CC05 - The Sanctity of Marriage?

Who Has the Ultimate Authority to Sanction Marriage, the Church or the State?

I recently had a conversation with a woman on YouTube, who was asserting the position that the State cannot be trusted with maintaining the binding nature of marriage, and that the power to adjudicate marital matters needed to be returned to the Church.  The idea was that many of the issues that men face today in our gynocentric society when it comes to the forced breakup of their families was due to the fact that a secular system heavily influenced by feminsim was in control of marriage and its participants.

The idea that the marriage is a bad thing for men is a fairly new one.  The prevailing belief seems to be that men use marriage to take their women 'off the market', to reserve a uterus for the gestation of their future children.  Feminists would argue that marriage has long been a tool used by the "Patriarchy" to enslave women in a domestic setting.  Many second wave feminists openly declared that in order to truly liberate women, the idea of marriage had to be destroyed.

"The nuclear family must be destroyed... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process." -- Linda Gordon

"We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- Robin Morgan

Feminist theory and how it's been put into practice has basically removed any benefit from marriage that men ever had, and the tool through which this destruction of the family has been wrought is the State and the Judiciary.  For men, becoming married is now essentially a "full risk, no reward" event.  It is no wonder that many men these days aren't interested in getting married these days.

In all secular countries, there are entire sections of legal code dedicated to adjudicating marriage.  Many of these laws have been designed specifically to remove any power men have in a marriage, the idea being that if the man has any power, then the woman must be oppressed.  While rational people understand that men and women compliment each other in a relationship, feminists in particular, and adjudicators in general, see the relationship as adversarial, in which one party is the submissive victim, and the other a domineering abuser.  And, let's be honest, men are usually painted as the domineering abuser.

Which brings us to the question, should the State remain the adjudicator of marital matters?  I would say...no.

This woman's suggestion was that if we returned the power to adjudicate marriages back to the theocrats, then women wouldn't be able to use the law to coerce money from their husband, and then toss them to the wind and deny them access to their children.  They wouldn't be allowed to seek a divorce simply because they were bored, as many women do these days.  There is very little risk for a woman seeking divorce, and many benefits, so when they tire of the man to whom they're wedded, they can simply say "I'm out", claim 'irrecocilable differences', and then take half his stuff, and half his paycheque and wander off to find a new, better man.  Having the Church in charge would 'fix' a lot of the issues that men are facing due to our legal system and family courts.

So then, should the Churches be back in charge?  To this, I also say no.  I mean, why swap one authoritarian overlord for another?

It seems obvious to me that the nature of a relationship is based on the people who participate in it.  Submitting to an outside authority for the validation of that relationship seems...superfluous to me.  All it can accomplish is detract from an already existing relationship.  Unless one's relationship conforms to the ideals of the authority to which one supplicates, one will invariably find denial and reproach regarding the nature of one's relationship from that authority.  Banning same sex marriages is a perfect example.  ANY authority beyond the people in the relationship has the potential to place limits on what can or cannot be a valid marriage.

When a marriage breaks down, it is then that authority to whom the ex-couple once again supplicates themselves in order for a 'final ruling' on the division of assets, etc., a situation that usually ends in the destruction of one of the parties.

The 'sanctity' of marriage is a fallacy, in my opinion.  Sanctity is subjective, and the only people who can declare the nature of their relationship as 'sacred' are the people involved in that relationship.  I think the only way we can honestly be fair about marriage is to remove ALL external authorities from the definition of marriage.

This is what I would propose:

We treat marriage like a business contract.  Each party involved agrees to a list of stipulations and obligations requested by the other(s), and offers a list of his/her own requests from them.  A clause is drawn up that outlines the penalties for failing to adhere to the agreement.  Hell, one could even put a time limit on the partnership.  The point is, that the people getting married are the ones who define the boundaries of their relationship, and they define the penalties for violating that contract.  That way we don't have to worry about the government dealing social issues like 'gay marriage' or 'polyamoury', or whatever the case may be.  And, to quote a YouTube comment: "As for Churches, Mosques, and Pirate Ships, their marriages should be ceremonial only."

In the end, I wouldn't want a government bureaucrat defining my relationship with my spouse(s) anymore than I would want a religious theocrat doing it.  The only people who should have the right to define my relationship should be me and my partner(s).

That being said, there are only two requirements that I would hold as essential prerequisites for these relationships.  All parties involved should be adults capable of giving informed consent, and they should be able to demonstrate said consent.  Other than that, leave the law out of it and let the people decide for themselves.

CC04 - Chivalry is Dead, and Feminism Killed it.

The Intellectual Fallacy of Chivalry in the Modern Age

　

Chivalry can be defined as "favourable or courteous treatment or behaviour towards women, especially by men" and I'm concerned with this notion that a man is OBLIGATED to behave in a chivalrous manner towards women, and that the failure to do so is indicative of misogyny.  The belief that I often see women in today's modern age expressing is that if they're not being treated favourably, then they're being discriminated against, or that the person who's not favouring them is doing it because (s)he hates women.

The very notion of chivalry is predicated on the idea that women are poor, weak, and incapable of self-actualisation, and thus, must be treated deferentially in order to protect them from all the nastiness in the world.  This is because, it can be argued, that in the days before modern science and medicine made living a productive life relatively easy to the way it was even two hundred years ago, a woman's life was worth far more to the survival of the species than that of a man.  The prolonged protection of a man's life made little sense, particularly after he'd sired children, but protecting the lives of the tribe's women, usually through the sacrifice of the lives of the men, was paramount to survival.  Women carried, birthed, cared for, and taught the children in the tribe, and losing a woman often meant losing a whole family.  Losing a man simply meant that man's woman found a new man.  A woman's role was far more important than that of a man's, and thus women were held in higher esteem and more resources devoted to their protection.

