Moebius

It's not "pointless". You're just missing the point. The story was about how a man deals with complete and utter isolation, a la Castaway. In the case of Will Smith, he uses routines to keep the ever encompassing loneliness away. Maybe you can dig that, maybe you can't, but I thought the movie did a decent job showing it. I don't think Will Smith is as good as Tom Hanks as far as inner portrayals go, but he wasn't bad. In fact, many scenes with him and the dog (especially the final dramatic one) I thought he did really, really fucking well. Will Smith's capacity as an actor is obviously pretty subjective. I for one think that he is excellent if only for the fact that he continuously improves and finding a wide dramatic range. I don't see why you think he isn't "smart enough", but certainly I think the movie did a poor job capturing the science part of Will Smith's character. Mostly we just see him record himself throwing one liners at a bunch of hairless, vicious rats. In fact, he never actually does anything scientific, which I suppose the director figures would only get in the way of the action. As for his motivations for curing the virus: it was the last thing that he had promised to his wife and child. For the next three years that he lived alone, it became the only motivation for his continued existence. If you think about it another way, what does Will Smith's character desire more than anything else at that stage of his life? Normal human contact. A part of him is convinced that he is the last man on Earth, and that there are no safe colonies nor any remnants of human civilization left. Thus his best shot at achieving what he wants the most is by curing the infected. Note that even as his life was threatened by a horde of zombies in his basement, the thing he most wanted was for them to submit to his help ("let me save you!").

I think the idea is that since a some of the earliest philosophers happened to came out of Greece, that automatically made their entire civilization great despite inferior technological, social, or military achievements relative to other civilizations.

Is that the one with Val Kilmer where they made pop corn by shooting a laser beam from space or something like that?

I don't think you can really measure Vick's passion for either, but yes its true that football is more financially beneficial. But then I'm a stock broker, but I am probably more passionate about basketball than about stocks. I'm not trying to say that Vick is a hero that stood up to an immoral law by dog fighting. My point is that knowing something is illegal but still deciding to break the law does not inherently imply stupidity.

Now, I don't know if this was the case for Vick. But if a man knows a law to be unjust and immoral, and chooses to break it knowing the consequences and refusing to blindly comply, that would make him uncompromising and perhaps even heroic, not stupid.

I believe I have stated it several times, even in the very post that you're quoting.

You're the one that called it a "moral outrage". I just said it is irrational and unjust. Now are you disagreeing with that, or is your only point this whole time that Vick is guilty of dog fighting as supposed to dog killing?

Alright, he's guilty of dog fighting, not dog killing. Does that change the principles of this discussion one bit? Oh, right, it doesn't.

It's exactly the same as the first one, except worse. And the first one was a mediocre film.

Oh but I did say that there should be no laws restricting killing dogs. Michael Vick should not be in jail, period. And that has been my stance from the start. There is nothing "special" about it, except for the fact that he is a high profile athlete. I am sure you can find other things that are more or less evil. My question is, so what? This thread is about Vick, and how he is wrongfully incarcerated. Either you think he should be jailed, or he shouldn't. The fact that greater evil exists is irrelevant and completely pointless.

I see. I do agree that drug dealers should not be punished by the government, but I have misgivings about not punishing pimps for reasons already stated. If you replace "pimp" with "prostitute", then I would agree also. I'm not sure though why the fact that the are all victim-less crimes warrants them the same moral status since that is the only thing they have in common. In principle, this is true. Only thing is that as far as we know, Michael Vick's only "crime" is dog fighting, whereas your average drug dealer tend to have far more problems. I would agree that freeing the non-violent drug dealers would be a moral equivalent, although probably not freeing drug dealers indiscriminately.

