"How much would you pay for the Universe?"

Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s short history of NASA’s founding during the Cold War and the day we stopped dreaming about the World of Tomorrow set to music and historic NASA films.

Abuse Changes Structure Of Brain

That's right. The emotional effect of a profound experience can go so far as to actually change the biology of our brain. This, and other studies before it are truly remarkable. Not only can this research explain the relationship between crime and a poor socio-economic background (where mental health problems are far more prevalent), but it also highlights how health is influenced by the presence of love.

We should all bare this in mind when we consider the epidemics of health and crime that trouble our planet. Remembering that human beings are the product of their environments, and more importantly, that the more conditions are supportive, loving and sustaining to all, the more we all benefit from reduced crime and improved mental health that impacts our entire society.

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Occupy London: A Snapshot

This is the little girl that spoke to the masses

Since the dawn of the Arab Spring the world has erupted with the spirit of protest. With one of them: Occupy London, at my back door, I couldn't resist the opportunity to get to the bottom of this worldwide phenomenon. 

I spent two days at St. Paul's to try and gain an understanding of the Occupy movement. To find out for myself and not through hear-say, the media and rumour. 

Tents were outside the entrance of St. Paul's. Contrary to what I'd read, many tents were occupied and there were a few tired heads trying to rest amidst the chatter of excitement in the square.

The people that attended were of all shapes, sizes, creeds and colours. Most social groups seemed well represented. Although It was a combination of disenchanted university graduates and those in the counterculture of the 60's that probably formed the meat of the numbers.

The Shiatsu experience

Adam Hellinger performing Shiatsu

Shiatsu comes from an esoteric tradition which promotes itself as a tool for healing through the manipulation of energy. Due to its abstract nature it can be a notoriously difficult practice to find words for, so enjoying a challenge, I thought I'd see if I could find some.

I was recommended Shiatsu through another alternative practice: Qi gong. I was initially drawn to Qi gong when I was told that it was excellent for not only self defence, but for health. The concepts in Qi gong form some of the fundamental pillars of Chinese philosophy. The aim of the practice is to harness the energy one takes from food, air or movement into potential and prosperity in the mind, spirit and body. To the average Joe it may seem difficult to conceive how this works. Yet the simple answer about any esoteric practice, is that they are impossible to explain intellectually without experience.

Beauty Meets The Beast

After sitting at my computer looking like the Bette Davis character “Baby Jane” a friend asked on facebook if I'd like to come to a fashion show. I took a look in the mirror and saw that I looked like a Gothic nightmare. Before I could answer she told me that I'd need to leave in fifteen minutes. As I washed the cobwebs from my face and threw on a blazer I told her I looked more Frankenstein than glamorous. She laughed, telling me that the summer/spring show of designer Kristian Aadvenik was all about combining Gothic and Glamour to create a fantasy world of fairy tale and nightmare.

Fall 2008 Black Feather Gown

Kristian Aadvenik is a London-based Norwegian fashion designer with an impressive repertoire. He moved to London to pursue a MA at the Royal college of art where he received numerous awards. From here on where Aadvenik went critical acclaim followed. In 2007 he was selected as one of five designers for the “protege project” leading him to work directly under Donatella Versace. After a personal showcase for his fall/winter collection in 2008 at Milan Fashion week he was named as one of falls greatest talents on style.com.

British students are now only Consumers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/sep/27/higher-education-alternative-white-paper


Higher education white paper is provoking a winter of discontent
As they publish their own 'alternative white paper' for higher education, academics claim the government's plans are fundamentally misguided

Professor Stefan Collini says academics who see the fundamental flaws in the government's plans must work for a better-grounded policy. Photograph: Si Barber
Hundreds of academics have signed a document, published today, that warns of dire consequences should the government's white paper on higher education become law.

First They Came by Martin Niemoller

They came and I didn't speak up...



A powerful reminder of our shared responsibility and involvement in the world's problems.

The Truth

Sometimes the simplest statements are the most profound.



Lenny Bruce is an edgy comic genius that died young.

Consumer Politics And The Death Of Idealism

We live in the age of consumer politics, where business and politics hold an inseparable power over our lives. In this time, have we come to a point where we have become tired of  both left and right politics? Through our realisation that neither wing has been able to implement change? Has power become stagnant and run out of ideas?

Recently I watched a series of documentaries by Adam Curtis called “All watched over by machines of love and grace” In it he describes how human beings have lost their profound ideological visions and now treat society as a process of maintenance. He believes this has been implemented by the computer age as those with power see people as statistics within a mechanical system. He believes that politics no longer holds profound, idealistic visions of the future but is instead pre-occupied with making the slightest changes to the present. In UK politics people have been saying for years how the Labour and Conservative parties have moved increasingly towards the centre; so Curtis's theory that we no longer idealise, but maintain, could probably be said for the government of my country at the very least.

How addiction changes the brain

Carrying on from the subject of trauma...

Dr. Gabor mate discusses how those that are addicted to heavy drugs have come through generational cycles of trauma. In this video he goes on to explain how many governments have a hypocritical definition of addiction, explaining that as many Jews that died in the holocaust as have died since from tobacco smoke. Fundamentally he points out that addiction is a health problem and that treating addicts as criminals only exacerbates the financial, neurological and inter generational damage it causes.

This woman helps to explain the culturally traumatised parts of UK society.

