Heretical musings on religion and culture from a literary scholar
I'm watching Utopia, Season One Episode 5. A small band of unlikely heroes are chasing down a conspiracy. They have one of the badguys tied up to a chair and are asking him questions about a dubious new super-vaccine called Janus, created along with a flu-epidemic panic. The gang thinks the bad guys are trying to eliminate a certain race. Not so. "We are now past 7 billion on this planet. When I was born it was ...
Procrastinating from work (which I always feel to be a colossal waste of my life, yet necessary to prolong it in comfort) I downloaded the Series Premiere of a new TV show called "Revolution". It's just beginning. It shows a modern family: toddler playing with an Ipad, daughter zoned out watching cartoons on a plasma screen, mother on her phone with daddy, and another pair of guys driving and sexting someone. Suddenly, all the power goes ...
I started writing this post a couple years ago as a response to a very silly book called "How to Profit from the coming Rapture". Here's the description: "Taking the familiar form of a how-to investment guide, HOW TO PROFIT FROM THE COMING RAPTURE instructs those readers who will certainly be left behind (Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, less ardent Protestants, and many more) on how to exploit the inevitable demise of the world in order ...
This week a study of the world's surface temperatures led Richard Muller - a long time, conservative skeptic scientists partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers - finally got him to change his mind. It's big news because he was a champion of those who say "There is no such thing as global warming" and "the earth naturally gets hotter and colder, human beings don't have any impact on the environment." For decades, ...
Today I watched the Smallville season 4 finale; then I went to see Transformers 3. It was interesting to find that they both feature the exact same story: a giant force is going to overtake earth and use all the people as slaves. One brave hero must find himself, defeat the threat, while at the same time protecting his romance. What's interesting, however, is the fact that Christianity - while sharing many of the same ...
If God was going to end the world ala Camping's May 21 2011 scenario, which time zone would he start in? It's already 1:20am here in Taiwan - which means the 21st has gone without so much as a storm or earthquake (both of which are common here). So for those of you in the US or Canada who are just waking up - spoiler alert - nothing special happens today. Some awesome things I've discovered online ...
The Taiwanese prophecy about Doomsday 2011 being on May 11th has gone unfulfilled; however it's now May 12th and today I've witnessed a freak small tornado and now an ominous thunder and lightning storm. It certainly feels like a foreboding or foreshadowing of evil things to come. So I thought I'd take a moment to write about Harold Camping's prediction that the End of Days will begin on May 21st, 2011, which is sweeping across some parts of ...
Given the escalating series of natural disasters devastating various portions of the world in ever greater frequency and gravity, as well as Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami disaster, it would be no surprise to me if something similar happened here in Taiwan. In fact for weeks I've been asking my students whether they were prepared for such a natural disaster, whether they trusted the government's ability to respond to catastrophic devastation, and whether they felt ...
If you're interested in religious mythology, astrological symbolism, or supernatural folklore, grab my book Gods of Myth and Man. You can go buy it on Amazon.
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