Brown Motion

I read the third international bestseller from an Israeli historian called Yuval Harari. A modern day thinker, this man has unpacked a lot in his writings over the past few years.  All his writings revolve around trying to answer some of history's most complex puzzles.  Who are we?  What is our purpose?  What comes next? In this latest installment he takes us on a journey way into the past to the point of creation and brings us crashing into the modern day earth and then paints a scary picture of what is to come.  Or at least a possible future. While it is hard to completely digest the entirety of this man's writings here are a few takeaways I can enumerate - 1.  Humans are really bad with large numbers.  Each of us to varying degrees has a switch that fails at computing 'scale'.  We can think of ourselves and our surroundings over a period of time but it is far too limited when appreciating our role as a species over extended periods....

This spring has been good in terms of getting to watch some good film-making.  We watched 'Room'; 'Bridge of Spies'; and then this latest one called 'Spotlight'. Spotlight is titled after an investigation and research team that works inside the Boston Globe, a 150 plus year old newspaper (today owned by a private wealthy investor).   This bunch of veteran journalists in Boston broke the story on the Sex Abuse Scandal that has infected the global Catholic Church system. This major news item was published on the front pages in 2002 after a couple years of hard investigative journalism.  While the screenplay is representative of the reality and the number of investigators it took to uncover these sad truths about child abuse and molestation of the nth degree by god's chosen few, it does shine the spotlight on the hypocrisy that we live in. While the Boston natives were themselves stunned to learn of the evil lurking in their place of worship, and the var...

People can be fanatics about their faith.  They can also be fanatical about fashion.  Simply put some think their 'faith in fashion' makes them fashionably faithful.  That is a mouthful. Here is a sampling of what I mean - Do Sardarjis (practioner of Sikhism) ever develop a bald spot?  I have not actually encountered one.  Now that is a classic example of the faith driving their fashion preference.  That of having to wear a pointed hat all the time.  This time to their advantage.  I mean because the faith advises to constantly wear a hat you never know what is hiding underneath.  Like someone said only when the tide goes out can you see who was swimming naked.  No chance of that for these faithful.  So they can live long with the others thinking that they are blessed with a luxuriant mop that does not fade. Yoga Pant-vasion - this new invasion of the spandex like leggings that has American women (some men) hopping (so...