The Devastation Of Haiti

I more or less believe that we, America, should stay out of other people’s business. I’m probably about as Libertarian as they come and believe for the most part, people should be left to their own devices. I don’t believe we should be forcing our beliefs on other countries anymore than I want the government to force me to live my life a certain way. We are, all of us, born free, regardless of what country you were born in. As Jefferson wrote, there are rights, not just those of Americans, but of all man, that are, in in his words, inalienable.

However, there are a few instances in which I think that a people, as a whole, need to work together for a common goal; for example the Hoover Dam, liberating Europe and the Moon landings.

America is more than just a nation; it is an idea, that there is hope and a better life for all. I think as a people, the instinct to do ‘good’ is ingrained in our very consciousness. The 20th century saw what a determined people we can be, through our achievements and sacrifices. The world looked to use for hope and when things looked their darkest, for help.

America and Haiti have had a long, if not always friendly, relationship and since the Monroe Doctrine, we have exercised enormous influence in the Americas. With the addition of the Roosevelt Corollary, this extended to military intervention.

But what if we were to turn our influence, our might as a nation, and the very meaning of the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary, towards a great humanitarian mission? Can you imagine the sight of hundreds of ships streaming from the very horizon, crowding the harbor of Port-Au-Prince, the beaches stormed, not by soldiers, but by doctors, nurses and rescue workers? Imagine the tears in the eyes of those suffering to see the skies suddenly swarming with helicopters,a scene straight straight from Apocalypse Now, but rather than delivering bombs and rockets, instead they drop food, medicine and supplies. Thousands of boots marching towards not conquest, but to the rescue of their fellow man. The skills and abilities of a nation who through sheer determination and will, was capable of leaving the footprints of Man upon the Moon, now brought to bear on reversing disaster and alleviating suffering.

America could do in a few weeks what it would take the rest of the world years to accomplish. Any U.N. humanitarian action illustrates this perfectly. Yet, we need the will to do it. We could help Haiti transform itself from a nation of poverty, hunger and political instability into one of freedom, Democracy and wealth. And then we should leave. All help should be freely given, without strings and with out need for thanks.

Perhaps, the world would see us then, not as a global policeman, but as their brother, their friend, and someone on whom, in their darkest hour they could always depend.

America was a bright and shining beacon to those whose world was dark and without hope. It meant freedom and a chance for a better life. It meant generosity, knowledge, fairness, and hope that humanity was indeed more than just a violent and vicious animal. Much has been done, either out of necessity or hubris to dispel this once heartfelt image of America.

It would let the people of the world again see the good will of American people. We are a great and mighty people, but might and greatness are not measured solely on the power to defeat your enemies or the wealth you can amass. It is measured by the responsibility you take for making the world a better place. It is measured by your willingness to lift the least among you up and help them stand as equals, not out of pity or out of a misguided sense of guilty, but because all mankind is indeed meant for better things.

Like the Phoenix of legend, hope can arise from the ashes of pain and suffering. Fear can be replaced with optimism and confidence in the future….we need only the will to act…and to remember what America really stands for.

New Image of Asteroid 2010 Al30

This is a great image caught by amature astronomers that I found on UniverseToday.com. It is still undetermined what the orbit and exact nature of the object is. It's possible that it is a man-made object, perhaps a spent rocket booster from the ESA's Venus Express. Check out UniverseToday.com for more images and more information. It's a great site!

UPDATE:

This was supposed to be an animated .GIF, but I haven't figured out how to get Blogger to display them properly. The asteroid is the small white dot at the center of the image. Hopefully I'll get the image fixed soon.

New Asteroid Discovered

I just read about on Wired.com. The object, now called 2010 AL30, is purported to be 30 to 50 feet across and is to come within one third of the moon’s distance from Earth. Check the links below, provided by Wired.com, for more information.

http://remanzacco.blogspot.com/2010/01/neo-2010-al30-close-approach.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/new-asteroid/

Xbox Live Game Room

I have to say that when I heard about Xbox Live’s Game Room announcement I was pleasantly surprised. It seems like a great addition to a platform that doesn’t offer much social interaction beyond playing multi-player games, at least in the way Playstation Home does. I know, I know, Home is a bit of a bomb. It may not have lived up to its promise, but it’s got a lot of room to grow if Sony can just figure out what to do with it.

