Christopher Hitchens - On the State of Human Intelligence.

An excerpt from the film 'Religulous'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtnLmnqsaJE&feature=fvsr

(Sorry - embedding not permitted.)

An article on 'prosopagnosia' (face-blindness).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/22/exp-erience-prosopagnosia-face-blindness-neurology

The science and wonder of the unseen.

What are you? What is the world? How does it appear? Does its appearance represent its true nature? These are all confounding questions, but they have surprisingly simple - and remarkable - answers.

The world as we see it isn't really the 'world'; we've evolved to see certain things in certain ways - what we see isn't 'true'; it's merely 'useful'. We are middle-sized creatures that have evolved to perceive middle sized-objects moving at middle speeds across middle-sized distances. We find perceiving the very, very small and the very, very large difficult because we haven't evolved to be concerned with them - it just so happens that the scientific method has revealed a lot about the world and the universe that our everyday senses are incapable of perceiving.

If we were atoms or subatomic particles (like neutrinos), we would notice that physical matter is composed almost entirely of empty space. However, humans are vast conglomerations of hundreds of millions of cells, composed of trillions of atoms. We can't travel through walls (or other solid objects) because all the atoms - and their constituent subatomic particles - in our bodies exert electrical, repulisive forces - the same as every other thing composed of large numbers of atoms.

We haven't evolved to see the world as being mostly 'empty' because that's not useful to us - our brains tell us that we simply can't travel through physical objects because of certain physical laws (so we perceive them as being entirely solid).

Bats don't see in light - they 'see', and create an image of, the world via sound (through echolocation). Bees don't see red light - they can see in parts of the ultraviolet area of the spectrum that we can't perceive. Water skippers aren't very large and so don't really feel the effects of gravity - they're more 'bothered' by the phenomenon of water surface tension.

We humans like to see ourselves as being special. But, compared to every other species, we aren't. In truth, every species is 'special' and no species has any qualities that are intrinsically 'better' than the qualities of any other. We just so happen to think ourselves special because we appreciate, and find useful, language, sight and scents, rather than, say, echolocation, animal pheromones, extra-ultraviolet light (outside the visible spectrum), or the minute electrial signals given off by organisms (which sharks can perceive).

However, we humans wield an impressive amount of potential and power - power to do both the extremely stupid and dangerous and the impressively beautiful and wise. What we do is up to us. 

If we wish to see the end of the 21st century, we're gonna have to make some big changes. We're going to have to stop seeing in such short-sighted ways; we're gonna have to embrace science and reason and shake off the last superstitious beliefs that plague the world; we're going to have to change our ways and be less greedy. Most importantly, we need to appreciate the world and see all the variety and beauty of it for what it is. We could potentially lose it all, and commit suicide as a species.

What say you? Shall we do something 'special'? It's down to us. If we go, the Earth will be here for  a long time after we're gone - and it shall purify itself. Imagine if the evolution of our species - from the first primordial bacteria that lived 3.9 billion years ago to the evolution of our species from our nearest common ancestor that lived on the African plains some 3 million years ago - turns out to be all for nothing. We simply can't afford to destroy all we've worked for. It's time to embrace the more noble elements that animate us and allow them to live, and overtake us. It's time for us to become fully 'human'. Thank you for reading.

A documentary on North Korea.

North Korea.

Smile,
or else they
might see you.

Subterfuge and
mind-control
and propaganda
and minds in vices.

The disabled are
torn from the wombs.
Where do they go?
It seems they see death.

Death camps,
and work camps,
and a 'Glorious Leader'.

You will be arrested
if you show dissent.

Big brother is watching you;
he's auditing your mind:
thought benevolent in this case
because of lies upon lies.

A demi-god
(a demagogue),
his father saved your country
from US repression.
(Or so you've been told.)

Malnourished,
and frightened -
for no sensible reason
that your minds
can fathom.

Smile,
or else they
might see you.

Death - a poem by Harold Pinter.

Where was the dead body found?

Who found the dead body?

Was the dead body dead when found?

How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother

or uncle or sister or mother or son

of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?

Was the body abandoned?

By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?

Did you declare the dead body dead?

How well did you know the dead body?

How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body?

Did you close both its eyes?

Did you bury the body?

Did you leave it abandoned?

Did you kiss the dead body?

TED talks.

The God Delusion (part 1).

I know, I know: the book's some three years old. Today, I picked up my copy of The God Delusion and started on a new chapter. I've had my copy for around two years but I've never really given it a fair shot - after all, I thought that I'd read the ultimate in anti-theism polemics: Why I am Not a Christian (by Bertrand Russell).

I started reading it a few weeks back and then left it, focusing on something else which I can't quite remember. Today, by chance, I started reading chapter 4: Why There Almost Certainly is no God. What can I say? I'm finishing the chapter as I write this and I'm full of excitement and my mind is brimming with the ideas I've been consuming.

It starts as a rebuttal of Fred Hoyle's posit that the origin of life is as unlikely as a Boeing 747 being assembled out of scrapyard junk randomly during a hurricane. Dawkins repeatedly rebuts this idea by showing that if something is reduced to being irreducibly complex, then that means that the likelihood of its being made by any deity is even more unlikely - thus we get into an infinite regress of the 'what made God' sort. By stating that something is too complex to have arisen via natural selection, one immediately undermines one's argument - how could something as complex as a deity have arisen by chance? Surely, it was also designed. But then what designed the designer of the designer? Ergo, we have an infinite regress that isn't helpful but rather creates infinite confusion.

