WALL E

Bravo, Pixar. Bravo.

I have long been a fan of Pixar movies. They know how to tell a good story, and with style.

With that in mind, I must say that WALL E is Pixar's best movie yet.

The creators have managed to look back on the history of cinema and look forward to the future of consumerism and affluence in popular culture - in a kid's movie.

The movie starts with a bleak look at the future of earth. The camera flies over a city overrun with garbage, piles of compacted trash reaching higher than the surrounding skyscrapers, and every thing in sight is produced by the same conglomerate - "Buy N Large". This wretched landscape stands in very stark contrast to the cheerful music playing behind it. Our hero, a trash compacting robot with a pet cockroach, triggers adds as he walks by, and we discover through fading holographic videos that humanity left earth because we had so completely poisoned it.

So it goes that WALL E works day in and day out to clean up, saving little pieces of trash - a spork here, a light bulb there. But here's where Pixar shows their true brilliance. This movie is not just an environmentalist critique of our culture. WALL E is Charlie Chaplin. NPR had this to say in their review:

There's actually a nice parallel between this largely silent film and Chaplin's first sound film, Modern Times. In that one, the silent clown used the soundtrack mostly for music and effects, not for speech, just as Pixar does here. Chaplin only let you hear a human voice a couple of times, and only on some sort of mechanical contraption — say a closed-circuit TV screen — to emphasize its artificiality. It was his way of saying to the sound world, "OK, everybody's doing this talking thing now, but look how much more expressive our silent world is."

Humans are left out, except as videos, until nearly halfway through the movie. When humans do appear, they are lazy and overweight. It seems that life in space is everything it promised to be - with hover chairs, nobody moves; with video screens built into these chairs, nobody has face-to-face conversations anymore; having never seen the earth, nobody knows what "dirt" is. The film-makers took The Jetsons and decided to show what life would really be like in a world where nothing was more than a button away.

On top of the scathing critique of consumerist culture, WALL E is full of allusions to other movies. Of course, Charlie Chaplin is the inspiration for WALL E, but he looks an awful lot like Number 5 from Short Circuit. Auto, the ship's autopilot, is H.A.L. 9000 (Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey) - right down to the glowing red dot. And continuing the ode to 2001, Johann Strauss's "On der schoenen blauen Donau" and Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra" both recieve their moments of glory in the film. Life on board the ship is somewhere between The Jetsons and Star Trek. Even the animated short (a Pixar tradition) gives a wink and a nod; the entirety of Presto is reminiscient of Bugs Bunny and a Merrie Melodies short, though Presto's magic hat resembles more closely that of the sorcerer from Fantasia.

As the credits role, we are treated to the evolution of art - from cave paintings to post-impressionist, van Gogh-esque scenes, the credits continue to show Pixar's brilliance and finish the story; the credits are a well-animated post script in a culture that walks out as soon as the credits roll.

One of the more interesting aspects is the importance of touch in this movie. WALL E spends most of the movie trying to hold EVE's hand. The humans afloat in space have become so dependent on technology that they no longer even converse face-to-face. As such, two humans (one voiced by Pixar's favorite actor, Cliff the Mailman) begin a relationship at first touch, and later rediscover the ship's pool and the joy of splashing water.

WALL E also serves as what one of my professors would call a "chaos monster". For the humans of the film, everything seems to be going fine. Not that things are fine, but nobody realizes how completely screwy things have become. Enter WALL E, who upsets the status quo - first, with the other robots, and then with the humans. As he roams the ship, everywhere he goes becomes a site of change. Like the children in Narnia, WALL E's presence disturbs those around him, awakening them from the trance-like assistance that has become life.

Pixar has a long tradition of telling stores with the lessons that need to be told - rites of passage, acceptance of yourself and others, courage, and the importance of remembering your past (seriously, who didn't get that from watching Toy Story 2?). With WALL E, Pixar has set a new standard for not only artistry, but themes in children's movies. Hopefully, other production companies will follow this shining example.

Rock on.

A Brief Look at Alternative Fuels

About a week ago, I was driving from Athens to Atlanta down 316. I don't like driving. I don't like 316. I don't like Atlanta. I always feel guilty about the drive - it's well over 100 miles round-trip. And though my little Toyota Echo is very fuel efficient, rising gas prices make the trip pricey. Not to mention that the horizon around Atlanta has a very sickly brown color. It's just not a good experience.

This trip, though, was made better by NPR. I like NPR, even if they are viewed by some to be nothing more than a bunch of hippies/liberals/communists/feminists/etc. Even if they present a skewed view (which, to be honest, is not as true as other sources of media), they can at least be polite about the hole thing. I've been listening to NPR since I was a child, and not once have I heard the hosts get into shouting matches with their guests, which is more than can be said for cable news programs. But I digress. NPR was broadcasting The Commonwealth Club, a California organization that invites speakers to present their views on varying topics. This particular speech was given by the CEO of GM, G. Richard Wagoner. And what he had to say surprised me - he dedicated the better part of the speech to the development of more fuel efficient vehicles and alternative forms of energy.

