---I can understand the moral delimma of cloning/abortion -- The value of life. Where do we draw the line?---
Simple question: Are you a vegitarian? If not, then I put it to you that you've drawn an entirely _arbitrary_ and meaningless line for your moral values. A blob of jelly with DNA instructions is infinately more valuable to you than a fully developed creature that can feel pain, form emotional bonds, and have moral interests: just because the particular protein strains in the blob of jelly happen to encode for a homo sapien and not a chicken. If less people would simply make up moral values out of the blue or from faith beliefs, and more would just THINK about ethics, about what it means to have a moral interest and how ANY treatment of anything should take those moral interests into account, then we'd have far less of a problem or a worry about the future treatment of ANYONE.
---Cloning comes down to selfishness. ---
Oh, clearly. Just like anything that you are against, right? All comes down to the moral vapidity and evil of those that don't see the world through your hell-colored sunglasses.
---In addition, Bush's decision has not prevented unused in vitro embryos from being destroyed. They simply get thrown out now, rather than having their stem cells extracted for research purposes. ---
This, more than anything, is pretty solid evidence for me that Bush's "stand" is a cynically political descion, not a moral one. If he REALLY cared about the destruction of embryos, he'd be cutting federal funding to fertility clinics and fertility treatment research that refused to stop mass producing and mass discarding fertilized embryos. But that would be political suicide: what is more pro-life than fertility clinics? Science is "scary" and misunderstood enough to attack though!
Killing stem cells can't involve the killing of a supposed singluar human "soul" imbued at conception anyway (as far as we can tell materially, it certainly kills nothing anywhere even as developed and capable of having moral interests than a shrimp, to which most people accord no moral value at all!), since after the point where the cell is killed for stem cell research, it can still divide into twins (or be made to divide into twins). Do they each get half the original, conception granted soul? Or it could not implant at all, which happens about 45% of the time naturally. Or, it could implant, but fail to develop and simply reabsorbed into the mother. Do mothers get two souls then? How many souls can one person rack up?
Despite the fact that the poster you are responding to is obviously some sarcastic beleiver trying to make a mockery of what he supposes anti-religious views might be.....
---He hated the Jewish RACE. So he tried to kill them. ---
If it hadn't been for millenia of Chruch perpetrated anti-semitism against this supposed "race" of Christ-killers, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere with this slander and slaughter of Jews. Hitler's Christian rhetoric, especially based as it was on Martin Luther, was a big sell for German the masses.
You're SO correct (whoops: I mean "right"). People on the right all oppose stem cell reasearch and people on the left are for it. That is SO true. And it all boils down to this: "leftists" are evil, selfish, and thoughtless. Whereas, people on "the right" would NEVER sell out the future for the here and now: not even if the stockholders demanded it. They value all life, and are deeply compassionate about other human beings.
Clearly, the crux of this debate is that people on the left lack any values at all: they're basically nihilists in disguise. They would rather EAT YOUR BABIES and RAPE YOUR WOMEN as soon as spit on you. Not like anyone on the right: they have values up the wazoo. And what's more, they are the RIGHT values: I mean, there's just no debating that. Like, check this brilliant point of yours out: ---("but those embryos are just clumps of cells" -- a statement that is 100% true of each one of us, as the scientists of Nazi Germany would explain if they were still around, given that there's no clear, scientific point at which we become more than a clump, other than conception---
Totaly! (well, except for the fact that everything is alive before cocneption as well). There is totally no difference in the moral interests of a stem cell with no nervous system and a baby. But a chicken, incredibly more advanced in every way than any stem cell, is of no moral worth at all: it has no moral interests. Why can't people just understand that? I mean, it says so in the freakin' Bible, which must make it 100% true even if (as you say) God doesn't exist! But I mean, everytime I think about anything I don't like: boom- it's JUST like the Nazis. The Nazis were so totally leftist! Social Darwinism, Anti-Semitism, military facism: those were like the biggest leftist plots ever!
---It's not so much the teaching of theories that's really bugging them, it's the indoctrination of children into the notion that life isn't a fundamental right given to us by God,---
Have to take issue with you on this one: not all rightists are religious zealots. Many rightists know that rights come from the law, and the vigalence of the values of the people, not any God. Plato refuted that nonsense (divine command morality) before the concept of rights had even been thought of!
