82nd & Fifth. “My First Time” from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of my favourite museums is The Met and one of my favourite paintings is also there. I was just impressed and happy to see that a new video cured by the art historian and curator George Goldner depicted and explained that painting.

The painting is titled” View of Toledo” by El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos).

In this painting, El Greco, “portrays the city he lived and worked in for most of his life. The painting belongs to the tradition of emblematic city views, rather than a faithful documentary description. The view of the eastern section of Toledo from the north would have excluded the cathedral, which the artist therefore imaginatively moved to the left of the Alcázar (the royal palace). Other buildings represented in the painting include the ancient Alcántara Bridge, and on the other side of the river Tagus, the Castle of San Servando.”

I invite you to watch the video interview behind this painting and Goldner’s commentary. I am sure you will love it.

Today January 27 is International Holocaust Memorial Day

Let us never forget,

Holocaust Memorial Day Documentary

Tribute to holocaust victims – We shall never forget!

Past and present of the globalization of knowledge

Globalization of knowledge is what I define as the process by which actors conceptualize and interconnect ideas in a global scale. In the past, the globalization of knowledge required initially an extensive research in books, magazines and other print resources of ideas that could be connected in order to create a larger image of the field being studied. Later, these ideas were linked and related one to another in the creation of conceptual maps that looked very similar to the nets of spiders in whiteboards. Later, these ideas were interconnected and global conclusions, hypothesis and thesis arised from the evaluation of information.

However, with the advent of technology these complicated and extenuating research process have been shortened and made much more efficient. Now, these interconnections and global images of our research are almost done automatically by computers.

The following video has a great example on how the past and present of the Globalization of Knowledge looked like. I hope you will enjoy watching it as much as I did,

On Earth Day 2012

Yesterday, April 22 many people gathered to celebrate “Earth Day” in order to call for a stop of human action and creativity in the process of transforming our planet. Fortunately, against these destructive minds and philosophy many men and women have been working to show why the transformation of the world is something good, positive and beneficial for all of us.

I invite you to watch this wonderful video titled “If I wanted America to fail”

Furthermore, I also invite you to read the essay written by Alex Epstein (Founder and Director of the Center for Industrial Progress) in which he elaborates why human transformation of Earth is the product of our success in being more efficient and productive. Because as Epstein wonderfully elaborates,

“It is only through technology–transforming the world around us for human purposes–that we eventually lessened that load. Technology, by creating a human environment in which our goals are easier to accomplish, buys us time–time to enjoy ourselves as we please, or time to create more technologies that will buy us even more time by improving our environment even more.” Read his essay here

Knight Of The Apocalypse No. 2

This is one new posts in celebration of the “A Week”,

“I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.” Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris andChristopher Hitchens have been referred to as The Four Knights Of The Apocalypse by mystics who believe in the coming of the last revelation given by the Christian god in the last book of the New Testament written by the prophet John. In the book, these Four Knights were sent by god to bring plagues upon the world. The previous authors, all active atheists opposing mysticism have written dozens of books that have enlightened and educated millions of men who previously believed in these and more irrational and mystic stories.

The Red Horse, represented the plague of war.
The Black Horse, representing famine and poverty.
The Green or Yellow Horse, representing death and illness.
The White Horse, representing the final moment of life in which the Death reappears once again to redeem humanity.

To parody this Apocalyptic stories and to celebrate the Week of Atheism, I choose to remember Daniel C. Dennett as Knight No. 2.

The books written by Dennett are among the easiest and more interesting to read in the topics of philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology. His are also some of the books with more notes, marks and corrections I have in my personal library. Dennett has a very clever and consistent stands specifically in regard to the field of philosophy of biology of which I have enjoyed reading a lot in his books. I strongly disagree with many of his arguments that depart from a objective and rational stand in regard to man’s epistemology, added to his incorrect relation of morality and organized religion as reciprocally necessary. Nonetheless he’s a great writer. Among his works are: