Dec 10, 2008
Che is a movie about a prolific revolutionary. Not his early years like Motorcycle Diaries. It's a huge story so it involves a 4.5 hour investment with an intermission. If you don't know whether you'll like it, let me answer for you: no. If you're looking for a long movie and you don't know whether you'll like it, you might like it. It's long and it doesn't mince words until the end. The first part is very glorious, heroic at times, and heavy on ideals. It explains what happened, why they did it, what role he and Castro had to play. If you know the story a tiny bit, you might not waste your time watching it, it's the details about city to city stuff. The second part explains the struggle in Bolivia. If you know a bit about Che, you probably understand that to compare the two parts of the movie is lame. A failed revolution is never going to be heroic or wonderful. And so Che is going to get a lot of flak from people who didn't really want to watch the second part. It's important for me to watch the second part because it shows that Che was mortal, died in a blaze of gunfire, and lived his ideals. Che has been symbolic for those who wish to shrug off the shackles of imperialism, tyranny, and dishonest governments. His life was powerfully lived as well as he probably could. A revolutionary who fails once or a hundred times has done what he or she can.
Am I trying to glorify Che? No, he probably gets as much credit as he deserves. It's the movie that I'm trying to redeem. People probably expect too much from the movie because there really isn't a revolutionary who can be glorified a lot more than Che and yet the second part of the "roadshow" was about him failing. If the directors had decided to stop at the end of part 1 and done the same as Motorcycle Diaries and printed the text saying: "Ernesto 'Che' Guevara went on to organized failed revolutions in the Congo, Venezuela, and Bolivia. He died in a hail of gunfire," it would certainly be a disservice to him. People would exit the movie and say: "and look at Cuba now, I bet they wish they were like Bolivia*." Describing what happened in Bolivia explains the duality of revolution, armed and unarmed conflict. Che partially led a successful armed revolution in Cuba because the support was far surpassing the enemy's number. In Bolivia, the lack of support and the overwhelming enemy military force was easily enough to defeat Che and the Bolivian rebels. What's this I talk about duality then? If revolution is just about numerical superiority, then no duality exists, does it? The duality of revolution is that numerical superiority comes from popular support, and popular support has nothing to do with violence. Popular support comes from ideals. If a revolution has better ideals and can sway the popular opinion, it will have the support it needs to win a war against an oppressive government. But here is where it gets tricky because if you have popular opinion, is armed revolution necessary? Che obviously thought it was and he has evidence. Evidence to the contrary is quite difficult to obtain. Pacifists may never obtain enough evidence that non-violence is the solution. So far we have India and possibly Tibet (which is in progress). Other evidence may possibly exist, but I'm not going to get into it. What people most certainly know is that when faced with a dictator who murders people, violent revolution has done the trick quite a few times.
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Dec 10, 2008
Talk is cheap, but talk takes time, time being money is not cheap, so why do we talk at all? Communication is important to life as social animals. Humans are bound to their society by needs, wants, and so forth and communication is needed to properly satisfy those tasks. From communicating for work, to community, and friendship, communication connects people in a way that no other medium can. Television, blogs, essays, and speeches fail to solve this because they are one-way monologue communication. If a person is properly coherent, people can glean meaning from a monologue form of communication. For example, a person who knows me well or who doesn't know me can read this and understand what I'm saying because I'm a straightforward speaker and I speak my mind in the same way I write a one sentence blog.
E-mail, IM, blog/forum comments, and telephone (a certainly dialogue form of communication) are notorious for their lack of appropriate guides for meaning. Face to face communication solves this issue by adding very quick responses, control over who gets to talk when, and facial expressions which help a lot for context and meaning. The obvious problem with face to face communication is that it takes time and energy to get to the same place at the same time. Since face to face communication is so important, people put a lot of work into making sure it occurs.
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Oct 18, 2008
It's probably been done before, but not with the Google Chart API (I suspect).
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=v&chd=t:100,100,0,10&chs=480x280&chtt=Intelligence&chdl=Smartest+Bears|Dumbest+Humans
This is a response to Pete Voss's "How technology helped reunite my graduating high school class". It started small but became large enough to become it's own post. Thanks for the idea, Pete.
My first essay (about Hawaii) in 4th grade private school was researched and plagiarized with Encarta encyclopedia on CD and typed on a 386 I think. Another essay in 6th grade public school (on Chile) was typed and researched from a Laserdisc and books (imagine that) but ultimately partially plagiarized from Encarta. By 8th grade, they were teaching us the incorrect way to use the internet for research which I had been using since 7th grade for collaborative creative writing and internet-based tech communities. My first semi-girlfriend I met online and never met in person. The advances I made using the internet in 7th-10th grade turned school into a very unfunny joke and a waste of time. Giving a computer with a ton of information to a curious young person is the gift of unmetered intelligence. Though increasing a child's intelligence by a factor of ten while forcing them to sit through mind-numbing repetition should be considered torture. The only way I was able to graduate was by attending the local community college instead which held my attention for the most part. In summary, most of my years between 7th grade and now have been spent on the computer. If there is one thing I regret, it is that the insatiable technolust that I acquired necessarily during my quest has harmed my advancement in work and society. But there's nothing I lack that I can't solve with effort and time.
Why does this sound so different from my brother's version of book research in the 90s? Simply put, he never put his trust in the computer until after high school. He typed papers in 9th grade, even 8th grade I think I remember. But he wasn't interested in the still very unpopular technology. He actually missed the first internet boom and bust. Though I have to admit that he caught on quickly since 2002 and his people skills of course show tremendously of the years he invested in them. I invested my time in the advancement of my computer skills and boy does it ever show.
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