The Atheist Blogger

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Now that “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” has come out on DVD, it seemed only right that I watched it to see what all the fuss was about. For those who are unaware, Expelled is a science fiction thriller that revolves around a post-Nazi, communist Darwinian world, ruled by tyrants, where anyone who simply mentions “God” is quietly removed from academic positions.

The film starts out by highlighting the relationship the story has with oppression and Communism; images of the separation of East Germany from West Germany and the building of the Berlin Wall is shown as the opening credits are edited onto signs in the archive footage (an applaudable effort by the visual effects team). A ball is accidentally kicked over the wall by a group of young boys playing football in the streets, and this foreshadows the people who are “expelled” later in the film. They too are “kicked” over the wall of oppression and their freedoms taken from them.

Ben Stein, the narrator and hero of the film, is introduced in a lecture set in the present day, where he is planning to tell his amazing story to a group of eager listeners. As Ben walks down the long corridor to present his talk, the faces and voices of the villains of the movie are seen and heard, each one arguing their position as the absolute truth, and therefore absolute law.

Ben Stein stars as the film's hero, locked in a war with SCIENCE.

Our hero talks about how freedom made America great, but how he has seen those freedoms torn down by the neo-Nazi organisation known collectively as “SCIENCE”. Over the course of the film, Ben meets in secret, the people who were kicked out of the organisation for questioning the methods used in controlling the people. Those who questioned the doctrine of Darwinism and the Dawkinsian Act (enforced to crush opponents of SCIENCE) were branded as “Intellectual Terrorists”, and forced to live in hiding from the brutal regime, their lives in ruins.

Ben’s view of the SCIENCE organisation begins to crumble, and he realises the corruption that has been hidden from the public view. Confused and scared, he visits his close friend Michael Shermer, a propaganda writer for SCIENCE, who attempts to explain the actions of SCIENCE in a purely positive way. Ben’s realisation that Shermer is just as corrupt as the leaders of SCIENCE leads to some dramatic scenes between the two friends, and ends with Shermer betraying Ben to the authorities.

Now on the run from the SCIENCE police (led by Richard Dawkins himself), Ben seeks out the resistance movement in the confusing back-alleys of Seattle. He seeks refuge with the anti-SCIENCE organisation “The Discovery Institute”, and from there sets out on his missions to bring down the evil leaders of SCIENCE.

The finale of the film comes in the confrontational encounter with the ruthless SCIENCE leader, Richard Dawkins. Ben is captured and interrogated by Dawkins, although Ben gets the upper hand in the process and forces Dawkins into a intellectual trap. The film ends with Ben escaping the clutches of SCIENCE, and pledging to tell the world about the corruption in the organisation.

This was an exciting movie, very well written, with plot twists that even M. Night Shyamalan would have trouble coming up with. It is so amazingly well done that at points I was actually convinced that this could happen in the real world, which is yet another credit to the realism the writers managed to convey in the film.

Both Ben Stein and Richard Dawkins gave fantastic performances in their roles as hero and villain respectively. I suspect an Oscar nomination might be just around the corner for such talented people; they certainly deserved one!

Overall, this movie scores 9/10. Very enjoyable.

As I write this, I’m listening to random tracks in Spotify. The quality is great, the music choice is vast, and the program is lightning fast (literally). So what is Spotify?

Spotify is an online music player that you can download and install on your computer. I’m prohibited to post any screenshots by the TOS of the beta, but I can tell you what it does. Once installed (yes, it runs through wine as well), Spotify allows you to search for music. I type “The Killers” hit Enter, and 0.5 seconds later, my search results are returned. To put this is perspective, I’m on a relatively slow network (3MBit), my laptop is using wireless (that slows down the connection a bit already), and my search has to go through 9 hops to get to the server in question. When my search reaches the server, it has to process it and get the list of results and then send them back to me to be processed in the program. Considering the amount of music Spotify has, this is amazingly fast.

So now I have a list of results, and I click on a song, “Mr Brightside”. The most astounding part of Spotify is now presented to me. I thought the search was fast, but the song starts playing immediately after I click on it. The delay is so minute I could swear that I am playing the song from a local file on my computer, but I’m not. The song is streaming across the internet and playing on my computer, without any delay or lag. What is even more astounding is that the program doesn’t seem to buffer the songs at all, because I can click to the last 10 seconds of the song in question and it will play that part immediately, with no delay.

When my friends and I started using it, everyone in the room was astonished, and considering we are all Computer Scientists and know how networks work, that is saying something. We were absolutely convinced the program relies on magic to operate, because networks simply do not allow that kind of speed and efficiency. Florian, the guy who invited me into the beta, swears blind that he ran the program without any problems on a 56k modem in a crappy hotel, where the internet was so bad Google was taking it’s time to load.

We were so impressed by this technology that I phoned up the company to say so. They revealed nothing about how it worked though, so I have to go get a job with them now.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, this program is entirely legal. They pay the licenses for all the music by putting in 30 second ads every 30 minutes of music you listen to. If you pay a fee though, you can remove the adverts completely. This program has everything it needs to head the new era of digital music; unlimited songs, speed, usability, and freedom.

At the moment it’s invite only, so if I get some invites I’ll let you know! Until then, you’ll have to sign up to the mailing list which will tell you when Spotify becomes public.