That's cute but sad because I'm guessing the dog has cataracts.

I have an apology to make
I'm afraid I've made a big mistake
I turned my face away from you, Lord

I was too blind to see the light
I was too meek to feel Your might
I closed my eyes; I couldn't see the truth, Lord

But then like Saul on the Damascus road,
You sent a messenger to me, and so
Now I've have had the truth revealed to me
Please forgive me all those things I said
I'll no longer betray you, Lord
I will pray to you instead

And I will say thank you, thank you
Thank you, God
Thank you, thank you
Thank you, God...

Thank you, God, for fixing the cataracts of Sam's mum
I had no idea, but it's suddenly so clear now
I feel such a cynic, how could I have been so dumb?
Thank you for displaying how praying works:
A particular prayer in a particular church
Thank you Sam for the chance to acknowledge this
Omnipotent ophthalmologist

Thank you, God, for fixing the cataracts of Sam's mum
I didn't realize that it was so simple
But you've shown a great example of just how it can be done
You only need to pray in a particular spot
To a particular version of a particular god,
And if you pull that off without a hitch,
He will fix one eye of one middle-class white bitch

I know in the past my outlook has been limited
I couldn't see examples of where life had been definitive
But I can admit it when the evidence is clear,
As clear as Sam's mum's new cornea
(And that's extremely clear! )

Thank you, God, for fixing the cataracts of Sam's mum
I have to admit that in the past I have been skeptical
But Sam described this miracle and I am overcome!
How fitting that the sighting of a sight-based intervention
Should open my eyes to this exciting new dimension
It's like someone put an eye chart up in front of me
And the top five letters say: I C, G O D

Thank you, Sam, for showing how my point of view has been so flawed
I assumed there was no God at all but now I see that's cynical
It's simply that his interests aren't particularly broad
He's largely undiverted by the starving masses,
Or the inequality between the various classes
He gives you strictly limited passes,
Redeemable for surgery or two-for-one glasses

I feel so shocking for historically mocking
Your interests are clearly confined to the ocular
I bet given the chance, you'd eschew the divine
And start a little business selling contacts online

Fuck me Sam, what are the odds
That of history's endless parade of gods
That the God you just happened to be taught to believe in
Is the actual one and he digs on healing,
But not the AIDS-ridden African nations
Nor the victims of the plague, nor the flood-addled Asians,
But healthy, privately-insured Australians
With common and curable corneal degeneration

This story of Sam's has but a single explanation:
A surgical God who digs on magic operations
No, it couldn't be mistaken attribution of causation
Born of a coincidental temporal correlation
Exacerbated by a general lack of education
Vis-a-vis physics in Sam's parish congregation
And it couldn't be that all these pious people are liars
It couldn't be an artefact of confirmation bias
A product of groupthink,
A mass delusion,
An Emperor's New Clothes-style fear of exclusion

No, it's more likely to be an all-powerful magician
Than the misdiagnosis of the initial condition,
Or one of many cases of spontaneous remission,
Or a record-keeping glitch by the local physician

No, the only explanation for Sam's mum's seeing:
They prayed to an all-knowing superbeing,
To the omnipresent master of the universe,
And he quite liked the sound of their muttered verse.

So for a bit of a change from his usual stunt
Of being a sexist, racist, murderous cunt
He popped down to Dandenong and just like that
Used his powers to heal the cataracts of Sam's mum
Of Sam's mum

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam's mum!
I didn't realize that it was such a simple thing
I feel such a dingaling, what ignorant scum!

Now I understand how prayer can work:
A particular prayer in a particular church
In a particular style with a particular stuff
And for particular problems that aren't particularly tough,
And for particular people, preferably white
And for particular senses, preferably sight
A particular prayer in a particular spot
To a particular version of a particular god

And if you get that right, he just might
Take a break from giving babies malaria
And pop down to your local area
To fix the cataracts of your mum!

