Mercy Killing

I have clearly heard teachers in American Zen Buddhism imply that mercy killing may be mandated by the precepts in certain circumstances.  So I guess I'm going to have to reconcile that with this bit from a Chinese Buddhist site that says mercy killing is necessarily a no-no.

Forming our own narratives..

I have a minor confession to make: our family went and saw The Interview on Christmas Day.   There's a lot of critiques of this movie out there,  that probably give every point of view possible already.  But you'll also find  - as often happens in movie reviews - that there's aspects of that movie that the critics miss. As this was written up as "frat boy humor comedy" blah blah, I expected that.   Another review mentioned some racist remarks by one of the characters.  My wife and son did not seem to notice (probably since the object of humor related to those remarks was Seth Rogen's character - that was left out of one of the reviews.)

So while I tend to agree with much of what was posted in some places before the movie was reviewed, I did want to see the film just to see what was behind this masterpiece of PR.  Yes, Rogen and Franco make things I usually don't want to see, still can't beat the way the PR was done.  While the final product did point out some of the nasty things about North Korea, it was done by this generation's answer to the Three Stooges, more or less.  And yeah, there's nothing here that any informed person would learn about North Korea.  But You Natzy Spy!  was similar fare, and so was Duck Soup, which was banned in fascist Italy, if what I've read is correct.

Happy New Year, all! I hope I'll have more chances to post here in the coming months.