The Year in Review: 2009

The following is a collection of my various film reviews for Logical Voice displayed chronologically for films released during 2009. I hope you enjoy them.

Review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (reply review)

I'm afraid I have to take the minority position in the face of both Tim and Andy on this one. I quite enjoyed the original film. I felt it struck a nice balance between storytelling and action, and although it was a bit strung out, it generally made good use of the time, and I was almost for the duration entirely entertained. In a word, it was fun. This movie was however, if anything, a chore to watch.

What Michael Bay did with this film was try to take the good points of the original and amplify them in the hope that a good movie would somehow be the result. Unsurprisingly, it was not, because there was no element of fun or innocence whatsoever intermixed with the action. That is primarily a fault of the screenwriters, but it was by no means their only mistake: the plot served as nothing more than a thin screen upon which to project as many explosions as possible.

And explosions there are aplenty. This film only succeeds in two parts, in my opinion: the action scenes are spectacular, and for the most part, entertaining (although as in the last film they tend to draw out and eventually devolve into a blur of dust and metal) and the relationship between Sam and Mikaela was explored more than I had initially expected, much to its credit. Unfortunately, far too much of the screen time is devoted to the CGI and not nearly enough to the human actors, who for the most part did a good job.

Speaking of which, the film, at 150 minutes, is a gut-buster which only keeps you from leaving the cinema early thanks to the spectacular final battle. So many scenes (e.g.: Sam's mother eating the hash brownie) and so many characters (e.g.: the twins, Leo) could have been cut and the movie would have been far more enjoyable for it. The only problem then would be the absolute lack of real storytelling to fill the gaps.

For fear of dragging on, I'll wrap up here. I also agree with Andy on the point that the sequel-friendly ending was a bit of a cop-out, and I also think that Alice (Isabel Lucas) was a (not-so) subtle reference to the third Terminator movie, though there's nothing wrong with that.

I give the film two stars ** for failing to deliver the goods on so, so many counts.


Review of The Hangover

Film-making is big business these days, and often, corners are cut in the screenwriting department in order to keep up with demand. However, every now and then, a film is released whose writing is so original, it's a simple pleasure to watch. The Hangover is one such film. 

The characters in the film, though all seem somewhat familiar, are very unique in their own right, and it is in this sense that this film comes off as a whole: familiar, yet individual. The same old tropes are there (after all, it is Vegas), but they've all been twisted into some delightfully fresh version which serve to push the movie along at a steady pace.

And speaking of pace, this film simply does not let up. From the moment the plot steps properly into its stride, after the initial rooftop scene, it does not let up; no moment, no line of dialogue, no gag is spared or wasted. The pacing of the film is steady, as I said, but also quite quick. Though it may be too quick for some, it certainly generates an appropriate tone for the film and keeps the audience on their feet, but most importantly, it complements beautifully the dialogue, which is remarkably witty for the duration (99 minutes, though it feels significantly longer, and not for the worse); as testament to that fact, the gentleman behind me found it so witty, he repeated every line he found to his amusement, and of those there were a few.

The acting is of a fairly high standard on the whole: everyone in the film, from Doug (Justin Bartha) to Chow (Ken Jeong) plays their part with such sincerity, it's hard not to get swept away. 

For all this praise however, the film is not perfect, and while the pacing, writing and acting is certainly above par, oddly, there are few particularly memorable lines, something which may be related to the film's greatest flaw, and a significant flaw it is: though it will have you chuckling from start to end (and through the credits), there are no real belly-laughs, and for a comedy film to be successful, they, those big laughs, are critical. Without them, the film seems too transient, too forgetful for its quality, and you'll most likely come out of the theatre without feeling particularly impressed, and it's for this singular reason that I regretfully have to mark The Hangover down to an above average, but still not fantastic, 3.5 stars.



Review of District 9


I once read that we should be sure to cherish profanities as an important part of language, simply because some things cannot be suitably described using conventional language.

Well, holy shit.
Now this is a movie.

Before I go further, I should make it immediately obvious to any of you who are not aware that this is not a movie for children. As far as MA movies go, this is definitely more towards the confronting end of the spectrum, and some scenes will haunt me tonight, I'm sure.

With that said, this is about as good a film as you're going to see any time soon. On an emotional level, I found this to be a very challenging film, and on an intellectual level, stimulating to say the least. The only let down is that the film turns to a (very, very) violent shoot-out towards the end, perhaps the only downside to a piece of cinema expertly written, shot and directed.

This will be a very short review, as I don't want to give much away. The movie is about a man named Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), shot in documentary style, who is the leader of an operation to move 1.8 million refugee aliens from a ghetto in Johannesburg called District 9. The Apartheid overtones are obvious and parallels to immigration, especially in countries like Australia, should be drawn from this film.