Cataracts don't cause complete blindness, but surgery will improve this little guys sight a whole lot.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'tim minchin and the heritage orchestra, sams mum, cataract' to 'tim minchin, heritage orchestra, sams mum, cataract' - edited by Sagemind

Hi, thank you for taking the time to reply, and sorry I didn't write back straight away. Obviously you're right in that they clearly don't mean to say that everything beyond the visible is pink, because that's self-evidently not true, and they know it, because they're not stupid. So yeah, it's all bit "well, obviously", if you see what I mean. Again, thanks for the considered reply

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
I watched it again, and they're not saying that radio waves are pink, they're saying that you can't see them... but that pink fills the spot on the colour wheel that would otherwise be filled by the invisible radiation.

They could've made it clearer, but they didn't say what you thought. What they did say isn't exactly wrong just not clear.

Fair enough that it's hardly worth counting UV vision in certain lens enhanced people, I just thought it was cool.
In reply to this comment by FlowersInHisHair:
>> ^oritteropo:

I think they mean that if you try to wrap the visible spectrum around a colour wheel, then it works for the red,green,blue,violet part and then stops working when you get to the magenta/pink/negative green part.
To quibble a little with your claim that anything out of the visisble spectrum is invisible, people who have had cataract surgery can see potentially light slightly outside the normal visible range (all right, not gamma rays, but still)... http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/605905
>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
The claim made in the video that we see all the non-visible wavelengths of light/EM radiation as pink is patently false. We know this because gamma rays aren't pink, they're invisible.


That's not what they're saying though. They are quite clearly saying that the vast area outside the tiny wavelengths we can see are perceived by human eyes as pink. If that were true, there would be so much light bouncing around that that we percieved as pink that we wouldn't be able to make anything else out.

And I quibble with your quibble: anything outside of the visible spectrum is invisible by definition, isn't it? The slight increase in the visible spectrum in a minority of the people who've ever had cataract surgery is hardly worth counting in this regard as it's not considered normal vision.

I watched it again, and they're not saying that radio waves are pink, they're saying that you can't see them... but that pink fills the spot on the colour wheel that would otherwise be filled by the invisible radiation.

They could've made it clearer, but they didn't say what you thought. What they did say isn't exactly wrong just not clear.

Fair enough that it's hardly worth counting UV vision in certain lens enhanced people, I just thought it was cool.
In reply to this comment by FlowersInHisHair:
>> ^oritteropo:

I think they mean that if you try to wrap the visible spectrum around a colour wheel, then it works for the red,green,blue,violet part and then stops working when you get to the magenta/pink/negative green part.
To quibble a little with your claim that anything out of the visisble spectrum is invisible, people who have had cataract surgery can see potentially light slightly outside the normal visible range (all right, not gamma rays, but still)... http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/605905
>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
The claim made in the video that we see all the non-visible wavelengths of light/EM radiation as pink is patently false. We know this because gamma rays aren't pink, they're invisible.


That's not what they're saying though. They are quite clearly saying that the vast area outside the tiny wavelengths we can see are perceived by human eyes as pink. If that were true, there would be so much light bouncing around that that we percieved as pink that we wouldn't be able to make anything else out.

And I quibble with your quibble: anything outside of the visible spectrum is invisible by definition, isn't it? The slight increase in the visible spectrum in a minority of the people who've ever had cataract surgery is hardly worth counting in this regard as it's not considered normal vision.

>> ^oritteropo:

I think they mean that if you try to wrap the visible spectrum around a colour wheel, then it works for the red,green,blue,violet part and then stops working when you get to the magenta/pink/negative green part.
To quibble a little with your claim that anything out of the visisble spectrum is invisible, people who have had cataract surgery can see potentially light slightly outside the normal visible range (all right, not gamma rays, but still)... http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/605905
>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
The claim made in the video that we see all the non-visible wavelengths of light/EM radiation as pink is patently false. We know this because gamma rays aren't pink, they're invisible.


