Beware of deep fake videos!

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Carrie Fisher, who acted as Princess Leia since the beginning of the Star Wars since 1977, died on December 27th 2016. But thanks to computer-generated imagery (CGI), she is kept alive in the movies until her character gets a decent burial. She appears in almost half of this movie due to the unused footage from Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

Imagine someone who had died two years previously still featured in a movie that demands continuity. As we see in this film also that there is a thin line between being alive and dying, especially if one is a Jedi Master. A departed soul can still perform ground shattering literally 'out-of-this-world' feats. One has to tune in to the correct frequency to receive the intended instructions on decision making. Do I sense a speck of Vedanta teaching here? 

This kind of make-believe is no longer confined to the celluloid industry and fantasy but has permeated into the mainstream. Cybertechnology has advanced so frighteningly fast that algorithms can digitally manipulate audio and visual inputs to create fake videos. These are called deep fake videos and have the potential to create disaster when conflicting information is inserted for nefarious intentions.  We have to be aware of this ability and be ready to differentiate what is real and what is not.

Now, coming to Star Wars Ep 9, it was not the fresh idea that came to change the world when the first episode (or rather Ep 4) hit the screens back in 1977. Since then, many have changed in advances in storytelling and film technology. Many copycat franchises have also emerged competing for a share in box office collection. 

It is the same good-over-evil message, but this time around, the storytellers are telling us that there is a thin line between living and dying, as mentioned earlier.

This YouTube video gives a complete rundown on the Star War saga.

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It is our fault!

Years and Years (BBC, Miniseries; 2019)
Season 1, Ep 1-6.

It started with the £1 Tshirts in the mid-1990s. Everyone knew it was ridiculously cheap, but nobody saw the need to create a ruckus about it. The businessmen took the lion's share of the profit while the poor workers who put it together took home a few pennies. The buyers did not complain as it was a bargain. The workers did not either. They were thankful that they had a job to go to. After many years, they were able to see some money. That was the beginning of the divide - the divergence between the haves and the have nots. It went on to create obnoxiously rich conglomerates.

With the spread of the world wide web to all corners of the world, global netizens were hooked. They were lulled with the dopamine of social media influence and the lure of aimless spending. People were cooped in the comfort of their echo chamber, looking into the eyes of the fellow humans but into the abyss of their monitors. Perched in their armchair, they became opinionated about everything and feel superior to the surroundings. Unbeknownst to them, the Big Brother of the Web was busy mining their habits and idiosyncrasies and would one day be used against them.

These must be some of the thoughts that went through the scriptwriters as they envisioned a potential dystopic UK in the 15 over years after 2019. 

The United Kingdom is no longer the cradle of the world as it used to be. Many jobs which used to be done by people is redundant as AI can do it as well, if not better. Who needs accountants anymore? Unskilled works like the manual car wash are resurfacing after being phased out long ago by the automatic car wash stations. Despatch riders to deliver online orders made a comeback. People simply needed jobs.

The story revolves a matriarchal octagenarian and her four grandchildren as well as their partners and children. Trump had been re-elected and had authorised the launch of a nuclear missile to the man-made island owned by China. Theresa May is somehow still in the picture. Politics in the UK is still chaos as hatred and populist politics hog the limelight. Brexit had secluded the UK from the Continent, but it has to deal with an influx of refugees from Ukraine. Russia had invaded Ukraine and is after its enemies and the LGBTs. Gay marriages in the UK are the norm, hence the illegal immigrants.

Along the way, many British banks collapse. Political candidates become outrageous in their approach to convince voters to vote for them. Digital contents are regulated so much. Deep fake videos make nothing credible anymore. Frequent power outages are carried to continually erase and modify data. Information is controlled by the ruling regime. BBC is shut down. Once again, print media makes a comeback as it proved more credible. Housing shortage becomes acute. The long arm of the law becomes something to be feared as the process to wrangle out such legal entanglements becomes too easy and cumbersome.

On the other end, people get so obsessed with integrating themselves to the net that they go into great lengths into incorporating the human body with the digital world. In Transhumanism, man can implant chips into their hand to receive calls, plant cameras into their eyes to get their instant clicks (literally at the blink of an eye) and even to transfer our memories and consciousness to a digital format. 

Along the way, we do see advances in medical treatment. Macular degeneration (which may cause blindness) is reversed with stem cell technology. The 80-year-old, who later became 90, seems active as ever, celebrating birthdays after birthdays. There is even mention of in-utero correction of spina bifida.

If Consciousness is the common denominator that unifies all beings in the Universe, the ability to interpret Consciousness will put Man at the level of God, would you say?

History has shown that giving too much power to the ruling elite can be disastrous. In the same vein, the people in the 2030 UK realised this and garnered their resources to oust the ruling regime by exposing their concentration camps and take charge of the Government.

