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      What's up everybody SonOfTerra92 here, this is just a quick update for the weekend while I have the time.

     Last Wednesday I got the chance to witness what was literally a once in a lifetime occurrence that demonstrated the elegance and beauty of celestial mechanics (how things move in space). I'm referring to the event of the Venus transit across the same plane as the Earth and the sun. The phenomenon was extensively advertised on-line  weeks before the event and although I had actually planned on skipping it, the buzz on Twitter ended up making me change my mind.

     Unfortunately I was unable to cover the event in further detail, there was a well received gathering at the Malaysian National Planetarium, where I got to see the transit via telescope but unfortunately I did not vlog the moment, my apologies.

    What really surprised me the most (in a good way) was how how diverse the crowd at the gathering was. The people that had gathered to witness the dance of heavenly bodies varied in terms of age , gender , race and even religion (I should know because I was able to pick out a fellow free thinker from among the attendees of the day). This is where the ability of science and nature to inspire the human mind really shines, in its capacity to do little harm and to captivate different people from different walks of life. You have the curious young ones whose minds may or may not have been affected by indoctrination, you have adults who sincerely want to teach kids about science, you have tourists that have come from different parts of the country (some from out of the country), and you have me the free thinker trying to get by as an engineer. It really puts things in perspective as we come to realise how the endeavour of science and naturalistic inquiry is a very "human" thing. You can survey a plethora of species on Earth but in none among them will you find the desire to systematically figure things out, appreciate what they have figured out and and subsequently pass on that knowledge to their younglings.

      It is a rather beautiful and humble process if you ask me.

The Concept is the same, its basically a mini eclipse.

    Astronomy is a very descriptive physical science. Astronomers pride themselves in "calling them how they see them". So in this case we have what is known as a transit or a shift in position between point to point of one celestial body relative to the backdrop of another. Even if you have never witnessed a Venus transit in your life you will immediately find that this sounds kind of familiar. It is exactly what happens during a solar eclipse but instead of the moon passing in between the Sun and the Earth this time it is the planet Venus. You can work out the respective trajectory and path of the transit using Newton's Laws or if you really want an even more accurate description of reality try general relativity, I heard it works too LoLz.

     And on this note I would like to segway into my final thought for the day and that is the significance of how we look at reality and nature in general.

:I have a working relationship with reality: This picture does not look any less magnificent because of that ...

    When I tell people that I am a "nature freak" or "reality freak" they commonly associate me with hippie tree huggers or a person that goes around pondering poetry while trying to get high all day. While it is indeed true that I am always in search of a daily fix I think we as a species need to re-evaluate the way we appreciate the workings of the universe not just for the added survival value of the individual but for the survival value of the whole species. Theses occurrences such as the Venus transit or any other given eclipse aren't just pretty phenomenon for us to look at and subsequently be amazed by. These things happen in our Universe because we are a part of it, not like a spectator to a theatre play more like the actors on the stage. There are a great number of other phenomena that have equal if not greater impact to the survival of our species and our fleeting planetary domain. We may look in wonder to the eclipse, but are we aware of the Asteroid with our planet's name on it ? We may be captured by the beauty of stars shining at night, but do we understand the power of the Supernova ? Our ancestors looked to the sky as we do now but the main difference is that we know more than them. We now know that understanding nature down to its principle levels can aid our survival and that to me really goes beyond the whole "pretty picture" perspective.

The backbone of night,

    That's all from me, SonOfTerra92 signing off, see you in the next video ....

Peace,
6/9/2012

Free-thought and its importance.

Seen my latest video yet ?
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Now on to my rant ...

     We pride ourselves in this day and age with being a better society than those that came before. Modern society loves to embrace freedom and the pursuit of it, we think of it as another one of those intrinsic privileges earned from the struggle to liberate ourselves from  darker times. When you look at it we have indeed come a long way in terms of the freedom we have developed. Slavery is now a thing of the past and women are allowed to get an education and what not. Way to go human race, you're getting there but you're not done yet. There are still some freedoms that remain unrealized, prevented by fear and dogma from ever seeing the light of being embraced in a holistic society.

     I'm here to rant about a particular freedom that is sometimes unfortunately shunned and stigmatized in certain societies all over the world, a freedom that I feel is as equally important as other basic human rights such as that to an education and racial equality, I am referring to the right of free thought. Yes I am going to go there, not because I want to intentionally stir up some controversy writing this as a "Malay"sian  but simply because I think that free thought is an essential mechanism for the advancement of  science and human progress  and I would be damned as a communicator of science if I did not play my role in defending it.

     My first contention in the fight for free thought is that unlike the social values of equality and freedom of speech the right to free thought has actually been with us since birth, it is as natural as the curiosity that gets little children to explore the world by poking at it in any way they can. Unlike the obviously contrived Magna Carta , the Charter of Liberties or even the US Bill of Rights we never had to hammer out the workings of the limits of the thought process through stages of  intelligent design. No one ever had to die on the guillotine for free thought, not yet anyway. In a sense, we were all born into the world as free thinkers, dumb, deaf and, blind yes but curious nonetheless. I think that when we realize this we will find that the big and scary Universe is not as big and scary after all because it can be made knowable through the process of gradual investigation. This is the very foundation of the Scientific enterprise.

:Set your mind free: Trust me you'll feel better once you do.

     No one can  capitalize free thought unlike other more common civil liberties. At face value we find that certain liberties are associated with the various identities of their own ideologies, however it isn't as equally easy to associate the thought process with anything other than that of being uniquely a human quality. For example, if you are Malaysian then you live under the Malaysian constitution, likewise if you are Muslim / Christian / Hindu  or Buddhist then you eventually end up living by the principles of those respective world-views. There will always be some other collective entity at play, but I can't recall the last time the firing of neurons in the human mind became linked to any form of written document, agreement between parties or even historical accounts. I'm not sure who quoted it first but I can indeed agree with "An idea is a monument far greater than a cathedral". I stand behind this not because of my own world view as a free thinker but simply because a typical cathedral such as St.Peter's Basilica in Rome was a result of a Renaissance Era culture living on Renaissance Era ethics however the the capacity of building other progressively better monuments (and better ethics) to outstrip the beauty of St.Peter's and the culture that built it lies within the minds of  more than millions of humans around the globe.

     The ultimate of objective a building a society capable of accepting the values of free thought and inquiry is not to give birth to a generation of fact checkers and bookworms. I prefer to look at it as an effective method to inject  healthy doses of skepticism into society. This brings me to my final contention and that is the road to a more progressive and prevalent society. While I do admit there is a long way to go before we reach a any form of societal  Nirvana, there are a few important values that can be learned from thinking freely that anybody, even the devoutly religious would do well to take heed of. I am not trying to enforce the way I look at the world onto other people. What I am attempting to do is to support the idea that a better world would be a world where people are allowed to ask questions even when the notion of it is unpopular or even when it comes off as a rather dangerous act.  This can only come from the values provided by free thought.

Most of the world acknowledge its importance.

     At the end of the day: what good is free speech without free-thought

But what are we really fighting for ? The ability to raise an opinion or that to have one ?

     In conclusion, we live in a world where everything can be made to be lost and nothing is really all too certain. Freedom of mind is all that is  left once you take a good look at where we are and where we are going. Until the day that some mad engineer is able to invent a serum of nano-machines that can be injected into the brain to assume full control of another human being, free thought remains one the most important and intrinsic civil liberties that has ever existed. It's almost like a fine wine that everyone can drink except it's free. 

Peace,
SonOfTerra92,
6/6/2012