Arrival (2016)

 Dr. Louise Banks: Despite knowing the journey... and where it leads... I embrace it... and I welcome every moment of it.~from Arrival (2016)

Arrival (2016), starring Amy Adams as Dr. Louise Banks, is not a typical alien encounter movie in that what the main character learns about life on earth is as fascinating as meeting the creatures from outer space. And fascinating they are indeed. (Warning: contains spoilers!) From their ominous-looking ships to their seven-legged blob-like forms, the "heptapods" as they are called radiate menace and benevolence in equal doses, as far as the scientists and scholars watching them can tell. According to Ars Technica:

Louise (Amy Adams) is a gifted linguistics professor who has done some spot work for the government translating videos made by foreign insurgents. As the film opens, her quiet classroom life is disrupted permanently when a dozen enormous spaceships materialize over seemingly random regions across the world. Made of no materials we recognize, and emitting no chemical signatures whatsoever, the ships hover like perfectly curved stones just above the ground. Twice per day, an opening appears in the bottom of each ship, admitting humans into the gravitationally bizarre interior to meet with squidlike aliens who hover in what seems to be an atmosphere chamber behind a transparent barrier.

Dubbed heptapods for their seven legs, the aliens make noises that are completely incomprehensible. When military officer Weber (Forest Whitaker) plays a recording of one to Louise, demanding a translation, she can’t even figure out what kind of organ could produce the noises. “Do they have… mouths?” she asks, bewildered. Despite her initial confusion, Louise manages to crack the alien code by using writing to communicate with them rather than speech.

And this is where the movie goes from pretty good to superlative. We watch as Louise and her colleagues—including astronomer Ian (Jeremy Renner)—decode the heptapods’ writing using data analysis. Each heptapod “word” is actually a sentence with neither a beginning nor an ending, squirted out of the aliens’ fingers like squid ink into graceful circular shapes whose squiggly contours are units of meaning. Ultimately Louise realizes that this writing system reflects the way the heptapods view time itself as a non-linear experience.

What makes this movie a science adventure on the order of The Martian is the fact that it all hinges on the subtleties of translation. Linguistics are key to the action. When humans across the globe finally know enough heptapod language to ask the aliens why they’ve come to Earth, the answer is a blobby ring of a sentence that’s very difficult to interpret. Is it a promise of danger? Of friendship? Or something so alien that we can’t really know? Each country comes to its own conclusions, and global tensions mount.

Throughout the film, Louise appears to be having visions of what I first thought were of the past but by the end of the film it is evident that the visions are of the future. By learning the language of the heptapods, Louise has begun to experience time the way they experience it. She is given glimpses of herself as the happy mother of a beautiful little girl who dies of cancer as a teenager. In the beginning, I thought it was a tragedy from which Louise was recovering but by the end I realized that it had not yet happened. Yet when given a chance to change her future, Louise embraces it instead. As Vox describes it: 

  Knowing the destination doesn’t change how rewarding the journey can be. Louise, to some degree, has even more appreciation for her own life, because she knows all the spoilers are coming. How often have you thought about how you might have done something differently, had you known that everything was about to change, or that a loved one was going to die, or that you were going to lose that job? Louise really gets the chance to cherish those moments — but she can’t change a thing.

Throughout the dealings with the aliens, Louise is working with a scientist named Ian Donnelly, who turns out to be her future husband and the father of the child who will die. After the heptapods fly away, Ian says to Louise: "You know I've had my head tilted up to the stars for as long as I can remember. You know what surprised me the most? It wasn't meeting them. It was meeting you." It is then that we realize that what is truly extraordinary is all around us, in each other, and in the here and now.

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A Liberal Media Bubble

From FiveThirtyEight:

So did journalists in Washington and London make the apocryphal Pauline Kael mistake, refusing to believe that Trump or Brexit could win because nobody they knew was voting for them? That’s not quite what Trende was arguing. Instead, it’s that political experts⁴ aren’t a very diverse group and tend to place a lot of faith in the opinions of other experts and other members of the political establishment. Once a consensus view is established, it tends to reinforce itself until and unless there’s very compelling evidence for the contrary position. Social media, especially Twitter, can amplify the groupthink further. It can be an echo chamber.

I recently reread James Surowiecki’s book “The Wisdom of Crowds” which, despite its name, spends as much time contemplating the shortcomings of such wisdom as it does celebrating its successes. Surowiecki argues⁵ that crowds usually make good predictions when they satisfy these four conditions:

1. Diversity of opinion. “Each person should have private information, even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.”
2. Independence. “People’s opinions are not determined by the opinions of those around them.”
3. Decentralization. “People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.”
4. Aggregation. “Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.”

