Prometheus

I tried watching Ridley Scott's movie "Prometheus" this evening. I wanted to like this movie, I really did. But I couldn't. In the first few minutes of the movie, Scott had painted all of the "believers" as noble characters, and all of the "evidence-based reality" people as the sort you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

In these few minutes of viewing, I saw the same sort of nonsense that you can find in typical creationist screed, including the "it's just a theory" non-argument (which really only shows the speaker's ignorance of what a genuine scientific theory amounts to). Meanwhile, the supposed archeologists of the mission, one of whom is painted as a noble believer, is being questioned by one of the evil evidence-based reality people with (paraphrased) "Where do you have any evidence that these supposed aliens jump-started the human genome?". The response (given with nobility of course) is "it's what I choose to believe." Well, that's not science at all and it certainly isn't going to get you published. Apparently, however, there are still enough rich people with lots of money to spend on promoting faith in the late 21st century to fund a "trillion dollar" expedition, so I guess there's that at least.

Like I said, I really wanted to like this movie. I loved Alien, and Blade Runner and even Numbers (the TV show), but this movie managed to establish everyone's character as completely unlikable, at least for the half-dozen or so characters that were explored, in a very short time. This made the movie unwatchable for me.

Incidentally, I'm well aware of the fact that being a believer doesn't absolutely preclude being able to do good research, but there's a big difference between being a scientist who has religious beliefs, and practicing the sort of non-science of coming to a conclusion sans evidence - currently largely the domain of "intelligent design research".

Making Sense of it all

People who don't live in the US may not get it, but if you want a reasonably accurate depiction of evangelical Christianity in the US, have a look at Jake Busey's character in the movie "Contact" and that character's followers.

For those who don't live in Texas, that's also a pretty decent depiction of the Rick Perry approach to governing.  If you're one of those Americans that believes that the country would be better off making evangelical Christianity the center of all things, then by all means, support Rick Perry in his presidential bid.  If, on the other hand, you think children should be given the opportunity for education rather than indoctrination, that people should be allowed to determine their own faith, or lack thereof (insofar as it isn't at the expense of others), or that prayers for rain is not an effective governing strategy, you might want to look elsewhere.

Perry is right that the nation is in trouble, but I'm reasonably certain he hasn't the slightest clue how to "fix" any of it.  But I'm sure that in his mind it'll involve a lot of prayer.

The apocalypse

Oh, hey, the world ended ~13 minutes ago, but I was too busy playing Portal 2 to notice.  They're still playing baseball on TV, Lawrence Welk is on and so on and so forth.  Nothing significant on the news, though there's a thunderstorm raging to the north.  Well, thank god for his messenger Rick Perry and his call for prayers for rain several weeks ago, or the rain would never have come.  This is absolute proof of God's existence!

Well that's enough snark for now.  It's a beautiful day for an apocalypse and I'm going to enjoy it as much as I can.

Edit: Actually the prediction was that "the rapture" would occur at 6pm local on this day.  The world isn't supposed to end until October, apparently.  Nevertheless, nothing eventful on the news.  It's worth mentioning this isn't Harold Camping's first unfulfilled prophecy, though I suspect the prophecies, failed or not, have probably netted him more money than his civil engineering bachelor's degree ever did.

Ignorance IS painful... to watch.

A local church has a vacation bible school program going on this summer they've chosen to name "Pandamonia!".  I'm uncertain as to whether the name was chosen in ignorance of the word's origin/meaning, or if it's simply that they hate their children.  I'd like to think the former is more likely, but I have a long history of misreading people.

Happy, fuzzy (sexual harassment?) pandas... from the capitol city of hell.