Viraj's Weblog

I never much was a Batman fan, so I didn't plan on checking out Batman Begins. I had seen the trailer and liked Christian Bale from American Psycho, but that's about it. Then I read Ebert's review which got me interested. I found out from there that it was directed by Christopher Nolan and then I just had to see it. This is the director that did Memento, which I thought was an amazing achievement in filmmaking.

What a great movie. I never thought there was alot of philosophy and politics behind Batman, and judging from the Adam West TV show who would think that? At the beginning of the movie I saw monastaries and other Buddhism-like stuff and was thinking WTF? But this movie is very dark and thought-provoking indeed. It seems like that's the trend nowadays. Compare the 'darkness' factor of the early Star Wars to the latest one. Things are just alot meaner. It goes into 'why' there is a Batman, and I found it really interesting and inspiring. Batman is essentially a person that dedicates his life to an ideal. It's something I try to do in my little life as well. There is an interesting bit about him becoming a criminal and going to jail just to understand the criminal mind. That's how much dedication he had.

The movie talks alot about confronting one's fears. There is a very cool scene where pre-Batman is being 'initiated' by a league of crime-fighters. He is given a drug that magnifies all of his fears, and while on this drug, he must defend himself. It's a strange and dark scene, and I kept thinking this can't be for kids to watch. It's rated PG-13 though. Honestly I think it should be R.

I'm not sure if many people will like the movie. It has alot of action, but it also is heavy on dialogue. The direction is good. It was refreshing to see a car chase in a blockbuster movie that isn't a fucking car commercial for once. My only gripe is that during the fight scenes it is hard to tell what is going on. The camera flies everywhere. I understand it adds to the excitement factor, but it's a little overboard.

When I signed up for College Algebra, I thought this class would be a joke. I've taken courses up to Calculus 3 and Differential Equations more than 8 years ago. I'm taking the premed requisites again as I have retained no knowledge from those days.

I like math, and get a kick out of working out pointless problems. I don't see any practical uses for it other than to provide exercise for my brain in problem solving. But I have to say, this College Algebra class is the hardest math class I've ever been in. I learned that many people in the class are taking it for the 2nd and even 3rd time. When I first heard that I thought they must be fucking idiots. But this teacher seems to like torturing students.

Now I got a 96% on the first exam, and just took the 2nd one today. It was much harder than the first, but I think I did fairly well except for the gay word problems ('uniform motion', 'mixing coffee', and dumb speedboats going up and downriver). But I'm sort of at an advantage because I vaguely remember some of the stuff and I'm studying my ass off. My main problem is during class and the homework, the problems are ridiculously simple compared to the questions on the exam. I'm not sure what the teacher is trying to prove here, but it would definitely help students to go through problems of the same difficulty level as the exam during class. It's like they want students to fail in order to pay more money to re-take the course.

For extra credit on the exam they asked to derive the quadratic formula. Believe me, everyone needs extra credit in this class. I knew how to do it, but what's silly is if you didn't explain your steps or worded anything unclear you would get no points, not even partial credit. That's just plain idiotic.

I got a 96% on my 2nd Chemistry exam as well. That was easy, and I should've got a 100% if it weren't for some dumb mistake. Class average was 60% though .

Well I'm getting pounded with ridiculous blog spam. SURBL and MX checking on the URL is not helping. I'm tempted to disable comments altogether. I think what I'll do is not allow URLs altogether in comments.

I read an interesting interview in Discover magazine with Doug Melton regarding stem cell research and ethics.

An interesting quote:

What would happen if scientists injected human stem cells into a monkey embryo? What would grow? A human heart, a human brain, a toe? That is a kind of new biology that I find a million times more interesting than these specious arguments over whether life begins at fertilization.

On the fear of stem cell research:

I would tell you that my own view is that there is an innate fear of crossing boundaries; people feel secure with boundaries. Why have ideas of chimeras fascinated man for millenia? Minotaurs and mermaids? Why is that so intriguing? If you think about it, the whole idea of classifying animals is that you could find a thing called a species, give a sort of stamp of approval on the idea that there is a natural order, there are boxes, there are shelves where everything has its so-called natural place. What is natural and what is anti-natural changes with time and is a very difficult subject.

People get the heebie-jeebies when you talk to them about putting a human brain into a dog. In fact, I would suggest there are two contexts where I think there might be an interesting connection. There is something like a natural double take when you see a person who's seriously deformed. People mostly say, when you see a burn victim or a person who's had an arm amputated, that the reason you're drawn to look at these poor people is the fear that it could happen to you. I actually think it's something deeper than that. I think it has to do with an affront to this idea of the natural order...

What was the significance of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? Why was Frankenstein considered an important book? It was, in my view, because it addressed what is the essence of being human.

This sort of research is something that has always interested me. I would probably say that personally I am not bound by ethical or moral beliefs against creating a chimera if the research is helping us further science. I think the concept of a human being can, should, and will be blurred in due time. It's not that I'm not religious, it's that I don't believe that humans are at the top of any divine ladder.