Four quick articles on kids and pressure

Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

Teens Who Feel More Peer Pressure Turn Out Better, Not Worse

Don't Shelter Your Children: Coping With Stress As A Child Develops Resilience And Emotion Regulation As An Adult

Children’s Work and Play

Got at least one of them over at FreeRange Kids.

An article on mental illness, here and abroad, and how communication is changing it

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

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An article on a "new" way to reduce both crime and punishment

New gets scare quotes because it seems to focus on what, gosh, any dolt could've told you - whatever you're doing works best if you're consistent. Maybe we should just make convicts and cops watch a few episodes of Supernanny and call it a day. (We could call it "Superwarden" or something!)

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So, I saw Avatar yesterday.

Now, prior to seeing this movie, I'd read a bit about it, and truthfully, what I read wasn't all that complimentary. Even the language (or, at least, the process of making it) didn't really escape this scrutiny. (And on the subject of language, I'm impressed that they went through all the effort of conlanging up a whole language and making the actors learn it, but meanwhile, why did the Na'vi consistently pronounced "Sully" as "Sooly"? That's a mispronunciation I'd expect from somebody who had seen the word written, but not somebody whose first (and possibly only) association with the word was hearing it spoken. Those two phonemes aren't that similar, are they?)

Well, apparently the guy I went to see it with had not read all I'd read beforehand, and neither was he clued into the fact that "long braid down the back +/- sparse beads and/or asymmetrical feathers = INJUNS! Native Americans! So I was there the second he figured it out. "Wait - they're supposed to be Indians! That's not... that's not right!"

(If those braids had been a little more cornrow-y, they would clearly have been Africans, and if we'd heard a little more of that random didgeridoo that was in one of the background music bits I could've called them Australians... but (gratuitous, non-alien Western musical scales aside) I can't blame them for that one, the didgeridoo is a pretty awesome instrument.)

So, now, what did I think of the movie? Well, I took a day or so to think about it. And then I thought, before I posted, I'd head over to TVTropes and see what they have to say. (And that sucked up my entire day, yes, yes, when will I learn?) And boy, do they have a lot to say on the subject! Holy FUCK!

So I'm gonna take some parts and talk about them, but I'm not tackling the whole thing. That *is* what TVTropes is there for.

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So, basically? It's a so-so movie with great imagery. It has some troublesome aspects (seriously), but they're mostly troublesome in the context of... well, everything else that shares those aspects. This wouldn't be so bad if the story itself weren't largely formulaic. But it is.

So I saw it once, liked it well enough once I turned my brain off, and don't intend to see it again any time soon. If you aren't spending your life on TVTropes you might like it more.

You know what it is?

Avatar? It's just not, to me, a very quotable movie. I mean, my mother and I saw Ever After, and that's no less formulaic, but we quote that movie at each other quite often. (It helps that it plays on constant repeat on one of those "women's channels".) I always find time in my life for another Princess Bride quote. I can quote Monty Python with, if not quite the *best* of them, at least the *worst* of them, and I've never seen Monty Python! I read OotS, and go to the forum there where you can end most any argument, at least temporarily, by quoting the appropriate comic... even if, upon closer inspection, your quote is wildly off-topic. I quote Piggie and Elephant with the nieces, and when they were younger it was endless repetitions of Go, Dog, Go!

Quoting. It's what's for dinner how I live, and (to an extent) how I think. I sometimes come up with just the right quote or reference but then re-think it into non-quotey speech because the people I'm with won't get it. (There is something wrong with complaining about an ugly hat but not getting the "Man wears a hat like that..." reference. But that's all right, Firefly's on DVD.)

So to come out of a movie and not, upon retrospect, be able to find something to quote, some scene that's appropriate to my life... that's a little disappointing. (Although the movie is worth watching if only to see the space jungle bugs. Strange compliment, that, but it's the absolute truth.)