“I did not sleep at all last night. It hurts like the devil! A snowstorm whipping through my soul, wailing like a hundred jackals. Still no obvious symptoms that perforation is imminent, but an oppressive feeling of foreboding hangs over me . . . This is it . . . I have to think through the only possible way out: to operate on myself . . . It’s almost impossible . . . but I can’t just fold my arms and give up.

“18.30. I’ve never felt so awful in my entire life. The building is shaking like a small toy in the storm. The guys have found out. They keep coming by to calm me down. And I’m upset with myself—I’ve spoiled everyone’s holiday. Tomorrow is May Day. And now everyone’s running around, preparing the autoclave. We have to sterilise the bedding, because we’re going to operate.

“20.30. I’m getting worse. I’ve told the guys. Now they’ll start taking everything we don’t need out of the room.”

So Avatar, the anti-corporate-excess, anti-unregulated-mercenary, anti-imperialist, anti-war, anti-materialism, anti-racism, pro-environment, sci-fi action adventure romance just passed $1.1 billion not too long ago (and stands as the fastest movie to hit a billion). Not too shabby, especially for sci-fi, which traditionally does not have wide appeal. I guess James Cameron knows how to make a movie.

Personally, I think Avatar is the best action/adventure movie I’ve ever seen. There, I said it. I think I’m a picky bastard, too. It easily tops Dark Knight for me, another movie that ranked highly with me. I loved Dark Knight, but DK is totally consumed by raw negativity (And I can be a jackass). There’s no rest, no break, no salvation. Just cynical bleakness. It’s a great window into the darkness, but as a result it just lacks balance, and that gets wearisome. I’m not surprised that men seem to favor DK more than women (in my personal sphere).

Avatar on the other hand has superb, technically accurate action (yet it’s an anti-war film; just like in Terminator 2, Cameron is so good at annihilating things while simultaneously being against it), but it also has a pretty well developed romance, for a movie that’s supposed to be action/adventure anyway. As Kim Masters of the Daily Beast wrote, “Cameron’s genius is this: He makes movies for women disguised as movies for men.” I’m sure the girls will say that it can’t match The Notebook or something like that (haven’t seen it, don’t want to), but that would probably throw off the balance for the men. But with the girl…er, female power, and the love story in Avatar, I’m not surprised that Avatar is doing quite well with women, probably not to the extent of Titanic, but still, I’ve heard plenty of women who want to and have watched Avatar multiple times.

Basically, the only way I can fathom someone not liking Avatar is if they hate fun and adventure—and love (or if one is diehard conservative, more on that below). If one finds such things abhorrent, then yes, Avatar is a bore. Hell, even A.O. Scott of the NYT liked it, and that mother is one of the snobbiest, high brow pro-reviewers I’ve ever seen. For the rest of us, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Avatar, at the moment, is the closest any of us ghetto 21st century folks will get to experience what it’s like to travel to another planet. You’re buying a ticket for an experience, a trip almost (especially when seen in 3D). Along the way, there’s a universally appealing story. So, relax, and enjoy the ride!

But is it just the effects, and the wonderful immersive 3D? I’m not sure anymore. I read an argument somewhere that movies don’t make over a billion dollars on effects alone, that Avatar is connecting with people at an emotional level somehow. I think I must agree. It definitely made me question whether I need to make so many unnecessary gadget purchases, and rekindled my doubt about the role of the cubicle in my life. Apparently, in China, some interpreted it as representative of the battle between real estate developers, and impoverished homeowners.

The most major initial criticism I hear is the simplicity of the story. Yes, it is simple, but it’s also epic, truly epic. “Epic” gets tossed around a lot these days, particularly with action/war movies, but Avatar is a true epic in the old school sense. Love, culture, and war. All in 2 hrs 40 minutes. It wasn’t totally predictable either, as some claim, especially towards the end. And it’s also complete. No further sequels are needed or alluded to. I’m actually hoping there won’t be any, because I wouldn’t want the franchise to be destroyed like so many others due to crappy sequels. While I love the characters in Avatar, their story is over. Unless Cameron can pull another miracle.

Besides, it’s how a story is told that is important. That’s all epic storytellers have really been doing for the last few millennia anyway, adding their own permutations to common storylines, or telling the same story, but better, like different productions of the same musical.

But I would also argue Avatar’s story is not significantly simpler than most movies out there anyway. I think it was just an easy aspect to criticize, especially by people I like to call the “nouveau intelligentsia,” who make the argument without really considering if it’s fair or not (especially Will Heaven’s poor argument that Avatar was racist, but more on that later). Because most movies aren’t that complicated, especially in the genre Avatar is in, and such movies definitely didn’t get as much heat. Success attracts disdain I guess.