If anybody gives away much more than that, they are depriving you of the joy (and horror) of this wonderful film. You simply must see it. Don't download it, don't even wait for the DVD, go out and see this movie ASAP. It will challenge you and it will show you what modern day effects can do when working hand in hand with the best storytelling.

An easy 4.5/5 stars. The first modern day sci-fi classic in many years. See this movie!


Further discussion

Certainly one of the best aspects of a group like this is that an actual discussion of the film can take place, and, against my better judgement, I'll level my right of reply against Tim's (fair, I think) review of the film; after all, what more deserving a film than this to discuss?

Tim's comment about this being more a story about humans and humanity than aliens per se is dead on. One of the great misconceptions about science fiction, especially amongst those not familiar with the genre (or familiar only with the blockbusters Hollywood spews out every 6 months) is that it's all about the weird and wonderful, the strange, the alien. All of those are wonderful aspects of the genre, akin in a sense to fantasy, but where sci-fi differs in most cases is that good sci-fi is about people more than anything else, and tries to hold up a mirror to the audience and show them what they're really like (as many great movies of other genres do, too).

Before I continue, I found in my researching the film a good number of references to South African culture which certainly enrich the film for me (Neill Blomkamp is of course South African), especially in regards to character names and especially the usage of the term 'prawn', and while I wouldn't look too deep if you haven't seen the movie yet (stay away from spoilers!) it certainly pays to look into the little details which add a sense of both symbolism and realism to the story. 

With that said, I agree with Tim, to a degree, on the matter of people-explosions (they are too plentiful towards the end), but I take exception to his complaint about a lack of hope. This is certainly a gritty movie, and it deliberately leaves some loose ends in place for effect. The way humans are depicted is ruthless and brutal, and certainly this portrayal is where much of the power of the film comes from -- who is more human? The people or the prawns? -- and I think that the sense of down-to-earth, uncompromising realism further emphasises this. There are no needless artistic flourishes in this movie, no preaching from the altar of the grandness of this or that. There are only people, and people put in a foreign and frightening situation. While I wasn't entirely sure about the portrayal of MNU as such a powerful enterprise, I'm quite happy (or should I say, disappointed) to say that I have every confidence the conclusion of the film was faithful to how real life might have played out.

Which is something to consider in itself.


Review of Up (reply review)

I was in the mood for a little light entertainment today, so I made a relatively unplanned trip to see Up at the cinema. It's marketed as a kid's movie, and I got my share of odd looks when people asked what I was seeing (especially with my newly shaven head) but the decision is not one I regret.

If anything, this is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time (excepting D9). There's an innocent charm to it, and the story itself is marvellous. Trust Pixar to deliver, once again, an absolute gem of a film with an excellent blend of humour, drama and action. 

Like my District 9 review, I don't want to give too much away, so I'll keep the review short, but this is definitely a film worth seeing. Not convinced? I nearly cried twice. Yes, twice. I've seen weepers that only drew sneers from me, but this was a genuinely touching film at times (nicely balanced out by some top-notch jokes), and nearly bringing me to tears is as good evidence of that as you'll find.

Now, is this a modern day classic? No, I don't think they'll be studying it in film classes 30 years from now, but it's definitely a film worth seeing at LEAST once. The pacing is good, and the plot is marvellous (a friend commented that it came together a little too nicely, but I'm not complaining).

4.5/5 stars. It's not perfect, but it's as close as you'll find in this genre for the next few months at least.


Review of Inglourious Basterds


Unless my reading skills betray me, there isn't yet a review of Inglourious Basterds up on the discussion board yet, which I have to admit is a little surprising, but luckily that's not something any of you will have to worry about any longer.

If you want to know what kind of movie this is, it's a Quentin Tarantino movie. If you don't know who Quentin Tarantino is or you haven't seen any of his movies, you're either a child and you really shouldn't be seeing his movies anyway, or you're an adult who really really needs to see his movies. 

So what genre is it? There's a lot of violence and there's a lot of intrigue, and it draws heavily from a number of genres (the spaghetti western influence is apparent from the opening credits) but more than anything this is a movie about movies. It's a film maker's luxury to make a film like this. Tarantino has always made his movies about cinema itself to some degree, but this is the first time that that influence takes the spotlight in some very interesting ways (I won't spoil them for you). 

What do I mean by 'a film maker's luxury'? The trailers (when they used to show) were all about the violence. Don't kid yourself: this is a violent film, and gore there is a-plenty. If you have a weak stomach there are one or two scenes which will have your eyes clamped shut, I can guarantee that. However, the violence comes in high intensity bursts, and looking back doesn't tend to pervade the movie. Rather, a very large portion of the movie is devoted to dialogue, and there are scenes which consist of nothing more than dialogue, some of which contributes minimally to the plot. For most movies this would be a major (not to mention pretentious) drawback, but this movie pulls it off in spades. The reason is can do this is because even when the dialogue seems non-chalant, there's an atmosphere of genuine malice all throughout the film that manages to build suspense where you wouldn't otherwise expect it.

