In this video, the mystery of why shark carcasses were being found on the bottom of the aquarium is eerily revealed.
Can you guess what animals they evolved from?
Octopus
In this video, the mystery of why shark carcasses were being found on the bottom of the aquarium is eerily revealed.
Can you guess what animals they evolved from?
Stephen Hawking's Zero-Gravity Flight
This one is for mom, who's a big fan of professor Hawking. Hawking took a zero-gravity flight yesterday in order to promote space travel and exploration. There was medical equipment in case there were problems, and he was given a motion sickness pill ahead of time to prevent possible complications. Anyway, here you can watch two of the eight dives the jet took, which produced the experience of no gravity for about 25 seconds each. During the video he kind of just looks like a doll that people are manipulating and moving around, but the end reveals just how much Hawking enjoyed the experience.
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Philosopher's Song
This is awesome stuff: a song about philosophers performed by Monty Python.
And again, with pictures of the philosophers mentioned
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And again, with pictures of the philosophers mentioned
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Noam Chomsky: American Revolutionary
In this video, intellectual, author and political activist Noam Chomsky is interviewed by Francine Stock, from the BBC.
By the way, for a fun little cartoon concerning the theme of pirates and emperors, check this previous entry.
On a different note, it is rather interesting and disconcerting that such a passionate activist for human rights speaks in such a robotic monotone fashion, isn't it? Such a shame...
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By the way, for a fun little cartoon concerning the theme of pirates and emperors, check this previous entry.
On a different note, it is rather interesting and disconcerting that such a passionate activist for human rights speaks in such a robotic monotone fashion, isn't it? Such a shame...
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Ricky Gervais on Creation
Apparently Darwin got it all wrong, and the book that disproves his theory is a bit old and dusty.
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Animaniacs Geography Lesson
How many out-of-date countries did you notice?
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Roomate Caught
This is not exactly your typical college video where some dude's roommates catch him loving himself while surfing for internet porn... this one has a very unexpected twist at the end. You might be scarred for life, so watch at your own risk. It is hilarious, though...
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Space: Star Stuff
Due to popular demand for documentaries on space, this is a mesmerizing one, narrated by Sam Neill. This first episode, called Star Stuff, explores how the known universe was made, from the Big Bang to the ingredients for life. The implication: we are all aliens, made of star stuff. Reminds you of Carl Sagan, doesn't it?
The video quality is excellent, as are the visuals and special effects.
The video quality is excellent, as are the visuals and special effects.
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The Simpson's Voices
I don't get to watch the Simpsons nearly as often as I should, but it's still a totally weird experience to watch these real-life dudes sound like the animated characters. Enjoy
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Islam = Submission
Submission, a direct translation of the word "Islam," is a 10-minute film directed by Theo van Gogh and written by the eloquent Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, depicting the plight of four different Muslim women who experience the injustice inherent in the writings of their religion.Since saying anything negative about Islam is grounds for a death sentence, Theo van Gogh was assassinated on November of 2004 by a Muslim extremist who did not quite share van Gogh's views. The assassin also left a note threatening Ayaan Hirsi Ali's life as next.
The film strikes me as very symbolic. The narrator is dressed in black transparent garments, both concealing her body (as tradition dictates) and revealing what Allah has created but orders to hide: a beautiful woman, whom Allah is now forced to see through the sheerness of the fabric. The koranic text written in the women's bodies shows the physical and psychological pain inflicted on these women as a result of the words of their 'holy book' and scriptures. Finally, at the very end, when the narrator prays to Allah, she looks up, suggesting defiance and no longer submission to God, which is all the more interesting and ambiguous since she still prays.
The Human Camera
This is a video of Stephen Wiltshire, an autistic man from London who has the uncanny ability to paint almost perfect pictures based simply on his memory. In this specific video, he paints the city of Rome after having taken a 45-minute helicopter flight over the city. Click here to see more videos from his website.
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The Awesomest Thing I Read Today
This is awesome! The Michigan Department of Environment Quality sent out a letter to this dude, Ryan DeVries, complaining about and ordering him to take down two dams built in his property, qualifying them as potentially dangerous. The letter is not exactly rude, but it is very cold and authoritarian (you can read the whole thing here).Anyway, here is Ryan's response:
Dear Mr. Price (the representative from the Department of Environmental Quality):
Your certified letter dated 12/17/02 has been handed to me to respond to. I am the legal landowner but not the Contractor at 2088 Dagget, Pierson, Michigan. A couple of beavers are in the (State unauthorized) process of constructing and maintaining two wood" debris" dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond. While I did not pay for, authorize, nor supervise their dam project, I think they would be highly offended that you call their skillful use of nature's building materials "debris." I would like to challenge your department to attempt to emulate their dam project any time and/or any place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic.