This sense of "protect the women at all costs" evolved into the chivalric code that permeated the middle ages, and with which we readily identify, even today.  However, in today's age, when technology has advanced to the point now that women can take care of themselves with relative ease, the need to protect them from the burdens of life is no longer needed.  After all, in an age when women are demanding fair and equal treatment, then they deserve fair and equal treatment. Treating people differently based solely on their sex is the very definition of sexism.

The concept of chivalry itself is misogynistic, in the idea that a woman must be protected from all the nastiness in the world because she, as a woman, cannot handle it. So, while women will often bristle at the idea that they are incapable of holding open their own door, or paying for their own meal, or fighting their own battles, they still expect that men behave in a manner that prevents them from HAVING to do these things. They want the favourable treatment without understanding the unfavourable discrimination that inspires it.

An argument can also be made that chivalry is misandrist, in the sense that men are obligated to carry the burdens of women in addition to their own, that the needs of men are secondary to the needs of women. When women were believed to be (or in actuality were) unable to meet their own needs, chivalry was needed to ensure women's safety and wellbeing. But in an age when women have the opportunity to, and are quite capable of, meeting their own needs, then the obligation of shifting the burden of meeting those needs to a man simply because he's a man is misandrist.

If you're a female, worthy of dignity and respect, and deserving of fair and equal treatment, then you had better not expect a man to treat you favourably because of your gender. Whomever gets to the door first opens it, walks through, and then the polite thing to do is hold the door open for whomever may be following. Whomever asks the other out on the date pays for the date. And if you pick a fight or get attacked, it's not the duty of a man to come to your aid.

The societal pressure on men to behave in a chivalrous manner (pay for dates, hold open doors, act as unpaid bodyguards for random women, etc.) is an obligation that no longer carries advantage.  We have a word for obligation without advantage.  It's called "slavery".  Thus, obligating a man to behave chivalrous towards a woman is akin to enslaving that man to the woman, that he is responsible for her welfare and wellbeing, merely by virtue of her sex, often at the expense of his own.

Now, please understand, that it's not to chivalry itself that I'm opposed. What I'm opposed to is the expectation of women that all men behave chivalrous, or that women are entitled to favourable treatment by men simply due to their gender. Let me say that again. It's not the ACT of chivalry that's wrong. It's the EXPECTATION of chivalry that's wrong. A man can still choose to behave chivalrously towards a woman, but it is not his DUTY to do so, and women have no reason to feel entitled to it.  In fact, chivalrous behaviour doesn't even have to be sex specific.  Women can hold open doors for men, etc.  So the idea that only men can be chivalrous and only women can be the subjects of that chivalry is flawed.

Examples of chivalrous behaviour that some women tend to expect from men:

1) Holding open the door. Chivalrous etiquette often dictates that if a man and a woman approach a door together, that it's the responsibility of the man to open the door, wait for the woman to enter, and then follow behind her. Whomever gets to the door first is deemed irrelevant. This is what's called the "Ladies First" rule. Preferential treatment based on gender is sexism, plain and simple, and no one should expect it. If the genders are treated fair and equal, then it shouldn't matter who opens the door for whom.

2) Giving up a seat. If there are ten seats available and twelve people show up, then chivalry demands that a man who has a seat must give up his chair to a woman who is standing. Irrelevant, it seems, is the consideration of who was on time and who was late. "First come, first served" apparently only applies between men. If a man arrived at the function on time, then why should he be expected to stand so that a woman who was late and couldn't get a seat can sit? If she wants fair and equal treatment, then she can stand. Maybe next time, she'll be on time. This also goes for buses and trains. A man is not obligated to give up his seat to a woman any more than he is to do so for another man.

3) Carrying luggage/parcels/groceries/etc. The expectation that a woman who is carrying something heavy must be relieved of her burden by a man is another example of sexism. If a woman has a heavy bag, then she is responsible for carrying it. Again, I want to point out that if any person sees any other person struggling with a heavy load, then the polite thing to do is offer assistance, regardless of gender. But the expectation that a woman, merely by virtue of being a female, is either too good or too weak to carry her own bags and thus must be rescued by a man is sexism. A man is not obligated to carry a woman's bags any more than he's obligated to carry another man's.

4) "Women and children first." The idea that a man must face danger or sacrifice himself to ensure the safety or wellbeing of a woman is another one of the chivalrous obligations that is unjust in a society where women deserve fair and equal treatment. A woman's life is worth no more and no less than a man's, and yet, men are easily obligated or expected to sacrifice themselves to ensure a woman's survival, and a man is deemed a 'coward' if he allows a woman to suffer harm in his place. "Ladies first" only seems to apply when it comes to walking through doors or deciding who gets the first turn in a game. "Ladies first" is conspicuously absent when it comes to facing danger.

So, ladies, if any of you are ever annoyed, irritated, or upset at a man for not holding a door open for you, consider whether you're entitled to that treatment because you're incapable of fending for yourself. If you can open the door yourself, then you shouldn't be expecting a man to do it for you, because when he doesn't, it's because he's offering you fair and equal treatment, something that everyone deserves, men or women.

Basically it comes down to one thing.  If a woman believes that she is entitled to a form of treatment or allowed a certain behaviour and the only justification she can call upon is "because I'm the girl", then that's an aspect of this chivalrous entitlement to which I refer.  In my personal life, I've known quite a few women who honestly believed that they didn't have to carry boxes, or shovel snow, or pay for drinks, or whatever, because "they were girls".  The only reason you shouldn't carry a box is because you're weak.  The only reason you shouldn't shovel snow is because you're weak.  The only reason you shouldn't pay for your own drinks is because you're cheap.  Being a girl has nothing to do with it, unless you want to equate being weak and poor with being female, and that's an assertion I do not accept.

