Thor

I watched Thor on DVD, and am pleased that I got it out of the library for free rather than paying $10 to the theater.

Good points first: Tom Hiddleston made an excellent Loki, particularly in the early part of the film where you can see Loki subtly manipulating the people around him. Chris Hemsworth (from Melbourne, be it noted) portrayed Thor, and probably did as good a job as could be done, given what he had to work with. And the scene with him sitting in the rain next to Mjollnir was good.

But I must have missed the soul searching scene where Thor decided to be purely defensive. When Loki is about to blow up Jotunheim--well, it wasn't that long ago that Thor was just fine with that, and we didn't really see a reason for him to change from "happy Norse berserker" to "wait, bad guys deserve to live too". It would have been nice to see a little moral quandary at that point. "Blow up Jotunheim? Sounds good! But wait, dear old Dad never did that. He'd probably say it's unjust. And Mom would probably say that if you're unjust to your enemies, you're going to be unjust to your allies sooner or later. And, you know, the whole blow them up with the Bifrost Deathstar Cannon thing is kinda cowardly. So, I tell you what, Loki. You want to go down and take on King Laufey and his thugs mano a mano, then I'm good with that. But nuking the whole realm of Jotenheim is a bit too much, and if you keep trying to do it, I'd have to, you know, whack you in the head with a hammer."

Overall, it didn't feel like a complete movie. Yes, it's part of another six or ten or however many movies for Marvel, but it still felt a bit thin as contrasted with Iron Man or Captain America.

On the other hand...it's a comic book. Maybe I shouldn't be expecting too much complexity.

Memory

I saw an article on Instapundit to the effect that neuroscientists have something of a handle on the chemistry of memory, leading to the possibility of selective memory erasers. Just some random thoughts arising from that--treat these as story seeds for the next science fiction novel:

• does it become possible to treat PTSD? Do you only treat those people who are completely shell shocked and nonfunctional? If not, where do you draw the line? For crimes like rape, assault, and burglary, where there's a sense of violation, are the victims treated with memory erasers? How about consensual statutory rape--if the victim gets memory erasers, does it still deserve to be a major crime?
• If war and violent crime are bad, shouldn't we leave the memories so people have the emotions that, yes, these things are bad? If we can make them less bad by alleviating the memories, does that mean that people will make less effort to avoid those events and they'll happen more often?
• How about making other people take it? If you have an evil neighbor, the sort of person who is spiteful and petty, and she takes offense at something and starts a feud...are there circumstances in which you can legally compel her to forget the incident that started it?
• if you're in front of your peers and do something stupid, you can take an eraser, but you can't make everyone else take it. You could find that you don't remember the impromptu stripper act you did when you were drunk at the company New Years party, but everyone else does. Is that better than if you did remember it? Do you tend to seek out strangers, because that way if you do something embarrassing, you can forget it and they won't be around to remind you?
• To what extend could memory be modifiable? Can you erase your entire memory of a person--your ex-husband, for example? Your mother? How about if you then want the memory back?
  

Saint Angel

Dinner tonight: a thick slice of French bread, with Saint Angel cheese. Saint Angel is a French triple cream cheese with a thin white rind and creamy texture. It's similar to Brie, but a bit softer and more of a buttery flavor.

Party

I attended a party held by Steven and Barbra, with a Dia de Muertos theme. (Yes, that festival is at the beginning of November, and yes, this is the weekend after Mardi Gras, but Dia de Muertos is what we had). Barbra made excellent carnitas and lots of decorated sugar skulls; Steven made a pie, vegetarian chili, and bean dip and tortilla chips, plus various non-thematic munchies, soda, beer and wine. Most of the guests seemed to know Steven from the yoga class he teaches, or from Ironman events. There was Jamie, who molds industrial plastics; Pat, who bought a house in October and gotten his books moved in, but not himself; Stacey, who had come down from Richmond to model in a photo shoot showing off an AK47 and a MAC10 with suppressor ("[the MAC10] doesn't look like a big gun, but when you're holding it out at arm's length, trying to keep perfectly still while the photographer is getting twenty shots, it gets really heavy"); and about another ten people whose names are eluding me at the moment. A typical party: get some food, then stand around with a drink in hand and talk to people. Had a good time. Daisy, the pit bull pup, was the star of the party; she is twelve weeks old and adorable, with several people saying she looks like Pete the Pup.

A Wrinkle in Time

Ran across A Wrinkle in Time on Josh's bookshelves--this copy was one that a college friend had given me. Worth re-reading.

20th GOP Debate

Who came up with the idea for the GOP to have TWENTY debates? Seriously. Best line for tonight (as taken from Stephen Green, Vodkapundit):

Mitt: “Is this program critical enough to be worth borrowing from China to pay for it? If not, I’ll eliminate it.”

(Stephen: I so wish he weren’t lying)

(edit) Or possibly the best line was:

Newt: “When you have government as the central provider of services, you inevitably move toward tyranny."

Let's see....I don't think Mitt is leader enough, Newt is stable enough, Ron Paul has a grasp of foreign policy, or Santorum is sharp enough. I'd hold my nose and take any of them over Obama, of course, but why can't we come up with some good candidates?

Napoleon's Campaign in Egypt

Since I've started work again on my 2011 NaNoWriMo novel, and since it's set amidst the Napoleonic French campaign in Egypt and Syria, it's time for more research!

• Napoleon's Egypt
• Tactics and Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon
• Napoleon's Lost Fleet
• Napoleon in Egypt
• Armies of the Napoleonic Wars

Mental note: Next November, do not go with something historical.