This movie had an impressive cast.  It had a large special effects budget.  The ideas and concepts of the film were new, fresh, and creative.  It had all the elements necessary for me to be sucked in and thoroughly love the film.

It is with regret, that I must report, that this film falls far short of my expectations.  The quality of the acting was spotty at best.  the direction, given the final output was muddled.  Story management and consistency within the story was absent.  Character motivations apart from the obvious were missing in action.

The theme carried a strong political message and was as preachy as it was heavy handed.  It seemed that the entire film was constructed to carry this message and all of the elements of the film were made to pay homage to it.  It lacked the deft hand required to deliver this message without coming across as paternalistic.  I should have expected this from the group that did the same thing with District 9.

This film was at best a poor output.  It falls into my worst films of 2013 file, and is a strong contender for worst film of the 21st century.  On an A through F grading scale, I give it a D and only that because the visuals and effects were impressive and convincingly done.  Otherwise my grade for this film would have been significantly lower.

In reviewing my previous blog entry, it is possible that some might conclude that I am not fond of capitalism.  Allow me to disabuse this entire notion.  I am an ardent advocate for capitalism.  For the most part, my fervent advocacy relates to three basic truths.  There is not another economic system conceived in the mind of man that works as well.  Capitalism when purely and properly implemented represents the cleanest, and the least encumbering method of matching consumers with producers.  And lastly it is the method by which the largest portion of a given population can be given the largest amount of the freedom they were endowed to have.

In my previous post, I took to task certain aspects of the economic model with reference to the electrical grid.  I used words like slavery, balkanization, and oligarchs.  I felt then, and I still feel now that those words were an accurate critique of that sector of the economy.  In large measure, Adam Smith would not recognize his economic theory being applied to this economic segment.

The utility sector is by and large governed by the worst words in the economic lexicon, necessary monopoly.  The two words are largely oxymoronic in nature, because rarely are they ever true.  Also these monopolies obviate the key elements of a functioning capitalist system.  It renders without relevance competition and choice.  The two elements are the two key weapons that ensure the price paid by the consumer is the best and fairest price available in the market.

As an aside, Ohio, my home state, is currently experimenting with a model that is supposed to end local and regional monopolies.  The idea is a good one.  The end result however as currently implemented hasn't gone far enough.  It hasn't introduced true competition to this market segment.  It has granted the illusion of choice.  Consumers have a range of options to choose from, but the power generation is still largely done from the same companies and same locations.  So in essence only the front office business functions have been opened to choice.  The wholesale per kilowatt part of the equation, the most important part of the equation of competition, is exempted from competition.

Some would argue that this part of the equation needs to be exempt to guarantee viability of the market and the companies within it.  I find this argument to be pure and unadulterated excrement.  We either force full and complete competition in a market segment or we don't.  Half measures lead to an illusory façade in which competition can be claimed, while it is not actually happening.

The utility segment needs to be made subject to true competition.  The consumer needs a marketplace for energy choices that is free, fair, open, and fully competitive.  Anything less harms the consumer unfairly and is an impediment to the free exercise of consumer freedom and economic choice.

Some argue that the energy sector is different.  They say that allowing multiple players to fully enter the market creates duplication of utility infrastructure and clutters an already clutters an already cluttered landscape.  There are some valid points at which I would grudgingly acknowledge some acceptance of validity.  I would respond we do not tell car manufacturers that all cars must be built in a single location and transmitted along the same delivery path to the consumer.  And those potential car market entrants should not be allowed to build and own the plant to build their own cars or the means to deliver their products.  If we don't say that to this category of players, because it would impede competition there; then we shouldn't say it here.

For me, capitalism is a binary state.  It is either a one or a zero.  It either exists or it doesn't Capitalism is like democracy.  It is messy.  It doesn't yield clean, linear results that actuaries and accountants and policy makers can see clearly on a spreadsheet.  Other command driven economies do this, but they harm consumers and largely fail every single time they have been tried.  They restrict choice and they enslave the participants.

Balkanized necessary monopolies run by the oligarchs that have bought, or bribed their way to their positions are a general menace to the public good.  They harm the consumer.  They limit choice unnecessarily.  They are an impediment to the public good.  They cause consumers to pay higher prices than would otherwise happen.

The logic of this market segment baffles me.  Microsoft became a monopoly that our government grew wary of and subjected to strict oversight and scrutiny.  The government even found it necessary to sue them over their monopolistic behavior.  They said their activities harmed competition within the market.  They said their actions harmed the consumer.  If however Microsoft was a player in the utility market instead all their activities would have been acceptable.  They would never have been sued.  They likely would been praised as a reliable and valued partner.

