Zak Refusenik

THE FEYNMAN SERIES: The Key to Science [Featuring Joan...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:22:28 -0400

THE FEYNMAN SERIES: The Key to Science [Featuring Joan Feynman]

The physicist and the philosopher.

THE FEYNMAN SERIES: CURIOSITY The physicist and the philosopher.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:20:25 -0400

THE FEYNMAN SERIES: CURIOSITY

The physicist and the philosopher.

THE FEYNMAN SERIES: Honours The physicist and the philosopher.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:18:14 -0400

THE FEYNMAN SERIES: Honours

The physicist and the philosopher.

THE FEYNMAN SERIES: BEAUTY The physicist and the philosopher.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:16:07 -0400

THE FEYNMAN SERIES: BEAUTY

The physicist and the philosopher.

Charlie Chaplin - The Great Dictator (1940) I’m sorry but I...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:11:43 -0400

Charlie Chaplin - The Great Dictator (1940)

I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish…

Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written ” the kingdom of God is within man ” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.” -Charlie Chaplin

Sir David Attenborough’s views on science and...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:46:45 -0500

Sir David Attenborough’s views on science and religion.

“Well, it’s funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the Almighty, always quote beautiful things. They always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses. But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he’s five years old. And I reply and say, “Well, presumably the God you speak about created the worm as well,” and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful God with that action. And therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing.”

- Sir David Attenborough

Excerpt from BBC biographical documentary on Attenborough, ‘Life on Air’.

Eusocial Shrimp - Synalpheus regalis From BBC series of The...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:36:13 -0500

Eusocial Shrimp - Synalpheus regalis

From BBC series of The Blue Planet with David Attenborough.

“Ants, bees, termites, and wasps were long thought to be the only animals that live eusocially—that is, they form communities of overlapping generations in which cooperative care of the young, common defense, and a breeding queen are the norm. Naked mole rats later joined their ranks as the only known eusocial mammals. Marine biologist J. Emmett Duffy of the College of William and Mary in Virginia added Synalpheus regalis, a newly discovered species of snapping shrimp, to the eusocial register, the first marine species to have that distinction”

Episode: The Blue Planet - Coral Seas

Richard Dawkins: Diatoms: Evolution of a new...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:29:00 -0500

Richard Dawkins: Diatoms: Evolution of a new species.

Stephanodiscus niagarae, and Stephanodiscus yellowstonensis

Sir David Attenborough - Wonderful World

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:08:00 -0500

Sir David Attenborough - Wonderful World

Negative buoyancy - free-diver walks on sea floor.

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:33:46 -0500

Negative buoyancy - free-diver walks on sea floor.

Lonesome George, the last of his...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:23:15 -0500

Lonesome George, the last of his species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelonoidis_nigra_abingdoni

(Throw-away society) Humans have only been engaged in heavy...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:48:00 -0500

(Throw-away society) Humans have only been engaged in heavy industry for a few hundred years, and within the span of two centuries we’ve irreversibly polluted the earth.

In this video by Riley Morton, photographer Chris Jordan discusses his Midway Project; a fine art photography series documenting the tragic phenomenon of the death of the local albatross population due to excessive intake of plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch.

When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money. - Cree Prophecy

Adrenaline.

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:25:00 -0500

Adrenaline.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reverence for Isaac Newton.

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:06:28 -0500

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reverence for Isaac Newton.

[Slavoj Žižek]: I don’t think that philosophers ever provided...

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:38:00 -0500

[Slavoj Žižek]: I don’t think that philosophers ever provided answers, but I think this was the greatness of philosophy, not in this common sense that philosophers just ask questions and so on.

What is philosophy? Philosophy is not what some people think, some crazy exercise in absolute truth, and then you can adopt this skeptical attitude: we, through scientists, are dealing with actual, measurable solvable problems. Philosophers just ask stupid metaphysical questions and so on, play with absolute truths, which we all know is inaccessible.

No, I think philosophy’s a very modest discipline. Philosophy asks a different question, the true philosophy. How does a philosopher approach the problem of freedom? It’s not “Are we free or not?” Is there God or not? It asks a simple question, which will be called a hermeneutic question: What does it mean to be free?

So this is what philosophy basically does. It just asks, when we use certain notions, when we do certain acts, and so on, what is the implicit horizon of understanding? It doesn’t ask these stupid ideal questions: Is there truth? No. The question is,”What do you mean when you say this is true?”

So you can see, it’s a very modest thing, philosophy. Philosophers are not the mad men who search for some eternal truth.

Gasland is a 2010 American documentary film written and directed...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:36:00 -0500

Gasland is a 2010 American documentary film written and directed by Josh Fox. The film focuses on communities in the United States impacted by natural gas drilling and, specifically, a stimulation method known as hydraulic fracturing.

“The true costs in health and environmental pollution of hydraulic fracturing.”

Hydraulic fracturing for the purpose of oil, natural gas, and geothermal production was exempted under the Safe Drinking Water Act. This was a result of the signage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, also known as the Halliburton Loophole because of former Halliburton CEO Vice President Dick Cheney’s involvement in the passing of this exemption. The result of a 2004 EPA study on coalbed hydraulic fracturing was used to justify the passing of the exemption; however EPA whistleblower Weston Wilson and the Oil and Gas Accountability Project found that critical information was removed from the final report.

Although this waste is regulated, oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) wastes are exempt from Federal Hazardous Waste Regulations under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) despite the fact that wastewater from hydraulic fracturing contains toxins such as total dissolved solids (TDS), metals, and radionuclides. About 750 chemicals have been listed as additives for hydraulic fracturing in a report to the US Congress in 2011.

America’s toxic legacy in Iraq. “The US has fully...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 03:15:38 -0500

America’s toxic legacy in Iraq.

“The US has fully withdrawn all combats troops from Iraq, ending its occupation after nearly a decade. But the chemical effects of US bombardments continue to harm the future of the Iraqi people.”

Depleted Uranium is the waste by-product of spent nuclear fuel. This high density (radioactive) material is being used for US military munitions - including high caliber artillery rounds and heavy ordinance.

A brief history lesson on the United States CIA involvement in...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:11:00 -0500

A brief history lesson on the United States CIA involvement in Iran.

The industrial complex is dreaming war.

“Behaving as war criminals.” Former U.S. Secretary...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:28:00 -0500

“Behaving as war criminals.”

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara on proportionality.

McNamara: Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay’s command. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.

McNamara: LeMay said, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

Excerpt from the (2003) documentary film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.

Richard Feynman describes his experience helping to create the...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:06:04 -0500

Richard Feynman describes his experience helping to create the world’s first atomic weapon, and his emotional reaction thereafter.