Inside Nature's Giants - Crocodiles

Crocodiles have been around virtually unchanged (externally at least) for a very long time, at least since the time of the dinosaurs. We mammals may think of ourselves as the present culmination of the evolutionary process, but crocodiles achieved the equivalent of anatomical perfection millions of years ago, and their incredible resilience seems unaffected even by the worst of environmental catastrophes.

Sporting underwater stealth technology, massive teeth and the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom, these reptiles are ferociously successful predators: once they grab a hold of you, there's no escaping, and death is inflicted either by drowning or by shredding you to pieces... and then swallowing your whole body. Thanks to one of the most intriguing and sophisticated heart systems found in nature, they also have the ability to digest flesh, bones and hooves as if they were cake. What does the heart have to do with digestion? You're about to find out; it's really quite remarkable.

Plenty of predators have gone the way of the dodo, however, so there's gotta be more to crocodiles than just their superior hunting skills. As you may already imagine, their tough armor-plated exterior provides them with protection from external injuries, and their advanced immune system protects them from diseases that could easily kill other species.

Check out the carnage that a group of gazelles are subjected to by a pack of hungry crocs :(

And if you want to learn more about nature's giants, check out the elephant and the giraffe.
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Justice - What Is the Right Thing To Do?

Episode 9. Affirmative Action is a notoriously contentious social, ethical and political issue, so before we let our emotions get the better of our judgment, it may be worth our time to consider its raison d'être: it stems from the recognition that our current system of distribution of goods, talents and opportunities is largely determined by historical antecedents that are less than fair. In some instances, they are the direct result of the exploitation of some groups by others. Everyone should agree so far.

The disagreement begins when we consider what, if anything, should be done today in order to deal with these injustices. Is affirmative action justified as a mechanism aimed to correct the reality of currently unfair social and educational conditions? Do we have a moral obligation to compensate for historical injustices such as slavery, segregation and discrimination? Do we have a social obligation to promote diversity? Do affirmative action programs unfairly discriminate against individuals who are not directly responsible for any past injustices? Are individuals' rights violated when universities do not accept them simply because they can't tan very well :)? These are just some of the questions explored in the first lecture below.

Having demonstrated the difficulty of understanding questions of distributive justice from the point of view of modern conceptions of justice based on individual rights, Professor Sandel then turns to Aristotle, whose teleological approach suggests that in order to figure out how goods and opportunities should be distributed, we ought to consider the telos (goal, end or purpose) of what is being distributed. For instance, the best flutes should be given to the best flute players. Why? Because that's the telos of flutes, that's what they're for.

Justice, according to the Aristotelian account, is a question of aligning a person's arete (virtue or excellence) with his/her appropriate role. High political offices, accordingly, should be given to those with the best judgment and the greatest civic virtue. Yes, something along the way went very, very wrong :)

Episode list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
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It's the Sextopus!

If this doesn't make you want to study marine biology, I don't know what will :)
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If Earth Had Rings Like Saturn

I personally think that the first time you see the planets through an ordinary telescope, Saturn takes the cake as the most beautiful to watch, and it can all be explained in two words: planetary rings.

Imagine how beautiful and interesting the sky would look like if the Earth had its own set of rings. If you can't imagine it, here's a nice video to help you visualize it, and as if that weren't cool enough, it is accompanied by the great sound of Schubert's Ave Maria.

If you're interested in creating these rings, I got enough crap in my room to get us started :)

Hat tip to Carol!
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Nature's Great Events - The Great Salmon Run

Pacific Ocean Salmon have it rough... when they reach adulthood, they embark on a journey thousands of miles long to the very same place in which they were spawned a few years earlier. It's still something of a great mystery how they manage to orient themselves so effectively, but this instinct drives them so powerfully that they will undergo great risks to complete their life cycle. My guess is that, compared to salmon, even Sysiphus had it easy...

The problem for the salmon, apart from the tremendous personal investment and the sheer difficulty of the suicidal one-way mission, is that plenty of other animals (whales, sharks, eagles, bears, foxes, sea lions, etc.) have come to learn of their great migration and systematically place themselves in strategic position for the hunt. What ultimately ensues for these poor fish is a massacre of gigantic proportions, as their last few seconds alive are spent being torn to shreds by hungry bears and other predators.

But that's just some of the amazing footage you'll be able to watch in this fascinating and very educational documentary narrated by David Attenborough. Watch out for some amazing footage of eagles hunting salmon... it's simply incredible.

