Cogito ergo sum.

I think, therefore I am.

Descartes said that. Rene Descartes laid the foundation of modern philosophy. Because he was badass like that.

Many people quote that line. They put that on T-shirts. But I do sometimes wonder about how many people actually think (har!) about what that sentence really means.

Here's the thinking (har!) behind that. Basically, Descartes said, you cannot trust anything. When it comes to deriving knowledge about something, you cannot trust anything. You cannot trust your senses. Senses can be deceived. Just watch a fucking magic show. So how do you know anything is real? How do you know that *you* are real? You perceive you through your senses and through the senses of others, all of which could be an elaborate cosmic deception. You cannot trust science because science uses instruments to establish reality. And those instruments are simply extensions of your already untrustworthy senses.

So how do you know that you exist?

By doubting, that is how. This is pure rationalism at work. When you doubt your existence, you establish your existence. Your doubt exists, therefore you exist. If you didn't really exist, you couldn't doubt your existence. Q. E. fucking D.

Still not with me? Go back to that magic show analogy and approach this from another angle. The only way you know that the magic is magic is by doubting it. If you didn't doubt the magic, it wouldn't be magic to you any more; it would be reality. And you would be wrong. (Which, by the way, is how all religions work). Now apply that line of thinking to the question of your existence and you immediately grok what the Big D was getting at.

Conversations with a Monkey, Part I

I am sitting with my five year old daughter and showing her a map of the world.

I point to the United States.

"This is where you were born, sweetie."

I point to India.

"This is where Deeda was born."

She scrunches up her face and thinks for a bit.

"We could drive there? No wait...we can't."

She thinks some more.

"I wish we had a water-car..."

A while ago, I was at a Latin American Festival and listened to a band from Peru play on pan flutes. Two guitars and a pan flute. The Peruvians came up with the pan flute; it is an iconic instrument. I had never heard a pan flute before that, and it was an amazing and soulful listen. We talked to the band after the performance and learned that style of music is called Andina--music of the Andes.

Here is Sounds of Silence performed with pan flutes.

I just got done watching the "Miller's Planet" scene from Interstellar for the hundredth time. Yes, I watched the giant tidal waves caused by the crushing gravitational field of Gargantua yet again, and the goosebumps wouldn't go away.

That movie, meaning Interstellar, vies for the top spot in my movie-going heart. It gets so many things right that it is startling, unexpected, and refreshing.

It gives us a sense of our place in the cosmos.

It gives us a sense of desolation and hope, at the same time.

It quotes Dylan Thomas.

It shows us a father looking at his daughter through the distorted mirror of dilated time.

And the score...oh, that music!

That movie makes me want to shed tears I didn't know I had to shed.

I know it is all entertainment at the end of the day, but there are people who watch movies like Intestellar and cry silently inside. There are people who watch True Grit (the reboot, of course) and marvel at how liquid poetry can masquerade as movie dialogue and be captured on film like that.

And then there are people who pay good money to watch Star Wars--a film where galactic idiots duel with colored flashlights and misshapen gremlins talk backwards.

Oh Humanity! Can't live with you, can't live without you.