Open Hatch

Archive for the ‘Hackles’ Category

I’ve been trying to get CorelDraw X3 working on a PC to edit .svg files for a project (wow, the svg format is cool). For some reason, it’s arguing with this PC, although it works fine on another (much slower) of mine. Every time I go to the file open menu it brings up a crash report dialog box. I can cancel the dialog and the program continues running fine – after it appears 3 more (total 4) times.

I love this application, but what in the world is with this? I finally tried the obvious, duh approach to finding a solution: google it. I quickly found a page with a proposed fix (from a user with a serious chip on his shoulder).

..You must launch regedit (ALT+R or START->RUN and type regedit and press enter) and go to:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32]

and change NoFileMru from 0×00000001 to 0×00000000

Registry hacking? Oh, brother. However, it worked. Problem solved. Application running normally again.

Since that person’s post saved me grief, I’m paying it forward. You can do the preceding registry hack much faster by using a .reg file. Download the following text (.txt) file, rename the extension to .reg, then double-click it. If Windows doesn’t report successfully importing the information into the registry, try right-clicking the file and then clicking “merge”. These instructions are for a Windows XP account with Administrator rights; Vista users may need to disable User Account Control or run it as an Administrator or whatever.

Registry Fix file (.txt to rename as .reg)

Creepy oddness I just ran across: after a friend of mine on Facebook shared a link, their friend saw an advertisement on CNN.com that said so. “[So-and-so] shared [this-and-that] on facebook”, it said. This is probably only targeted to friends of that friend. Presumably, this is a service, or else why would CNN and Facebook be in kahutz to set this up without either user’s awareness or express permission?

How (technically) did it happen?

By default, Facebook allows all of the following information about you to be shared by your friends:

• Personal info (activities, interests, etc.)
• Status updates
• Online presence
• Website
• Family and relationship status
• Relationship details (significant other, looking for, etc.)
• Education and work
• My videos
• My links
• My notes
• My photos
• Photos and videos I’m tagged in
• About me
• My birthday
• My hometown
• My religious and political views

“Shared” means publicly available for harvesting by facebook applications, or now, apparently, facebook partner web sites (read on). If you’re logged into facebook, here is the link to the friends privacy settings page where you can uncheck all that.

That isn’t the only place with related settings, it seems. This page has a setting for whether “select partner” web sites (which evidently includes CNN) can “personalize your experience” by use of such information.

Even if you disable that, and you have a facebook account and have “added” any reasonable amount of people you know, the following is true: anyone can find your profile page, and from that page, they can learn all the following: your name, gender, “networks”, friend list, and Pages. This (minus a few things you can withhold, like a profile picture and your city) is all defined by Facebook as “publicly available information“.

All of this bothers me. About their “publicly available information” policy, I agree with this blogger – this search of his blog pulls up three posts about it at this writing. The report he links to from the EFF is alarming, and frankly damning. And I never thought I’d agree with the ACLU on any point

It seems to be the most common attitude of social media engineers; that there is no ethical problem in manipulating people into disclosing as much about themselves as possible, and making this information boundlessly and permanently available. They declaim: we respect your privacy. Rubbish! Their bottom line is advertising, and that means the more information about users they can harvest and exploit (with or without your knowledge and express consent), the better their bottom line. End of story – and all the evidence in the ongoing story supports it.

Google Buzz is also terrible with privacy. Here’s the revision as of this writing, of the Wikipedia entry’s section on privacy concerns over that service. Most notable and alarming there is the report that by using Buzz, a woman was found by her abusive ex-husband, because it shared her contact and work information without her knowledge or consent.

This page relates how to disable the service in gmail, or at the least curb what it discloses about you.

Other readings – a blogger who was creeped out by Buzz’ initial release – Google quoted as officially stating “there is no complete privacy” – a blog post that may be fairer to Google. Still, the release of Buzz was recklessly dismissive of (or even contemptuous toward) privacy concerns.

