Listen to this review! "Good science is good observation."—Dr.
Max Patel, Avatar When Avatar was released in December 2009, I
chose not to write about it in part because it was already
receiving a great deal of attention. Now that an extended
edition has been released and the original has been available on
DVD for some time, your students will likely be familiar with
the storyline. I'll examine a couple of items from A
Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of
Pandora, a book on the science and social science of Avatar, as
well. Avatar is set in the year 2154 on a moon of a Jupiter-like
planet being mined by humans for a substance called
"unobtainium" (more on that later). Jake Sully is a former
marine now paralyzed from the waist down, who is sent to the
moon, Pandora, in place of his identical twin brother, to
participate in a scientific project using avatars. Avatars are
genetically engineered hybrids of human and Na'vi, the
indigenous people on Pandora, controlled remotely by the humans