Camilla Batmanghelidjh meeting David Cameron. Image ownership of The Guardian.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ive-got-kids-who-sleep-with-knives-under-their-pillows-834553.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/jun/05/child-criminal-camila-batmanghelidjh

A letter for equality

We are all influenced by the distortions of the media. Recently I found myself affected by the reportage of the London riots. I've observed how so many have risen up in anger, some when influenced by the media, against the “underclass” that they feel is responsible for the damage. I have also witnessed recently how both media and politics have been colluding in serious corruption. The media is how we all keep informed of world events. Yet it now acts as the mouthpiece of politicians, and is biased by the ownership of the big businesses that own the world's media giants. It is important to remember that because of these biases in the media that the demonisation of the working class has always been inherent in U.K society and therefore our institutions. The government itself has waged financial and rhetorical war on the poorest parts of our society. Yet it this belief that the underclass is separate from us, our values and our way of life that has bred the calls for tougher punishment. We must view our society as one organism. If one area is sick we do not punish it, but heal it. The day we acknowledge that these behaviours are a a product of the society we have all created and take responsibility for the whole, will be the day that this “broken society” will be fixed.

The fine line between realities: Introducing the Synergy age

I recently read an article which stated that by 2015 50% of businesses will have introduced gamification as a tool to increase productivity in the workplace. Gamification describes the process of creating games out of menial administrative tasks. By creating an animated world with characters and a storyline simple spreadsheet activities become “games” by which you can measure your progress, save and re-explore. This is an interesting development, but above the potential of a more enjoyable workplace this movement towards gamification reveals a broader trend about our rapidly changing relationship with technology.

Embrace the Infinite Possibilities

If I could want any one thing from a human being it would be the ability to look up and beyond your limitations: be they physical, mental or spiritual. Throughout our recorded history we have been repeatedly breaking from the shackles that have limited our true potentiality. From the moment we are born we are relentlessly striving for the future. We are bought up to endlessly anticipate what is to come. A lot of us aren't really prepared for today but live in a society that is endlessly talking of the future, of what you “could” achieve or what the politicians will eventually provide. But have we become a culture of apathy that doesn't take responsibility for the world that we live in? Living in the UK I'm personally very familiar with cynicism and moaning. Although sometimes charming and funny with it I think the British are keen to blame and complain. I myself have been caught by this rare ailment and often find myself dismissing things before I've ever weighed up their actual possibility.

Be your own God

The denial of rational logic drives me mad. The fact that there are people out there who will deny plain observable truths is just baffling. I believe we can attribute this to the fact that those that reject facts are those that just reject thinking. You don’t have to be a scholar to think, a lot of the time you just need common sense. Some things are just givens. When I look at American politicians mindlessly shouting “freedom” to the masses and religious fundamentalists rejecting evolution it makes one wonder whether than an actual rejection of the thing that differentiates human being’s from animals (a higher degree of thinking) could reverse that process and create devolution. I recently read an article in the new scientist which said that because of human accelerated change there are species that are evolving at rates of thousands of years in the period of you or I’s lifetime, as well as those that are devolving at the same rate. It’s incredible to think that through the machines and mechanisms that we’ve created since we first learned to use tools that we now realm the earth like unmerciful Gods against everything that has sustained us on this planet. If anything is proven by these facts it is that our capacity to radically change everything is unprecedented. We have literally transformed the things that once caused us to cower and wonder. We can now identify our dramatic impacts on the weather, obliterate animals that threaten our survival, and amazingly create elaborate social, scientific and cultural systems that fill the vacuum created by our needs and desires. All of the conditions of everything we have ever created – the city of New York, the concept of Communism, the parched lands of ancient over farming in Africa... have been the result of a large network of people creating that as the world’s reality.

Rant on American Republicanism

Why do people get involved with or have any interest in politics? Because they're interested in the society at large and how that beast might transform, thus making our lives better or worse. I think we can establish that changing the lives of everyone in an ENTIRE SOCIETY is pretty important. Even if you think the man on the telly in the suit and tie is boring, you really do care what he has to say even if you think you don't. Besides Political inaction is ethically troublesome. Ever hear the story of the man who watched all his neighbours being taken away whilst he watched idly as he and his friends did nothing? They were gradually taken away with no one to give them a voice, until finally he too was taken away and there was no one to speak for him. There is NO WAY that you can not be involved in largescale political actions, your abstaining from them has it owns influence, your inaction gives somebody else power. But of course that's what it comes down to. Most of us are keen to give away power to anyone who is willing to take it. As a species we seem largely adverse to responsibility. The worst attrocities in our collective history have come about as a result of our implicit accepting of what the powers tell us. It is this that led to the wide scale acceptance of dictators such as Hitler and Stalin. Why question Adolf's logic that all the nations problems will be solved by the genocide of an entire species? Because to do so would involve difficult questions, expose lies and force you to confront facts. And in order to ask difficult questions we'd have to think, and we wouldn't dare go to that trouble would we! 

The power of listening

Every now and then I am surprised by the incredible transformative power of the simplest of acts. Simple phrases become mantras for entire political, spiritual and cultural movements. Such concepts and ideas have the ability to encapsulate powerful human emotions and provoke individuals to commit the most startling acts of love and kindness or the most disturbing acts of destruction and fear. 

I’ve spent a lot of time considering how entire populations of people could be led by charismatic speakers towards unfathomable horrors. This has taken me on an emotional rollercoaster of doubt, anger and resentment about the direction and purpose of the human experiment. So after plummeting to the lowest ebbs on this emotional ride I needed something to drag me slowly and agonisingly to the top again. Something to give me hope and that would allow me to look up at the sky in amazement before another seemingly inevitable drop.