Checksum Arcanius

There are plenty of movies where the characters, and sometimes even you as a watcher, don’t know who is who. Like in Mission Impossible with Ethan and his masks. It makes for interesting film, but I’ve never had to deal with the situation in real-life – until recently. The issue involves AOL Instant Messanger and a particular person who doesn’t seem to realize her friends are sneaky mischiefmakers. Several times over the past few weeks, I have come to the startlng revalation that I’m not talking to who I think I’m talking to, and its atually somewhat disturbing, to say the least. Its not like I’ve said anything I’m embarassed about, but, well, do people get off doing this or what?

According to this article, Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 leaves much to be desired. The whole Carlyle group thing didn’t bother me too much, but the plane trips thing did, and it is interesting to see that the claims that these flights were illigetimate were fabricated and that the person who approved the flights was none other than Richard Clarke, now an outspoken critic of Bush.

It doesn’t change, of course, the Patriot Act or the Iraq War vs. The Afghanistani War, but it does make you wonder about the rest of the claims in the movie. If Moore had simply left all verifiably false stuff out, then the entire film would gain credibility. But instead, he leaves it in and calls all the content into question. Of course, without the claims addressed in teh above article, it would have been a pretty short film about mostly Iraq, and we’ve all had enough of that.

Today, I woke up at 6 and ate breakfast, got up again at 7 and revisionist blogged until 8, folded until 9, worked on the lawn until 10:45, Played Ultimate (my team finally won!) until 1, worked more on the lawn until 2, showered, and participated in the third hack session until 5, helped prepare for a partay until 6, partayed with glorious food and friends until 8, met with the TRC leadership until 9:45, then saw Spiderman 2 until 12:30.

Yikes!

Today after a wonderful day at work in which I ended by successfully generating on-the-fly a control barcode for the Flic barcode scanner using code written from scratch by yours truly, I went with Maneesh
to see Farenheit 9/11.

My first reaction to the release of this movie is that I would not see it. This because Michael Moore is an avowed leftest, and I didn’t want to support him, his propoganda, or his causes. But then, after some reflecting and reading of reviews, I decided that watching it would be useful. I wanted to hear oposing viewpoints, if for no other reason than knowing what they were. While I went in with more than a grain of salt, I also tried to keep an open mind.

First, since it is a movie, I think visuals should be discussed. Large parts of the movie consisted of footage blown up from TV quality images. While it was bearable to watch, anybody who gave it a high score in visuals is retarded. And there were plenty of people that did just that on Yahoo! Movies. ‘Tards.

The attempts to direect the audience emotionally were well done. I’m not terribly emotional to start out with, and I had to grimmace to make it through the emotionally charged parts still keeping my wits about me. The hardest were the mother who lost the son in the war and the Iraqi woman who lost some family members.

The large array of factual evidence presented is the most convincing. For example, the military commitments to Afghanistan and Iraq were oppisite of what it sees they should have been. Fewer troops went to Afghanistan than police patrol the streets of New York. More than ten times the number committed to Afghanistan are in Iraq. It tooks months for US forces to penetrate Afghanistan, and only days for Iraq. Its not to hard to believe Mikey, then, when he suggests that this is the reason Osama got away, and Sadaam got caught. It is also fairly easy to believe, with the other evidence presented, that the Bush administration took on Afghanistan out of neccesity, whereas Iraq was the prize they sought, with 9/11 as the means to that end.

And that became the most disturbing theme in the movie, because of how true it seemed upon personal reflection. September 11th was used as a justification for agendas that existed long before. Take the Patriot Act. It was very telling when Michael Moore was interviewing a congressman who said that members of congress don’t actually read what they turn into law, because to do so would take too long. So Mikey decided to go and read the patriot act to them. If it takes someone whose job is to legislate too long to read a single new law, how in the world are the rest of us, who have real jobs to do, supposed to read all the laws that we are supposed to abide by?

Other interesting tidbits

• the Afghani pipeline for natural gas
• the tactics of Marine recruiters
• Only one member of congress has a child overseas in the service
• Members of congress don’t like the idea of getting their kids to sign up for the Army

Overall, seeing the movie was a good experience. I just wish there were a conservative version of Michael Moore, so we could have an equally skewed version of this sort of commentary from the right. Maybe then people would realize how screwed up the system really is. While the rest of the movie went on to try to paint Bush and Cheney as unique in their ties to Enron and Haliburton, one truth remains. If you filmed anyone in politics for 4 years, you could make them look any way you wanted, because they will certainly provide enough ammunition. Unfortunately, the truth is that most of our government is corrupt and its not getting any better. Sure, its called politics as usual when senators get contracts for their home state and they get campaign contributions in return. But pretending that is somehow different than bribery doesn’t make it any less harmful.

