WALL-E<==>Satan

In case you missed it, over at the Millennial Star, there's an opinion piece about WALL-E. The basic premise is that the film is environmental propaganda, and that the environmental movement is a tool of the devil to take away our freedom, therefore WALL-E is chief wrench in Satan's toolbox.

Poet's Inc. was first to "break the story" as it were, and my comment got big enough to be worth posting here.

I think the modern environmental movement (I'm talking lobbyists here not lovers of songbirds and blue skies like Tim and Alison) invites some of this hysteria on itself. In a more perfect world people watching WALL-E would realize rather quickly that trash overwhelming the earth is not a practical way to destroy the planet. It is literally impossible to run out of places to bury things; it's just not reasonable. So, the film's message must not be "throw away less stuff" but something more abstract, and picking an unrealistic doomsday scenario would be smart to do purposefully so the audience is not distracted from the real theme.

The problem is, the EPA issued a pamphlet saying exactly that (we are going to run out of landfill space) in the 70's. And consequently we have a bunch of legal requirements to recycle things from the ensuing panic. The scientific basis for running out of landfill space? The guy typing up the pamphlet at the EPA felt like putting it in.

So there are a lot of people who don't really appreciate being jerked around by environmental policy of dubious benefit and consequently become a little hypersensitive about it. And so the logic goes "obviously this is not about saving the environment because this makes no sense, therefore it is about having power to make me do stuff, i.e. Satan"

Now while the link between "don't throw away plastic bottles" and "don't have any babies at all" is obviously VERY tenuous, I felt it deserved a better shake than what Bryce gave it.

Now for a real world example! Global warming; look kids, it's real. The temperature of the Earth had been going up until 10 years ago and may still be; it's a wiggly graph. There are good reasons to think we might be causing it; computer models of climate with elevated CO2 levels have higher temperatures, it's a greenhouse gas, etc.

One possible solution is to reduce CO2 by using a cap and trade system where the total carbon emissions allowed in the US are converted into certificates and bought and sold. This has the advantage of allowing the carbon gains to be made in the easiest locations through the market mechanism. So the free markets work their magic and we save the planet.

At the same time, however, we just chose to let someone else (or at least a regulating body appointed by elected representatives one of which may have been voted for by us) decide how much we get to breathe .

So we have a balancing act, combining the strength of our conviction that human CO2 warming is real, the size of the danger if the problem is ignored, and the cost in lost liberty if it is not.

I think the problem with "Wall-E: the religion of environmentalism" that has touched a nerve is the same problem the climate lobby has; rigid intolerance.

It is possible to disagree that WALL-E is propaganda and still be a good Mormon. It is possible to believe we need more nuclear power plants and be a good environmentalist. When Bryce Hammond or the Sierra Club publicly suggest otherwise, I think it becomes reasonable to start worrying about what image these self-appointed spokesman have created.

Spore

So, Spore is the newest computer game that we've invested in. We bought the Creature Creator for Isaac's birthday. All three of my boys love to make creatures. Here's John's latest invention [it took some sort-of-clever trickery to make it appear to fly -John]

Another Speech Delay?

Like her brothers, I'm suspicious that Danielle has a language delay. At her 18-month check-up, I talked to her nurse about it. We concluded that because she's about 6 months ahead of where she should be in all other areas, we'd give her 3 months to start talking some more. I think the minimum standard for an 18-month old is in the 10-12 words range, and mostly Danielle would just say "mom mom mom mom mom" pretty incessantly. She did point at things and say "this" and "that" a few months ago, but then stopped.

This week her language has really picked up. She started saying "daddy" after John came home from Scout camp, then added "eyes" and "hi" and "bye" earlier this week. Today she brought me the book "Little Red Riding Hood" and asked "big bad wolf?" Then later she was carrying "Little Red Riding Hood" under one arm and an (empty) ice cream bucket over her elbow like a basket...the book has a picture of Little Red Riding Hood carrying a basket over her elbow. She's very cute, and constantly surprises us with how smart she is.

Stamping Pancakes

I made pancakes for breakfast. They weren't very good. I used the leftover pancake mix from our ward picnic for the Fourth of July. (I'm a pancake snob.)

Well. Breakfast was a few hours ago, and apparently there were a few pancakes left on the table.

Isaac says, from the table, "I'm stamping pancakes!"

"WHAT are you doing?!" John and I were a little confused.

"I'm stamping the pancakes! To make them taste good!" Isaac happily explains.