Beyond that, this movie is funny in a typically Tarantino-esque way (ie: in all the wrong ways). When you laugh you may not think you should be, but there's no denying that there is humour in this film, which, given the content, is impressive in itself. 

My review so far has been full of praise and I would say that the film enjoys moments of cinematic genius (the meta-reference to cinema all throughout the film is not something you can fully appreciate upon the first viewing alone), but this is not a perfect film. At 152 minutes in length, this is a hefty long haul, but it certainly won't leave you bored. It's not too long and it doesn't overstay its welcome, but there are moments which drag on a little too long, small lulls here and there which somewhat dampen the experience. This isn't a major drawback so much as a minor complaint. The bigger problem with the film (and how small a problem it is should be apparent) is that there's a certain something missing, a certain intangible je ne sais quoi that made some of his earlier work instant classics. 

But not everything he touches has to turn to gold for it to be any good.

4.5/5 stars. If you like Tarantino, you'll love it. If you don't but you appreciate cinema, you'll at least like it.

By the way, look out for Christoph Waltz as Standartenführer Hans Landa, a character so singularly unique, every moment he's on screen being played by such a fine actor is a delight.


Review of Moon


Moon is a unique movie, but at the same time, it can't seem to shake the ghosts of its predecessors. Indeed, if anything, it welcomes them with arms wide open, and the film is all the better for it. Yes, this is a film for science fiction aficionados and not many others, unapologetically so, a fact which was emphasised when a woman came up to my friends and me outside the theatre and asked if any of us could make heads or tails of the film. We could, but it's certainly easy to see why one mightn't.

The film is deliberately slow-paced, in my opinion perhaps a little slow, and is reluctant to explain too much to the audience, preferring instead to leave the details to be read between the lines, so to say. The pacing does, however, seem to suit the sets (which seem to resemble more than a little those of the 1970s classics, best seen in the vast, desolate, every-so-slightly out-of-focus and undeniably shrunken lunarscapes), which are suitably empty and lifeless.

The performance by Sam Rockwell (as Sam Bell) is perhaps not always perfect, but given the task at hand, he does a remarkable job that rarely lets up, and that of Kevin Spacey (as GERTY) is, as voicing robots goes, just about second to none. 

That's not to say the movie has its faults - I believe it does, and those faults are somewhat crippling in a way. The film is billed as a psychological thriller, but the ever-present sense of foreboding never properly builds to a crescendo, something which gives the film at times the feel of an amateurish homage rather than a film of its own, something which, trust me, it does not deserve. Though the film gives few direct explanations, the ones it does give come too readily, even though there is a lengthy period before any of the "action" starts. 

I know it seems unusual, but I don't have a lot to say about this movie. It's artful, and probably the truest to the hardcore sci-fi genre to have come out in years. For some, that's a turn on, and for others, it's quite the opposite. Whether or not you should see this movie is probably going to be determined by which of those categories you fall into. I would give it 3.5/5 stars, and say only that, had things panned out differently, it could've become a classic - but not every movie has to be a classic for you to enjoy it.


Review of Paranormal Activity


This is a movie which will split viewers. I know this because I witnessed it first hand. Some in the cinema were screaming in terror, others were laughing with amusement (or was it nervous laughter?). I suppose it all depends on what you go in expecting, and what your mindset is.

Paranormal Activity is a film in the style of Blair Witch, with no credits before or after the 'found footage'. The entire film is shot from the perspective of a held camera, something which is surprisingly well-handled. Most of the footage is done on a tripod, and that which isn't seems to be held by someone who has had enough experience with a camera not to result in everything being blurry and exaggerated (ie: about five minutes), something which impressed me greatly. There are a couple of shots relatively early on which might seem as though they couldn't have been shot by either Micah (Micah Sloat) or Katie (Katie Featherston), but given the 86 minute length, those couple are remarkably minor.

It should be noted, on the topic, that the film was done on a shoestring budget. To say that it shows is disingenuous, as, after all, that is the intention of the genre, but worse, it would betray an extremely shallow view of the film. On that note, a number of my comrades, upon leaving the film, complained that it wasn't scary enough, or gory enough. Understandable; it shows few of the hallmarks of the horror genre, and some people won't be scared at all. But I would say that the point is not to leave you with wet pants at the end of the film, but to leave you checking the bolts on the door when you get home. This is not a shock film, it's a suspenseful film, and a reasonably psychological one at that.

That was part of why I liked the film, but far more so was because of the brilliance of the execution. I've already mentioned the camerawork, but going hand in hand with that is the direction, which of course is accompanied by the acting and it with the scripting and so on; all of these aspects work together seamlessly - the acting (especially by Featherston) is brilliant and well-supported by the retroscripting approach to the screenplay. All in all, it produces an extremely convincing and natural feel to the footage that should draw in any viewer who hasn't gone in at the beginning determined not to be. 

