RIFLE RANGE BOY

  The Thirteenth Floor (1999) Sadly, this film got all lost in hoopla created by the Matrix trilogy that nobody actually remembers this under-rated film. It is a convoluted film about consciousness, reality, altered reality and possibly parallels the universe. 'I think; therefore I am', said Descartes. We use our senses to make sense of who we are and our surroundings. Every input that goes through our sense organs helps build composite pictures of our personalities and determine what is right and what is not. We cannot merely rely on our powers of physical perception to ascertain reality, can we? How often our eyes have lied? What we saw was not what we got. Our dreams can sometimes appear so vivid and so real, surreal! With our addiction to experience everything and yearning for impossible things to achieve in one lifetime, our wants have no boundaries. The creation of alternate universes in cyberspace, where we can take different personas, certainly offers escapism from the ...

It was a dark, humid night, and as I was traversing a back alley making it to my car, I stumbled upon a meowing or rather a weak yowling. It turned out to be that a tiny kitten, all drench in muck, was straddling to wherever it was heading to. My heart felt for that tiny creature. No, I did not take the pitiful animal home to nurse it back to health and send it out to the wilderness with a glint in my eye. It is too much responsibility. What went through my mind was what someone told me (or maybe overheard) long ago; that our existence is just a freak accident of Nature. We, the products, have to fight it out to survive to preserve the entity called Consciousness. The consciousness that probably also happened via the accident of Nature. Life as we knew it was just going on without care as simple organisms with hermaphroditical abilities. We dragged on our existence with self-propagation without care. As life became more complexed, there was a need for variation. Nature dictated t...

To the ignoramus, this YouTube clip would be a joke. Laced with a thick South Indian accent, impregnated with assertive gestures and complete with protruding eye movements for special effects, it has been making its rounds in many social media outlets many times over for hearty laughs and cynical smiles. Added on with the fact that this holy man was once caught on a CCTV to be in close proximity with a disciple, this flick becomes more enticing. Because of his unholy conduct, in a single brush, all his seemingly profound sermons have come to nought. If one were to listen to heart what Swami Nityananda is saying, depending on one’s understanding of life, its origin and purpose, it could not be denied that his speech carries a deeper meaning. He is talking about the Atma (soul) that is within all of us that is part of the Brahman as mentioned in the Vedic scriptures. The souls of all beings are linked in a different realm. To quote a line from Beatles’ song ‘I am the Walrus’, ‘I ...

Ex Machino (2014) When the upright apes started exploring the savanna and heading out of Africa, little did they realise that they were leading to extinction. Not only the descendants of these apes would quickly destroy their own kind and reflect, 'I am become death, the destroyer of the worlds', they would also create machines that one day possibly annihilate them. This is the premise of this and many other apocalyptical sci-fi movies. The one that makes this film different is the inclusion of artificial consciousness as compared to artificial intelligence what most scientists test. The Turing test, when humans are unable to differentiate an interaction with a machine from that of with a human may be the benchmark of AI excellence, but it only measures intelligence, not consciousness. It tests the adaptability of the machine to its environment. In the case of a conscious machine, it processes external information, transforms it with its subjective ju...

Wild Wild Country (Documentary; 2018) It is easy to classify everything as either good or bad. There are, however, two sides of the story. At a cursory look, both sides seem justified with their assertions. In the old uncivilised world, might prove to be right. Violence and killing settle everything. In the civilised society, the fight through rhetorics and mind wars can be equally brutal. At the end of the day, both parties would realise that there are no winners in wars, only losers. Hence is the story a sleepy hollow of retirees with a population of 40 in the middle of nowhere in Oregon, USA; in a town called Antelope. Nothing was happening till a band of members of an international New Age Awakening group bought a large piece of barren land there. At first, they were undisturbed by their activities minus the curiosity. Soon, the original town dwellers realised that they were unnumbered and the newcomers' practices were different to what they had held dearly. That is ...

Social Engineering, Agenda 21 & Transhumanism - The Secret Manipulation of Humanity (2014, You-tube; David Icke) Recently, I was introduced (not in person) to this erudite, fast-talking, fearless critic of modern civilisation. He can be said to be one of the doomsday prophets who predicts a very bleak future for mankind. He foresees a future where Man would not be a thinking individual but rather one whose reasoning power is numbed, thanks to the subversive actions of alien lifeforms and their representatives on Earth, the descendant of the Rothschilds and many other leading members of the society including the ones in the Fabian society.  In this 2 and a half hour presentation, the speaker tirelessly covers many ranges of topics that he has been trying to do a summary of all the things that he has been trying to theorise all these years. First, he suggests that human beings many centuries ago had full use of their brain, living blissfully long lives in harmony. An a...

Lion (2016) In the process of evolutionary neural development, lifeforms initially developed a primitive neural structure. As the transmission of neural impulses increased by leaps and bounds, the nervous system slowly evolved to develop a brain, protecting information collecting interfaces from the central processing unit. When the impulses were overwhelming in terms of quantity, some of them were suppressed. This highly complicated mechanism eventually developed 'attention schema' and eventually consciousness. Memory, which is an important component of our brain function also helps to build consciousness and conscience! This interplay has helped mankind to survive the many calamities of Nature, outlive many of their contemporaries and rule over many of the deathly beasts that roam the Earth. Unfortunately, it also acts as a double-edged sword. Memory which helps to avert danger, to repeat the same mistakes twice and to progress as a race, also gives traits like guilt, no...