Two Words, One Answer.
Thirteen
 Thirteen $15.00 This excessively long book is based on a simple idea about human evolution. With the development of agriculture and sedentary civilizations, certain personality traits were the subject of negative selection. This negative selection resulted in loss of brain features producing charismatic, powerful, somewhat anti-social males. In the near future, genetic engineering to resurrect a cadre of these males as super-soldiers. These men (variant thirteens) are essentially exaggerations of Napoleon Chagnon's descriptions of Yanomano warriors. One of these thirteens is the protagonist of this book. The near future is a rather messy and somewhat dystopian world of nano-technology, genetic engineering, and fractured political systems, including breakup of the USA. The plot pits the protagonist against another thirteen. Both the basic idea other aspects of the book have significant defects. The idea of these sorts of atavisms being typical of hunter-gatherer cultures and genetically driven are far-fetched. The suggestion that such individuals would constitute a different human species is completely wrong. The excessively complex plot, gratuitous violence and sex, and wooden writing obscure the intellectual value of the ideas. To be fair to Morgan, he does try to introduce some more sophisticated elements into the plotting, notably a recurrent theme of sibling conflict, but these touches are generally lost in a welter of bloodly scenes.  Thirteen $14.98 The movie Thirteen is an extremely well done look into the perspective of an out of control, average American teenager who once was good and had a conscious but was quickly replaced by drugs, and poor choices. While there are some seemingly unimportant and questionable scenes such as the last shot in the end, the movie doesn't disappoint to preview a simple way of "getting caught up" in peer pressure. Recommend it for people of 17+ to fully understand the concepts with little misinterpretations.  Thirteen Ghosts $14.98 But it reminded me how much the late 90's/early 00's sucked for horror movies! Most of the "big" horror movies from back then (including this one) have dumb plots, dumb characters, clichs, stupid and/or predictable twists, endings that don't make much sense, an abundance of cheap jump scares, ... It's as if those who made them thought that having a lot of special effects was more important than having a good plot, good characters, good scares, etc... This movie, The Haunting, Ghost Ship, House on Haunted Hill (I liked it a bit though), Fear Dot Com, Phantoms, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Jason X, The Rage: Carrie 2, Blair Witch 2, etc... are all very lame. Many of them were made with big budgets, but they all feel cheap. Seriously, the horror genre is much better today! and of course, it was much better before the 90's. Don't get me wrong though, I know that some horror movies from the late 90's/early 00's are great.  Thirteen Reasons Why $16.99 "Thirteen Reasons Why" is mainly about a teenager called Clay. He comes home one day to find a package of tapes at his door. The tapes are recordings made by a girl that committed suicide just weeks before. On the tapes she names thirteen reasons why she decided to kill herself. This book can teach many teenagers out there about what they say and what they do. It was fantastic and gave me a full viewpoint about this girl who decided her life was not worth living. I am going to tell many people about this book. We have so much to learn from this story... |
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