Ever since James Watson and Francis Crick cracked the genetic code, scientists have been fascinated by the possibilities of what we might learn from reading our genes. But the power of DNA has also long raised fears — such as those dramatized in the 1997 sci-fi film Gattaca, which depicted a world where “a…
Author: The Teeming Brain
The Teeming Brain is a blog magazine exploring the intersection of religion, horror, the paranormal, creativity, consciousness, and culture. It also tracks apocalyptic and dystopian trends in technology, politics, ecology, economics, the arts, education, and society at large.
Recommended Reading 25
We have quite a varied assortment of reading this week, including: an article about a brilliant reclamation of an abandoned Wal-Mart building for a wonderful counter-purpose; an analysis of Burning Man’s sociocultural-mythological function; a report on widespread distrust of the United States around the world; a fascinating interview with a psychologist on the nature and…
Nuit Blanche (SHORT FILM)
Shot in a style that renders it both an explicit homage to cinema noir and an exploration of fantasy and surrealism, “Nuit Blanche” (2010) is nothing short of exquisite. The title translates literally from the French as “white night.” The production company is Spy Films. The director is Arev Manoukian. The idea is this: Nuit…
Dead Can Dance: “Opium”
Anastasis is the first new album from Dead Can Dance in 16 years. The legendary musical duo consisting of Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard (backed by numerous accompanying musicians) has covered a lot of ground, both musically and geographically, since they formed DCD in Melbourne in 1981, and the appearance of a new album by…
Western civilization and the divided brain
In his 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, psychiatrist, doctor, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar Iain McGilchrist mounts a fascinating argument for the idea “that the division of the brain into two hemispheres is essential to human existence, making possible incompatible versions of…
Recommended Reading 24
This week we bring you an exceptionally rich list of excellent reading and, in two cases, excellent listening. Topics include: the inherent — and ongoing — problem with financial institutions that are “too big to fail”; the siege of higher education in its traditional form by tech startups and the exploding online college movement; the…
Terra Sacra Time Lapses (SHORT FILM)
Mesmerizing, beautiful, and even revelatory, this short film effectively does what the time lapse portions of Koyaanisqatsi did for contemporary urban-technological cityscapes and selected portions of untouched nature, only it expands the scope to encompass the planet as a whole — an appropriate ambition for a film titled “Terra Sacra,” Latin for “Sacred Earth.” “Terra…
Within Two Worlds (SHORT FILM)
“Within Two worlds” offers another impressive take on a philosophical and cinematographic idea explored in Koyaanisqatsi and “Terra Sacred Time Lapses” — specifically, the idea that unrecognized aspects of reality and nature, including astonishing patterns and motions of beauty, grace, and symmetry, become visible when time lapse photography allows us to view the world at speeds…
The library as cultural memory bank
I found it important to begin by reminding my audience what a library essentially is: a memory bank. Only thanks to the existence of libraries are we able, as a culture and as a society, to keep remembering our own past. But libraries do much more than just looking back, in nostalgia or otherwise, at…
My fellow barbarians: The dumbing of Americans and their campaign speeches
Two days ago, the August 31 edition of the PBS program Need to Know concluded with a brief video retrospective of American political convention speeches from the last century: From William Jennings Bryan to FDR to Adlai Stevenson to Barack Obama, anchor Jeff Greenfield takes a look at the convention speeches that propelled some politicians…