The film itself was very good, but if I could point out one (potentially fatal) flaw, it would be that the suspenseful feel ventures too far in to the film and makes the punchy final 20-30 minutes seem a little too contrived. If the earth had started shaking a little sooner (both metaphorically and otherwise) the result may have been close to perfection. 

Instead, I'm happy to give 4/5 stars, and a hearty recommendation to those who think themselves brave enough to handle it.


Note: I also saw Terminator: Salvation and wrote a review for it. However, this was never published and has since been lost. The gist of it, though, was that I was not terribly impressed.

Thanks for reading. I know it's probably too late to be using most of these reviews for cinematic releases, but hey, if you're ever curious about whether or not to buy it on DVD, maybe my reviews could be of some assistance.

So, this is Sights wishing you all a happy New Year, hoping for an entertaining and thought-provoking 2010 in cinema and signing off for the last time in 2009. See you next year.

A proper response

When the topic of my atheism comes up in conversation, as it does from time to time, I seem to be always asked the same two questions, usually linked, with only slight variation. They are, firstly, "But how can you not believe in anything bigger?" and secondly, "But don't you think life is special? You really think it was just an accident?". I almost always give the same response, but over time I've become more and more dismissive of this particular line of questioning. Why this is, I am not entirely sure; perhaps it is the implied answer of the questioner, 'God', that irks me. An answer that comes too quickly, from too little speculation, or thought, or even imagination (the irony of which does not escape me), I may prejudge. Or perhaps I am simply tired of hearing the same questions over and again, and so every time I respond, I become more impatient and to me, my answers become more and more trite and superficial, and that is not something I like. Or perhaps there is some other answer, another, maybe even simpler explanation.

However, my feelings on the subject are largely irrelevant. Having re-examined the questions and my own answers to them, I've decided that, despite everything I don't like about them, they are questions that I should answer, and I owe a proper response to whoever asks them. This is not to say what I've told people in the past was false, or a misrepresentation, no, not at all. Instead, I mean that a proper response requires the sort of time and delicacy to be formulated and explained in order to be sufficiently effective that an on the spot response simply cannot suffice, no matter how much practice one has delivering it. And so I have decided to use my blog here to give a proper response, a response that I feel does the questions justice without being needlessly convoluted. And of course, the advantage is that, if anyone were to come to this blog and read this primer which I am about to write and are curious enough to look for further details, well, they need not look very far at all! So, without any further delay, my response.

You say I don't believe in anything bigger than "just this". You say you think there's something else, something grander, more magnificent perhaps, I imagine. Well, I do believe in "just this". Let me tell you what "just this" is. Take the carbon atom. It is not an object I imagine you have paid much attention to in the past - neither have I. It is something which is incredibly small, almost unimaginably so, and so I think we can be forgiven for not dedicating a great deal of thought to it, and yet, without it we would not exist. And yet, even this is made up of smaller particles: protons, neutrons and electrons, electrons having over a thousand times less mass than protons, and existing on a scale which is impossible for us to see, not even with the most powerful optical microscope. Here, "inside" the atom, the rules which appear to govern our world seem to break down. This is a quantum world, a world entirely alien and unfamiliar to our experience and perception, better represented with numbers and graphs than by even the best estimation of human imagination.

In reality, this quantum world is everywhere, its effects universal. But we are so big in comparison, we cannot even begin to notice its bizarre rules in operation. How big? Let me tell you. Glucose is a molecule which contains six of our carbon atoms, along with twelve hydrogen and six oxygen atoms. Put together, the molecule has a diameter nearly three times as great as the singular carbon atom. As wide as this and nearly four times as long is your garden variety phospholipid. If you don't know what a phospholipid is, I won't bore you with the details, except to say that it is much bigger than our carbon atom, which in itself is incredibly bigger, if such a term can be used, than our friend the electron. Now, nearly four times longer again than the phospholipid is the antibody, a type of protein you may remember from your science classes on the human body. If you do not recall so readily, antibodies are an essential part of our immune system, existing in our blood to neutralise microscopic threats to our health, such as viruses.

But how big exactly are viruses? A singular rhinovirion, a nasty little thing which in great enough numbers has caused many a headache to bosses the world over for its role in causing the common cold, has a diameter two and a half times greater than the length of an antibody, and it's tiny as far as viruses go. A standard influenza virion might be easily four times greater in diameter than that rhinovirion, if not more. Now, if you're even vaguely familiar with any of this, you've almost certainly heard of Escherichia coli, better known by its abbreviated name E. coli. E. coli is a species of bacteria which, if one is unlucky enough to come across a particularly nasty breed, can cause food poisoning, and well and truly ruin a lovely evening. An E. coli bacterium is in itself rather large, compared to our influenza virion at least, at nearly five times as broad and over 23 times as long as the virion's diameter. If you're having trouble picturing that, draw a circle of diameter one centimetre, and next to it, a rectangle of dimensions 4.6 x 23.0 centimetres, and now you have a rough approximation of the comparable size of the bodies (not including E. coli's flagella).