I'm definitely thinking sushi right now :)
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Darwin: The Most Revolutionary Scientist of All Time

150 years ago today, Chuck Darwin published his famous On the Origin of Species, so it's appropriate to dedicate today's entry to the brilliance and imaginative power of this radical intellectual. In the following thought-provoking lecture, Richard Dawkins persuasively argues that Darwin may very well deserve the title of most revolutionary scientist ever, even more so than Newton or Einstein. A bold claim indeed!

Ideas about evolution go all the way back to the Pre-Socratics in ancient Greece; the argument from design had already been refuted on logical grounds by the Scottish philosopher David Hume; and there may even be authentic claims of priority for the concept of natural selection by other naturalists. So what makes Darwin so damn special?

Dawkins argues that a proper understanding of evolution by natural selection requires the crossing of four intellectual bridges. With the exception of Alfred Russell Wallace, who managed to cross the first three bridges, even those who may have a legitimate claim to the priority of natural selection, failed to see through the power of the idea of natural selection and its implications. Darwin, the argument continues, was the first person to independently cross all four.

Even more impressively, he also came tantalizing close to crossing a fifth bridge that would not be properly understood until the development of population genetics in the 20th century: what is normally referred to by biologists as "the modern synthesis" of Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics. Dawkins refers to this paradigm shift as Digital Darwinism.

Click here to learn more about the power of the digital revolution.

Al Gore to the Rescue!

When those in office lack the political will to make things happen, even after the majority of the population has made itself heard loud and clear after the last major election, it's time for Al Gore to take matters into his own hands and let it rip :)

And if you don't help, he'll eat you! :)
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Justice - What Is the Right Thing To Do?

Episode 8. Philosopher John Rawls asks us to consider what formal principles of justice rational and mutually disinterested persons would choose in the original position of equality behind the veil of ignorance. If you didn't know your own place in society, the frequency of people like you, or the original distribution of natural assets and abilities, there is always the chance that once the veil is removed, you might find yourself among the least advantaged, and so the rational principles of justice would be one of maximal basic liberties for all persons and one of income distribution that would maximally benefit those worst off.

The first objection you may want to throw against Rawls is that it appeals to the lowest common denominator (I know I did the first time I read his work). Most of us agree that when it comes to justice, however, we should ignore from our considerations morally arbitrary variables over which we have no control, like race or age, for instance. One might want to conclude, therefore, that a truly fair system would be one based on merit and effort, but Rawls brilliantly points out that even a meritocracy doesn't go far enough in discarding morally arbitrary considerations of variables for which we have no control: even the naturally gifted can't claim credit for their success, since their success is based on factors as arbitrary as birth order. In a Harvard classroom full of students who most likely believe in a meritocracy, an impromptu poll hilariously proves Rawls' point :)

This analysis leads to a discussion of fair distribution of wealth, income and opportunities in which Rawls' egalitarianism must contend, in a truly fascinating set of thought-provoking arguments, against alternative systems of utilitarianism, libertarianism and meritocracy. Finally, and in order to drive his point home, Rawls draws an important and subtle distinction between desert and entitlements to legitimate expectations, and argues that those at the bottom of society are no less worthy simply because they lack the talents that their particular society happens to favor. In a truly just society, Rawls concludes, the naturally advantaged must share with the least advantaged.

Whatever conclusions they draw, this is how politicians should deliberate! :)

If you're curious about the birth-order effect, check out Charlie Rose and Stephen Colbert talking with Frank Sulloway about it.

Episode list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
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The Story of God - Life, the Universe and Everything

Humanity has been curious about the nature of the universe and our place in it for a very long time. That curiosity, as well as our large heads and the fact we are big fat copycats, might be one of the reasons we stand in such a peculiar relation to the rest of the biological world: able to manipulate our environment to our needs instead of just adapting to it.

Before the invention of the philosophical and scientific methods, however, our ancestors simply didn't know how to get objective answers to their most pressing questions: they didn't have the intellectual tools to tell the difference between reasonable hypotheses and arbitrarily made up ones. Their ignorance about the natural world led them to postulate the existence of a transcendent reality somehow separate and inaccessible from ordinary experience, and because we humans love to anthropomorphize, we imagined that this transcendence resembled our own petty wants and needs in a great variety of ways.