--- a view the right believes is, itself, regardless of whether God actually exists, necessary to the preservation of a free society over many generations.)---
Totally! The commoners just wouldn't be able to function if they didn't believe God existed! They'd rape and kill each other at the drop of a hat! I mean, no one is really capable of valuing other human beings unless they are threatened by eternal torment or authority! Everyone is basically an inhuman monster, accept maybe you and me.
Just because something is CLAIMED to have happened once doesn't mean one is off the hook for having to back up the claim.
---You could argue that the various faiths is evidence of this after generations of word of mouth errors, and idealistic differences (just look at the anglican vs catholic churchs).
----
No, you couldn't, because as is a basic starting point in science: beliefs are not facts. If beliefs were true merely by virtue of people believing them, then there would be no need for science or logic: soliphism would reign! Few creation myths are realy as similar as apologists make them out to be. Once you get past the pretty commonplace bare idea of some wilfull being (what else is the human imagination going to dream up?), and down to what's really important: the HOW of a creation event, few creation myths tell even remotely the same story. And even if they did, this would hardly be evidence of creation, just evidence of the very similar way most people imagine things.
---How can you claim someone is lying when we are discussing theories? ---
When people use and reuse logical fallacy, even after its been pointed out them, I think it's fair to call that "lying," or at least "dishonesty" (making an argument that is logically falacious is almost by definition dishonest: as per Lincoln's famous maxim that "he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.")
When Behe claims, for instance, that no papers have ever been published on the evolution of flagellum, he's lying. When creationists claim that complexity inherently demonstrates design, they're lying. When creationists claim that no transitional fossils exist, they're lying. It's that simple. I hear the same fallacious arguments over and over: often because even after being conclusively and publically debunked, creationists continue to try and use the same faulty arguments to convince others, who then go on to parrot these same claims to me.
And the bottom line is that creationists, even well-read ones, are not doing science. They are not publishing theories about how creation happened based on empirical evidence. If creationism were to become a science, it would be the first modern science to exist without any testable theories or any articles published for peer review. In fact, still to this day what the majority of "creationists" do is not even elaborate the workings of their supposed alternate theory of creationism (because all they have is "poof" and "the creator is beyond understanding), but attack evolution in the mistaken (and again, logicaly fallacious by false dilemna) belief that if evolution is discredited, then a creator making creation is the default state (itself, apparently, requiring no proof or elaboration!). Now, attacking evolution, or any theory, is a healthy thing. But by and large, few creationists have advanced any helpful or even meaningful criticisms of evolutionary theory: largely because they can rarely even muster an non-staw man description of what the theory actually says.
Re:Another great site in this vein...
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Seanbaby.com
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As requested, you are now connected to outer space.
PERHAPS THERE WAS AN AGE WHEN PEOPLE DREAMED OF THE POSSIBILITIES IN THE OUTER SPACE?
Re:Seanbaby is TOTAL crap.
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Seanbaby.com
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Erik, some gentle advice: just call these freaks fags and pull out. They have nothing to offer either the cause of funnymaking or women. I'd rather face an onslaught of charity link Shugashackers looking for love than this geek shit.
----There are very few fat people where they eat properly (Japan).----
Are you fucking insane? Eat properly? The Japanese? Home of nearly all the world's top eaating contest champions? The land of tentacle rape's pretty lunch? You've got to be kidding.
His views on Taiwan and Tibet aren't rational. There is no "Chinese" flavor of "rational." The fact that his arguments are flatly logically fallacious is all that should normally need to be said on the subject.
Personally, I have much more sympathy with the Chinese conceptions of material human rights than most people. However, in most cases, views like Alex's are non-sequitur (not to mention almost direct restatements of what the CCP teaches) because they have a dogmatically Panglossian view of whatever Chinese leadership does to run China. "It is hard to feed billions of people" is simply not a good answer to "why does the government quash political dissent." Billions of people elsewhere in the world seem to get on fine without central control: in fact historically they've done lots better. That China is one large country makes little difference: or at least I've never heard any sort of argument as to why this would make a difference in allowing pluralism.