John goes over there and then pokes his head in the living room, and tells me, "Um, he's stamping pancakes? Does that mean we need to throw them away?"

Laughing at John, I tell Isaac, "We don't stamp on our food. The ink isn't good for our bodies. Ink from the stamps isn't food, and we only eat food. Food is good for our bodies, not stamps."

Isaac is sad, a little disappointed. "I wanted them to taste good." I guess he knows better than to think Krusteaz tastes good, and so I feel pride as a mother.

We all return to our respective projects, on our respective rooms. After the bathroom sink is running for a complete minute, I realize that maybe there's a new project going on that I didn't know about. So I go to check it out.

Oh. It's Isaac. Washing the stamps off his pancakes. And then bringing soggy pancakes (still stamped) to the table.

"Isaac, we don't wash pancakes." I try to say it gently. I don't want him to feel reprimanded...

"Why?"

"Well, when we wash pancakes, they get soggy, and then they don't taste good anymore."

"I was just trying to make them taste good and get the stamps off."

"Oh. We don't wash pancakes."

I guess the pancakes didn't taste good today.

Arizona

We're moving to Tempe, Arizona. All of us. In, oh, about 5 weeks. Just to let you know.

We were going to send just John for 2 semesters. We changed our minds and all of us will stay for 2 years.

So along with the regular packing and cleaning, I need to get the boys registered for school and do a ton of paperwork and find renters to pay us to live in our house and finish arranging transportation needs. Fun? :)

Isaac's Update

Yes, it's been way too long since I wrote Danielle's and Jeremiah's updates.

Here's what Isaac has to say: Hmmm...go to grandma's house or...do something!

That was brief. Isaac turned 5 a few weeks ago, and we had a clown party for him. When his preschool class did the "Jobs" unit, he drew a picture of being a clown when he grows up. Personally I thought it was a better choice than being the president of the United States. So we had clown ice cream cones and a game of pin the nose on the clown and things to dress up as a clown like face paint and big bow ties...and I didn't take into account that these are Isaac's friends who are very shy. One of his friends participated in the games...nobody wanted to dress up like a clown...only one of his friends didn't want ice cream (how is this possible!?!). It was a fun party and Isaac enjoyed having all his friends and family there. When I asked him which of his friends he wanted to invite, he started naming them: "My friend Hannah, and my friend Mary, and my friend Daniel and my other friend James," until he named all of his aunts and uncles nearby and a few friends from school (with prompting). So that's who he invited. (His aunts and uncles participated in the clown games, just not his friends from school. In case I needed to clarify.)

Isaac currently likes to sing. He carries a melody pretty well. Sometimes he'll sing the real words to a song. When he gets to choose a "bedtime song," he's invariably chosen "Thomas the tank engine loves his friends," which the makers of Thomas the Tank Engine certainly don't know, and the words change periodically, with the same theme line of "Thomas the Tank Engine loves his friends" and then some hard thing that Thoms has to do because of his friends... I guess it may be genetic... One of his grandpas always sings wonderfully made up songs as well. :)

Isaac likes to read, and reads himself books. He memorizes them, and recites them to himself, with wonderful inflection and voices for characters. He also likes to play the piano (sort of like he sings "Thomas the Tank Engine loves his Friends") and write letters to people. He continues to amaze and frustrate us with his computer literacy, and often shows me how to play complicated video games at grandma's house. He laughs and laughs and laughs, and everyone around him must laugh when he does. It really isn't optional--his laugh is so infectious! He has a wonderful imagination and is extremely creative. We signed him up for art classes this summer, and last time he was given three long strips of paper...he pasted them together and scrounged for some strips of cardboard and made a dragon, complete with a whale in it's stomach.

John took Isaac to see WALL-E last week, and since they went, almost every day Isaac's wanted to see a movie at 4. We haven't gone back yet. Isaac's almost finished with his 20 hours of summer reading, and I'm trying to figure out if we can do it again. He has had so much fun with the reading and with the prizes--we went bowling (he was sad because he didn't win--Mary did, and she really used the bumpers to figure out the best angle to throw the ball down...literally...seriously...not by accident), had a scoop of ice cream, a personal size pizza, a lunch buffet. Isaac is always very sad when he doesn't win or get his way (we're working on that one). He's very sweet. His teachers in Primary and preschool just say that he's the sweetest boy and always kind to the other children, and chooses the "good kids" for his friends.