These arbitrary inventions go by the name of religion and spirituality, and because we lacked the intellectual sophistication to realize they were the products of our own imagination, we made the mistake of ascribing to them more reality than the reality of our actual experience and of thinking that this life is some sort of test for a future life for which we have absolutely no evidence :)

In this documentary series, Lord Robert Winston explores very sympathetically the origins of a number of such religions, including the Aztecs and their gruesome human sacrifices.

If you want to learn about the history of our emancipation from these imaginary chains, check out Jonathan Miller's documentary series Atheism: A Brief History of Disbelief.
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A Drop of Water

There is so much about the world we are completely unaware of simply as a function of the slow speed of our perception. If we were to release a water drop into a pool of water, for instance, it would seem to us as though the drop were being instantaneously absorbed into the pool. But if we manage to slow down our experience of this process, as the video clip below shows, we would very soon come to realize that what actually happens is way more interesting and deserving of a more sophisticated and elegant explanation.

Learn all about the invisible world in this great documentary.
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Kurt Vonnegut - Harrison Bergeron

"All men are not created equal. It is the purpose of the Government to make them so." That is the premise of this film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's brilliant short story: Harrison Bergeron (which you can read in less than five minutes here).

The story tells the tale of a society intent not simply with achieving equality of opportunity or equal consideration before the law: the goal is to make all citizens equal in every possible respect. Because of our long history of bigotry and discrimination, we might be inclined to think that equality at all costs has got to be worth worth any price.

But of course (and this is why only Vonnegut could have written this story), since it's impossible to make the less intelligent and talented more intelligent and talented, the only way of achieving perfect equality is to reduce humanity to its lowest common denominator until we are all equally mediocre. Welcome to the future: it's a no brainer :)

Leave it to Kurt Vonnegut to vindicate my elitism :)
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Face-Off With a Deadly Predator

Many of the documentaries I post on this blog, especially those featuring animals, display incredible photography, the kind that must require weeks or even months of patience, careful planning and a touch of serendipity. Many of these photographers and camera people often expose themselves to great danger in order to get the money shots.

Here is a short story of photographer Paul Nicklen and what happened to him when he tried to photograph a gigantic and dangerous leopard seal, the kind that weighs around a thousand pounds and whose jaws can crack bones like they're pudding... if pudding could be cracked :)

Check out the amazing and heart-breaking story of a leopard that found a baby baboon in a mother she had killed for dinner. Nature will never cease to impress, huh?
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The Matrix as a Silent Film

When they directed The Matrix and its sequels, the Wachowski brothers were confronted with a dilemma: their fantastic sci-fi story required visual and special effects that simply did not exist at the time. What to do?

Hey, the fact that there was no calculus didn't stop Newton from inventing it so he could get on with his scientific research. Similarly, the Wachowski brothers decided to invent the revolutionary technology required to bring their vision to fruition, and they deserve a lot of credit for that.

But what if they had decided to shoot the film during, say, the 1930's? Here is what it might have looked like :)

Here's the movie based on Charlie Chaplin's autobiography, starring Robert Downey Jr.
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Justice - What Is the Right Thing To Do?

Episode 7. As we saw in the previous episode, the essence of Kant's categorical imperative is its absolute and universally binding force: since the moral status of our actions does not depend on consequences or contingent conditions, the moral law admits of no exceptions. One of the famous objections to Kant's theory came from the philosopher Benjamin Constant's case of the inquiring murder: you hide your friend in your house because a murderer is trying to kill him; the murderer knocks on your door and asks you if you know where your friend is. Kant tells us that it is always wrong to lie, but can it really be moral to betray your friend for the sake of honesty? Kant was consistent enough to bite the bullet, and not for any trivial reason...

Professor Sandel uses the famous case of Bill Clinton's attempt to dodge the question regarding his marital infidelity to begin a discussion and analysis of white lies and misleading truths in light of Kant's moral theory and his distinction of human beings' dual nature as empirical and intelligible agents.

The second lecture provides an introduction to John Rawls' idea that principles of justice would be those agreed to by mutually disinterested rational beings in an original position behind a veil of ignorance. This is a hypothetical scenario that points to the need to preclude any purely subjective and morally arbitrary considerations that might motivate individuals to enter the social contract with the prospect of securing some unfair advantage for themselves.

In presenting the basic idea behind Rawls' contractarianism, Professor Sandel provides a series of amusing examples of real and imaginary cases, mixed with an analysis of the conditions that could render contracts morally binding. As always, nothing is as obvious as it seems at first glance.

