January 2011
Terrence Malick Interview | Rome Film Festival →
youmightfindyourself:
“Terrence Malick is extremely shy and you must not attempt to make direct contact with him. You must pretend you are eavesdropping on a private conversation.”
I am sitting in the middle of the front row in the “Petrassi” hall of the Auditorium in Rome, Italy, where Terrence Malick is about to give an interview as part of theRome Film Festival – his first interview since...
Problems with a Private Language
The problem is that Wittgenstein never gives word to what scholars after him coined as his “private language argument.” He never uses the phrase himself. Instead, the argument arises most notably, but not explicitly, in his books, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations (see P.I. 293). A lot of the “private language argument” can be understood better if we first...
On Private Language, Private Pain
“The experience of feeling pain is not that a person, ‘I’ has something. I distinguish an intensity, a location, etc. in the pain, but not an owner. What sort of thing would a pain be that no one has? Pain belonging to no one at all? Pain is represented as something we can perceive in the sense in which we perceive a matchbox.”
—Wittgenstein
Understanding this quote...
On Organized Religion: A Reprise
The following is a continuation of what I wrote here.
When I picture times in my life when I have fancied myself intellectually clever and have been critical of the church I attend—while failing to serve and love its imperfect people, failing to take the practical and tangible steps to transcend the offenses, the trivial, the routine, or the errant, failing to alchemize what seemed to be blatant...
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people...”
– C.S. Lewis
Oscar Overload! →
stephhbell:
Hosted by James Franco and Anne Hathaway, the 2011 Academy Awards will air at 5 p.m. on February 27 on ABC.
Best picture
“127 Hours” “Black Swan” “The Fighter” “Inception” “The Kid’s Are All Right” “The King’s Speech” “The Social Network” “Toy Story 3″ “True Grit” “Winter’s Bone”
Best actor
Javier Bardem, “Biutiful” Jeff Bridges, “True Grit” Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social...
“One very natural human tendency is to associate ourselves into groups of...”
– Andrew Tallman (via azspot)
DonaMajicShow: On Signs →
sthinking:
————————————————————————
Hi DMS!
In the interest of keeping this discussion nice and short I’m going to start by agreeing with a lot of what you said. Your points about how people should seek to better themselves and embody characteristics like truth and justice are great and I do not seek any major quarrel with them.
The overall feeling I’m getting is that the term atheist is...
WatchDismemberment Plan on Fallon — What do you want me to say?
DonaMajicShow: On Signs →
sthinking:
donamajicshow:
It is often the case with militant atheists to start with a self-defeating, epistemic condition before they risk the search for truth and God: they say, “If you will show me a sign from heaven, then will I believe.” Confident in this position, the atheist claims he is perfectly willing to believe,…
I had to think a bit about my response to this argument. Summarising...
Miian: The infinite possibility each day holds... →
miianwilson:
The infinite possibility each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I’m sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same...
International Tour Blogger →
This will come in handy…for european touring.
The Consumerist Gap
While we are increasingly worried about the effect of affluence and luxury on us and our children, more and more of us find ourselves defined by consumerism. We find that everything is a question of marketing, including religion and politics. We find that more and more of our time is spent in the acquiring and dispensing of material goods. And while many of us nostalgically long for traditional...
WatchDoshaCare
90-second industrial ad I made to help bring DoshaCare to market.
On Signs
It is often the case with militant atheists to start with a self-defeating, epistemic condition before they risk the search for truth and God: they say, “If you will show me a sign from heaven, then will I believe.” Confident in this position, the atheist claims he is perfectly willing to believe, if only someone will provide clear, rational argument and evidence in advance. Such prior “knowledge”...
Gods in Embryo
If it is true that we are eternal intelligences, gods in embryo who can fulfill our infinite potential only in an ever-ongoing process of perfecting the very best of what we know and find joy in—love, marriage, friendship, service, integrity, learning, pursuing beauty, creating—then it is worth every effort, every sacrifice, to engage in the process sufficiently to find out. Certainly,...
“Thee lift me, and I’ll lift thee, and we’ll ascend together.”
– Quaker Proverb
Fifteen Writers →
azspot:
“Fab 15″ Rules: List fifteen authors, fiction or nonfiction, including poets, playwrights, and screenwriters, who have influenced you and will always stick with you.
Make your list in no more than fifteen minutes!
N.T. Wright
David Korten
Chris Hedges
Donald Kraybill
Howard Zinn
Kernighan and Ritchie
Eugene Peterson
Walter Wink
Jacques Ellul
Will Durant
Martin Luther King...
“If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save...”
– Isaac Asimov (via ageofreason)
On Love
The true guilt of mankind lies not in our crimes but in our failure to commit acts of love. We don’t believe in love, not truly anyways. We make a great sermon of it on Sundays but then have difficulty crossing the street and talking with our despondent neighbor. We philosophize it to death in the classroom but then abandon it with the first person who offends us. How many of us actually...
On Invisible Realities
“Everyone, especially children, wonders whether there is a reality beyond what we see. Cave paintings and other archeological evidence show that tens of thousands of years ago people were already seeking to understand a reality beyond the visible. By endlessly creative means, including prayer, alcohol and other drugs, meditation, music, study, contemplation, sexual practices, shamans,...
“Man is a mystery. It needs to be unraveled, and if you spend your whole life...”
– Dostoevsky
