As IF Times

link Director James Cameron says BP turned down help offer – Yahoo! News.

Why doesn’t someone just listen to this guy?  He’s obviously convinced that his ability to create fake characters and make believe worlds has also conferred upon him  the powers to do real life things.  In fact, if I may be so bold, I can suggest a way in which Cameron can easily fix the Gulf leak.  Invent an avatar that can swim to depths of a mile underwater and bring along numerous rolls of Mighty Fix It, that silicon product that’s being hawked on network TV.  Once the cartoon, oops, the avatar wraps up the opening in the pipe, tada!

Of course, this wouldn’t be interesting entertainment.  You’d have to script a love interest as well, so other cartoons would have to be written in before the actual fix can occur. In line with what happens in the movies, this should all be resolved in about two and half hours.

At sea level, pressure on a body is about 14 psi.  In water, according to calculations, pressure at about 1 mile beneath the ocean’s surface is about 2400 psi, enough to crush any human being without sufficient body fat to withstand the enormous forces, except perhaps Michael Moore.  Cameron would have to design an especially rigorous cartoon in order to survive these great depths.  This may not be as easy as it sounds, since there are logistics involved.  Will the cartoon be a male or a female character? Will it be a white, blue, or some indistinguishable amalgam of ethnic make up?  Will they have 4 fingers or only 3 as per most cartoons? Would they be able to handle the rolls of Mighty Fix It with only 3 fingers?

Another possibility is to employ creatures that are already capable of moving at those depths.  Why not enlist  whales or giant squids to help plug the pipeline ala Flipper?  If only serving to give rides down to the leak site for the cartoons, or at least to hold the flashlights, these creatures can be of great help.  All of this may be moot however, because the ultimate solution is to create a time machine which would allow us to go back and cancel the leak in the first place.  All these solutions are possible…in his fermenting head. 

Sadly for us, Cameron happens to live in the real world, not the make believe planet that he seems to inhabit with many of the Hollywood delusional set.  For many of these people, reality is something the regular folk have to deal with.  They live in a world of fawning agents and adoring fans, leading their fantasy lives  in the fake worlds they populate.  And that’s all fine.  In order for these people to be ‘good’ at pretending to be other people, I suppose they have to buy into the fantasy completely.  For most of them however, having to deal with the realities of a world where things don’t get tied up neatly in 2 hours is a huge shock and they are probably wholly unprepared for those results. 

The only person who came out of the hollywood miasma with any vision was Ronald Reagan and he was successful because his ideas were rooted in reality and common sense, ideas  which stood him far apart from the elitist Hollywood crowd.  However, for every one of him you have an ocean of fantasy life entertainers who purport to have solutions to society’s ills, people with no real life experience.   The truly sad part is, they can actually convince some of the public to believe them.  The first few lines of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody sums this up for me:

Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide

No escape from reality…..

These people are entertainers.  They have decided to sidestep an education in hard sciences, math, physics or  engineering in order to capitalize on their skills at make believe.  Can you imagine in any other culture or time when the rulers would take the advice of the court jesters for military or economic guidance? Picture the scene circa 1491 or so in Spain.  Chris Columbus is asking for dough to explore for a path to the west indies by ship.  “Oh wait”, the Queen exclaims, “let me consult with my juggler.”  Or imagine if you wound up at a bar in the seedy side of town surrounded by hostiles.  Would you want 120 pound  Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz to come in and “heyyy” the thugs away?  As if.

Getting back to Cameron, talented as he is and with intents that are undoubtedly sincere, let’s just keep his fantasies on the screen and away from real life before he makes us all blue.

link Cameron hearts ecoterrorism — WHAT WOULD TOTO WATCH?#more-5646

Whatever people’s political leanings, if they feel passionately enough about an issue, they are bound to say some extreme and in hindsight, dumb things. All sides of the political spectrum will provide examples of this. Recently, Pat Robertson, in an intemperate moment, expressed that the nation of Haiti may have brought the recent earthquake devastation upon itself by making a pact with the devil some years ago. Without question, this was a poor time to volunteer that opinion and he was excoriated by the media and the political left and right alike.

In a recent interview according to the linked article, Mr. Cameron of recent Avatar fame, let it be known that he would certainly advocate “eco-terrorism”. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion since, like noses, everyone has one. Of note however is the notable silence on the part of the media on Cameron’s advocacy for violent means to support his views. No doubt Mr. Robertson and Mr. Cameron are sincere in their sentiments, it just so happens they expressed their opinions publicly.

As well as rebuking Robertson for his remarks, we neccesarily also have to weigh past and future opinions from him in a somewhat skeptical light. It doesn’t discredit everything he says, but the view of his judgement has suffered. Having said that, we weren’t actually there when the devil made the deal.

For Mr. Cameron, whose genius in film-making is certainly not matched by his logic in real world matters, we should consider what he is is advocating.

We assume “eco-terrorism” entails the destruction of things deemed to be harmful to the environment, which could include oil and gas drilling sites, power stations, forestry operations, mine sites or any kind of factory. The target list can be quite exhaustive since there will always be some way to rationalize the detrimental aspects of any kind of industry. Heck, even Starbucks coffee, the staple consumer item of the green set uses paper cups, so it’s just a matter of time until someone jumps on their case.

Let’s also assume that the hundreds of millions of dollars used to finance his epics came from conscientious people who buy into his worldview and not for reasons of glorious profits in case the films makes it big. These film making costs can only go up in the future because the price of walking the green walk will entail finding hybrid or electric airplanes to ferry people and equipment around to all the shooting sets. Either that, or use horses and mules.

In this scenario also, movie theaters that show the films would not use nasty old electricity gleaned from hydro electric power dams or coal fired plants. Instead, all theater goers will sit on bicycle-like devices and everyone will collectively pedal to power the projectors required to show the film. It’s likely Cameron will have to make shorter films, because bicycling for 3 hours seems like an iffy proposition. Not to mention, fewer people will go to the movies on a romantic date.

As well, he is now pushing new technology in his films, the introduction of 3-D effects. Naturally, they will have to stop handing out the free plastic viewing glasses because of plastic toxicity. They will have to make these viewers out of something biodegradable, perhaps sugar crystals that can later be eaten.

This obviously won’t work well, but as we all walk the green walk it’s likely that we’ll turn back the hands of progress of most everything we do including aspects of entertainment that we take for granted. I don’t know what forms they will take but I wouldn’t throw away the old radios.