The Flying Pancake

The World Through My Eyes is the latest book from Daido Moriyama. I received it yesterday (along with Anders Petersen "French Kiss", that I may talk about later), and I have to admit, this book is just great! Ok, I am a Moriyama fan.
The book present a sequence of more than 250 images spanning form the 60's through today. All the classics from Moriyama are here; and unless you are a Moriyama obsessive, some of the images will be new to you.
It is very well printed, without margin, not blank pages between the image that are full of details, or grain i should say! Some will argue that most of the images are printed on double pages, the pictures are cut in the middle... I don't think it is an issue as it is not the first Moriyama's book printed like that ("farewell photography" at least).
In my opinion Moriyama's work can not be seen in a single blurry grainy image, it will therefore made a great introduction to Moriyama's work. In addition a very illuminating (but short) interview by Filippo Maggia and a introductory assay from Akira Hasegawa will help you understand the artist work. The book present the artist frenetic universe made of contrasted, grainy, blurry pictures, still not as raw as the epic Farewell Photography, but an impression of roughness emerge from the book. Like a slap. This  book reflect a restless life spend shooting in the narrow streets of Japan. Finally, the constant and frenetic flow of images tells a story, the story of a "photographer on the road" that is trying to show one reality amongst countless other, the way Jack Kerouac write about his vagabondage.

Wondering what would jesus do? A recent psychological study revealed that is the same as "What would I do?", according to Nicholas Epley from Chicago University.  He showed that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs.

To make a long story short, by using a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, the study not only showed that people use their own beliefs as a starting point to infer God's mind; but also that they use the same part of the brain when considering God's will and their own opinions.

For some, religion provide a moral compass, and what Epley say here is that inferring the will of God sets the moral compass to whatever direction we ourselves are facing. He says, "Intuiting God's beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one's own beliefs."

The main conclusion is that that using God to make decisions and judgments is little more than spiritual sockpuppetry : the loser whose opinions are indefensible, so he invents an army of aliases to agree with him. So what better sockpuppet than God himself?

A quote from Epley himself "People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want. The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."

Reference: PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.0908374106 and 

The “Human Provenance pilot project” sound like sci-fi? Be afraid! it is not! It's the new project launched in mid September very quietly without fanfare by the UK border agency to use DNA and isotope analysis of tissue from asylum seekers to evaluate their nationality and help decide who can enter the United Kingdom... The project was revealed by the Daily Mail and The Observer, sparking protests from refugee advocates.

The plan it to use mouth swabs for mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome testing, as well as analyses of subtle genetic variations called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and therfore determining if the asylum seeker claiming to be from Somalia and fleeing persecution are actually from another African country such as Kenya... 

Does the Border Agency have even looked at the scientific literature to know whether it's possible or not? surely not! To my knowledge, the research needed to determine the structure of Africa population at the DNA level has not been done (correct me if I'm wrong).
Furthermore, according to Mark Thomas, a geneticist of University College London “Dense genomic SNP data does have some resolution … but not at a very local scale, and with considerable errors.” Alec jeffers, a pionnier in human DNA fingerprinting from Leicester University also say that "assigning a person to a population does not establish nationality - people move! The whole proposal is naive and scientifically flawed.” which I can not agree more.

I am wondering how the Border Agency came up with such idea?... is it by similarity to there own isolated country on an island, they might think all the other countries are also isolated from each other, that people don't move? and therefore the population structure is fix... simple minded idea! I am the proof that it's not the case, a French man in... UK...

To read more see Science
Image by ghutchis'