Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Body & Soul

It took Darwin about twenty years to publish the theory that made him feel like he was confessing to a murder (God's perhaps?), but how did he come to articulate the theory in his own mind? His voyage in the HMS Beagle had a lot to do with it, certainly, but it's not all confined to the Galapagos Islands only, nor was it confined to his observations of non-human animals...

Part of it started with his politically and philosophically liberal views concerning the equality of all human beings, and the logical consequences of such equality: if we're all equal, then slavery, and the exploitation of blacks and other foreigners must be wrong.

In the first part of this truly fascinating documentary, Andrew Marr explores the scientific idea of natural selection as formulated by Darwin, as well as some of the ways in which this description of the living world has taken on a life of its own, with implications that go far beyond the world of science, revolutionizing the way we think about ourselves, challenging the need for a creator, undermining dogma, tradition and authority, and making us question the origin and nature of human morality.

Happy birthday, Chuck!

He's an enthusiastic fellow, isn't he? :)

And yes, I may have failed to mention there would be some remarks about thinkers as wide-ranging as Marx, Nietzsche, Malthus, J.B.S. Haldane, William Hamilton and George Price, but now you know :)

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Nigel Marsh - How to Make Work-Life Balance Work

One of the most prevalent problems of modernity involves the following set of circumstances which, statistically speaking, probably apply to you: you spend the majority of your time working for a job you hate to buy shit you don't need to impress people you don't like, or to provide for the family you never see because you're so busy selling your soul to your corporate masters...

In the following engaging and funny TEDTalks presentation, and without using any technical jargon, Nigel Marsh explains one of Marx's insights (that corporations are designed to get out of you as much as they possibly can get away with), and seamlessly incorporates that idea with the Aristotelian notion that the good life is a life that balances all the different aspects that make that life worth living.

Fortunately, The Onion reports that entrepreneurs in third-world countries are doing what they can to help you balance work with home... by letting you bring your work home :)

Sure, you may laugh at them, but do you have a work laptop or blackberry? Yeah, you're your company's bitch :)
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