I drink your milkshake!

I'm not watching the awards show tonight, though this year was marked by several movies that I enjoyed thoroughly: Michael Clayton, Juno, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood--all excellent. As an ethically-challenged American, I found Michael Clayton to be rather illuminating regarding the inherent inadequacies in the American legal system, a system that requires its opposing sides to argue for biased outcomes in order to find justice, while at the same time keeping me on the edge of my seat. Juno, in addition to being a sweet, sardonic, wholesome, and affecting film, has the added benefit of featuring lots of music by Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches, a band K-dog interested me in light years ago. So, I get to look superior and on-top-of-it, music-wise. Or, at least, feel superior, since I never told anyone about the music thing. No Country for Old Men was amazingly thrilling. It had a continuous rumbling-landslide inevitability that gave its characters mythic proportions, contained only by the unforgiving landscape. My favorite film of the year, though, has to be There Will Be Blood. Day-Lewis and the Dano convinced me that they each believed in a universe created for only them and the movie almost made me believe one of them might be right.

Honorable Mentions: Black Snake Moan, 28 Weeks Later, The Simpsons Movie, Superbad, Eastern Promises, The Darjeeling Limited, American Gangster, Once

To See: Atonement, Zodiac, Ratatouille, Sicko, Sunshine, Rescue Dawn (and precursor Little Dieter Needs to Fly), The Bourne Ultimatum, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Into the Wild, Lust, Caution, Gone Baby Gone, Sweeney Todd, Walk Hard, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Late to the Party

I once lied that I was a huge Built to Spill fan to impress someone. I'm not sure if it was effective, and I have nothing but a vague sense of self-disgust to show for it. This beautiful, melancholic track that will not leave my internal jukebox may be my karmic justice. (Wouldn't it be great if every karmic punishment came in the form of a lovely song from a band you hadn't previously appreciated?)

Built to Spill -- Liar (streamed .wax)

The Necessity of Shock

I identified strongly with Dahlia Lithwick's commentaries (1, 2) on the state of torture in America. We are gradually losing our capacity to be appalled by descriptions and even direct visual evidence of inhumane treatment. The public and our elected officials are becoming inured to greater atrocities in the name of the national interest. The things that used to shock us are both continuing and gaining ambiguous (and sometimes outright) legitimacy while we are debating the legalities of even grosser violations of human rights. I recognize the need to protect the nation as best we can from violence, but surely there must be some means that the ends do not justify. The growing acceptability of torture epitomized by the waterboarding discussions and the encroachment of our rights as citizens epitomized by the PATRIOT Act bring to mind the quote often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, ''Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.'' There are things we must not do as a nation, actions that we must not condone and crimes we must not pardon, regardless of their life-saving or catastrophe-averting potential. Aren't there?

Perhaps it's the time of year...

As I read about cancer immunoediting, I tend to fall on the skeptical side. I like Swann and Smyth's 2007 review, which highlights both the evidence for and against its existence and suggests that the immune system can have three central roles in tumor prevention: limiting potentially oncogenic viral infections, limiting inflammation that could lead to tumorigenesis, and immunoediting--eliminating endogenous tumors as they arise by targeting tumor antigens or stress-induced molecules. The first two seem reasonable and likely, and while immunoediting has a logical and feasible appeal, the evidence in its favor often seems contrived and too broad to have specific implications. It seems that some of the strongest evidence comes from knockout mice, like the Ifng-/- mouse, but to simply see more tumors in this mouse and to conclude that immunoediting is the mediator is a large leap. And many other studies rely on carcinogenic induction methods that introduce many other uncontrolled factors and complicate the studies beyond simple conclusions.

Also, I'm tired of science.