I had thought that when Xbox Live rolled out avatars with the upgrade to Live that there would be more of a social component, or at least someway to interact with your friends in some lobby environment. I’m not sure if that’s going to be a component of Game Room either. Wouldn’t it be great if you could open up your game room to a bunch of your friends and all hang out like you used to in the arcades of old? Remember sitting around some kid that was just wailing on Defender? The dazzle of the blinking lights and cacophony of blips, bells and whistles all mixed together with the scent of popcorn, Coca Cola and odor of cigarettes burning the plastic of the game cabinet’s button shelf.



I can almost smell the burning plastic from here

Kids today are missing out on all of that. If I close my eyes and thick hard enough, I’m back at the roller skating rink, jamming quarter after quarter into Dig-Dug, the air think with the smell of cotton candy and music blasting in my ears (I’d like to say it was KISS, Thin Lizzy or something respectable like that, but it’s more likely to be ABBA or Wild Cherry…ugh). Imagine being able to recapture that? After buying the games to put in your game room, you could open it up to your friends and let them go wild! I’m sure Microsoft would prefer that people buy their own games and then play them in their own game rooms, but I think they are missing a great opportunity to bring some real social aspect to Xbox Live. The people playing the games would use a few Microsoft points, with the owner of the game room getting bonuses; say a new game for every 500-1000 points spent in his arcade, new levels and attractions, free music downloads for an arcade jukebox or movies to be played in a mini-theater. High scores could be posted on leader-boards across Xbox Live or there could be carnival games that award special achievements for those who win. The owner could allow Microsoft to sell ad space in their game room and again reward the owner of the arcade to gain a bonus for the amount of traffic their game room generates.

If they’re smart, Microsoft will pick up on the opportunity to make a little bit of money while offering something really exciting to its subscribers.

We Roll Tonight To The Plastic Guitar Bite

Since I wasn’t able to make it to CES this year (and probably won’t EVER get a chance to go) I get all my info about up and coming technologies from other web sites and technology-themed shows, like G4’s Attack Of The Show.

Some of the more interesting things that I heard were introduced at the CES were Midi guitar controllers, such as the YouRock guitar and Gambridges Z-1 Hybrid guitar, which can be used both with rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band AND be used as a controller for GarageBand on Macs. I had read about the midi guitar controllers courtesy of Technologizer.com which gives a pretty good description of the capabilities of both. I have not used them, but as someone who has played guitar for over 20 years, I have always complained that playing the games isn’t the same as playing music (much like being a DJ doesn’t make you a musician…it just doesn’t folks, sorry) and how some people treat the controllers like real guitars. It is absolutely ridiculous that there are game controllers made from the body of real guitars and that there are people that will spend an outrageous amount of money to buy them.

I bought my first real guitar, a Kramer Striker 600ST (I think, I’ll have to double check), which cost me about $350. It was by no means a ‘great’ guitar, due to the plywood body which made it both sound crappy and heavier than a cinder-block. It did, however, have a Floyd Rose tremolo and it was MINE. I loved that guitar and I still have it at my brother’s house. It was the guitar that I first learned to REALLY play on. The guitar I used before that was a Harmony Flying V that my brother got for Christmas and while I started to take lessons on that guitar, from no less than the late, great Bernie Brauswetter, my Kramer was the guitar I learned to solo and the first guitar I ever played on stage. Interestingly enough, I read somewhere that the Striker body type is being used as the body of a guitar controller for Guitar Hero. Oh, how the Gods of Rock mock me…

I have to say that I am not as big as an opponent of rhythm games as I first was. They have introduced me to some music that I would have probably never bothered listening to and introduced my kids to some great older music that they would have never been exposed to or would have dismissed out of hand because it wasn’t cool or it was ‘old music’. There is nothing more surreal than listening to your kids sing the lyrics of a song that came out over 30 years ago. To their credit, the games were always fun and are a great way to enjoy music socially and interactively. In the past the only real way to do this was to learn an instrument and hit an open jam (Orphan Annie’s on a Sunday night!) or get a bunch of friends together and bang away on an acoustic guitar. I often think of old movies where someone would jump on the piano and everyone would gather around and sing some old standard. You know why you don’t see things like this anymore? No one can play an instrument. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band allow people who can’t play a way to enjoy music socially again and allow those of us who can play a way to enjoy music interactively with our kids. In fact, my son got so into playing Rock Band with his friends at one point, he actually picked up my guitar and asked me to show him a few things. A year later, he has his own guitar and continues to play to this day.

