Kopfkino

 “I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armour and attacked a hot fudge sundae.” - Kurt Vonnegut. Artist or not, we have all encountered the wrath of ‘The critic’ in our lives. But are critics really necessary? Why then, if we must bring up this question, are they so widespread and popular? The New Yorker Two reviews, one makes headlines. NY Times critic Pete Wells is famous for his scathing reviews of restaurants and here’s a snippet from his most popular one.  “(Mr. Fieri), did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?” Here’s another review by the same critic. “I am convinced that if everybody gave up turkey and just had Sailor’s roast chicken once a year, the country would be a better place. Ms. Bloomfield’s desserts are kn...

Look at your clock. A mortal creation made of crystals, gears and glass burdened with the immortal task of keeping time. Its hands trace their cyclical paths each minute, hour and day. Ticks, tocks and mechanical whirs are the voices we give to time. Ironic, how the same voices poke at our fears. Mocking us for our limited possession of time. Art by Cornelis de Heem You may want to throw your clock out the window or pull the batteries out of your watch. But time moves on nevertheless. Aloof, perpetual and indifferent to one’s sufferings or joy. In our tiny lifetimes when compared to the scale of history, we as a species have created order out of zilch and erected societies, into which we are born today. Capitalist or not, one must agree that at the heart of all this progress, lies money. To deepen this discussion, I shall introduce a friend of mine from another world. Meet Lyra. A celestial entity who lives in solitude through the darkness of space. She knows no concept of death. ...

  "The best books.. are those which tell you what you already know." - extract from 1984. In today's world, every step we take and word we speak is recorded. We sit helplessly as media being fed to us gets dangerously close to narrow propaganda. Each day we find it harder to raise our voices against our governments which become increasingly dilute and fragmented in their accountability. George Orwell's famous works of literature are, '1984' and 'The Animal Farm', revolve around the harmful by products of an autocratic rule, but strikingly stand out even in the world we live in today.  The word 'Orwellian' is often used interchangeably with 'authoritarian'. But the true meaning of the author's works and what the word stands for is far more interesting and grave. It is also interesting to note that Orwell himself was an avid socialist and his works focussed rather on the harmful consequences of a totalitarian regime where the masses w...

It took humankind 200,000 years to reach a billion in population, but only 200 to reach 7 Billion.. This trend suggests some very apocalyptic images for our future. However, the UN forecasts that the 12 billionth human will never be born at all.  Why and how may this be true? Population explosion is defined as a sudden increase in population of a region due to various catalysts. The first one was the advent of farming which allowed for settlements. And the last two centuries have had some of the most intense developments like the industrial revolution and the rapid growth of advanced sciences. Almost every country in the world goes through a demographic transition which includes 4 phases. In the 1800s, most European nations too had severe poverty, famines, poor health and low life expectancies. A woman had around 6-7 kids but even then only 2 would make it to adulthood. The second phase sees the growth of living conditions in the region…. as we see with the industrial revolution, b...

'A fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations with mechanical elements.' This is what the term- 'Cyborg' means.  But,  does it  ?   " Hey! V-Sauce, Michael here-" no lets not do that.  Pop culture has defined a cyborg's appearance like this: But the way I see it, this is a more realistic cyborg. (DC don't sue me) You're probably thinking why this harmless depressed lady can be called a cyborg. It's all about perspective. We are born in a world where things don't change drastically, so we grow accustomed to our surroundings. Take a look at this scenario. A human communicates with a machine by releasing static from her phalanges (fingers) into the screen which the machine processes and via a global network, fetches the required data and interprets it in the form of light emitted by pixels in a coordinated succession that then enters the human's light receptors and causes a rush ...