Archive for March, 2010
Angels & Demons: Decoded
Investigate the fascinating truths behind Dan Brown’s (The Da Vinci Code) first novel. From centuries-old secret societies to real-world cryptography, from the high-stakes intrigue surrounding the installation of a new Pope to the sometimes uneasy relationship between the Vatican and leading scientists, this special…
Examined Life
This documentary puts philosophy on the streets. We meet some of today’s most influential thinkers: Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor.
Inside the Living Body
* The human body is made up of around 100 trillion cells.
* The human brain contains 100 billion neurons (nerve cells) — about as many stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy — and it can generate enough electricity to power a lightbulb for 24 hours.
* The heart pumps 100,000 times per day, sending 8 to 10 pints of blood through about 60,000 miles (96,560 kilometers) of blood vessels.
* A newborn baby’s skeleton has 300 parts. Gradually, these fuse together during childhood to form the 206 bones of an adult. By the time you are 25, this process is complete.
* We change our skin about every 4 weeks. Every minute, we shed as many as 30,000 dead skin cells.
* The human head has around 100,000 hairs. We lose 40 to 100 every day. Each follicle grows around 20 times in a lifetime.
* The combined growth of hair on your head and body totals 100 inches (254 centimeters) a day, making an incredible 7 miles (11 kilometers) of hair a year.
* We breathe an average of 700 million breaths over the course of an average lifetime of 70 years.
The Cove
In a sleepy lagoon off the coast of Japan lies a shocking secret that a few desperate men will stop at nothing to keep hidden from the world. In Taiji, Japan, former dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry has come to set things right after a long search for redemption. In the 1960s, it was O’Barry who captured and trained the 5 dolphins who played the title character in the international television sensation “Flipper.” One fateful day, a heartbroken Barry came to realize that these deeply sensitive, highly intelligent and self-aware creatures must never be subjected to human captivity again. This mission has brought him to Taiji, a town that appears to be devoted to the wonders and mysteries of the sleek, playful dolphins and whales that swim off their coast. But in a remote, glistening cove, surrounded by barbed wire and “Keep Out” signs, lies a dark reality. It is here, under cover of night, that the fishermen of Taiji, driven by a multi-billion dollar dolphin entertainment industry and an underhanded market for mercury-tainted dolphin meat, engage in an unseen hunt. The nature of what they do is so chilling and the consequences are so dangerous to human health that they will go to great lengths to halt anyone from seeing it.
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Time – Daytime
We humans seem to run to the beat of time, often without being aware of how this is the case or how our perception of it may differ from another person’s, from nature’s rhythms or from our own internal clock. In the first episode of the series, string theory pioneer Michio Kaku witnesses one of the most extraordinary feats of timing in nature on a remote Californian beach.
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