I can stay as neutral as possible for a variety of subjects, but this is one that I can't help but choose a side in. I don't normally write personal entries in this journal, but...

Mom, Dad, I'd like you to take the time to watch this all the way through.

Do it at home where you can have the time and quiet to think. It is very important to me because this video shows the invisible pressure that surrounds us. Even here, where homosexuality is legal. It's important to me, who can be so clumsy with words, to have something to show you a taste of what it's like.

I have been lucky, but at the same time there are invisible pressures from society that people don't think about unless they're made to see.

Journey of life

"Strip away our technology and we're all still cavemen."

A look back at the origins of humans both biologically and culturally. A fascinating look on the biologies of our bodies and how they differ from chimpanzees. How did we survive those harsh times when a volcano's eruption blocked out the sun for six years? How is talking a biological function that we are willing to die for? The answers are all here. We created a cultural and intellectual revolution and saved ourselves from extinction.

( Video here. )

Egypt, the habit of civilization

A look back at Egypt from the time of the pharoahs to the time of the Greeks to its Islamic roots now. The cultures and the way of life that are presented here are still viable in today's Egypt in some ways and the civilzation that grew around it has aspects that have also been passed down throughout the ages. It talks about the great Pyramids as well as the Islamic Prophets, it explores the supposed tomb of Alexander the Great and talks about the strange mixture of the Greek and Egyptian gods, the mixing of cultures that became concrete with the onset of Islam within Egypt and monotheism.

Also, the commentator is kind of adorable. He is the Steve Irwin of Egyptologists, at one moment sober and academic. Then the next he is excited as a child in a way that makes you think that he's going to yell "Crikey!" at any moment.

( Video here. )

The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena

"We are Energy and we are forever."

This is a documentary from the seventies or eighties that explores phenomena as astral projection, telekinesis and telepathy. It is so old that it is really more of a joke than anything else as there are very few actual scientific facts. It presents their evidence, but rather than leading you towards a subtle conclusion, they will state their answer. It is poorly shot, poorly linked together and while it is interesting to watch, it doesn't give much in the way of actual scientific data.

There are very few scientists talking in this respect and I for one, would love to see Richard Dawkins take this host on. While watching this, please expect cheesiness. :p

( Video here. )

Home
A film by Yan Arthus-Bertrand

"We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate. The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet."

The embedding of this movie has not been allowed, but you can find it streaming on youtube here.

References:
HOME official website: http://www.home-2009.com
PPR: http://www.ppr.com
Carbon offset movie: http://www.actioncarbone.org
Good Planet: http://www.goodplanet.info

Dangerous Knowledge

"Beneath the rules of the world are the rules of science,
but beneath them, there are a far deeper set of rules,
a matrix of mathematics which explains the nature of the rules of science
and how it is that we can understand them in the first place."

What is the system that everything has to adhere to if there is no god? David Malone looks into the lives of four brilliant minds. Georg Cantor, who searched for the numerical value of infinity and was driven insane by the answer when he found the answer to his query. Ludwig Boltzman, who undermined the timeless undercurrent of physics in a time that craved certainty and introduced the ideas of entropy. Kurt Gödel, who was the first to realise that there are statements that are true that could never be mathematically proven and who then tries to tackle the same problem as Cantor with horrific results. Lastly, Alan Turing, who broke the German Enigma Code during World War II, but he was also the man who made the Incompleteness Theory even worse and made the first comparisons of the human mind to that of a computer.

"A timeless and perfect world never changes, but it is dead.
The real world, the thermodynamic world is alive
precisely because it is full of change."

( Video here. )

The Root of All Evil?
Part Two: The Virus of Faith

"Religion is an insult to human dignity.
Without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things,
but for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."

Dawkins claims to want to know why these children are being segregated and whether it is to stop them from finding reality. He argues that if a child does not shake off doctrination in their adult life, they are stuck in a state of infancy which leads to a sort of warped morality.

The journey is bewildering as Dawkins infiltrates Hell Houses which are productions set up by evangelicals in order to leave an "indelible impression upon [people's lives] that sin destroys". They bring the children in at 12 to watch shows that change their lives and are frightening and disturbing even to an adult watcher.