Uh. The whole piece is one big conjecture that sums up to something like "well plastic kills, which forces animals to adapt, which is good". Adaptation is not inherently good or bad, it just is. We can probably fill the ocean up with nuclear waste and SOME animals will survive and adapt. But that would not be a good argument about whether nuclear waste is good for the environment/animals/whatever. Also, yes it is true that numbers without context is meaningless. But the numbers provided in the article itself are equally meaningless if not down right deceiving. Yeah okay some turtles lay 150-200 eggs -- but they need to lay that many in the first place because only about 0.001% of the hatchlings even make it into the sea. That's one in a thousand eggs, meaning likely NONE of your 150-200 will ever even taste sea water.

I agree with you about drug trading. I don't know about pimping, whose job description basically reads "fuck up any prostitute that turns tricks on your turf who doesn't pay you, fuck up any john that messes with the prostitute that does pay you". The job is inherently about violence. But this is all off-topic and beside the point. Assuming these are all victim-less crimes like dog fighting as you said, why then should I feel morally outraged as David suggested? I wanted David to explain himself, but since you keep on answering for him, I'd like to hear your opinion too.

Maybe street level drug dealing is victimless, but there is certainly a lot of violence involved with the trade (whether the root cause is government regulations or not). As far as pimping goes, there's definitely a whole lot of force being used one way or another. These things probably warrant its own thread so let us assume for the moment that these are truly "victimless crimes". What then is the proper level of "moral outrage" that David is talking about? Zip? A lot? Somewhere in between? I mean, at least the drug and sex trades are strictly transactions between humans. Personally I don't feel much if any moral outrage about dog fighting. In any case, the morality of dog fighting already has its own thread. The bottom line is that Vick is jailed wrongfully under an unjust and irrational law.

Dog fighting is comparable to drug dealing and pimping... in what way?

Word. The fact that a man is going to jail for killing his own dog is just wrong. I wouldn't necessarily equate what Vick did with a meat butcher since he was killing those animals for entertainment rather than nourishment, but it does not matter. Whatever torturing animals may say about him as a person is not enough grounds for putting him in jail. FREE MICHAEL VICK!

You forget Memento, easily the best Chris Nolan film and by far my favorite.

Only if you're the criminal.

I guess the question is why not add it? You could simply have the members divulge these information on a voluntary basis.

Personally I think Leonidas, being the King of Sparta, would have fought the Persian regardless of whether or not he loved his wife. How you want to read his motives though is up to you. Sparta existed on the back of slaves. It is simply a historical fact. How else do you think a warrior society where every single man lived for violence raise their crops or build ANYTHING? Sure, the movie is set in the past. Yet you can still compare the Spartan society with other cultures from the same era. Sparta's was a barbaric culture based on force and violence, whether historically or as presented in the film. And finally, as far as I can tell Leonidas was the only man in the film that questioned mysticism, and only when the Ephors did not comply with his wishes. The fact that the Spartans were required to consult the Ephors in the first place (along with sacrificing virgins to them and what not) should tell you how steeped in mysticism Sparta was. So I will say again that when Leonidas proclaims to fight against mysticism, when he really meant was only PERSIAN mysticism, and religion -particularly Greek religion- in general. If your only defense for the brutalities and moral corruptness of Spartan culture is "well they existed back in the days", then the same thing would apply to the Persians. I did not say that Sparta's practice of infanticide was pointless. They killed them because they would not be able to fight as well, period. Face it -- the Spartans did not kill those kids because "the healthier people survive better". They killed them because they couldn't fight as well. I do not see how the length of time that humans has existed is relevant when passing moral judgment. Note that historically other societies, be it fellow Greeks or the Persians, did not need to resort to these practices to prosper. I think Frank Miller is a mediocre writer of limited scope. And yeah, they fought in phalanx formation for about five minutes during the first battle -- which accounts for the 5% of running time that I talked about. And yes, I am aware of what the Spartan plan is supposed to be. They utilized it to great effect for that whole of five minutes that I was talking about. Reason existed before, after, and regardless of the Greeks. It is simply the nature of human beings to utilize reason to survive. To give credit where it is due however, the Greeks began the systemic study of reason based philosophy which proved to be the foundation of modern society, and I give them major props. I do not see the greatness of Greek culture as being relevant to a review of the film however, unless you mean to say that any film regarding the Greeks automatically gets extra points for the time period it depicts. The ONLY instance in the film where the Spartans spurned mysticism was when Leonidas defied the Ephors. And like I said, it was only because the Ephors disagreed with his (certainly reasonable) decision. Had the Ephors said "sure Leonidas, fight the Persians", there would have been no spurning to speak of. So as I see it, it is an individual act by Leonidas that does not represent the Spartans as a whole, and Leonidas did it not because he was anti-religious in general but because he believed (correctly) the Ephors to be corrupt. As for reason, I suppose the fact that Leonidas recognized the threat and acted on it counts as one instance. Otherwise there was scant little to speak of in terms of battle tactics, what with wearing thongs into battle and all that one on one scattered fighting -- which to be fair I did not expect there to be. I mean, the film is what it is. It is supposed to be a glorious, comic based, adrenaline-filled violence fest meant to appeal to teenage boys. For a better example of a film that portrayed a hero that uses reason, look at a movie like Braveheart, where the protagonist was taught that a warrior uses his head, and then applied that lesson over and over again throughout the film. As for the queen, I agree that in the film and historically Spartan women enjoyed more relative freedom than their average Greek counterparts. Although frankly that is pretty minor. Yeah I liked both Leonidas' and the Queen's characters, but a technical standpoint they were very one dimensional and under-developed. Leonidas' lines consisted pretty much entirely of yelling empty one-liners at the top of his lung. I do not doubt that Frank Miller might have a message somewhere in the film, but it certainly was not very clear and is perhaps limited by his capacities as a writer. Yeah, I guess Leonidas was supposed to represent reason and freedom, but sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

