much as it pains me to side with the authorities, frankly, I think cracking down on idiots joking about bombs in public places is probably a wise measure.
But we should also not be over-reacting. If this guy ends up with his house torn apart in a futile search for non-existent bomb-making materials, or if he finds himself in the lock-up or whatever, then that would be stupid. All things in measure.
-FL
You are quite an optimist. I don't know why. [. . .] Whatever you read should be considered an outright lie. The only good to be gleaned from this lie is to figure out who it benefits ,so you can speculate on what really happened. Then keep your eyes and ears open for any supporting disinformation.
Really?
Amy Goodman strikes me as somebody who has made difficult and earnest choices in order to report as accurately as she is able. Like everybody, she and the rest of her team are subject to the same and various mind-control techniques visited upon the world by those who waves such wands, but at least their intentions appear to be coming from a place of practiced integrity. --And such integrity allows one a degree of protection against the mind/perception warping forces arrayed against us. It's not zipped up by any means; you're not going to see, for example, Richard Dolan invited on as a guest or see psychopathy discussed openly, or any other such people or efforts which press as far against the veil, so you are right, such 'news' is leaving out the truth. (Though I'd question if it is just more dissociative sleep-walking and not a tactical decision given that we ARE dealing with a skittish public. Getting Goodman's private views on reality would be fascinating.) In any case, it's better than the outright conscious complicity with psychopathic leadership that is practiced by virtually everybody else on the news spectrum.
It's important to remember that approximately half the people out there, if given the choice on a soul-level, would choose love & enlightenment over fear & sleep. It's simply the ignorance, control measures and general confusion which prevents delineation from being altogether clear and the news from being entirely valid, but the intentions do manifest in the ways they are able. That, based on my years of seeking, appears to be an objective truth, so optimism and pessimism really have no place when making such calls.
Just my opinion.
-FL
Well , their suicide sets a good example for a dated corrupt media. A good idea defended by the founding fathers and others was reduced to a shallow meaningless lie of propaganda for government, liberal causes and big business. What doesn't evolve as necessary, dies as superfluous tripe. It won't be missed.
It won't die. It's too important to the ubiquitous propaganda effort required to keep Objective Reality subdued down to a mere nagging thought at the back of everybody's mind. My guess is that this NYT thing is a ploy which fits somehow into the whole internet crackdown which has been brewing in the wings. (The Obama White House, being just one player, is preparing some pretty crazy legislation to be unleashed on the world stage.)
Somewhat more real news comes from places like http://www.democracynow.org/ --Which while it doesn't touch certain things, is a helluva lot less doped up than the NYT.
-FL
I find this kind of awareness experiment absolutely fascinating! -I think it is deeply related to many things in our reality, and the ability of people to ignore changes in order to exist within a logical continuum is what is meant by being Asleep versus Being Awake. There are SO many things in 'official' reality which don't add up and which take a form of cognitive dissonance, (the term people studying this stuff have come up with to explain the general insanity of people's lack of reaction to weirdness in the world), to live with.
Here's the study I think you are referring to. . .
And here's a treat: some videos of "Change Blindess" experiments.
-FL
Here is what I got out of this whole thread...The US should: 1. Educate all poor people of the world. 2. Dismantle some, most, all of our intelligence agencies. 3. Fire all politicians. 4. Don't fear or worry about terrorism. So what planet do you guy live on? Great ideas but how do you make them happen. How about some solutions that we can actually do in the next 10 years.
1. The US is just a name for a big whack of people living in one place with an out-of-control government. It's not obligated to, and probably can't do anything cohesive or useful. Which means. . .
2. People have to educate themselves. This becomes more possible for more people with each step forward YOU take as an individual person. You are part of a greater whole and your impact upon that whole happens in ways which are non-linear. So educate yourself and you'll be doing your bit. The rest happens pretty much on automatic so long as you obey your inner drives and do the right thing, whatever it happens to be in any given moment.
3. Intelligence agencies are the enemy, and you can't dismantle them. So you'll just have to operate along your own path and let them do their thing along theirs. In the end, so long as you continually absorb knowledge, they can't stop you or anybody else from growing powerful. You might die a few times, but those are just blips in the overall scheme of things. In the end, those who seek to control out of and through fear and insanity undo themselves. It's a universal truth.