It doesn't matter if you believe in global warming or not. It doesn't matter if you think recent high gas prices will go down or not. All that matters is that the current world economy is dependent on transportation, which is dependent on a finite resource. At some point in the near future, we will run out of fuel. Before that time, we need to find a new source and adapt the infrastructure to fit the source. And better sooner than later.

So, with this in mind, here's a quick view of the common alternatives.

Bio-Diesel and Griesel/Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO)
First, watch this interview with Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou. Great band, great guy, and interesting bus.

I have long supported the use of SVO. You can run a traditional diesel motor with it (at the cost of fuel efficiency). And in warmer climates, it works pretty well. But the problem is that the restaurants don't use oil to sustain a large economy. So instead, we end up using "virgin" SVO, which is slightly wasteful. The main advantage of SVO is that it recycles this oil that we don't need. And, as addressed in the video, cooler temperatures can cause problems for running a griesel engine. Bio-diesel runs into a similar problem. Diesel ignites at a higher temperature than gasoline*.

Of course, we should not be too hasty in ruling out bio-diesel and griesel entirely. UGA runs their bus system off of used grease from the dinning halls (I may be mistaken, but I believe we use a B20 mixture, meaning that it is 20% bio-diesel). Diesel has long been used to run heavier vehicles, namely farm equipment and eighteen wheelers. Diesel engines were developed so that farmers could dedicate crops to fuel production.

Ethanol
My friends and I joke about cars that run on Everclear and Golden Grain. Mostly because we're college students. But the use of ethyl alcohol (ethanol) is rather promising. Corn and soybeans produce large amounts of ethanol, which burns cooler, reducing the size of the cooling unit needed. So while ethanol is not as efficient as regular gasoline, the resulting reduction in vehicle weight makes up some ground.

Ethanol has some special sources, as well. Last April, I attended a symposium hosted by the UGA chapter of the Roosevelt Institute, a national student think tank. One policy proposal was the development of cellulose-based ethanol. In short, with the development of a certain enzyme, pulp derived from recycled paper products can be converted into ethanol. The two flaws in this plan: 1. The enzyme has yet to be found. 2. Diverting paper products from regular recycling to fuel development requires more trees to be cut down. Careful attention would have to be used in deciding which paper products are used to make recycled paper and which are used to make fuels.

The other source is hemp. While certain types of cannabis plants are used as drugs, hemp does not contain sufficient amounts of THC to produce a "high". Hemp produces, among many things, to include durable fabrics and robes (the oldest piece of fabric ever found is made of hemp), paper (it contains longer strains and is lighter in shade, meaning it can be recycled more and does not need to be bleached), food (hemp is high in fiber and other proteins, and to consume enough hemp to get a moderate buzz is the equivalent of taking two or three high fiber laxatives), and ethanol. Because hemp can be grown closer together, it produces more ethanol per acre than soy or corn, and more paper per acre than any type of tree. Hemp is grown in nearly every part of the world, except for the US, where legal regulations on every variety of cannabis makes production cost-prohibitive.

The downside of ethanol is that while it may burn cleaner than fossil fuels, there is question on how clean.

The Problem of Food Prices
The largest argument against non-celluslosic based ethanol is that it is driving food prices up. Which might be true. But it doesn't have to be. Because corn and soy are so heavily subsidized sold at such a low cost, farmers do not meet their full potential for production. Crops are either left to rot, burned, or not planted - it's just not worth it. The problem isn't that we can't produce enough crops to feed the world and produce fuel, it's that we don't get the food to where it needs to go. To compound this, Americans are affluent. We throwout food that is only a day past the sell-by date. If we were to take only what we planned on eating, and not what "might be nice to have at some point next week", we wouldn't have as much of a problem. We buy in bulk, eat about half of it, and throw the rest out. I'm not saying that, by changing our shopping habits and subsidies, we can completely alleviate world hunger, but we can take steps in the right direction WITHOUT getting rid of biofuels.

Electric Engines
Electric engines are great. They have been in development for a while, so they are getting to the point where they can actually compete with traditional internal-combustion-based vehicles. The problem is that the electricity has to come from somewhere. Which means that fossil-fuels are indirectly used to power many electric cars. The advantage is that when the energy market as a whole changes formats (from coal or oil based to hydro, wind, or geothermal based), the electric car will still be able to operate. The other problem is battery power - the technology for the batteries has a long way to go.

Hydrogen
The hydrogen fuel cell is an electric car that runs on hydrogen. I'm not smart enough to explain how it gets electricity from hydrogen, but it does. And it's exhaust? Water.

There are a few problems, though. Cost is a big part of it. Another part is compression - hydrogen has severe limitations in how much can be stored in a fuel cell. But the biggest problem is efficiency. It takes a lot of energy to produce the hydrogen to produce the electricity. Take a look at this chart.
It would be much more effective to use a traditional battery.

