the glory and the horror

‘Ralphies,’ leg lamp fans keep film thriving – CNN.com

So it blows my mind that people MAKE those leg lamps. That said, it is a great movie, a lot of fun and definitely reminds me of parts of my childhood growing up.

You know you all had all sorts of schemes and ideas in your mind to make sure you got what you wanted, or tried to figure out ways to find out what was in that box.

So there are two space dramas to talk about today. First, there’s the recent news bit that China has shot down a satellite, and proved that it’s something that they can do. This is very interesting, because I don’t think the US has even tried to do it yet, and this may be the first step in China trying to assert itself as a world power, threatening one of the US’s sources of power – its satellite network used for surveillance, GPS, communications, etc. We’ll see.

Secondly, and much more fun, is the Sci-Fi Channel’s series, Battlestar Galactica. Kathleen and I are tearing through the series. We’ve finished season 2.5, and we can’t get enough. It’s more than a science fiction flick, like the old version of Battlestar, and would be better classified as a space drama. It has real characters, with depth, strengths and flaws. It looks at human nature and asks very hard questions about choice, liberty, freedom, survival, media and the military, the greater good vs. individual freedoms, political philosophy, artifical intelligence, and xenophobia. Of course, this is all being written and shot with the war in Iraq as the backdrop. It’s quite a riveting story and I can’t wait for them to release this season on DVD. Thank you, Isaac, for our latest addiction.

So somehow, in the last month of so, we’ve been able to see a BUNCH of movies, both at home and in the theater. We saw Stranger Than Fiction the weekend it came out, and that was well worth it. The story is engaging, and you want to know how it ends. The actors do a wonderful job, quirky and witty, believable and with depth of feeling. We saw Eragon this past weekend, which was, of course, not as fun and interesting as the book, but decent still. We also saw The Pursuit of Happyness, which is definitely the feel-good movie of the season. Will Smith does a phenomenal job as a dad who is just trying to do right by his son. It doesn’t hurt that it’s actually his own son that he’s acting with, either.

If I had to rank them, I’d say go see Stranger Than Fiction first (rent or theater). Only see Eragon if you liked the book. Not that great as a stand-alone movie. Pursuit of Happyness is kinda sappy, but not overwhelmingly saccharine. Good date movie, or family movie. Just a tiny bit of bad language. Great discussion piece, too. Lots to be talked about in terms of balancing work and family, and doing what it takes to get things done.

I also got Kathleen Something the Lord Made for Christmas, and we got to watch it in CA with my siblings and sister’s boyfriend, who is in his first year in medical school. It’s about a revolutionary surgery, the very first heart surgery, also the very first pediatric heart surgery, and also the very first treatment for babies with cyanotic congenital birth defects, all in one procedure. It stars Alan Rickman (aka Prof. Snape to most people who see movies nowadays) and Mos Def (aka as Ford Prefect to many moviegoers) as the two main characters. It’s also another feel-good movie in one sense, and quite sobering and frustrating in another, especially as you see race relations as it plays out in medicine not-so-long ago, and how in medical research, credit doesn’t always go where credit is due. HBO makes some quality movies and mini-series. We’ve already watched it twice.

I wonder what Dr. Cooley thinks of his character in that movie. He only has but 1-2 lines, but they chose them wisely.

Not exactly, but you can shoot for mars in this dolphin game. I’ll give you a hint. Try to link up your jumps as much as you can.

My best is 1327745, longest jump at 87.55 m, and highest at 63.67, with a top speed of 32.41 m/s.

Also, for those who care, we now own the 5-6 player expansion pack for Settlers of Catan, so we need people to come down here and play with us, much like Kimbell did this past weekend.

I’m not normally one to just start watching a TV show, but one grabbed me tonight for no reason, and I ended up finding it incredibly fascinating.

This week’s Law & Order: SVU involved a mom that loses her husband and daughter in a car accident, and then becomes delusional, thinking her daughter was kidnapped. She hires a couple PIs to snag a girl that looks JUST like her daughter would have looked if she didn’t die. Then, DNA tests show that the nearly abducted child IS biologically the mom’s daughter. Investigation shows that at the root of this is an unethical fertility doctor who used mom’s fertilized eggs without her consent, and implanted them in this other woman, and that child she saw was her biological child, but the second mother was the one who gave birth to the child.

So the case goes to court, and the defense lawyer makes a compelling argument for how mom A was just following her maternal instincts, which no law could stop. The prosecuting attorney feels like she’s already lost the case, since she perceives the jury to already emotionally be on the defendant’s side. After all, how can one be guilty of kidnapping her own child? Especially since that child was “produced” against her will, and without her consent.

So the kicker is that a colleague of the prosecuting attorney brings up Solomon, and explains the story of the two women who are arguing over the child. The prosecuting attorney takes this advice to heart, and then lights into the child during the trial, repeatedly trying to get the little girl to realize that mom A really is her “egg mommy.” The child loses it at this point, and the judge even wonders where this line of reasoning is going. The child can’t stand this, hates it, doesn’t want to hear that her parents aren’t her real parents, and so mom A breaks down, and refuses to go on, pleads guilty, and for all intents and purposes, the case, and show, ends.

Yikes! Talk about some crazy means and ends. No one is going to ever be the same after this, and all because of an unscrupulous doctor. I don’t know what would happen if this really happened. This would be incredibly complex, and the precedent this would set would have to be unbelivably nuanecd, or else this would open all sorts of issues up. Ideally, if the doctor weren’t unscrupulous, this would never have happened, but conceivably, something like this could merely be a result of a mistake, and not any sort of fraudulent or disingenuous intentions.

Sheesh. Wow.