Almanach Patrick Sebastien

Sam Harris has spent the last God knows how long railing against Donald Trump. He’s had many people on his podcast who are in as much disbelief as he is. And he’s one heck of an atheist I can tell you. Concerned his Waking Up podcast was becoming an echo chamber, he asked his audience to suggest a Trump defender for his stated reasons of providing ‘balance’ and to try and understand how on earth someone not completely insane or a completely ignorant ‘low information’ type can support a man...

How much of a hard time can you give a person if all they were doing is trying to improve their life? One on side of the polarizing European Migrant Crisis debate, that is their argument and reason enough to rally together to help these poor people and get them back on their feet with all the milk and honey that those of us fortunate enough to be born in the west, take for granted. What of the other half? And what are the measurable consequences of the crisis beyond the United Kingdom...

"Please, for the love of all that's glorious in the world, look at these cat pictures." So says the global conversation according to that mass interactive communication platform: Social Media. One can scarcely bear to imagine what life might have been like before the brow dampening joy of tweeting one's whereabouts to the indelible archive that is the Internet. "Validate me now, you sods." So says the unflinchingly self aggrandizing mode of standing before the precipice of the infinite...

Intelligence is generally defined as an ability to obtain and accumulate knowledge from which skills are developed and applied. The exclusive purview of the Human race currently. However, futurologists and increasingly, prominent scientists, industrialists and fear mongers would have you believe that credible machine intelligence is only around the corner, given our present rate of technological sophistication. Complex mathematics, Chess, Go, language comprehension and parallel computation...

Avoiding godless communism. This is done by promoting prayer in school, believing climate change is a hoax, opposing abortion, supporting American exceptionalism, and generally only caring about one's own needs. Screw everyone else, it's all about me. Perhaps American Conservatism is actually a personality disorder like sociopathy. And how can we so reliably predict what a person's stance on climate change is by knowing where they stand on same-sex marriage? Isn't this tribe mentality? How...

Discussing race is never easy. It’s quite possibly the most divisive topic of our current era. A fair skinned person of european descent needs a lot of caveats before discussing anything pertaining to the lives and cultures of peoples of a different ethnic persuasion. And had better acknowledge his or her ‘privilege’ and apologise sincerely and profusely for his or her’s part in the exploitation of all non-white races since time immemorial. Otherwise, this person is a racist....

Probability theory is only really fun when money is involved. From a whimsical flutter on the outcome of mechanical race horses at the arcade to shorting airlines to slapping down a barber pole at a top carpet joint—nothing gets the brain opioids pumping like the glamourised institution that is gambling. We all want to be publicly validated for being right, lucky, blessed, smart or right. The rush of winning big when backing the underdog, the agony when your dead cert team fumbled the ball...

Something that’s happening over there, displayed over here. Better yet, something that happened over there now displayed over here. Increasingly, something that never happened, displayed. There’s nothing not to like about the concept of television. We’re a highly visual species and the ability to see things that we have not witnessed (or are not witnessing) is a magic trick that in a just world, we should never get over. Ever since that great Scot, John Logie Baird managed to force his...

American politics as seen from the UK, particularly during the ‘election season’ (a ‘season’ being a few years), is essentially one big sitcom...Palin, Bush, Gore, hanging chads, God, guns, gays, etc. Not a funny sitcom. There’s a kernel of truth to the BBC’s reporting, but it’s more often ‘Isn’t America dumb? Aren’t we wonderful?’ Living in the United States and seeing how the sausage is made, it’s more complicated than a one-note show with an obnoxious laugh track. America is a big...

Imagine a world where you forgo any plausible claim to privacy by paying for-profit companies in other lands to collect and analyse your personal data. Imagine further that the means with which said companies acquire your data is through a portable computer bristling with sensors that you literally wear on your body, most of the time. The portable device, communication and data services are so important to your life that you’re driven half mad with worry and misery when parted just for a...