Chivalry and Sexism are two aspects of the same issue: gender discrimination. Fair and equal treatment means that favourable treatment based solely on gender is just as wrong as the unfavourable treatment.

Movie Review: Prometheus. *SPOILER ALERT*

So, I saw Prometheus tonight. I know it's been out for a week or two in the rest of the world, but it just opened in North America, and it was one of the few movies that I wanted to see all summer, mostly because I've loved the whole Alien franchise since its inception. So, when I heard that Ridley Scott was building a prequel to his 1979 hit Alien, the movie that started it all, I was really quite excited.

Then I saw the movie.

Now, the movie itself wasn't bad. I mean, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't spectacular either. It was basically a run-of-the-mill survival horror "haunted house" style movie that was shot beautifully, incredibly pretty, and one of the best applications of the 3D system I've seen since Avatar. It's obvious to me that the movie was filmed in steroscopic, rather than "3D'd" in post production like most films are these days.

The following plot summary is copied from Wikipedia. The original can be found here. The plot summary will be in italics, and my expansion and comments will be added in as we go.

A spacecraft arrives on Earth in the distant past. A humanoid alien drinks a dark liquid. Its body disintegrates and falls into a waterfall, seeding the planet with its DNA.

This scene is pretty straight forward. The movie doesn't give us any time referrence, but there's a giant saucer shaped ship lifting off the ground, and the alien, which looks distinctly humanesque, has with him this little vial of juice that starts dissolving his body when he drinks it. This is obviously a "Space Jockey" (referred to in the movie as an Engineer), and as he breaks down, he falls into the waterfall and disentigrates. The camera zooms in to show us new chains of DNA being formed from the shards of the alien's broken DNA. Fast foward to the future.

In 2089, archaeologist couple Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway discover a star map among several unconnected ancient cultures. They interpret this as an invitation from humanity's forerunners, the "Engineers". Peter Weyland, the elderly founder of the Weyland Corporation, funds the creation of the scientific vessel Prometheus to follow the map to the distant moon LV-223. The ship's crew travels in stasis while the android David monitors their voyage. In 2093, the ship arrives, and its crew are informed of their mission to find the Engineers. Mission director Meredith Vickers orders them to avoid direct contact if the Engineers are found. The Prometheus lands near a structure and a team is sent to explore within.

My first issue with this is that Peter Weyland is declared the "aging founder" of Weyland Corp. Makes me wonder what happened to Charles Weyland from the AvP movie. I thought he was supposed to be the founder of Weyland Corporation, and that was back in 2004. So, right from the get-go, Prometheus breaks from established Alien canon. Anyway, the briefing the crew watches from Peter Weyland is recorded, and is said to have been recorded two years previous, and that Weyland was now dead. This mission is supposed to be his legacy, his way of contributing to the world in one last glorious way before his death, even though he wouldn't be around to see it.

Inside they find several stone cylinders, a monolithic statue of a humanoid head, and the decapitated corpse of a giant alien, thought to be one of the Engineers. They also take off their helmets as the air is breathable inside the structure, but this in turn alters the atmosphere inside and causes the cylinders to start leaking their contents. Other bodies are later found, and the species is presumed to be extinct. Shaw takes the head of the decapitated alien and David secretly takes a cylinder, while the remaining cylinders begin leaking dark liquid. A rapidly approaching storm forces the crew to return to Prometheus, leaving crew members Milburn and Fifield stranded in the structure.

Now, the thing I find most unbelievable about this part of the story is that a bunch of scientists, on a hostile world, in an alien structure, surrounded by the bodies of dead creatures, decide to take off their helmets and start touching stuff. Seems to me that either these are the stupidest smart people Weyland could find, or the writers didn't know how to trigger a crisis without stretching plausibility. And, of course, the two crewmen who get left behind (Fifeild, a geologist, and Milburn, a botanist) are so because they decide that now that they've taken off their helmets and touched everything, it was the perfect time to decide they weren't needed and wander off back to the ship. Somehow, on their way back, they get lost, which makes no sense, because Fifeild started the exploration by sending out a handfull of floating probes to map the structure, and he's the one with the map.

So, anyway, the other four or five people decide that they're gonna crack open this sealed room, with their helmets off and breathing on everything, and when they break the seal, the influx of atmosphere begins causing all the stuff inside to start breaking down. Murals on the walls start corroding, all these little bio-chem cylinders start leaking, and of course, the dead Engineer's decapitated head (which they date to being two thousand years old) starts melting. In a panic, Shaw vacuum seals the head for maximum freshness and tosses it in her bag. This is also when David, while everyone is freaking out about the head, stealthily tips a canister of meltygoo into his duffel. Then the captain back on the ship calls to tell them that a storm is racing in, and they have ten minutes to get back to the ship.

Now, I'm no meteorologist, and I'm definately not a xeno-meteorologist, but I'm pretty sure that storms don't just swarm up nearly instantly like that, and I'm pretty sure that a giant spaceship filled with sensors would be able to pick up the storm from a little further off than ten minutes. Anyway, so everyone but the two lost guys jump on their little dune buggies and race back to the ship. But, just as they're driving up the ramp, the bag with the Engineer's head pops out of Shaw's grasp and goes rolling off into the dust. In a panic, she jumps off the back of the buggy, runs into the swirling sandstorm, grabs the bag, and then the winds pick her up and blow her away. David, the android, has to tether himself to the ship and run out to rescue her. As a group, they all follow the tether back into the cargo bay and shut the door. This is when they realise that they're missing two people. Oh well.

