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Lack of words for a subject
   ^{[ posted by: R.I.P ]}

First off I want to thank everyone who wrote us last week expressing their sympathy over the loss of our dog Logan. Some of you asked if we had pictures, and yes, we are planning to put together a small page shortly. I'll make a link to it when it's available.

On another subject, we went to see the movie "A.I." on Saturday. For those of you living under a rock for the last year, "A.I." stands for Artificial Intelligence. It is a movie initiated by Stanley Kubrick before he died, and brought to life by Steven Spielberg. The movie deals with issues regarding the creation of artificial life forms, and the moral/social issues involved... just for starts.

I'm not going to get to much into the story here at this time, but I will sum up this film in a way that will get me blasted by the most people, by saying that this was a brilliant fairy tale story, that I don't think many "adults" will ever truly appreciate or understand. Just put aside both Kubrick's and Spielberg's past films and go and watch this movie. I took my three children with me to see this film (4, 7, 9 at the time) and they were all riveted. All of them thought the movie was fantastic, and overall a happy movie in the end. Yes, I'll be the first to admit that most people will feel this movie isn't appropriate for children, but to be honest, I found the violence in Atlantis far more startling to my children, and only accepted by U.S. viewers because the movie is a "cartoon".

As far as people bitching about how the movie should have ended earlier, I just don't see how. If it had ended earlier, it would have been a different movie, a different story, and not of had the impact and resolution. Another good descriptive term for the story would be to say the ending was bittersweet, so much of the movie was so sad, but it's hard to just feel sad at the end since there is so much more.

The most troubling thing for me with this movie, is in someways, the same thing that bothered me with "The Sixth Day", in that most of the viewers miss the bigger issues being addressed in the film (much like the characters in the movie), and don't see that these are issues that are here for us to deal with now and today, not tomorrow, or off in some distant but untouchable future. There are Doctors, a heartbeat away from creating a living human clone somewhere, there are people and researchers that are just a happenstance away from awakening A.I. in some computer, or antonymous robot. What rights and privileges will these clones and synthetic life-forms have in our society?

As a global society we need to address these issues TODAY, before the hand of man creates a new life outside of the standard biological processes, that can think, feel, and reason on it's own. We need to resolve how we're going to deal with this situation in a sane manor because we are going to have to deal with it. No laws, or sense of moral outrage is going to stop some person from crossing this line. It will happen, and it's going to happen very soon if it hasn't already.

Everyone should see this film, most of you are going to dislike all or part of it, that's a fact and it's your loss. Me, I'm going to see it again. You know, in some strange way this movie has also helped me in dealing with the loss of our pet by letting me look at these issues of life and death in a larger perspective.

Cheers!

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