Jings, crivens, help ma' boab have we got a braw topic for ye, Jimmy. If we were to reduce a country down to a few specific food items, Scotland would be 'haggis', 'porridge' and 'mutton'. There are probably others and we may mention them in the show. 'Shortbread' is another. References to Scottish cuisine in the media will almost certainly be derisory; often for comic effect. The natives' penchant for deep frying is a particularly familiar canard, but there is a serious tone when talking...

Two men who have never met each other before, might even be from different social classes, might be different races, different species even. What they have in common is sport. They can talk to each other about a recent game or the consequences of an upcoming game, how an England manager is somehow a turnip, how it’s been a good season for something or other and so on and so forth. Etc. And on it goes. And why not? Coverage of sport is top billing stuff. Literally teams of millionaires...

We’re living in an age where otherwise normal people prefer to deftly caress glowing rectangles than exchange more than a few sentences with their kin. We’re locked in our homes cosseted with the convenience of online purchasing and large screen televisions. Technology seductively iterates in an ever tightening stranglehold. The tremor in a surgeon's hand, a customer service representative’s botched order, palliative bathroom duties - the writing’s on the wall for human labour. It is only...

Creationism is the belief that life, the universe and everything, began when God said 'go!'. He apparently did this mere thousands of years ago and we have record of this in the first book of the Old Testament. 'What kind of chump would believe something simply because a book says it is so?' Well according to high profile 'creationists' such as Ken Ham and many others, there is actually a massive body of scientific evidence that confirms the truth of the book of Genesis. If you dig deep...

The Deutsche Demokratische Republik otherwise known as East Germany was a significant slice of post war Deutschland administered by the Soviet Union for over 40 years. During that time, the population endured an ever dwindling economic output. Goods and services taken for granted by those in the perceived American puppet state over The Wall were unimaginable. The people were largely trapped in a state where the suspicion of dissent or insurrection was punishable by harsh personal levies...

In the days where you'd wait to see something on telly as opposed to watching whatever you want, whenever you want (wherever you want), Christmas would be the time where there'd be a Star Wars film on. Bloody Star Wars. Everyone has seen Star Wars. The 'western in space'. The film spawned a plethora of sequels some good, some awful and of course, the merchandise which according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the most successful instance of toys, tat and geeky collectables sold...

'Maintain vigilance against the ever-looming threat of an American invasion.', 'Let us hasten final victory through a revolutionary ideological offensive!', 'Let us turn ours into a country of mushrooms by making mushroom cultivation scientific, intensive and industrialised!' As they say in that darkest of nations, North Korea. It's a minor miracle that a country can succeed in alienating itself from the world's stage so completely but the technologically impoverished denizens of the...

Whenever we see lists of 'greatest' anything to do with cinema, the name Stanley Kubrick will almost certainly be there and his paragraph will likely have words like 'innovator', 'meticulous', 'control freak', 'freak'. He was freakish in the level of interest he would take into what he was working on, finely crafting every second of celluloid whether it was to appear in the final cut or not. His attention to detail and absolute perfectionism would win him frothing adoration from movie...

Famous for one's works, famous for the works of others, famous for being famous. Celebrity has been currency ever since Moses dropped the first set of commandments. In today's age, If You're Not Famous at Fourteen, You're Finished. From premier league footballers to reality TV desperados to attention-seeking serial killers, celebrity is the ultimate confirmation of one's secret suspicion, 'I'm special'. They may be workaholics, sycophants, obsessives or uncommonly gifted in their field,...

Apparently there are basically only four jokes. Or five or some other low number. Depends who you ask. The point is that all jokes are derivative of only four actual jokes (or five or some other low number). Despite this, 'comedy' as an artform is forever popular. People like to laugh. Whether it's just a silly joke or a clever joke, some spiky piece of satire, gallows humour; comedy can be remarkably remarkably useful. As crazy as it sounds, in one form or another, it could have been...