In the ship, the Engineer's DNA is analyzed and found to match that of humans. Meanwhile, David investigates the cylinder and discovers the dark liquid. He intentionally infects Holloway with the substance. Later, Shaw and Holloway have sex. Inside the structure, Fifield and Milburn are attacked by snake-like creatures. These have come from some sort of worm in the ground that are transformed after exposure to the dark liquid. Milburn is killed, and corrosive fluid from one of the creatures melts Fifield's helmet, exposing him to the leaking dark liquid.

So, this part is fun. Shaw and Ford (the medic) decide to examine the dead Engineer head. Without masks, gloves or any kind of quarantine measures, they just pop open the helmet and start poking it. They actually stab it with an electrode and introduce current to the brain to "trick it into thinking it's still alive". Shaw never explains why she wants to do this, but the head reacts, starts twitching out, and then begins to bubble and melt. That's when they decide that they should probably be wearing masks, and they close a containment enclosure around the head just in time to contain the resulting explosion as the head splatters the walls of the box. Oh well, not all is lost. They take some of the mess, test it for DNA and find it to be a near perfect match to human DNA.

Now, I'm not a geneologist, but I'm pretty sure that DNA differs from person to person, so I was a little confused about how a sample from an alien who's been dead for two thousand years can match the sample from a modern human. I mean, I guess you could believe that the structure of DNA from human to human remains the same and that's what they were comparing, but since I don't know enough about the science, I can't be sure. But it sounds wrong to me, and this was one more instance when I had to suspend my disbelief. I mean, I accept evolution as the method by which life on Earth developed into the multitudes of species we have, and even on earth we have wildly differing DNA profiles between species. The premise of the movie is that the DNA of the Engineer race was used to seed all of Earth, so wouldn't it have similarities to all terrestrial DNA, not just human? And the fact that it's an identical, perfect match....

Back in the 'catacombs', where the tunnels are so twisty that even the guy with the map and the scanner probes can't find his way out, the two stranded scientists find themselves back in the sealed room with the leaking cylinders. Now, apparently, there are worms in the dirt on the floor of this room, and the fluid from the canisters has mutated them into giant snakelike creatures. Milburn, the botanist, decides that the best thing to do when encountering one of these creatures it to try to pet it. He gets close, its head opens up like a cobra hooding, and he reaches out to poke it. Now, I'm not a herpetologist, but I've seen Indiana Jones. Poking a creature who's trying to make itself look bigger is usually a bad idea, particularly if you don't know WHAT it is. But, I guess they don't have Crocadile Hunter reruns in the future and our friendly neighbourhood botanist pokes the snake. It bites his hand, wraps around his arm, constricts it until it snaps, and then uses the resulting hole caused by the burst bone to enter his suit, where it makes its way into his helmet and rams itself down his throat. Throughout this whole ordeal, the geologist, Fifield, panicks, trips, and lands face first in the fluid, which by this time has created little puddles and rivulets all over the room. The fuild melts his helmet, his face, and presumably his brain as well. Bye bye to two scientists who were little more than glorified Redshirts.

So, back on the ship, while Shaw and Ford are playing with the head, the android, David, decides to use some of the fluid from his secret bio-chem cylinder to infect Holloway, Shaw's lover. Holloway gets randy, goes to see his lady-love, and they enjoy some friendly affectionate time. This is when Shaw reveals that she's sterile, which makes no sense at the time, but the fact needs establishing for further plot developments. Afterwards, Holloway goes to a mirror, and sees a tiny worm crawling out of his eyeball, and he freaks out. Before he can really react, though, the captain calls again and says that the storm has passed and that they could go back outside.

The crew returns to the structure and finds Milburn's corpse. David discovers a room containing an Engineer in stasis and a star map highlighting Earth. Holloway's infection rapidly ravages his body, and he is rushed back to Prometheus. Vickers refuses to let him aboard, and immolates him at his own request. While David attends to her, a medical scan reveals that Shaw, despite being sterile, is pregnant with an alien offspring. Escaping crew who intend to put her into cryogenic stasis, Shaw uses an automated surgery table to cut it from her abdomen. Weyland is found to have been in stasis aboard Prometheus, and he explains to Shaw that he intends to ask the Engineers to prevent his death from old age.

This is where a lot of the story loses itself. So, the crew return to find Milburn's dead body, but there's no sign of Fifield, and while they're freaking out about what could have killed him, David wanders off to find another sealed room. He breaks in, cuts his video feed to the ship, and starts touching stuff, triggering a sort of....log of what last happened in the command room. He discovers that, for whatever reason, the Engineers had decided to eliminate all life on Earth, the life they had kickstarted, and recolonise the planet for themselves. But the bioweapon they planned to use was released on their ship by accident, and that's why they were now all dead. All accept one, whom David finds in stasis, alive and healthy. With this information, he decides to return to the crew and finds them over Milburns death and now all panicking over Holloway's advancing infection.

Holloway is all discoloured, his skin greying and melting in patches, much like the Engineer at the beginning of the movie was, and in a state of slow distintegration. The crew decide to take him back to the ship for treatment, but Vickers, the mission commander, recognises the threat and refuses to allow him on board. Understanding that he's dying anyway, Holloway asks that Vickers set him on fire with a flamethrower, much to the dismay of Shaw. Then they all reboard the ship to consider their next move.

Now, since Holloway was obviously infected, David decides to examine Shaw, presuming that she had had intimate contact with him after being infected. A medical scan reveals that she's not only pregnant, but three month's pregnant, an apparent impossibility because Shaw was sterile. Realising that the gestating embryo was most likely some kind of mutated hybrid that was rapidly maturing, David decides that Shaw needs to be put into statis, so that the embryo can be harvested back on Earth. Shaw disagrees, and flees. She makes her way to an automated surgery table, programs it to cut her open, and extracts the gestating embryo.