As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity. My first dam question to you is: (1) Are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond Beavers or (2) do you require all beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request? If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, through the Freedom of Information Act, I request completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits that have been issued. Perhaps we will see if there really is a dam violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Michigan Compiled Laws, annotated.
I have several concerns. My first concern is - aren't the beavers entitled to legal representation? The Spring Pond Beavers are financially destitute and are unable to pay for said representation - so the State will have to provide them with a dam lawyer. The Department's dam concern that either one or both of the dams failed during a recent rain event causing flooding is proof that this is a natural occurrence, which the Department is required to protect. In other words, we should leave the Spring Pond Beavers alone rather than harassing them and calling their dam names. If you want the stream "restored" to a dam free-flow condition please contact the beavers - but if you are going to arrest them, they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter - they being unable to read English.
In my humble opinion, the Spring Pond Beavers have a right to build their unauthorized dams as long as the sky is blue, the grass is green and water flows downstream. They have more dam rights than I do to live and enjoy Spring Pond. If the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection lives up to its name, it should protect the natural resources (Beavers) and the environment( Beavers' Dams). So, as far as the beavers and I are concerned, this dam case can be referred for more elevated enforcement action right now. Why wait until 1/31/2003? The Spring Pond Beavers may be under the dam ice then and there will be no way for you or your dam staff to contact/harass them then.
In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention to a real environmental quality (health) problem in the area. It is the bears! Bears are actually defecating in our woods. I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the beavers alone. If you are going to investigate the beaver dam, watch your step! (The bears are not careful where they dump!) Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office.
THANK YOU
RYAN DEVRIES + THE DAM BEAVERS
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Einstein Is Watching You
I've been familiar with these optical illusions for a few years now, yet my abstract understanding of the phenomena can't make me subjectively experience them any differently than I did the first time. Same thing with a necker cube...
Very cool, and yet very creepy, huh?
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Very cool, and yet very creepy, huh?
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Penn & Teller Explain Sleight of Hand
In this short clip, Penn explains the 7 principles of magic while Teller masterfully brings them to life.
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Genghis Khan
This is a pretty cool documentary about the life of the legendary Mongol warrior Genghis Khan, and the vast empire he created through a mix of practical wisdom, cruelty and technological innovations.
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More on people and stupidity
According to this Reuters article, millions of people in Pakistan have been freaking out over a prank they received over their cell phones. The prank warns the naive believers that they have been infected with a deadly virus transmitted over their phones. Yeah, ridiculous... I know... and yet how many of you keep on forwarding those stupid e-mails for fear that your luck will change or so that your wish to bone your co-worker comes true? Just because you're not Pakistani doesn't mean you can't also be stupid...Anyway, many of the local mosques fell right into this inane trap and started warning their communities that people were being killed by a phone virus and that they should fear God's wrath. I didn't know God had a cell phone... maybe I'll call his complaint department one of these days and see what he can do about all the idiots around; hopefully he'll have a recall... or maybe I should e-mail him...
But the story doesn't end there... how could it?
Let's recap: people get the message, through their phones, that their phones are instruments of possible divine wrath, that they can become infected through them and die. What would you do? Me? If I were drunk enough to believe this crap, I'd probably throw my phone into the nearest lake as quickly as possible... problem solved.
But what do you think these geniuses did? That's right, they used their cell phones to call their cell phone providers and inquire further into the matter... Makes me feel warm inside.
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Why People Believe Americans Are Stupid
This starts out as hilarious, and soon turns to chillingly frightening...
So, how many answers did you mess up on? And how many of the jokes did you not get? You wouldn't know, would you? That's what I thought... go read something!
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So, how many answers did you mess up on? And how many of the jokes did you not get? You wouldn't know, would you? That's what I thought... go read something!
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Chris Rock on Rap
Oh man... my stomach hurts now :)
Doing laundry
Here are some instructions on how to do your laundry, especially if you are a college student/professor, courtesy of Olga.I can't wait till my mom sees this... ha ha ha.
