"Creating Freedom: The Lottery Of Birth" (2013): Not All Documentaries Are Created Equal, colon A Rope Of Sand

 "Creating Freedom: The Lottery Of Birth" (2013)
Directed by Raoul Martinez & Joshua van Praag

I downloaded this documentary after IMDb'ing Steven Pinker to see if he was in anything I hadn't already seen. I found Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth and saw that Daniel Dennett was also interviewed for the film. Too bad they're only featured for about three or four minutes in the doc just to say that humans are tribal and have evolved to trust their parents (and by extension, authority figures in general). Beyond that, there's little reason to give this documentary your time. Curiously, and despite the title, the real implications of the lottery of birth is scarcely explored. No, we do not choose the time, place, and to whom we are born. But the documentary makes only a passing reference to this rather obvious (though seldom recognized) fact before moving on to how none of this would matter if we were only able to overcome those nefarious social systems put in place to prevent us from being truly free... WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

If you already know a little about the human animal through the writings of smart people, this does not offer much in the way of anything new. The narration is a little over the top, and vaguely conspiratorial at times, what with references to shadowy Elites meeting in secret boardrooms trying to figure out why people are so hard to control in a democracy. The interviews with prominent scientists and other authors serve only to create a tenuous link between what we can reasonably say about what humans are actually like and the filmmaker's outlandish narrative about how society is organized to limit your freedom (as though there is such an attainable thing in the first place).

If you're interested in the brain, read something like Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works, or even something with a narrower scope like Michael Gazzaniga's Who's In Charge?. For the psychology of the self, check out Bruce Hood's The Self Illusion. And to learn more about how and why individuals slip easily into roles they otherwise would never imagine they could (Milgram experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, Abu Ghraib, etc), pick up Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect. These are just a few titles off the top of my head, and could probably name a few more if I put in the effort, but these books are a good place for the uninitiated to start as any.

Plane Drain

It has been a rough year for airplanes. More specifically, it's been a rough week. This torrent of tragedies has garnered about as much media attention as is allowable against the backdrop of the Israeli ground invasion in Gaza. That these accidents have all occurred in a startlingly short period of time is purely coincidental. I haven't checked, but I'm sure the interwebs is abuzz with various conspiracy theories.

But more importantly, the recent loss of life from airline crashes may skew the perception of how safe air travel really is. Looking at the numbers, deaths from plane crashes has been trending lower in the last decade or so. However, 2014 is proving to be an aberration:

(Chart from The Upshot)

It's easy to see from the graph that air travel related deaths peaked prior to the 1980s, but has been decreasing ever since. Planes have never been safer, despite the anomaly that this year is turning out to be. Regardless of the news coverage of the recent disasters, there is no reason to fear air travel. As a matter of comparison, an average of 2 500 Canadians per year died in motor vehicle traffic accidents between 2007-2011. This is not an insignificant number, especially when you consider that the airline fatalities represent global totals. I don't even want to look at the global number of car deaths per year.

In an ironic twist, some people choose to avoid air travel in response to hearing about plane crashes. They opt to drive instead, and thus increase their risk of injury or death. This is precisely what happened after 9/11 resulting in and esitmated 1 600 more traffic deaths in America than would normally be expected. Granted, this phenomenon was also bound up with the fear of terrorist attacks, but the worry was directed primarily at airline safety.

It is necessary to put the terrible news about the recent plane crashes in context and bring some perspective to the number of fatalities. Don't be afraid to fly. It's still much safer than driving. Whenever you get worked up about your next flight, try to remember how many planes take off and land all over the world every day without any trouble at all. Normal, mundane things that go as planned simply don't make the news. Oddly, neither do most motor vehicle accidents unless they're particularly large or dramatic, or if you live in a small town. And if more people choose to fly, that means more room on the roads for motorists -- which makes everyone safer!

What Does Money Mean Anyway: Alan Hull's "Pipedream" (1973)

Oh Anna, what does money mean anyway?
I've got more than all that
I can smile when it's a rainy day
I can see what's behind the big money game they all must play.

Turns out Pipedream by Alan Hull is a terrific album. And I probably never would have listened to it were it not for the rather odd cover art. As I was thumbing through many boxes of vinyl records (purchased as an entire lot with the intent to resell some potential hidden gems), the surreal image on the sleeve of a man smoking his own nose through a pipe like a dragon eating its own tail demanded that I spin the record contained therein.

I was not disappointed. Not that I had any expectations. I had never heard of Alan Hull before. After looking the album up on Wikipedia, I read that Pipedream was Hull's first solo album after the band Lindisfarne broke up. I don't know who they were, either. But as I dropped the needle, it became obvious that I had stumbled upon a darn good record -- and an original UK pressing on the Famous Charisma Label to boot!

There's some sturdy folk-rock songwriting on display here. Specifically, "Justanothersadsong", "Money Game", and "Country Gentleman's Wife" are standout tracks. The harmonica on "STD 0632" is reminiscent of Neil Young. By the time the album closes with "I Hate To See You Cry", Hull eschews tighter vocal arrangements and begins to throw his voice around all over the place with reckless abandon. It's a fitting closer, and the solo piano is a nice touch.