4. Politicians are just puppets and villains. You can't really fire them or even replace them particularly well because the system is so utterly corrupted from within. (The more you learn about it, the more hopeless you realize it is). Again, the solution is to just get on with your own learning and step around their boundaries when they put them in front of you. In the end, the only power they hold is that of withholding knowledge, so the more you learn the weaker their hold over you becomes. And it's geometric in growth. The more you learn, the faster you learn. It's those first starting steps which are so difficult, and where the fight is taking place. It's easy to keep people ignorant if they don't even realize that they are ignorant.
5. Other people who are on the same path; when you start to get into a groove with others and network and criticize with an aim to overcoming ego and false knowledge, then the strength of that signal increases, again, geometrically.
That's how it's done, and now is as good a time as any to begin.
-FL
The terrorists were manufactured.
The public is persistent and scrappy, and they refuse to let up. More information keeps cropping up and the threads keep expanding and the picture gets more and more clear. So any beliefs one might have settled on last year or three years ago or earlier based on the available information and spin at the time always need to be updated. That's the way of knowledge; Love it or lie to yourself, (and pretend that Popular Mechanics isn't run by cherry-picking true-believers of God and Country). Anyway, this latest has been put through the crucible since November of last year. . .
The forum at "Pilots for 9-11 Truth" is worth lurking in if you want to understand how the flight data recorder info has been examined and what juicy details it has revealed. (Basically, that the government story is complete horsepoop.)
So this whole question of so-called "terrorism" is really a big, bad and messy joke.
-FL
Please explain what value Wired gets from my time and attention unless I click on ads, subscribe to printed magazine and so on?
Well that's a rather rhetorical waste-my-time kind of question. Surly you grasp that "eyeballs" are bought, sold and generally coveted in the ad industry. You don't have to act directly on an advert for you to have delivered your value simply by seeing it. --By increasing the percentage of possible click-throughs an ad may receive, your presence increases the value. There's a reason ads during the Superbowl cost a gazillion dollars and late night ad spots on local cable channels are as little as a few hundred bucks.
But static eyeballs are one thing; they have even more valuable if they can be labeled and tracked. If somebody knows your psychological profile, income level, cultural background, sex, education and general interests, etc., then the value of your eyeballs increases. But you know that already.
If I post a portion of their article on a blog without attribution, they are deprived of this possibility for a portion of readers of their work.
"Deprived?" Seriously? You're trying to make them sound like victims because the knowledge they put into the world happens to spread according to the naturally efficient systems developed through evolution over millions of years? Why is it that conservative business types seem to be locked in a permanent pitted battle against the very backbone of reality? (Actually, I know the answer to that, but it may be something for you to ponder between prayer studies.)
Okay. . .
First of all, this is just another banal argument in favor of locking down the flow of knowledge and information, keeping poor people uneducated and various other nasty things. I have little patience for anybody who has chosen to fight for a world where greed and fear of want trumps human awareness. The more we know, the stronger we are as a species, whereas the dark side wants us to remain stupid and easy to manipulate and generally enslaved. Intent is the key here, and every argument which INTENDS to increase slavery is just a semantic bit of bullshit which adds to the pile of human misery. To make such an argument, in essence, declares that in order to avoid the fear (just the FEAR) of not having enough for the self it is okay to make sure that others live in deprivation. This is the essence of reptilian brain thinking versus the higher brain functions we are capable of as a species. Those who want us to go back to sleep versus those who want us to wake up as fully as possible.
Secondly. . , Wired is, without asking permission, selling knowledge of you to advertisers. Why is it okay for them to do this when it is not okay for you to share the knowledge you glean from them?
Thirdly. . , your example is just plain silly. It has no bearing on anything. If information is cut and pasted from an on-line magazine and re-published whole cloth in a blogging effort somewhere, then for that information to hold validity, the blogger is going to add a link back to the source in order to be taken seriously. Heck, if it doesn't contain a link, then it is plagiarism and there are a whole set of laws which come into play during such an event. It is simply not the issue in question.