Episode list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
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From Poison to Cow Dung - A Quick History of Philosophers' Deaths

For all the diversity of their thought and the uniqueness of their creativity, there's at least one thing all philosophers have in common: eventually they all die. It's like we're cursed! :)

Unlike religion, which seeks to provide comfort, solace and hope to its followers, regardless of the truth of the matter, philosophy approaches the subject of death quite differently: it is better to confront death in the face, and learn to deal with it, than to hide and delude oneself with agreeable fantasies and half-baked made-up stories.

The recognition of our mortality creates the possibility of living authentically and meaningfully because the fragility of life imposes on the living the responsibility to live well while living is still possible.

Another thing many philosophers have in common: interesting deaths ranging the spectrum from the traumatic and the violent to the ridiculous and the ironic. In the following short excerpt, philosopher Simon Critchley documents (with varying degrees of accuracy and humor) some of the most notable of these cases. Word to the wise: stay away from angry Christian mobs, especially if they're carrying oyster shells :)

Go here for the full lecture. It's well worth the time investment.

Is the Catholic Church a Force for Good?

When we think about the time the Romans would unleash hungry and fierce lions on devout Christians, we tend to squirm, become morally outraged, and express our righteous indignation against the cruelty that one group of human beings would arbitrarily inflict on another group. Forgetting for a second the pain those poor people had to endure, though, you gotta admit that must have been a great show to watch! :)

Well, without any of the blood, today we have the intellectual version of that massacre in all its delicious unfairness, as Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry pounce with great wit and eloquence on the unsuspecting, oblivious and ill-prepared Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, and Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe, as the latter two desperately try to argue (against the backdrop of its long and sustained history of moral corruption, bigotry, antisemitism, homophobia and misogyny) that the Catholic Church is a force for good. I can't remember the last time I watched a debate this awesome :)

Man, was the Archbishop trying to help the opposition? At least half his answers undermined his own position...

And Stephen Fry is gay??? I had no clue... I guess no gaydar for me :)
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Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan would have turned 75 yesterday. I can't help but wonder what the state of the world and our general attitude toward science would be today without his courageous quest to popularize science and inspire skepticism, critical thinking and awe at the human condition in light of our scientific understanding of the cosmos and our place in time and space. I'm not sure there's anyone to this day who can simultaneously make you feel so insignificant and so special in the same stroke.

The following video is a mix of images, animations and real footage set to Carl Sagan's reading of one of his books explaining the human drive for exploration and discovery. It culminates in his now famous meditation about Earth, that pale blue dot caught in a beam of sunlight, as seen from the edges of the solar system.

Check out more Carl Sagan goodies here.
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Chaplin

Born from humble beginnings rooted in deplorable poverty and a broken home, Charles Spencer Chaplin would one day rise to worldwide prominence through the artistry of his comedic genius and the newly invented ability to disseminate information, art and entertainment through film.

Originally born in London, Chaplin emigrated to America when in his twenties, and soon became an icon of silent films, which proved particularly popular because they could be understood not only by American citizens but by waves of immigrants and international audiences. In a world torn by World War I, the Great Depression and Hitler's rise to power, Charlie Chaplin brought relief and laughter to millions when they needed it most.

Many of his films, though comedic and intended for popular audiences, drew their inspiration from his liberal philosophy, from his own experience with poverty, and from his sympathy for what he considered the oppressed working class. His leftist leanings, as well as his association with socialist and communist figures, caused the ire of zealous paranoid conservatives who could not stand the ambiguity of his humor. During the McCarthy era, director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover eventually managed to have Chaplin exiled from America.

This film, starring Robert Downey Jr. and a great cast, tells Chaplin's story.

If you're not in the US, here is a workaround to view the film.

Kind of ironic that such a professional perfectionist would totally suck in his personal life...
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Jon Stewart Nails Glenn Beck

I don't know if you've had the patience to watch Glenn Beck make a complete ass of himself during the past year with his dramatic accusations, preposterous associations, exaggerations, inventions, convulsions, fear mongering, crying, non-sequiturs, ad hominems and complete lack of coherent thought. Sorry, but that's a year of your life and IQ points you'll never get back, my friend...

Anyway, Jon Stewart brilliantly condenses an entire year of Glenn Beck mental diarrhea into a few minutes of comedy genius (minus the retarded and cruel boiling of a live frog to make a stupid point).