In short, radical change needs to come to the energy sector.  Capitalism needs to be applied there.  Adam Smith's teachings need to go there.  The consumer is in need of relief from the yoke of these necessary monopolies.  Only in doing so will we uphold the virtues we claim to cling to and hold dear.

The American power grid is an outgrowth of a competitive war of titanic proportions between two vastly different visions for delivering electrical power.  The war was initially between two men of genius caliber intellect.  It quickly grew beyond them to those that supported them, and beyond.  The visionary wunderkinds were Thomas Edison and Nickola Tesla.

The war between these two men was the stuff of legend.  Their competing visions for electrical power boiled down the DC model promoted by Edison and the AC model promoted by Tesla.  Both models were radically different from each other.  The struggle for supremacy of the electrical distribution hegemony brought out the best and the worst in both men and their corporate backers.

Much has been said and written about this period of strife.  The purpose of this piece is however not to chronicle in detail this period.  Rather it is my purpose to ask a simple question.  In the decades since this struggle was concluded and Tesla's AC model won, we have seen the task as building a grid of electrical distribution and making that grid as efficient as possible.  All the effort has been place on managing the grid.  And we have settled into a world of balkanized oligarch's ruling regionalized monopolies that have a stranglehold on the consumer.

My question is this, What's next?  Where is the effort for innovation in the world of power generation?  The battle for creation of new methods and new processes seems to have ended when the battle between Edison and Tesla concluded.  Sure we have experimented new technologies and we have created more efficient methods of delivering power.  The revolutionary time of Edison and Tesla seems to be gone.

There don't appear to be any great thinkers working on the question of what's next.  There don't appear to be men and women on the stature of their progenitors of the grid efforting this issue.  A dearth of fundamental basic research is where we find ourselves.  Researchers don't seem to be interested in revolutionizing the situation.  They seem be content to put their efforts into innovating the status quo.  Essentially making the mouse trap a more effective, not in reviewing if the mouse trap is needed at all is where we reside.

The status quo is untenable.  Our civilization is struggling under an archaic model that is verging close to a century in age.  And while the grid's impressive size and scope in the first world, it is a staggering problem for the developing world.  As nations attempt to make the herculean leaps that first world nations made a century ago, their population sizes and the grids and power plant necessary to support them are becoming environmentally challenging.

Take the athletes that competed in the Beijing Olympiad for example.  Across the glod they spent a minimal amount of time there, because of poor air quality.  As pollution goes, China's environmental situation is bad verging worse.  Even with the efforts to clean things up for the Olympics, it was a difficult situation.  As other nations of China's size attempt to make their leaps the global impact is likely to be disastrous.

I am not a doom and gloom let's all return to the 17th century agrarian life, sort of person.  Nor am I suggesting radical change for the overall individual electrical consumer.  what I am saying is that our civilization needs the next gargantuan innovation that fundamentally alters the electrical model.  Our world is waiting with baited breath for that which comes next.

The world needs a cheap, clean, and low impact, user friendly invention that shifts away from the grid delivery model, that while necessary in the past, can no longer be relied upon.  Some suggest solar and wind are the way forward and there are benefits to this suggestion.  It does however fail the test I laid out for what is needed and are both useless in poor weather conditions or times of zero wind.

Some suggest that nuclear power offers the best way forward.  It also fails the test I laid out.  Furthermore the recent earthquake in Japan demonstrates that even when the best and brightest build these plants to the highest standards, they are still horrendously risky endeavors.  These plants are also among the most costly ways to produce energy.  Also even with more than half a century of experience with this power type, we do not have a functional solution for how to handle the waste they produce.

Each other method currently deployed carries with it risk.  They all have ecological costs and human health risks attached to them.  None have zero environmental impact.  No have zero risks to human health.  All are products of the last race for innovation and power production.

What we need is something that is fundamentally new.  We need something sets the consumer free from their corporate masters, that attempts to enslave them.  We need something that renders obsolete the old model and ushers in the next age of human development and progress.  Anything less is not what's next, and it is by extension that which already is.  And as such is an effort to arrange the Titanic's deck chairs for the best viewing angle of the eventual calamity that will claim us all.

We need a revolution, not to change which company bills the consumer.  Rather a revolution that sets us all and our world free.  We owe the next generation nothing less.