That brings me back to my original point. My biggest problem with a game is that all the time and energy spent learning the button sequences to a song in the game could be put toward learning the song itself on a real instrument. Some of the sequences are truly difficult when the game is set to ‘Expert’, ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ by DragonForce is a prefect example of what I’m talking about. Look it up on YouTube if want to see what I’m talking about. I was in the car the other day and ‘Heart Shaped Box’ by Nirvana came on the radio and the first thing that came to mind was the graphics of the game, mainly because I had hear that song more while playing the game than I had ever heard it on the radio, even when the song was first released. He mentioned that if he closed his eyes, he could still remember the button pattern to play the song. Crazy, huh? If you are going to spend time memorizing something like that, why not just learn the song?

That being said, the game’s drum controllers go much farther in teaching someone the basics of playing real drums. Since I can’t play drums myself, I can only say that it seems like a good way to build the coordination that it will take if you were to make the jump to real drums.

If rhythm games are going to continue to be popular, they are going to need to keep the challenge up. I can’t think of a better way to do that then to inject some of the elements of real instruments into the game. 20 years from now there might be a legion of rockers who owe their entire coreers to Guitar Hero….

When The Lights Go Out...For Good

The other night I came across a great show about what would happen if society falls, called ‘After Armageddon’. It depicts a fictional Los Angeles family trying to survive after a global pandemic kills over a 100 million people in the United States and more across the globe. The story plays out over the narration of experts describing how these events might occur in the real world and what may be necessary for the average person to do to survive. It’s funny, because just recently my daughter mentioned that she couldn’t wait for the zombie apocalypse to happen and that got me to thinking about how people tend to romanticize about post-apocalyptic scenarios, myself included.

After all, the media is filled with stories about the world after ‘The Fall’. I believe I read somewhere that this is result of modern society, people feel the need to be free, to start over again and not be shackled by their jobs or their debt. I for one have to admit that the thought of the free and wild frontier days, the open range and a man living by his wits, hold a powerful allure. However I think we are in for a rude awakening. It is the safety and security that allows us to fantasize about the world without it. We are surrounded by comforts that we are not ever remotely prepared to do without. The world without water, power, law and civilization is a very dangerous one indeed.

Overall, I found the program very interesting and many of the things that the characters thought of and the experts suggested were things that I never thought of. One for instance was an easy way of salvaging gasoline from cars on the side of the rode. Normally you’d think that you would need a hose to siphon the gas from the tank. However, it is far simpler to punch a hole in the vehicles gas tank with a screwdriver, let it pour out into a bucket and then fill what ever gas cans you have with you. The vehicle isn’t likely to be going anywhere, so why waste your time trying to get the gas out?

Another suggestion dealt with where to find water. If you think about it, the average home has several water reserves that we may not immediately consider; the toilet tank for one. They tend to contain at least a gallon of water and since it doesn’t come in contact with the bowl water until the toilet is flushed, it is relatively clean. Water heaters can contain over 50 gallons of water, all of it potable. If you consider that every home has one, and the potential for those homes to be unoccupied is pretty high, that leaves the chance of finding temporary sources of water very good. I’m curious too about how much water is held in the pipes of an average house. If some one were to go into the basement of a two story home and cut the water pipes, how much water would be retained in the pipes to the second floor bathroom, to the garden hose and to the washing machine and dishwasher? Since most water if delivered into homes by water pressure, does that mean in its absence, will the water simply run back out of the home and to its source? Consider THAT for a moment then…how difficult is it to access the main at the street? It’s probably an awful lot of digging, but it might be easier than digging a well…at least for the short term.

The show also discussed what foods would be a good idea to bring on the road with you. Since water is a necessity and is heavy, they suggested bringing along food that was energy dense, such as a jar of peanut butter and crackers. Peanut butter is packed with carbohydrates, essential fats, fiber and nutrients. The crackers have essentially ALL carbohydrates, so they offer quick energy when eaten, plus they are more than likely made with iron enriched flour, have sodium and are trace sources of vitamin B.