It also touches on homosexuality, finding that fundamentalists call it "a deeply confused lie", about a man who believes that Adulterers should be executed and the people who fight abortions and murder abortion doctors.

( Video here. )

The Root of All Evil?
Part One: The God Delusion

A UK television documentary that was written by Richard Dawkins, the God Delusion explores the belief of organized religions touching on Islam, Christian Fundamentalism, Catholicism and others. He argues that faith should be countered by reason and that religion is not reasonable. The faith that people put in the various religions kills ideas, separates people and at the same time, unites certain bits of people into a homogenous society. What this ultimately does is erases all trace of dischordant thought and the effect of religion on the world is that it could bring our scientific processes, our understanding of the world, to a halt.

While Dawkins is obviously not objective, he is reasonable and if his bitterness about religion comes across at times, it is understandable when you see the certainty of the people he faces. Science is about having an open mind and about expanding or changing theories in order to better understand our changing universe while Religion relies on staunch faith in facts that have not been proven. It was a fascinating documentary to watch that touches on not only the mindset of religious people, but the serious harm that can do the world politically.

( Video here. )

After the Talking Bird, the nice man at the Tavistock Clinic kept asking me why I stole books and birds, though I had only ever stolen one of each.

I told him it was about meaning, and he suggested, very politely, that might be a kind of psychosis.

"You think meaning is psychosis?"

"An obsession with meaning, at the expense of the ordinary shape of life, might be understood as psychosis, yes."

"I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not."

He twiddled his pencil. His nails were very clean.

"I am only asking questions."

"So am I."

There was a pause.

I said, "How would you define psychosis?"

He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil: Psychosis: out of touch with reality.

Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it.

In New Orleans, a Creole-style mansion in the midst of the French Quarter was the home of Dr. Louis Lalaurie and his wife Delphine. She was a beautiful woman, known for giving extravagant parties. Even though they seemed like a respectable pair, there was something strange about how submissive the slaves were to Mme Lalaurie. Even though she would be gentle to them while there were other people around, stories abounded including a young girl chased off a roof, slaves beaten and whipped beyond what was allowed.

Prompted by a dream, the head cook set the kitchen on fire in 1834. Mme Lalaurie seemed indifferent to the plight of the servants, who were locked inside the house and instead told the members of the volunteer fire brigade to save her valuables instead. When the firemen broke int a locked attic room, they were stunned by what they saw. According to "The Human Predator" by Katherine Ramsland there were several accounts that "...dead slaves were chained to the walls, but the piteous cries coming from cages revealed several who were still alive--if barely. Once the fire was contained, they were rescued, but some of them were in such a state, it might have been more merciful to let them die. Most had been severely maimed by medical experiments. One man had been surgically transformed into a woman, and one woman was so deformed she looked like a human crab. Her arms and leg bones had been broken and reset at odd angles. Another woman's arms had been amputated and her skin peeled off in a spiral pattern, while the lips of a third were sewn shut. A few had skin grafts and some had been dissected, with their organs still exposed. One man had a stick portruding from a hole in his skull. Scattered around the room were pails full of body parts, organs, and severed heads. Among those who had died were males whose face had been grotesquely disfigured."

Despite Ramsland's claims however, there is no proof of these grotesque crimes and a reading of the New Orlean Bee which mentioned that crime states that all the servants were found alive. It is most likely the work of sensationalists that have made this into the gruesome legend that it is.

References
Ramsland, Katherine. The Human Predator. Penguin Group, 2005.
The New Orlean Bee

It confuses me sometimes, how we as a society abhor pain. Pain is the ever present thread that links all of us together whether it be physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. Pain is the one thing that none of us go through the day without even if its measure is small. There is pain at birth, pain at death, pain for each step taken.

Yet we fear it. We desperately run away from the pain, drowning it in alcohol, in prescription medication, in pointless distractions.

We fear pain so much that we turn that fear into hate and allow that hatred to control us, making us reach for the aspirin each time something hurts. We protect our children from pain and by doing so, gift to them a rude, jagged and harsh awakening later on in their life.

