Category Archives: READING MATTER

Books I read & recommend

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

THE UNIVERSE IS A BIG PLACE, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS OF ALL TIME

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” (Philip Jose Farmer), “Venus on the Half Shell“

Venus on the Half-Shell is a science fiction novel by Philip José Farmer, writing pseudonymously as “Kilgore Trout,” a fictional recurring character in many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. This book first appeared as a lengthy fictitious “excerpt”—written by Vonnegut, but attributed to Trout—in Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965). With Vonnegut’s permission, Farmer expanded the fragment into an entire standalone novel (including, as an in-joke, a scene that incorporates all of Vonnegut’s original text). Farmer’s story was first published in two parts beginning in the December 1974 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The plot, in which Earth is destroyed by cosmic bureaucrats doing routine maintenance and the sole human survivor goes on a quest to find the “Definitive Answer to the Ultimate Question,” bears some resemblance to the later Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, first launched as a radio serial in 1979.

According to Farmer’s introduction in Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, Vonnegut was initially reluctant to allow the project, but finally relented. After publication, a poorly-worded magazine article gave Vonnegut the impression that Farmer had planned to write the story regardless of his permission, which angered Vonnegut. Also, it was popularly assumed that Vonnegut wrote the book. This problem was solved by the book being reprinted under Farmer’s by-line.

A common element to this novel is the origin of many of the characters’ and locations’ names. Farmer “put in a lot of references to literature and fictional authors… Most of the alien names in Venus were formed by transposing the letters of English or non-English words.”[1]

The title and paperback cover art are a reference to an Italian Renaissance tempera painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, which depicts the birth of the goddess Venus as her rising from the sea on a scallop shell.

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

OUR LIGHT

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

wardencliffe“It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world!
Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer’s keen searching sense.
But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention, instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence.
So do we get Our Light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”

~ Nikola Tesla, Problem of Increasing Human Energy ~

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AS A PDF

...and other stuff, ART, BULLSHIT, FREE ADVICE, LIVES, PICTURE POEMS, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

THE MEANING OF “LIFE”

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

meaning-of-life

If you have spent any time with animals you should have observed that they experience emotions similar to our own. Animals can communicate between themselves, or with other species, including humans, with amazing sensitivity.  Many experiments have been conducted that conclusively demonstrate extrasensory abilities and perceptions of animals.  Millions of people in India consider that the reincarnated souls of humans inhabit the bodies of every kind of life form.  Therefore, every life form is is “sacred” and entitled to live freely within human society.

However, the “civilized” Westerner does not possess an awareness of personal spiritual immortality.   Instead, human beings in Western “civilization” considers themselves to be the “highest attainment of evolution”.  Or, that humans embody “the image of The Creator”.  There is no concept of “personal spiritual immortality”.  It is virtually inconceivable to the “civilized Westerner” that spiritual beings inhabit and animate life forms.  Rather, the animation of life is a “mysterious and unknowable” phenomenon that is being “studied” by the priests of Western culture: “scientists”.

A “scientist” is a professional academician or “priest” whose “religious belief” is that the “entire universe consists of nothing more than solid matter, energy, space and time”, including living organisms.  These “priests” possess a profound inability to observe the obvious fact that LIFE FORMS ARE ANIMATED BY SPIRITUAL BEINGS!

Question: What is the definition, or meaning of  “LIFE”?

Answer:  A material form or organism which is animated and motivated by a non-material energy source, or “spirit”.

Factually, Western “science” does not have working definition for the word “LIFE”.  As a consequence,  the “average” American and European human view of themselves as a life form is egocentric, myopic, ignorant, self-aggrandizing and pathetically barbaric.  Visit any grocery store or restaurant anywhere in the western world, and it becomes instantly apparent that human beings are carnivorous predators who consider that other animals are a primary and necessary food source!

animal thoughts

This idea is very, very similar to the belligerently aristocratic notion of “great” Britain that “the brown races” are the natural subjects of the white race, and that it is the “manifest destiny” of Caucasians to rule over them and use them as slaves.  Thus, the British Empire, which invaded and conquered all by 22 of the nations of Earth, entitled and bequeathed unto themselves the “god-given right” to murder, steal from, indenture or enslave nearly the entire population of humans and every other life form on the planet!  The Nazis Third Reich was motivated and empowered with a religious conviction that they were entitled, as “the Master Race”, to rule the world!

What is the difference between the philosophy of these genocidal “civilizations” and the philosophy that “humans are the highest life form on Earth”?  In both cases, these philosophies are used by humans as justification to murder, slaughter, enslave or EAT almost every living organism on Earth!  I suggest that human beings are nothing more than stupid savages as regards their awareness and treatment of themselves and every other life form on Earth.

If you would like to “cure” your own ignorance or superstitions on the subject of “LIFE”, I recommend that you read the very excellent book, Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures by Virginia Morell.

From the publishers promo about the book:

“Did you know that ants teach, earthworms make decisions, rats love to be tickled, and chimps grieve? Did you know that some dogs have thousand-word vocabularies and that birds practice songs in their sleep? That crows improvise tools, blue jays plan ahead, and moths remember living as caterpillars?
Animal Wise takes us on a dazzling odyssey into the inner world of animals, from ants to elephants to wolves, and from sharp-shooting archerfish to pods of dolphins that rumble like rival street gangs. Morell probes the moral and ethical dilemmas of recognizing that even “lesser animals” have cognitive abilities such as memory, feelings, personality, and self-awareness–traits that many in the twentieth century felt were unique to human beings.”