I’m kinda puzzled, though. The newest relevant blog article I can find on it (and here are two previous – 1 – 2) relates that Buzz hasn’t disabled default sharing of your “following” and “followed by” lists, but; in my own test of Google Buzz, after I joined, activated my profile, and logged out, I viewed my public profile link, and it didn’t display who I’m following and who I am being followed by. (I’ve suddenly just imagined a strange and tasteless modern retelling of Jesus’ arrest and mock trial, in which Peter is accused by those around him of following Jesus’ twitter account, and denies it thrice before, erm.. the google cache reveals it.. and Peter goes out and weeps bitterly.) It also said there wasn’t enough information to be indexed, so maybe that’s why. Regardless.. it’s well enough for me to be part of Google’s Brave New World via the search engine and gmail. Sigh – and YouTube.

I ran across this site, foursquare. That link is to an anonymous (to me) user who volunteers exactly when and where he is, at any and many times. Specific times and addresses, and all of this is completely public. It is creepy enough knowing the founder of Facebook makes breathless declarations about how (allegedly) outmoded privacy is, and how easily people could be burglarized as a result of tweeting about their vacation (or updating their status in any of a variety of social media).

WARNING: very foul culture exposed in the first link to follow – avoid if you’d rather not know.

[link 1 - link 2 - link 3.]

The article at the first of that group of links explains how easily you can locate any stranger’s house by connecting, as an example, geotags from a flikr account to an individual. But this foursquare service provides all that in one glance, in addition to time information in one glance, for anyone to look up. Any burglar (or worse) who wants to find a target doesn’t even need their name. Time and location is enough.

mindlesstweeter plane landed! did u see my tweets about my new expensive electronics? pls burglarize me!

goods4me @mindlesstweeter: in ur house raiding ur expensive electronics! u cannot find me my accnt is behind anonymus proxy hahaha

I am stunned by this.

Among the 3 million people this census variation is being (apparently) sort of tested on (hey, will they put up with this?), any one of them could be fined $5,000 for failing to answer questions like the following (I summarize):

How many people live in your home? Are any of them Hispanic? Are they citizens? How big is your home? What is your education level? Do you have difficulty making decisions or climbing stairs? Are you able to bathe, dress, or shop alone? How much do you pay for your sewage system? Are you married? What industry do you work in? What is your precise job description? What’s your rent or mortgage payment? Do you own an automobile? Are you covered by health insurance? What type? Are you on food stamps? How much money do you make?

I am not making this up. (Could I? I am not Ray Bradbury, and our world is not yet a Fahrenheit 451 world.) Here is a direct link to the publicly available .pdf form for the questionnaire, which is available from the Census web site here.

Apparently the Census Bureau “rarely” seeks fines for failing to answer. So what? What on earth caused any government official to think it is okay to compel everyday citizens to disclose such excess of private information? In regards to an everyday citizen, so much private information is not the Government’s business. (The puzzled administrative personnel respond: what is private? What exactly do you mean by this term?) Unless your government has evolved much closer to Communism than you may realize. So maybe I’ll make that statement more accurate. Evidently, as things are, precisely such information of everyday citizens is the government’s business – but it should not be.

At opentochoice, “choice matters”:

“..the Web browser has become one of the most critical and trusted relationships of our modern lives – with nearly perfect knowledge of everything we do.”

Um, no.

.. And I’m thankful for the Mozilla Foundation, and search engine optimization, and my search engine ranking, and Firefox plugins.. and please bless that Google will stop nagging me to opt-in to Google Wave..”

The ‘net is great (even arguably crucial), but this sounds like.. actual worship. Wrong god. Idol Fail.

(I actually am thankful for the Mozilla Foundation, though.)

You may find this useful as the days get warmer. Click the image for a much larger version. Here is the original Photoshop format file for you to mess with, and here’s a .pdf version for easier printing, too.

For example – in Mozilla Thunderbird, to add an RSS feed and manage reading it in a sensible, organized way, you must follow detailed steps involving figures A through P (or 1 to 16; PLUS, if you want to know that this is 16 steps (simply to measure the extent of your technical fatigue), you must count A-P on your fingers. Unless you happen to know off-hand that P is the 16th letter of the English Alphabet. I didn’t.)

