Being! Or Nothingness

Beauty Can Save the World

Santi thinks so.  The money shot, for me, was:

"The problem is not that poetry and music are not persuasive enough, but that the totalitarian mind limits the scope of reason within itself and is not open to being persuaded by a new experience—especially the experience of the mysterious, which it quickly debunks. The greatness of The Lives of Others lies in showing us that the totalitarian mind is more vulnerable than we think, and that a single moment of beauty can pierce through decades of ideological brainwashing. As Glenn Gould’s case shows, the power of the artist lies not necessarily with the political content of his work but rather in the intelligibility of the beauty that he creates.
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Disney: No Fags Allowed

Well, it looks like Disney is definitely anti-fag.  No, silly, I don't mean homosexuals.  That would be derogatory and definitely against the PC culture that Disney fully espouses.  I mean cigarettes of course.  Disney has officially banned the smoking of cigarettes in all of its movies.  It will also discourage its other movie distributors (including Miramax) to refrain from using the little white death sticks in their films. 

What about those directors of movies for adults (PG-13 and above) who want to include a scene where cigarette smoking occurs?  Quote Disney:  "It's a confrontation we're certainly willing to have."

Ella used to sing "In olden days a glimpse of stocking was something considered shocking.  Now, heaven knows, anything goes . . ."  Anything, that is, except smoking.

Whoah, Jeremiah!

So . . . is it really that shocking?  Jeremiah wasn't a liar?  A tiny little rock with cuneiform writing indicates a historical person exists:  Nebo-Sarsekim.  The problem?  Well, until this little rock, the only evidence of this person was in the Book of the prophet Jeremiah.  And since the historical-critical method indicates that what is in the scriptures can only be historically true if it can be verified by a source outside of itself, he wasn't really believed to have existed.  And then comes this rock.  And all of a sudden . . . a la Emeril . . . "Bam," he's real.

And yet, the historical-critical method lumbers on . . .