And I should further point out that Alex's views represent the sort of jingoistic racialism that is becoming frighteningly mainstream in China. We've heard this this "you are true Chinese, you are not, you are (racially) loyal, you are a (race) traitor" rhetoric before.
----(that was the estimate of AMERICAN losses, not total) Furthermore, the losses to the Atomic Bomb were in the region of 35,000 (IIRC). The number of civilian losses in the Tokyo firebombings that occurred a few weeks earlier were in the region of 250,000. Order of magnitude higher. If Japanese leadership was willing to continue the war after that, why would the loss of 35,000 faze them?---
Um... so this leaves us wondering. If the nuclear weapons were so ineffective compared to the firebombings, why were they used at all? Why not firebomb Hiroshima and kill and order of magnitude more people there, thus being even more convincing? The idea of a single bomb doing that damage might have a psychological impact, but what does it matter when we could have killed even MORE people via other methods?
I think this throws even more weight onto the "We did it for Russia's benefit" idea.
And regardless of what you think the justifications are, terrorism against civilians is still terrorism against civilians, supposedly and utter anathema to principled people and later enshrined in the Geneva convention. If it's acceptable in our case, then I see no reason why it wouldn't be valid to conclude that it was acceptable elsewhere in countless other situaitons we are used to decrying as evil. _Everyone_ likes to think their cause is just, and that any action, no matter how extreme, is justified.
It's true, taking over Switzerland by conventional assualt would either be incredibly costly in American lives, or even just plain impossible. But the precious bunkers of the Swiss are of no military problem to the US. All we have to do is simply demonstrate that if they don't surrender and come out of their holes, we will simply unilaterially eradicate all the men women and children in some of their cities. People can hide in their bunkers all they want, but we could still easily slaughter tens of thousands at the drop of a hat if they don't comply unconditionally with our demands.
Anything is possible when you're willing to use mass terrorism against innocents. Long live the USA!
Re:no its a valid alternate historical perspective
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Antimatter Propulsion
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---Regrettable, but as I said, perhaps that loss of life prevented even greater losses. Just something to consider.---
Well, not anymore really, since we pretty much know that the US knew surrender was immanent, on terms that we had already judged acceptable (and, indeed, on the exact same terms that we eventually dictated TO them), but it was the pride factor that was paramount. Even though the Japanese were willing to compromise (and basically, their one key provision was that the emperor be immune from prosecution and attack), we did not want to be seen compromising, especially not in the face of the Russians and the Chinese conflict. So it's the strange, all or nothing logic of "unconditional surrender" that really makes many of our military leaders look like amoral Machaevelians rather than tactical utilitarian heroes in retrospect. It's also a little hard to support the claim that the Allies showed much more laubable compassion for human life than the Axis powers, once they started assaulting civilian targets directly. The worst part is that it turns out even the tactical rationale for attacking civilians was often lacking, as with the bombing of German cities that only managed to _increase_ German war production by destroying the civilian economy, leaving many people with nothing else to do but make panzers.
Face it, if you want to dominate your opponent, there's no better strategy than threatening civilians and demonstrating the depths of barbarity you are both willing and capable of commiting. The U.S. military leaders knew this, and did it well, but it's really hard to commend them morally without resorting to protective rationalizations.
It's really too bad, because we had the chance to show the world a true "good guys vs bad guys" scenario, and we flubbed it.
One VERY important thing to remember however, is that NO ONE knew that anyone would die of canerous radiation exposure. For a long time even after Hiroshima, U.S. scientists sincerely thought that the zone of deadly radiation would be well inside the 100% blast kill area.
---Judges have been making their decisions based on what the social change will be since the 1920s. ----
Try since Marbury v. Madison. The judiciary has never stuck to simply applying the law- virtually every ruling in some way modifies or further details the finer points of the law. It's almost unavoidable. The point is that this power should never get out of hand, and on the whole it's a bad idea to encourage it doing so. M v. Madison is a perfect example of a court opinion filled with outrageous lies and obvious nonsense, and once you realize that virtually everything we know about the modern federal judiciary is founded on that case, and you realize how wacky and arbitrary a lot of it is, you can start to see the potential for real mischief.
Put more work into making your conspiracy theories more entertaining next time. At least the Holocaust revisionists put some gashdarn OOMPH into their efforts.