Now, throwing your minds back to those viruses I mentioned, and the antibodies that fight them. As you'll no doubt again recall from those science classes of old, all of this happens in the blood stream. Blood, now there's something you're a little more familiar with, yes? And red blood cells, those red disk-shaped cells that deliver oxygen around the body and populate the blood stream, you remember those as well? Those are two and a half times as wide as are E. coli bacteria long, and there are 20 to 30 trillion of them in your body at any one time. Impressive, no? But we are still only just at the beginning of our tour, and things are only just getting interesting. The next exhibit is the human ovum, the first that can be seen without the need for a microscope and, coincidentally, is the largest cell found in the human body. Compared to the red blood cell, its diameter is 16 times and its volume is five orders of magnitude as great.

If this is beginning to do your head in, well, allow me to ease you into a more familiar world. The diameter of a human ovum varies from 100 to 200µm. A grain of salt, by comparison, is approximately 0.5mm, or 500µm wide, though this is certainly nothing in comparison to something the size of, say, a coffee bean, which might be about a centimetre in length, give or take. Welcome to the world of the visible and tangible, my friend! Just to prove it is so, let me pick up that coffee bean, and hold it in my hand. It's not so large, you know, compared to me at least. Why, I myself stand at about 181cm tall, many many times taller than this coffee bean is long. But before we move on, I'll remind you of how far we've come. Our electron, one of six constituting our friend the carbon atom, has a mass of roughly 9.11x10^-31kg, which would make it about 32 orders of magnitude smaller than my own mass (a closely guarded secret, I assure you). For those of you who would like a bit of context to that statement, there are 3 to 7x10^22 stars in the observable Universe, 10 orders of magnitude less than our multiple above. For those of you who are wondering what 10^32 actually looks like, here it is (although those who are pregnant or have heart conditions may want to look away): 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's how many electrons it would take to mould an electron version of me (though that's certainly not advisable).

So, we've finally arrived at the human form. If you have a head on your shoulders, you've probably already figured out the purpose of this tour, and you may wish to get off. You may leave at any time, of course, but remember, you still won't have the answer to your question. Not the proper answer, in any case. If you've the constitution to stay the course, strap in, because things are about to start moving quickly now that we've come to the supposedly privileged human being. After all, we have to, for we have a great deal more ground to cover, so to speak, now that we are to venture from our common experience to far, far bigger things.

Humans are not generally large creatures, not even by our own standards. After all, if we were, would we look on at the skeletons of dinosaurs with such awe and wonder? Take, for example, Amphicoelias, a sauropod which may have grown to be 60m long, or, for a slightly more recent creature, the Blue Whale, the heaviest of which on record weighed just shy of 177 tonnes. But even so, these come nowhere near the sheer size of human creations, such as the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Dubai, which stands at 818m tall. But what is this in comparison to the size of the Earth, with a radius of over 6,300 km and a mass of 5.97x10^24 kg? The entirety of the human race and all of its construction is barely a scratch in the surface (in more ways than one) of this planet, which we presume to be master over. And how far have we gone from our home? Only so far as the Moon, which is never much further away than 400,000 km from the centre of the Earth. This may seem like a lot of course, but to say we've only just stuck our toe in the tide pool of the cosmic ocean is probably something of an exaggeration.

For our little rock is whizzing around the Sun at this moment at a distance of about 150,000,000 km. The Sun, a ball of gas that could comfortably fit one million Earths within its girth and then some (and is not even very big by stellar standards), which emits some 3.83x10^26 joules of energy per second by nuclear fission, a process which all the nuclear weapons on Earth could not nearly replicate. It is the centre of our Solar System, which extends beyond the reach of any human spacecraft. The furthest planet from the Sun, Neptune, maintains an orbit of about 4.5 billion km from the Sun, but beyond here lies the Kuiper belt, an asteroid belt which contains a number of dwarf planets including Pluto, and it extends as far out as 8.2 billion km. The furthest man-made object from Earth, Voyager 1, is currently further than even this; it is now travelling in the heliosheath at a distance of some 16.5 billion km from the Sun. The furthest extent of the Solar System, the hypothesized Oort Cloud of comets, may reach to as far as 50,000 Astronomical Units (the mean distance of the Earth from the Sun), or almost 7.5 trillion km away. Welcome to the edge of the Solar System.