Yes, in other movies, the dialogue can be more sophisticated, but unlike most other movies, Avatar pushes hard on multiple, relevant contemporary themes simultaneously (as previously listed). In this sense, I honestly think Avatar is actually quite sophisticated. Avatar tends to expound its themes through visuals, instead of telling through dialogue, letting the viewer stew on it later, like a painting (indeed one guy interpreted some 9/11 imagery that I hadn’t thought of, and that I don’t think Cameron intended, though he found it interesting). Of the recent “good” films I’ve seen lately, District 9, Dark Knight, Inglorious Basterds, Up in the Air, I think Avatar generated more introspection and personal thought. Basterds came close (but in a negative way. More in its own review). Up in the Air was an interesting character sketch, but hey, I’ve got my own issues to deal with, and if I want to waste my time to see you conquer or deal with yours, I’d only want to see it once.

Here, I stumbled across a well-written argument by an Amazon customer; I can’t really put it any better, so I’m just going to quote her:

You could boil the plot down to Dances With Wolves does Star Wars in Middle Earth, but that wouldn’t do real justice to this fantastic film. It follows an archetypal storyline (archetype, not stereotype), which may make it feel familiar (or trite, if you are looking for a plot twist a minute). Think Joseph Campbell: the Hero Journey (the basis of tales like Star Wars and LOTR). I think a familiar, archetypal, mythic storyline will draw much more of the audience into this fantastic world than a quirky tale with plot twists. Here in York County PA, tastes run to beer and blue jeans, and it’s hard enough getting them into the theater to see “some weird story about ten foot tall half naked blue guys”. Kudos to James Cameron for creating a tale with relevant issues (decimation of indigenous peoples, our overconsumptive culture, our relationship with tech and the natural world), awesome visuals, and universal appeal.

I’ve got to agree; I don’t think a jumpy or soapy plot would have been appropriate, nor would the sharper, snarkier dialogue of someone like…Joss Whedon. Cameron went for classic epic that appeals to children and adult alike, while hitting on relevant real-world topics, not “hey, that was quirky and interesting, but I have no intention of watching the movie again.”

And Avatar only seemed to get better with another viewing – if you were like me who was kind of cynical about the whole thing at first. From my first viewing, I came away liking the movie, but I was not amazed with it. However, the more I thought about it, the more it grew on me. Then I saw Avatar again and I was definitely hooked. The amazing visual effects definitely do the grunt work, but the attention to detail do as well, like the Na’vi language created by a USC professor, the alien flora and fauna, also created by a professor, and the raw emotion of the actors captured by Cameron’s upgraded mo-cap technology. You can see every expression that the original actor made, but on an alien body. No uncanny valley here. It really helped me empathize with these “space smurfs”, and it definitely put Zoe Saldana on the map for me.

Sadly, Avatar made me realize that there could be tons of talented leading ladies out there that will never get the time of day because of their skin color, unless they get roles like Neytiri. Other than films sketching minority life, how often do you see a colored woman in the lead actress role?

I suppose I should now mention the subset of conservatives that hate the movie for such themes. But they hate most things out of Hollywood, so I don’t want to waste my time. Besides, I think their complaints are legitimate, in the sense that it definitely crosses their ideology. Although I think the movie is less about anti-America, and more anti-Blackwater/Halliburton. And well, if you can still defend either of those, our ideologies are way too different.

It never ceases to amaze me how powerful asking for forgiveness can be, and in kind, forgiving. It equally ceases to amaze me how stubborn some people can be in refusing to ever admit being wrong. Because that would be weak. To me, it’s cowardice; it takes more balls to swallow pride, than it is to ignore the issue.

I remember when I was still a student at UCI that there was a professor who was doing some controversial research pertaining to the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. She would ask witnesses highly suggestible questions after they had viewed a traumatic scene, and voila! The witnesses would “remember” it the way she suggested. Apparently she got harassed a lot for such research, from media and law enforcement alike.  Supposedly one reporter would actually hound her, and sit in all her classes, trying to sensationalize her work as depicting all eyewitnesses as lying, incompetent boobs.  I *think* the researcher in question was Professor Elizabeth F. Loftus, but I’m not sure. Oh, ha, I didn’t finish watching the second video above, but Professor Loftus is in it.

Even among my friends, it’s kind of interesting to see who is more consistent and who is not. When there’s a common memory among multiple friends, there’s usually divergence. Then there’s always that person who, after a few months, will pass off someone else’s words and ideas as their own.

