Last weekend I saw Julie Taymor's Grendel. To say the least, it was a tremendous spectacle. The set was very well executed, with the projected sequences meshing perfectly with the music and the action on stage. The costumes were an eclectic, yet cohesive, mix of modern, anglo-saxon, and even Japanese(?!?) motifs. The libretto was a little dull and ( Read more... )

It's not that I dislike or hate religion. Well, I only dislike it when it trespasses on grounds where it should not have any weight, like legislature, government, or anything that involves the social ethic as a whole.

It's just quite interesting that the violent, radical, secterian rebel group in the Phillipines is called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or M.I.L.F.

You know, I do sincerely wish for everyone to be happy, or at least reasonably comfortable and content... However, I can't imagine that happening unless we destroy a vast majority of the human population.

There is a difference between being a biological homo sapien, and being an Actual, thinking Human Being....Sadly, most people fall into the former category.

What I find incredibly interesting is that So many people I have met seem to be readily prepared for bodily death. Whether it is through ambivalence, depression, religious fanaticism, or sheer lunacy; some people are quite eager to shuffle off their mortal coil. Yet, when it comes to ego-death, or the prospect that there is nothing after death, ( Read more... )

Music (n) an area of universal expertise. the less professional training a person has, the more they think they know what is good, and that their opinions of the subject are just as valid as the opinions of those who have spent their lives studying, playing, and composing music ( Read more... )

Warning: unproofread and with generally not much care in syntactical or grammatical triflings ( Read more... )

Again and again we are faced with an epidemic of Hubris. The insistence that we are somehow a 'special' group of organisms. It's quite sad that such a vague and untenable concept as "Humanity" should be sacrosanct. It is a distinct type of arrogance to claim that an animal that has won the luck of the evolutionary draw should be held on so high ( Read more... )

What really gets me riled up, I don't know why, but I'm really pissed when people say "Buddhism is not a true religion". Anyone who makes this claim with any degree of certainty without knowing anything about the Mahayana, Theravade and Vajrayana sects should be summarily shot, and all useable genetic material should be destroyed. They have no ( Read more... )