Wonderful Matters

Last night Barack Obama gave his first State of the Union address, a celebrated affair in which he boasted about what a great president he is at fixing things. It was peppered with lots of Americanist platitudes meant to inspire, and I guess there's that. I just wonder if he's so Johnny-on-the-spot ready, willing, and able to make this country oh-so-wonderful again, what is it precisely that he's going to do that gazillons of potentates through the ages have failed to do already? How'd he get so wise? I didn't exactly hear that part. Ironically this is the week the finance bigwigs from all corners of the globe are gathering at the Davos pow-wow to hash out economic things. If there was a place where the truly helpful wisdom would emerge, this has to be it. But, yeah, they've been having it every year for however long. We still had bad bad economic things happen very very recently, certainly since their last meeting. Oh well. As I browse all the World punditr...

I saw Avatar last night with my two sons, and after hearing everyone who's seen it offer up the quite elaborate response of "Wow," I can see why they say that. I could go into great detail of every item of note regarding this groundbreaking picture, but I just want to briefly touch on two things. One is about the production itself, and the other is about something in the story. First, the production. The 3-D effect has certainly come quite a long way. It has become so advanced that many more films, particularly those with the kinds of special effects that were in this one, will be adopting this format. The key thought I had regarded the boundary of our vision, that is, the 3-D effect was limited within that rectangular box. In some sense I felt I was watching a motion dynorama, you know, like those scenes you'd create in the second grade with the cut-out shoebox containing little plastic figures and cotton and pipe-cleaners. Avatar was just like that except every...