Hear Ye! Since 1998.
3
Sep 03
Wed

Cushket

Plug for a friend: It’s a polar fleece blanket that also folds up into a cushion. Perfect for friends who decide to crash overnight at your place on the couch. Also good for those outdoor events. Resold by YI ;)

2
Sep 03
Tue

Battle of the Megalomaniacs

Doz sent me this bizarre comic strip: Stalin vs Hitler.

Man Sues Coke

SMH Article: Mr Pareezer gets shot five times while loading a coke vending machine. He is therefore sueing Coke for negligence, because Coke purportedly knew that there was a gang operating around the area that was targeting vending machines and keys. They must have been a very thirsty gang. The plaintiff’s son saw the shooting, and the wife arrived afterwards at the scene, and they are both suing for nervous shock.

This is a bit of shocker – you get shot doing your job, which is loading Coke cans into Coke machines, so… you sue your employer. Coke probably does owe a general duty of care to ensure the safety of its employees, but I would find it extremely difficult to see that Coke would have breached that duty of care. I mean, sure they knew of the risk of a gang attack, but what sort of preventative measures could they have reasonably implemented? There’s nothing practicable that I can see that can be done. And then would any of those measures have prevented the injury anyway (the issue of causation)? Even if you gave the guy an armed security detail, they wouldn’t have necessarily been able to stop bullets.

Is it really reasonable to give your employees bullet proof vests on the off chance some psycho gang member is going to shoot you while you’re loading a Coke machine? That would really be saying something about society, wouldn’t it? I mean, what if you happen to have a job in a part of town that is by reputation rough? Say you work the night shift at Maccas in Cabramatta. What is McDonald’s meant to do to shield an employee from being shot at by some cashless drugged out lunatic with a midnight craving for Big Macs?

Turning now to pure nervous shock. Assuming that McDonalds was negligent (which is unlikely), Pareezer’s son and wife would definitely have a case for nervous shock, if they sustained some recognisable psychiatric illness. They’re close relatives and appear to have experienced the sudden sensory shock necessary to sustain a case for pure nervous shock. The problem though, is the breach of duty issue, as above.

Update – I got this on the comments section:

Stuart, I think your characterisation of the measures Coke could have taken misses the point of the claim. Based on what you say about it, it looks like his claim is that they breached their duty to provide a safe system of work by requiring him to go into a dangerous area. And what’s more, they knew about the particular danger. they meet their duty by not requiring him to go into danger without adequate safeguards. And in this case, they can just not put the machine there, and not put their profits ahead of the safety of their employees.

Even if I’m wrong about that and, as you say, their duty might have been to provide armed guards, then I say that *would* have been a way to prevent the injury, because in the face of possible armed resistance from apparently trained security guards, the gang would probably not have attacked. That is, the measure you dismiss as a means of Coke meeting their duty would arguably have been effective. Sure, they cant stop bullets, but they might prevent them being fired in the first place, just by their presence.

You may have guessed that I dont think that this man’s claim is so far fetched as you seem to think it is. His lawyers must agree with him to some extent, since they are obliged to only pursue cases that have reasonable prospects of success. (See the idiotic amendments to the Legal Practitioners Act (or whatever it is called in NSW) put in by Carr last year). But Coke (or rather their insurers) cannot just give in, because it is too far outside the currently accepted norms for negligence: so they didn’t agree to settle when he made his demand.

Incidentally, Maccas have the same options as Coke. If it’s really dangerous, it’s appropiate that there be adequate security, to deter said cashless drugged out lunatic with a midnight craving for Big Macs. Once you’ve taken reasonable steps to prevent injury, then you are in the clear.

As for nervous shock, how have the Courts responded to post traumatic stress disorder, which is what doctors now say all nervous shock cases have? It’s a recognised pysch illness …

… and decided I might as well write up a fuller analysis of the situation:

True, I probably did approach the issue of breach a bit too impulsively. Actual knowledge of the particular danger is not really a requirement under tort law – if Coke knew or ought to have knew of the danger, then that is sufficient. In my limited knowledge of torts (you sound like you have legal education of some sort, so I’m keeping it in mind you may know more about this than me!), a more formal legal analysis would seek to analyse the standard of care required by Coke. It would look at what the plaintiff alleged what measures Coke should have implemented in order to meet its duty of care. The Courts would then have to look at what Coke actually did, and then also at whether the measures the plaintiff proposed Coke should have taken were reasonable. Three factors are used to evaluate what is a reasonable standard of care. The measures the plaintiff proposed that Coke should have taken are then assessed in relation to this standard of care to determine if a breach occurred. The factors are gravity of harm, the probability of such harm occurring, and the practicability of preventing the harm.

