Something in the water?

It's been a little over six weeks since I moved to Toronto. Listen to this interesting dream I had last night. I think Toronto's water supply is drugged!

The following takes place between 6 AM and 7 AM inside my head.


As dawn covers the battlefield in its orange hue, myself and a dozen archers approach the castle we are going to attack. As we approach the castle walls, the draw bridge lets out a dull metallic moan. They know we’re here…

“READY…” I yell and we all reach for an arrow, load it into our bows and wait for the onslaught of soldiers sent to protect their castle. The first soldiers to appear are pelted with a storm of arrows and fall dead. However, in the next few seconds, a hundred soldiers storm through the castle entrance and rush towards us. Although a few more castle defenders are killed my whole group is dead within seconds.

Pause.

A window pops up:

Mission Failed. Would you like to restart?
(OK) (Cancel)

Mission restarts, however this time I am in a fort not on the battlefield. As I am getting my team of archers together for the attack, a man stops me: an important and powerful man.

- “We can’t attack Quebec” says the man after he grabs my arm.
- “These are my orders, sire” I reply.
- “THESE ORDERS WERE GIVEN WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE. This is not an acceptable course of action. If we attack Quebec, this will re-ignite old rivalries and too much blood will be spilled! ”

The alarm clock buzzes.

Author's notes:

I have not played Warcraft 2 in years!

I have no intentions of attacking Quebec.

Homo sapiens redux

Are we really more than the sum of our parts? Reductionism originally arose from French philosopher Rene Descartes. In his 1637 treatise entitled "Discourse on the Method" he postulated that "the world was like a machine […] and that the machine could be understood by taking its pieces apart, studying them, and then putting them back together to see the larger picture"(Wikipedia). Essentially this has been the basis of science the last 371 years. Originally this postulate was thought to be true for both objects and living organisms. Presently, the consensus is that no living system can be explained by the sum of its parts.

Can we really be sure? As science progresses and keeps finding all of the machine's parts, a complete understanding of our surroundings seems unlikely at this point in time. Let's look at a simplified timetable of science's understanding of the human body:

1- Corpse dissections allow early scientists to identify the various colorful organs inside our bellies.
2- Further inspection of the organs reveals the intricate architecture of tissues within a single organ
3- Microscopes allow for the observation of cells
4- Stronger microscopes reveal that every cell has its own organs (such as the nucleus, vesicles, etc.)
5- Discovery that cells are little "bags of proteins" and each protein has its own specific role
6- A protein's construction is encoded by DNA
7- Human genome is sequenced…80-90% of the human genome is baptized "junk DNA"
8- Junk DNA is used by a cell more than non-junk DNA

This list highlights one thing: just when we start to take the "machine" apart and look at the pieces we realize that each piece is itself a machine. If each new discovery brings forth another machine to take apart, is it right to say “we are more than the sum of our parts”? Maybe once all the parts have been discovered, characterized and understood we will have answered all the questions.

The problem with saying “there is more to something than the sum of its parts” is that it takes into account only past discoveries. Can we still be sure of this statement if we consider future discoveries? For example, the human body is a lot less mysterious in 2008 AD than in was 2008 BC. Contrast current ideas such as stem cells, DNA and vaccines with the Bronze Age. That’s how different things will be in another 4000 years. I am sure Bronze Age “doctors/scientists” knew about the body’s organs but obviously not cells. Likewise, it 2008 who knows which pieces of the puzzle science has not discovered.

Reductionism considers that all the pieces of the machine are known. How can you see the big picture with only 10% of a puzzle’s pieces? If science persists long enough on a given topic, is it possible to find all of the puzzle’s pieces? Can you imagine its impact on religion/spirituality….

What doesn't kill you...

The blog has been quiet lately. I have not abandoned ship, I have actually spent the last three weeks recovering from surgery. This week I was feeling like my good old mischievous self. I will be back soon with some more of that thought provoking goodness you all love.

An Inconvenient Truth About 9-11

I was having a small talk with a friend of mine at a new lounge (called Touché on College West, check it out!!) and we were talking about conspiracy theories. Maybe I have watched too many X-files in my life, but although they are incredibly entertaining I rarely (i.e. never) believe them. One of the most entertaining theories is how 9-11 is an inside job by the US government. REALLY???

I saw that online documentary called "loose change", I have read several essays, and I have seen the whole "type Q33NY in MS Word and change the font to Wingdings 1". The documentary was well executed and raised some interesting points. I think it had me believing the whole conspiracy on the spot but a few hours later I was back to my good ol' skeptical self! The Q33NY Wingdings e-mail is a perfect example of how conspiracy theories are usually weak. The e-mail claimed that Q33NY was the tail number of one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center (WTC). There is no proof of this...

My main problem with this whole US government "inside job" theory is all of the resources needed for setting up such an operation. This includes remote controlled airplanes flown into the WTC, a rocket fired into the pentagon, explosives secretly set up and detonated at the base of the towers and passengers of flight 93 secretly transferred onto another aircraft. If my memory is correct all of the aforementioned elements are described in the "loose change" documentary.

If the US government organized the whole thing how many people were involved? At least a few hundred (if not thousands) to plant the explosives, fly the remote controlled airplanes, fire the rockets, transfer the Flight 93 passengers, etc. Also, who would execute these orders? Patriotic soldiers who signed up to defend their country? Please don’t say "brainwash" because a patriot killing 3000 of his country's own people seems a little far fetched. Even by assuming a hundred brainwashed US soldiers executed their orders, it seems unlikely that not a single conspirator has cracked under the guilt of treason and revealed the awful truth.

Now my question to all those conspiracy theorists: "Who is responsible?". Let me guess: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the CIA and Elvis in a secret coalition with the Saudis and the Israelis bent on making money from the "tragic events of 9-11".Does anyone honestly believe that a secret meeting took place where a PowerPoint presentation was given outlining the destruction of the WTC, the framing of Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden leading to an eventual invasion of Iraq for their precious oil! COME ON!!!

I think the biggest problem with this theory is that it supposes that the US government is a powerful all-seeing entity. If this is the case how can a conspiracy theorist explain the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq? We all know that "faulty intelligence reports" prompted the Bush government to invade Iraq. So here’s the problem: how is it that the same government capable of killing thousands of its own citizens using secret military technology and the same government capable of finding Saddam hiding in a hole cannot plant some WMDs in Iraq. This would have been an obvious move on the part of the US either in 2002 for the UN inspectors to discover or in 2003 after the invasion. They could have easily built a nuclear silo or planted some uranium enriching equipment. To date nothing has been found. How hard is it to plant some evidence so that Bush can say “You see… we told you so!!!”.

My theory? South Park said it best: "it was just a bunch of pissed off Arabs"! I think 9-11 was a terrorist act and the US got caught with its pants down. These events were used to justify the occupation of Iraq but even without 9-11 I think the Bush administration would still be in Iraq today. The reason: the energy crisis. It’s been known for a few years now that Cheney had some “super secret meetings” with oil company execs to discuss the future of the US’s energy policy. Apparently Iraq’s oil was discussed with interest in the aforementioned meeting. Here’s the kicker, this meeting took place in the spring of 2001, several months before 9-11. Some will say this is proof of a conspiracy, I think its proof of America’s opportunistic response to 9-11, using it to accomplish their to-do list.

Any questions?

Google hits: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10715149
Loose change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E3oIbO0AWE
Cheney’s secret meetings: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501842.html
More on Cheney: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0718taskforce.htm