Indeed, there's nothing about the ending that was hidden in the beggining. If you think about it, you always knew WHAT and BY WHO- you just didn't know WHY?
If only you can be cynical the earliest, you can beat the crowd hunh? A sort of "first post!" of hip-to-above-it-all-ness. I saw it, and I don't "know what you mean." I thought it was not only inventive, but actually fleshed out a unique character in a unique way, giving you lots to think about regarding the self, how memories fit into who "we" are, and the limits of moral responsibility.
Yeah, it is hard to say what it was, because it would make no sense without seeing the movie to understand why its important.
The revelations at the end aren't the sorts of things you could shout out and spoil the mystery of the whole movie like you could in Fight Club or the 6th Sense. Even though the movie sounds like a search for his wife's killer, finding out who killed his wife is NOT the climax- it's not even as important as some of the other stuff that goes on, which is far more complicated and linked to the develpoment of characters, not just "Mr. Green, in the conservatory, with the revolver."
Yeah- you don't have to see it twice to understand what happened. Nothing is a "trick" like that, and the plot is clear by the end. What you're left totally unsure about is how to FEEL about what happened, because the movie shows it to you in a way that makes you question any simple judgement you might have made abotu the various characters. Normally, in a frontwards movie, if a character does something "good" at the beggining and later turns out to be bad at the end- we condemn them. But here, the "good" character we get accustomed to in the beggining is actually the end result of events, not simply someone who was themselves tricking us about who they were. It's really a new insight on people.
There are lots of new things you catch on a re-viewing, but because they deal with references to the past, not the future, you don't feel like they were "hidden" from you.
I disagree. The movie does have it's puzzles, but they're not really there just to jazz you when you find them out. In this case the puzzles really say something insightful about the characters: they let you experience Lenny's condition in a way you couldn't have if the movie went forwards, or if you knew things that Lenny didn't.
I think the movie is a character study as much as a suspense/mystery. And plenty of things in it were artful and even really moving. Lenny's discussion of how he can't heal, or his experience with the escort come to mind...
I think the ending is good because it is NOT what you expect: is it not a revealing of some trick secret, like that Lenny is really a ghost, or that the murderer is.. so and so... Lenny really does have the condition he claims he does. No silly masks are pulled off.
If you go into it hoping that you'll be getting a Fight Club or 6th Sense type jolt, you will feel disappointed- because this movie doesn't do that. It does something new: a much more subtle and psychological tying up of loose ends. It really makes you question not just all the facts in the movie, but also your own moral sense, the coherency of your own memories and intentions. And that's why it was worthwhile- not just because you felt so goosed that it tricked you.
It grows on you too. After first seeing it, I liked it a great deal. But I kept coming back to it (not just the ending either) and just HAD to see it again (which, by the way, is an entirely different experience. All sorts of new realizations, like Lenny clenching hsi fist at one point, or Teddy joking that they should steal Dodd's car)
It's neither. In fact, by the end, WHO killed his wife is not really the important part at all. His wife's death has nothing to do with the "shock" part of the ending, and that's what's so powerful about it. The realization is instead almost entirely psychological- an insight into character, not just the unwinding of a "trick" plot, or a pulling off of a cheesy mask.
Re:The audience should be challenged
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Review: Memento
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The movie is not confusing at all, and indeed it sometimes it's fault is that it lays out the whole backwards things a little TOO obviously.
This aint "Hollywood" either. "Hollywood" never could have come up with a film like this.
The whole backwards thing is perfect- it fits in exactly with Leonard's character and his medical condition, and never becomes just a cheap gimick.
And damn, this movie was GREAT.
Too bad it's not getting the Tv advertising or the studio support it needs to go in a really wide release- most of the major theaters around me aren't even going to show it, and I had to go see it in New York. It cost me 10 bucks to get into the city, about 3 bucks for sub fare and other expenses, and 10 bucks for a ticket. And you know what? I would have been willing to pay more.
This movie is not only a brilliant reworking of the whole suspense/detective genre, but it's also emotionally wrenching. There were a few scenes that were just heartbreaking, and I tihnk everyone can identify with Leonard to some extent- the feeling of waking, of losing important thoughts before they can be recorded- and of a past self determining things for the future self- sometimes without the future self-being aware of it...