[The header of the concluding section of that article says: "That Was Painless". Um, if you're used to following, say, 42-step technical processes in your everyday work, maybe, in comparison.]

This should be a three to four step process:

1. Click the RSS icon in the address bar of Firefox.

2. Select “Subscribe Using Thunderbird”, which should be available by default (if you want Thunderbird to even be in the equation – which, even if it is, Firefox doesn’t tell you in the subscription button – it assumes you just know). Since this is not available by default, you have to follow a 5 step configuration to make that available.

3. Thunderbird comes up with a window, asking “If you want to add [title of RSS feed] to your Thunderbird RSS Subscriptions, select the account and folder you’d like to add it to.” – providing drop-down menus to select the account and folder.

Theoretically, it’s possible to get it down to such a three or four step task (and that page only got me heading in the general right direction). I haven’t gotten it to work. And this is in lieu of many more hacking steps I’d really rather avoid.

I thought these two applications were kinda cuddly friends? My exploration of the idea doesn’t find any proof..

[Myeh. The Wordbook plugin copied the first draft with an innacuracy too soon at FaceBook, and I can't change it.]

I’ve become fascinated and very impressed by public-key encryption, which I’d never understood, but have now read up on at Wikipedia.

With this setup, you and you only hold a private decryption “key”. You also have a public encryption key. Anyone can encrypt anything with your public key, but anything so encrypted with your public key can only be decrypted with your private key. Your public key can therefore be completely public.
Read the rest of this entry »

It has been horrifying and surreal to read, hear and see the events unfolding around California’s State Ballot Proposition no. 8.

I’ve spent more time reading, listening to and watching the advertisements and arguments of the movement I disagree with (No On 8 ) in order to grasp their point of view.

Items:

1. Disappointed “No on 8″ voters protest outside the walls of the Los Angeles Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or “Mormon”).

One thing at least the protesters aren’t happy about is that, leading up to the Ballot vote, the LDS Church had urged its members to contribute to the cause of the “Yes on 8″ campaign – and it worked.  Wikipedia cites mercurynews.com that about 45 percent of out-of-state donations to “Yes on 8″ came from citizens of the state of Utah (which is mostly populated by Mormons and where the LDS Church is headquartered).

The following YouTube video, about 10 minutes, is footage of the protesters shouting “Go back to Utah!” – “You wanted Armaggedon?” – “SHAME ON YOU!! SHAME ON YOU!!” – and “TAX THE MORMON CHURCH!! TAX THE MORMON CHURCH!” – or that’s everything I picked out.

Slanderous, hate-filled messages on signs (link – Flikr gallery) from protesters condemn Mormons and/or their Church.  The hypocrisy of these signs is well-described at this post at the One Thousand and One Parsecs blog, here.  I would only add that the Flikr gallery evidences vandalism on Temple walls, vandalism of sacred grounds, from people preaching “love” and “tolerance.”

The source of the protesters’ ire?  If, as they believe, they’ve lost a civil right, this is freedom fighting.  What is a slap in the face when you’ve lost your human, your civil rights?  That’s the morality of it, from their vantage.  But this has started to go beyond slaps.  Some apparently felt justified in physically attacking – beating to the ground – an onlooker who, out of pity for the sacred grounds, proceeded to remove the offensive signs – as reported at Meridian (link).

Granting what I think is a radically far stretch, that these beliefs justify such measures (the Democratic process is still very open! – I’m not out slugging Obama supporters because of my disappointment!) – how good are these protesters’ arguments?  Well, I think the aforementioned blog post also dismantles that.