Political journalism scores highly on the fourth condition, aggregation. While Surowiecki usually has something like a financial or betting market in mind when he refers to “aggregation,” the broader idea is that there’s some way for individuals to exchange their opinions instead of keeping them to themselves. And my gosh, do political journalists have a lot of ways to share their opinions with one another, whether through their columns, at major events such as the political conventions or, especially, through Twitter. But those other three conditions? Political journalism fails miserably along those dimensions. (Read more.)

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Martyrs and Spirituality

From Stephanie Mann:

From The Catholic Thing, Fr. Bevil Bramwell, OMI, writes about the martyrs and compares and contrasts them to celebrities:

Martyrs represent more than just names or dates on a calendar. As Saint John Paul II explained – take note – in his encyclical On Faith & Reason, not in a merely devotional context:

The martyrs know that they have found the truth about life in the encounter with Jesus Christ, and nothing and no-one could ever take this certainty from them. Neither suffering nor violent death could ever lead them to abandon the truth that they have discovered in the encounter with Christ. This is why to this day the witness of the martyrs continues to arouse such interest, to draw agreement, to win such a hearing and to invite emulation. This is why their word inspires such confidence: from the moment they speak to us of what we perceive deep down as the truth we have sought for so long, the martyrs provide evidence of a love that has no need of lengthy arguments in order to convince. The martyrs stir in us a profound trust because they give voice to what we already feel and they declare what we would like to have the strength to express.

They are the standard for understanding people – all people – who arise in human history, not just on a gut level, but according to the truth that they express, the truth of Jesus Christ, to which we have committed ourselves by baptism.

Now, we all hunger to see genuine humanity played out in front of us. We see it in the lives of the martyrs. They live out something of the deepest truth of Jesus Christ. So, far from being abstractly pious or merely edifying examples, the martyrs really relate to real people in real time.

 Please read the rest there. (Read more.)

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Birthstones

From Victoria:

The history of birthstones can be traced back to biblical times and the breastplate of Aaron, High Priest of the Hebrews. It is described in the book of Exodus as being set with twelve gemstones representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Down through the ages, these stones were linked to the signs of the zodiac and credited with talismanic powers. Not until the eighteenth century did assigning a certain jewel to each month become the custom. The official list was adopted in 1912, and though other bijoux have been suggested in recent years, it is the traditional lineup to which the majority of gemologists adhere. Most women wear their own birthstone, but it’s not uncommon for others to honor their offspring. For a  time, “mother rings” were quite popular, with bands made up of a rainbow of stones representing a beloved brood.

These colorful gemstones also captivate brides. For example, a ring setting might feature a center diamond with smaller emeralds or sapphires alongside it. “Back in the twenties, engagement rings often had a subtle touch of color,” says Chuck Cooper of Van Atkins Jewelers, “and we’re seeing more of that today as well.” Cooper once found a diamond with a tiny ruby inclusion, and because the ruby is July’s birthstone, that one-of-a-kind find now graces the left hand of a bride married in that month. (Read more.)

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Investigate Obamagate

From The Spectator:

Obamagate is here. And Mark Levin is on the case. First on his Thursday radio show and then in his appearance on Fox and Friends over the weekend, Mark laid out in chapter and verse the mainstream media’s own reporting that the Obama administration was responsible for using government agencies to spy on its political opponents — namely Donald Trump, his aides, and then-U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, now the Attorney General of the United States. Said the former chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III:

This is not about President Trump’s tweeting; this is about the Obama administration spying.… The issue isn’t whether the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign or transition of surrogates; the issue is the extent of it…. Donald Trump is the victim. His campaign is the victim. His transition team is the victim. His surrogates are the victim.

To the question of whether former President Obama was involved? After noting that there were repeated stories on the government’s spying of Trump and others in the New York Times and the Washington Post — newspapers unquestionably well-read by the Obama White House — the talk radio host added: “I will tell you this, he’s more involved than he says; it’s his executive branch.” Bingo. (Read more.)

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Boodle's

From Geri Walton:

Boodle’s was a gentlemen’s club founded in London in 1762 by the future Marquess of Lansdowne and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne. It was established for like-minded men to meet, exchange, and discuss political issues and ideas. However, Boodle’s took its name from its head waiter, Edward Boodle, who also began to manage it shortly after it was opened. William Wilberforce belonged to Boodle’s, as well as four other clubs, and he claimed, “nothing could be more luxurious than the style of these clubs … you chatted, played at cards, or gambled as you pleased.”

The club opened at 49-51 Pall Mall, and, in 1782, it moved into 28 St. James’s Street, a spot occupied by the Savoir Vivre club. The building was designed by architect John Cruden in 1765 and soon cited as “the most interesting architectural object [on] St. James’s Street.” Between 1821-1824 alterations to Boodle’s ground floor were made by architect John Buonarotti Papworth and included a comfortable reading room. (Read more.)

