"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

No matter how long you've been a rock, when you start getting beaten by paper it's time to start thinking like scissors.

Treating People Like People

Saw the movie 50/50 tonight, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a twenty-something man coming to terms with his cancer diagnosis. Seth Rogen's pitch of the movie on The Daily Show didn't do justice to the premise, but it did get me to check out the trailer. The trailer did a great job of portraying our characters as more than the typical 2D cut-outs we get from cookie-cutter rom-coms dealing with pain and loss, i.e. Sex and Other Drugs or P.S. I Love You.

50/50 could easily be praised simply for its ability to tread the line between comedy and tragedy to paint for us a moving and compelling story of a man dealing with a damning diagnosis. However, I feel that its true strength lies in its ability to create human characters rich with complexity, vices, and virtues. 50/50 also manages to do so without the heavy-handedness and sentimentality of movies like Crash, where we're beat over the head with the didactic "treat everybody nice 'cause you don't know what they've been through" treatment.

50/50 successfully portrays a tenet which politics, nationalism, and religion tend to underplay--that we are all people. "My enemy is my brother or my sister first, and my enemy second."

To Boldly Go

Anyone who's seen the new Star Trek movie has undoubtedly noticed the rampant amount of lens flare the film makes use of and, while some may think it cheesy or tacky, I began to appreciate it more after J. J. Abrams explained how he felt that t was cool that "the future was so bright it couldn't be contained in the frame."

Looking to the future and its unbridled possibilities, I am usually overcome with a wave of awe, an electricity of anticipation, and more than just a twinge of fear. At times, though, I find myself so completely overcome with the beauty of human potential and the what-can-be of tomorrow that, if I were a stronger man, I would allow myself to cry at the amazement of it all. I fathom an America where community and human engagement have become tangible, where the news broadcasts highlight good being done, and the new church preaches that "education" is a lifestyle, like being a vegan or a parent or a citizen, not a four-letter word whose domain begins and ends within the walls of a building. And then my next immediate thought is usually a very sobering "it's a shame that we are not on-track to make this a reality" and I'm aware of how a frustrated idealist can be mistaken quite easily for a brooding pessimist.