In one of the previous articles I wrote and published on this blog, I discussed the different criteria of truths – how the truth operates in the minds of the people. Therefore, to have a better understanding of what this “post truth” all about, reading my article entitled “Unraveling truth and its Many Faces” remains a highly recommended pre-requisite. However, as years, even an era, goes by, there is a sudden emergence of a different (another) interpretation or criterion of truth. This is more alarming that even natural or social scientists such as philosophers and sociologists alike must delve into to provide a thorough criticism and evaluation. Why? This criterion, which they called “post truth” goes against objective truth that was promoted and invested (intellectually) by these thinkers - inherited from the Greek civilization circa 800 BC or even earlier - to enrich the very foundation of knowledge through a systematic approach, guided by reason and valid arguments either…
It's a Christmas tradition in geek culture as ingrained as Magic: the Gathering booster pack stocking stuffers: making fun of the Star Wars Holiday Special. And well we should: It has definitely not aged well, to damn it the faintest. Reviewing it is a guaranteed hit on YouTube, so every major reviewer has a shot at it. Let's get a few out of the way: The Nostalgia Critic has the funniest review, hands-down: The Cinema Snob has a great runner-up: Dark Corners has a shorter, sweeter review: Even geek-culture webcomic classic XKCD just had to take a swipe at it. The Star Wars Holiday Special is the very definition of "low-hanging fruit." Yeah, and you know what? YOU'VE ALL GOT IT WRONG! You young Millennial whipper-snapper Star Wars fans, I'm sorry, but you can take the next Star Tours shuttle express to planet Get Off My Lawn! There are a whole four decades of cultural and historical context you're all ignoring. What else do you do, break into Egyptian pyramids and graffiti critiques next…
15 Hot Music Genres You'll Be Thrilled To Discover Those of you who've only followed the Present Author for the past couple years may be surprised to learn that I used to write about music. No, really, a lot. It's been a while since I wallowed in the discovery of new bands. What I'd like to do for the world this Christmas is illuminate some little-known, niche music micro-genres. Most of them are new, some of them only established after the fact or experiencing a retro revival, all of them are judged to be popular and trendy based on stats gleaned from Spotify (mostly), plus iTunes, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube, and whatever crazy noise I can run into on the street. I will try to keep it to genres established enough that they won't just disappear by the time you read this. That's all we're doing. So if, a few days from now, you just received a new music-playing gadget and are looking to load it up with cool new beats, you're bound to find one genre here worth exploring. #1: Witch House …
Are you an ECommerce entrepreneur outside the United States who sometimes depends on working with Americans? And who isn't these days? Perhaps your virtual remote team includes a few staffs hired over UpWork? And have you ever been mystified by the panoply of American holidays? Then this post is for you. Because I'm in Iowa (it doesn't get any more American than that) and have worked with people all over the globe, and I'm always running into confusion as to which holidays are significant and which ones are a blow-off. I've had clients who offered me Groundhog Day off at one extreme, and clients who were shocked that I wasn't expecting to pull a sixteen-hour shift Thanksgiving Day at the other. So bookmark this and save it for the year! I will be rating the holidays from 1 to 5, "1" being "no big deal" to "5" being "everybody in the country is either at a big family banquet or getting sloppily toasted, so forget getting anything done until this blows over." All paid days off get at least a…
I'm going to tell you a wonderful, wonderful story that happened to me one time: I was perusing the works of the late, great George Carlin, one of my biggest heroes growing up. This was back in the day when you had to catch the special on HBO or else rent the video from Blockbuster (only a five-minute ride from my house on dinosaur-back). And I caught the one time in his stage act where he ripped into parents and children. Thanks to the miracle of modern YouTube, the clip is available here: As I watched that routine, as I listened to a man I'd laughed at and loved for most of my life, a funny thing happened: I began to become offended! I don't know why, maybe my guard was down, but this time I caught myself saying "Oh, no, George, that's going too far!" I mean, children! We were all children once. And as a dad of four, I'm pretty damn satisfied with myself for being the parent I've been. That little flash of irritation passed, and then I laughed out loud at myself. A wonderful thing…