2. There’s contradiction among “No on 8″ supporters in their condemnation of religious reasons for supporting Prop 8.  (There’s contradiction among Mormons, too, which is sad.  Your prophets make their occasional prophetic statement – in this case supporting something – you believe your prophets are prophets, you support it too.  That simple.  Unless you don’t believe they’re prophets.  Which admits complication.)  According to a KUTV report I saw, the “No on 8″ campaign does not support the infamous ad portraying LDS missionaries invading a lesbian couples’ home and shredding their marriage certificate.  However, that campaign has repeatedly singled out the Mormon church as antagonists to their campaign – their news section fairly frequently mentions the Mormon church and Utah, and scarcely mentions the wider religious coalition or other bodies opposed to their campaign.  Clearly the Mormon church is consistently in their sights – and meanwhile, many of thier associates, if not the “No on 8″ campaign itself – these protestors, and the producers of that vile commercial clearly condemn motives for supporting Prop. 8. that originate in religious motivations.  “SEPARATE CHURCH AND HATE!” reads a sign.  “Say NO to a church taking over your government”, says the ad.  Clearly many of these folks are opposed to the LDS church urging a yes vote. Confusing, in light of “No on 8″ often reporting that this or that religious institution urges you to vote no on Prop. 8.  Examples: [link 1]- [link 2] – [link 3, a video, clearly displaying the No on 8 campaign logo]. There was an ad from their campaign with a man clearly stating his church says to vote no – end of ad, final point (wish I remembered the link).  So how would it be not okay for the LDS church to religiously support the Proposition, while it would be okay for any other church to religiously oppose it?

Point to underscore: this is a moral question, often or usually founded in religious feeling. Religion is by definition irrational.  It explains the unexplained and cosmological.  (So does science, more often than we usually admit.)  Opponents to the proposition openly appeal to religion.  So do proponents.  Because, strictly, both are thinking irrationally – that is to say, religiously – they may never agree.  Therefore, appeal to religion has no effective place in discourse over state policy questions, which is what this question is. And we’re mixing those up.  Religion can have appeal to individual citizens’ right of conscience, and how the people collectively vote becomes law. Religion influences the State but is not the State. No religion’s reason dictates the law. That would impinge on the religious right, or right of conscience, of one religious group, while putting forward the other.  Which, as pointed out from my first link, has happened to churches. Won’t put kids up for adoption to gay couples?  Blam – you can’t put up any kids for adoption anymore.  Won’t marry gays?  Blam – out goes your tax-exempt status.  Meanwhile, gays in civil unions in California retain all the same legal rights as heterosexual marrieds.  Who is losing rights?  Whose religiously asserted right is impinging on the rights of others?

A very thought-provoking post at one blog got me, well, thinking:

“One post commented wondering if there was a way for both sides to get what they wanted. There probably is. It would be for the state to acknowledge that homesexuality [sic] is a faith based practice.”

I haven’t even begun to think through the implications of that.  But it made me stop.

Meanwhile, George Lucas.. disappoints me again.  As if the writing in Episodes I-II wasn’t bad enough (if largely redeemed in episodes III, IV and V), now Lucas buys the line that anybody is losing any moral-civil rights, and shells out $100,000 to keep the line going.

When did you not grasp the actual machinations that give rise to an Evil Galactic Empire?

I’ve got to end on a good note.  (That is, unless you disagree with me.) As a Mormon, I’d like to express a thank you to the people who said and created the following.

To: President Bush <comments@whitehouse.gov>

Subj: OPPOSED to H.R. 5889 The Orphan Works Act of 2008

Dear President Bush,

I am very alarmed by the so-called “Orphan Works Act” of 2008, which has twice very recently been “hotlined” by Senators and has now passed in the Senate.  It is a basic philosophical reversal of copyright law and could spell economic doom – not an overstatement – to the enterprises of countless artists.  If the bill also passes in the house, I ask you simply to veto the bill.  I suggest that your best source of opposition to the bill may be found in the ample resources and rhetoric of the Illustrators Partnership of America.

Sincerely,

Alex Hall

[My street address]

[My phone number]

I’m pasting this letter from the Illustrator’s Partnership [edited only to change links to hyperlinked text]. Also following it with my comments is a reply I got from my Congressperson, Chris Cannon (R-Utah) about my letter to him opposing the bill. show

I recently heard arguments for universal health care that seemed maybe okay. Then I went back and looked at some things that convinced me against it. The following part of an argument I’ve quoted before most convinces me against universal state-provided health care.

show

I know health care is expensive. That’s why I’m focused not on making it more expensive, but on making it cheaper, and how you do that? You do it with conservatism! I’m by no means out of touch on this. If the health care industry were priced like every other industry is on the patient’s ability to pay, then we’d fix the problem, and that’s the direction we have to head in.