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If only Glenn Beck would get into a fatal traffic accident... :)
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The Story of Maths - The Language of the Universe

Nature and its laws seem to be governed by patterns which can be described mathematically, and human beings have been hard at work trying to make sense of such patterns for a very long time.

In this first episode of the documentary series The Story of Maths, Marcus du Sautoy (who recently succeeded Richard Dawkins as the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University), traces the history of math, from its inception in Egypt as the solution to practical problems having to do with land distribution and taxation, to the development of numeric placeholders in ancient Babylon, to the culmination of mathematics into an analytic and logical system in the hands of the Greeks. The devil, of course, is in the details, and the details are exquisitely fascinating, as you are about to find out.

Related videos:

The Story of 1, with Terry Jones from Monty Python

A water-tight proof of the Pythagorean Theorem

Carl Sagan on the pre-socratics and on Plato's influence on Kepler

The Genius of Archimedes

The hilarious Tragedy of Being Zero
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Remember, Remember... the 5th of November

We're probably all guilty, English majors included, of occasionally laughing at English majors. But here is a little vindication for language enthusiasts in the form of some kick-ass alliteration from V for Vendetta.

And here is the original scene, accompanied by an epic score.

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Picking Up an Existentialist Babe

Suppose you're wandering around an art museum and you stumble upon a suicidal hottie who's read a bit too much Sartre or Camus for her own good and who's more than overwhelmed with existential angst.

If there's no hope of talking her out of her suicidal despair, what should you do? In this hilarious clip, Woody Allen teaches us that desperate times call for desperate measures and quick thinking :)

At least he didn't find her in Franz Kafka's International Airport :)

Hat tip to Tony!
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God's Identity Crisis

Religions are wacky in all sorts of ways, but at the heart of Christianity there is a logical problem so deep, one has to wonder how on earth it's possible for people to actually believe it... and no, I'm not talking about the fact God basically raped Mary and knocked her up (yes, rape: she never consented and was only informed about it after the fact). But that's a moral problem, not a logical one.

The logical problem arises out of the identity relationship between God and Jebus: one is the father, the other the son, and magically they are still somehow supposed to be the same person. When philosophers analyze the question of personal identity, we argue that one of the logical rules any criterion of identity must satisfy is the transitive rule of identity: if A=B, and B=C, then A=C.

Now, a father/son relationship is precisely NOT an identity relation, since they are supposed to be numerically distinct persons. In other words, it would make no sense to say that if grandpa = father, and father = son, then grandpa = son. There's all kinds of wacky things that could turn out to be true: you could be your baby's mother and sister, for instance. Hell, you could even be your grandpa's son and grandson simultaneously, but you can't be your own father...

If you think about it from the point of view of a causal relationship, the matter is just as mysterious: how exactly is it possible for someone to cause his own existence without already presupposing the existence of said being? Some may call it a divine and transcendent mystery; I call it a logical contradiction!

Don't feel bad if you're confused, though... so is Mr. Deity, and he's God :)

Who's on third? George Bush! :)
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Victim in Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck

Losing a loved one in a fatal accident is obviously difficult, especially when it's your innocent and life-loving child, but The Onion reports that what really sucks, the real heart-wrenching tragedy, is when the victim wasn’t Glenn Beck :)

Glenn Beck a fat dumb Mormon fuck-face? Ah... when you must resort to fake news to get the truth :)
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Justice - What Is the Right Thing To Do?

Episode 6. No ethics course can be complete without an exploration of one of the strangest and most important moral theories out there: Immanuel Kant's deontology (or duty-based morality). Kant argues that morality is not simply a matter of social convention, nor the expression of personal tastes or sentiments, nor the consent to enter a social covenant, nor the result of a cost-benefit analysis, nor even the submission to God's will. If morality is none of these things, you might wonder, what can it be, and how can it be defended? Well, that's one of the very many reasons why Kant is a genius...

In these two lectures, Professor Sandel explains the various elements that Kant must juggle in order to find the synthetic a priori judgment that will allow him to vindicate the objectivity or morality. Sandel also explains Kant's test for determining whether our actions have moral worth, the famous categorical imperative.

Agree or disagree with Kant, you are in for a thought-provoking treat :)

Ironically, part of the reason Kant's theory may seem so strange is that is the philosophical expression of popular and ordinary intuitions about morality, as Nietzsche concisely explains in this quote from The Gay Science:

Kant's joke.— Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would dumfound the common man, that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the scholars in support of popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for the people.

Episode list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

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