Lincoln's legacy

Will Smith is not an actor in the aesthetic sense when we use the phrase "great performer". He is competent only in following the beat in his scripts, and this he learned through the audience track in Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which in turn made him likable in Men in Black, but when you examine the porous fatalism of Seven Pounds against the image of Liberians left lying in thoroughfares as no more than rabid animals, Gabriele Muccino's proportionality is a very dangerous game we play with ourselves through the filter of the studio system. The lie of balanced scales. The Jennifer Lopez vehicle Angel Eyes does the same thing only slightly less stupidly, not offering up any sacrificial remorse as it leaves its principal characters rough around the edges in the aftermath of a vehicular tragedy, unlike Tim, who for some inexplicable reason literalizes Christian cannibalism as expiation for the gratification of technology.

Propulsion engines simply are what they are, much like the distractions of cell phones, but disease? 

Death, purely on the scales of evolutionary dynamism, seems to be necessary, but I have a hard time, just as anyone else, with the excruciating nature of excessive pain bequeathed to complex organisms, whether it is the bludgeoning death of cute mammals like baby seals for absolutely no reason, or an infectious agent like Ebola reminding us all that despite our unparalleled success as a species, we simply cannot act collectively to mitigate destruction without turning ourselves equally into soulless autonomic functionaries slaving away at the behest of an inexplicable agent. CDC authorities assure the developed world, however, that we have no reason to worry. Hogwash. Antibiotics and the concentration of our sick bodies in institutional settings gave rise to super bacteria like MRSA. There is no reason then, that Ebola, like AIDS, could not in turn adjust, and spread from West Africa and hit vulnerable sectors in China, India-- which is not to say the human body would not eventually adapt in turn, but the hubris of our faith in ourselves is nothing short of lunacy.