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The butt of civilisation

Sometimes in times of introspection, I do wonder why the contour of the posterior profile of an individual is so important that people dared to go through great lengths and life-endangering surgeries to ‘improve’ theirs to what is perceived as ‘perfect’ in the eyes of the masses.

Even though poets have described the buttocks as the equal counterpart of a person’s frontal beauty, come to think of it, it hosts orifices of some the human excrements with putrefying odours that may, in cultured settings, be considered inappropriate on polite conversations.

Seeking the perfect symmetrical contour is some people’s favourite pastime. Performing of some kind of ritualistic war dance with the gluteals is some people’s idea of arousal and enticement to exchange bodily fluids.

When exactly did this part of the human body become an object of endearment?

Science suggests that just like the nuchal ligaments which stabilise our head to our trunk, the gluteus muscles revolutionised our species to stand. About two million years ago, these group of muscles transformed us to become endurance runners who could outrun many of its predators and make them our prey instead. The gluteal muscles stabilise the trunk and help in each running stride. Hence, developed endurance running which made Man outrun other speedy occupants of the savanna. This trait made them better hunters and soon came to dominate the world. Other primates with small butt continued wandering aimlessly occupying the lower rung of the food chain.

In other words, our buttocks civilised us.

Now that our lives have become sedentary; we do not pounce or kill our dinners, our rears do not fulfil much of its duties. Perhaps due to our high caloric intake, it has now become a storage space for excess fat stores performing its incidental function as padding as we sit on our asses all day.

People are fixated on symmetry, proportion and conformance to the golden ratio. They try to apply these in all their daily dealings and get high by satisfying arbitrary cravings and imaginary standards. 

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Robin Hood complex?

Hustlers (2019)


Look around you. It is no brainer that the divisions between the haves and the have nots are increasing as we speak. The price of essential goods only goes one way - up. There will be many justifications to raise the price of a commodity. It could be the weather, artificial shortage, the hike in petrol price, the value of our currency, you name it. Interestingly, when the offending factor is relieved, the price stays the same. Minimum wage barely changes but the lure to buy, purchase and spend never ends. 

The members at the lower end of the economic spectrum always seem the target of these baits via subliminal advertisements in the media or movies. In this cruel world of punishing the poor for being poor, it appears like the wealthy have it all too easy. We get to keep their cake and eat it.

A case in point is the 2008 and the many similar economic meltdowns that the world frequently experiences. The poor need to tighten their belts and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The big conglomerates, investment bankers and the Wall Street hotshots instead get fat bonuses and a chance to run away with their obscene stash even though they singlehandedly were the cause of the mishap.

The law seems impotent to be dealing with all these shenanigans. It takes a lifetime to get the legal system to mete acceptable justice. The only beneficiary of this exercise is the legal fraternity itself. It pats itself as it assumes a demigod status displaying pristine honesty, laughing all the way to the bank.

Hence, the alternative strategy would be an ala 'Robin Hood' method, to rob from the rich to feed one's own lifelong desires. Unfortunately, society does not receive this kindly. Perhaps, they want a piece of the action. They want a share of the loot in the form of taxes. Robin Hood becomes the bad guy while the greedy wealthy bankers become the victim.

In a nutshell, this film tells how a group of exotic dancers (in everyday language, striptease) during the 2008 economic downturn, use their entrepreneurial skills to outwit the members of the financial market. The effort is nothing more than to live the high life that they always dreamt and to improve the lives of those around them. It is based on a real-life story where high-flying executives were cajoled into partying with them. They were drugged with a concoction of ketamine and MDMA (date drug) to max out their credit card and not having any recollection of it the day after.

The story is not new, but the moviemakers sex it up with the continuous flow of naked ladies in different stages of undress engaged in various unlady-like postures. Understandably, it proved too raunchy for screening in many Asian countries. Meanwhile, the media, parroting the voice of liberalism and freedom of expression, screams praises of the story and the acting. They even suggest it as one of the best offerings of the year to be churned out from Hollywood.  

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OK Boomer?

Once upon a time in Hollywood (2019)
Screenplay and Director: Quentin Tarantino

It is funny that every young generation feels that they have been taken for a ride by the generation before them and that there is a dire need to put things in order. Invariably, they all fail miserably. Look at the timeline at which this film is based. It is the late 1960s. The world is in chaos, yet again. After getting the world crippled with two world wars, the baby boomers got the world upon its feet again. But that was not to last. Within a decade, the world nestled back into two camps yet - the 'good' and the 'bad', and the whole imbroglio of violence and killing is to repeat. The youngsters see this as the failure on the part of the adults to set a just world. They venture into the realm of the unknown to set into motion a new world order. 

