Antarctic Edge

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Antarctic Edge is a great documentary. It’s gotten pretty mixed reviews – reviewers seem to think it should be a snappy political piece or a focused scientific piece.

By way of their warts-and-all stories, these individuals closely connect with the audience, but what the work and findings in each of the scientists’ respective fields means in the context of handling climate change seems secondary to how this work affects them on a personal level. … This unintentionally gives her film the feeling that it’s not a first-person account of working to figure out the effects of climate change, but an ensemble character study filled with quirky individuals who happen to be stuck in a cataclysmic event. [link]

And that’s what’s great about this film. It actually captures very well the day-to-day of being a scientist, from the way it feels to be working on a problem like climate change, to how a desire to spend more time with your family influences technological advances in the field, to the exhaustion, tedium, frustration, and bad jokes that are part and parcel of field work.

You can watch the full film on Netflix or here.

The language you found touching in the Supreme Court judgment pissed me off

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“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. … [M]arriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. … [The] hope [of the petitioners] is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”

Equal dignity sounds good. But did you catch the other message? The one about how the alternative to marriage is being condemned to live in loneliness? That’s quite sinister. Make it part of a sweet celebration of love, though, and somehow it’s good to go. The power of love is a curious thing.

In the rush to celebrate “love” when we mean marriage, we hide the damage done by the idea that love doesn’t count unless you’re married (and if you don’t marry you’ll die miserably alone).

Don’t mix up love with marriage.