And finally. . , if you REALLY have to ask how tracked data can be used to cause harm, then you have been living under a rock for more than a decade. Please don't waste my time with such deliberately ignorant questions.
-FL
1. You get to read wired for free
2. You get to copy sections of their articles and post them to your own blogs
3. All wired gets is increased chance of attribution (you could still delete the link after pasting) and anonymous statistics on which portions of their stuff people found interesting.
You have it all backwards. Yes, industry (and slave-masters) would very much like everybody to think that way, but really it works like this. . .
1. Wired is able to exist because your attention holds value. They OWE their entire existence to you. You are the prize, not them.
2. The material they give you is payment for the time and attention they extract from you.
3. By controlling and tagging your time and attention, they are attempting to increase the value they extract from you without increasing the value of the material they offer in return. Since they do so without your consent, (and why should they? The web is free range, after all.), then there is no reason to feel any sort of guilt in disabling their little tracking device in order to protect your value.
You owe them nothing, but they are the honey trap; just showing up is payment enough. And you cause no danger to them in showing up, where by contrast, tracked data can be used to cause harm in a very real way.
-FL
The opt out process is very simple -- if you don't want to view wired's website under wired's conditions, then don't visit their website. Having an internet connection does not automatically entitle you to free access to everything you want on your own terms... (Yes, doing stuff like this might turn their readers away, but that's their choice, not yours)
Entitled or not, a Cat, as they say, can look at a King. And it works both ways; If Wired doesn't want Joe Public to visit their site, then they don't have to put content out on the vast internet commons.
And anyway, what the hell. . ??
I simply cannot understand why anybody would suggest that individuals ought to shut up and let large bodies mistreat them.
Is that what you were taught about your own value as a human? That you are a disposable worker ant and you should bloody-well take crap when it is served to you? I'd like to submit the possibility that you have been lied to. You are worth more that that.
For my part, I've already installed the little pac-man ghost on my browser. Entitled or not, fair or not, whatever the clever argument about justice, (and there always is one), I do not care. I simply will not submit like a good little cog, comrade, citizen or whatever. But feel free to allow yourself to have your earlobe tagged and your hind leg branded. If you want to play cattle, then that's your business. Just remember what happens to cattle.
-FL
I'm not altogether clear on what you were saying with much of that except to say you appear to consider cynicism a valid response to life.
I suppose definitions are in order, because perhaps you mean something I am not grasping. From my personal dictionary, "Cynicism" presupposes negativity and banality in all things, and actively warps observations until they fit this preconception. Objective observation, by contrast, requires that one take the bad with the good. (And vice versa, in this case.)
Blind cynicism is as silly as blind optimism. Both entrap and fail to report on reality in a useful manner.
People who say their are objective are usually full of shit. They are objective when it suits them or when they have no personal involvement.
We all have strong opinions on things and trust me, people are rarely objective.
Trust a cynic? That's rather paradoxical. Still, you are right. Objectivity is not the first or natural response one sees most often.
You live long enough and you will see enough bull to make you a cynic.
Listen to the media long enough and you should become a cynic.
Well, the objective truth is that the media is full of falsehoods. I accepted that long ago. Cynicism however, according to my definition, would require that I give up from seeking knowledge altogether, and further, (though less obviously), that I abandon my sense of joy. "Media" is a big word and it includes materials far away from TVs and newspapers. There's plenty of knowledge and truth out there, but it cannot be found when one's eyes are clouded over with bitterness.
I'm far from fault free on that point. I have tended at times to grow angry with people for not learning more quickly, but that doesn't help me one bit. Impatience is the first cousin to cynicism.
-FL
So these days, in order for Steve Jobs to to market effectively, he needs to. . .
1. Sit down and really think before jumping.
2. Repackage old technology with sensible user interfaces and thus change the world.
3. Do nothing new for a few years.
4. Announce nothing.
5. Let the world speculate with wet-dream anticipation until it infects even a decidedly biased anti-Mac forum like Slashdot.
6. Do nothing.
7. Do more nothing.
8. Release some more old technology with a sensible user interface and make everybody orgasm. Again.
9. And yes, Profit.
The man is either brilliant or the rest of us are just really slow.