It's a solid record that I find myself spinning intermittently with some eagerness. What a cool find. Thanks, vinyl!

What Can Vampires Tell Us About Humanity? Some Pointless, Meandering Thoughts About The Film "Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013)

"Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013)

Written & Directed by Jim Jarmusch

It's easy to take the long view of history when you've been around for (and contributed to) so much of it. Being effectively immortal really helps put things in perspective. The problem is that it's too much perspective!

At least it is for a vampire named Adam (Tom Hiddleston), who has grown somewhat cynical about humanity over the centuries. Who can blame him? We haven't always reacted in the most tolerant and understanding way to individuals who have revolutionized the world through their ideas and discoveries. We are still squabbling over Darwin, as Adam painfully reminds us. Let's face it: He's got a point.

Eve (Tilda Swinton) is a little less pessimistic. She likes her iPhone and her extensive collection of classic books. So there's that.

Of all the things vampires have to worry about, the contamination of their food supply is pretty high on the list. This is precisely what humans have done to themselves with their various blood sicknesses, unwittingly putting vampires everywhere at risk. Kids these days! Also, there's that other thing we're doing that is tantamount to poisoning the planet... so, like, maybe it's a metaphor?

Perhaps the lives of humans are so nasty, brutish, and short that we collectively fail to gain the wisdom necessary to become good stewards of the planet. We tend to pull ourselves back from brink just in the nick of time. It appears that Vampire Adam & Eve have been around long enough to figure this out, but are content to keep to themselves while they let us go about our self-destructive business. The irony is that our fate is also theirs. 

There's a larger point in all of this, but I have failed to make it. This movie also has some good music.

___

"The Future Of The Mind" by Michio Kaku

This ain't your typical brain book. Writing from a physicist's perspective, Kaku focuses on the intersect between technology and neuroscience. From magnetic resonance imaging to electroencephalography, the study of the brain has undergone a revolution in recent decades as new tools have allowed scientists to probe the brain with increasing resolution and insight. Much of this technological advancement stems from our understanding of the physics of magnetic and electrical fields and applying them in novel ways to help answer the age old question of how the mind works.

But this is only the beginning of the story. When we look at the current state of art with respect to the study of the brain, a fascinating picture of the future starts to emerge. Fortunately, I possess just enough familiarity with Star Trek to get references to tricorders (cell phones with MRI capabilities) and the Borg (nanoprobe implants in the brain to enable telepathic communication). Scientists have already been able to read minds by creating a mental dictionary by matching up signals emanating from the brain when subjects focus on particular letters. This effectively allows someone to type using only the power of the mind. Needless to say, this is pretty wild. And we're just scratching the surface here...

Again taking a physicist's viewpoint, Kaku outlines a definition of consciousness that assigns "levels" which correspond to how an organism models the world according to a set of feedback loops and parameters. This is called the "space-time theory of consciousness" and it is certainly a handy way to think about the various ways in which animals are conscious. The "levels" in the theory roughly line up with stages in the evolution of the brain, from the reptilian, to the mammalian, to human. In increasing complexity, the brains of animals create models of the world in order to achieve their goals starting with simple sensory input about the environment (reptilian), then expanding their model to incorporate their relationship to others (mammalian), and ultimately including the parameter of time by evaluating the past to make predictions and plan for the future (human). Hence, the "space-time theory of consciousness".

Once thought impenetrable to scientific inquiry, the problem of consciousness is becoming less opaque by the day. With the recent news that scientists may have found the proverbial 'on/off' switch for consciousness, our lofty philosophical notions of the special place occupied by human awareness are slowly coming back down to earth. Granted, there's still a long way to go in fully comprehending how all the complexity of human mind emerges out of the traffic of the brain, but real progress is (encouragingly) being made. This is a good thing. I, for one, am perpetually enthralled and amazed by the capacity for the brain to know itself.

Currently Reading: "Ship Of Theseus" by V. M. Straka (?)

I happened upon this novel while perusing a stuffy used book store and purchased it on a whim. How can one resist such a neat old-timey cover? I had never heard of the author, nor did I bother to crack it open before deciding to buy it. Had I done so, I may have put it back on the shelf because it seems that at least two people (judging from the handwriting) have apparently been carrying on a conversation written in the margins of the book. Who does that!? And who would want to buy a book that's all marked up?

As it happens, this conversation has revealed a whole new dimension to the story beyond the novel itself. There is some dispute over the authorship of Ship Of Theseus that may or may not involve the translator F. X. Caldeira. The intrigue doesn't stop there, however, and I'm only just getting started. The mystery surrounding the amnesic character known (so far) only as "S." has certainly piqued my interest. There also seems to be some academic competition and skulduggery going on, which has yet to be fully revealed to this reader. It's all kind of 'meta' with a story taking form on top of a story, and the two are inextricably linked.

I have no idea where all of this is heading, and I will resist seeking out any answers online before I have finished examining the book and its extraneously inserted contents. Further down the Straka rabbit hole I go...