Modern Art - My Opinion

Ok, so I've decided to make this blog post after reading Tom Milsom's tumblr and seeing his and other artists' vendetta against anyone who doesn't like modern art. A lot of people claim that anyone who doesn't like modern art doesn't "understand" or "get" it. I'm going to define what I think the "point" of modern art is.

Modern art, as I understand it, is there to make you think about the world in a way that you wouldn't normally, and to view every day things which you may not notice on a daily basis through different lenses.

In this post I've included a piece by Richard Serra. A lot of people say "it's a bit of rusty metal against a wall, what is there to get?" but this is a piece about balance and equilibrium. When you see it you have several different feelings about it. Perhaps it is a metaphor for balance in life.

I see the point of modern art, I know its aims and all of that stuff. What I don't like is the way in which artists try to meet their aims. Surely modern artists would like for their work to be as accessible as possible and something that enlightens as many people as it can? My point is, there are easier ways to make a point about balance than putting a sheet of metal against a wall. To me it seems like a very half-assed way of making a point and invoking an emotion.

If I really really wanted to make a point about balance, I would write something. Maybe to make it even more understandable, I would do diagrams in a scientific fashion. I would explain my intentions and point clearly.

I'd like to state that I'm not saying modern art should be "dumbed down". There are ways of making things obvious and understandable without compromising the beauty and artistic nature of it. Just look at poetry and prose. It can be very descriptive and clear and still very beautiful. To me, this image looks like it's been taken out of a book with no context given. Without any kind of context, it's rather frustrating to try and second-guess what the artist is trying to say. If I took a diagram out of a science book, would you enjoy trying to figure out what kind of diagram it was and what it meant? I certainly wouldn't. It could be illustrating something brilliant like the formation of a supernova, but I would have no idea and it would be lost on me.

What gets my goat the most is being called ignorant for not instantly understanding a piece of modern art. It's not my fault if I don't get the 'point' of the piece, it's the artist's fault for not making it more accessible and understandable. I feel like when interpreting a piece of modern art I'm trying to fill in the blanks. It's like reading a poem where half of the words have been taken out at random and I need to guess what has been taken out.

And sure, maybe some people would enjoy looking at a diagram and trying to work out what it means, or trying to fill in the blanks of a poem. However it feels like those people are doing all the artist's work for them.

My last point is this. I know that some pieces don't have a specific "point" to make, they are just there to invoke emotion. However when a piece is so simple that the physical act of creating the piece isn't admirable at all and the emotion it invokes is the main attraction, especially when the emotion is not clear and you have to kind of "make it up" in your head, I do stop and wonder if it's worth the hassle.

I don't need that piece of metal against a wall to think about balance, I could just go outside and look around. There are plenty of things leaning against my walls in my house. Or maybe I could just, you know... think about balance. I don't need to see it in front of my eyes to have the same emotion.

What I like about traditional art is that it gives you a LITERAL view of something you've never seen before. I've seen a rusty bit of metal balancing against a wall before. I can understand that other people find that piece interesting but I personally don't. I'm sorry if that puts a bee in your bonnet. Not everyone can like the same thing as you.

To any fan of modern art who's angry, distressed or upset upon reading this (or any post by someone who they feel doesn't "get" modern art), I'd like to point out one thing. I'm a heavy metal music fan, and constantly get criticism from others that heavy metal is "just noise". Yet you don't see me writing tumblr posts about how ignorant everyone else is for not liking heavy metal. Unlike you, I accept that people have differing opinions to me and that doesn't make them ignorant. Not everyone enjoys heavy metal, or modern art. GET OVER IT.

Stories of a 10 year old genius

I recently came across the school books of my 10 year old brother, who has Asperger's syndrome. The syndrome makes him incapable of socialising properly, meaning he refuses to take part in class activities or do anything with the other kids. This makes teaching him quite a challenge.

At his school they decided to give him one-to-one support from a TA and allowed him to type his work on a computer as that's where he felt most comfortable. While he was working in the corner on his own he wrote some very interesting things which were printed off and stuck in his book. The following is from his English book. I may post more from other books as it is all completely mind-boggling.

It starts off with the usual 10 year old drivel they made him do, but then he goes into a "big write" where he is allowed to write his own story. I hope you enjoy it. Note: I have not changed a single part of this, from the spelling mistakes to the spaces and dashes.

