manavmehta

* Some spoilers ahead * Yes, perhaps important things were left out from the perspective of continuity, but I still don't see why they cannot make the later movies while continuing to omit those things, or make up for their absence in later movies. To me, personally, those things weren't important in this movie, but they did omit some of the things I would have liked to see (and I do agree that people who haven't read the book would be lost at certain points). But, then, those are the compromises of condensing a 500 page book into a 2 hour movie - you please some of the book's devoted fans, while you dissapoint others. I personally loved this movie, and thought it was very well made and true to the book. I think Voldemort was brilliantly done visually, though I was also dissapointed that they omitted his red eyes and his clear high cold voice. And I loved the Yule Ball scenes - they were hilarious, especially some things they added which are not in the book (the way Ron says "where!?" when Prof McGonagoll asks him to place his hand on her waist )

My picture is in my avatar, but since its not very clear....

"Wouldn't You Rather Be Manav?" "Make Room for the Manav." "Manav Is Good For You." "Gotta Lotta Manav."

These are hilarious! I've got tears in my eyes from laughing

Me too! That was indeed the best line in the movie and this was the best movie of this year (surpassing Batman Begins in my book) and the previous and the one before that...! I saw this movie no less than 3 times this weekend! After seeing it the first time, I went back to the cinema hall the next day looking for other movies to watch, but everything other movie playing there seemed so unattractive in comparison to what I had seen the previous night that I could not bring myself to watch anything but this movie again! Every one of the 3 times I watched it was as much fun as the previous time (though the breathtaking suspense was gone the 2nd and 3rd time), and I came back refreshed each time! I am still thinking back on the movie's funniest lines and laughing my head off. I highly recommend this one to anyone who wants a genuinely good time. This is art at its very best (philosophically sound and entertaining).

I remember in the past seeing a link at the top which used to lead to some IRC chat forums but I don't see it any more. Has this feature been removed?

Nice signature Yup, pretty much. Well, not exactly - it differs from year to year. Some years I am in the US 8 months of the year, some years it's 3 months, and some years I just don't go back to India at all. My previous US stint was the longest - I worked in Minneapolis from Oct 2003 to Nov 2004, then worked in India from Nov 2004 to Feb 2005, and now I am back in Minneapolis since Feb of this year (and will probably be here till Mar 2006). What dictates the durations of my US stay is the requirements that my company has for keeping me here to service a client on-site. There are five votes for Asia so far. I count me, Prometheus, Indobj and Shakthig. Would voter no. 5 come forward please?

Even though I am in the US six months of every year, I voted Asia because that's where my actual home is. I'm from India, and I know for sure I'm not the only Asian in this forum (mine is the only vote so far for Asia). I guess the others are too busy working insanely late hours for their respective US clients I know I am and it's a wonder I manage to find time to browse this forum.

Nobody is advocating that America should interfere with other cultures and try to change them. But minding your own business is different from tolerating the objectively evil practices of other cultures. We cannot convert those who do not want to be converted, but that does not obligate us to tolerate them.

Sometimes it is better to offend people than to tolerate their evil practices. Bride burning, the caste system, child marriages, female infanticide - these were all evils of the old India which no one should ever have tolerated. Today, if they still exist, they are not tolerated and are probably relegated to the most primitive villages of the country where the people refuse to integrate themselves with modern times. They were continued only because they were tolerated by society. They were objectively evil practices - they were evil regardless of whether people tolerated them or not. In the same vein, America's race prejudices were evil regardless of whether society tolerated it or not, and regardless of whether white supremacists are offended when someone pronounces moral judgement on them. You seem to belong to the primacy of consciousness school of metaphysics - you seem to think that good and evil are not objectively determined by reality but by whether people consider them to be good or evil.

That is exactly what I meant. Ayn Rand wouldn't have wanted followers who treated her ideas like dogma, so I think it is an insult to her to even call such people Objectivists. This is the reason why I don't call myself an Objectivist. Though Ayn Rand's ideas seem true to me at a glance, I have not yet entirely convinced myself that they are true. The day I call myself an Objectivist will be the day I have completed the enormous task in my mind of tying the last of her ideas to reality.

Now, that's an oxymoron, if I've ever heard one!

