Seeking the Principles of Power and Danger

The above clip is Christopher Hitchens closing arguments in a debate with intelligent design advocate William Dembski (available in full: here ) that seems to me to be a perfect coda and summation of the differences between the certainties of  faith (belief without evidence) and this risks of thinking for oneself. On another tack, I recently finished Hitchens' book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable read. It has been criticized on a number of points of minor  inaccuracy, such as conflating the synoptic with the canonical gospels , which is disappointing and provides a superficial basis for dismissal,  but I don't think the handful of slip ups distract overly from the central thesis of the book that religion is obviously man made and abounds in absurdities, that thinking people cannot accept religion as a true or adequate explanation of how and why things are the way they are.      

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.” ― Jorge Luis Borges.

Standing nude (c.1912) by Amedeo Modigliani. Despite the injunction against photographs and the watchful attendants, I took this picture at the National Gallery of Australia.    With the instant nostalgia that is only possible with photography, I captured the moment I first laid eyes upon a piece by Modigliani.     

An engaging documentary on the life and work of Vladimir Nabokov . It contains a lot of archival footage of interviews with the man himself and covers topics from lepidoptery to Lolita.   The narrator Stephen Smith interviews Martin Amis and contemporary literary critics to identify the character of the man and the underlying moral message of his Magnum opus .  Though I enjoyed it, I'm not quite sure if Nabokov would have approved : there is a heavy strain of criticism as psychoanalysis, art as didacticism throughout the film.

Yesterday I submitted an honours thesis entitled:   " Discerning Knowers: An Exploratory Study of University Students’ Perceptions of Knowledge Claims ”.  On the final count it was 110 pages long, with twenty two thousand words in total. It changed several times from the initial conception to the final product. I have a lot more respect for people who conduct research,  it is very hard to get at what is happening in the world. Also, now I know the process isn't impossible. Even when I started the thesis there was a large part of me that thought that I couldn't write twenty thousand words; but as it turns out I wrote a lot more that didn't end up in the finished thesis. Perhaps one day, after the comments from the markers and final revisions,  I might put it online or let people read it. For now I'd like to thank my supervisor Dr Karl Maton   and present the thesis abstract bellow for anyone who might be interested. Abstract The main problem thi...

 In short, he so busied himself in his books that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak and the days from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading his brain dried up and he lost his wits.   -  Miguel De Cervantes.