Slashdot Mirror
---I can understand the moral delimma of cloning/abortion -- The value of life. Where do we draw the line?---
Simple question: Are you a vegitarian? If not, then I put it to you that you've drawn an entirely _arbitrary_ and meaningless line for your moral values.
A blob of jelly with DNA instructions is infinately more valuable to you than a fully developed creature that can feel pain, form emotional bonds, and have moral interests: just because the particular protein strains in the blob of jelly happen to encode for a homo sapien and not a chicken.
If less people would simply make up moral values out of the blue or from faith beliefs, and more would just THINK about ethics, about what it means to have a moral interest and how ANY treatment of anything should take those moral interests into account, then we'd have far less of a problem or a worry about the future treatment of ANYONE.
---Cloning comes down to selfishness. ---
Oh, clearly. Just like anything that you are against, right? All comes down to the moral vapidity and evil of those that don't see the world through your hell-colored sunglasses.
---In addition, Bush's decision has not prevented unused in vitro embryos from being destroyed. They simply get thrown out now, rather than having their stem cells extracted for research purposes. ---
This, more than anything, is pretty solid evidence for me that Bush's "stand" is a cynically political descion, not a moral one. If he REALLY cared about the destruction of embryos, he'd be cutting federal funding to fertility clinics and fertility treatment research that refused to stop mass producing and mass discarding fertilized embryos. But that would be political suicide: what is more pro-life than fertility clinics? Science is "scary" and misunderstood enough to attack though!
Killing stem cells can't involve the killing of a supposed singluar human "soul" imbued at conception anyway (as far as we can tell materially, it certainly kills nothing anywhere even as developed and capable of having moral interests than a shrimp, to which most people accord no moral value at all!), since after the point where the cell is killed for stem cell research, it can still divide into twins (or be made to divide into twins). Do they each get half the original, conception granted soul? Or it could not implant at all, which happens about 45% of the time naturally. Or, it could implant, but fail to develop and simply reabsorbed into the mother. Do mothers get two souls then? How many souls can one person rack up?
Despite the fact that the poster you are responding to is obviously some sarcastic beleiver trying to make a mockery of what he supposes anti-religious views might be.....
---He hated the Jewish RACE. So he tried to kill them. ---
If it hadn't been for millenia of Chruch perpetrated anti-semitism against this supposed "race" of Christ-killers, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere with this slander and slaughter of Jews. Hitler's Christian rhetoric, especially based as it was on Martin Luther, was a big sell for German the masses.
You're SO correct (whoops: I mean "right"). People on the right all oppose stem cell reasearch and people on the left are for it. That is SO true. And it all boils down to this: "leftists" are evil, selfish, and thoughtless. Whereas, people on "the right" would NEVER sell out the future for the here and now: not even if the stockholders demanded it. They value all life, and are deeply compassionate about other human beings.
Clearly, the crux of this debate is that people on the left lack any values at all: they're basically nihilists in disguise. They would rather EAT YOUR BABIES and RAPE YOUR WOMEN as soon as spit on you. Not like anyone on the right: they have values up the wazoo. And what's more, they are the RIGHT values: I mean, there's just no debating that. Like, check this brilliant point of yours out:
---("but those embryos are just clumps of cells" -- a statement that is 100% true of each one of us, as the scientists of Nazi Germany would explain if they were still around, given that there's no clear, scientific point at which we become more than a clump, other than conception---
Totaly! (well, except for the fact that everything is alive before cocneption as well). There is totally no difference in the moral interests of a stem cell with no nervous system and a baby. But a chicken, incredibly more advanced in every way than any stem cell, is of no moral worth at all: it has no moral interests. Why can't people just understand that? I mean, it says so in the freakin' Bible, which must make it 100% true even if (as you say) God doesn't exist! But I mean, everytime I think about anything I don't like: boom- it's JUST like the Nazis. The Nazis were so totally leftist! Social Darwinism, Anti-Semitism, military facism: those were like the biggest leftist plots ever!
---It's not so much the teaching of theories that's really bugging them, it's the indoctrination of children into the notion that life isn't a fundamental right given to us by God,---
Have to take issue with you on this one: not all rightists are religious zealots. Many rightists know that rights come from the law, and the vigalence of the values of the people, not any God. Plato refuted that nonsense (divine command morality) before the concept of rights had even been thought of!
