Le Perdu.

Ten Minutes.

2008-05-29T01:44:00.001-07:00

What does ten minutes mean to you?

'10 Minuta' by Ahmed Imamovic.

Black Button.

2008-05-10T09:11:00.001-07:00

Came across this while searching for 'short films' on Youtube.

I thought it was an absolutely brilliant film.
Do not scroll down below the video if you intend to watch it, but have yet to do so.

I don't think it's too hard to figure out who the man in the black suit is... :)

Such a simple idea manifested in a brilliant way, in such a short span of time. For those who didn't get it, the plot is basically this:

Mr. Roberts finds himself in a strange room with a smartly dressed man. He is presented with the offer to push the black button to get 10 million dollars in return. However, the catch here is that pushing the black button will result in someone's death, possibly by an accident. The offer is made even more appealing with the fact that Mr. Roberts is a man heavily in debt.

Here's the interesting part. Should Mr. Roberts refuse to press the button, he will be presented with a key to leave the place (the door is locked), and shall never see the Mysterious Man and the 10 million dollars ever again. After a verbal wrestle, he finally gives in and pushes the button. Nothing seems to happen, but the Mysterious Man assures him that is all true. However, before Mr. Roberts can take the money, the Man drops a bombshell: Mr. Roberts is already dead.

The Man reminds Mr. Roberts that he was involved in an accident on the way to work. The tragedy of this story is summed up in one perfectly composed sentence: "You had the key to salvation; you chose condemnation."

Since this film was set within a Christian point of view (the opening text were quotes from the Bible), it isn't hard for us to see that the Man is Lucifer, the Devil, and Mr. Roberts is human, like the rest of us. And that the Key to Salvation here is actually Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to redeem us from our sins. Unfortunately, consumed by greed, Mr. Roberts chose to end a life for the sake of money instead of receiving salvation.

And the sad thing is it speaks very much about the world around us - about us today.

What would you have chosen to do had you been Mr. Roberts?

Press the Black Button?

Or receive the Key to Salvation?

By Any Other Name.

2008-05-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

You know, sometimes I think one definition is enough for certain words.

I never cease to be baffled and amused when girls call - not their friends, not their enemies, but themselves, a 'B*tch'. Even more baffling still, they take pride in it.

All of us who are acquainted with the dictionary knows that 'b*tch' means (or originally meant) 'a female dog'. So why some girls call themselves the b-word is definitely beyond me.

But of course, I ought to know. I spotted somewhere in a friend's autograph book this entry by a fellow schoolmate defining 'B*tch' as such:

B - Beautiful
I - Intelligent
T - Talented
C - Charismatic/Charming/Compassionate (whichever it was)
H - Honest

Bitchware has other definitions which you can read for yourself.

Which I think is very weird, because that means we can now in effect call each other 'stupid':

S - Sexy
T - Talented
U - Unique
P - Passionate
I - Intelligent
D - Devoted

"You are so stupid."
"I'm STUPID and proud of it!"
"My son more stupid than yours lah."
"The Stupid Generation."

Of course, some ladies claim that to be a b*tch is to be sassy, dominating and direct. And I can't help but wonder which human bean has so successfully deluded the entire female race by managing to squeeze those adjectives out from a noun that originally meant 'a female dog'. And to think that a female dog has so many mating partners ... (though I must admit it isn't too far a description about today's ladies, sadly)

But seriously girls, I do think there are much better words you can use to describe your beautiful selves. Calling yourself a b*tch does not make you sound any more intelligent, or any more sassy - just b*tchier. Which is sad, and does not give you the dignity you deserve.

By the way female dogs are adorable. The animal ones, I mean.

Work.

2008-04-19T05:14:00.000-07:00

W = Fd.

Where W = Mechanical Work, or amount of energy transfered by a force
F = is the portion of the force acting in the same direction as the motion
and
d = is the distance traveled by the object.

And yes I took that from Wiki. No way am I gonna browse through my textbooks again, design school has downgraded me to a brain so subjective and liquidised that it can never hold anything as solid and (relatively) objective as Science.

Okay in other words I'm lazy la. I can make a good orator, no?

My apologies for not updating Le Perdu like, for eons - long enough for Charles Darwin's apes to evolve into men. You see, Le Perdu is reserved for my 'deep, deep, so so deep' (quoth May) thoughts, while my other blog Le Journal de Imagination is a, well, journal for my imagination which comes more often than my logical thoughts (and is thus updated more frequently). But again that blog isn't very imaginative yet...