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Food and Diet in the Irish Cottage

From Irish Cottages:

Ireland has excellent grass pastures suitable for beef production, yet beef was not historically a feature of the Irish diet, instead dairy products are. There were many variations of milk to drink, including buttermilk, fresh curds, old curds and ‘real curds’. There was "thick milk," which was milk that went solid, which was sliced and eaten. From medieval times Irish butter was a notable export to Europe and the churning of butter, a laborious task, was governed by Fairy superstitions. If you got on the bad side of the ‘Good People’ your butter might not churn, and it was considered a good idea to leave milk out to appease the Fairies at night. (Read more.)

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Sex Traffickers and Predators Arrested

From The Daily Wire:

Donald Trump became president on Jan. 20. And in one short month, there were more than 1,500 arrests for sex crimes ranging from trafficking to pedophilia. 

 

Big deal? You bet. In all of 2014, there were fewer than 400 sex trafficking-related arrests, according to FBI crime statistics.

 

Liz Crokin at TownHall.com has put together a great piece on the push by the Trump administration to crack down on sex crimes. And she notes that while "this should be one of the biggest stories in the national news... the mainstream media has barely, if at all, covered any of these mass pedophile arrests. This begs the question – why?"

 

Of course, the answer is twofold: One, it would take away from the daily meme that Trump is owned by the Russians; and two, it would show that the president really meant what he said when he vowed to come to Washington and "drain the swamp."

 

Plus, the surge in arrests shows that Trump is already getting a lot done, even in fewer than 50 days in office.

 

Trump had made sex trafficking a key issue, and his daughter, Ivanka, also wants to crack down on pedophiles and pimps. In 2012, Trump tweeted, "Got to do something about these missing children grabbed by the perverts. Too many incidents – fast trial, death penalty."

 

Crokin points out that Trump on Feb. 23 called sex trafficking a “dire problem."

 

"Dedicated men and women across the federal government have focused on this for some time, as you know.  A lot of you have been dealing with the federal government and it's been much more focused over the last four weeks -- I can tell you that," he said at a "Listening Session on Domestic and International Human Trafficking."

 

"I'll direct the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies that have a role in preventing human trafficking to take a hard look at the resources and personnel that they're currently devoting to this fight.  Now, they are devoting a lot, but we're going to be devoting more," the president said. (Read more.)

From Church Militant:

The MSM refuses to report on President Trump's war on pedophiles and on child sex-trafficking rings in spite of the recent avalanche of arrests which include the following:

• Jan. 27: 42 arrested in a human trafficking operation in Tennessee
• Jan. 29: 474 arrested in California (28 sexually-exploited children were rescued)
• Jan. 18 to Feb 5: 108 arrested in Illinois sex-trafficking sting
• Jan. up until Super Bowl Sunday: 178 arrested in Texas sex-trafficking sting
• Jan: 16 arrested in Michigan for sex trafficking during the Detroit Auto Show
• Feb: 11 arrested in Virginia child-sex sting
• Feb. 14: 42 arrested in Florida child pornography related cases

The supposedly "unbiased" MSM has no qualms about quickly reporting on every sex abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church. The liberal media's ever-changing morality towards the grave evils of pederasty and pedophilia, however, has caused some journalists to question whether their tears are real or fake. (Read more.)

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Salt and Light

From Larry Alex Taunton:

A generation ago pop star Bonnie Tyler famously asked: “Where have all the good men gone?”  Since then, the situation has only gotten worse, Bonnie.  As C.S. Lewis noted, men in the English-speaking world have largely been emasculated, and men in the Church are seldom an exception to this decades-long trend.  To stand strong for one’s faith in Jesus Christ and push back against a culture that, in the words of Isaiah 5:20, “call[s] evil good and good evil” is to be “divisive,” “unloving,” “bigoted,” and “intolerant.”  This is because evangelicals have confused Christ’s command to love others with being likable, as if that were an attribute of God. (It isn’t.)  As such, they endeavor to be, above all else, inoffensive and polite.  This doctrinal malpractice has given us a generation of men who are what Lewis called “men without chests.”

I am a child of the military.  I was born at Fort Benning, Georgia and grew up at such places as Fort Gordon, Fort Campbell, and Fort Lewis.  The idea of fighting for things that matter has never been foreign to me.  I fully recognize, as the Athenian statesman, Pericles, observed, “Happiness depends on freedom, and freedom depends on courage.”  My father, a career soldier, had a phrase he liked to employ whenever he saw a man behave in a manner that was less than manly.  He would say something like, “That was candy-assed.”  Of course, my father didn’t invent the idiom, but in his use of it you didn’t need further explanation.  You knew exactly what he was talking about. (Read more.)

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