Conclusion
One of the great things that Mr. Wagoner said is that alternative fuels have to fit the area in which they are used. The alternative fuel for the US doesn't have to be the same as the alternative fuel for Europe. Which is why Brazil's FlexCar is such a great technology.

Someday.

Rock on.

*Anecdote time! When I was in high school, my JROTC Ranger team trained in fire suppression. We trained using diesel fires contained in pans. In order to ignite, the diesel had to be mixed with gasoline. The gasoline was lit, and as it burned, it, in turn, ignited the diesel.

Update (22 June 2008) - About two weeks ago, GM announced that they would be reevaluating several of their lines, to include the Hummer and other SUVs. Granted, this doesn't mean that they will discontinue the Hummer, but even making it a few miles to the gallon more efficient is a step in the right direction.

Spielberg, China, and the Olympics

I know that I'm pretty much alone in my protest of the Chinese Olympics. And I must admit that I am appreciative of China's support, limited though it may be, of peacekeeping operations in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

But I point your attention towards this.

Defenders of the Beijing Olympics state that we must be careful to place a divide between sports and politics, that the Olympic games are about competition, not international relations. Which is why the US and the USSR took turns boycotting games. And why the 1980 Miracle on Ice was such a big deal. And why nations and regimes use the Olympics as a display of their power. Because above all, we are very careful to separate our national teams from politics.

This quote, in particular, disgusts me: "'Sports is too important. It is too important to use it as a political instrument,' said Milan Zver, the sports minister of Slovenia, which holds the EU presidency."

Sports are too important - more important than human lives. More important than making a point about natural rights. More important than those ideals which we in the West hold so dear?

Mr. Zver also said that the Olympics are not a good place to discuss politics - and under Olympic rules, it is true that athletes aren't allowed to discuss politics within within "Olympic zones." But I want to know, if the Olympics are all about coming together and putting differences aside, if the Olympics are signs of hope and reconciliation, then shouldn't they be the perfect place lobby for human rights?

China is using the Beijing Olympics as a tool to elevate its status as a world power. And after all, who can blame them? Hosting an international competition is a great way to get publicity. But why do we not play the same game? Large nations boycotting the games (or individuals boycotting the corporations that sponsor the games) would send a clear message to China: if you want to be an international superpower, than it's time to clean up your act.

Rock on.

The World Might Not Be Flat, But It Certainly Is Getting Smaller; Or: What I Learned In Korea

I'm in Korea visiting my family for Christmas. For those wondering, it's a fourteen and a half hour flight from Atlanta to the Incheon airport and covers a distance of nearly 9,000 miles (flying over Siberia was very interesting - well, as interesting as flying over a barren, snow covered landscape can be).

I was on the plane flying to from Incheon to the city my parents are stationed in when the girl in front of me (a college student making the same trek I was) started a conversation with the old Korean woman sitting next to her. After about five minutes, it was discovered the old woman's son was the American girl's dentist and neighbor. "It really is a small world," the Korean woman said (in near-perfect English).

At first, I chuckled silently at the cliche and thought about how a small world would never have as long of a flight as I endured.

But after about half a minute, it occurred to me that the conversation in front of me had just proven Thomas Freidman right - the world is flat (though I understand flat to mean no barriers to entry in the market - we're not quite there yet), small, shrinking, however you want to phrase it. Considering that I had traveled half-way around the world in little more than half a day, there is definitely something to be said about this. How we connect to each other was forever changed by the first intercontinental flight. No place in the world is more than a twenty-four hour flight away.

The fact that an old Korean woman is very fluent in English is amazing. I can understand a younger generation being bilingual. But we're now at the point where the retiring generation is also bilingual - and it's not just in Korea (the long-term US presence obviously has something to do with it, but it can't be the only variable). With international travel becoming an every-day, no, every-hour occurrence, English channels on Korean television, and any number of other factors, I shouldn't be at all surprised. It is said that if you speak English and Chinese, you can communicate with half of the people in the world. Imagine if you threw in French! Don't get me wrong - the language barrier when I'm walking around off post is a problem, but the number of English speakers is astounding.

Then there's the fact that I'm sitting in Korea writing a blog to be read by friends in the US and parts of Europe (and occasionally a few other more remote locations). When my father was in Korea in the early 90s, we got email (then called E-Mail) just to communicate with him, and as far as middle-class Americans were concerned, we were very early adopters. Now I have three different email accounts, all hosted for free, maintain a blog with very few technical skills, and use Facebook to keep up with friends from high school who live halfway across the country from me. Friends who live in California and Alaska can be communicated with in real time with IM services.

Most friends know that I am not the biggest fan of technology - I'd rather go out for coffee than talk over IM, rather climb a tree than play a video game, and rather go hiking than watch TV. But despite my qualms, there is something astounding about the opportunity for the sharing of ideas and maintaining of friendships (vital to military kids such as myself) allowed for by technology.

Rock on.