--- a view the right believes is, itself, regardless of whether God actually exists, necessary to the preservation of a free society over many generations.)---
Totally! The commoners just wouldn't be able to function if they didn't believe God existed! They'd rape and kill each other at the drop of a hat! I mean, no one is really capable of valuing other human beings unless they are threatened by eternal torment or authority! Everyone is basically an inhuman monster, accept maybe you and me.
---Creation is supposed to have happened once.---
Just because something is CLAIMED to have happened once doesn't mean one is off the hook for having to back up the claim.
---You could argue that the various faiths is evidence of this after generations of word of mouth errors, and idealistic differences (just look at the anglican vs catholic churchs). ----
No, you couldn't, because as is a basic starting point in science: beliefs are not facts. If beliefs were true merely by virtue of people believing them, then there would be no need for science or logic: soliphism would reign! Few creation myths are realy as similar as apologists make them out to be. Once you get past the pretty commonplace bare idea of some wilfull being (what else is the human imagination going to dream up?), and down to what's really important: the HOW of a creation event, few creation myths tell even remotely the same story. And even if they did, this would hardly be evidence of creation, just evidence of the very similar way most people imagine things.
---How can you claim someone is lying when we are discussing theories? ---
When people use and reuse logical fallacy, even after its been pointed out them, I think it's fair to call that "lying," or at least "dishonesty" (making an argument that is logically falacious is almost by definition dishonest: as per Lincoln's famous maxim that "he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.")
When Behe claims, for instance, that no papers have ever been published on the evolution of flagellum, he's lying. When creationists claim that complexity inherently demonstrates design, they're lying. When creationists claim that no transitional fossils exist, they're lying. It's that simple. I hear the same fallacious arguments over and over: often because even after being conclusively and publically debunked, creationists continue to try and use the same faulty arguments to convince others, who then go on to parrot these same claims to me.
And the bottom line is that creationists, even well-read ones, are not doing science. They are not publishing theories about how creation happened based on empirical evidence. If creationism were to become a science, it would be the first modern science to exist without any testable theories or any articles published for peer review. In fact, still to this day what the majority of "creationists" do is not even elaborate the workings of their supposed alternate theory of creationism (because all they have is "poof" and "the creator is beyond understanding), but attack evolution in the mistaken (and again, logicaly fallacious by false dilemna) belief that if evolution is discredited, then a creator making creation is the default state (itself, apparently, requiring no proof or elaboration!).
Now, attacking evolution, or any theory, is a healthy thing. But by and large, few creationists have advanced any helpful or even meaningful criticisms of evolutionary theory: largely because they can rarely even muster an non-staw man description of what the theory actually says.
As requested, you are now connected to outer space.
PERHAPS THERE WAS AN AGE WHEN PEOPLE DREAMED OF THE POSSIBILITIES IN THE OUTER SPACE?
Erik, some gentle advice: just call these freaks fags and pull out. They have nothing to offer either the cause of funnymaking or women. I'd rather face an onslaught of charity link Shugashackers looking for love than this geek shit.
----There are very few fat people where they eat properly (Japan).---- Are you fucking insane? Eat properly? The Japanese? Home of nearly all the world's top eaating contest champions? The land of tentacle rape's pretty lunch? You've got to be kidding.
His views on Taiwan and Tibet aren't rational. There is no "Chinese" flavor of "rational." The fact that his arguments are flatly logically fallacious is all that should normally need to be said on the subject.
Personally, I have much more sympathy with the Chinese conceptions of material human rights than most people. However, in most cases, views like Alex's are non-sequitur (not to mention almost direct restatements of what the CCP teaches) because they have a dogmatically Panglossian view of whatever Chinese leadership does to run China. "It is hard to feed billions of people" is simply not a good answer to "why does the government quash political dissent." Billions of people elsewhere in the world seem to get on fine without central control: in fact historically they've done lots better. That China is one large country makes little difference: or at least I've never heard any sort of argument as to why this would make a difference in allowing pluralism.
