Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy!

Octopus.
Because I can.

Humanities Dinner at Thai Garden

Thursday, February 5th

5pm at Thai Garden

Please RSVP (in the comments or through email) by Monday, February 2nd.

Gravedigger

The most powerful experience with art i have ever had was one of the first times i ever saw the Dave Matthews Band live. It was when the screaming crowd of over thirty thousand fell silent, as Dave Matthews quietly spoke "Gravedigger" into the mic. It riddled my body with goose bumps, i could not believe the power that came from his voice. Then the crowd began to uniformly and quietly sing Gravedigger. To be in the presence of thirty thousand united in harmony, it was ground breaking. My view on the power of art completely change, art was not just listened to art seen, it brought people together and empowered them. Art shapes the world.

The End of Death

I have spent many hours researching and composing my paper on death in three major religions. It has been a rough ride. A lot of time spent doing tediuos work. In the end, i see it as a success. Not just one that is academic but one of culture. The research i have done has helped open my eyes to the views of these religions, and that helps me understand with a greater depth the reasons why events in the world happen as they do. This paper may have been a challenge, but it is far more of an enlightenment then any other paper i have done.

Death thus far

So far i have found far more on Judaism and Buddhism than i could have hoped for. Islam on the other hand is proving to be the problem child of the group. There is a lot more to the views and rituals than I previously thought. As for the differences, there are many, but the message behind the religious views seem to be very consistent. It is quite heart warming to find how comforting and malleable these religions actually are. I thought they would be extremely rigid and black and white. There is a lot of room for gray.

Art and beauty

Art and beauty are seen to go hand in hand, but in actuality, they don't. For example, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, it is art but it is not in anyway beautiful. It is revolutionary though, it shows something that is often related to art and beauty, it shows truth. It is very rare in the world of art for there to be a piece that lacks beauty but changes so much.
Arts job is to convey ideas, and with this there is no need for beauty. There for, the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is an excellent example of truth. It conveys ideas and lacks the beauty that so often restricts art. Art is an odd thing, it is extremely powerful thing that may have a wide variety, but above all it is not bound by beauty.

demons and angels

So far I have learned a lot about my topic: demons and angels. It is a very interesting topic to study because so many different cultures view them in different ways. For instance, in Buddhism, there are many different ranks of angels-the higher the rank, the more abilities they have. While  in Hinduism, there is only one rank of angels(archangels) who act as heavenly guides. In Egypt Angels are called 'winged spirits' and there were 1000's of them. They would build elaborate tombs and put small windows in them so the angels could get in and visit their dead loved ones. Zorastirans believed that there was no such thing as an angel, just good and evil angels.
Demons in all cultures are of course known as evil and are the opposite of good. What I found interesting was that in Hinduism, demons and angels sometimes worked together in certain stories. In one story, they worked together to achieve mortality. I still have to get much more on the topic, but it is very interesting! :)