I agree with all of Diana's points. It is very similar to how I felt about the movie. They say that, but they live and act differently. They are against PERSIAN tyranny, but they are okay with Spartan tyranny. They are religious, they just don't want the PERSIAN religion. They FORCE every able-bodied child to fight, they KILL all the lame ones, they sustain their society of fighters and "heros" by enslaving their neighbors. They say the hunchback can not fight because he could not hold the phalanx, then spent 95% of their battles doing 1 on 1 fighting. Sometimes instead of projecting your own feelings on the lines they spout, you need to consider the context and think about what they actually meant and how they actually act.

The Joker is frightening because he is completely unpredictable. He can be calm and tranquil, sure, but then the next second he can explode into a murderous raving psychotic. I mean, the whole point is that he is literally crazy, and that is scary because you have no idea what kind of completely fucked up thing he is about to do next. But yeah I don't know how I feel about that dirtied up The Crow look, and the trailer kind of sucks. More or less it's a lot of Joker screaming and a couple of "Hey there is a bat-cycle!" moments. But the lead actor, the director, and the first film kicked so much ass that this one deserves the benefit of the doubt as well as my ticket money.

Yeah its Heath Ledger. I don't know, Joker has never been one of my favorite villains, but Nicholson basically stole the show in the Tim Burton Batman. Where Nicholson's portrayal was a silky smooth psychopathic killer, Ledger's version looks much darker and is just out right crazy. Either way I am sure it will be a very entertaining film. I love virtually all Christian Bale movies, and Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors out there. The Batman franchise was becoming a joke until the actor/director pair breathed new life into it.

Yeah but... the kids can get plastic surgery too. Besides after the surgeries you can theoretically attract healthier mates and thereby improving your offspring's gene pool. From that point on your children can just rinse and repeat.

A rule is not a theory. A rule just says "do not do this or you will be punished". I don't understand what you think we are pretending. That some people cheat? That a lot of people cheat? What? And I still don't understand your reasoning for why we should get rid of these rules in your original post. We should get rid of these rules because it creates an illusion? An illusion of what? To whom? And why does that constitute a reason for throwing out a rule? If we have a rule that says "do not cheat on tests" and found out that 60% of kids cheat anyway, we should just throw out the rules and allow them to cheat?