Just like Greta Thunberg and the angry kids around the world in the 21st century, the 60s had their share of anti-establishment. The anti-Vietnam demonstrator, the hippie culture and the flower power movement are examples of the above. Unfortunately, they chose many self-destructive avenues to mull their pain of an unknown future. A group of them built a commune in the middle of the Navajo desert with an ambitious plan to plant crops. The plan failed miserably, and they end up having free sex, booze, illegitimate children, drugs and crimes under their belt to support their sustenance.  Their dreams of living in a free world never saw fruition. They ended up in the same world that they abhor, of subjugation, control, dominance by one party and victimisation. The ladies thought they were liberated by burning bras. They felt they attained women empowerment through contraception. They got neither. They found themselves getting unknown diseases, unshakeable baggage and answering to the dominant force they were trying to shake off.

We are angry, and it is your fault!

It must be the curse of mankind. They are forever trying to find the best way to find peace with themselves and their surroundings. They have trying multiple economic modules with the same disastrous results. Trickle-down economics, fountain effect using the market forces or a utopian leftist agenda, it gives the same answer -disappointment.

Coming of age around the mid-70s and early 80s, we are all too familiar reading of Marilyn Manson and his occult cult. The tabloids kept us informed of the pretty Natalie Wood and the mystery surrounding her yacht accident and the gruesome murder of a gravid Sharon Tate in her exclusive Hollywood home.

Not knowing what to expect but deciding to watch it anyway after finding out that it is a Tarantino movie, I was wondering what the movie was all about. At first it about the story of a struggling actor and his stunt double. Then it moved on to 1969 Hollywood, the commune of hippies, Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski and the murders towards the very late part of the show.

The author took the liberty to give a totally different twist to the course of history as we know it. The three members of the Manson cult/family end up having a duel with the actor and his stunt, as well as dying in their hands. Tate is nowhere nears the assassins. In fact, at the end of the movie, she calls her neighbours over for drinks. 

Maybe Tarantino is hoping for an alternate universe where Tate becomes a big star, and the world would come together and sing Kumbayah! 

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In the spirit of colour red and Christmas

What colour reminds you of Christmas? Some smart alec would attribute the colours green, brown, silver and gold combinations found on a Christmas tree as quintessentially the spirit of Yuletide. But what is the season without the red hue of the tunic of Saint Nicholas, you say.

There is a long-standing conspiracy theory that it is no mere coincidence that Santa’s ‘Father Christmas’ costume has the same hue as that of Cola-Cola advertisements. 

Coca-Cola did start using Santa in advertising in 1933. Santa had been portrayed almost exclusively in red from the early 19th century, and most of his modern image was put together by the famous American caricaturist, Thomas Nast, in the 1870s.
Thomas Nest is well known to have drawn the Elephant for the Republican Party. He popularised the Democratic donkey, Uncle Sam and Columbia, the female personification of American values. This man, dubbed as the American father of cartoons, is honoured for portraying the modern Santa Claus with a red tunic. 

A Thomas Nast Santa from 1881,
wearing the modern Santa suit

Before that, Santa was depicted in tan. Nest also drew in green. It was Haddon Sundblom, working as an advertiser for Coca Cola Company in 1931 who immortalised Santa's costume to remain forever red. How convenient, Coca Cola's corporate colour also became red; reminding potential to stock their homes with the red beverage which corresponds to the spirit of the Season of Christmas. This must have been the time Edward Bernays, the nephew to Sigmund Freud, who incorporated psychology into the retail business. 

The colour red also worked just fine to highlight the spiritual significance of X' mas. Red denotes blood, and for the celebration of a figure who would have to die to wash the sins of mankind, it fits pretty well. 

Think celebration, think red, think Coca Cola. 

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Overconsumption is the problem.

The Game Changers (Documentary, 2019)

I grew up trying to ward off suggestions from animal-loving vegans who tried their level best to convince me that structurally humans are supposed to be herbivores. They justified their assertions, with seemingly scientific support about our dentition. I would tell them that if we were born to eat just plants, our facial structures would look a goat's. And that I loved my animals too much that I eat them every day. 

In the late 19th century British India, Sikh and Muslim soldiers were favoured over the Hindus to serve the Crown. Apparently, the Hindu soldiers, being mostly vegetarians, lack the prowess that made a bloody thirsty sepoy. Meat consumption had always been linked to muscle power, athletism and aggression. Now what this documentary is saying is that we have got it all wrong. All the things that we thought about being vegan are actually just the opposite. Consuming plant-based products and avoiding meat, fish and eggs are the sure way of health, endurance, recovery and even building muscle bulk in athletes of all categories including wrestlers, footballers and weight lifters. When compared to meat-eaters, plant-eaters are claimed to be more virile.