And while I admire Jobs for being able to see, I can't stand Apple stuff. It's all designed for pod people. The part I can't reconcile is that he sees that people really ARE from pods and rather than swim against that tide, instead makes baby toys and rakes in the 'Wow'.
-FL
Once you remove the trolls, flames, childish sniping, political rants, and ravings of amoral anarchists, the remaining 1% is just plain wrong.
I think that percentage varies depending on the subject and quantity of knowledge surrounding it. China represents a fairly dark spot on the public awareness.
In any case, the idea is that when you have information that others do not, you share it so that everybody is able to step out of the mire of ignorance if they choose.
But it doesn't work if you don't participate.
Yes, there is a lot of fluff and uneducated opinion around here, but there is also a hunger for hard information. The only real trick is navigating all the ego traps; Egos do not like to think of themselves as lacking, but so what? That's a pandemic situation across all of humanity.
So put your cards on the table. What's the situation with China wrt Google and the internet as you see it?
-FL
Some of the criticisms in this analysis are spot on, while some are just dumb and deliberately fail to see why the points being criticized do in fact work.
EVERY movie Cameron has ever made has been formula to the bone. This one is the same. Its only two crimes are A) It was a 20 year old script which wasn't quite tight enough. And B), It criticizes American values and pits love and spiritual awareness directly against technology and human colonial expansionism.
Touchy-feely is good in a sinking-ship movie because the 15 year-old girls watched it three times each, (minimum!). But here, where the core appeal is to Sci-Fi hungry guys, such a message is simply not going to be received without some murky looks and grumbling. -Ego-related discontent to be later masked beneath, "Legitimate Critical Analysis." -You know, because every big film with plot holes gets this kind of treatment. (I didn't see anybody pull apart Star Trek or the last Batman like this. . , and neither of them were anywhere near perfect.)
Also. . . This may be a false reading, but it seems like it was it that creepy narrator guy who did a Phantom Menace analysis who inspired this. Monkey see, Monkey do. If you're going to be a movie critic, at least do it for the right reasons.
Being cynical is not cool. Being objective is cool. There's a difference.
-FL
Also some other tests were done about effects on humans, but with no results. Kwon, Myoung Soo: Effects of mobile phone electromagnetic field: behavioral and neurophysiological measurements, PhD thesis.
A look at the other publications by Kwon M.S. and the odd writing style in the introduction indicates a rather enthusiastic (read: "Rabid") supporter of the cell phone industry. It smells off. Given that other researchers have found entirely different results, I'd be surprised if this wasn't an example of one of the hundreds of industry PR attempts masked as science.
So, a grain of salt here.
The best thing to do in this whole case is to read a lot of different authors and papers and look for patterns. When medical companies are selling products which can directly stimulate the brain with directed EM, it is logical to conclude that the telecoms are not being entirely honest in their claims that nothing is going on. When one digs, one finds that the can of worms is very deep indeed.
I have a very difficult time understanding why people are so downright eager to trust giant corporations with their health and well-being. It's like geeks, the smart kids, lose their minds to some manner of Pavlovian programming when authority figures in white lab coats walk on the scene. But when geeks wake up, it's also a very powerful thing; they are well-suited to using their built-in skills of observation and critical analysis to actually build non-insane pictures of reality for themselves. The first step, though, is realizing that one has been programmed since birth; that's a tough one to accept because the ego jumps in and cries, "NO! Not me! I'm smarter than that! I would have SEEN!" --Which is, of course, totally false. We've ALL been clobbered since we were kids with teachers handing out love and approval in the form of little check marks and gold stars in environments where competition for social approval is vicious among the kids, largely due to age segregation among mammals which instinctively need to know the power order in the pack.
The signs are all there for anybody to read, but part of the programming is to make people look away and feel uncomfortable when they see the edges of the illusion peel up. Bring up taboo subjects among geeks, and their nostrils flare and they start to puff. It becomes obvious what is happening when one looks at this behavior through the lens of social programming. High emotion is a great means of blinding people to reason.
-FL
Wow, that's got to be the longest "coming out" announcement I've ever read.