Why is pain feared when it is the ability to withstand and face one's pain that gives the image of strength?

While I understand the need for medications and the need for relief from the most extreme of pains, I do not see the need for the constant abuse of that relief that I see daily. We have become weak, you know, as a society and through that, unable to stand up to the challenges that life throws at us.

When the end of ages comes, when the seas boil from the pollution that we have poisoned the atmosphere with or when we stand in a nuclear wasteland, we will despair. For we know not how to take our pain and train it, use it and through its use make it our strongest ally. When life hands us our defeats and knocks us from our knees, we won't know how to get back off our feet because we've never truly had to.

Pain is necessary to grow, it is a part of life that cannot and should not be avoided. To do so makes trivial matters become the end of the world and allows us to become apathetic to the truly heartbreaking events that are taking place in the world today.

And hand in hand with lack of pain, walks ignorance. It is our own pain that allows us to empathize with the pain of others, it is our own frustrations and desires that drive us to seek something beyond our current woes and better ourselves. It is pain that cleanses even as it tears, making us the stronger for it.

So in the end, what becomes more frightening? Pain or living a pain-free but useless and empty existence?

I know what my choice would be.

"Energy and persistence conquer all things."
- Benjamin Franklin

( This is what's making news this morning... )

( And in awesome space related things... )

( And finally, an etranger_esprit special report... )



Links:
Vulcan Tourism: http://www.vulcantourism.com/st-tours.html

In today's society, it's almost impossible to imagine a world without corporations. They have become a huge part of our economy, one that controls our banks, means of communication and even our water supply. To imagine a world without a stock market or the corporations that feed it is something that not many people can bring themselves to do. Even in a weak economy like we currently have, an economic recession that corporate greed played a large part in, thinking of a life without corporations can hardly be fathomed. Even amid the calls for reforms within the way corporations are run, the incredible amount of power that corporations have over our governments and over our very lives can be seen. The abuse of power is blatant, the frivolous spending thrown in the faces of tax-payers even as more money is asked for to save the dying industries. Since corporations have become an integral part of the global economy, their power must be checked in order to protect every day people from the unfair advantages that corporations have over them. The current system of restrictions on corporate governance has failed the western economies with the world's foremost superpower at the very forefront of this wave of economic collapse and through the actions of a few, entire nations have been brought to their knees more efficiently than any army could have dreamed of. In order to not dominate society, corporate restrictions must be tightened for the well-being of society as a whole rather than the capital gains of a few individuals.

( Corporate social responsibility (or CSR) is something that is widely disagreed upon. )
 
Works Cited:
"The business benefits of corporate social responsibility | Business Link." Business support, information and advice | Business Link. 05 June 2009 <http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?r.l1=1074404796&r.l3=1075408468&r.lc=en&type=resources&itemid=1075408491&r.l2=1074446322&r.s=sc>.
"Corporate Social Responsibility - Home." Industry Canada / Industrie Canada. 05 June 2009 <http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/csr-rse.nsf/eng/home>.
Daems, H. The Rise of Managerial Capitalism. Leuven UP, 1974.
Marshall, Clinard B., and Peter C. Yeager. Corporate Crime. Transaction, 2005.
Porter and Kramer, “The Link between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility,”
Putterman, Louis G., and Rand Kroszner. The Visible hand. Cambridge UP, 1996.
Reich, “Responsible Capitalism and Democracy”
Weiss, Tara, Matthew Kirdahy, and Klaus Kneale. "In Their Own Words: CEOs On CSR - Forbes.com." Forbes.com - Business News, Financial News, Stock Market Analysis, Technology & Global Headline News. 16 Oct. 2008. 2 May 2009 <http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/16/ceos-csr-critics-lead-corprespons08-cx_tw_mk_kk_1016ceos_slide_7.html?thisspeed=15000>.
Who Killed the Electric Car. Dir. Chris Paine. DVD. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2006.

Addtional Notes:
This is horribly cited. I lost a lot of marks (and rightfully so) for the sloppy citations and the poor writing, but the topic, I thought, was still interesting enough to warrant sharing.

