"Family Guy" will return from the dead

Three years after it was canceled, a cartoon sitcom returns to prime time. The people have spoken. They could've asked for world peace. They wanted more 'Family Guy.' 

Terri Schiavo- Rest in peace

"Look in my face;my name is Might-have-been;I am also called No-more;Too-late,Farewell".

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Terri Schiavo passed away today.

Coffee Lover

Voltaire, who drank copious amounts of coffee throughout his life, was once warned that the beverage was a slow poison. "It must be slow," the philosopher replied, "for I have been drinking it for sixty-five years and I am not yet dead."

Good Question

While visiting a greenhouse in Dresden one day, Arthur Schopenhauer was approached by a clerk who had noticed him apparently entranced by a certain plant. "Who are you?" the clerk asked, taking him for a specialist.

Schopenhauer slowly turned and regarded the man for some time before replying. "If you could only answer that question for me," he finally intoned, "I would be eternally grateful."

Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest

There is no shortage of foolish rhetoric clamoring for the attention of poor Terri Schiavo, from both the self-declared "culture of life" and the smeared "culture of death." The mystery here is why the press is so unable, or unwilling, to distinguish the grandstanders and the crusaders from those with actual, relevant comments. We hope, though, that we can all come together in agreeing that CNN has hit a new low in coverage of the story: Rod Dreher, of The Dallas Morning News, writes in despair: "Be of good cheer. I just heard Deepak Chopra on CNN assure the public that Terri is not suffering, and that her soul is now being broadcast throughout the universe. So there!"

The Revealer

I am!

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

John Clare (1793-1864)

One final victim of the Rape of Nanking?

A young historian's book on the 1937 atrocity unleashed a tide of repressed anguish and international recriminations that continue even after her suicide

WHEN WILL IT END? 

Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
(Remember, 9-14) Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) 

The Choice

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity.Yes. But what do we do when our loneliness begins to feel vulgar too?

Schopenhauer

W. Somerset Maugham:
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life.

 

U2 more than musicians, they're philosophers

In his History of Philosophy survey course, Brigham Young University Professor Mark Wrathall likes to quote famous thinkers to illustrate tenets of existentialism.
Sartre? Kierkegaard?
Rock band U2.
"They're so much more quotable than most philosophers," says Wrathall of the Irish rockers, who are being inducted today into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Wrathall has incorporated U2 song lyrics into many of his classes and even plays the band's CDs and videos for his students. "It's easier to spout a U2 line as an answer to a philosophical question than, say, Kant."
Courses on contemporary pop culture are increasingly common on university campuses. One small Christian school, Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., recently offered a class on U2 and religion. But Wrathall, who is working on a forthcoming book, U2 and Philosophy, is perhaps the first professor to seriously analyze the philosophical implications of the band's lyrics.
A longtime fan of U2, Wrathall hit upon the idea in 1997 while driving to Provo from California.
"I remember it very clearly. I was in the middle of the Nevada desert, listening to 'Last Night On Earth' from the 'Pop' album," he says. "I was struck by how Nietzschean the song was, and I thought, 'Wow, I could really use this in my lectures.' "
Wrathall has identified several distinct philosophical stages of U2's 25-year career. As he sees it, the band's early songs reflected traditional Christian pessimism. By 1987's "The Joshua Tree," however, U2 had begun to question whether religious faith alone could fulfill a person: "You carried the cross/And my shame/You know I believed it/But I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
The next stage, from 1991's "Achtung Baby" through 1997's "Pop," found the band flirting with existential despair. In embracing the view that humans are responsible for their own actions, U2 recognized the anguish inherent in such a burden.
Its current phase, beginning with 2000's "All That You Can't Leave Behind," shows the band rediscovering its Christian roots to achieve a sort of existential joy. On "Beautiful Day," frontman and chief lyricist Bono sings, "what you don't have, you don't need it now." On its recent song "Vertigo," U2 celebrates earthly love as a form of spiritual fulfilment.
Wrathall sometimes passes out U2 lyric sheets in class to help his students decipher songs' meanings. He believes his U2 lessons help bring some life to dry philosophical concepts. And what better way to grab the attention of the MTV generation than through rock music?
"Students tend to miss the connections between what we say in class and the rest of their lives," says Wrathall, who earned a law degree from Harvard and a doctorate in philosophy from UC-Berkeley before coming to BYU. "So it's nice to be able to show them that even the most abstract philosophy can be seen every day in pop culture."
His students agree.
"It's really helpful," says senior Josh Gillon, a philosophy major. "I'll never listen to U2 the same way again."
"It's a real fun way to learn," adds fellow senior Steve Stakland. "Because it's contemporary music . . . it's easier to relate to. Whereas if he just told us to read Kierkegaard, it wouldn't make nearly as much sense."
Parents, don't fret - Wrathall still makes his classes read Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and other great thinkers. But he gets more requests for his U2 lectures.
The professor is editing a book on the philosophy of U2's music, to be published as part of a series in 2006 by Open Court, an Illinois-based publishing house. Previous books in the series have probed the philosophy of such pop-culture phenomenons as "The Simpsons," the "Matrix" movies and the Harry Potter books.
All his scholarship, however, can't get Wrathall tickets to U2's Salt Lake City concert in December. Nor has it won him any special access to the superstar rock band. But that's OK with him. Says Wrathall, "They're doing just fine without me."