************* SPOILER WARNING ************** I didn't agree with the League of Shadows' idea of justice, so I was rooting for Batman all the way through! The idea of decimating an entire population may have some plausibility when you are dealing with dictatorship nations, but it hardly applies when it comes to an american city crippled by corruption - the answer is not to kill all the innocent people, but to bring the criminals to justice. The idea of Bruce Wayne choosing not to be an executioner may be flawed in its reasoning - I agree that criminals don't deserve compassion - but there is something to restraining yourself from the use of lethal force and letting the law take its course. It is the whole reason why we choose to delegate our right of retaliatory force to the government. But, anyway, phew! gasp! WOW!!! This is one of the best movies I've seen in recent times! The movie was about a clear cut fight between good and evil. The good characters were principled and stood for something, as opposed to the gray protoganists and anti-heroes you usually see. Bruce Wayne was portrayed as a thinking, intellectual man, using his intellect to achieve his values. And they did a fantastic job explaining the origins of Batman. All in all, a good ride - I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I thought it was an excellently done movie, from the plot, the excellent production values, the fine acting performances (especially Christian Bale), through to the thrilling musical score. I found myself sitting at the edge of my seat during the climax! And I loved it when Rachel Dawes sums up the essence of morality in one line - what you are inside doesn't matter, it is what you DO that defines you! When the titles started rolling in the end, I found myself doing something I rarely do at a movie - applauding! I may not completely agree with the movie's explicit philosophy, but I loved its portrayal of a man using his mind to reach his goals, and doing it with a smile on his face!

People who smoke Marijuana might also do it for the taste. I don't see why taste would be a factor in smoking, but not in the use of mind-altering drugs like Marijuana. I don't know for a fact that Marijuana doesn't taste good, and if what Eric Mathis is saying is true about the use of Marijuana, then it is possible to smoke it without getting high, and I can even envision rational people deriving some value from Marijuana - it can be used recreationally the same way alcohol and cigarettes are used. I smoke cigarettes because they relax my nerves when I am stressed out at work. I drink because I enjoy the taste of beer, and because it relaxes my nerves and therefore helps me to unwind after a hard day's work. So taste is not the only factor determining recreational value. Point taken. Both #1 and #2 are criteria, assuming that you can determine easily whether your consumers are deriving the value you intended from the product. If not, I don't see how #2 can be applied. Taking your particular example, there is a non-medical, recreational use for Marijuana, so the pot dealer is not immoral for selling it -- although a majority of Marijuana users probably use it to get high, a pot dealer's intent may be for it to be used rationally for recreational purposes.

How could a dealer ever know if his product is being consumed by rational consumers, short of stalking every consumer to find out how they are using his or her product? The above is the reason why I consider (1) to be a sufficient criteria for determining the morality of a profession.

Are you saying that after smoking one joint of Marijuana, you retain the capacity for clear thought? If yes, then I was mistaken in my judgement of narcotics use, because that would mean that it could be something that could be enjoyed for recreational purposes by a rational person who uses it not to get stoned but to relax. If no, then how can you say that alcohol takes one as much away from reality as marijuana? He doesn't. But how much does he really have to smoke before his consciousness is altered? The vital question is this - is it possible for a rational person to derive value from narcotics? If yes, then your teenage dealer does not deserve condemnation.

I disagree. I sometimes have have upto three pints of beer when I visit a bar, and I don't feel drunk. And I still retain my capacity to think, and I certainly think I would be able to drive a car as well as (and perhaps better than) someone who hasn't had a single drink. I always stop at three pints, because I know anything beyond that would alter my capacity for clear thought. That is my standard in determining where I should stop. I don't think I am escaping reality by doing what I am doing. Disagree again. The person who bought the vodka could be storing some of it for future use, or he could be entertaining guests, or it could simply be possible that he could drink all of that vodka without getting drunk (different people have different capacities for retaining alcohol).