Now, I'm not an obstetrician, but I'm pretty sure that a caesarean section surgery incision is about four centimetres long, and generally done just above the pudendal cleft. Whether horizontal or vertical, it's a fairly small incision, and it is generally done far below the navel. However, the automated surgery bay in which Shaw is manually C-Sectioning herself cuts a wide, 20 centimetre gash from hip to hip across her navel. Now, I dunno if this was done so the actress could still be wearing her underwear and avoid LOLFANSERVICE, or whether the writers honestly didn't think the audience would either notice or care, but I've seen enough combat movies to understand that a wide abdominal gash like that is usually fatal.

Anyway, so the robotic surgery bay cuts her open, fishes around in her innards for a while, and pulls out an octopus looking thing about the size of a basketball. It has four tentacles and a bulbous head, much like an octopus does. Oh, and complete with an umbilical cord, that Shaw simply reaches into her gaping wound to grasp and yank out. Again, I'm not an obstetrician, but I'm pretty sure that kind of trauma can cause all sorts of uteral problems. So, the robot surgery bay sews her wound shut, tosses in a few heavy duty staples for good measure, and kicks her out of the bed. During this whole episode, the 'embryo' is thrashing around in the mechanical forceps, so Shaw closes the conatinment capsule on the bed, and orders a "decontamination purge". The capsule fills with hissing gas, and the embryo stops thrashing.

Despite recently being the subject of a fairly invasive surgical procedure, Shaw throws on a bathrobe and goes for a jog around the ship. She stumbles into a room where David and two medtechs are assisting an elderly Peter Weyland from his stasis tube. Apparenlty, the old guy has been with the ship the whole time. Not dead, just sleeping, waiting for confirmation that there's still an Engineer alive and available to for conversation. So now we discover Weyland's true motives. He's afraid to die, and so, funded this whole expedition to find the 'creators of life on Earth' and beg them to save his life. Yay. Here's the prequisite "Corporations are Evil" motive for which the Alien franchise is known.

A mutated Fifield comes back to life and attacks the hangar bay and kills several crew members before being killed himself. Janek theorizes that the structure was part of an Engineer military base that lost control of a biological weapon, the dark liquid. Weyland and a team return to the structure and awaken the Engineer, who is discovered to be the pilot of an Engineer spaceship. David speaks to the Engineer, who responds by decapitating him and killing Weyland and others.

So, with Weyland up and about, and Shaw apparently miraculously recovered, the remaining crewmen decide to go back to the structure and talk to ol' Jockey McSleepy-pants. As they lower the egress ramp, they find the contorted body of Fifield, who suddenly starts jumping around like a spider, bursting out of his spacesuit like something from Resident Evil, and smacking crewmen around. Gunfire erupts, flamethrowers go off, and after four people get torn to shreds, Fifield-zombie-mutant gets burned to ash and finally stops murdering people. It was by this time that I was feeling a little bored with the whole thing. The movie had devolved from being an epic prequel story that would answer all the questions that Alien fans have had since 1979 into a run of the mill slasher monster flick. But, hey, I held out hope. They still had a living breathing Space Jockey to encounter, and thus, the possibility that those questions would be answered was still in existence.

So, Weyland, David, Ford and Shaw all go to the Engineer stasis room and pop the hatch on the pod. The Engineer wakes up, looks around, and all the humans start babbling at him. Shaw starts demanding why they decided to exterminate their planet after having seeded it so many eons earlier, and Weyland starts demanded to be saved from old age. David, however, is the only one who can actually speak to the Engineer in his own language, and so he says something, presumably translating for Weyland. We weren't given a translation, but whatever it was, the Engineer understood it, took offence, and reacts by ripping David in half. Then he grabs Weyland and smashes him into the floor, before pouncing on Ford and turning her into paste too. Shaw flees and the Engineer does not pursue. However, he decides that, hey, since he's awake, he might as well complete the mission that they all started out to do, and activates the computer systems in the statis room. This is when we discover that the room isn't actually a room, it's the bridge of a buried spaceship that had been docked in an underground hanger. The Engineer activates the cockpit, revealing the iconic chair-with-a-telescope that we all know from the movie Alien. He sits down, and a helmet and spacesuit fold around him, sealing him in the chair.

Shaw escapes the Engineer spaceship as the pilot reactivates the vessel and prepares the launch cycle. The still-active David reveals that the pilot intends to complete the previous mission and release the dark liquid on Earth. Shaw desperately convinces Janek to stop the Engineer ship before it can succeed. He crashes Prometheus into it while Vickers ejects from the ship along with a lifeboat. The Prometheus is destroyed and the disabled Engineer ship crashes onto the planet, killing Vickers. Shaw goes to Vickers' lifeboat to replenish her oxygen supply, but while retrieving supplies, she finds that the creature she removed from her body is still trapped in the surgery bay and has grown to tremendous size. David warns Shaw by radio that the Engineer Pilot has survived the crash just moments before he breaks in and attacks her; she opens the surgical bay door and the creature attacks the Engineer Pilot, allowing her to escape. After a struggle, the creature thrusts a tentacle down the Engineer's throat, subduing it. Shaw recovers David's remains, and with his knowledge of Engineer navigation systems, she commandeers another Engineer ship from an adjacent pyramid to travel to the Engineers' homeworld in an attempt to understand why they created humanity and later attempted to destroy it; she transmits a final message to Earth warning them to avoid LV-233 at all costs.

