Though it is true we are the highest and smartest animals, ospreys have eyes we have calculated to be sixty times more powerful and sophisticated than our own and that blindness, often caused by microscopic parasites that are themselves miracles of ingenuity, is one of the oldest and most tragic disorders known to man. And why award the superior eye (or in the case of cat or bat, also the ear) to the inferior species.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the complexities of evolution and intelligence among species.
Christopher Hitchens highlights the irony of human arrogance regarding intelligence and superiority compared to other species. He observes that while humans are often considered the most advanced beings, other animals possess extraordinary abilities, such as the osprey's superior vision. This commentary encourages a deeper understanding of nature's diversity and challenges the notion that intelligence alone defines superiority.
In practice
In a discussion about animal abilities vs human abilities during a biology class.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
The tourist transports his own values and demands to his destinations and implants them like an infectious disease, decimating whatever values existed before.
It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.
Each of us lives within the universe - the prison - of his own brain. Projecting from it are millions of fragile sensory nerve fibers, in groups uniquely adapted to sample the energetic states of the world around us: heat, light, force, and chemical composition. That is all we ever know of it directly; all else is logical inference.
For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment
In a fully free society, taxation-or, to be exact, payment for governmental services-would be voluntary.
We anticipate a time when the love of truth shall have come up to our love of liberty, and men shall be cordially tolerant and earnest believers both at once.
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