But if we’re going to keep this notion that everybody’s entitled to have whatever they want medically paid for by their neighbors, then we are finished. We are finished as a country; we are finished as a society. You can talk about my wealth, but let me tell you something, sir. I don’t depend on anybody else for anything, and it was one of my objectives when I grew up. I didn’t want to be obligated. I didn’t want to be dependent. I didn’t want to owe anybody. I don’t buy into insurance plans because it’s a hassle! Now, I know a lot of people don’t have that freedom. I used to not have that freedom, either. But I do now because I worked for it — and if I can do it, a lot more people can do it than think they can, and that’s conservatism again. People are much better than they know. They have much more potential than they know. But when you’ve got a Democrat Party and a movement telling them they suck, telling them they can’t get anywhere because the deck is stacked against them and the people stacking the deck are Republicans and so forth, then you are diminishing the country; you’re diminishing the future, and you’re destroying people’s lives.
……
The health care problem in this country is getting worse, while people are voting on for people who are making it worse because they hear these people saying, “I’m going to fix it.” Well, the people in charge of fixing it have no interest in it getting fixed, because if it gets fixed, you don’t need them. You can rely on yourself. This health care debate is one of the most infuriating things I witness every day, because I get so sick and tired of people buying hook, line, and sinker a lie. “I’m going to get everybody covered. I’m going to make sure everybody gets health insurance in this country. We’re going to make sure it’s not just the rich.” It doesn’t happen, does it? When you have government telling private industry how to operate, this is exactly what you get, and it’s going to happen in energy. It’s already happening in a number of other industries, too. It’s happening in the auto industry…

I’ll add to this. I recently read that the top ten poorest cities in the United States have been governed only by Democrats for the past thirty years. Democrats repeatedly promise this and that measure to raise folks out of poverty, which never happenss, but the next time around folks think maybe it will. Lucy lifts the football every time and you still fall flat on your back. No one says what needs saying: your wealth is your responsibility, so go to work. Of course genuine misfortune can prohibit that. But many poor people work 8 or 10 hour weeks when they could work 40. I suspect lack of motivation generated by welfare dependency. Why work if someone else will pay the bill? I think it was on Bill O’Reilly’s radio show I heard this – kids who know they have a large inheritance don’t work and study as hard. (I would like at this point to declare my forgiveness toward my grandparents for dropping tens of thousands of dollars in my lap when I was only a kid. Yeah, the money didn’t stick around long – but I must also credit my own foolishness. Which I also forgive.) When kids don’t know they have an inheritance, they buck up and study and work harder.

If you are rich, stamp out any suspicion in your kids that you are generous by being a chore-driving pig of a parent. Well, be a nice pig and give them ice cream every now and then. By the way, the LDS church has one smart solution to welfare dependency: welfare recipients work in the orchards, canneries, farms and distribution centers that produce the goods they themselves receive.

State health care is welfare. Someone else gives you what you could earn yourself. It takes away working motivation, dragging workers out of the economy, producing less taxes from less work, giving the government less money to subsidize people’s laziness, and the vicious cycle goes downward until somebody thinks it’s a good idea to say that some people deserve taxes and some don’t, and heck, the rich deserve a lot more taxes – and what do you have? An economy that only thrives because America happens to be exceedingly ingenious despite all the retarded “equality” legislation that strangles everyone, and despite most of the middle classes seeing a whopping forty percent of their income go to government programs that do nothing for anyone other than exist as a mirage that something is getting done.

Who thinks universal health care is a good idea? Hillary Clinton is more religious about it than she is about defeating extremist Islam. Except that she isn’t religious about defeating extremist Islam. For all I know Barack Obama thinks state welfare is a good idea, but I’ve tried not to really pay attention to him or to Clinton.