There are as many outlooks on life as there are people to have them.  In many cases, they are about as useful as an opinion and a warm glass of spit.  The single biggest problem with a life outlook is that they define the world as perceived or it doesn’t define anything at all. Outlooks on
life when effectively constructed and laboriously installed define the visual field and its contents for the viewer.  They also give the viewer emotional preset feedback.  They can also act to narrow the field of vision and color it to whatever preset the outlook was built to output.

When it is done properly, this works to aid the viewer. It can assist the viewer in advancing agenda and attaining life goals.  It can spur the person on in making the most of their time in the world and redeeming the opportunities granted him or her.  It can be a positive spur.  It can be a substantial aid in times good and bad.

If the framework is done improperly, it will act as the exact opposite.  When its constructed from fear, bias, and negativity it is anything but helpful. It acts to keep the viewing from risking advancing on a potential opportunity seeing as a trap.  It limits potential for growth and with that success. It becomes a chain that binds the viewer to a world of agony and disappointment.

The outlook that defines nothing is just as problematic. It is in essence no outlook at all. It can be and often is an outlook in name only.  Typically it goes completely unused by the potential viewer.  This outlook causes the viewer to drift through life with no sense of urgency or little ability to recognize opportunity when it is staring the wearer in the face.  The viewer is for all intents and
purposes in this case leaves the viewer functionally blind.

Life outlooks require substantive effort to create. The demand constant adjustment to function as intended.  The viewer must still be vigilant to guard against bias and general animus that can bleed
into outlook.  They are certainly not build, install, and forget appliances.  Outlooks to function effectively require constant attention.

The best life outlooks proceed from overtly simple concepts.  Some are little more than expressions of personal values.  A friend of mine shared his with me recently it is, ‘life is an exploration’, and it has guided him well over the years.  Another profound one I ran across was ‘life is about giving all that you are in the moment’.

My own outlook is based upon such a simple notion. It is ‘always value the power of that which is possible’.  This is not some ode drawn from pop psychology.  It is not some weak assent to the power of positive thinking.  It is drawn from personal experience coupled with Biblical enlightenment.  In Matthew 19:26 it says…  “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are
possible.”  In my opinion that means in any situation the divine is capable of delivering infinitely more than I can comprehend or accept as possible.  It means that three loaves and two fish in the master’s hands can feed a multitude.  It means that seas can part, a universe can come into being, the sick can be healed, and a valley of the dead can be raised to life in service to the creator.

For me, it means, in my own life, that the facts as I see them aren’t the whole picture.  It means one plus one only equals two as long as there aren’t other factors in the equation to change the outcome.  It means a young man of little means can somehow, mystically survive college without the obvious resources to do so.  It means an undisciplined and rebellious youth can see the world in a Navy uniform.  It means a man who had given up on life and love can have his world radically altered by the simple act of a desperate prayer spoken in the wee hours of the dark. It means that the tattered remnants in our lives can be transliterated into something wholly different.

When we value what is possible at the core of our being, the world becomes a different place.  When that is our outlook on the world, we can accept the current state while understanding it doesn’t always have to be that way.  The broken and battered can become the repaired and reforged. The so called bungled and botched can become the renewed and the avant guarde.  That which is can become that which should be.

There are historical examples of this.  Gandhi embraced the idea of Indian independence through non-violent means.  At the time he embraced this idea there was no evidence it was possible to do this. There was no road map for walking this path.  The consistent witness of history to that point was that independence was only achieved through force of arms.  And yet in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, he persisted to believe this was possible.  It became the mission of his life.  It was a success.  That success reshaped the South Asian continent and I daresay the entire world for the better.

Winston Churchill in the dark days of World War Two is another example.  He believed not only that the United Kingdom would survive but that the Axis powers and Germany in particular would be vanquished.  He had no evidence for this belief.  Western Europe had been crushed under a swastika banner.  The Axis armies were better equipped, better led, and had superior tactics.  At the low point, the Allied Command hadn’t won a single battle in the field.  Their cities were being pummeled daily and German submarines were sinking every cargo ship in sight.

And yet he persisted in believing in eventual triumph as more than just a distant possibility.  His outlook on it defined him.  It radically altered all his actions.  Many though him to be insane for his beliefs.  The testament of history proved his belief to be correct.  His faith in the possibility of eventual victory was vindicated only a scant few years later.