I wonder how many joules of energy have I produced throughout my 18 (coming 19) years of life... haven't you wonder yourself? Maybe enough to power one house. Alright don't laugh. One house can make a lot of difference y'know!

Human beings are working creatures. We work to get good grades, we work to get a good salary, we work to bring up our family, and then we work to keep ourselves alive after retirement. Basically, we work to sustain ourselves and those around us. We work to survive - even if you're stuck in a forest you have to go and pluck a fruit to eat - that's work.

But what happens if we don't work?

Or can we ever stop working at all while we are still alive (being in a brain-dead state like the - with all due respects - late Terri Schiavo does not count)?

Is death the result of the absence of work (heart stops beating), or is death the cause of the absence of work (man stops doing his job)?

It's like asking the proverbial 'which comes first' question - the chicken or the egg?

Just something to keep Le Perdu afloat for a while. :)

Science As The Ultimate Answer?

2008-02-18T19:41:00.001-08:00

I'm not super when it comes to scientific terms, so I'll be using layman words and reasoning for this entry. Comments are as usual, very welcome as long as they don't border on spam.

I do not consider science as the ultimate answer to the mysteries of this life and beyond. I think that should be obvious to those who know me, say, from okay-okay to very well.

I'm not undermining the importance of science, either. I believe science and religion can complement each other to a certain degree. For all you know the Fibonacci numbers might be just another one of God's little surprises embedded in nature, urging us to make use of the brain He gave us and find a little something more in the landscape of His creation. But if one of them is having a hard time catching up, it would be Science.

Science is important to explain certain physical phenomenons, but that is how far it gets. Read TIME's occassional study on topics like 'The Science of Happiness', 'The Science of Romance' and even 'What Makes Us Good/Evil' (which later in the magazine begins as 'What Makes Us Moral'). Of course, these studies are often largely based on biological findings: Anterior Cingulate Cortex - Difficult moral dilemmas increase activity here, signalling the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to provide executive control, Medial Prefrontal Cortex - This part of the brain, associated with emotion and social thinking, was one of the regions damaged in the famous case of Phineas Gage, whose personality changed from kindly to beligirent (What Makes Us Good/Evil, Dec. 3 2007).

The case of Phineas Gage, which obviously implies that our morality actually lies in the biological processes of our brain and thus implicitly deny the involvement of spirituality in our character is one that cynics, not only phrenologists, would take delight in despite the fact that information about Mr. Gage's pre-injury behaviour is limited, lying solely on outward observations from his friends and acquaintances. I could suggest things like 'maybe the sufferings he went through during the period of his recovery was too much to bear', but even such suggestions admittedly do not serve to give a satisfying answer to the mystery of Mr. Gage. Hence it is not too hard to see why scientists themselves were baffled by the 'dramatic change of behaviour', and having a hard time justifying the intangible, they turn to physical 'answers' which were more widely accepted and easier to grasp.

But there's a catch in this case. Supposing our morality lied solely in the unpredictable biological processes and effects of our minds and has nothing to do with decisions triggered by our conscience/soul or the spiritual, where do law and order come in? Wouldn't it be wrong to hang Saddam Hussein since the poor man had the 'honour' to have his neutrons and synapses operate the 'wrong' way and does commit numerous atrocities? And the Holocaust was actually a result of Adolf Hitler's brain working the way it should, though due to the variety of human beings his brain was also varied from others and it simply took a slightly different way of operation. Thus Adolf Hitler was not consciously in control of his biological processes at all, so you can't blame the person himself. In fact, nobody is wrong and nobody is right because, well, it's just nature taking its unpredictable, free-flowing course. Just imagine a murderer telling you that 'it was just my medial prefrontal cortex doing its thing.' This is in line with Francis Crick in The Astonishing Hypothesis:

"The Astonishing Hypothesis is that you—your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

One wonders what kind of life Mr. Crick must be living.It does not make sense, yet it is probably a reasoning most of us readily accept on the basis of disqualifying the 'supernatural' and its 'superstitions', the same when it comes to angels, miraculous recoveries, God et cetera 'because Science cannot prove that these things exist'. Of course Science cannot prove that these things exist, because Science can only touch on physical reality, which again it is still struggling with in certain areas. In order to explain the 'supernatural', you have no choice but to go beyond Science itself. And where is beyond?

The answer probably lies in the word 'supernatural'. Supernatural - something beyond our nature, the current reality. Not subnatural, nor is it natural. It's supernatural, reality on a different plane which science - having been created on our plane of reality - is unable to accomodate.