movie night themes

Insomnia is pissing me off. It takes away from what I can get done in the daytime without adding any extra time in the night. So, in an effort to be productive instead of browsing fark at 3am, I thought I'd throw out an idea.

Now that the theater room is basically done, I've been wanting to hold a semi-regular movie night and have folks over. We will provide movies, popcorn, and maybe even cheap beer. The idea is to hold various themed movie nights: Western, Vietnam, sci-fi, detective mystery, Kubrick, anime, and so on. Probably just two movies in an evening. And people would be encouraged to hang out and chat afterwards. Perhaps even about the movie. Art house style. Maybe we'll even make coffee or tea.

Anyway, are there themes or particular pairs of movies that you all would enjoy seeing in a cozy, private, soundproof theater room with 108 inch screen and a sound system better than any comercial theater?

To start things off, I couldn't think of a better theme than our very own City of Angeles. We could just pick out a couple movies about LA. Or (this is the extended plan) we could make three LA themed nights: Los Angeles Past, Present, and Future. Past could be films like Chinatown or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Possibly even LA Confidential. There are many candidates for Present. Swingers and The Big Lebowski come quickly to mind. Both are great movies and show an interesting cross-section of LA. Magnolia and Mulholland Drive are also possibilities. Falling Down isn't quite a classic, but it's a great view of the trek across LA on foot. Short Cuts looks interesting. And, Collateral and Crash were recommended to me, but I've not seen either. As for future, all I can think of is Blade Runner. I guess Strange Days and Escape from L.A. would count, but they both look pretty bad.

Any other suggestions?

Lastly, I'd like to throw in a plug for di.fm. I wouldn't be able to stay focused this late at night were it not for them. Nothing like trance thumping through my foggy mind in the dead of night.

the new academic morality

I noticed a friend's blog linking to a disturbing Wall Street Journal opinion piece decrying the instructional standards set by the University of California for highschool course requirements. In the article, new UC guidelines are deceptively depicted as a rejection of harmless literary dialogs, such as whether Frankenstein's monster had a soul. The author portentously portrays the guidelines as an ominous attack on Christian schools that will eventually spurn entire curriculums at faith-based schools—despite the fact that only three courses in the entire state were rejected as sub-standard. While the new rules merely deny academic credit for rejected courses, the article insinuates that taking such a course will effectively prevent a student's acceptance at a University of California. The article also ignores the real reasons given by UC for the rejections. As an example, the UC system requires that students read at least one full text, and one of the rejected courses was only anthology samples. But, apparently, this type of reasonable academic standard is now a discrimination against Christians.

In ending, the article makes the absurd accusation that the UC requirements are "stripping religion even out of the religion classes". They evidence this claim by quoting the helpful hints section which notes that a course should not have "the personal religious growth of the student" as a primary goal.

I may be old-school, but I hold to the belief that education should be primarily about education, not spiritual guidance. I'm sad that mainstream Christianity seems to disagree. In fact, in many areas, our predominantly Christian culture is moving away from well-grounded traditional education. We have a huge movement pressuring schools to teach faith-based ideologies as fact. We have Christian courses revising history to portray Deist founding fathers as devout Christians. We have a president who claims that science classes should include—on equal footing—"differing" viewpoints based on religion instead of science. We have federal a program promoting abstinence by claiming that AIDS can spread through tears. And now the WSJ is complaining because classes primarily focused on spiritual advancement won't receive academic credit in some California universities? What ever happened to the idea of a simple, instructive course on religion?

From the quote in the article, the guidelines don't even appear to discount the idea of spiritual growth being a secondary goal, as long as the primary intent is education. That this basic educational requirement raises the ire of Christians is very unnerving. More and more, I see Christians claiming that science classes need to consider alternative sources for truth, beyond the scope of science; that we can't discount any belief as long as enough Americans believe it; that anyone who upholds the scientific method as the sole means for explaining the physical world is oppressive and dogmatic. In fact, scientists are increasingly viewed as atheistic, agenda-driven elitists who can't be trusted to determine ethical standards in their own fields of expertise. This is a radical change from the 50's and 60's view of American scientists as noble, innovative pioneers, finding a way to reach the moon, fight polio, or harness atomic energy.

At one time, this country—along with its Christian majority—was a bastion of learning and scientific progress. Today, we have Christians fighting against rudimentary academic requirements, opposing well-established principles of health sciences, and muddying the public's understanding of the last 150 years of biology. It's time for this country to get back on track. But when will American Christians return to an acceptance of scholarly standards?