The Sun's light from about 2005 is now reaching Proxima Centauri, our nearest neighbour at 4.2 light years (39.7 billion km), and light from 1999 is now reaching Epsilon Eridani, the home of the nearest known exoplanet, a Jupiter-sized gas giant imaginatively named Epsilon Eridani b, which is at a distance of 10.5 light years (99.3 trillion km). Beyond this point, any use of kilometres becomes so cumbersome, I shall refer only to distances in light years (the distance light travels in a single year, for those who did not know). After all, a trillion of anything is beyond any form of unassisted human comprehension, and it is not my purpose to make your head spin by citing as many zeroes as the Universe may hold in store. So let's continue on our journey to our next milestone - at a distance of approximately 60 or 70 light years, you can turn off your portable radio, because this is the furthest extent of human radio transmissions, made so many years ago. Beyond this point we have stars and more stars, of types varying from dwarfs to hypergiants, of many different colours and temperatures, sizes and temperaments, and these stars constitute, along with numerous other phenomena, the galaxy we like to call the Milky Way, a large spiral galaxy spanning 100,000 light years across.

Many people confuse the Galaxy and the Universe, and if you've come this far already, and can even begin to grasp the scale of the 200 to 400 billion stars which comprise it, then you might be forgiven for making that same mistake. But oh no, we're not even close. The Milky Way has its own satellite galaxies, most notably the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (though there are a number of others) which orbit it, and all together, our Galactic Realm is but a small part of the Local Group, a group of about 30 galaxies which are near to us, and includes the Andromeda Galaxy, one not unlike our own, which is destined to collide with the Milky Way in about 2.5 billion years or so. The Local Group, our small galactic neighbourhood, is itself about 10 million light years in diameter, but even it is only a speck in the Local Supercluster, a large group of at least 100 galaxy groups which has a diameter of 110 million light years. We currently know of at least 40 of these superclusters, which are, along with other galaxies, found in structures known as galaxy filaments and galaxy walls, which are typically about 80 megaparsecs in length (261 million light years).

At a distance of 13.7 billion light years, we find the afterglow of the Big Bang, the extent of cosmic microwave background radiation. Beyond here, at a distance of 46.5 billion light years, we find the edge of the observable Universe, though it seems likely the physical Universe exists even beyond this point. So, 46.5 billion light years - think about that. That's about 439,622,855,430,000,000,000,000,000 metres, in case you were wondering. Can you even try to imagine that? Honestly? Can you come anywhere close to truly comprehending that scale in all of its enormity? If so, please say so, because that would probably make you the first.

Now that we've completed our journey, from the smallest of small to the biggest of big, and you have, so to speak, seen it all, perhaps now you can see what you mean when you speak of "just this", and if you've got any sense you'll hang your head in shame for having looked on all of cosmos with such ignorant scorn. You think there needs to be something bigger than all this? Does this not satisfy you? Is it too "material? for you? Has its scale alone not touched you? You dare demand more in existence, as though all of what I've described to you, itself only a pathetic fraction of all there is, is incomplete, imperfect, without an invisible man to sit and watch it? That is my answer to the first question. My answer to the second is far, far more brief.

Do I think life is special? Yes, I do. But that does not mean it is important. Why should it be? Look at how pathetically tiny we are, tiny even in our own backyard, and that is not even so grand as a speck in the Universe. If you feel such a desperate need for import, by all means, believe there is a god watching over you, and that all the vastness of space means nothing to you in your cosy little home. It makes no difference to me. But do not presume to think of me as the ignorant one. And yes, I do think life is an "accident". Accidents happen, and they happen frequently, and I think it is a far more likely explanation that at a particular place at a particular point in time where conditions were good for life, conditions by no means necessarily unique, life arose, simply by natural means. If it is possible, why not? Can something not be special if it was not willed or manufactured? Is there nothing special about a snowflake just because nobody wished for it explicitly to form as it does, God or otherwise? Or is every snowflake in history the direct manifestation of the (apparently otherwise unengaged) Almighty's will?

That is my response, proper and in full. I apologise for any rudeness, but sometimes a certain brusqueness is required in making one's point forcefully. Other than that, I can only hope you've found my response to be, if not eye-opening, then at least somewhat educational; I myself learned a great deal in doing the many hours of research required to put together this reply, and I only hope that transfers well to you, the reader. On that note, I sign off until next time.

What are we?

We often ask ourselves in times of change or difficulty who we are, and quite rightly so. However, the question of this post is not asking who, but what we are. This question might at first seem unnecessary at best, but we often tend to overlook the more basic questions when we try to come to grand conclusions, and I dare say we are far the worse off for it, for how can we possibly assume to be able to tackle grand questions of meaning and existence when we haven't even considered the most basic tenets and preconceptions upon which we base our arguments, or question the assumptions we make in the course of making those considerations? If we are all so expert in the science of life and the art of living that we presume to know the answers to these questions without having need to properly sit down and think on them, why is it that we are so often feeling unsatisfied or unhappy?