Fireplace

Thursday 9th September 2010

LI use narrative structure and past tense in writing.

Lesson intro using connectives.

Robin was scared of the sheriff.

Robin's hands trembled as he picked up the arrow.

Robin feared the sheriff as his hands were shaking in fear as he picked up the arrow.

Robin was shaking in fear of the sheriff as he was picking up the arrow.

BIG WRITE

Title:

The Guider

Story:

Somewhere in England, lived a normal man. And he no more knows his destiny, then a tealeaf knows the history of the east India company.his name is john tarrion, and one night, in one uniqe dream, he saw the guider...

The guider told him that to become destin for greatness, he must...

Eat the cheese..." eat the cheese?!" says john, "yes you must eat the cheese, and this dream will be returned." says the guider."but I'm not hungry!" says john.

"just eat the cheese so I can return this dream already!"says the guider.

"ok ok ok!"says john, john eats the cheese and wakes up in the morning.

"hmm..." john thinks that the dream could be special..."nah, it was just a dream."

Says john, john goes to work and when he returns home and goes to sleep, the dream returns as said.

"I knew it!"says john."you're the galaxy's last hope."

John wakes up in the next morning and finds that his house was moved to a strange rocky land."let the games begin."says the guider.the guider trains john."but why me?!"john angrily replies."because...the master says so..." replies the guider sounding scared.the guider tells john to follow the quardrants on the spaceship he is told he was trained to use.he goes in and somehow understands how to fly it and follows the quardrants. And there he finds a space station oriting the bigger space station and in the smaller space station lies a teleporter. John goes through it and there lies a mysterious figure that starts walking towards him."who's there?!" screams john at the top of his lungs."tell the guider, you've sw him." Says the mysterious figure.the mysterious figure disappears and john goes straight to the guider and without stopping, john tells the guider that he saw him..."go and retrieve the golden water."says the guider. John goes into the same spaceship and explores the universe and finally comes at top speed onto the planet "earth"! and, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, his entire ship is almost swallowed by a small fly...the ship is only one third as big as his house so he suffered terrible demands for air resistance, escaping earth was going to require some serious speed power & muscle. His first attempt got him crashd on a small piece of grass. And finally, after 27 attempts, he finally left earth and got on his way to find the golden water. Dawning through space at an incredible speed, he finds a small blue planet and lands on it, luckily this time the calculation of size works perfectly...

Or so it seems! He was a giant compared to the beings on it, and he asked if anyone knew where the golden water is, and only one replied saying"its in sector 999999999999999999 alpha fifty."

"any simpler quadrance?"asks john.

"alpha nine, just say it in the ship you have." "thanks,!" john happily replies. John gets in the ship and says "alpha nine", and the ship goes to auto pilot. A few hours later, he crashed down onto a planet and manages to escape with the ship beyond repair. But then he saw it.the golden water... a whole five meter long river of it. About roughly 10 meters deep, stretching as far as the eye can see. The shining golden water reflects enough heat to burn the fuel leak in the ship as it blows up in a ball of fire and somewhat confusing radiation.john creeps into a hole that suddenly cracks open with the top whooshing into the sky! In the cave it is silent and a single drop of fresh cold-golden water falls on john's head..."you've collected some!" says a voice sounding like the guider.

_________________________________ --- ----_____

--- -- Aaaaaaaahh!! -- _ --- __

Says john by a matter of fact, who is thinking about how odd this event is...

he falls through the vortex next to the guider and the golden water is extracted and put into a rather confusing thing that looks like the kind of thing you would hae a wedding thing in...

The Garden of Eden According to Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Today I learned a lot about the study of Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a senior lecturer of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter with a PhD from Oxford University. She makes some very interesting claims about the story of Eden and the Fall which I'd like to share in this blog post.

So I'm assuming you all know the story: God creates a beautiful garden for Adam and Eve, who are created completely innocent. The snake shows up and tempts Eve to taste the fruit, who then tempts Adam, and so God expels them from the garden to live a life of suffering and death. It's the foundation of the notion of original sin and the biblical origin of the idea that we're all born bad people.

Dr Stavrakopoulou (I'll call her Dr Stavra for short) thinks that the origin of this story is not what we'd think. She believes that Eden was a real place on Earth, a man-made garden created by man.

