I’m making a modest donation (which is what I can afford) to Convoy of Hope, an organization I heard about and researched.  They already had operations in Haiti before the earthquake, so their network to help people is already in place, and they have a higher charity rating than the Red Cross.  I’d like to encourage all my readers to make a donation to the relevant organization of their choice; here’s a list to help you research charities.

I saw the movie.  It looked cool and the alien culture has its appeal.  However…

It’s so hard I can’t force myself to think that it’s just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na’vi will never happen.

and

I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora…

and

When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning…I live in a dying world.

…?

context and hat tip

First of all, IT’S A MOVIE.  It’s a movie with pretty glowing plants, but, it’s a movie.

Second, if A MOVIE is all it takes to make you suicidal, you are so not ready to be chased around by those things that chase people around in the movie.  Try the Amazon rainforest or similar sometime; that’s as close to Pandora as Earth gets.  If it works out for you, you get the next best thing to your wish.  If you get eaten, I don’t have to teach your future spawn.  Win-win.

Third, if this is what you can come up with to worry about, I envy you your calm and peaceful life, but not your level of detachment from reality.  People that disengage from the world are at least half of the reason you “live in a dying world.”

In summation, Avatar is a cool movie, but Avatar fans are killing what was left of my faith in humanity.

Assuming middle school or early high school age kids, or bright upper elementary…if I wanted to start setting them up for radian measurement in order to make their lives easier when they get to trig, would it work to have them turn degrees into “fractions of a half-circle” or “fractions of a protractor” or something like that?  Since this doesn’t totally fit into the middle school curriculum, I’m thinking of it as an enrichment activity, either a worksheet for if they finish early or an extra direction for the kids who would otherwise be bored by activities like measuring angles in degrees.