I guess I have to now, because people swallow their balogna philosophies wholesale.

In this chat with a coworker I comment on the current revision of this Wikipedia article on the Laffer Curve – involving economics (this was an offshoot of discussion about game theory, which is work-related – I find, two paragraphs into the article:

(12:27:18 PM) Alex Hall: “..Critiques commonly point out that socialist states, such as the U.S.S.R., have been able to derive revenues at a 100% tax rate, though they would have derived more if tax rates had been lower.”
(12:27:35 PM) Alex Hall: Oh, good. I’m glad communists can get higher taxes from rates lower than one hundred percent.
(12:27:42 PM) Alex Hall: !
(12:27:45 PM) MoD: hehe
(12:27:49 PM) Alex Hall: Can you believe that?
(12:27:53 PM) Alex Hall: Ah, Wikipedia.
(12:28:18 PM) MoD: Probably has something to do with people earning more or something
(12:28:47 PM) Alex Hall: Maybe. I haven’t investigated that. I think I’ll go home and see if MY LIFE produces any MOTIVATION which might produce any TAXES.
(12:29:01 PM) MoD: hehe
(12:29:11 PM) Alex Hall: LOL what a joke.

Last night I watched ABC around 9:30 to try to follow emerging Presidential Primary results (tragic to be watching ABC’s coverage, yes, but my internet connection wasn’t available). They brought on Huckabee via satellite interview, glowingly fawned over him (following the orders of their favorite party in doing so – now they’re just roping him along to steal votes from Romney) – and they swallowed unchallenged his incredibly deceived line that he’s run one of the most civil campaigns anyone has seen in a while (read my disagreement about that here) – then provided extensive coverage of Clinton and Obama, and covered McCain’s speech claiming he’s the front runner (it has to be said he has about twice the delegates pledged to him now that Romney does – which simply baffles me. The man is simply not a conservative. And Huckabee would like to rewrite the Constitutation to align with his personal religious whims! Romney is the only conservative running!) They had signs sliding on and off the bottom of the screen saying who won what states, and though it was hard to follow them, I gathered Romney had won maybe five or six states (including Utah at 8o percent – I can’t imagine how that happened ) – I had a hard time tracking it. Along with that they had longer heads-ups displaying pictures of candidates with a list of won states underneath them. As I said, from watching the sliding displays I knew Romney won five or six states, but how many states were listed under the picture of Romney? Two – Utah and Masachussets, the states in Super Tuesday he has close ties to. And how much coverage time do they devote to any interviews or footage of Romney? Virtually zero. A few pictures and short clips, interspersed with long clips and coverage of every other candidate in play. And they list only two of the five or six states he won. Virtually zero coverage of Romney and blatantly displaying his gains as far less than they are.

Tell me mainstream media isn’t biased against Romney! The candidate that the liberal mainstream media is blatantly biased against is the candidate that conservatives should be blatantly biased for! Romney has pledged to stick it out to the convention! Rally for him! He’s the only conservative in play!

I’ve been holding off recommending this film, because ai-ai-ai, will it make a Mormon audience composed of your typical Mormon culture uncomfortable. It is ridiculous how fully Dutcher has taken on the role of The Artist Who Challenges You. If Dutcher is going around touting in his advertisements that the thing is R-rated – one of the hot-button topics in Mormon culture – I cannot see otherwise but that he has taken it upon himself to challenge culture. If that gives you brownie points among crowds that think that’s the mission of an artist (*ahem*AML-list*hem), okay. But I don’t think there’s any chart in heaven detailing how much any artist challenged culture. It’s not about that.