I did a little research myself on the edible plants in my local area and I was surprised with what I found. Dandelions offer an amazing amount of nutrients for something considered a weed and so readily destroyed out of hand. I found the following from a quick Wikipedia search on Dandelions:

“Dandelion leaves contain abundant amounts of vitamins and minerals, especially Vitamins A, C and K, and are good sources of calcium (0.19% net weight), potassium (0.4% net weight) and fair amounts of iron and manganese, higher than similar leafy greens such as spinach. They contain 15% protein and 73% carbohydrates, 37% of which is fiber (27% of the leaves are fiber). The leaves also contain smaller amounts of over two dozen other nutrients, and are a significant source of beta carotene (0.03% net weight), lutein and zeaxanthin (combined 0.066% net weight), A cup of dandelion leaves contains 112% daily recommendation of vitamin A, 32% of vitamin C, and 535% of vitamin K and 218 mg potassium, 103 mg calcium, and 1.7 mg of iron. Dandelions are also an excellent source of vitamin H, which is proven to aid in weight loss when ingested.”

Dandelions seem to have medicinal properties as well:

Dandelions, flowers, roots and leaves, have been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine & medicinal teas, most notably for liver detoxification, as a natural diuretic and for inflammation reduction. Unlike other diuretics, dandelion leaves contain good amounts of potassium, a mineral that is often lost during increased urination. There is also evidence that this property of dandelion leaves may normalize blood sugar.

Dandelion flowers contain luteolin, an antioxidant, and have demonstrated antioxidant properties without cytotoxicity.

Dandelion contains Caffeic acid, as a secondary plant metabolite, which some studies have shown to exhibit anticarcinogenic properties, at low doses but carcinogenic properties at high doses. There have been no known ill effects of caffeic acid in humans.

I found a good list of edible plant that you might find in your back yard here. Click on the link for a more thorough list. As always people should become familiar with the plants before consuming that as many have poisonous look-alikes.

Apparently, Violets are highly edible as well, the flowers and leaves at least. The rhizomes (underground stems) are not to be eaten as they can make you quite ill. They are high in vitamin A & C and have been used in folk medicine for years.

Pine needles can be used to make a tea that is rich in vitamin C and the catkins (the little green buds) can be eaten as well. Also the inner layer of bark can be eaten in a rough spot. Of course, if you can manage to get them, pine nuts are edible too.

I found out about eating clover at camp years ago when a counselor told us how they tasted like citrus. To this day, every now and then I’ll pop one or two in my mouth and am instantly reminded how tart they can be. The flowers can be eaten too. However, if memory serves, clover is the source of warfarin, a potent anti-coagulant, so it's probably not a wise idea to consume clover in mas quantities.

I did a little searching for acorns because in my area they abundant. From what I found out, they are full of tannic acid, which is toxic. However should you be able to leech out the acid, usually by boiling them several times and pouring off the water repeatedly, they apparently are edible. Check the link here.

However dangerous the lack of food or water may be, the biggest danger is other people. They become desperate when things go wrong. As the show mentioned, it took only 4 days for the ‘veneer of society’ to fall away in New Orleans after Katrina and people began looting and preying on one another in the Superdome. This is less of an issue outside of densely populated areas where resources are quickly depleted and people rely on public services. Your best bet for survival is to simply remain unseen. Stay indoors and avoid contact with people. Throw furniture and clothing about your front lawn to give it the appearance that your home has already been ransacked. Without staffing, inmates from mental institutions and prisons will no doubt find a way out. It isn’t unreasonable to expect that criminal organizations and gangs will move to capitalize on the lack of authority, seizing food and resources to gain infulence, security and strength. A person or organization with access to the necessities of life becomes very powerful and desperate people will have no other options than to turn to them to survive.

This is one of the main reasons the suggest it will eventually become necessary to move from a populated area, should things continue to get worse or it becomes apparent that they aren’t going to get better. I began to think about what I would do were I in this situation. I think as most people, I would load up my car and attempt to get as far as possible before gas ran out or it became impossible to get further by car, be it to remain inconspicuous or because the road had become too congested by traffic or derelict cars.

