Challenger: The Untold Story

I hate to rain on yesterday's parade of pride in our space program and the rover missions to Mars, but it's worth keeping in mind that it hasn't always been this suave and smooth ride of awesomeness. In fact, when the Challenger Space Shuttle shocked the world with its explosion just over a minute after takeoff in 1986 (I'll never forget that surreal experience), the whole space program was put on trial, as the documentary below shows.

Fortunately for future missions, one of the people involved with the investigation of this tragedy was the always astute and fearless Richard Feynman, who would ultimately discover that the problems went beyond the engineering and technical design:

It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery? .. It would appear that, for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy."

And if you just can't get enough of him, check out the Richard Feynman tag.

.

Spirit and Opportunity on Mars

As part of the search for extraterrestrial life, and after a number of regrettable failures to safely land, the exploration of the chemical composition of the red planet has recently yielded a number of exciting and tantalizing discoveries which could not have been achieved if the Mars rovers hadn't outlasted the original estimates of their energy lifetime, so here is a high-definition visual lesson on the rover missions. Enjoy.

Check out more goodies in the space tag.

.

The Human Animal - The Human Zoo

Continuing his fascinating study of the human species, Desmond Morris explores the evolutionary and psychological implications of modern city-living, a kind of environment to which our genes have not yet had time to adapt. In the process, and despite seemingly vast cultural differences, Morris reveals a very odd species replete with arbitrary beliefs, rituals and traditions that work as mechanisms of social cohesion and group identity.

If you've ever thought that most traditions and cultural mores are arbitrary and ridiculous, you'd be totally right, but these kinds of behavior begin to make sense when you think of them at the meta level, as the social glue that binds a particular group of people together and provides a sense of identity and belonging to its members. And as you'll see, people go to insane extremes to maintain a balance between their individualism and their group identity.

Check out similar videos in the Desmond Morris tag.
.

Chappelle & Diogenes: Fuck It!

Cynicism today doesn't mean what it used to when it was a respectable philosophical school of thought in ancient Greece. Cynicism represented a virtuous life predicated on the spiritual benefits of leading a simple life lived in accordance with nature. This simple way of life required the rejection of superficial social conventions and materialistic desires, for these represent distractions from true spiritual enlightenment, and they create self-defeating expectations that preclude the possibility of achieving happiness.

The most famous of the cynics was Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub or a barrel and carried a lamp around during the day, claiming he was looking for an honest man. Diogenes famously asked Alexander the Great once to get out of his sunlight when the great conqueror told him he would grant him any wish he might have. If Alexander were not himself, he once declared, he would wish to be the philosopher Diogenes.

Now it seems Diogenes has created a partnership with Dave Chappelle to sing children's songs and teach the little rascals some lessons about the simple life :)

Check out other ways in which philosophy can contribute to your happiness, or not... fuck it...
.

Sigmund Freud - Analysis of a Mind

Challenging the materialism of his day after discovering that thought and ideas alone could result in the unexpected manifestation of physiological symptoms, and finding that sex and childhood trauma and frustration were somehow involved in a great deal of human conflict and misery, Sigmund Freud became the father of psychoanalysis.

Originally influenced by Nietzsche's intimations with the subconscious nature of human drives and instincts, Freud systematized these ideas and further developed them into a full-fledged theory of mind, replete with therapeutic approaches for the treatment of psychological and emotional illnesses. If anyone ever took the introspective motto 'know thyself' seriously, it was certainly Freud.

Many of his original ideas have not survived the test of time and scrutiny, however, but the impressive paradigm shift for which he was responsible, and his novel approach to the understanding of human psychology marks him as one of the true and most interesting geniuses of history, as you are about to find out in this fascinating documentary.

Check out the All Too Human tag for similar documentaries on Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre.

.

Socrates - A Life Worth Living

Singlehandedly, and asking what must have seemed at the time to be perfectly innocent questions, so trivial in fact as to not even be worth asking, the ancient philosopher Socrates revolutionized the world to come by showing that engaging in rational inquiry could produce conclusions about the world much different from those we have blindly inherited from our ancestors and our culture.

