'Oppenheimer:' A Breathtaking Dramatic Detonation

Bart and I just saw Oppenheimer, a staccato film composed of time-hopping vignettes that nevertheless maintains an absolutely clear narrative line. 

This is really an intellectual history, but exactly the reverse of the kind of dry didacticism that phrase suggests. Director Christopher Nolan covers the ethical, political and social implications of the creation of nuclear weapons, focused through the lens of a handful of top actors at the top of their game. 

Against the backdrop of a threat to human civilization that has never really diminished, Nolan even points us toward an ending that’s a mystery and a solution as satisfying as anything that Hercule Poirot ever showed us.

This is a movie like Chinatown, like Sunset Boulevard and a few others — a film that will live on and on.

Monkeys with Money and Guns

Those who confront lies with documented facts are branded as liars themselves by the corrupt, the know-nothings and the moral cowards who foolishly claim that truth is only a yellow line down the middle of the road.

I always hoped we might someday achieve something that we could refer to as "civilization" without laughing in derision.

When the Virgin Mary Appears in a Pancake...

Let’s give the science-vs-religion problem a shave with Occam's Razor, shall we? 

The world is chock full of claptrap religions making fantastic, contradictory, supernatural claims for which no credible witness ever sees any supporting evidence, unless you want to count the Virgin Mary appearing on pancakes and wall stains. 

What's the simplest answer? Is it more likely that all those fantastic, unseen miracles have happened, and that for example the universe actually does rest on the shell of a cosmic turtle, or that the people who make those claims are delusional and/or lying?

I'm afraid that once you let irrationality in the door — defined in this case as the ardent acceptance on "faith" of metaphysical assertions without visible evidence — you can hardly claim to be surprised about what comes in along with it. One person's "God" tells him to take communion, and the next person's "God" instructs him to kill everyone at an abortion clinic.