Bill O'Reilly on Real Time November 5 2010

Bill Maher had Bill O'Reilly on his show. O'Reilly said a couple of completely misleading things that really bother me. The first problem was when Bill Maher was asking O'Reilly about Sean Hannity reading incorrect information about Obama's trip to India (something about the trip costing $200 million). O'Reilly's defense was that like him, Hannitty is an opinion guy and not a hard-news person.

Posted on: 8 November 2010 | 6:34 pm

Being a spectator versus being a participant

Since the advent of TV, people in the western world have been increasingly taught to be spectators. Being a spectator is a very old activity of course. TV just made it seem like being a spectator is the default way to experience the world. “Don’t experience it yourself, but watch others experience it.” This has encouraged many negative behaviors in our modern society. A sedentary lifestyle

Posted on: 9 September 2010 | 12:27 am

Slow Down

As technology has increased, become cheaper and ever-present, the speed of life has increased significantly. 200 years ago, New York to San Francisco would have taken months with a strong possibility of dying. Now it's a 6 hour plane flight, affordable to most people that aren't living in poverty. The observation has been made many times now that although things can be done much quicker, it

Posted on: 19 August 2010 | 1:02 am

DIY in hard economic times

Americans are used to convenience. Convenience is certainly a good quality. The problem is that convenience takes precedence over many other more important qualities for many people. As just one example, many Americans choose convenience over health with their food choices. It's the whole appeal of fast food. Convenience relies on our monetary system. The reason we can do things

Posted on: 3 August 2010 | 8:57 pm

The Century of Self

I just finished watching a 4 hour BBC documentary entitled "The Century of Self". It's one of the most impressive documentaries I have seen in a while. It should be required viewing for all people in Western societies to understand why the world is the way it is. It chronicles how the ideas of Sigmund Freud and other members of his family have deeply affected our current society. His daughter

Posted on: 18 July 2010 | 2:41 pm

True Belief

What does it mean to believe something? If I say I believe in Christianity, does that make me a Christian? How does that compare to me saying something like, "I believe you're a waiter". And is this the same type of belief as when I say something like, "I don't believe in global warming". After taking a course in Vipassana meditation, my understanding of belief has changed. Belief in the

Posted on: 13 July 2010 | 12:27 pm

Excellence or Quality

In the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", Robert Pirsig discusses how the ancient Greeks believed in excellence. Excellence in a person wasn't defined as someone that could do one thing really well, but someone who could do many things well. He goes on to discuss how our modern society has lost this value of excellence. From talking to people, it seems that most people in our

Posted on: 3 July 2010 | 7:02 pm

TV is the best sedative

Television is the perfect sedative for our society. It's better than conventional drugs and alcohol, because it has no overt psychological effects that last after you finish watching TV. It doesn't cause instant death from overdose. It just wastes more and more of your time, giving you unrealistic expectations of reality. It makes you feel safe and secure. It doesn't require any critical

Posted on: 24 June 2010 | 4:38 pm

"Conservatism clings to what has been established,

fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed."-Morris Raphael Cohen I want to relate politically conservative philosophy to the new immigration law and associated racist laws recently pass in Arizona. There is a fundamental problem with conservatism. It tries to keep things as they are, but in this world of space and time,

Posted on: 16 June 2010 | 9:39 pm

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

This is a quote by Philip K. Dick. He is my favorite science fiction author. I don't particularly like science fiction in general, but his stories were prophetic in many ways. The underlying core of most of his stories though, wasn't science or the future, but the nature of reality. Everyone lives in their own unique world, and for most people, it seems like they can never truly experience

Posted on: 10 June 2010 | 4:29 pm

don't just boycott bp, boycott oil!

It's a lot easier to believe in things than to do them. People can say they care about the environment, but then they buy bottled water and drive every day. Can such a person still claim to care about the environment? We all know such people, and 99.99% of us are such people. Whether the issue is religious, personal, or social, it is very difficult to live your beliefs. What I think is

Posted on: 7 June 2010 | 4:45 pm

Shifting the focus of environmental concern

When it comes to environmental issues, people have a range of opinion. These opinions can be placed on a rough scale from extremely environmentally conscious to extremely environmentally unaware. On the unaware side, there are many variations, from people that just don't think about the environment as an issue at all, to people that think it's a non-issue and that humans should do whatever

Posted on: 5 June 2010 | 3:26 pm