In the documentary, the gladiators are hailed as the ultimate warriors, respected for their dedication to the blood sports. Archaeological discoveries found their bones to have high strontium levels indicative of them living on nuts and cereals. And they had solid bones. Of course, they had strong bones because their lifespan was extremely short. They were not fearless warriors bur rather fearful captives fighting for their dear lives. These slaves were not fed on a special diet but were hurled skimpy discards before being thrown into the arena to defend against fearsome soldiers or jungle beasts. Their life expectancy was less than 30, hardly any time for osteoporosis to set in. 


This is the first sign that something is not right in the delivery of the facts. The rest of it had to be taken with a pinch of salt. There are plenty of cherrypicking in highlighting the agenda that they are putting forward.

The film goes on arguing the merits of staying vegan, i.e. avoiding animal products altogether - no meat, fish, poultry or eggs. The plant kingdom has it all, nutrients, vitamins, proteins and all. There is no need at all for animals in our food. Towards the end, the film refers to many highly controversial studies. To put the seal of approval to these, they resort to name dropping. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a bodybuilder who won all his medal as a meat-gobbling athlete, now calls to go vegan. Jackie Chan and James Cameron appear in the credit roll. To support their hypothesis, they showcase the performers of many renowned international record-breaking athletes, ultramarathoners, Grand Prix racers, weight lifters, cyclists and more.

For every point that they put forward, there are as many counter-arguments against it online. 

The documentary seems to postulate that glucose is the only form of energy consumed by the brain and muscles. Basic sciences tell us that we can use energy from carbohydrates, fats and finally protein in extreme conditions. Glucose (stored as glycogen) is the primary source of energy while fat is an efficient second line of defence. It is agreed in the scientific community that with the widespread of simple carbohydrates and sugars in the modern diet, our body's ability to burn ketones as fuel is dwindling. We are addicted to sugars for the instant rush. Hence extreme sportsmen like triathletes have to train their bodies via intermittent fasting to prepare the body to burn fat and not to depend too much on glucose. The brain also uses ketones.

The excessive carbohydrate intake regime, as advised by the film, will only build up visceral fat. That is a marker of morbidity which may predispose individuals to coronary artery diseases, stroke and metabolic diseases. Never in the film is fat discussed as a form of energy.

Endothelial damage is assumed after observing a cloudy blood sample. It is a too simplistic an indicator of ill health. Conclusions cannot be made after short intervals of change of meals.

It is suggested that our digestive tract is too long for us to be carnivores. Carnivores typically have shorter tracts (as compared to the body height) and herbivores longers ones. But the acidity of our gastric juices is high, just like carnivores. In my mind, it explains perfectly why we should stay omnivorous. 

Anti-oxidants are high in plants. Some researchers posit that the anti-oxidants are to protect plants, not us. Regarding the controversy about plants being able to provide all forms of proteins that we need, the meat camp disagrees.

Heme iron (of animal origin) is portrayed as the bad guy responsible for a myriad of ailments including coronary diseases, stroke and cancer. The counter-argument to this point is that anaemia, caused by iron deficiency is a bigger problem affecting the functionality of millions.  

With the labelling of Alzheimer's disease as Diabetes Mellitus Type 3 as a result of insulin resistance, perhaps we should relook at their suggestion to increase carbohydrate consumption. 

Finally, environmental degradation perpetrated by cattle farming is proposed as a good enough reason to be vegan. Meat eaters, on the other hand, blame big companies for the blatant use of synthetic hormones and mismanagement of wastes for the pollution. They quote instances of smallholder rearers who have zero carbon emission in husbandry and cattle industries. Even in the cultivation of crops, mega conglomerates are guilty of indiscriminate use of fertilisers and failure to rotate crops for soil health.

We must be very wary when celebrities with little scientific knowledge recommend certain products. They probably have more to hide than their botox-treated crow lines. When they rekindle the story of a 'long lost treasure cove' as the panacea of our woes, I would be worried. I smell a business pitch here.

I wonder if all the virtue of being vegan has anything to do with the laboratory-grown cultured meat that was seen in the media recently.

Rather than concentrating on the type of food that we consume, we should instead try to curb overconsumption. Just about 50 years ago, during our schooling days, we noticed that there used to be one oversized student in the whole form. Now, it is almost impossible to find a normal-sized child in any class. Overeating is the problem. 

It is the converse of the Malthusian theory. Malthus, the English scholar, had predicted, in the late 18th century of a world of famine as a result over exponential growth of population overgrowing its arithmetic increase in food production. Time has proven him wrong, but now, we are stuck with a different set of problems.

Dr Sten Ekberg reacts to 'The Game Changer'. His is one of the counter-arguments against the proposals in the film

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