Let me fill in some personal background as quickly as possible: When it comes to faith, you could define me pretty close to agnostic. My wife of 25+ years is a lapsed Catholic. There's no real conflict here, but our respective cultural backgrounds give us a different attitude towards religion in general. Christmas is a secular affair for us; when the kids lived with us, it was all Santa and presents. Since we joined the empty nest club, Christmas is an excuse to goof off and relax for me, actually I smirkingly pretend to celebrate Christmas while inwardly considering it "Yule," since Western society has seen fit to rip off the Pagan holiday and rebrand it as Jesus's birthday with the serial numbers filed off. For Mrs. Penguin, it's pretty much the same, but she adds in the ritual of staying up til midnight to watch the Vatican's Midnight Mass. I watch along with her, but for me, it's something to marvel and gawk at. Occasionally I'll look up from my eggnog and laptop gaming session to…
> "Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne What a strange topic for a product recommendation list, and yet what strange creatures we are. We do indeed invent gods by the dozen, so let's pour one out for Montaigne, arguably history's first "blogger." Not only do we invent gods and ways to worship them, we even do it for a goof, just to be silly. Even the joke deities tend to get taken seriously over time, which provokes the question: How do religions get rolling, anyway? Apparently, all we need are rumors which become legend, legends which become myths, and then the myth gets a church and a 501(c)(3) tax status. The pantheon of parody religions is a fascinating one. The Hacker's Dictionary makes reference to "Ha ha only serious," a characteristic of geeks taking an ironic joke and applying it with a grain of truth within. That applies to parody religions: Even the joke ones have a point, which is…
Pardon my round-eyed white idiot weeaboo indulgence, but your Present Author has been sent on a mission by the Editors That Be to explore vTubers(Virtual YouTubers, Japanese: Vユーチューバー, バーチャルユーチューバー). This is 21st century living at its most stereotyped: whole subcultures emerge and gain millions of followers within a couple of years, without most of the world quite knowing they exist. But I'm a techie and media geek first, so even I can appreciate that there's something happening here. We all expected that better AI and CGI technology would give us virtual celebrities sooner or later. That's all a vTuber is: a Virtual Youtuber, a real-life celebrity who never shows their face (almost), instead of having their movements motion-captured and animated through a virtual character, for whom they also provide the voice. Westerners may smirk and say "Hey, that's Max Headroom." Well, no, not quite. It's actually more like Black Mirror. Namely, The Waldo Moment way back in season two: Scary, isn't…
From Uzumaki (Japanese: うずまき), Junji Ito (伊藤潤二) Every now and then, an artist comes along who is so original, so defiant, that they break all conventions that came before and force us to invent a special new category just for them. Comics existed before Rube Goldberg, but he alone invented the complicated machine gag. Thereafter every humorous complex contraption, be it in comics, cartoons, or even in film with Peewee Herman's "breakfast machine," is referred to as a Rube Goldberg machine. Single-gag one-panel comic strips had appeared in every newspaper, but Gary Larson was the first to introduce high-brow nerdy humor in his ground-breaking strip The Far Side. Thereafter, every nerd humor comic which is aimed at an educated and mature audience, from Dilbert to XKCD, owes a debt to Gary Larson. (Oh yes, mine too. Perhaps somebody read it once.) Horror manga existed before Junji Ito; we swear it really did! There was Kazuo Umezu, for one, whose first work was published just one year before…
A couple of years ago when I worked at Cumberland Falls State Park, a young boy and his dad came to a program I was hosting - a craft program that involved making picture frames out of sticks, leaves, pinecones, and other materials found on the forest floor
The three of us went on a hike and the boy picked out all the materials he needed. As he was building his frame he picked up a pinecone that was quite battered and broken. Next to it laid a whole pinecone. It was, for all intents and purposes, perfect. So, I picked that one up and asked the boy if he would rather use the perfect pinecone.
He looked up at me and said very matter-of-factually, “No, I like the broken ones.”
Tears instantly welled up in my eyes.
A lifetime's worth of wisdom was spoken from the mouth of a child. A Love/Hate Relationship
We do not always see our bodies for the miracles they truly are. In fact, many of us treat our bodies as something separate, something apart from us, something we have to fight against.…
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