In ancient Near-Eastern culture, kings were seen to have a special link to the Gods. They were the connection between the physical world and the heavens. One of the roles of the king would be to construct a lavish garden for a God to dwell in, and some of these extravagant gardens are pictured on reliefs such as the one featured on the right from Nineveh. It matc

hes descriptions of the Garden of Eden, with flowing water. It also has a very visible tower on it belonging to a king. Gardens such as this were believed to be a place where there is a true connection with God, unlike anywhere else.

Dr Stavra therefore believes that Eden could have been made by human hands. Not only that, but she also believes that Adam himself was a king. He was the gardener of God, given the task of keeping the garden and looking after it, all the while maintaining a close relationship with God, similar to the Near-Eastern kings. The fact that Adam was a king is not mentioned in Genesis, however Stavra claims that an earlier biblical account is a previous version of the story, and it describes the fall of the king from his garden.

The sin in this case was not eating a fruit. In Ezekiel 28:6-19, a king is described as having gained too much ego and considering himself to be as good as God. This is comparable to the Genesis version, where eating the fruit results in having knowledge like God does. God sends a message to this king, the King of Tyre:

"You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you. [...] Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you." - Ezekeil 28:11-15.

This much earlier mention of Eden says that the king believed himself to be "as wise as God" and had participated too much in dodgy trade business and violence. The punishment God gave him was to send all his enemies against him in an act of defiance to his reign and to bring him down, banishing him and all his successors from the throne. It speaks of a fire which burned down his palace in front of him and his people.

It is believable enough that a king's ego could turn nasty and cause people to want to bring him and his kingdom to an end. However, Dr Stavra's claims become a bit more bizarre. She claims that the Garden of Eden may not have been a garden at all, but a temple.

1 Kings 6 tells the story of King Solomon building a grand temple to God in which he can dwell, and she believes it was this temple which was the Garden of Eden in which the King and God could have an intimate relationship. But how can a temple be a garden? The passage describes the temple as having walls not of stone but of fine cedar, with the floor made of pine and no stone to be seen. Into the stone was carved gourds, palm trees and blooming flowers. Cherubims of olive wood guarded the temple, as they did in the Genesis account of Eden. There were pillars, at the top of which was images of two hundred pomegranates and lilies, and a vast image of "the sea" stood upon statues of bulls. There were many basins and "sprinkling bowls" and gold images of flowers and leaves adorned the entire interior of the temple. It was a truly magnificent place.

The king says that this is a house for God, and God responds to him graciously and says that if the king were to ever fall out of line, he would smite the temple and cause all his enemies to turn against him and his city. Later on, God is displeased with Solomon and tells his enemies that he is going to take the kingdom from the hands of his successors and give it to those who will overthrow him. Apparently, Soloman's 700 wives and 300 concubines had turned him away from God and made him worship false idols, so his position as king was taken from him by God.

So this is Dr Stavra's explanation for Genesis. But what about Eve and the snake? Well she states that the symbol of the snake, before the book of Genesis, was a valuable religious symbol and wa

s worshiped in Christianity, for example the staff that Moses carried had the form of a snake. Snakes were also used in medicine and the snake is still visible on the emblem of pharmacies to this day.

Somewhere between these stories, snake-worship became associated with evil. Dr Stavra seems to believe that after the king showed his true colours, his ideas of snake worship also became evil and demonised.

As for Eve, it is common in the New Testament for women to be shown as evil temptresses who lead men astray and this could be reflected in Genesis, because at the time this was the vision of women and the blame was placed on Eve to relieve Adam a bit of his sin.

Well, that's that. I'm not sure how far to take Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou's claims, they do seem a bit far-fetched, especially when she claims to know exactly where Eden was. However I thought it was an interesting thought and wanted to share it with you all.

For more information watch her BBC documentary on the subject "Bible's Buried Secrets: The Real Garden of Eden".

That's it from me for now, hope you enjoyed this and it wasn't too long!

60 Transitional Fossils in 4 Minutes

Heya. Sorry I haven't written a blog in a while, I've been busy, but to fill the gap until I finish all my work, here's a video I made this evening.

The Evolution of the Stickleback Fish

People often ask questions like "yeah, but how does evolution work though?" and "how can such massive changes happen so quickly and stick around?". They are good questions, and as it turns out, they've been answered.