As mentioned above, you would need to bring food with you along with other necessities. The show suggested preparing a bug-out bag or as they called it a G.O.O.D. bag (Get Out Of Dodge). So I began to think about what should be included. The most important thing they mentioned was water, and since it’s heavy, you need to be judicious with what else you bring. Canned goods can be good, so long as you have a can opener or a similar way to open the can. The water the contents are packed in can also be consumed. Canned beans, fruits and vegetables, tuna and other canned meats, unsalted nuts, dried fruit and anything else that will not spoil quickly would be a good choice. Vitamins and any medicines, such as antiseptics, antibiotics and pain-relievers you can carry are probably a good idea, along with bandages, scissors, needle and thread, candles, matches, a map of the area and a compass if you have one, a few tools (screwdrivers and a pair of pliers), some rope and a good knife for everyone. These are just a few items off of the top of my head, but it should be a good starting point. You should probably prepare you bag as soon as you feel that there is a possibility that you may at some point be forced to leave your home. Keep it safe and put away and don’t touch it unless you need to go, otherwise you may use everything up and leave nothing for your trip. It may be a good idea to bring cash and some valuables with you. It’s possible you may need to barter for something you need or use them to save your life.

After that, the fist thing I would do is cut my daughters' hair so they would appear to be boys. It would probably be a good idea to take your time with this and not have it appear as though it was just hacked off. Luckily, the hairstyle now-a-days are messy and shaggy, rather than clean-cut. I would make them wear loose fitting clothing and rub dirt into there faces and instruct them not to talk and if it DID become necessary, to speak in lower tones. It might not be a great ruse, but it may get us by someone not looking too hard.

I think it’s important to keep as low a profile as humanly possible. Defending yourself or your loved ones requires fighting and fights can, and will, be lost. It’s best not to fight at all.

That brings me to the matter of weapons. The first thing you are going to have to understand is that guns are going to be everywhere. From private ownership, illegally obtained guns, or guns taken from fallen police and soldiers or looted from abandoned police stations and barracks, guns are going to be everywhere. Your first thought may be to say, ‘Well, hell, then I’m going to get the biggest one I can find!”. That probably isn’t a very good idea, nor is an assault rifle very practical. If you are by yourself or with your family, you are NOT going to win a fire-fight with a gang of bandits. That isn’t to say you should go unarmed. A pistol or a rifle chambered in a readily available caliber is your safest bet. If fact if you can manage both, mores the better. They can both be used as a last resort for defense, and the rifle can be used for hunting. Another good choice would be a shotgun. It too can be used for both.

A big consideration should be whether the need for defense out weighs the need to remain out of sight. If you should find some manner of civilization, be it another group of people, a small town or a compound, then a more organized defense would be served by a bigger weapon. Until smaller with easy to find ammo is probably better. Even a .22 can be useful for small game and personal defense.

The experts did touch upon a subject that I hadn’t thought of before. It’s possible that you may come across a town or a group of people that, while friendly, may have a very different ideological view as you. The crisis will be a spawning ground for religious fundamentalism and racial bigotry. Many groups of this ilk cultivate an ideology that “the end is coming” and have been preparing for the worse for years. As I stated before, care should be taken with whom you decide to associate. Unfortunately, you WILL need to join a community sooner or later. People, on their own, will likely not last very long.

Joining a community may be difficult. People now-a-days lack many of the practical skills needed by a post-fall community. Very little in the modern business world will prepare you for gardening/farming, blacksmithing, carpentry, canning and preserving food and animal husbandry. You had better be willing to do manual labor and earn your keep if a community is going to take a chance on letting you in.

Well, this post ended up being MUCH longer than I had originally intended. I find the whole idea of having to start from scratch fascinating, so maybe I’ll continue this in another post. Hell, maybe it’ll be a feature!

Avatar: An old story retold....again

I went to see Avatar last night, and while I can’t say it’s a great film, I would have to say it was definitely worth seeing. I decided that if I was going to see the movie I might as well go and see what all the hype regarding the 3-D was all about. I have to say that while I wasn’t ‘blown away’, the 3-D was impressive. However, I felt it was ultimately unnecessary to the film. I also found that the glasses dimmed the picture noticeably, similar to wearing weak sunglasses, so that the colors of the film were muted. One of my daughters got a headache from wearing the glasses. I, myself, felt a little eyestrain from trying to refocus on things, but nothing that made it uncomfortable. The few times I removed the glasses I was surprised to see how much more vibrant and bright the colors were. I would have liked to be able to experience that with the 3-D. Still, one can’t blame Mr. Cameron for that. He pulled out all the stops and spent an obscene amount of money getting the technology to its current level. I have a feeling, that if the technology ever fully matures, it is going to owe a great debt indeed to James Cameron.