In numerous cases, he showed that our natural assumptions lead us to hold incoherent and inconsistent worldviews that ultimately contradict each other. The solution, according to Socrates, starts with the examination of your own mind and its internal prejudices. The unexamined life, he famously claimed, is not worth living.

Check out more goodies in the Socrates tag.
.

The Epic Journey of Sperm

You've learned all kinds of fascinating things about sex, reproduction and sperm here, here, here and everywhere in the sex tag. What you haven't seen yet, however, and this is going to blow your mind, are those puzzling instances whereby sperm become increasingly confused in their search for eggs to fertilize, but, as it turns out, there's a perfectly obvious reason why that's sometimes the case, as it's about to dawn on you...

Oh man... I haven't laughed that hard in a long time!

.

Mind Bites

The Enlightenment rescued humanity from a tradition of dogma and mysticism that precluded much needed intellectual and moral progress. To its credit, the Enlightenment revealed and celebrated our rational essence, and it showed us the promise of an intellectual potential we have been successfully pursuing for the past few centuries... despite ourselves.

The following slideshow reveals some beautiful photography, accompanied by small quotes and excerpts coming out of research that shows just how irrational our minds can be, how suggestible we are, and how quirky our experience of the world can become when one small module of our brain starts to malfunction.

Make sure to view it in full-screen mode.

For an interactive version, check out Mind Bites.

.

I Have a Dream...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the famous civil-rights activist who delivered the classic speech embedded below, was born 80 years ago. To me, one of the most impressive aspects of this social revolution is that many of those who saw him deliver this speech are still alive, and although there is still a lot of work left to do, these people have experienced the full force of racism and its gradual decay over the last few decades. Tomorrow, they will experience the inauguration of the first black president of the United States...

.

Richard Dawkins: Growing Up in the Universe - Designed and Designoid Objects

In the first episode of this lecture series (Waking Up in the Universe), we saw Dawkins awaken his audience to the wonder and the mystery surrounding us everywhere. Today's lecture reveals the absolutely brilliant and subtle insight behind Darwin's discovery of the process of evolution through natural selection and the empirical proof he provided to support Hume's objections to the idea of intelligent design: the appearance of conscious and deliberate design in nature can only be rationally explained through a cumulative and gradual process that starts with simplicity. To explain complexity through an intelligent designer begs the question, since it leaves unanswered the embarrassing question of the infinitely greater complexity of such a being.

Instead of relying on high-minded philosophical reasoning, awesome as it is, Dawkins explains these wonderful insights to the lucky children attending this Faraday lecture through the use of a great number of intelligently designed examples :) from the natural world and computer models.

Squeeze... what a perfect name!

Click here to see the full set of lecture series.
.

The Evolution of Robots

It's taken about three and a half billion years of arduous evolutionary nail, tooth and claw competition, and the extinction of countless species who didn't make the cut, to give rise to a species capable of finally producing hot fembots...

You know you'd totally nail one if you could...
.

100 Greatest Discoveries - Astronomy

Looking up at the sky has had the effect of making mankind think in abstractions and wonder what our place in the large scheme of things is. Frankly, I'm always suspicious of the question of whether we are alone: to me, whether there is more life in the universe or not, we have each other, and that's good enough to keep me contended. Given the great diversity of life on this planet, I don't feel alone one bit. In fact, I could do without certain forms of life, if you know what I mean...

In any case, if you need a refresher course on some of the greatest scientific discoveries in astronomy, most of which took place in the 20th century, here is your chance to catch up with the basics.

Check out the rest of the 100 Greatest Discoveries
.

