Friday, November 30, 2007

friday movie night ramble

we rented the dvd of the Last Mimzy tonight.

I really enjoyed this movie. Sure it was a bit fanciful and over the top but I like science based fantasy. The product placement was over the top, fo sho. But I couldn't help but rejoice in the buddhist/meditating/new ager woman who recognizes the universe communicating to her fiance and giving him the kick in the ass that he needs to do what he needs to do at a critical moment.

Watch this movie. It won't dumb you down.

Having the dvd, I clicked through the various featurettes and in the section on dna, I was struck with the reminder that humans are 99.9% identical on the genetic level. The featurette featured Dr Spencer Wells, a geneticist/scientist who's been on PBS on a show about retracing the evolution of humans across the globe and how we all can trace our genetic roots back to Africa and how we're really one big messed up family. He also stated that the incredible diversity in humans has occurred in the last 50,000 years, a mere 2-3000 generations. The salient point being, the differences that we love to, are brainwashed to focus on, are products of culture and mostly in our heads.

This made me think of the NOVA program awhile back on intelligent design. To me this show was a slam dunk on creationism trying to infiltrate the public school system. I really appreciated this show and highly recommend everyone watch it. And keep in mind that as I've posted before, I don't think evolution threatens the notion of God in the slightest. It does threaten the worldview of narrow minded religious people and their narrow unscientific explanation of how things came to be. Ironic that the scientific view of evolution and human evolution suggests common ancestry and I daresay a message of One Love, stewardship of the earth, whereas the "god mongers" of churchianity promote a view that species spontaneously emerged (by the hand of god, presumably) in separate lines of organisms. What hogwash. People think descending from monkeys is some horrible thing. Get over it. Its beautiful and miraculous. We're creatures on a planet where dna in cells keeps replicating itself. In plants and animals, fungi and phlegm. behold the greatness of God.

the other video I rented is Art School Confidential.

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