That's not what they're saying though. They are quite clearly saying that the vast area outside the tiny wavelengths we can see are perceived by human eyes as pink. If that were true, there would be so much light bouncing around that that we percieved as pink that we wouldn't be able to make anything else out.

And I quibble with your quibble: anything outside of the visible spectrum is invisible by definition, isn't it? The slight increase in the visible spectrum in a minority of the people who've ever had cataract surgery is hardly worth counting in this regard as it's not considered normal vision.

I think they mean that if you try to wrap the visible spectrum around a colour wheel, then it works for the red,green,blue,violet part and then stops working when you get to the magenta/pink/negative green part.

To quibble a little with your claim that anything out of the visisble spectrum is invisible, people who have had cataract surgery can see potentially light slightly outside the normal visible range (all right, not gamma rays, but still)... http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/605905
>> ^FlowersInHisHair:

The claim made in the video that we see all the non-visible wavelengths of light/EM radiation as pink is patently false. We know this because gamma rays aren't pink, they're invisible.

Could you repeat that please?

[sorry, couldn't resist.... thanks for the info, I didn't know this. edit]

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Well, the #1 vet recommended way to help prevent eye disease in dogs is to keep them from sticking their heads out the car window. I'd say this qualifies.>> ^bareboards2:
Really? Why would the dog have cataracts?

>> ^Drachen_Jager:
I guess this is marked 'comedy' in the sense that the dog will be blind in a few years from cataracts, ha ha, how funny is that, a blind dog.


Well, the #1 vet recommended way to help prevent eye disease in dogs is to keep them from sticking their heads out the car window. I'd say this qualifies.

Well, the #1 vet recommended way to help prevent eye disease in dogs is to keep them from sticking their heads out the car window. I'd say this qualifies.>> ^bareboards2:

Really? Why would the dog have cataracts?

>> ^Drachen_Jager:
I guess this is marked 'comedy' in the sense that the dog will be blind in a few years from cataracts, ha ha, how funny is that, a blind dog.



Well, the #1 vet recommended way to help prevent eye disease in dogs is to keep them from sticking their heads out the car window. I'd say this qualifies.

Really? Why would the dog have cataracts?


>> ^Drachen_Jager:

I guess this is marked 'comedy' in the sense that the dog will be blind in a few years from cataracts, ha ha, how funny is that, a blind dog.

When I was wrapping up in High School, I trained for four months to physically hit the peaks necessary in order to apply to be a member of the RCMP. I wasn't going to let my diabetes keep me from it at all, and it was some hard, hard work.

Then the hammer came down when I went to apply and I was told that due to the cataract surgery I had when I was 10 years old I couldn't be a Mountie. It was a blow at the time, and to this day I still wish now and then that I could've become a Mountie.

The amount of free light and solar heating that you get through windows is massively outweighed by the energy you lose through the windows, unless the outside is only slightly below room temperature, or their insulation is way above the standard of double-pane windows found in ordinary houses. When it's warmer that "free solar heating" is working against your AC.

Clear plastic doesn't interfere with your ability to look out a window. Neither does having a smaller window. You're probably looking at a computer or TV so much of the time that it doesn't matter. You could actually *go* outside instead of just looking. I don't know about you, but I don't get claustrophobic just because I can't see the sky or some trees for a few hours. If this stuff were actually done it could reduce residential electricity consumption by three fourths. That's well worth the sacrifice of not being able to see trees 24/7 except when you actually go outside.

LEDs are adequate unless you have cataracts or a strange aesthetic desire for extreme brightness at nighttime. I have one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Bright-XtraFlex2-Kindle-Version/dp/B000TXZIDM
If you set it on "Low" and shine it at a wall, the reflection of it is still plenty for reading a book. If you're concerned about lighting, put up some mirrors so you get more free light through your small windows.

Imstellar -- Just raise the price of fossil fuels / pollution / environmental destruction through taxing those things, and then the market will figure out how to get the best of both worlds.

Also, you're still using a computer aren't you? Pot kettle black?