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Thomas

quixotictom

About Me

Born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1977, my early adolescence witnessed a change of venue to Indiana where I was to reside until my college years, passed in Cincinnati at Xavier University, from which I matriculated in 1999 with my B.A. in philosophy and a thesis magniloquently titled, "On the Tragic Sensibility of Kant's Metaphysic." The subsequent eight years of my life have been outwardly unremarkable, but internally not without value. Their passage has been marked by a preoccupation, on a conscious level with few central problems. Most notable among these has been the problem of how to engage the economic sphere without entering too complicitly into the moral indifference which seems to characterized the determinations of the market sphere. Colloquially, this may be referred to as striving "to be in the world, but not of the world"...a phrase to be used with caution lest by it we covertly import an array of theological premises which could too easily distract us from the real problem, which is how to live a decent life. Few conclusions of a definite aspect have been reached over the course of my reflection...but some have emerged as worthy of conviction nonetheless. One is the imperative to awareness...without the cultivation of a mindfulness, of an attentiveness, we are at the hopeless whim of the very neuroses which have conspired to make our situation as challenging as it is. Another is that it is in the principle of compassion that we find the key to almost all dilemmas. In closing, thank you for taking the time to read this description...I am 84% Evil Genius.
.. I am pure evil. I lie awake at night devising schemes of world domination, and I will not rest until all living souls bend to my will. Take the
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My Interests

Rock Climbing...mostly bouldering, but with a desire to move to more trad; Pool; Chess; Reading in general, with a leaning towards non-fiction; exercise, yoga, spinning , pilates, lifting; languages; politics; philosophy; Buddhism; Vedantic Thought; Puzzles an Logic Problems...Mixed Martial Arts...etc.

I'd like to meet:

There are several members of the Buddhist community that I would love to meet, having been quite impressed with their writings and such talks as I have heard of theirs. A few of these include Ken Mcleod, Joan Hallifax, Stephen Batchelor, and Allan Wallace...a list which is hardly conclusive. There a few yogis, but one whose show I have followed from a afar is Steve Ross. More common names include, in no particular order, Bono, Arundhati Roy, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Gere, Conan O'Brien, Kenneth Brannagh, Patrick Stewart, Tavis Smiley, Randy Couture, Arun Gandhi, and Jimmy Carter...a catalogue far from exhaustive...Chris Sharma, or Jason Kehl might for example be added.chris sharma climbing witness the fitness
..
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Music:

My tastes are eclectic....Latin music is especially resonant with my individual despite my lack of thorough familiarity with it; Jazz, Blues, Bluegrass are pleasing on the ears, and classical....some country, such as Johnny Cash, some Willie Nelson...classic rock...and hip hop and rap are engaging...but again I have little formal knowledge. I simply enjoy the sound.

Movies:

The Matrix, and the sequels thereto, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy; Star Wars...I am resisting the temptation to apologize for so cliche sounding of a list; The Terminator trilogy, especially the first two; The Iron Monkey; most Jet Li films; Scent of a Woman; Monsieur Ibrahim; In the Heat of the Night; North by Northwest; Hamlet (Brannagh version); Bourne Identity; The French Connection and it sequel; The Outlaw Josey Wales; Dirty Harry; Pale Rider; Unforgiven; Lawrence of Arabia; etc.
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Television:

Of late, The Shield....what a delicous melange of moral ambiguity...Frasier; Star Trek, TNG, and Voyager; PBS...NOW, Frontline, Independent Lens, Antique Road Show, Secrets of the Dead...C-SPAN and C-SPAN2...especially Book TV; BBC; Deutsche Welte; etc...

Books:

The Myth of Sysiphus; The Rebel...both by Camus; Brothers Karamozov; The Idiot by Dostoevsky; Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy; Several works by Thomas Merton, including, "New Seeds of Contemplation", and "Confessions of a Guilty Bystander"; Several works by Chogyam Trungpa, including "Sacred Path of the Warrior"; A great deal by Thich Nhat Hahn, including" The Miracle of Mindfulness"; Several works by Thomas Hardy, and his poetry; and lots by Aldous Huxley..."Time Must Have A Stop" on that list; and Shakespeare...and the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes...to name a few....

Heroes:

Siddartha Gautama; Asoka; Dogen; Joshua, son of Jospeh, a.k.a. Jesus; Seneca;Henry David Thoreau; Frederick Douglas; W.E.B. DuBois; Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Thomas Merton; Thich Nhat Hahn; and the innumberable who have renounced violence in going out to help the world....

My Blog

Ironically, some Hardy for the fun of it...

A fine poem by Thomas Hardy here.... Hap If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing, Know that thy ...
Posted by Thomas on Thu, 14 Jun 2007 12:53:00 PST

Games are to Life as....

As a starting point for today's reflection, I'll take a question which I posed to a person the other day, but to which I had not really given adequate consideration for my own part. Namely, "What is t...
Posted by Thomas on Thu, 24 May 2007 08:53:00 PST

Intelligent Design...musings...

Today, I would like to address the issue of Intelligent Design, a term which has come into some broad misuse in the recurrent debate between the theories of creationism and evolution. In point of fa...
Posted by Thomas on Sat, 19 May 2007 01:59:00 PST

....The secret of imperfection

In considering my blog yesterday, whilst no retractions are forthcoming with respect to its gist, I am embarassed by the a.)its stylistic awkwardness, and b.)the air of righteousness it may have inadv...
Posted by Thomas on Fri, 18 May 2007 10:55:00 PST