So, wincing occasionally and grabbing her belly to show that she's still feeling the effects of her major surgery, Shaw begins to climb and run and jump and dodge her way out of the structure and the spaceship like a spider monkey, leaping across chasms as the ground breaks away beneath her and climbing up slippery rock ledges. She finally gets free just in time to see the Engineer ship, the iconic horseshoe ship from both the Alien and Aliens movies, lift off from the underground hanger and pull away into space. Janek, Promethues' captain, realises that the ship cannot be allowed to get away, and so he tells Vickers, the mission commander, to get into the lifeboat and get away. As soon as she ejects, Janek flies Prometheus into the Engineer ship, cause both ships to crash back to the planet's surface. The lifeboat, however, doesn't get far, and ends up crashing as well.

Now realising that she's out on a barren rock with limited oxygen and no more Prometheus to fly her home, Shaw runs to the downed lifeboat, thinking to use it to escape. Inside, she replenishes her suit's oxygen, and walks past the medical bay with the automated surgery table that she used to cut out her mutantbabything. She notices through the window that the casing on the containment pod is shattered, and realising that the creature must be free inside the medbay, decides to flee the lifeboat.

BUT SHE CAN'T, because suddenly, the Engineer who was piloting the ship that they just crashed, survived and is coming to look for her. She flees, finds herself trapped by the door to the medbay, and, in order to save herself from the Engineer's rage, releases the mutantembryo from the bay. It leaps out of the medbay and tackles the Engineer, all tentacles and rage, and in the confusion, Shaw flees the lifeboat. The embryo overpowers the Engineer, and rams a tentacle down his throat, wrapping itself around him like a parady of a proto-facehugger.

This is when David convinces Shaw that they should just hijack one of the Engineer's other ships that they have hangered under the ground there and flee. So Shaw runs off, collects David, and decides to take one of the ships back to the Engineer home planet.

Now, it was right up until this point that I was still hoping the movie would pay off, that it would still somehow tie Prometheus into Alien. And then....

In the lifeboat, an alien creature with jet-black skin and an elongated skull bursts out of the dying Engineer's chest and flexes a set of binary jaws. The End.

...oookaaaaay?

I mean, they had everything set up nearly perfectly to tie into Alien.

Horseshoe ship? Check.
Impregnated Space Jockey? Check.

All they needed to do was take the Impregnated Space Jockey, wake him up, walk his ass over to the ship, fly it off again, and then have the Alien burst from his chest while he was sitting in the cockpit-telescope, have the ship crash on LV-426, and the Alien molt into a queen and start laying all the eggs needed for the Nostromo crew to find. I mean, was that too much to ask for?

This movie has so many things wrong with it that you have to really stretch your suspension of disbelief and lower your expectations if you're gonna get anything out of it. I mean, it basically says that Shaw's protofacehugger embryobaby is the progenitor of the Xenomorph species.

But, it doesn't answer any of the questions that we've had since we first saw the derelict ship in Alien. In fact, it raised quite a few more, and contradicts quite a bit of established canon. Maybe I don't know it all, but to my understanding, The Engineers/Space Jockies/Progeniters created both Humans and Predators. We know from the Alien vs Predator franchise that the Predators had been hunting the Aliens as prized prey more than six thousand years earlier, so if the protofacehugger was supposed to be the first of the Xenomorphs, it's about six thousand years too late.

So, I dunno, maybe my assumption that this movie would show us where the ship from Alien came from, where the eggs came from, and how the Xenomorphs actually started, is where I went wrong. The movie is pretty, it's one of the most beautifully shot movies I've seen in a long time. It has great set peices, beautiful costumes, and realistic 3D that won't make you carsick.

But the story....really falls flat. If you're in the mood for a popcorn flick, this is good, but if you're looking for a movie that ties in well with the Alien mythology...you'll be disappointed. As a friend of mine said: Ridley Scott is a great storyteller, but he cut his teeth on an audience who wasn't as well versed in science as the average moviegoer is today, and the radical leaps in logic that the story makes in order to stitch everything together is a blatant assault on the intellect of the people who're watching it. For more than half the movie I found myself asking with incredulity whether we were seriously supposed to believe what they were saying, or if the movie was making fun of us.

This is AngryDuck!, nerdraging about Prometheus.

CC03 - Health Care

Why Health Care is Not a Right

You know, a few weeks ago I was challenged by a feminist to explain why "fair and equal health care" was not a right, mostly because I was arguing that women's insurance being more costly than men's in the US wasn't indicative of systemic gender discrimination. I thought about it and spent about an hour putting my thoughts into a reasonably coherent piece of reasoning.

However, it lead me to think about the nature of our health care system in Canada, about how, specifically, it was more restrictive and less respectful of our rights as citizens than a private system such as the US.

Now, before I get started, allow me to preface myself with a caveat. Socialised health care has benefits and drawbacks just as the private insurance model has benefits and draw backs, so this isn't going to be a "Capitalism > Socialism" rant.  Instead I'm going to try to illustrate how each system's priorities differ in such a way as to radically change the effective result of health care delivery.

Let's look first at the way Canada's health care system is structured. Basically the way it works is that doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc., are all public employees, paid for by the government. All costs associated with offering services are paid by the government through the use of taxpayer dollars or, depending on province, premiums paid by individual citizens. For the most part, what this means is that everyone is supposed to have the same access to health care facilities without concern for cost.

Hospitals, including machinery and equipment, are government owned, built and maintained at taxpayer expense. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, custodians, etc., are all public employees, hired and paid by the government. The health care system is, almost in its entirety, a government bureaucracy, where decisions about health care delivery is made by politicians and bureaucrats, instead of doctors and their patients.

The upside of this is that it ensures that there is SOME kind of health care system available to every citizen to meet his or her medical needs. The downside of this is that it's run from the top down, that decisions are made based on what is best for the government or society as a whole, rather than the patients as individuals.

Now, since this is a social system, and there's only so much money available to pay for services, the concept of a market economy system regulating the prices of health care services cannot work, since there's only one provider of service (the government). So, there's no marketplace within which prices are regulated.

