In Kirill Yeskov’s The Last Ring-Bearer, “the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor … Sauron’s citadel, is, by contrast, described as ‘that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic’.”
Tag: 02.15.11
‘Neurotheology’ – The Attempt to Explain Spiritual Experiences Medically
“For all the sickly Romantic geniuses out there who purportedly succumbed to the wild thrall of their passions – Robert Schumann, Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake, etc. – there have been as many doctors, psychologists, and literary Darwinists itching to diagnose them. … The not-always-subtle subtext is that unexplainable visions, or other divine madnesses, have no place in our enlightened, modern world.”
Guilt, Repentance, and Innocent Bystanders
“New research finds when we make amends to assuage our guilt, a third party often pays the price.”
UK Arts Cuts Risk Creating ‘Cultural Apartheid’: Former National Theatre Director
Richard Eyre: “And little by little the already large gap between those for whom the arts are a part of life and those who feel excluded from them will widen to an unbridgeable divide. The result: cultural apartheid.”
It Takes a Church Like Scientology to Have Apostates These Days
“To make a true apostate you need a religious community that has, among other things, obvious insiders and outsiders. In the United States, with our promiscuous spiritual questing, many of us are never exclusively in one religion enough to one day find ourselves out of it. To leave some religious groups is to apostatize, while to leave other groups – notably mainline Christian groups – is simply to float away. It is hard to imagine a Unitarian-Universalist apostate.”
South Park Guys’ Mormon Musical Isn’t Anti-LDS, It’s Anti-Stupidity
“What Parker and Stone do isn’t religion-bashing. It’s religion-teasing. And it’s born more from fascination than disdain. … Adding to Parker and Stone’s fascination is the fact that Mormonism is itself a young religion. ‘It’s like Darwin’s finches of religion – we can watch it evolve,’ says Stone.”
Jeopardy‘s Man-Vs-Computer Plays On Our Fears
“The idea of man-against-machine competition is a source of constant fascination, one in which the dark fear that we could be bested by our creations always lurks right underneath the surface. Everybody may love GPS, but nobody wants to wind up in the Matrix.”
Iran Sets Up New Prosecutor’s Office For Media, Culture Offenses
“The move signaled new restrictions on journalists and artists, many of whom supported widespread protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.”
Some Art Looted From Egyptian Museum Is Recovered
“Cairo authorities said Monday they had recovered a pharaonic heart scarab and a tiny statuette, two of several ancient treasures looted from the world-famous Egyptian Museum during the country’s uprising.”
Big Changes In Video Game Industry
“The surprising popularity of casual games among even the hardest of the hard-core foreshadows a sea change for an industry that over the years has grown to resemble Hollywood, complete with star directors, creaking franchises and budgets that dwarf the annual operating costs of a small city.”