Yesterday I watched a movie called "Shattered Glass". It's a movie about journalism. I don't wanna say too much, because I feel the movie was much better not knowing what it was about (yes, I was told, but I forgot, and I don't want to assume you all have the memory I have). I just checked imdb and watched the trailer, and realized the plot outline and trailer give the whole movie away. So avoid them. And don't search the Internet for Stephen Glass either, you'll probably find some Forbes articles that the movie is based on.
Anyway, it was about journalism. Then I remembered my parents were talking about William Randolf Hearst, since they had apprently seen his house. I remembered that I had learned about him somewhere, and wondered if he was the guy that started the Spanish-American war with journalism.
So I started looking into Hearst, and I discovered the secret to time travel. Just kidding, but your were probably wondering where I was going with the title of this entry weren't you? I'll get there.
Anyway, I was looking into Hearst, from what I found he didn't "start" the war, but he definately used his publication to stretch the truth and sway the public towards supporting the war in an isolationist time. "Yellow journalism". Some people beleive the reason for having fact checkers stems from this.
Anyway, somehow I ended up on the wikipedia entry for hoaxes. I started reading about some of them, and then on caught my eye. One that was listed as only a "possible" hoax was a pretty recent one, from the year 2000. It was about a man named John Titor, who posted on message boards and claimed to be from the year 2036. He spouted all kinds of science, even had pictures and diagrams of his time machine.
This man claims that 2005 will mark the beginning of a 10 year civil war in the United States. Tensions will grow around the 2004 elections and blossom into full scale war by next year. It will not be North vs. South, though. It will be Farms vs. Cities (a somewhat modern equivalent to the rural South vs the industrialized North in the original war). The war will be ended when Russia nukes all the major cities.
Now, ultimately he'll be proved wrong or right by next year. But I don't beleive him. Besides the ridiculousness of it, he did not predict 9/11. You'd think that would stand out. And it has changed a lot of things.
Before 9/11, we were a country with no major wars. We just had a huge military stationed on peacekeeping missions all around the world. And the US has a long history of rural vs urban relations, in government. I can see this building into a war, if we had nothing else to think about.
But now we do. The news is all about Iraq and Afghanistan. Foreign affairs is what we are divided on right now. No one cares about the farms and cities, we are looking at the rest of the world. That's where the splitting is.
But I guess time will tell with this guy.
Oh, by the way, a site that has his stuff archived is johntitor.com
See ya in the future.
Tonight I left home at about 8 PM, and 2 hours and $8 later I saw The Day After Tomorrow.
It was entertaining, but I won't give it much more than that. I think it was just another disaster movie, following in the footsteps of Deep Impact, Armaggeddon, The Core...you know the movies. There is some global catastrophe that is predicted by one middle-aged scientist who then tells the American government to do something about it. Intertwined is, of course, a love story, as needed, and a story about a kid who's dad was never there (not necessarily a disaster movie theme, but a Hollywood cliche nonetheless).
And like all disaster movies of the present day, there are many dazzling CGI scenes of stuff getting smashed and destroyed by the weather, many of which could be cutscenes from the next SimCity game. That makes it entertaining, of course, and is what I was expecting.
It was also completely unrealistic, I'm sure any movie geek that watches movies only to find the mistakes would find thousands. But that is also a part of being a disaster movie.
However, this movie also had a message. It was obviously an environmentalist movie, a criticism of how we treat the environment, and what will happen if we do nothing to stop global warming. It portrays the vice-president as an irrational man with no care for the environment when he had the economy to look after (Dick Cheney? C'mon, he even looked like him...) So it had that going for it, at least the movie had meaning.
The last disaster movie I saw was The Core, or "The worst movie ever". I had the unfortunate "priveledge" of seeing it twice. The first time I saw it I said it would have been better if my seat was moving like a ride. The second time was on a turbulent plane. It still sucked. I didn't care about the characters at all. They kept dying and I just didn't care. It had science, but it was presented terribly.
So I guess The Day After Tomorrow really wasn't all that bad in comparison. It had its good points. I did care about the characters. I did get excited, and my fists were clenched through the drama. It was also different in that crisis was not averted, people just need to live with it. I liked Deep Impact for that too (waaaay better than Armageddon...jeez, why the heck did Armageddon get so popular? Fricken movie...) So all in all, it was enjoyable. Just not a great movie.
And now it is the day after yesterday. Later.
Home for the summer is where I am. Home. The home I grew up in. This home in which I grew up. And I grew up in this house.
Usually it's not weird to come home. It's been the same home for so long, and littl changes.
But then there are those times when you come home to a new computer for your parents, central air conditioning, and a car for me.
That's a lotta change.
Problem is the car doesn't work. Gotta take it in for a new alternator tommorrow. whoopee.
Such is life.