And I should further point out that Alex's views represent the sort of jingoistic racialism that is becoming frighteningly mainstream in China. We've heard this this "you are true Chinese, you are not, you are (racially) loyal, you are a (race) traitor" rhetoric before.
----(that was the estimate of AMERICAN losses, not total) Furthermore, the losses to the Atomic Bomb were in the region of 35,000 (IIRC). The number of civilian losses in the Tokyo firebombings that occurred a few weeks earlier were in the region of 250,000. Order of magnitude higher. If Japanese leadership was willing to continue the war after that, why would the loss of 35,000 faze them?---
Um... so this leaves us wondering. If the nuclear weapons were so ineffective compared to the firebombings, why were they used at all? Why not firebomb Hiroshima and kill and order of magnitude more people there, thus being even more convincing? The idea of a single bomb doing that damage might have a psychological impact, but what does it matter when we could have killed even MORE people via other methods?
I think this throws even more weight onto the "We did it for Russia's benefit" idea.
And regardless of what you think the justifications are, terrorism against civilians is still terrorism against civilians, supposedly and utter anathema to principled people and later enshrined in the Geneva convention. If it's acceptable in our case, then I see no reason why it wouldn't be valid to conclude that it was acceptable elsewhere in countless other situaitons we are used to decrying as evil. _Everyone_ likes to think their cause is just, and that any action, no matter how extreme, is justified.
It's true, taking over Switzerland by conventional assualt would either be incredibly costly in American lives, or even just plain impossible.
But the precious bunkers of the Swiss are of no military problem to the US. All we have to do is simply demonstrate that if they don't surrender and come out of their holes, we will simply unilaterially eradicate all the men women and children in some of their cities. People can hide in their bunkers all they want, but we could still easily slaughter tens of thousands at the drop of a hat if they don't comply unconditionally with our demands.
Anything is possible when you're willing to use mass terrorism against innocents. Long live the USA!
---Regrettable, but as I said, perhaps that loss of life prevented even greater losses. Just something to consider.---
Well, not anymore really, since we pretty much know that the US knew surrender was immanent, on terms that we had already judged acceptable (and, indeed, on the exact same terms that we eventually dictated TO them), but it was the pride factor that was paramount. Even though the Japanese were willing to compromise (and basically, their one key provision was that the emperor be immune from prosecution and attack), we did not want to be seen compromising, especially not in the face of the Russians and the Chinese conflict. So it's the strange, all or nothing logic of "unconditional surrender" that really makes many of our military leaders look like amoral Machaevelians rather than tactical utilitarian heroes in retrospect. It's also a little hard to support the claim that the Allies showed much more laubable compassion for human life than the Axis powers, once they started assaulting civilian targets directly. The worst part is that it turns out even the tactical rationale for attacking civilians was often lacking, as with the bombing of German cities that only managed to _increase_ German war production by destroying the civilian economy, leaving many people with nothing else to do but make panzers.
Face it, if you want to dominate your opponent, there's no better strategy than threatening civilians and demonstrating the depths of barbarity you are both willing and capable of commiting. The U.S. military leaders knew this, and did it well, but it's really hard to commend them morally without resorting to protective rationalizations.
It's really too bad, because we had the chance to show the world a true "good guys vs bad guys" scenario, and we flubbed it.
One VERY important thing to remember however, is that NO ONE knew that anyone would die of canerous radiation exposure. For a long time even after Hiroshima, U.S. scientists sincerely thought that the zone of deadly radiation would be well inside the 100% blast kill area.
---Judges have been making their decisions based on what the social change will be since the 1920s. ----
Try since Marbury v. Madison. The judiciary has never stuck to simply applying the law- virtually every ruling in some way modifies or further details the finer points of the law. It's almost unavoidable. The point is that this power should never get out of hand, and on the whole it's a bad idea to encourage it doing so. M v. Madison is a perfect example of a court opinion filled with outrageous lies and obvious nonsense, and once you realize that virtually everything we know about the modern federal judiciary is founded on that case, and you realize how wacky and arbitrary a lot of it is, you can start to see the potential for real mischief.
snore.......
Put more work into making your conspiracy theories more entertaining next time. At least the Holocaust revisionists put some gashdarn OOMPH into their efforts.
Indeed, there's nothing about the ending that was hidden in the beggining. If you think about it, you always knew WHAT and BY WHO- you just didn't know WHY?
