History (World, Western, Military, Cultural, Art / Architectural, Anthropological, Planetary), Science (Technology, Physics / Astronomy / Cosmology), Philosophy (Logic), Photography, Travel, Aviation, Motorcycling...
Stephen Hawking / Kip Thorne / Roger Penrose, any of the U.S. presidential candidates in my friends list below, and freethinkers / humanists of all miens...
Favorite Quotes:
"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder." --Ralph W. Sockman
"Not far from the invention of fire... we must rank the invention of doubt." --Thomas H. Huxley
"After all, it is as respectable to be modified ape as to be modified dirt." --Id.
"The mediaeval university looked backwards: it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge... The modern university looks forward: it is a factory of new knowledge" --Id.
"May the Gods be with you, in those secret places you must walk alone..." --Ancient Egyptian saying
"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... It does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." --Carl Sagan
"Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?" --Epicurus
Pale, Blue Dot (remix)
Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, the Cure, the Sisters of Mercy, Bel Canto, Robert, Emma Shapplin, Enigma, Portishead, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tom Waits, any 4 a.D. works (the Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance), Sky Cries Mary, Mazzy Star, Lush, Garbage, Metallica, Revolting Cocks, Rammstein, Muse, KMFDM, the KLF, Front 242, Boris Mikulic, Will / Skinny Puppy / Delerium, Moby, Faithless, Leftfield, Underworld, Massive Attack, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation, Hallucinogen / Shpongle / Raja Ram, Technossomy, Royksopp, Gorillaz, Eminem, Slowdive, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, 50 Cent, Chris Isaak, Julee Cruise / Angelo Badalamenti, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, CCR, Faye Wong, Faith Yang, Wu-Bai and China Blue, traditional Ofra Haza, Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, Alpha Blondy, Atman, Govinda, Beethoven, Vivaldi...
Dark City, Immortel (Ad Vitam), Santa Sangre, Syriana, A.i., 300, Perfume, the Illusionist, Blow, Ghost In the Shell / Innocence, Before the Rain, American Psycho, 1984, Farewell My Concubine, American History X, Lost in Translation, Hostel, the Howling, Sin City, Boiler Room, the X-Men / the Matrix / Pirates of the Caribbean / Infernal Affairs / the Evil Dead / Creepshow / Phantasm series, the Notebook, Event Horizon, Equilibrium, Tetsuo: the Iron Man, Nick of Time, the Butterfly Effect, Return to Paradise, WarGames, Tron, Cyrano de Bergerac, the Piano, Vanilla Sky, Labyrinth, Borat, Reign of Fire, Gods and Monsters, Final Fantasy, Zoolander, True Romance, Leon: the Professional, Crash, The Good Shepherd, Flawless, the Seventh Sign, Sky Captain, the Core, Elizabeth, the Usual Suspects, Runaway Jury, any (or most of): Ridley Scott / Darren Aronofsky / Terry Gilliam / David Lynch / Wim Wenders / Bernardo Bertolucci / Martin Scorsese / Krzysztof Kieslowski / Neil Jordan / Tarsem Singh / the Cohen Bros. / Terrence Malick / Oliver Stone / Anthony Minghella / Quentin Tarantino / Antoine Fuqua / Marc Forster / Jean-Jacques Annaud / Ang Lee / the Hughes Bros. / Mike Nichols / David Fincher / James Mangold / Stephen Chow / Sean Penn / David Cronenberg / Richard Donner / Peter Greenaway / Tim Burton / Francis Ford Coppola / Paul Greengrass / Stanley Kubrick / Christopher Nolan / Jean-Pierre Jeunet / George A. Romero / Steven Spielberg / Wong Kar-wai / Michael Mann / Kathryn Bigelow / Charlie Kaufman / John Carpenter / Steven Soderbergh / Kenneth Branagh / Robert Zemeckis / John Milius / Wolfgang Petersen / Danny Boyle / Sam Mendes / Adrian Lyne / Alejandro Gonzalez In'arritu / Peter Weir / Roland Joffe / Bernard Rose / Studio Ghibli films...
Cosmos, Twin Peaks, the Shield, Rome, the X-Files, Nip / Tuck, Entourage, the Apprentice, Man vs. Wild, Project Runway, Queer Eye, Deadliest Catch, UFC / soccer / rugby, most anything on Nat. Geo. or Discovery, Anthony Bourdain: No Limits, V, any Monty Python, Three's Company, Boiling Points, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Curb Your Enthusiasm, the BBC...
The radio host of the program below isn't that particularly witty or well-spoken, but he does provide a national radio service with notable speakers that is sorely needed and invaluable to our culture.
Non-fiction (or, close to it):
The Giant Leap, the March of Folly, the 6th Extinction, The Chinese Machiavelli, the Tipping Point, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Fingerprints of the Gods, 1421, Simulacra and Simulation, the 5th Miracle, the Bible, the Koran, Changing Consciousness, the Death of Forever, Asian Portraits, the World's Most Evil Men, With Good Reason: a Guide to Informal Fallacies, the Chinese, the Rise and Fall of Great Powers...
Fiction:
1984, Mythago Wood, Catcher In the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Metamorphosis, the Alchemist, Ishmael / the Story of B, early Piers Anthony (Xanth-, Apprentice Adept-, Cluster-, Ghost) / Lloyd Alexander / C.S. Lewis, China Gate, the first 3 of Anne Rice's Vampire series, the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, the Dead Zone, the Shining, the Hobbit, the Name of the Rose, any Friedrich Schiller / Edgar Allen Poe / Shakespeare / Euripides...
My father, sister and my girl, the human spirit, Alexander the Great, the ancient Romans and great explorers (the Polynesians, Zheng He, Vasco de Gama, Columbus, Magellan, Bering, Cook), Lincoln, Einstein, F.D.Roosevelt, M.L.King, Jr., Carl Sagan / Galileo / Kepler / Leibniz, single parents, war veterans, refugees of the world's crises...
Better The World - One Click At A Time!
On each of these websites, you can click a button to support the cause listed -- each click creates funding, and costs you nothing! Bookmark these sites, and click once a day!
Click here to post this on your page or 'blog
Miscellaneous
Write comments here, after clearing this message... ):^)
With the tool below, pictures from your computer can be uploaded. This saves the hassle of hosting photos yourself, or finding ones online. There's a bug in the original code, however, so here are the steps around it...
1.....After you've chosen / browsed for a picture you already have on your computer, click "Upload".
2.....When the warning message from MySpace alerts you, click "Yes" and wait a second. If it goes to another page, then proceed to Step 4, below.
3.....If nothing happens, then click "No" to start over (the picture's location is still in the field, though, so you won't need to browse for it again).
4.....This next page is where the HTML and URL codes are. Copy the HTML code (left-click on the field, right-click "Copy"), navigate back to this profile page, and then right click "Paste" next to your comments in the above box.
5.....Then, importantly, delete the bottom half of the code, from ...(div style="..:absolute ...to the end. The "()" will look like "greater / less than" symbols in the code.
6.....Lastly, click "Submit". Now go and put some real photos up that you've taken and spruce my page up, damn it! ):^)
Selected Videos
Women In Art
It's Not As Unlikely As We'd Like To Believe
Rebuttal: Probabilities In Science, Chance, & God
Music Videos
Leonard Cohen - Dance me to the end of love
Keane - Somewhere only we know
Emma Shapplin - Spente le stelle
Humorous Videos
Full Metal Rudolph
So cute - there's a bunny following the car!
Ali G. vs. Kent Hovind - Technology & Evolution
Terrorist Video Bloopers