The main point given early in the chapter is that evolution isn't determined by chance - it is guided by natural selection. The only chancey thing that's ever occured is the origin of life. Dawkins states that we are here not because of God (or a god, or gods, or a flying spaghetti monster) but because of the 'anthropic principle'. What is it? Well, simply stated it is the fact that out of all the billions and billions of planets that exist in our universe, many (billions, in fact) are likely to be well-suited to life. If one per cent in a billion billion planets bears life, that still means that there exist a billion life-bearing planets in our universe.

The anthropic principle has two qualities: the human side and the cosmological side. The human side has been stated in the previous paragraph. The cosmological side of the anthropic principle coin is very much similar. I'm sure you've heard of it - multiverse theory. This theory posits that there could be an infinite number of parallel universes (an alternative theory is that they could be linked in series). In this theory, each universe has a different set of conditions - some combinations of which lend themselves to life; others of which are hostile to life or, in fact, can never bear life - or even certain mixtures of atoms.

It could be that all universes bear the same six 'univeral constants' that support life (the ones present in our universe); it could be that there are many possible combinations. Either way, we know that we live in one of said universes because we are here.

One theorist - Lee Smolin - presents an altogether more tangible idea 0f the multiverse (although it still is quite peculiar to our everyday senses). In his mind, the multiverse isn't a 'foamy' structure like that of Martin Rees's - universes exist inside black holes (so the multiverse is a honeycomb structure that, in theory, 'evolves'). In this theory, successful universes are universes which bear black holes. Universes that bear clouds of dust form stars, stars form black holes, and black holes create new 'universes inside the universes in which they're present'. Each new 'daughter' universe born of a black hole contains 'mutations' which alters slightly its properties. It's a fascinating idea.

http://www.2think.org/lifeofthecosmos.shtml

Movie review: The Fisher King.

The Fisher King (1991) is a film by Terry Gilliam, starring Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges and several other actors of note.

When Jack - a radio host for a subversive morning show - gives an ambiguous message to a disgruntled and disturbed listener, a terrible series of events unfolds: the listener goes to a 'yuppie' bar and kills several people, before turning the gun on himself.

This controversy spells the end for Jack's career. He spirals into a life of bitter self-loathing - although he still has a wonderful girlfriend and a job (at her video store).

One night, guilt takes hold and Jack takes a drunken walk. In his stupor, he finds himself lost in either Brooklyn or Manhattan and is set upon by two young men who mistake him for a homeless man. Out of nowhere, a knight in dulled armour appears: a homeless man named Perry. Perry sees off the attackers and takes in Jack for the night.

When Jack is rested, Perry tells him that he needs him to fulfill a particular purpose: Perry is working for God and needs Jack to steal the Holy Grail from a wealthy entrepreneur's house. (Perry also occasionally thinks fairies are present and perpetually sees a so-called 'Red Knight' who roams Central Park trying to get at him.)

Jack leaves, but soon sees Perry again - and decides to get to know him. After seeing brilliance behind his madness - and often delusional behaviour - he decides to help him in whatever way he can. And there's another reason: it turns out that Perry's wife was one of the victims killed in the shooting three years earlier.

Wrecked with guilt and overcome by the power of his new-found friendship, Jack goes on to help Perry find love. Whilst helping Perry, though, Jack is losing his way. The film is about redemption and recognition - and finding love and wonder where one can.

The title is derived from a story Perry tells Jack one night when they're both lying on a green in Central Park at night - Perry is nude in this scene. Whilst sleeping in a forest, a young boy destined to be king awakes to be greeted with a vision of a fire containing the Holy Grail - a symbol of "God's divine grace".

With wonder, the boy tries to retrieve the grail but is terribly badly burned. With time, his wounds grow deeper. One morning, a simple fool enters the king's chambers and sees him sitting alone, looking pained.

The fool doesn't see a king - merely a man in pain. He asks him if he can help soothe him. The king tells the fool that he's thirsty. The fool finds a cup and gives him some water. Through this simple act, the king's wounds miraculously disappear and he is healed.

When the King looks into his hand, he sees not a cup, but the grail for which he's been hunting his life entire. 'How could you have found that which my brightest and best have failed to find all these years?' enquires the King. 'I don't know,' replies the fool, 'I only knew that you were thirsty.' The story is an interpretation of an Arthurian story - of King Arthur. My interpretation of it is that grandeur is often found in the simplest of things - but that's just me.

The movie is streaked with themes of love and pain. When Perry enters a state of catatonia after re-living the nightmare that unfolded three years previous, Jack finally endeavours to get the grail in hope that it might bring Perry out of said state. I won't spoil the ending - although I've probably already given it away. It ends on a high note; it left me feeling enchanted. Watching it again wouldn't be as much of a pleasureable experience, but it's a real gem.

Sufjan Stevens - Sister (live).

Cosmos - Vangelis.

Arvo Part - Spiegel im Spiegel.