The gravity is obviously very high, but the probability of this harm occurring is quite low, though not negligible. There is a provisor in the above arguments in that this particular group of gang members was particularly targeting Coke machines, but whether this specific targeting by the gang significantly raises the probability of a Coke refiller getting shots at is debatable. It may be more probable that the Coke machine refillers may get robbed, but not getting shot at?

There are three main types of solutions you propose: (1) Not require the man to go there. (2) Not to put a machine there at all. (3) Not require the man to go there without adequate safeguards. [and (4) Warn the employee about the dangers.]

The first proposition implies that it is too dangerous to fill up the Coke machine, therefore employees shouldn’t do it. I would argue that this proposition is unrealistic and unreasonable on a few grounds. How would Coke fill up the machine? It would require a solution like a robot or similar, which is certainly not practicable. (Whereupon the argument would then progress to the second proposition.) The second ground is that employees are often sent into arguably more dangerous situations in order to do something that needs to be done. For example, it is conceivable that parking inspectors, due to their line of work are at an increased risk of physical assault (from irate motorists), or falling victim to a pedestrian-car accident. However, the job needs to be done, and it is not practicable to remove the human element from that job function.

The second proposition aims at removing the presence of Coke machines from “dangerous” areas. The practicability problems with this are obvious. What would be considered a reasonably dangerous area, such that it would justify the removal of a drink vending machine? If there are reports of gangs in the area? What about if the newspapers have reported a serial killer in the vicinity that has been terrorising the neighbourhood for a few weeks? It seems patently unreasonable to, especially in a country with a relatively low crime rate like ours, to impose a burden upon coroporations to make sure their drink vending machines are in gang-free areas. There is also a side-effect is depriving citizens of access to carbonated beverages, because the areas is perceived to be “too dangerous” for vending machines to be refilled in. I agree there are arguments both ways, but your argument seems in my opinion, more dubious.

The third proposition is much more contentious. It would not seem that Coke provided the man with any safeguards against being shot at. Prima facie, the probability of this happening, in the view of a reasonable person (ie, me :), would be so low as to be discountable, even if there is a gang known to be in the vicinity. I admit that this is not a terribly strong point, so in the alternative that the chance of being shot at is sufficiently probable as to warrant some sort of protective measure – what should that measure be? Bullet proof vests and security guards are options. With the latter, it seems excessive to assign a bodyguard to a guy who refills Coke machines. If this duty were to be imposed on Coke, imagine how many employees who conducted company business in public would require security personnel to accompany them! It is conceivable that the postman might get robbed. That the person on the night shift at a 7-11 store could get held up and shot. The costs would be prohibitive, and the fact that this is not the present case in society is a telling fact.

Regarding bulletproof vests. Again, it does not seem, on the face of the matter, that the probability of being shot at would warrant Coke purchasing for its vending machine refillers a bullet proof vest (by extension, many employees would then require bulletproof vests on the off chance that they are working in gangland). Then what about robbery with assault? A bulletproof vest is not going to stop a fist, or a well placed knife. And those types of assault are more likely than one with a gun.

Even if Coke did buy a bulletproof vest, there are causation issues. It cannot be said “but for” the bulletproof vest, the plaintiff would not have been shot and injured.

The fourth proposition that Kraz brought up in the comments section is that Coke should have warned the plaintiff. Setting aside the fact, as Bonhomme mentioned, that the plaintiff knew the area was dangerous, it probably can be said that Coke breached its duty in failing to warn the plaintiff. Breach of duty does not necessarily lead to negligence. In this case, a warning to the plaintiff to “be careful” would not have prevented him from being shot (because on the facts, the plaintiff was aware of the danger and was shot). Therefore, causation fails.

It would seem that the other measures above impose too great a burden on corporations, even though they may make obscene profits. What if a company is losing money and couldn’t afford to give their staff bulletproof vests? Just because a corporation makes more money, should it be obliged to meet a higher standard of care? Clearly not – it is the nature of the risk that determines the standard of care, not the financial capabilities of the organisation.

