What I just did
Extra credit to the first person who catches what I did. Best part is that I did this in a bookstore in Danville. I'm a lil' punk at heart...or so I've been told.
What? You expected something better? Taste my mediocrity, world!
Extra credit to the first person who catches what I did. Best part is that I did this in a bookstore in Danville. I'm a lil' punk at heart...or so I've been told.
So, at work yesterday someone said that my degree in Religious Studies was essentially a degree in rhetoric. Of course, it was meant as a joke (mostly), but I think there's some truth there.
Firstly, I atended a Liberal Arts college, and as you may (or may not) know rhetoric was one of the three original Liberal Arts (along with logic and grammar), so there's some basis for saying that I got a degree in rhetoric.
Secondly, rhetoric has been a core component of politics and religion from the beginning. From Aristotle to Augustine, Cicero to Kierkegaard, the need to speak convincingly has always been a part of any movement intended to sway people toward an opinion. So, in that sense, I studied a great deal of rhetorical works and some truly phenomenal rhetorical speakers and writers.
But I have to disagree that the program is essentially a degree in rhetoric. Saying that the study of religion is the study of rhetoric is like saying that the study of war is the study of tanks. You can't avoid learning a little about it, but the focus in a properly managed religious studies program is elsewhere.
Of course, the person who said that knew this. He just wanted to see if he could spin me up. Didn't work, but because I like the topic I decided to post something about it anyway.
... but here
Farr otherwise, transported I behold,
Transported touch; here passion first I felt,
Commotion strange, in all enjoyments else
Superiour and unmov'd, here onely weake
Against the charm of Beauties powerful glance.
Or Nature faild in mee, and left some part
Not proof enough such Object to sustain,
Or from my side subducting, took perhaps
More then enough; at least on her bestow'd
Too much of Ornament, in outward shew
Elaborate, of inward less exact. (Paradise Lost VIII:528-539)
Rather than accept that Adam was at fault for his own lust, he blames, first God and then Eve herself. Typical dude.
He cites the case of a Muslim scholar, a high-level al-Qaida operative who was "as hard-core as you could find." Using a non-coercive approach, "in six hours I convinced him to cooperate."
Torture is both ineffective and immoral. It is morally hazardous to allow it even on our behalf.
Maus is the gripping biography of the author's father told through the medium of a graphic novel.
The novel's subject, Vladek Spiegelman, was a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor and the story moves between his life in Poland before and during the Second World War and his later life in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City.
This work has won a Pulitzer Prize. It's worth taking the time to read it and find out why.
They lie! Everyone knows birds come from God's eyelashes.
I smacked into the back of some chick's car this morning. No real damage. No injuries. She is still filing against me insurance. Some people are just that way. Oh well.
I am, nonetheless, the smiling Buddha. I refuse to let the world's lameness get in the way of my smile.
Taste it, world! I will not back down.
I often see myself clinging to my point of view, as if everything depended upon it. But I have to remind myself that my opinions and ideas have no permanence and will gradually fade away like the blistering summer. What I believe today should hold no more sway over me than what I believed a year ago, a decade ago, or thirty years ago.
In that sense, there is a calming impermanence to selfhood.
What a great name for an evil diety's temple! I think we should use it in the new campaign setting. I'll have to bug Bryan about it.