Life of Mammals - A Winning Design

The evolution of mammals, roughly about one hundred million years ago, has given rise to varieties of species capable of filling up virtually every niche on earth, from the hospitable environment of the jungle to the desert, the icy poles, the oceans and even the air. In the first episode of this documentary series, Sir David Attenborough takes us on a journey to learn more about these warm-bloodied creatures, starting with the peculiar and fascinating evolution of marsupials in Australia and South America, and moving on to the more familiar placental varieties to which we ourselves belong, showing in the process the implications to which these different adaptations have lead.

In case you're wondering, yes, there will be koalas, kangaroos and platypuses...

Check out more videos like this in the Attenborough tag.
.

The Examined Life - Bringing Philosophy to the Streets

One of the essential features of philosophy is its relentless habit of exploring the presuppositions through which we make sense of our experience, revealing the conditions required to live coherent lives, and pushing us to become better and more courageous human beings. None of this would be possible without taking seriously Socrates' famous idea that "the unexamined life is not worth living."

Here is an example of those simple questions that can turn your view of the world and yourself upside down.

If you're curious about Peter Singer's paper Famine, Affluence, and Morality, you can find it here.

This documentary should be out sometime in February; make sure you don't miss it. 

.

Religulous

Unfortunately, it seems the video clip in the entry of the last scene of this documentary, which I posted a few days ago, has been removed from youtube and google video. Not to worry: today you get to watch the whole documentary... unless it also get taken down from this site, so watch it while you still can.

There is a part of me that wants to blame Bill Maher for creating straw men and caricatures of people's beliefs, which he can then easily refute and ridicule. The sad thing, however, is that a great number of people do have these sorts of beliefs --enough people, in fact, that they have acquired so much political power, they basically run a large part of our country and many others. And when nuclear launch codes and intercontinental planes are made available to paleolithic minds, the prospects can't be good...

It's easy to beat someone silly, but wouldn't it be great if we could also beat sense into people?
.

The Human Body - An Everyday Miracle

Thanks to our friends at RadioLab, you now know why men produce so much sperm. In today's episode of this fascinating documentary series about the human body, Sir Robert Winston takes us through the perilous journey sperm must embark in order to fertilize an egg, the odds stacked up against an egg traveling down the fallopian tubes, the complex evolutionary process of competition and cooperation between mother and parasite/child, the stages of fetal development and the changes that the mother undergoes as her body readies itself for that experience of reproduction unique to women. Not sure who's got it better...

To watch the entire documentary, download the Veoh Web Player.

Oh, did I forgot to mention you'd see a live birth :) ?

.

When Base Jumping Is Just Not Rad Enough...

Man's dream of flying was first expressed in the myth of the famous inventor Daedalus and his son Icarus, a youth overcome by the giddiness of flight and who tragically forgot his father's advise not to fly too close to the sun with the wings he had crafted for their escape from Crete.

Fast-forward two millennia and you get a bunch of guys who find base jumping boring and decide to bring it to the next level, if you can imagine such a thing...

Related videos:

Base Jumping in the documentary Planet Earth

Leonardo daVinci's invention of a parachute

.

Bill Maher on Religion

There is little more dangerous in this world than a person or group blinded by ideological obsession, and few ideologies are more pernicious than religion. By their very nature, religious beliefs must see this life as a means to some other end for the sake of which present sacrifices are not only permitted but sometimes demanded.

In the video clip below, Bill Maher shows some of these dangers and talks to seemingly regular people who would rejoice and see a silver lining behind a mushroom cloud because they think that's a sign that vague ancient prophecies are about to be fulfilled.

Now, if you must be a fundamentalist, you should become a member of The Church of the Holy Undecided :)

.

The Tell-Tale Heart

Most of us consider ourselves sane, and at least some of us are probably wrong. After a small involuntary hiatus, we're back in action today, with a wonderfully, if archaic, stylized animated adaptation of the classic short story by Edgar Allan Poe describing the lengths to which a man will be tricked by his own obsessive mind, the extent to which he will deny his own insanity, and the poor old man who becomes the victim of this driving obsession.

Check out other works of literature, such as:

The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)

The Gospel According to Mark (Jorge Luis Borges)

Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orson Wells)

.