[In response to Bonhomme: The fact that Coke told the employee something along the lines of “tough luck about the assault, go back there” makes no difference. If it was another new employee that went on that refilling run, the same principles as above would apply. The fact that he was assaulted there five years earlier is evidence that Coke was aware of the danger of the area (although five years is a long time! Statistically, there are many places around city streets that have had assaults happen in over the last five years – but that doesn’t mean that the probability of assault recurring there is significantly higher.) The fact that Coke was aware of the danger changes nothing (actual knowledge is not a requisite to be liable for negligence). There was nothing special about this plaintiff that differentiated him from any other Coke employee that would have been in the same situation had they had the plaintiff’s delivery run.]

BTW, I agree with you in that there is virtually always a case for both sides in law. It just seems to me that one side is particularly stronger (though not all the arguments above are strong ones), and that’s what I’m arguing based on this opinion.

Regarding nervous shock, I believe that Courts use the DSM-IV to determine what is an acknowledged psychological illness.

1
Sep 03
Mon

Backbench Issue 2

Issue 2 of Backbench has just been released. Check it out.

29
Aug 03
Fri

Just a Slight Rephrasing

Doz sent me this link about a slight rephrasing of White House headlines.

Blaster Guy Caught

They got him. SoBig.F is much more annoying because it’s worse than spam, and spammers are already a good enough reason to reintroduce capital punishment :).

Mum Strips for Son

Desperate times (finding you can’t celebrate your kid’s birthday because all the go-carts have been rented out) call for desperate measures (putting on a striptease for your son and his friends instead).

Roomba

Heh, I would love one of these… Roomba is an automated vacuum cleaner. They came out a while ago, but recently announced a couple newer models to their line. Hell, I’d be “vacuuming” every second day with one of these things, just for the novelty of it haha! Alas, they’re not available in Australia.

28
Aug 03
Thu

Neo-Fascists?

An amusing anecdote with a run in with some neo-Nazis in the 70s.

  6:35pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 
25
Aug 03
Mon

Matrix 3 Trailer

The new Matrix Revolutions trailer is out, but it’s pretty much the same as the one you would have seen if you stayed behind after the credits of Reloaded.

Provocation

Every once in a while, I’ll make a post which interests almost nobody. This is almost certainly one of them, so just ignore. Despite being half-asleep through most of it, we had an interesting Crim Law class today on the defence of provocation. That is, if someone swears at you and you kill them, will you be able to claim that you were provoked and thus mitigate your murder charge to a manslaughter sentence? It was a little confusing, so I needed to put some notes down on paper (well, digital paper, at least) after class to get my thoughts in order, and that’s what’s appearing on this page, for no particular reason other than it’s my own musings and I don’t have anywhere better to put them.

Australian law currently imposes a two-step test for whether a person was legally provoked into killing someone. In Stingel, the whole court determined that the first stage is a subjective test where it must be proven (by the prosecution beyond reasonable doubt) that the accused actually did lose self-control, given the particular circumstances and particular disposition of the accused. The second stage was an objective test where it must be proven that in those same circumstances, an “ordinary person” (not “reasonable person”, as loss of self-control implies a loss of rational reasoning ability) would have lost self-control to the extent of killing. That is, a subjective test.

The first test is logical. Let’s say that someone has an inordinate amount of composure, more so than the ordinary person (we’ll get to the peculiarities of that term in a moment) such that on certain provoking circumstances this hypothetical ordinary person would kill, but this super tolerant person would not. Without this subjective loss of self-control test, the latter person would be able to kill the person provoking, while claiming it was justified (or excused – this distinction in terminology is unimportant) because an ordinary person would have done the same thing. Clearly this is illogical, given that provocation is all about loss of self-control. If the person did not lose self-control and formed an intent to commit murder, then that is murder, regardless of what the ordinary person would have done. Naturally, this line of argument is rare, as the defence will try to make out the defendant to be as unstable as possible.

The second test is far more problematic. It basically accepts and consequently excuses the fact that human beings sometimes do lose control when provoked, and as a result, absolves them of some fault with regards to the commission of homicide. This test accepts that beyond a certain level of provocation, a person will snap such that they no longer have a choice in how they react. Where, though, should the law set this bar and hence decree where a person can no longer determine their reactions to an onslaught of verbal abuse/gestures, or sexual promiscuity from an ex-lover, or prolonged abuse from an oppressive spouse?

