CHARACTER: Dr. Polo

We're doing a video project in school, and we had to use an organization-chart to develop our main character...

CHARATER: Dr. Polo

AGE: middle of successful career as psychologist

MAIN TRAIT: eager, NERD

HUMANIZING TRAIT: Naive, passionate

PROFESSION: psychologist

ADDRESS: messy middle-class home (papers strewn about EVERYWHERE), has an old '62 convertible beatle

VALUES: work, bettering mankind

FOIL: his colleague/supervisor

OBSESSION: bettering the world (picks up litter, donates to charities, gives bums money)

GOAL: to perfect his brainwashing technique to make criminals good

IDOL: Albert Einstein

EPITAPH: "for the greater good" changes to "Preserving mankind"

INTERNAL CONFLICTS: wants to leave an achievement behind to be remembered by; is afraid of fading into the history books, but is shy & hasn't managed it yet

INTERPERSONAL CONFLICTS: is jealous of his fellow proffessor, who has the fame and fortune he desires, but Dr. Polo is shy and lets the outgoing man walk all over him

SOCIETAL & ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS: lets his colleague take advantage of him, doesn't actually like him, but doesn't want to say anything because he's insecure of himself

BEST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN (but is actually bad): perfects his method and becomes famous (but brings about a dystopia)

WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN (but is actually good): destroys his work (and saves the world!)

WHY IS HE LIKEABLE: has a strong moral code he adheres to, he's a bumbling, naive, clueless genius and he saves the world :)

Blade Runner Review

For Humanities, Kay had us watch a movie about a utopian society and focus on the question:
What went wrong with this idea of perfection?

In the movie Blade Runner, which is set in 2019, Earth is in the grips of a nuclear winter. The premise is that man figured how to create androids that looked exactly like people and were as intelligent as people, but stronger. They also had a limited lifespan of four years. Replicants were used as slaves, especially on colony worlds.
What went wrong is that the robots- replicants, as they're called- went rouge and killed lots of people, proving that artificial intelligence can be more than just a little scary. A nuance of the movie that I noticed is that they had an experimental replicant who was created with a flase set of memories of life- a childhood and whatnot. She was human- the only thing setting her apart from other women being her inevitable short lifespan.

Interesting. According to the movie, what makes us 'human' is what we experience, how he are brought up.