According to Michael Medved – who has given Dutcher some of his best reviews! – the artist as cultural or religious challenger is a mythical role that has emerged only in this last century. Medved argues that most of the artists who created our “classics” through the centuries found plenty to do – under every kind of label or adjective you could conjure: disturbed, glorious, funny, tragic – whatever- without heckling their host culture, as so many artists in our day have been taught to believe they should. It is a point given in Dutcher’s biography at his own web page that one of his teachers while in film school at BYU prophesied that the first great Mormon writer will be excommunicated. Richard, that teacher was full of crap! Without a mass of knowledge to back up my agreement with Medved, I only say that Medved’s take on artists and culture sounds to me a whole lot better than advertising your film as “The first R-Rated Mormon film!” Why don’t we just change the billboard to say “This film will shock and offend you!” What of the dopes in the narrative of this very film who claim the only way an artist will get ahead is by shocking and offending? We’re supposed to think those guys are dopes, right? They’re part of the culture that led to the lead character’s fall. So let’s not listen to them.

Now I know I’ve gone and abrasively criticized marketing. Sometime last year I abrasively criticized a marketing effort coming from Dutcher’s Main Street Movie Co. and shortly thereafter found a comment at my film blog from Dutcher’s marketing guy, abrasively criticizing my (retrospectively) amateurish concept trailer. Tit-for-tat cannon blasts among the artists in Zion. I don’t think it’s easy for artists to separate the line of personal criticism from artistic criticism. And too often we merge them – but that’s an essay for another day.

I believe Dutcher could have told the exact same story of FALLING with just slightly different directing decisions that wouldn’t ensure he turns a lot of his audience away. And his marketing of this film is way off-base. (I know, I hear the cannons blasting still.) If you don’t care about ratings (as I believe Dutcher claims not to), you don’t advertise them. If many Mormons think it wrong to ever see an R-rated film (and that thinking is in error, in my opinion), period, that’s fine for them – it is their right to risk missing out, and frankly, too many who argue against the point would seek to deny Mormons so inclined of that right, or deny them their freedom of conscience to avoid whatever they want – but the inevitable message behind “The first R-rated Mormon film!” is ironically as narrow in a different way. It actually seeks to drive the question of the appropriate to the utmost limits of tolerance – and I would argue that very approach will only produce intolerance – it isn’t going to make anyone think. Nobody thinks when they feel threatened. All they think about is either raising their fists to pummel the hell out of you or getting the hell away from the situation (Dutcher has experienced far more than his share of both, on emotional terms). Fight or Flight. It reduces us to cavemen. Where’s the love in that? Philosophical battles are one thing, but you’ve gotta know that even though there may not be a rational basis for Mormons to do so, they’re simply going to read it as an attack on their religion.

Art isn’t a culture or religion test. Life is a culture and religion test – the way we live. Art is a huge part of life (and for artists, it is literally the subsistence of their life – how they get by) – but as the Indigo Girls penned, “..there’s just no medium for life”. Life is life, art is story (where this film is concerned). And this story should be advertised for what it is – a very powerful morality tale – not for what it isn’t (G-rated).

The unfortunate irony of that advertising is that the film is, in my opinion, powerfully Mormon, but while the advertising raises a question entirely irrelevant to the film, it only invites those whose minds are closed to the question – and I have tried opening many minds to the question, and the steel trap set on that question does not respond to crow bars – it only invites them to keep the trap shut, indeed the trap may only close tighter.

I had to decide whether I think Dutcher himself or his actors went against good principle in their performances. I’ve decided I don’t think they did. The directing decisions over that question are so distracting it could not only tear down the proscenium for many (it nearly did for me, but I’d gone into the film with a lot of forethought and preparation) – it could make them want to burn down the theater. Nevertheless, to those willing to explore them, the questions are so gripping it may not matter. The context and the story, the presentation, the direction, what happens – it all very clearly paints the disturbances the film explores as just that: disturbances which are not wanted in a good life. The obvious implication is that we like good, not evil. Hallejuhah. One more film striking against evil.

This also may not be a film for the squeamish.

This film wallops the bloodthirsty with divine guilt.

Last of all, this film probes deeper into the mystery of the Atonement than any work of art I have encountered. If the story it presents is deeply disturbed, the power is in the questions the story poses of whether those disturbances could be overcome. The ending presents situations on questions of innocence and very powerful symbolic reversals – leading to Christ – which I found deeply affecting.