One solution is to say that everyone is different, and the test should thus be subjective. The fact that someone lost control is a relative thing, and we all have different tolerance levels. In effect, it ditches the second test altogether. Naturally, this is highly problematic given that it is hard evidentially to determine if someone actually lost self-control if they say they did.

It is also more realistic to ascribe some sort of minimum standard which people should adhere to. The fact that someone is unusually prone to fits of violent anger should not mean they receive greater leniency from the law. Hence, this is where the “ordinary person” standard enters: the jury has to imagine the situation as if they were a hypothetical ordinary person. What is an ordinary person? How can a single point of reference cover the wide variety of defendants that appear before the courts? Stingel provided for the ordinary person standard to be take into account the defendant’s age, since age determined maturity and incidentally a teenager would react differently from a middle-aged adult. The idea of attributing different standards to different ages is also found in the notion of doli incapax (eg: Whitty).

If the notion of age being the only factor differentiating between different standards of ordinary people seems somewhat restrictive, you wouldn’t be alone. McHugh J’s dissenting judgment in Masciantonio argued that “the ethnic and cultural background of the accused can be taken into account in determining whether an ordinary person would have lost his or her self-control as the result of the deceased’s provocation”. In England, the House of Lords has actually progressed down this path by holding that other factors apart from age and gender should be considered when assessing the ordinary person: R v Smith [1999] UKHL 49.

This notion is also not without significant difficulties. What other factors should be also taken into account? Physiological differences? Ethnical differences? Religious beliefs? And to what extent should they play a mitigating role in assessing provocation? If Masciantonio’s rage at his son-in-law was partially influenced by his Greek ethnicity and culture, and he was to be provoked because of that, would that mean that all Greeks would be allowed to do the same act and successfully claim provocation? Would there be any consistency in jury verdicts at all, due to differing individual opinions about how a potential myriad of characteristics should be weighed up against each other?

In Green, the members of the Court themselves highlighted this problem. Green, a 22 year old man, claimed provocation after responding to sexual advances and groping from a male friend by punching him a couple dozen times, stabbing him several times with a pair of scissors and then bashing his head into a wall. Apparently Green’s onslaught was partially elicited by images of his father who used to molest his sisters when he was younger. The trial judge directed the jury that they should ignore Green’s family history in considering what the “ordinary man” would do. The Criminal Court of Appeal held that this was an error, and the jury should have been allowed to consider Green’s family history, but still held that Green’s conduct was less than that expected of the “ordinary man”. The High Court applied Stingel with regards to the second step test, but each judge came to differing conclusions. The majority of the High Court disagreed with the Court of Appeal, saying that it was a question of fact whether Green reacted in the way an ordinary man would react that should be left to a jury, where it was possible they could decide either way.

Gummow and Kirby JJ, in dissent, argued that there was no way that a reasonable jury would find that the defendant acted as an ordinary man would in those circumstances. Kirby J, thinking that the killing was elicited by the fact that it was a man cracking on to the defendant, asserted that not responding with homicide to homosexual advances was part of the ordinary man standard. He further asserted that even though this was a homosexual advance, it was something that should not be taken into account for the first step test (I think?). (One can but speculate that Kirby J’s motives behind his judgment were influenced by his personal orientation and views, which of course is the reality for many judgments.)

The other alternative is to abolish the defence of provocation altogether, dispensing with what may be considered as an anachronism dating back from the time a man could kill another man who was having an affair with his wife due to his honour being stained. However, there are still cases in which conceivably people may be so provoked, that there is some justification or excuse for their actions, eg, Battered Wife Syndrome. If overridden by statute, provisions for provocation may initiate a category based approach to provocation, which is not too desirable given the wide variety of circumstances that surround individual cases.

My opinion is that provocation should be retained, along with the ordinary man test. The ordinary man test, if given too many qualifying attributes, would become extremely convoluted. Yet, to have age as the sole attribute seems overly restrictive and unfair. It would seem that Lord Steyn’s dissenting judgment in Luc Thiet Thuan makes the most sense to me: “it may prove difficult to say where the line should be drawn. We ought not to shrink for this reason from recognising a rational and just development. The traditional common law answer is apposite: any difficult borderline cases will be considered if and when they occur.” Taking things on a case by case basis seems fairer, although it still has issues with consistency of justice, due to different cases accounting for different attributes of the accused. Australian law as it stands, however, is still with the tests in Stingel.