In this post I'll look at the example of the stickleback fish, a small fish characterised by three little spines attached to its pelvis (right) which it can push out to counter predators, essentially turning it into a swimming pincushion. This was a very useful trait as you could imagine. However, over time the stickleback population began to move into more freshwater regions, where their spikes were a disadvantage as large insects like dragonflies could just pluck them out of the water by their sticking out spikes. As you would expect, the spiky sticklebacks began to die out and through natural selection a species of stickleback without the spiky pelvis began to emerge and thrive in the freshwater regions.

This is simple enough to understand on a basic level, but we can dig deeper. How did the stickleback lose its pelvis in the first place? Evolutionary biologist David Kingsley of Stanford University has researched into this question thoroughly and has come back with very convincing results. What he managed to do was isolate the stickleback's gene which was responsible for the production of the pelvis. What he found was that this gene is present not only in the marine sticklebacks with the pelvis, but also the freshwater sticklebacks.

What we can tell from this is that even though both types of fish have the same gene, there is something turning off that gene in the freshwater population - a kind of switch. These gene switches control when a gene is turned on and in what places. So as it turns out, it is not the genes themselves which are mutating, but the gene switches. As a result of this we find very different species can have very similar gene patterns, it's just that some of those genes are switched on or off.

It's likely that this is why we sometimes see mutations in the

human DNA that reveal parts of our ancestry, such as tails (yes, they do happen).

We share 99% of our genes with apes. Yet how do we look so different? The mutations needed for these changes are so so small, but can make such a huge difference in appearance. In my next blog post I might go into how the human brain actually evolved to be so much bigger than the ape brain.

It is all down to tiny mutations.

So what do you think guys, should I have been an evolutionary biologist?

Bands I've Seen Live

This actually has nothing to do with anything, I just want to keep a list of all the bands/acts I've seen live and this seems like a good place to do it. :)

• Linkin Park
• Heaven & Hell (before Dio died, R.I.P)
• Metallica
• NIN
• Soil
• Machine Head x 2
• Bullet for My Valentine
• Lamb of God
• Avenged Sevenfold (before The Rev died, R.I.P)
• Anthrax x 2
• Saxon
• Alien Ant Farm
• Skindred x 2
• Dead By Sunrise
• Iron Maiden
• Rammstein
• Pendulum
• Lacuna Coil
• Alice Cooper
• Gary Numan
• Europe
• Slayer
• Madina Lake
• Alestorm
• Sabaton x 2
• Turisas
• The Fab Beatles
• Bjorn Again
• Tim Minchin
• Dara O'Briain

This list should get bigger this summer!

Explaining the God Delusion with Social Anthropology

As many of you know I recently converted to Atheism. However, even now that I am an Atheist, I am still questioning the nature of faith and belief in religion. It is clear to me that we have found enough evidence for evolution for it to be logically considered more convincing than any religion. For the sake of this blog I will use Christianity as my main example as I know more about it than I know about other religions, but I'm hoping that the same principle can be applied to any religion.

I'm not making this blog to push my atheism on anyone else, nor am I making it to try and give evidence of evolution. I am making this blog post to investigate this question: why is it that when Christianity fails under the scrutiny of scientific evidence, the beliefs are still held worldwide and thought to be the best explanation of the world around us by many?

Power in Numbers

The statistics of the amount of atheists in the world has never been favourable. Wikipedia has this to say on the demographics of atheism:

"The demographics of atheism are difficult to quantify. Different people interpret "atheist" and related terms differently, and it can be hard to draw boundaries between atheism, non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious a

nd spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, atheists may not report themselves as such, to prevent suffering from social stigma, discrimination, and persecution in certain regions such as the Middle East, or, in cases where the situation is reversed, religious people may keep their beliefs secret in pro-atheist societies." - Wikipedia

Atheism has been pushed into the margins of society and looked down upon for as long as it has been around. Unfortunately, it is often the case that people will change their beliefs dependant on the society they find themselves in.

I am not the first to come up with this argument, Dawkins has been arguing it for years.