In Memoriam - Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, one of the true literary geniuses of our time, passed away last night; he was 84. Vonnegut is the author of classic works such as Cat's Cradle, Welcome to the Monkey House, Galapagos, and Slaughterhouse 5, which was originally inspired by his personal experience of the fire bombing on the city of Dresden during World War II, in which more than 150,000 civilians were basically burned alive. Vonnegut has a war prisoner at the time, and had to clean up the gigantic human mess left behind.Click here to watch an interview of Vonnegut for PBS, in which he expresses some choice words concerning many issues of contemporary significance, especially as they relate to democracy and our government.
Finally, here is a video of a Second Life interview of Vonnegut for the radio program The Infinite Mind.
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Bullfrogs, the most unlikely predators
When you think of predators on the prowl, you probably think sharp claws, razor sharp teeth, amazing musculature, a sleek design, and so on. Well, meet one ravenous omnivore that looks nothing like a predator: the bullfrog.
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Dawkins - Religion: Root of All Evil?
Lots of interesting and thought provoking stuff worth entertaining.
Part 1 - The God Delusion
Part II - The Virus of Faith
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Here is Howard Zinn, author of the classics A People's History of the United States and You Can't Be Neutral On a Moving Train on his latest book, A Power Governments Cannot Supress.
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What We Call The News
Not only is this entertaining, it really does say a lot about the brain-dumbing crap that is the so-called 'news'
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E.O. Wilson's Wish to Change the World
As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; and yet we're steadily, methodically, vigorously destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.
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The true story of the Easter Bunny
Didn't mommy tell you?Oh, and once he's done with this, he's gotta go screw some chickens... Where else do you think the eggs come from? Rabbits?
The Century of the Self
From the BBC, here is Adam Curtis' acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty (videos at the bottom of the entry).To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?
The Freud dynasty is at the heart of this compelling social history. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis; Edward Bernays, who invented public relations; Anna Freud, Sigmund's devoted daughter; and present-day PR guru and Sigmund's great grandson, Matthew Freud.
Sigmund Freud's work into the bubbling and murky world of the subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society's belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man's ultimate goal.
Episode One: Happiness Machines
The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.
His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.
It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world.
Episode Two: The Engineering of Consent
The programme explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses.
Politicians and planners came to believe Freud's underlying premise - that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.
Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the centrepiece philosophy. The US government, big business, and the CIA used their ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people. But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation. Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.
Episode Three: There is a Policeman Inside Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed
In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud's, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.
Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people's minds by business and politics.
This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard's Erhard Seminar Training - into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation.
But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.
Episode Four: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self.
Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people's inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.
Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s.
The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn't realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them.
Here are the actual episodes:
Episode One: Happiness Machines
Episode Two: The Engineering of Consent
Episode Three: There is a Policeman Inside Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed
Episode Four: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
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Episode Two: The Engineering of Consent
Episode Three: There is a Policeman Inside Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed
Episode Four: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
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We Are Very Small
A while ago I posted a pretty cool computer generated animation showing the relative size of our planet with respect to other bodies in the universe (which you can find here). Here is more of the same:
Makes you feel special, doesn't it? Like God created the universe just for you...
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Makes you feel special, doesn't it? Like God created the universe just for you...
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The Evolution of Homer
This is a fun little introduction to the Simpsons.
The sad thing is that billions of years of evolution have resulted in Homer and creationists... Talk about an almost outright refutation of intelligent design theory!
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The sad thing is that billions of years of evolution have resulted in Homer and creationists... Talk about an almost outright refutation of intelligent design theory!
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Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
It's not often that I get to post philosophy videos, but here is a nice one on one of my favorite philosophers of all time: Friedrich Nietzsche.The documentary differs significantly from my own interpretation of his philosophy, and it concentrates a little too much, in my opinion, on the negative aspects of his personal life, and maybe way too much on his time post the breakdown, rather than on the scholarly nature of his ideas and the centuries of philosophers against whom he rebelled, but it's still nice to see that he is being introduced to the general public somehow.
The shots around the mountain are awesome, by the way...
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Painting the Mona Lisa
The original is amazing, even though we'll never know how accurate the painting was to the actual model, but more amazing is actually watching someone do an awesome replica of the original painting on a computer screen.
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Faith in Numbers
Here is a documentary by James Burke on the vicissitudes in the development and organization of systems, and how these can be influenced by logic, chance, unforeseen events, or genius.
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