The CG was second to none. So long as the Na’ vi weren’t shown in the same frame, close up, with an actual human face the illusion is amazing. I cannot stress enough how impressed I was with how realistic the Na’vi looked. When they interacted with their environment and each other, it looked completely natural. The likenesses of the actor’s avatars looked incredibly good, especially Sigourney Weaver’s. I would’ve been able to tell it was her had I been presented with a picture of the avatar and not told who or what it was. It’s that good. The facial expressions were equally impressive. I am VERY excited thinking about were this will lead us. I know, I know, all this digital wizardry is a slippery slope…before you know it, we’ll be seeing movies starring Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart again. I hope that those who make films will have the integrity not to abuse the tools that will enable them to do just about anything they want, but, in the end, it will be the audience that will curb such abuses.

As for the story, where do I begin? I’m going to resist comparing it to Dances With Wolves, because I defy you to find a site reviewing the movie that doesn’t. Suffice to say it’s VERY similar. I’m immediately reminded of some of the war films of the late 70s and early 80s that depict the brutality of war on the native populace, although in most cases even these films blame the senselessness and stupidity of war itself or the faceless superiors that started the war to begin with. The violent psychopath is the exception not the norm and the common soldier, while certainly capable of great violence, is usually portrayed as a sympathetic character, sickened by the carnage before him and what war has driven him to do. To be fair, I am not suggesting that all of humanity is noble if just given the chance. There are those out there that will pull the wings off of flies simply to see them suffer and probably more than a few people who love nothing more than to visit misery on there fellow man and will use the excuse of war to indulge their every dark and twisted fantasy. For the most part, Avatar portrays the average military man as just that; not simply over-zealous, beer swilling, frat-boy bad, but blood lusting, village burning, baby eating evil, to the point that you half-expect them to start twisting their mustaches and snickering as a locomotive eviscerates the fair maiden. I mean, you start to think that, yeah, human society as a whole is pretty screwed up, but why would they do that? Not because of some moral outrage, but because NOT doing it seemed to make more sense and much more practical.

It was like watching a bunch of orcs from the Lord Of The Rings gleefully killing serfs, burning down their hovels and generally tearing shit up only to be cut to ribbons as comeuppance and saying, “Well, they’re friggin’ ORCS, what do you expect?”. The film uses a very heavy hand in getting its point across. I get it; corporations are bad, unfettered consumerism and waste are raping the planet and you feel the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wrong. OK, you don’t have to beat me over the head with that message every 10 minutes.

The plot itself revolves around a mining expedition to Pandora, an Earth-like moon of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. Pandora is smaller than Earth and hence, has lower gravity. It does however have a denser atmosphere, which I’m guessing is due to the gas giant’s magnetic field, which protects the moon from the star’s solar-wind, much the way Jupiter protects the atmosphere of its moon Titan. All of this does little to affect the evolution of the flora and fauna of Pandora. Nearly every plant and animal has clear analogues with those found on Earth. In fact, other than size, most of the trees look similar to the trees outside my window. There are panthers, horses, wolves/coyotes, pterodactyls and elephant/rhinos, not to mention sentient, symmetrical, bipedal humanoids that act and look just like any number of terrestrial aboriginal peoples, despite their feline-like appearance. I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to have a movie with this sort of budget, this level of technology behind it and the amount of hype this movie has enjoyed only to have it feature a race that is only one or two steps above the average Star Trek:
NG episode. I have read that the Na’vi originally were supposed to be much more alien looking, with multiple limbs and so forth, but it was decided that people would have a hard time relating to them. This may be a fair
assumption, but with the success of the District 9, which featured a very non-human and purposely ‘unpleasant’ looking (albeit, still bipedal) alien, I can’t help feeling they could have really made the Na’vi something otherworldly.

