inception

I saw Inception and I thought it was pretty good. If you are obsessed with dreams and love to question reality, then you will be in heaven for about 2 hours… it’s a long movie.

A good analogy that would explain the concept behind the movie is a technology behind virtual machines. A virtual machine or VM as we call it in IT is a simulation of an operating system that can run on top of another operating system.

The main idea of “Inception”: if you run a VM inside a VM inside a VM inside a VM, everything will be very slow –
myzt

For example, Window XP could run inside of Windows 7 or even in Red Hat linux. In the movie Inception, a dream is happening within a dream within a dream. So it is like, Windows 7, within Windows XP, within Linux within Windows Vista. Each time you run another VM inside another it runs slower and slower. In Inception, each time the characters go deeper (dream with a dream) time slows down.

The interesting thing about this is that I can recall having 3 – 4 dreams at a time similar to the movie. The coolest concept in the movie is the idea of “mutual dreaming” or two people participating in the same dream. I have never had a mutual dream (or at least not that I am aware of). And you don’t find much about it online. What surprises me is that more people are not obsessed with lucid dreams and reality.

Patriot Riders vs westboro baptist

Imagine you are at the funeral of your loved one. Maybe your mother or father has recently passed away. Or perhaps, you have out lived your child. Maybe your son or daughter was killed in I a conflict on the other side of world. For you and those closest to the dearly departed it is a time of mourning, remberance and grieving. They are not ever coming back and you have to live with that separation.

Right in the middle of the eulogy, a group of protesters arrive at the funeral. They are cursing your deceased loved one and the country from which he or she was born. They are yelling and ranting and raving about your loved ones life. They are saying that God is punishing them for their countries sins.

This would be a paragraph of twisted fiction about a sick alternate America if it weren’t based on truth. There is a group of far right wing Christian conservatives how travel the country to protest the funerals of fallen soldiers. They are called, Westboro Baptist Church. Their rationale is that God is punishing America for its acceptance of gays in the military. “God Hates Fags” and your sons and daughter are dying because America is being punished.

This is so crazy that I don’t even know what to say. I don’t know whether to be mad at religion, stupidity, or just Westboro Baptist Church. Regardless of your feelings of the politics behind any conflict we take part in or the state of the U.S. military past, present or future, I would not soil the dignity of a families right to grieve their dead. If the decrease was Jeffrey Dahmer or Hitler or some other psychotic mass murder, I might not have feelings either way about a funeral protest. But fallen soldiers?!

Apparently, there are a group of counter protestors that show up to some of these funerals known as the Patriot Guard Riders. Now even though I did serve in the U.S. Armed Services, proudly in more than one conflict, my healthy mistrust of any government prevents me from being very patriotic. That being said reading about the Patriotic Guard Riders, brought tears to my eyes.

I think it’s the fact that they are champions of basic human dignity that did it. Its very simple need for respect of the living and dead. For me, its not about patriotism just basic human dignity. Something extremists convince themselves to forget. Maybe someone should protest their funerals with signs that say, “God Hates Stupid People”.