Instead, the government decides how much it will pay for each specific kind of treatment. Usually, this formula is decided by committee, where many different people all debate on what a reasonable fee for each procedure might be, but, in the end, it is the government that decides how much each procedure will cost the system. Then, it uses a cookie cutter method of fitting each patient, regardless of his or her personal needs, into that specific 'mould' for each procedure. What ends up happening, is that the government decides how many of each procedure it can afford to pay for each year, and puts a limit on the number of those procedures that the public system will provide.

If the government decides it can only afford 1000 hip replacement surgeries in a year, and there are 1500 patients requiring hip replacement....well, you can see where we end up. Wait lists that are getting longer and longer as time goes by, simply because the government has artificially limited the number of available procedures.

Another big problem is the cost overrun. Because a socialised health care system has only a single health care provider, there is no competition to bring down prices or encourage innovation. The government just decides for what it will pay and that's the end of that. And, if you're not aware, in Canada, it is illegal to offer private medical services for anything the government is obligated by law to provide. The government basically has a monopoly on delivering health services.

So, consider again the hip replacements. Every year, there are 500 more people being denied services simply because the government decided not to (or is unable to) pay for any more procedures that year, but those patients have no other options within Canada. So, many of them go to the US, where services are paid for by the patients (or the patients' insurance).

Recently there's been a discussion, in Alberta at least, about whether we should be forcing our citizens to head to another country to pay for their medical care in a reasonable time frame. But, because it is illegal in this country to offer medical care that is supposed to be provided by the government, what option is left to the patient when that service is not being provided within a reasonable time frame?

There are currently two schools of thought. The first, often touted by supporters and proponents of socialised medicine, is that the patient should wait his or her damned turn, and that the government needs to ramp up spending in order to meet the demand.  If only we had more tax dollars to spend on health care.  Lets put in a fast food tax, a tax on pop, and raise the sin taxes even more on regulated products.  Then we'll have lots of money to spend on extra hip replacements.

The second, generally held by opponents of socialised medicine, is that those people, should they choose to, should be granted the option and the opportunity to purchase services outside of the public system, to help them maintain their own health at their volition.  If people are willing to pay out of their own pocket for fast, efficient, and effective health services, then why should we deny them that chance?  It will save the public system money, and shorten wait times, and we don't need more government to do it.

Now, while there are advantages and disadvantages with both options, the pertinent issue in my mind is the personal freedom to choose one's own destiny that is being denied by the nature of Canada's health system.

Consider this: When you rely on the government for your health care, you are giving them the power to decide how your health will be treated.

It is their decision, not yours, what conditions you have that merit treatment.
It is their decision, not yours, when those treatments will be provided.
It is their decision, not yours, where and by whom those treatments will be provided.
It is their decision, not yours, because they are paying the bill.

Now, by preventing a second option to people who would rather keep the power to make decisions regarding their own health care by paying for their own needs, the socialised system is basically denying our citizens their right to self determination. We are being held completely at the whim and mercy of a government bureaucracy.

Now, proponents of socialised medicine will often becry the idea of allowing people to pay for their own health care as condoning or encouraging a 'two tiered health system', in which people who can afford to pay for their own health care go into one line, and those who are unwilling or unable to pay their own way go into another. The very idea that people be allowed to choose and pay for their own service based on what they are willing to spend is abhorrent to these people, mostly because it helps encourage the idea that a person does not NEED to rely on the government for everything.  They think that the end result will be a withered public system, starved for money and incapable of even treating a simple cut, where poor people are sent to die from infection because the rich people don't like them.  They think the private system will be opulent, and expensive, and "gold plated" (as is often a phrase I often hear in the media), where affluent people will go for medical services denied the plebes.  They think that it will help create, or cement, a class system in our country, a 'medical apartheid' (another phrase I've heard used in the media), where people will be denied service simply based on their income.

While this seems to be pretty obvious hyperbole, to me at least, systems like this are found throughout our society.  Only rich people get to drive expensive cars.  If you want a Ferrari, you have to pay for the Ferrari.  If you can't afford a Ferrari, you'll have to settle for a Toyota.  I don't think health care is any different.  Homes, cars, restaurants, computers, education; the higher the quality, the higher the cost.  The main difference between this scenario and the health care debate, though, is that the government subsidises health care, and the standard is set for quality.  The variable, unlike in real estate (which is value), is time.  So, you can either have an expensive private system that's high quality and quick, or an affordable public system that's high quality and slow.

Like industrialists are fond of saying: "Fast, Cheap, Good.  Pick two."

Back to our hypothetical.  Consider this: You have 1000 hip replacement surgeries available in one year through the public system, but you have 1500 patients needing the procedure. However, let us presume that there are three new private clinics, capable of doing 250 surgeries each, offering to do the same procedure for a reasonable personal cost, that 700 of the 1500 patients requiring the surgery are willing to spend. So, instead of having 1500 people in line for 1000 available spots, you now have 800 people in line for 1000 spots in the public system, and 700 people paying for one of 750 spots in the private clinics. So, with less demand on the public system, costs and wait times go down, service goes up, and anyone who is either unable or unwilling to buy their own health care out of pocket actually benefit from allowing the people who are to do so.  We've gone from a shortage of available spots (1500/1000) to a surplus (800/1000 + 700/750), simply by allowing those with the means and the will to purchase their services in a private clinic.  And the best part is that those dollars stay in Canada.

As it stand now, though, there is no second option, and everyone must stand in the same line, for a finite amount of services. Costs go up, quality goes down, and in the end, a purely public system is unsustainable, particularly now that our populace is aging into senior status. The older you are, the more your health costs increase, and the less you contribute to the tax base. 30 years ago this wasn't an issue, because there were far more working class people than seniors, and thus the system was solvent. But now it's the other way around, and there isn't the tax base to support the rapidly increasing costs associated with 40% of our population being of retirement age. So, a purely public system is unsustainable, and I would put forth, unjust as well.