The simplest and perhaps most obvious answer to the posited question is that we are human, but this answer is not nearly satisfactory, and merely raises more questions. "What is it to be human?", and "How do we know?" for example. But even those questions are built upon a more basic presupposition which needs to be explored; before we can ask what we are, we must ask if we are (and presumably, if everything else in the Universe is), or, in other words, if we exist.

This again seems like a question that has a self-evident answer, an answer so self-evident that I dare say few people will even bother to provide a response. This in itself should be setting off warning bells that we are far more ignorant in our considerations than perhaps we had supposed, and this is a situation that must be remedied as soon as possible if any progress is to be made here.

"Do you exist?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"Twenty years ago, did you exist?"

"I suppose not."

"So before your body existed, you did not exist?"

"No."

The temptation here is to equate our own existence with that of our bodies, but clearly more consideration must be given when one considers exactly one begins to exist. This tends to be a major sticking point in the debate about abortion. Though it is not my intention to enter into the politics of that particular issue in this post, some of the issues which I intend to address are crucial to the debate, so please excuse me, reader, for dabbling briefly into politics.

"Your body existed at birth, did it not?"
"It did."
"And one day before birth?"

"I suppose so, yes."
"And one day before that?"
"Yes."
"What about at the moment of conception?"

"It would appear so."

"It certainly would, wouldn't it? But what was your body at the point of conception?"

"A single cell, a zygote."

"Hardly a body, I would say. It would seem to you or I no more a body than a single cell of skin or muscle, I imagine."

"But a single cell of skin or muscle won't grow into a fully formed human, will it?"

"No, it will not."
"So there is clearly a difference."

Again, there is a temptation at this point to simply say that because the fertilised cell can in time grow into a fully formed human, it is a human, but even the logical underpinnings of the argument defeat it - if the cell will in the future become a human, the implication is that now, at the point where it is a single cell, it is not a human. Even so, the matter of potential development is one which must be addressed, and so the discussion continues.

"What exactly is the difference, then?"

"The difference is that one will grow into a human, one will not."

"So it is a question of potential?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"But how does one measure potential? A single sperm cell has the potential to eventually become a human, supposing it meets an egg. Is this sperm human? No, it is merely a single cell with the potential, given certain circumstances, to become human at a later point. How is it different to your zygote? In chromosomes alone. Does your humanity lie in the number of your chromosomes alone?"

"Of course not!"

"Then this zygote is no more a human than a single sperm cell."

This is something of a simplification, though. If your DNA is in that cell, then there is at the very least something of you in that zygote. Even so, it is still a mistake to go on to equate a human being (with all the rights that status enjoys) with this single cell, no matter its genetic make-up, purely on the basis of a nebulous idea of "potential".

However, the question then arises as to when exactly a collection of cells becomes human. It may be after conception and before birth, but beyond this we have little idea of when it is the case. This is because we have yet to pinpoint what it is to exist. We know that we do not exist before our body does, but we have established that we, as people, do not strictly exist for some time post-conception either. Again, there is a temptation to return to the body for an answer.

"Consider that you have died, and your body is lying before me. "

"If you say so..."

"Am I looking at you?"
"Unless there's something extraordinary going on outside the window, I imagine so."

"Can I converse with you?"

"For your sake, I hope not."
"Can I play sport with you?"
"No."
"If I'd never met you, could we form a bond of some sort? Become fond of each other, even friends?"
"That would be absurd."
"Indeed. Tell me, can you donate to charity, or assist the poor, sick and elderly?"

"No, I'm dead."

"Right now, do you consider yourself a good person?"
"I certainly think so."
"Do you do what I mentioned? Donate to charity and perform other works?"

"I do."

"So as I look at you lying cold on the floor, do I see a good person?"

"Yes."
"But you told me dead men cannot do those things which you say qualify you as good."
"But I did them in the past."

"In the past yes, but not now, as I look at you. So either you have become a person who does no good, or I do not see you."

"You cannot condemn the dead for being dead!"

"Of course not, which only leaves one conclusion. That dead body is not you."

This may seem like a perplexing conclusion, even paradoxical. But there is a resolution if we consider another avenue of hypothetical argument. Consider now two people, let's call them Daniel and Emily, of contrasting personality. They are put under the knife and, in a world-first operation, their brains are switched from one body to the other, with no complications and complete functionality. Medically speaking, this is entirely impossible, with our current knowledge of medical treatment anyway, but luckily we need not perform hypotheticals in real life to determine their outcome.