By Brandon Griggs
The Salt Lake Tribune

"Death has a thousand doors to let out life: I shall find one" —
 

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others hath it ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone! 

Lord Byron

(1788-1824)

Woe Unto Us

You have no idea what you are experiencing; you run through life as if you were drunk and once in a while fall down a staircase. But thanks to your drunkenness, you don't break your limbs in the process; your muscles are too slack and your head too dull for you to find the stones of these stairs as hard as the rest of us do! For us, life is a greater danger: we are made of glass - woe unto us if we bump against something! And everything is lost if we fall!

Nietzsche in The Gay Science

"Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege."

childhood

"I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic
in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught
along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined
this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since
my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here
in front of it . . ."

Kazuo Ishiguro

Ode on Melancholy

She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

John Keats

the interval

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity."

George Santayana

The War Crimes of George W. Bush & Donald Rumsfeld

Newtopia Magazine | "Never to Forget" by Paul Rockwell // February/March 2005

Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa

nthposition online magazine: The magical world of Fernando Pessoa

Are you among the millions who were engrossed by The Da Vinci Code?

If the answer is yes, you should begin planning a trip to Ottawa for this summer. On May 29, in fact, the National Gallery of Canada will open Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and the Renaissance in Florence. This unique exhibition presents the first half of the 16th century from the studies of the two great masters to the comeback of classical painting embodied by Giorgio Vasari.The exhibition follows the artistic history of Florentine Renaissance between 1500 and 1550.

 

The Second Cup

'Coffee, the sober liquor, powerfully cerebral, which, unlike alcohol, increases clarity and lucidity - coffee which suppresses the vague and heavy poetry of the imagination's mists, which strikes a spark from what is actually and accurately seen, the flash of truth itself.'

Roland Barthes

Beautiful and Damned

...Isn't alcohol fun?
I'll drink to that
Are we coming undone?
Darn tootin' fact
So what if the party's getting out of hand
When the barman rings the bell
We'll tell him, go to hell!
One more!
There isn't no stopping the beautiful and the damned

I think we're crazy, dear lady
But so is the crowd
I'd like to dance with you
Am I allowed?
If anyone gets in our way
We'll tell 'em scram!
Life is a pink lady
We're the beautiful and the damned

The musical Beautiful and Damned, based on the Fitzgerald novel, opened in London in 2003. These lyrics are from Roger Cook and Les Reed's title song.

Kierkegaard's tortured faith

Kierkegaard's tortured faith | csmonitor.com