Now, contrast this with the American system, which is much like a car insurance system. Each citizen can choose to pay (or not pay, at least until LOLBamaCare kicks in) an insurance company a regular fee in set intervals over time with the expectation that the company cover unexpected medical related costs in the future.

The HMO system in the USA used to be like car insurance, and was analogous with owning a car. You bought a car, you took out an insurance policy against that car in case of theft, collision, or meteor impact, such that if anything unexpected or catastrophic occurred, you were protected against the loss of the car. But, you were still expected to pay for fuel, and maintenance, and repairs on that car, to keep the car in good working condition, and to drive it safely, at the risk of voiding your insurance.

Now, the health care system in the US was much the same way. Each person was responsible for maintaining him- or herself in good health, and the insurance company was only expected to pay for catastrophic or unexpected medical costs, such as in cases of grievous injury or onset of disease. Going to see the doctor because you had the sniffles was something you paid for out of pocket, just like you paid for the fuel you put in your car.

But somewhere along the line, whether by design or demand, health insurance companies in the US became more and more responsible for paying for the maintenance of one's health, rather than to protect the patient against the costs of catastrophic injury or illness. I don't know how it happened, but I imagine it was something along the lines of an insurance company offering additional services as a way of enticing greater dues from its clients, or as a way to say "Look, we're better than that other guy, let us be your insurer", and after a while, the additional perks began to be seen as entitlements instead of added perks, until now we see any service taken on behalf of one's health as legitimate cause to bill the insurance company. We see the result of that with insurance companies scaling back what they're willing to pay for, and finding whatever reasons they can to deny clients benefits (usually after the fact).

So, the Americans find themselves in the unenviable position of being at a loss for a decent health care system at all. Those who cannot or will not pay for health insurance are responsible for paying whatever costs may be associated with maintaining their health, but health care providers in the US are compelled by law to treat those without insurance despite the fact that they may not be able to cover the costs of their treatment. This tends to lead to huge costs for the hospitals as those who cannot or will not pay for insurance realise that they can still get services despite not being prepared to pay for them. The health providers offset this cost by increasing the charges they bill the insurance companies, which in turn, raised the premiums and decreases the services covered to those willing to pay for insurance. It is obvious that this situation is unsustainable, and also unjust, in that it forces responsible people to carry the cost of the irresponsible, and to force insurance companies to cut services wherever they can to make up the difference.

Now, if the Public system is unsustainable and unjust, and the Private system is unsustainable and unjust, what do we do?

Well, I think the first thing we must do is come to accept that health care is not a right, that it is a service.

Let me say that again.  THE PROVISION OF HEALTH CARE IS A SERVICE

It is a specialised, technical, and expensive service, yes, but a service nonetheless. We, as a society, do not have the right to health care. What we have, is the right to buy health care.  We cannot claim as our right the efforts, skills, time, and labour of other people.  Rights are held within ourselves.  We have the right to do things, or not do things, as we choose, but we can only choose for ourselves.  We cannot assume the right to make choices for other people.  The assertion that health care is a right, assumes we, as individuals, have the right to claim as our own, the efforts, skills, and labours of another person.  We have a word for when one person has the right to production of another; it's called serfdom, or indentured servitude.  Personally, I cannot abide any system that treats any of its members as a serfs, and health care delivery is no different

When talking about public vs private health care, we need to understand that each style of health care delivery has its benefits, and each style has its drawbacks.  Luckily for us, each style's benefits and drawbacks are complimentary to those of the other. So, instead of being of one or the other, we take the best of both and mixed them.  If we took the innovation and competition indicative of a private system, and combined it with a publicly funded insurance system, we'd have the best of both worlds.  Instead of having the government decide to which facility or personnel tax dollars go, they instead followed the patient, allowing the patient to decide which facility to use.  That would force the different providers to compete with each other for patronage of patients, and it would allow the patients to access needed services without too much concern for cost.

Alberta in the '90s under Premier Ralph Klein toyed with the idea of what was called a P3 system. P3 is an abbreviation for Private/Public Partnership. It suggested that health care could be privately delivered, like in the US, encouraging customer service, innovation, fair market value for services, and modifying supply to meet demand, while still being publicly funded, like in Canada, ensuring that all citizens would have access to health services.

Now we're kinda sitting in a limbo of that idea in Alberta. There are private clinics who offer services that the government is required to pay for, but they also offer non-publicly funded services to their members, who must pay a yearly fee to access those services. On average, these memberships cost about $600/yr, and entitle the member to health care services that are not traditionally covered by the public system, but for which there was no private health insurance option prior to this P3 innovation.

But to this day there is still rabid opposition to the idea of privately delivered health care, by socialist groups like "Friends of Medicare" and government unions like the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).  It kind of makes sense, too, when you consider how...invested these organisations are in a purely public system.  They claim to be concerned for the welfare of patients, but I think they're solely motivated by their own interests.  Which isn't a bad thing, to be certain; I just don't think that another person can be trusted to act in my interests if my interests conflict with his.  Better to allow me to act in my own interests, rather than rely on someone who may not share them.

In the end, I believe a privately delivered, publicly funded health care system is the best option we have available to us, and by what right do the proponents of a purely public system feel they can deny us the choice, option, and power to determine our health care on our own?

So, perhaps, my whole point is simply that regardless of whether one is a whole hearted supporter of socialised medicine or not, one does not have the right to decide for another person how (s)he will maintain his/her health, and by denying the private sector a place in health delivery, one does exactly that.

I may not have a right to health care, but I have a right to decide how to secure my own health care.