Before and After

Death is a concept frequently addressed in all forms of art: in painting, skulls and other ephemeris were placed into still-lifes, film addresses both the philosophies and realities of death. Photography, too, has been no stranger to death. BoinBoing posted a beautiful, but sobering, series of photos by Walter Schels and his partner, Beate Lakotta. Accompanied by brief exerpts of interviews and summaries of the people, these photos serve as testament to the fleeting enigma that is life.

Metacontext

For days now, I've been thinking about an internet curiosity that I wanted to share with you, because hey, you've got nothing better to do right? Right.

The thing I want to talk about is links. Not just any links, but unannounced links. You've no doubt noticed on my site, as I'm sure you have on others, that sometimes I'll make a word a link without indicating to you in the sentence that it is a link (i.e., click "here.") For instance, a few posts ago (Curiosities), I made the actor Kevin Corrigan's name be a link, without telling you I'd do so. The sentence made no reference to the fact that one word was a link to something else. This has been popularized by Wikipedia.

What I find so interesting about this is that it is a whole new way of communication. Imagine this:

You and I are sitting in a cafe in Brooklyn. Why not, right? We're young, we're hip, we like tea and coffee. So we're in this cafe. I'm talking to you about the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Your mind immediately recalls the meaning of "Tiananmen Square," a place in China about which you learned in high school. I make mention of the recent film entitled Summer Palace. You haven't seen this film. You haven't even heard of it. But here's the exciting part: Your brain gives you the option of learning about it immediately, before the conversation continues any further. Sounds like some Matrix shit, right? But that's EXACTLY the way blogs are structured when they have these metalinks inscribed in the text. It is a way of allowing you to instantaneously find out what a word or person or concept is before you proceed any further.

Now, you're probably saying, "Well, that's not new. Anytime I read an article, if I don't know what something is, I can look it up before I keep reading." And I'd say yes, that's true. But the fact is that you have to look elsewhere for that information. It is not instantaneously accessible to you. That can be a deterrent for people. But regardless of whether it is a deterrent or not, it lacks the excitement of immediacy.

I could make every single word in a post be a link to something else. I could write only one sentence of seven words, and link to something with each word. If you were to click each link before continuing on, it would take you forever to read that sentence. In a way, that's something our brains are doing all of the time. Constantly referencing what each word means to us - emotionally, mentally, physically, the whole deal. It's why mention of a single person's name can evoke intense emotion, distraction, excitement, anything. If and when we find a way to merge man with machine (as some argue is the next step of human evolution), we could one day expect this instantaneous learning, this burying of "links" within human speech and thought, to be a commonplace aspect of life. Wouldn't that be exciting?

That's what I've been thinking about. Do with it what you will.

Mario vs. Quantum Physics

I think it's no surprise that videogames can be considered in philosophical terms. In fact, anyone who plays videogames, I think, has some kind of philosophical thought process going on in the background, directly related to the game(s) being played. So, when I found this video and accompanying explanation of Many-Worlds Interpretation, the concept of many different worlds existing, branching off of a single moment of quantum decision so to speak, I thought it was a fun and simple way to be introduced to the concept. Enjoy!

And, as a bonus, this video reminded me of a video I'd watched a year or so ago that was, luckily, linked in the related-videos section, so it's included here:

Objectivism

I was reading a post on BoingBoing that made mention of Objectivism, a philosophical belief that I knew absolutely nothing about. I'd never even heard of it before. So I checked it out. It's very dense and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the reading, but I find this Wikipedia entry very interesting. Let me know what you think.

Je l'ai déjà vu

Zach and I were just talking yesterday about the phenomenon of déjà vu. I personally sometimes am able to hold onto or regenerate my sensation of déjà vu when I experience it so that it becomes more durable, more lasting. I've always been deeply excited by it, because I get the distinct feeling that it is something more than random nerve firings, a purely rudimentary-scientific experience. I do think that science can ultimately explain everything -- I think there is no reason that God can't be explained by science, but no way will we figure that out anytime soon -- but like God, I think that déjà vu functions on a very metaphysical level that indicates something very unique. Perhaps it is the same phenomenon of Siddhartha's river of time... perhaps time flows both forwards AND backwards, so as a result we have some kind of metaphysical memory of the future...

But why, then, is it the tiny moments that we experience it? A flick of the hair, the pattern of tiles on the bathroom floor, the way someone says something? I don't know. But there's got to be a fabric to reality, and perhaps it's just that at the tiny moments we're able to see the tiny holes in the fabric, see through to the other side.

Ultimately I have no idea what déjà vu is. Some scientists at MIT seem to have an idea (check it out here) of what it is. Personally, I don't by it. But that's just My Opinion.

A couple of other already-seen links via BoingBoing:
Chronic Deja-Vu (really interesting!! constant deja-vu...)
A more plausible explanation than MIT presents