The mind of God

Monday morning isn't necessarily the best time to ponder the secrets of the universe.  In fact, it's probably not the best time to do very much, at least until the first couple of strong. black cups of coffee have doused the oesophagus.  But it is perhaps the best time to consider how little we  - as a species - really know about anything.

Take gravity, for instance.  ECPs (extremely clever people) have been trying for many years to come up with a theory to explain why the universe exists, and how. EMECPs (even more extremely clever people) have centred their thoughts on M-theory; M-theory can describe any of 10 000 000 000 000 000 000…and so on universes. Some physicists argue that this is evidence that there are multiple universes, but others think it just means the theory is untestable.

The list of what we don't know is almost infinitely long, and rather worryingly impacts significantly on our everyday lives. There are those - often avid devotees of "24" - who firmly believe that torturing suspects will comprehensively protect us from any and all attacks, despite clinical evidence from studies which proves fairly conclusively that prolonged physical torture acts on the body to flood the brain with stress hormones such as cortisol and the catecholamines, reducing the size of the hippocampus, which is important in retrieving long-term memories; the amygdala, which forms part of the fear network; and the frontal lobes. In addition, prolonged stress can also lead to the creation of false memories based on information and supposed facts presented by the interrogator.

Given that we know so little about almost everything, therefore, one has to ask why the media continues to bombard us with 'facts' which are nothing of the sort, and continually scare us into believing that just about everything causes cancer. 

Or more pertinently, why do we continue to buy newspapers?