Aquarium Update

Admin Law test tomorrow, so brief update before I sleep. Our aquariums have been fairly dull over the last few months, each yabby having its own tank. Jess bought Dave another crab today. It’s absolutely tiny, so instead of dropping it in with a yabby and leaving the crab to its tender mercies, we shifted the two yabbies into the big tank, and the small crab into the small one. I wonder if the yabbies will get along. I give them two days before the big one starts abusing the little one.

In other news, I now think the talk with Jess a couple nights ago can be attributed (almost) entirely to alcohol, especially upon hearing it’s the first time she’s actually been drunk :). I guess a few people actually get more articulate with booze.

Uni work is beginning to pile up. Two assignments and a class presentation next week. Have a catchup dinner tomorrow night, judging the PwC Mgt Comp for Wednesday night… how oh how am I going to get my readings done?!

24
Aug 03
Sun

Dave’s 21st

Big 21st Birthday greets to my flatmate Dave! The actual date is tomorrow, but he held the party last night. It was very enjoyable. Since I would imagine everyone there was too plastered to remember much of anything, here’s my blow-by-blow account of how the not-so-venerable evening unfolded. Remember people, we have photos. We also have videos.

6.30pm: The time rolls around for people to begin arriving. Dave starts to pace up and down waiting for “the scum” to pick us up, muttering something about the unreliability of Malaysians.
6.45pm: Dave starts to worry that he’s been stood up by everyone…

Click for more pics
Click to continue…

  10:34pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (4)  • 
20
Aug 03
Wed

Dijkstra’s Codex

Salon called Dijkstra’s periodic writings a proto-blog. Apparently he used to keep a series of sequentially numbered letters which discussed a manner of issues, musings and notes to send to a few dozen of his colleagues:

Like most of us, Edsger always believed it a scientist’s duty to maintain a lively correspondence with his scientific colleagues. To a greater extent than most of us, he put that conviction into practice. For over four decades, he mailed copies of his consecutively numbered technical notes, trip reports, insightful observations, and pungent commentaries, known collectively as “EWDs”, to several dozen recipients in academia and industry. Thanks to the ubiquity of the photocopier and the wide interest in Edsger’s writings, the informal circulation of many of the EWDs eventually reached into the thousands.

Sort of like the Leicester Codex, except that Leonardo couldn’t really send his pages off to anyone else (not that he would have wanted to, given the code he wrote in). His archive of writings is available here: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/. There are a few interesting notes amongst all the EWDs.

18
Aug 03
Mon

SE T610 and Gizmodo

Gizmodo is a good site for those who, like me, have gadgetlust. Incidentally I bought a Sony-Ericsson T610 a couple weeks ago.

It’s reminded me that I should follow my own advice and stick with Nokias. However, it’s slowly grown on me. The T610 has a bristling feature set, which was its main selling point for me. The screen is large and quite vibrant, and although some have complained the phone is virtually unusable in direct sunlight, I can’t agree. The display fades in sunlight, as does any colour LCD, but it is still visible. The clock that pops up after a few seconds of inactivity, however, is worthless due to it being too dim to make out in just about all lighting conditions. The call reception quality is a small notch down from the Nokias, but for all intents and purposes, it doesn’t make that big a difference unless you’re out in the bush. However, one gripe is that the SE doesn’t have a loudspeaker. The volume of phone calls is fine when turned up to the max, but I have come to rely on my mobile as an alarm clock, and my old 6210 had an amazingly loud alarm. I don’t much care for polyphonic ring tones (the T610 can play 32 sounds simultaneously) and was a little annoyed to discover there were no simple “ring ring” alarm or ring tones. When it comes to ringing, I’m very much a pragmatist – my only requirement is that I have to hear it. The camera takes decent photos for what’s expected of a mobile phone camera. There’s Bluetooth, GPRS, WAP, e-mail checking and all the connectivity I wanted on a phone. Unfortunately data rates are 2c per kB ($20/MB), and data charges are in addition to any unused call credits you have on your plan so it must be used sparingly. MMSes (pictorial equivalent of SMSes) are 75c each, which is not cheap either. The phone is a nice size, with a simple attractive minimalist design. Some would say it’s boring, but when Nokia keeps bringing out phones with weirder and weirder designs, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Battery life is heavily affected by phone usage, the average charge for me lasting up to 5-6 days, which is not stunning, but sufficient.