1. The word "barbarian" whose etymological root is barbaros was originally used by ancient Greek travelers to designate foreigners who did not speak Greek because when they spoke their own languages, it sounded like sheep bleating. ("Baa baa")

( 2. There are at least 2,796 separate... )

References:
Berlitz, Charles. Native Tongues Castle Books: New Jersey. 1982.

"How the fuck did I work that out?"
- Pythagoras

( Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. )

References:
Wajnryb, Ruth. expletive deleted: a good look at bad language. Free Press: New York. 2005.

Links:
Cuss Control Academy: http://www.cusscontrol.com/
Swear Away: http://listen.to/swearing
Swearotron: http://www.rathergood.com/swearotron.html

Picture a world without affordable global communication. In a world that is increasingly becoming more and more connected, it is becoming difficult to imagine not being able to communicate with people at great distances. It is even more difficult to consider not knowing many people outside of a mile radius of where one lives. Technology is growing exponentially, making the world faster and more efficient with every passing day. Contrary to the way that the world was run in the past, today’s society is run by information instead of traditions and the pace of an information-run world is leaving people behind at an alarming rate. The ability to be connected with millions of other people with a simple click of a button is something that is seen as mundane now, ordinary. Most people do not realise how complicated these systems are, never mind how they are affected by these systems. In Art Spiegelman’s Maus II and Don DeLillo’s White Noise, it is easy to see how other people’s feelings and experiences can affect one’s own mentality. As a human being, one is shaped by his/her experiences and the experiences of those they know, but because they are bombarded with the experiences of other in the modern world, it is hard to figure out exactly where the shared identity of society ends and one’s own personal identity begins.

( In Maus II, Spiegalman is so affected by his father's story that it warps him too. All his life, his father's experiences have hung over him and skewed... )


References

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. Penguin Books: New York. 1986
Spiegelman, Art. MAUS II. Random House, Inc.: New York. 1986

A note on this essay:

For this course, all of the essays that we wrote were opinion papers. While we were supposed to use the text to prove our points, we did not need to anything more in the way of notation than to use a bibliography. Therefore, there are no notations in this essay.

There are very few people in the Western world today who do not know of capitalism and the role it plays in the world economy. In fact, even in the Eastern societies or even communist society where capitalism is portrayed as the destroyer of all things good, it plays its part. Capitalism is the driving force of the world economy along with the idea of scarcity. To participate in the world market today, a capitalist economy is practically required as the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, uses this economic system and through that power forces the world to follow suit. Adam Smith; considered by some to be the father of modern economics, had an optimistic view on the division of labour and all that comes with the idea. Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes on the other hand, believed that there were innate flaws within Smith's visions, flaws that could not be fixed by the “invisible hand” that is so often touted by economists of the laissez-faire doctrine. Upon closer inspection, the division of labour through Smith's ideology demeans the workers, creates an unsupportable economic climate and only gives more power to not the bourgeoisie that Marx predicted but to the incredibly powerful corporations that have become an immutable force within our world.

( Smith's Divison of Labour is something that is used even unto today, which can be strange to think about considering how long ago he penned the words for his treatise... )


Reference List


Heilbroner, Robert and Thurow, Lester. “Three Great Economists” from Economics Explained: Everything You Need to Know about How the Economy Works and Where it's Going. Touchstone Books. 1998.
Marx, Karl. “The Rise of the Political Economy and the Market” from Business History: Canada in the Global Community, 2nd edition, Captus Press. 2000.
Smith, Adam. “Excerpts from the Wealth of Nations” from The Wealth of Nations: Books I-III, Penguin Books 1986.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing these days is not that the world is full of inequalties, but that people flock to groups and sects that are "fighting" for rights. While this is an understandable and noble undertaking, it often seems that through efforts to find equality the distances between men and women, black and white, gay and straight are widened rather than bridged. These distinctions, these differences that are manufactured by our prejudices, culture and even our language are unnecessary.

For in the end, whatever our sex, race, financial status or religion, we are bound together solely by the fact that we are all human beings.