Intent is everything. When you were bartending, I am sure you were aware of the fact that people could get stone drunk on what you sell, but I assume that was not your intention in selling the alcohol. The teenage pot dealer in this movie is not innocent because he is aware of the most common use of a substance like marijuana, especially in the context in which he was selling it. So it couldn't have been his intent for people to use it for anything other than escaping reality. If people want marijuana for medicinal use, they will buy it from a drugstore after taking a prescription from a doctor, not from a pot dealer. The people who do buy it from a pot dealer don't intend to just take small whiffs of it to relax (assuming that was possible with a substance like marijuana) - they intend to get seriously stoned and your teenage dealer couldn't have been innocently ignorant about this fact! I may be mistaken about this, and perhaps I am just inexperienced in the use of controlled substances, but it is also my understanding that substances like marijuana cannot be taken for recreational purposes without an adverse effect on your level of alertness. Alcohol on the other hand is something you can just take a few shots of and still be alert enough to drive, or even to do intellectual work. The value you gain from those quantities of alcohol you take in small quantities is that it helps you to relax.

No. Because alcohol can be consumed without escaping reality, and it has both recreational and medicinal value, depending on how you want to consume it. I did not say that the product you sell has to fulfil a necessity of human life - it must just be something that a rational person would value. This might have been the wrong example to illustrate my point, but it doesn't invalidate the point that what you do should be of value to a rational person.

It is a vice to sell something which you know for a fact can never ever be used in any way that is of value to a human being. It does not matter if it affects you or not. The fact that it personally does not affect you doesn't mean that you do not have the right to condemn it for the evil it is. Everything, if you know beyond any doubt that the knives you are making are going to be used for skinning people alive. The same principle applies if you are making a home made bomb and selling it to a suicide bomber. You can argue that there is nothing wrong with you making the bomb because the suicide bomber wants it and is paying you for it, and because you are doing a great job at it. This argument can be extended to innumerable things. You can argue that there is nothing wrong with selling copies of the Bible or the Koran or the Gita because people want to buy them, but the fact is that these books have inflicted irreparable harm to mankind. You can argue that there is nothing wrong with being a catholic priest, or a contract assasin, or a pimp, or a prostitute. But the fact is that the practitioners of these professions cannot be relieved of moral judgement just because they are only providing what people want from them, because somebody wants their services. And that, in a nutshell, is what my point is - that you are what you do - and you must prepare to be judged for it. Intent is everything.

I don't care, but I don't admire the kid either. Admiration should be reserved for virtues, not vices. To cater to people's vices is a vice, no matter how efficiently you do it. What he did with his money is immaterial to judging whether he earned it through virtue or vice.

Are you certain that Valium and Xanax are not prescribed by doctors in certain situations? It could be that the companies manufacture the drugs purely for medicinal purposes. The fact that the drugs can be misused is not the company's fault. The intent to create value means everything when you are running a business. If there is no medical situation that warrants the use of these drugs, then the companies are indeed being immoral by manufacturing them.

(Background note from Mod: A thread (link) about the movie "American Beauty" turn to a discussion about dealing in drugs, because one of the characters sells illegal drugs. This sparked discussion about activities like selling knives and guns, etc. Since the discussion appears to be more than just a passing aside, I'm creating a separate thread for it, and will move some of the relevant posts from the movie-thread into this one. (Earlier this forum had a pretty long thread ago about tobacco, drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc. It might be of interest.) - SoftwareNerd] End of Background note ) I don't consider the selling of drugs to be a productive or creative endeavour. While alcohol does have some genuine recreational value, drugs are of no value whatsoever to a society of rational men. The only "value" of drugs (if you can call it that) is that they help you to escape reality, to escape a focused (sober) state of consciousness to enter a state of consciousness that is unequivocally un-focussed, and I don't get why a rational person would ever want to do that (for that matter, I don't understand people who like to get stone drunk on alcohol either). So, I don't think the kid is worthy of admiration for running a business that caters to the vices of people, instead of indulging in a more productive activity. I don't subscribe to the view that the running of a business as such is to be considered a virtue, regardless of the context i.e. what value the business offers to its customers. Such a view would regard a contract assasin and an industrialist to be morally equivalent, since they both run businesses!

What about his liberal use of drugs? What about the fact that he prefers a job in a McDonald's outlet to his white collar job? And what about his daughter and her drug peddling boyfriend? What are they supposed to signify?

i) Chinese ii) Elvis iii) I don't know what these cars look like, so, as of now my response is - Neither. iv) Cat v) I like to sleep during the day. I assume that is what you mean by Day Person.