•It’s the start of a “Month of (R)evolucion" -- Mo(R)e
for short -- on this blog, a time of both seismic and incremental changes.
•Among other things, I’ll blog about three books that
concern humans themselves being transformed: Matt Ruff’s Sewer, Gas & Electric, Nicholas Wade’s controversial A Troublesome Inheritance, and Ken MacLeod’s
The Cassini Division.
•Plus this month brings the revolutionary tales Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Lucy, as discussed in my recent YouTube chat with
Gerard Perry (about those films, Edge
of Tomorrow, and Transformers 4).
For next month, we’ll have thoughts on Guardians
of the Galaxy and Sin City -- and
for September Atlas Shrugged -- so
stay tuned.
•Unlike Ayn Rand, Rand
Paul does not create superhumans, but thanks to him the blind will see in
Guatemala. That’s just how heartless laissez-faire capitalists roll.
•Of course, given the historic breakdown of the U.S.’s
southern border, many Latin Americans will be coming to U.S. doctors soon,
saving doctors the trouble of having to travel down south. The current
confusion is unfortunate, but the Southwest belonged to Latin Americans in the
first place, so I cannot be too pained about things reverting to normal there --
or about people moving where they choose.
•The chaos in the Middle East is more troubling, but whether
it’s beheadings by ISIS or Hamas condoning-or-committing the murder of
teenagers, it’s not clear greater U.S. involvement would make things better. One
can understand the Russians feeling as if the U.S. bombs jihadists one day and
supports them the next (if on the second day it appears they can be directed
against Russian proxies), which has been our incoherent pattern for about
thirty-five years now.
It’s enough to make one more ambivalent about whether to
oppose Russian efforts in Ukraine as well. It also makes the usual right/left
debate among pundits, about whether to blame Bush et al or Obama et al for the
current state of Iraq, even more depressing and futile: The fingerprints come
from both the right and left hands.
•I would likewise not blame a sane person for feeling that
recent healthcare, tax bias, economic data, recess appointments, union
membership, NSA, and culture-war craziness was all either too bipartisan in
origin or too complex to be worth most people arguing about, so I’ll skip
sniping on all those fronts.
•In fact, nudged by the (unextraordinary) news about
Facebook tweaking users’ feeds as a psych experiment, I’ve given up for now on
Facebook updates (really: check the past several days) and will make this my last month of steady blogging in order to
focus more on writing books, which -- contrary to all apparent trends in the
Twitter era -- may be more necessary than ever, in part to combat all the
pointless one-liners, wisecracks, and amens that persuade no one.
Science and stats are good things and algorithms greatly
enhance efficiency, but we all know that if we are increasingly consuming tiny,
shallow snippets fed to us by algorithms, Nietzsche would want us at some point
to “kick over the law-tables” that make us predictable.
•The current National
Review cover
story by Adam Bellow from LibertyIslandMag.com
is also pro-books, more specifically novels, arguing that they not only have
more influence than op-eds but in the long run still have more influence even than
films.
•Still, I admit I’m pleased the top films of the year so far
(gauged by worldwide box office per Box Office Mojo, as reported by
DarkHorizons) suggest audiences love tales of super-scientific or supernatural
physical transformation (and indeed the new Transformers,
though awful, will likely join this list soon, not to mention the new Apes, a certain Raccoon and his pals,
and one last Hobbit movie by year’s end, possibly making 2014 the biggest ever
for sci-fi/fantasy-type films):
1. X-Men: Days Of Future Past ($712.7 million)
2. Captain America: The Winter Solider ($711.2 million)
3. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($703.7 million)
4. Maleficent ($585.6 million)
5. Godzilla ($488.1 million)
6. Rio 2 ($470.2 million)
7. The LEGO Movie ($467.2 million)
8. Noah ($359.2 million)
9. 300: Rise of an Empire ($331.1 million)
10. Edge of Tomorrow ($318.7 million)
But this week, a very different, more political sort of
movie opens in New York City and elsewhere, so a note on that next time.
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