The interior of the so called 'Stag's Hall' at Mar Lodge in Scotland.  This incarnation of the lodge was lived in by the granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

Amore e Morte by Calcedonio Reina

Glass Delusion

The Cliff of Death by
Lajos Gulácsy

Those robots playing metal kind of remind me of this guy I once worked with who studied zen in a monastery in Japan for many years then came back and formed a zen metal band. (no lyrics...)

Its been a good week.  Yesterday a friend and I walked in ripped to a local food store up island around 3:00 PM.  The person working at the place took one look at us and said smiling: 'so you guys haven't done anything all day right?'

Noting the perceptiveness of the question; I responded: "No that was yesterday, today we actually went surfing."

A Good Advertisement from Jamaica

And in India...

The commercials are a bit different in Russia...

They are a bit different in France too...

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/multimedia/bushism_joy_of_hanukkah.mp3

To Learn To Die

That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die (1580) Essay by Montaigne

"Like everyone else you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose.  To accept defeat, to learn to die is to be liberated from it, so when tomorrow comes you must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying."

- Bruce Lee








'If you derive your philosophy from death, then you become a disciple of death.'

- Admonition from the Tao Te Ching









Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?

Answer: “I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.”

-- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest

I just finished reading Max Tegmark's book "Our Mathematical Universe."  What I found to be particularly interesting is Tegmark's calculations that humans are most likely the only sentient species in the universe.  This goes contrary to a common opinion that the odds are in favour of other sentient life existing in the universe.  So what if we are the only sentient life in the universe?  Tegmark believes that since this is in his opinion an exceedingly likely reality, then we have a lot of responsibility on our shoulders including especially the immediate preservation of our own species, which our own negative natures such as the stockpiling of nuclear weapons continually threatens, yet this is hardly a public issue.  In this regards according to the figures Americans spend 10 billion dollars on cosmetic surgery each year, one half the budget of NASA.  This doesn't even go into the military budget, which dwarfs NASA's budget entirely, but where is our priorities and awareness?  If Earth life has the only sentient beings in the universe, this is a particularly disturbing thought.  Even more frightening a statistic in his book is that almost 50% of Americans think the earth to be less than 10,000 years old.  Mostly this is due to poor education, but even more frightening are the educated people who actually believe this although in a very low minority.  Yesterday I had an unpleasant conversation with a client who is a neurosurgeon consultant who told me that he thought the earth was less than 10,000 years old and that the deluge happened.  When I noted that there was no evidence for a global deluge that wiped out almost all life on earth in the fossil record, he reverted to faith.  The insanity of faith beyond reason is a true danger that as Tegmark suggests should be replaced by rationality and I agree.

Where I'd rather be right now...

That's me this winter.  Really though I can't figure out how weak the state of Canadian comedy has gotten.  We had the two biggest goofballs Rob and Doug Ford in probably the whole history of Canada running Toronto like it was one drawn out episode of Cops, and still no one drew the parallels between Robert and Doug with Bob and Doug?!!!  What a couple of hosers eh??? 

Having some flashbacks here to the 90s.

You know I used to be a funny guy once in the 90s.

Does it get cheesier Gothic glam rock than this?  I have to admit I still damn like this song one of the very few things this band ever did that was good and if this blogs' credentials aren't already dead this will be sure to kill them.

 

On a similar subject a good song from the Subhumans which also takes me way back.

Eating like a King from the Wastefulness of North American University Students

The last couple days have been surreal.  Yesterday I read a National Geographic Article about the amount of food wasted each year in North America which was stunning.  I also realized at lunch that day that one didn't need to actually pay for quality food at all.  All one has to do to eat like a king is to go to the local University vegetarian restaurant and just eat what others throw away.  Its really bizarre.  Within 45 minutes I had eaten 5 plate loads of quality vegetarian foods, stir fries, marinated tofu, Italian pasta, salads, falafels all free.  At the end I literally felt sick because my stomach was so full of all this good food. It was so bizarre.  The students buy whole plates of this stuff probably 5$ a plate, (because its subsidized for them), they take only a few mouthfuls, or eat a quarter to 50% of what's on the plate and throw the rest out!  I couldn't believe it as I watched them do this.

After discovering this yesterday I did the same thing today.  I walked in, and found plate loads of food.  One girl in front of me put a full bowl of salad she hadn't eaten at all and put it in the throw out pile, as soon as she put it in, my hand went right in and took it out right after.  She looked at me like a stunned doe in the headlights.  I just walked out with a Cheshire Cat grin on my face with two plate loads of free food.  So much for the stereotype of the starving students...

At first glance one might think of this as a criticism of the Republican party and its supporters and it is, but look at each one of these tags, and try to figure out which one of these doesn't apply to the Democrats as well?

What is the difference between the U.S. two party Plutocracy and One Party Communist China?

Just one party.

The Apotheosis of War (1871) by Vasili Vereshchagin, 

“dedicated to all conquerors, past, present and to come."

Source: Feuilleton

See Also:

Key Democrats Call for Perpetual War as Official U.S. Doctrine

Only the Good Ones

You Guessed It...

†RIP† On Dead and Dying Blog

Well that was fun.  On Dead and Dying Blog was an exploration of death, often involving humour and surrealism and usually a combination of the two.  I've decided to discontinue the blog, but who knows I might bring it back should some sense of spirit move me to do so, until then it rests in peace.  Thank you for all who perused/found interest in the blog.  May you have an interesting and enjoyable life.