What? Was that a gay joke? Oh dear, you've got some knots tied up.
But no judgment from me. Be whoever you need to be!
-FL
I am the person I am, and my clothes are just bits of cloth. Fashion is for people who are willing to judge people on the superficial!
I had a HUGE problem with that concept for years and years. consequently, I dressed like a highschool geek; conservative clothes I hoped looked professional enough to not get laughed at. I'd never want to wear anything remotely out-landish or 'cool'. Clothes had to work properly and protect me from the elements. That's it.
Then I realized: "NO! The body is like a canvas. Who wants to look at boring paintings? Fashion is fun! It affects how people react to me! Neat-o!"
Actually, that was more a forced recognition after one girlfriend had had enough of my bland & safe attire and insisted that I look cool in the clothes I wore. The thing which was so difficult at the time is that the entire world started to treat me with a LOT more respect when I dressed as directed. The fact that girls took a great deal more interest in me was not an insignificant factor my being willing to explore the whole thing further. Heck, peacocks have those ridiculous tails, right?
The big problem was overcoming the inherent shallowness of it all. My original position was that clothes, beyond their protection-from-the-elements aspect, are a lie, at best an effective tool to manipulate people. But then I realized, yeah, they're a lie, but they're also Body Art! And that's great! You don't need to shop at the popular stores; you can outfit yourself just as effectively, (if not more so), at the Salvation Army center. And if I walk around with the intention of trying to bring a fun and bright piece of visual appeal into the world, then I can live with the whole clothing-as-manipulation thing quite happily. And then a curious thing happened; I realized that it was not a manipulation at all; I really did feel like the clothes reflected who I was.
The fear and insecurity were gone, and the outward visual showed that quite honestly. Interesting!
Out of all the things in my life which were difficult challenges, this one seems particularly ridiculous, but there it is.
Anyway. . .
So yeah, every outward aspect of your being which people can see and which you have control over, will shape the reactions you receive, and an email name is the same way. A poorly selected email name will not serve you well; it's swimming against the popular tide without any need to do so. People WILL judge you either positively or negatively, and so you need to take this into account in order to be effective in the world. Rather than sweat over the unfairness of this, why not flip it on its ear and have some fun with it? You don't have to think of it as a negative thing if that isn't your intention.
In the end, clean up your innards, banish fear, and then have your outward impression express who you really are.
It's okay for painters to paint pictures which give people a positive feeling.
-FL
This could change the game for small tablets; you could hold the tablet on either side and use your fingers behind the screen to manipulate images without obstructing your view of them.
I've seen variations of such a solution which artificially create a 'finger' effect through graphics with the touch pad on the back of the device, but this would be the real thing.
Interesting.
Also. . .
People are obviously worried about the privacy factor of see-through computer screens, but I could see this being considered a huge plus in the evil corporate work environment; the drones would only be allowed to use laptops where the backside is a window to the front. A lot less Facebook and Farmville would eat into company time that way. Or at least, this may be how the pointy-haired dictator might think when placing bulk-orders for laptops.
-FL
[...]home and end keys that go TO THE BEGINNING AND END OF A LINE. LIKE EVERY SANE COMPUTER SYSTEM ON THE PLANET!?!?!?!?
Your request for options beyond the minimalist factory defaults suggests an unhealthy desire for excessive control over your environment. As everybody knows, such deviant individuals threaten our simple way of life. "Simplicity is happiness. Compliance is duty."
Now please come with us, citizen. You are overdue for your mandatory injection.
-FL
Reality is coiling up in preparation for a big paradigm shift; we've all been seeing the signs, and the collective human awareness, like a fleet of little paddle boats on the sea, is carried along with it. Those little boats which are well constructed, which are not loaded down with excess baggage, which are sensibly captained. . , these can rise with the wave. But those which are leaky and poorly held together and that are pointing every which-way, will capsize. Or so the logic runs. . .
