University & Unicorns

I’ve watched a few documentaries on Channel 4 in the last week and it’s had me questioning things and stuff.

I always think about these things in bed at night and say to myself “I must write about this in a blog post” and then never get round to doing it, or go off on a complete tangent and talk about something else entirely.

Anyway, the first doc I watched was In The Shadow Of The Moon about the Apollo Moon expeditions. Towards the end of the doc they were talking to one astronaut, Charles Duke about what his overall feeling was at having been one of very few humans to actually visit the Moon. I’m not sure if I’ll remember it ver batim but he said something like…he had an epiphany while up there. He was looking around thinking that this (the Universe) could not have been made by accident and that someone or something MUST be behind it. He had a new found sense of faith. That he believed in God more than ever. He is now the leader of the Duke Ministry for Christ.

I just found that weird. That for a man of science (being an astronaut) you would think after seeing what you saw out there in space that you’d be thinking “Wow, what an amazing Universe this is! Surely just one being could not have made all this?!”. Instead he thought “Wow! God did good!”

I find it very hard to believe that one sentient being – be it “God” as depicted in The Bible, or some other “higher” being, working alone – would be responsible for the Universe. Religion seems to dispute categorically the notion that the Universe is just random acts of biology, chemistry and physics coming together to make this thing we live in. Yet if there was a defined “beginning” (ie: God created the heavens, etc), where the f*ck did God come from???

I think we, as humans are just another virus floating around. We just happened to mutate enough to grow a brain that works out language and maths and all the mental functions we use now. But it’s probably very infantile in its approach compared to what could be “out there”. And by that I don’t mean God or a God but other alien life.

How do we know we’re not just some HUGE mistake? How do we know that this God of ours (if he is to be believed to exist) is not just creating this tension between us (as humans) to force us to wipe each other out? Perhaps “he” can’t be bothered to fix his mistake (IE: us humans) and thought “You know what? I don’t want to eradicate them myself, so I’ll let them do it to themselves”. And for us what seems like has gone on for THOUSANDS of years – a vast expanse of time for us – has just been nano seconds to this “God” of ours???

I’m getting a bit deep here, but there you go.

Anyway…on to the next one…

Last night there were two docs on. One about Gordon Brown’s first year as Prime Minister. I enjoyed watching that. I was worried it might be heavy, or over-politicised (yes, I know, it was about politics, what did I expect?), but it wasn’t. Maybe I like my politics “dumb”, I don’t know, but I know I enjoyed watching the “review” of Gordon’s year.

I was in Oz last year when Blair finally said “good-bye” and Gordon took over. It was weird coming back to the UK a few weeks later and have a new PM in charge. I was holding out SO much promise for Gordon. It was SO great to see the back of Blair! But it’s all gone wrong for GB. Most of it being things beyond his control. Bad floods, Foot and Mouth outbreaks, Northern Rock and the credit crunch. It all seemed to conspire against him. And really, it’s culminated in him taking the decision NOT to have an election at the end of 2007. Something at the time I was hoping strongly that he would do. Because I could just see his PM-ship getting worse and worse for him and that by the time an election was actually due, we’d be getting ourselves a new Conservative government – which is SSOO gonna happen now 🙁

Anyway, the doc was good. Thank you Andrew Rawnsley.

The last doc I want to mention was Victorian Sex Explorer. Just looking at the Channel 4 web site for info on it there’s a page that says “All the best bits from The Victorian Sex Explorer”…erm, was there any? This is what I was about to say. I was disappointed. Not because there wasn’t any “sex” in it or anything gratuitous like, but because it was just bland. I really wanted to know about this guy’s life, but it wasn’t so much about him but more about the “things” he explored. Which was fair enough, I suppose, but it was SO inanely done. I just sat there at the end of it thinking “was that it?” I want my hour back!!

Well, that was a rant!

Ciao