False imprisonment is pretty much the biggest reason why I’ve mellowed out with the death penalty. I know, I’m liberal, I should be against it by default, but with particularly heinous crimes, I just can’t help it. But with so much room for error in our system, the death penalty just isn’t right. Which makes Texas and Japan particularly scary to me, both liberal democratic governments. I’ve read that Japan has a prosecution rate over 95%. In other words, if you’ve been accused, and you stand trial, you are almost certainly going to be found guilty. The defensive rationale is “only the truly guilty get that far” or some BS like that. So don’t get to that stage. Because after that, they can execute your ass with only a few hours prior warning (look it up). Then Texas is Texas. There was one case, I wish I could be more specific, but I don’t recall the names anymore, where an “arson expert” who was about as much of an expert as I am at the bbq grill, pretty much singlehandedly lead to the execution of the accused. Multiple real experts from out of state looked at the evidence, and determined that the first guy had no idea wtf he was talking about.

Anyway some links:

PBS’s site for Jennifer’s case

Edutopia links on witness testimony research

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTby_e4-Rhg

Most of the terms are beyond the math I learned in college, but one of the commenters (Nightbreeze1) attempted to explain them:

Kernel: All of the domain of a function (map) which is mapped to zero

Rank-one: meaning the range-space has dimension one (such as the real line!)

See zeroes: he’s in the kernel!

Smooth path: A smooth function has derivatives of all orders, a path is a special type of function (in some sense)

Continuous: meaning without ‘holes’ or ‘jumps’, as in a function

Upper bound: Just an upper bound on some quantity, used often

Axiom of Choice: Controversial, but famous, axiom. gogo wiki

Relation, well-defined, function, proposition: All terms you encounter every other paragraph of any math book

Finite simple group of order two: Ironically, ‘simple’ is too complicated to explain here. A group is a mathematical object measuring symmetry (wiki!) and the ‘order’ is just the number of elements in it

Identity: Identity element or ~map in a group is that which leaves everything unchanged

Tensor: Rather complicated mathematical object.. (wiki)

Without loss of generality: WLOG, found in manymanymany mathproofs, which makes it funny

‘Quotient out’: Operation done on groups/spaces/etc, very important!

Map-image : Map is a function, the image is the image

one-to-one : Property of a function, meaning for every element in the image of a function, precisely 1 is mapped into it from the domain

Equivalence: Equivalence relation, found often… wiki

Bundle: very complicated, wiki won’t help much

wedge between two-forms: Too complicated

Complexified: Extending ‘something’ to incorporate the complex numbers (not just reals)

Simply connected: Property of a set, meaning every two points can be connected via a path (think circle!)

Open-dense: Properties of sets…

System: System of sets collection of sets

Finite limit: Well, this combined with the previous line has something to do with a very abstract limiting process, probably in terms of a set of systems. This could be in the context of sigma-algebra’s or just general topology or any other context in which limits ‘in some sense’ may arise..

Operator, class : Both words found often. Operator is a special kind of function, class is just a class (we class our operators!)

Mirror pair: Forget it

Forgetful functors: nah.. can’t explain this either

Associative : Algebraic property! (a+b)+c = a+(b+c) meaning order of operation is irrelevant (all groups have this)

Free: Another groupproperty..definition a bit too complicated

corollary: Something found in every math textbook after many of the theorems and lemma’s

Q.E.D.: Everybody knows this one, Quod Erat Demonstrandum!

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, some things never change. Dumbasses. “But the man told me to!”

This is so awesome. A new era of medical, optical, and power technology could be upon us. I like the name, too.

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/12/sionyx-brings-black-silicon-into-the-light-material-could-upend-solar-imaging-industries/

http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/10/01/donorschoose-challenge/

It looks like blogs, along with their “vassal” blogs, compete against each other to see who can rally the most financial support.

Each classroom has a description of what their project needs are, as well as their relative poverty level. Pick one, donate, finish!

Personally, I find the spectral analysis and bio themed ones particularly noteworthy. I recall “electric cars” in middle school being utterly worthless. But I figure microscopes will attract kids’ attention even if they don’t understand what’s going on. “Hey look! It’s a little moving blob! And they’re everywhere!”

From there, they can learn all about anthrax, ebola, biological warfare, etc. etc. I kid, I kid.

I’m looking forward to when physics unlocks a new era of technology for man. I kinda feel like we’re stuck in a slowing iterative path at the moment, struggling to find new sources of energy. Thanks Eric.