In the end, this movie reaffirmed rather than challeneged my core beliefs. It did shift my perspective on Bush, but it didn’t rule out my voting for him. It certainly didn’t make me any more likely to vote for Kerry, even though an old lady wearing a Kerry for President pin tried to get me to register to vote (I am already registered). But it still seems clear to me that the government which governs least governs best. Government started the War in Iraq for a number of legitimate and probably a number of illegitmate reasons as well. But government also supplied and supported Hussein and Bin Laden in the first place. Imagine the lives and money that could have been put to better use had government just stayed out of it all.

Vote freedom first.

Peace.

Today I finished up the last two Seattle International Film Festival movies that I had planned. So it seems like a good time to talk about my first film festival experience now.

I saw the following films, in the order listed, and give them the following overall ratings (from 1 to 5):

Uniform – Confused Drama – China – 1.5
Primer – Sci-Fi Drama – USA – 5
Nicotina – Dark Comedy – Mexico – 4
Ruby & Quentin – Light Comedy – France – 5
6ixtynin9 – Dark Comedy – Thailand – 3.5
A Problem With Fear – Confused Comedy – Canada – 2.5

Uniform was a tarrible way to start out the festival, except perhaps that it made me really aprreciate the next five I saw. It was almost a complete bomb, but for my passing interest in it as a documentary of day to day life in China. As a movie, however, almost everything was wrong. The plot mostly sucked (even though it could have been interesting), the cinematography was crap (but what can you do, when working with standard definition digital equipment that’s probally 10 years old?), the dialogue is uninteresting, and it just goes downhill from there. Avoid this movie unless you’re hoping to catch some rest and waste some money at the same time.

Primer was stark contrast to Uniform in that it was made with what may have been a similar budget (just $7000), but it was so much better. The writer, director, and lead actor was actually there at the screening, which was pretty cool because he answered some questions afterwards, and seemed like a genuine good guy. The movie is one which requires deep thinking – its definitely not a light popcorn movie. But the thought you have to put in is all worth it. Science is treated repectfully – it helps that the writer/director was a software engineer and a techie, and that he didn’t have the budget for bad special effects. The film does lack exciting cinematography, and it could use some help in the music and sound department (but in this case, all of the above were one guy). However, this doesn’t really detract from the movie, because the movie doesn’t require any of this to be very, very good. I highly suggest that you go see it when it comes out in theaters in september (thats what I hear). You can also visit
the website for a trailer and other info on the forums. Very highly recommended.

I will finish this another time, when I am not yawning. Have a wonderful day!

I just returned from the Harvard Exit theater where I watched, along with Ben, Jim, Dan, Alex, and others, the movie “Primer.” It was incredible, bar none the best time-travel movie I have ever seen, and it was all done for $7000. FIRST Robotics, which is increasing its fees next year, could learn something here. But I digress. The movie was excellent, I need to see it again, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone when it becomes more widely distributed.

From myuw.washington.edu:

Application Status

Applicants are notified beginning April through July, as soon as an admission decision can be made. Autumn quarter 2004 begins September 29, 2004.

This is the first change I’ve seen since they reported recieving my transcripts almost two months ago. Its good to see life in the machine, it means the wait will be over soon. I think I’ll get in, but there’s nothing quite like confirmation to warm the soul and strengthen the ego (as if I need more of that!)

In other news, I got my Diff.Eq. tst back today. A 40 was an A and I got a 44.4, so I figure thats pretty good. I’m having more dust problems in photography, and since I’m working most days of the week, I hardly have time to really make prints except when I’m rushed. Finally, work is going well, except for the recent dead head disk drive controller, SmarTeam insanity, and self-extracting installs gone awry. Its a pretty good life.

Ben and I have selected movies from the Seattle International Film Festival we’d like to see. A lot of them sound pretty cool. The next step is actually buying them. Unfortunately, due to schedules and movie selections, only one of my selections coincides with one of Dan’s. If we work things right, we may be able to bring that up to two. We shall see. $45 for a six pack, two between us. Anyone who wants to see the director’s cut of Donnie Darko, contact me.