Anyway, the collective subconscious is always many steps ahead of the Now, and is constantly sounding alarms in our conscious lives. The book which falls off the shelf at your feet is the one to read. For some reason, James Cameron is, in my opinion, tuned hard-core into this vibe. His messages have always carried a lot of metaphoric heft. The more one looks at his films, the more one sees. This is even true with a romance like Titanic! With the sinking economy and the ship of state being constantly referred to, I can't escape from the raw images of the Titanic going down with all hands despite its power and grandeur. It offers a touchstone of metaphor which I always have in my head, though I doubt he was thinking of it as such when it was created. But that's how the subconscious works. When the news tells us, "The economy is sinking!", James Cameron has provided the easy visuals for everybody to tap into.
Anyway. . ,
Avatar brings many new and sharp ideas to the surface. There's the whole UFO phenomenon which few ever want to talk about, much less study well enough to be able to talk about it intelligently should they ever choose to. Ignorance rules the day with many. (For the love of Pete, read Richard Dolan!) And beyond that, I suspect that as the finishing touches are put on humanity's complete take-over, we'll begin to understand colonialism from a whole new perspective. James Cameron is tuned right in.
And the interesting thing is that our media reflects the changes in more than just subject. As 3D beings, our ability to communicate through media is largely done by manipulating the levels beneath we have already mastered; 1D and 2D. Switching up a level of awareness will presumably allow for an expansion into power over 3D visual media. That Avatar contained such relevant messages regarding Alien invasion, colonialism, and spiritualism also happened to be wrapped up in a 3D delivery media. . , well, I find that intriguing.
But then, I'm a patterns guy. I see and read and think the stuff few people are capable of getting past their knee-jerk emotional control systems to process without feeling sick, -and who can blame them? (Other than me on a shitty day. Sorry guys.), so I get to play, "Assemble a picture from countless seemingly disparate pieces". -And then put up with the automatic abuse offered by others for not playing with my Lego bricks according to the official rules. But whatever; it's a small and ever-shrinking price to pay for an increasingly useful scope of vision.
So 3D telly in our homes? What does it mean? I can sum it up with one quote:
"The medium is the message!"
-FL
No mod points today, so. . .
Thanks for posting this.
-FL
Neat!
-FL
How on earth did this make it to the front page?
Not that I'm complaining. . , but this is probably total marketing at this point.
It's like not letting people into a dance club all at once. Having a group of people waiting out in the cold in their night-club gear is excellent advertisement from a variety of standpoints.
By the time Apple actually releases this gizmo, it'll be pre-sold through the wet dream factor alone. All it has to do is not suck, and if it actually happens to be cool, then it'll do very well indeed. But more than this, all this attention indicates that people REALLY want this thing. Star Trek computer GUI devices. There's always, it seems, something that the whole population is hankering for. In the past, it was movie, book and television show releases; entertainment. Somehow, ASUS and now Apple tapped into that same vibe but for a manufactured product. Before it has even left the design floor!
I guess this isn't terribly new wrt computers. I remember waiting with pent up anticipation for the first crop of 486 PCs to hit the market, but this thing has a much less geeky vibe to it. My mom would probably dig such a device.
Whatever. I won't be buying one unless because I find Apple's "Evangelism" kick creepy and patronizing. It's like they finally realized who they really are and have embraced it with gusto. Brr.
-FL
I don't know about the science behind the 3D, but the end result did look amazing and I forgot I was even wearing the glasses after a couple of minutes. From the very first scene where people were waking up in zero-G in a mile-long star ship interior, I was wowed.
It wasn't like any of the carnival 3D flicks I've seen before, and I didn't have any eye-strain. (I know what you mean about crappy 3D; but for some reason this didn't hurt my head.) Anyway, since it doesn't cost any more to see it in 3D than in 2D, I'd definitely opt for the gee-whiz version if you're going to watch it.
The film, like everything Cameron has done, was formula to the bone. The criticisms against Avatar are founded largely I think on the fact that unlike his previous fare, this one wasn't quite as tight. There were a couple of logical, "Huh?" moments for me, primarily because tree people with sticks v.s. space people with machine guns really only has one ending. But by and large it was still well worth $10. Given that the last three films I saw in theaters included, "Star Trek", "Indy 4" and "X-Files", James Cameron's latest offers by far the most entertaining and least awful Fantasy/Sci-Fi.
-FL