The trailer for Avatar, the next film from James Cameron, is now available. Avatar has garnered a lot of attention from the geek community because Cameron has demonstrated a talent for writing and directing intelligent, propulsive science fiction films (Aliens, Terminator 2) and because it prominently features computer-generated scenery and characters that occupy almost every frame of the film. The trailer looks spectacular, although it only hints at a plot centering on a paraplegic marine who volunteers to have his consciousness transferred into the body of a blue alien dude.

Hollywood really does have a soft spot for stories of gimps being given the chance to walk again. As long as the movie isn’t one big cliché, I won’t complain. But should I ever finish my current writing project, my next effort will be a futuristic tale of a gimp space pirate, his faithful robotic attendant, and his many, many love interests.

I like this quote from Robert Putnam, the noted political scientist, that I came across in The Daily Dish:

Most men are not political animals. The world of public affairs is not their world. It is alien to them — possibly benevolent, more probably threatening, but nearly always alien.

Whenever I start discussing health care reform with people who don’t closely follow this stuff, they are usually quick to ask why the Democrats don’t simply push health care reform through and be done with it. That question makes a lot of intuitive sense. After all, Democrats hold clear majorities in both the House and Senate while also controlling the White House. What’s the holdup?

In most parliamentary democracies, such large majorities would be more than sufficient to pass most major legislation. Not so in America. As much as our school textbooks like to portray it as the greatest political experiment ever, the U.S. has an extremely risk-averse political culture. The drafters of the Constitution were obsessed, perhaps to the point of paranoia, with placing checks to prevent one state or region from holding too much sway over the nation as a whole. It’s certainly an understandable impulse; nobody wanted to see the rise of an American tyrant after working so hard to throw off the shackles of a king. But that impulse led to the creation of procedures, like the filibuster, that can hardly be considered democratic.

Our system also concentrates a huge amount of power in individual senators, making it possible for a small cadre or even one senator to gum up the works and ensure that nothing gets done. In fact, I think we miss the point when we look at the Senate in terms of majority and minority parties. It’s more accurate to view the Senate as a collection of one hundred egos that are all looking for a bit of stroking.

These dynamics aren’t new, but they don’t get much attention usually because most people find the legislative process boring and removed from the realities of their own lives. The health care reform bill is one of the few times that a substantial number of Americans are watching the policymaking process in action and they are coming away feeling confused and a little repulsed. I don’t blame them. 

The story of wayward extraterrestrials who receive a less-than-welcoming reception from us Earthlings is a Hollywood trope whose roots can be traced back to movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and persists in District 9. District 9 is the latest incarnation of the familiar tale and this time, the giant mothership comes to a halt over Johannesburg and carries a sizable crew of half-starved insectoid aliens that soon acquire the derogatory appellation of “prawns”. How the prawns came to Earth is never clearly explained, but the South Africans set about repeating their history by placing the aliens in a segregated shantytown known as District 9. The movie picks up twenty years later as the government is preparing to forcibly move the aliens to a larger detention facility hundreds of miles away from the unfriendly and suspicious population of Johannesburg.

District 9 could have been a tired retread of better science fiction movies, but it manages to give homage to those movies while making a lasting impression of its own. The movie veers from standard Hollywood fare by making most of the major human characters pretty unsympathetic. The protagonist is a loathsome mid-level bureaucrat who regards the prawns with thinly disguised contempt. And the aliens are decidedly alien; the movie makes no attempt to turn them into cuddly pieces of merchandise. The story also draws clear parallels with not only apartheid, but all the ill-fated attempts to segregate a minority population from the majority.

District 9 also succeeds at being a raucously fun summer popcorn movie. Besides the aliens (who are some of the most expertly rendered CGI characters I’ve seen so far), the movie has plenty of gunplay, badass alien weaponry, giant robots, and chase scenes. This is the best original science fiction film since Children of Men and obligatory viewing for any fan of the genre.

One feature of my new entertainment system that I quite like is the ability to stream Netflix videos onto my television. Netflix offers a surprising amount of decent content that can be streamed at any time, such the original Star Trek series and both recent and older movies. The Internet being the Internet, the video can still stutter and lag at times. But when the network is free of hiccups, the video quality is almost indistinguishable from a DVD. Physical media isn’t going to be displaced for a long time, but digital delivery of video is likely to be commonplace in another five to seven years. In the meantime, I’m happy to be the future’s beta tester.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here’s Guardian columnist Hugh Muir commenting on the ridiculous IBD editorial that warned about the hazards of the U.K.’s national health care system to Stephen Hawking’s mortality:

We say his life is far from worthless, as they do at Addenbrooke’s hospital, Cambridge, where Professor Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, was treated for chest problems in April. As indeed does he. “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS,” he told us. “I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.” Something here is worthless. And it’s not him.

I propose that when Hawking and I enter the ring for our Stellar Smackdown (trademark pending), we both wear T-shirts with the words THIS FIGHT MADE POSSIBLE BY GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE emblazoned across the front and back. We’ll set up a web storefront to sell hoodies and tank tops that bear the same logo. Our clothing line will become the hottest thing since the trucker hat. Before long, celebrities will appear on PerezHilton wearing our stuff. And that’s how we’ll market socialized medicine to the American people. Watch and learn, Democrats.