June 2010
May 2010
Strangers in Good Company (1990)
In moving between reality and fiction, Strangers in Good Company (1990) displays a compendium of small, quilted moments that center on the realities of being old. The film is not tightly scripted nor heavily reliant upon theatrics, but spotlights a nonprofessional cast of eight elderly women who find themselves stranded alongside a derelict, rural countryside. After being given a basic story...
Free Online Courses from Top Universities →
willschiff:
likeneelyohara:
milkchugger:
fuckyeahexistentialism:
Philosophy
Ancient Philosophy – iTunes – Feed – Stream – David Ebrey, UC Berkeley
Death – YouTube – iTunes – Download Course – Shelly Kagan, Yale
Existentialism in Literature & Film – iTunes – Feed – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
Heidegger – iTunes – Feed – MP3s – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
Heidegger’s Being...
Watchazspot:
OJ Guilty But Not of Murder
The Fog of War (2004)
The story of Robert McNamara is nothing short of a tragedy. For although he was once seen as the dedicated public servant who “demonstrated nerve, mastery of detail” and “had such careful and pragmatic tactician at the Pentagon’s helm,” he would forever be stained in historical annals as the failed Vietnam War architect who “obfuscated the public record about Vietnam with evasive rhetoric and...
“Catholic social teaching calls us to both charity and justice. Charity meets the...”
– Why Do Americans Emphasize Charity Over Justice? (via azspot)
“The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude....”
– Nikola Tesla (via azspot)
Atheism & the Need for Explanations
“He who believes that some ancient form was transformed suddenly through an internal force or tendency into, for instance, one furnished with wings, will be almost compelled to assume, in opposition to all analogy, that many individuals varied simultaneously. It cannot be denied that such abrupt changes and great changes of structure are widely different from those which most species...
The Evolutionary God
“Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference between the offspring and their parents—and a cause for each must exist—we have reason to believe that it is the steady accumulation of beneficial differences which has given rise to all the more important modifications of structure in relation to the habits of each species.”
“If it could be demonstrated that any...
“The problem is that Christianity has been disproved in every generation,...”
– Debunking Christianity: Christianity Disproved (via danielholter)
vruz: the trick is: mutate form, preserve function. a sort of elusive generational syncretism in order to avoid being pinned.
I mean, it doesn’t get any uglier than massive, worldwide child molestation.
(via vruz)
...
Watchfuckyeahthomyorke:
win a date with thom yorke.
If God did exist, what would he/she/it be like?
Law and Order (1969) -- The Ethics of Parenting
The white-telephone era’s failure to reflect Italian realities during the early 20th Century led to the emergence of a darkened cinema powered by grittiness and pessimism, referred to as Italian neo-realism. These were emotionally controlled portraitures of suffering persons victimized by a variety of social concerns, including: post-war poverty, chronic unemployment, child abuse, and the...
Our failure as human beings to sometimes clump,...
Cinéma Vérité: Quantum & Religious Implications
Cinéma vérité, in its various manifestations, is a paradoxical and indeed tricky style of filmmaking to analyze. We understand its aims: to capture the truth of what life is really like; to get at the “nitty-gritty of the world by observing people in the process of some crucial interactions with each other” (Breitrose 36). Think interviews, home movies, Italian neorealism, newsreel...
“The Jesus of the New Testament was of course extremely concerned with spiritual...”
– Mike Lux (via azspot)
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(REVISION)
On a political level, Lux seems to advocate a socialist perspective of...
Philadelphia Steals it from Boston
Wow!
Down 3-0 in the series to Boston, Philadelphia comes back to see Game 7. Down 3-0 in Game 7, Philadelphia ties it at 3 and pulls off the remarkable win with seven minutes in regulation. In one of the most unbelievable comebacks in hockey history, this one goes out to pelicansss—you and your team deserve it!
You don’t get much better than that in playoff hockey.
The New War Between Science and Religion - The... →
vruz:
by Mano Singham, The Chronicle of Higher Education
—via friendlyatheist:Awesome article. Check it out.
There is a new war between science and religion, rising from the ashes of the old one, which ended with the defeat of the anti-evolution forces in the 2005 “intelligent design” trial. The new war concerns questions that are more profound than whether or not to teach evolution. ...
Watchzackwolk:
Life and Ministry of Wolk
On Sickness
“The sick are in need of doctors and nurses who are sick themselves…[The man of hostility] must be sick, he must really be a close relative of the sick and the destitute in order to understand them.”
-Nietzsche
Only the sick understand the sick. Those who have suffered from a sickness become doctors of that sickness—they know what it’s like to feel crumby,...
Interpreting Compilation, History, & Propaganda
The reportorial documentary pioneered by Vertov might best be described as a mixture of compilation, history, and propaganda. These facts few film scholars will dispute, and their admitted truth must be handled with care and intelligence when seen from a relational standpoint within other films; after all, they are deeply intermingled and pervasive in many documentaries. In the context of Frank...
Multi-Cultural Dialogue
If documentary is supposed to be based on historical truth – what Vertov calls “fragments of actuality” – and those fragments are subject to human perversion and are unable to escape from human frailty, how are we to discern the real from the counterfeit? The answer is that we engage in a continual multi-cultural, documented dialogue—one that is candid yet respectful and coupled with compassionate...
David Foster Wallace on Worship
Taken from Deadlift Poetry
Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH...
Cannibal Tours (1988)
“There is nothing so strange, in a strange land, as the stranger who comes to visit it.”
Within tourism, the primitive ‘other’ occupies a magical position for neocolonial sightseers. The more exotic and detached the landscape is and, by extension, the villagers who inhabit it are, the greater those wondering resources will be for the inexperienced globetrotter. It will be as two alien worlds...
Hawking Reveals Realistic Ideas for Time Travel →
youmightfindyourself:
It seems that time travel has captured the imaginations of people since time began. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity speculated that traveling close to the speed of light would physically alter time by dilating it. This means that there should be places where time slows down, and others where time speeds up. Discovery News reports that Hawking recently expanded on...
Mama Nix — Spencer Russell
Rhombus Review
...
A State of Mind (2004)
In Western media we get a lot of characterizations of how nefarious the collective mindset is, sometimes making broad, sweeping generalizations that overlook the complexity of its more positive aims and doctrines. Politically speaking, this shouldn’t suggest that we recklessly take an apologist position for state autocracies—indeed, such cultural systems have their own problems to answer for....
Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
The human eye sees very poorly and very little—and so men thought up the microscope in order to see invisible things and the telescope to explore the outer reaches of distant, unknown galaxies. Concerning the visual amplification of man’s next endeavor, Dziga Vertov writes: “The movie camera was invented in order to penetrate deeper into the visible world, to explore and record visual...
