“The world reaches our eye upside down, and yet we see it the other way around in our mind. Epistemology is in the Eye of the Beholder. Kepler sorted out our physical optics: the image to reach the retina is upside down.”

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In the spirit of Halloween and silly pranks, here is a funny video about the scary bubblehead man.  Back in September, we talked about bubbleheads in the news media, political pundits who are bubbleheads, babbling bubbleheads, and looked at how to break out of the bubble.

Sanctus Real – Everything About You

Be my light in this darkened room…
Questions fade when you invade
You chase all my fears away
With your love in my atmosphere
All confusion disappears
And nothing but your truth remains

Peggy Noonan got me thinking about bubbleheads, and epistemological self awareness.

This video is trying to sell something, but I’m thinking about the lessons it teaches on how to break out of your bubble.

This unique YouTube video, by Candy Spilner and Allan Rubin, captures some interesting aspects of epistemology, conversation, language, art and music. The video may seem pointless, even stupid — at first glance.

Look closer. Observe carefully.

It depicts the babbling bubbleheads who (having no deep understanding of the shortness and fragility of life) continue talking about nothing important — until suddenly (pop)  — life is over.

When was the last time you had a deep conversation about the meaning (and purpose) of life — with someone you love? Pop! Too late — your life is over. Babble, babble, babble … bloop! It mocks and ridicules post-modern foolishness, babbling bloggers, pontificating political pundits, promise-breaking politicians, TV talking-heads, shameless gossiping twitter-heads, and the continuing cacophony of all our careless conversations. In the babbling bubbleheads we see with penetrating perception – a reflection of ourselves.

Peggy admits that people living in big cities, working for big media companies are particularly prone to the bubblehead syndrome:

Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads. We know this and try to compensate for it by taking road trips through the continent — we’re on one now, in Minneapolis — where we talk to normal people. But we soon forget the pithy, knowing thing the garage mechanic said in the diner, and anyway we weren’t there long enough in the continent to KNOW, to absorb. We view through a prism of hyper-sophistication…And again we know this, we know this is our limit, our lack…But we also forget it… And when you forget you’re a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things.

Smart and Sophisticated

“People in your time,” Evelyn had interrupted flippantly, “were wise and good. Nobody wants to be wise and good in these days. We want to be smart and sophisticated. Your good old stuffy dining-rooms were like your good old stuffy consciences. Now my breakfast room is symbolic — the green and white for the joy of living, and the black for my sins.”

From page 96, in the book “Mistress Anne”, by Temple Bailey, published by The Penn Publishing Company, 1917

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning will I bring to nought.

γεγραπται γαρ απολω την σοφιαν των σοφων και την συνεσιν των συνετων αθετησω.

I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE,
AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER, I WILL SET ASIDE.

Works of John Locke - page. 81 - Quoting the prophet Isaiah

לָכֵן, הִנְנִי יוֹסִף לְהַפְלִיא אֶת-הָעָם-הַזֶּה–הַפְלֵא וָפֶלֶא; וְאָבְדָה חָכְמַת חֲכָמָיו, וּבִינַת נְבֹנָיו תִּסְתַּתָּר

In several recent articles, we talked about the impact of the new documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. (See also: Can I Ask You a Question?) The movie was released about 2 weeks ago. The article I wrote last Saturday, Questions That Aren’t Properly Answered … received a number of interesting comments. It’s obviously too early to tell what the long term impact of the movie will be, and like many movies, it makes a big splash for about 2 weeks, and then disappears off the radar… only showing up in DVD rentals and video sales many months later.

When you look at the chart above (thanks to Google Trends), you can see where interest (“search volume”) in the Expelled movie (green line) and Ben Stein (red line) peaked around April 18th, 2008. It’s a 30 day view of the data. The bottom part of the chart above (labeled “News reference volume”) indicates a ripple effect in news articles with reference to “Intelligent Design” (blue line) slightly after the movie release.

The chart below takes a longer view of the data (showing 2004 – 2008), and indicates that most of the debate, public interest in Intelligent Design, and news articles about Intelligent Design took place in 2005. I was surprised by this — and had forgotten about the 2005 broohaahaa over ID.

The blue line indicates interest in Intelligent Design, both in search volume, and news articles. The red line shows a peak in queries about Ben Stein occurring at the time of his movie release. On the original Google Trend chart that I reviewed, item C (above) indicates a news item: “Schools Should Teach ‘Intelligent Design,’ Bush Says”. Item D was a news item: “Intelligent Design Debate to Take Center Stage”. Item E was most interesting – a news item: “Pennsylvania voters oust school board that backed intelligent design”. So there was a whole PA school board that was expelled. Finally, the big blue spike flagged as item F was tagged with news item “Judge rules in intelligent design lawsuit”.