"If you'd been brought up in India, you would be a Hindu. If you were brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you would be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you would be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa, you would be believing in the Great JuJu of the mountain." - Richard Dawkins ~2006

In my opinion, it seems fair to assume that your social surroundings play a vital role in determining what beliefs you hold. Only 2.5% of the entire population of the world is atheist, showing that science and archaeology are, for the most part, ignored by most of the earth. In places like Africa I can understand their religious beliefs, as they may not have access to information about how species really evolved (which is quite sad really, as Africa is where it all happened). However in places like America, it is utterly unacceptable in the information age for only 1.6% of the population of North America to express themselves as atheist.

At this point I would like to state: There is power in numbers. Not just physically, but mentally too. Religion can be seen as an "imagined community" - imagined, but not imaginary (Anderson 1983). Anderson uses the concept of imagined communities to explain nationalism, but I would like to use it to describe the religious community in the USA. Christianity is a socially constructed community, "imagined" and created by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. His theory states that without anybody to imagine the community, the community dies. So if nobody believed in Christianity, Christianity would quickly wither and die and other beliefs would take over.

Similarly, because lots and lots of people are Christians, their faith is very strong. Like I said, power in numbers.

No Evidence, So Why Believe?

I would now like to talk about the philosophical teapot theory, which I find best describes the religious doctrine.

In 1952, a Bertrand Russell wrote the following for an article:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time." - Russel 1952

This idea has been reincarnated in many ways such as the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Dragon in my Garage. The point is, if you can't prove that something isn't there it doesn't mean that it IS there, because that's not yet been proven either. However, something as ridiculous as a celestial teapot or a Flying Spaghetti Monster can be seen as historical fact if enough people believe in it for long enough. If we found a 6,000 year old text which affirmed the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster, no doubt a religion would form around it and people would live their life by this fictional being.

In my opinion, there are two reasons that people become Christians and only two.

The first is that they are looking for an explanation and don't understand science enough to understand that the Big Bang theory and the theory of Evolution are very convincing. This is incredibly disgusting and should be fixed as soon as possible.

The second is that they find themselves in a society where believing in Christianity is the norm. Think about it. If you were born into a society where wearing crocs was the norm, you would wear them too right? Even though crocs are so ugly and atrocious and a crime against fashion, you might see this, but it doesn't matter because it's "tradition" and everyone does it. You would especially wear crocs if you had been told as a child that if you don't, you'll burn forever after you die, or will be eaten by the boogey man. If anyone from a different society comes along and says "Why are you wearing crocs? They're ugly!" obviously you would defend your stance fervently, but you wouldn't really understand why you felt so strongly about crocs. This is what I think is the case with the majority of Christians today.

Christians feel like they are able to defend their faith because they have the power of the church behind them. Religion is a social construction which brings people together and at the same time divides them. Human beings are social creatures, above all they just want to be accepted by others. Human minds are also very prone to indoctrination and brainwashing, an example of this is North Korea.

Hegemony

One of Gramsci's necessities for hegemony (total and utter ideological control) was isolation. This is one of the forms of control shown by the Christian faith which stares us right in the face. Parents with a strong Christian faith often want their children to grow up in a Christian environment, because as we've seen, the place you grow up shapes your beliefs and what you feel is the social norm. So the Christian parents isolate their children completely from any other religion. This is particularly prominent in the USA. They send their young child to a Christian preschool, where they are taught the teachings of the bible. Then they are sent to a Christian elementary school where they are taught no science, only biblical "facts". They are also taught, as little children, to fear that place called Hell that they might go to after they die. It's the same concept as telling a child that if they misbehave they won't get any presents from Santa Claus, but even more disgusting.

Christian children are not allowed to find out about any kind of magic like Harry Potter or dragons and are punished whenever they try to rebel against their Christian faith.

A similar example of hegemony like this is North Korea. In North Korea they are not allowed contact with the outside world, and told that North Korea is the best nation on the planet. If anybody tries to debate this, they are quickly "silenced". Total isolation, total control.

To exercise this level of control on any human being is horrible, whether it's the citizens of a country or your own child. To try and get your child to behave by making them fear the consequences so much they have nightmares about it is moral abuse and shouldn't be tolerated in this day and age. There are other reasons to be good apart from getting into heaven and children need to understand that as much as adults do.

Anyway, that's my two cents on religion for now. Maybe one day I'll write a book about it, lol. My blog posts are always so long it's a wonder anyone reads them at all! Please do tell me what you thought of all this if you read it and if you agree with the points I raised. If not, please tell me why. Ciao for now!