What lets this phone down the most is its usability. It is pretty awful, compared to Nokia’s time-honoured user interface. It’s just not logical, is really fiddly, and requires too many clicks to do simple things. Simple things such as setting up speed dial, and even sending SMSes takes far too many clicks. The joystick is a bit annoying too in that sometimes it clicks in when you mean to move it down or up, and sometimes it moves down or up when you click in. If you’re upgrading to this phone from a Nokia, it’ll be frustrating, not because you have to retrain yourself, but because some of the ways Sony-Ericsson makes you do things are just plain cumbersome and illogical. One example off the top of my head is that there is ample screen space on the default screen. When you enable an alarm, it displays the alarm time in the place of the date. Therefore, when you set an alarm, you no longer can see the date, even though there’s about 8 square centimetres spare where they could have placed the alarm time instead. Another flaw is that it doesn’t display the time of missed calls, if they were missed before midnight of the same day. The phone definitely needs more than the 2mb of memory it has, as well. I would have bought the Nokia 7250i, but alas it has no Bluetooth.

15
Aug 03
Fri

The Backbench

A bunch of friends that like to write and I have started up a site called The Backbench. It’s basically a repository for opinionated articles on virtually any topic that we hopefully will attract people to read. The web is the best medium for things like this. With luck, it’ll eventually be a place where others submit articles and essays to as well. If you write a decent essay at school or uni, why just restrict your audience to your teacher or lecturer? Check it out!

The Italian Job

Really fun movie! The Napster jokes are hilarious and it even has a cameo of Shawn Fanning in it.

Tears of the Sun

This was an impressive film. You can always approach a film like this with a cynical eye, or you can go with the flow and become immersed in it. If you do the latter, this film is very powerful. If you do the latter, the effect is lost, but the movie’s core sentiments are still true at heart. Possible spoilers ahead, but it’s not the plot you’re watching this movie for, it’s the themes. I rarely lapse into idealistic rambling, but I don’t think lapsing into idealistic moods occasionally is a bad thing at all.

The film dives straight into it. A military team led by Bruce Willis is sent in to extract “foreign nationals” (ie: Americans) from an African country that has plunged into another brutal civil war/rebel uprising. It’s telling that it could be virtually any African nation, but this one happens to be Nigeria (and what ironic timing, given Nigeria’s current involvement in Liberia). The team’s primary object is to get a doctor, played by Monica Belucci, to safety. When she refuses to leave without taking a bundle of Nigerian refugees along with her, an apparently straightforward assignment quickly turns perilous as Willis’ conscious elects for the moral high road. Unfortunately the moral high road is extremely long and deadly.

Far too often we hear about ethnic cleansing and African warlords massacring civilian men, women and children. It may appear in the news for a few days. Soon, however, it is forgotten. If a similar event happened in Western society, just a single case of systematic ethnic cleansing and mutilation, the news would not leave the front pages for weeks. This is simply true because we do not regard genocide as something particularly unexpected in impoverished nations. Something like that happening on home soil, however, is unthinkable. That’s unfortunately the harsh reality of the world, and hearing about it through the news is such a sterile way of hearing what are truly “crimes against humanity”. However, regardless of how expected, or unexpected such atrocities are, they are universally held as atrocities, and it is perhaps saddening that they do not get as much attention as they warrant.

One of the strongest scenes for me was when the cavalry gets called in and two US jets firebomb a horde of murderous rebels. It wasn’t because of the pyrotechnics, or the bodies flying up in the air, or the feeling of “you fuckers got what you deserve”. After seeing a band of ethnic cleansing rebels raze a village, rape the women, kill the men and children, we realise the huge power imbalance between those with small arms and those without. The way the vulnerability of the innocent are “exploited” as they are exterminated is terrifying. Then we see a similar power imbalance as the jets fire their rockets and in one fell swoop kill a few hundred soldiers. The first world and the third world are two extraordinarily different places. The former wields an enormous amount of power, and it is scary to think about what could happen, or does happen, if used irresponsibly.

Let’s not kid anyone. This movie is not enough to galvanise very many people into doing anything about it. It’s still too remote, too distant. Hopefully, what the movie does is make people think about it, to imagine what it would be like to live in a world that is otherwise unimaginable. That would already be a good start.

Highly recommended.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Walked into this movie blind because Identity had sold out just as we got to the counter, no thanks to the couple in front who couldn’t decide what movie they wanted to see. It’s a lesser known flick with an A-list cast (Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney and Julia Roberts), basically a biography about Chuck Barris. Too lazy to write a review, so read what others had to say. I’m in general agreement.




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