Collateral
Well, this was quite a cool movie, in my opinion. The plot is not exactly completely innovative - there's the detective who's on the right track when noone else is, there's the "I-hold-a-gun-to-your-head-and-make-you-do-illegal-things-therefore-it's-not-your-fault" 'dilemma', so on, so forth. What made the movie above average for me was Tom Cruise's character, Vincent, the hitman.
Here are a couple of quotes from the movie:

(Vincent has just made his first hit of the night)
Vincent : Max, six billion people on the planet, you're getting bent out of shape cause of one fat guy.
Max : Well, who was he?
Vincent : What do you care? Have you ever heard of Rwanda?
Max : Yes, I know Rwanda.
Vincent : Well, tens of thousands killed before sundown. Nobody's killed people that fast since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Did you bat an eye, Max?
Max : What?
Vincent : Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Whales, Greenpeace, or something? No. I off one fat Angelino and you throw a hissy fit.
Max : Man, I don't know any Rwandans.
Vincent : You don't know the guy in the trunk, either.

(Max asks how Vincent is able to do what he does for a living)
Vincent: Well, Max, it's like this. We're just insignificant little dots in the universe, and what difference does it make if there is one less of us? Nobody even notices.


You know what I like about those lines? They make sense. If you look at the world from a materialistic, atheistic point of view, there is NO rebuttal to Vincent's justification. In fact, Jamie Foxx's character Max doesn't ever truly give an answer to why Vincent's thinking is flawed. At some point he says something along the lines of "You have absolutely no conception or understanding of what someone else is thinking. Something's just wrong with you. Something that's supposed to be there in people is just...missing!"
Well, that's great, Max, but it sure isn't any logical rebuttal to Vincent's thoughts.

The fact is - if there is no objective standard for right and wrong, for value of anything, then who are we to tell Vincent he's wrong? A friend of mine said "Well, it's simple. Life is better than death, because life is something and death is nothing." Well, who are we to decide that nothing is better than something?! By doing so, we are declaring all nihilists wrong!!! Which we have no grounds to do!

The movie, I think, shows wonderfully and chillingly where the materialistic, atheistic world view ends - in absolute chaos, where there simply is no saying something is truly wrong - and therefore monsters like Vincent are absolutely fine to just do what they do.

Boy am I glad I ain't no atheist. :)

This movie gets a 7. Definetly worth seeing at least once.

Erstes Babybild
Tja, richtig gehört, für alle, die wir noch nicht erreichen konnten. Stephi ist schwanger!!!! :-) Und hier haben wir auch schon das erste Bild, wo man überhaupt nichts erkennen kann. :)
Der rote Kreis ist das Baby - zur Zeit einfach ein kleiner Wicht. Das schwarze drum rum ist die Fruchtblase. Stephi sagt mir, unten mittig hat das Herz geschlagen.
Cool, oder? Voraussichtlicher Geburtstermin ist ca. 3.5.2005.

Hi guys...
Just thought I'd post some random "deep thoughts" :) I've been having lately, I was talking over this with Gene, Kathy, and Stephi last week. I still find it pretty intriguing:

Quantum theory and prayer

Can God answer prayers for things that have already occurred? In other words, I pray that God would bless someone's exam only to figure out later than at the moment I had prayed for this person, they had already taken the exam.
If we truly believe that God is timeless, then we believe God could answer our prayers basically retro-actively. Let's just assume that for a moment.
But that then brings us to a very interesting point, similar to Schrodinger's Cat: As soon as we know whether or not God answered our prayer, God can no longer answer it (who ever heard of the past actually being changed because of his prayer?). So as soon as we figure out the actual answer to our prayer (yes or no), we have basically split off into the universe in which our prayer for the past has no relevance whatsoever any more, up until that point though we were in both worlds at the same time.

...

Uh, or God simply doesn't count prayer that are prayed after what is being prayed for. That's possible, too. :)