And so let me conclude by saying this…  It is not too late to adjust your outlook.  It is not too late to start valuing the possible. In doing both you can radically alter your own circumstances. 
I can’t promise results or that the preferred outcomes we ache for will
happen.  I can promise that your
life will be significantly different, and the ensuing adventure will have been
worth the ride. And being consumed
along the way by a peace and joy not defined by circumstance as I have will have
been worth the risk.

Here's the truth...  You are more than the scars of your past.  You are not defined by the sum total of your wounds.  The things you have survived no longer have power over you.  You have summoned the will to conquer them, if only by putting one foot in front of another. 

The past is a corpse in desperate need of internment.  And you need to walk smartly away from it.  The demons of times long ago, no longer hold sway.

You need to set yourself and those around you free from it.  Move into the present firm in the knowledge that that which was is no longer.  Let the hate, the pain, and the angst die with those that are defined by it.

Life is too short to be shackled by that which was done to you.  Get busy living!  Live among those intent on dwelling in the now!  Anything less is a waste of the spirit gifted to you by the divine creator of all...

DISCLAIMER.....  This piece is written strictly for humor's sake and is not intended to be taken seriously at all.  If you are or can be offended easily, this is likely not the piece for you...  If you have been told you have a thin skin, please move on to something else I have written...

I wrote this piece a long time ago, the exact date of its writing has escaped into the vaporous ethereal nature of time.  I know I wrote it at a period of time when I was writing a lot in the wee hours of the morning, after everyone had gone to bed.  Usually I would have the television on, and somehow the infomercials would sneak into the channel that had been Leno, or Letterman...  Without actively realizing it I would end up watching this idiotic infomercial or that one.  I wrote this as a satirical replacement for one of those buy my book and all will right in your world sort of infomercials and as general piece of satire during that period...  Please enjoy.


A satirical look at the institution of marriage and the role of the human male in it....

For reasons beyond comprehension or rational thought, you have chosen to enter into the institution
of marriage.  The typical reasons for you to have made this tragic mistake are many, but frequently you will have surrendered to the incessant gibbering of a nagging long time girlfriend or significant other, (does the question, ”Where is this relationship headed?” ring any bells for you).  It is also possible that you have yielded to the unrelenting passion of a parent(s) for you to progress down the path of providing them with grandchildren, (does the statement, “Your friend <insert friend’s name here> got married and they are having their first baby any day now. What is wrong with you?”  Remind you of someone you know).  It is also possible and quite likely that you have taken leave of your senses completely and are unable to spot a deadly logic bomb when you see one.  
 
Marriage ahh that wonderful institution; that poorly designed and ill-thought out contractual relationship, that when successfully carried out to its logical conclusion will claim your life.  When this contractual relationship fails miserably, (which happens more than fifty one percent of the
time), the extrication of yourself from this prison will cost you dearly.  Usually more than half of your assets will cease belonging to you, plus monthly penalty payments designed ultimately to do two things; remind you of your failure and penalize you for the act of reclaiming your freedom and dignity.  In all honestly, a looted Fortune 500 company like Enron will get treated better by a bankruptcy court than you will in a divorce court.

Marriage as a general topic is however not the purpose of this book.  If you would like more information on this ghastly institution, (information you really should sought out before your trip to the jeweler by the way), you can refer to any of my other books on the subject.  Titles include “Marriage for Men: So you have Chosen an Extremely Slow Form of Suicide”, or “Why Men are Completely Brainless when it Comes to Women” or my first book “Why Married Men Secretly Long for the Sweet Embrace of Death”.The ultimate purpose of this book is to provide you with some keys to surviving marriage.  You should look at this book as a tool for surviving and avoiding the
traps and pitfalls that are strewn throughout marriage, and I assure that there are a plethora of them.  
 
Let’s be honest here, you want your marriage to work, you need your marriage to work! Let’s remember this one simple fact; failure costs us at least half!  You should say that phrase like a mantra everyday possibly in the morning while you are shaving.  It is possible that you should also say it in high stress situations when temptation might lead you to think seriously about bluntly speaking your mind, (a temptation you should never yield to by the way).

In this book we will cover such issues as how to negotiate the mine field that is the honey-do list, we will also cover the basics of the toilet seat debate, and we will also provide you with an extensive list of general principles that will make your married life much easier, and make your time in the grim reaper’s waiting room pass much more uneventfully.  An uneventful marriage may give you time to ponder some of life’s big questions like “Is there SportsCenter in Heaven?”, or “Does membership in the democrat party require an I.Q. under 30?” or “Which came first liberalism or invertebrates?”