I also found the predominance of Caucasian faces odd. I know this is supposed to be an allegory to 19th century imperialism, but plenty of other cultures practiced genocide and oppressed less advanced cultures, although perhaps not with the commercial efficiency the Europeans employed. Still, am I to believe that, 150 years from now, only Caucasians work for ‘evil’ corporations and are warmongering brutes? Other than Sam Worthington, Michelle Rodriguez is the only Marine that is opposed to the wholesale destruction of the indigenous population’s society and culture. I wonder if it was simply coincidence that Jake Scully’s character, who is supposed to be an American I believe, is played and Australian.

There is a great article about this sort of thing by Annalee Newitz at her site IO9, called When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar.
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Since I am unlikely to make as good an argument as Ms. Newitz, I’ll leave it to her. Read the article. I found the science for the most part to be very believable. If one is willing to believe that interstellar travel is going to be feasible in 150 years, then it will probably look similar to what is portrayed on screen. I do however wonder what the cost of transporting all that mining and military hardware 4.37 light years at around 70% the speed of light is(ifmy rudimentary math skills are correct), but I suppose with ‘unobtainium’ (I’ll get back to the name later) worth $20 mil per kilogram, maybe it is worth it. Somehow, even with the invention of anti-matter drives, I doubt it. I just seems to me that if you can produce enough anti-matter to accelerate millions of tons of material to nearly the speed of light all the way to another solar system, you have got to be able to figure out away to make some ‘unobtainium’ back home.

I’m also curious about Jake’s inability to afford the procedure in which he’ll regain the use of his legs. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if they can combine human DNA with whatever the alien analogue of DNA is and create a hybrid that not on functions properly, but is capable of ‘linking’ with the indigenous animals, is a biotech miracle. Forget the fact that you are CONTROLLING the hybrid from a remote location via a MIND LINK?! All this and you can’t just walk down to the corner drug store and put on a patch of stem cells that cure spinal injuries? That’s a bit of a stretch.

There are no ‘force-fields’ which is good and it’s interesting that humans are still using projectile weapons. My guess is that it’s supposed to give the film and humans a grittier appearance, and it works. The Halo games use the same approach and it works in that context as well. You already know these weapons and what damage they can do. You don’t need to suspend disbelief when you hear the report of an assault rifle; you duck by instinct. It’s a visceral response; something a ‘laser-blaster’ just can’t elicit. I’m curious why there are no robots or drones. They are able to remotely link into the avatar bodies, why couldn’t they remote into the mobile power suits? It stands to reason that there would be an effort to reduce the amount of human casualties. The fact that we use Predator drones today should bear this out. Just take a look at the The Ripsaw MS1 Remote Gun Tank . The battle field will be crawling with things like this in about a dozen years. In 150 years shouldn’t there be a single marine directing a whole platoon of Asimo’s big brother carrying laser-rifles? Hell, why not some robot troopers similar to The Phantom Menace. Sure those things got their asses kicked by a bunch of Gunguns, but I don’t for a minute believe that it would play out that way at all were it a real.

It does make one wonder; will our own REAL future, in some respects, look far more advanced in comparison with what Hollywood imagines? We may not travel to other star systems, but I have a hard time believing that in 150 years we won’t have some sort of directed energy weapons. Even the Army’s ‘Pain-Ray’ that they have been itching to deploy overseas seems to be a little more advanced than firearms, and with Pandora’s denser atmosphere, more effective than it’s Earthly counterpart. I have to admit though; I wouldn’t have found it as believable if they did use energy weapons.

As for ‘unobtainium’; anyone who has read more than a few Sci-Fi books over the years knows this is a catch-all phrase for any fantastical element that doesn’t exist in reality. Kryptionite, adamantium, vibranium, dillithium, mithril; each a perfect example of what I’m talking about, only someone took the time out to think of a name for them! Using unobtainium was either incredibly lazy writing or some nerdy wink and nod to show his Sci-Fi cred. Or maybe Mr. Cameron was looking to copyright the term itself.
There’s tons of other stuff that rubbed me the wrong way, but it’s ‘fantasy’ not science fiction, so I guess you have to give it a pass. You want GOOD ‘hard’ Sci-Fi, you go to 2001 or Silent Running. However, it’s hard to get GOOD fantasy Sci-Fi. Star Wars: A New Hope is the gold standard of the genre. It’s hard to make good space opera that compares to the original three Star Wars movies. The prequels are proof of that.