Having completed this hypothetical surgery, we ask ourselves this: Who is Emily, and who is Daniel? If the body we might recognise as Emily's comes up to us and begins acting in a manner entirely at odds with her character, speaking in a different way and about different things, taking no interest in foods or activities she previously adored, and so on, but instead acting, speaking and eating just as Daniel would, by what merits can we call her Emily instead of Daniel? If we've never met Daniel, this "Emily" does not even have a singular memory of us, and will probably not even like us. To call her Emily instead of Daniel would seem to be a mistake, for it is not her. It does not think like her, it does not act like her, it is nothing like her except for the bodily form she once possessed, and the same can be said for "Daniel".

So identity does not exist in the body. Where then? The brain? Well, let's change focus slightly back to another of our early questions. We began by asking if we exist, so let's now ask how we know. That you can see, hear, touch, these in and of themselves prove nothing. But that we know what seeing, hearing, touching are, this is paramount. To cut to the short answer, we know we exist because we are self-conscious, a fact summed up nicely by Descartes in his declaration, "Cogito, ergo sum." or, in English, "I think, therefore I am.". All sights, sounds, and other sensory inputs prove nothing, for they could be non-existent; synthetic representations fed directly to you, akin perhaps to The Matrix. But the fact that you can process them, whether they are real or not, indicates that you must exist, if not in the world of the inputs then at some higher plane of existence. If you did not exist, you could not process the input. Of course, you must then question how we know that a non-real entity cannot "think", and in order to do that we must question what it is we consider to be "real". However, this is only a short blog, and many great men have spent their lives on those questions, time which we, needless to say, do not have here. I do not think it is entirely unreasonable, however, to take Descartes' declaration at face value, at least for the purposes of what I would call the philosophical equivalent of "rough working". If we do continue presuming "cogito, ergo sum" to be a true statement, and thus taking thought, representational of self-consciousness, to be the proof of existence, it follows that self-consciousness is also prerequisite for knowledge of existence.

Now, what is it that makes you you? In other words, what constitutes your identity? It cannot be what you do, because I'm sure that many others have done, or at least can do, what you have done, perhaps not exactly, but then nobody else can have the exact same experiences as you; such is the nature of the Universe. This detail is irrelevant though. I kick a ball exactly 10 metres. Another person kicks a ball exactly 10 metres in exactly the same fashion. Is it the fact that he did not do it at the exact same time or place what makes him essentially different to me? No. The same reasoning follows for all things external and experiential. With this excluded, all that is left is the internal, or rather, that which is internal to the mind (the mind being holonymous to thought). Though further exploration is possible, it satisfies me that, given that all people have different identities, and given that what distinguishes one identity from another is (or at least seems to be) the mind, and that the mind is individual to its possessor, the mind is fundamental to identity, or, in other words, it is your thought and intellect, your consciousness that makes you you.

This has profound implications, the most pressing one being that before a human develops its consciousness, it does not have a distinct identity. In humans, consciousness does not typically develop until the age of one, which means that before this point, the child was merely a body. This is not as confronting as it immediately seems, but it does mean that we have not yet come to a conclusion about when a body becomes human, only when it develops an identity. Since I do not want this post to be political, I will not further explore that issue, as it is not only time-consuming, but rather tangential and not essential to our question. After all, we said that we were human, but did we not mean that our bodies were human? And have we not already discounted our bodies as being determinant of what we are, the primary question at hand?

So, let us recapitulate. We know we exist because we are conscious of our existence, and our existence, that being the existence of us and our identity, resides in the mind. Thus, before the mind (not the brain) functions, we do not exist, and the same is true for after the mind has ceased to function.

"But wait," you interject, quite rudely. "What about life after death? What about the soul? If identity exists not in the body but the mind, is there not the potential for us to survive bodily death?" The allure is certainly there, for those who wish to draw that conclusion, to do so. I would argue that such an action would be premature. Those despairing for some comfort, unable or unwilling to confront their mortality, might cling desperately to such a prospect. As for a soul, this is more of a theological question, as certainly no evidence of souls has come to be, but as for a mind, this is something which can be discussed.

The brain and the mind are not one and the same. But with this said, the mind is dependent on the brain. If one shuts down the rational centres of the brain, the mind can no longer function rationally, something which becomes evident in certain cases of brain trauma. A clearer example comes from split-brain patients, whose corpus callosum is severed, leaving both hemispheres of the brain unable to communicate. In these patients, it is not unusual to see two distinct personalities develop, two minds, as it were, one corresponding to each half of the brain. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that with the whole brain dead, so dies the mind and, subsequently, you.

So no, your mind will not survive death. If you wish nevertheless to believe in some sort of soul, beware that it may not resemble the mind at all, it may not correlate any form of nous at all, it may not be conscious, and it may not be you, not at least as you know yourself. However, this is not a question I have to struggle with; I see no reason why a spirit or soul should exist within me. As far as I'm concerned, if there is such a thing as divinity, the mind is as close a thing as a fragment of it as can be found, and I've no need for more than that. And at the end of the day, think of it the way Mark Twain did: "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."