If only you can be cynical the earliest, you can beat the crowd hunh? A sort of "first post!" of hip-to-above-it-all-ness. I saw it, and I don't "know what you mean." I thought it was not only inventive, but actually fleshed out a unique character in a unique way, giving you lots to think about regarding the self, how memories fit into who "we" are, and the limits of moral responsibility.
Yeah, it is hard to say what it was, because it would make no sense without seeing the movie to understand why its important. The revelations at the end aren't the sorts of things you could shout out and spoil the mystery of the whole movie like you could in Fight Club or the 6th Sense. Even though the movie sounds like a search for his wife's killer, finding out who killed his wife is NOT the climax- it's not even as important as some of the other stuff that goes on, which is far more complicated and linked to the develpoment of characters, not just "Mr. Green, in the conservatory, with the revolver."
Yeah- you don't have to see it twice to understand what happened. Nothing is a "trick" like that, and the plot is clear by the end. What you're left totally unsure about is how to FEEL about what happened, because the movie shows it to you in a way that makes you question any simple judgement you might have made abotu the various characters. Normally, in a frontwards movie, if a character does something "good" at the beggining and later turns out to be bad at the end- we condemn them. But here, the "good" character we get accustomed to in the beggining is actually the end result of events, not simply someone who was themselves tricking us about who they were. It's really a new insight on people. There are lots of new things you catch on a re-viewing, but because they deal with references to the past, not the future, you don't feel like they were "hidden" from you.
Yes, there indeed IS a Sammy Jankis. The movie answers that question explicitly, and the other questions surrounding it.
I disagree. The movie does have it's puzzles, but they're not really there just to jazz you when you find them out. In this case the puzzles really say something insightful about the characters: they let you experience Lenny's condition in a way you couldn't have if the movie went forwards, or if you knew things that Lenny didn't. I think the movie is a character study as much as a suspense/mystery. And plenty of things in it were artful and even really moving. Lenny's discussion of how he can't heal, or his experience with the escort come to mind...
I think the ending is good because it is NOT what you expect: is it not a revealing of some trick secret, like that Lenny is really a ghost, or that the murderer is.. so and so... Lenny really does have the condition he claims he does. No silly masks are pulled off.
If you go into it hoping that you'll be getting a Fight Club or 6th Sense type jolt, you will feel disappointed- because this movie doesn't do that. It does something new: a much more subtle and psychological tying up of loose ends. It really makes you question not just all the facts in the movie, but also your own moral sense, the coherency of your own memories and intentions. And that's why it was worthwhile- not just because you felt so goosed that it tricked you.
It grows on you too. After first seeing it, I liked it a great deal. But I kept coming back to it (not just the ending either) and just HAD to see it again (which, by the way, is an entirely different experience. All sorts of new realizations, like Lenny clenching hsi fist at one point, or Teddy joking that they should steal Dodd's car)
It's neither. In fact, by the end, WHO killed his wife is not really the important part at all. His wife's death has nothing to do with the "shock" part of the ending, and that's what's so powerful about it. The realization is instead almost entirely psychological- an insight into character, not just the unwinding of a "trick" plot, or a pulling off of a cheesy mask.
The movie is not confusing at all, and indeed it sometimes it's fault is that it lays out the whole backwards things a little TOO obviously. This aint "Hollywood" either. "Hollywood" never could have come up with a film like this. The whole backwards thing is perfect- it fits in exactly with Leonard's character and his medical condition, and never becomes just a cheap gimick.
And damn, this movie was GREAT.
Too bad it's not getting the Tv advertising or the studio support it needs to go in a really wide release- most of the major theaters around me aren't even going to show it, and I had to go see it in New York. It cost me 10 bucks to get into the city, about 3 bucks for sub fare and other expenses, and 10 bucks for a ticket. And you know what? I would have been willing to pay more.
This movie is not only a brilliant reworking of the whole suspense/detective genre, but it's also emotionally wrenching. There were a few scenes that were just heartbreaking, and I tihnk everyone can identify with Leonard to some extent- the feeling of waking, of losing important thoughts before they can be recorded- and of a past self determining things for the future self- sometimes without the future self-being aware of it...