This Guy Is Way Smarter Than You

Neil deGrasse Tyson Death By Black Hole

This guy is hilariously informative. I highly recommend everybody read this book even if you're not into having your mind blown by science. It immediately places Dr. Tyson in the "Carl Sagan pantheon of great scientists who make the amazing accessible for the lay man". Seriously, who needs religion and spirituality when you can be enrapt with wonder by the very workings of our bodies, our planet, our universe!!!

Please Don't Buy This Book...

For the first post since the interregnum, I'm going to reprint here the piece I posted on goodreads.com that inspired me to restart blogging. It's here in it's original form, unedited, with the comment I posted there after I actually finished reading the book. Enjoy...

Daniel Pinchbeck 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

this guy is a fucking idiot. i'm forcing myself to finish this because i need to see where he ends up. after a promising start, the book cruised straight downhill into a pile of endless shit. um, buddy, guy, dude, you've based your stupid book on widely (and I mean WIDELY) discredited pseudoscience and touchy feely new age drivel. i'd be laughing while reading this if it wasn't so infuriatingly tragic that people believe this garbage. uh, you do understand that science is based on that which is experimentally verifiable and not just some wild thoughts and premises that people of questionable psychological stability dreamed up ages ago. rudolf steiner? carl jung? seriously? c'mon! you've even botched the parts where you criticize Jared Diamond's conclusions (which are based on actual evidence and testable theories) in his books. did you even read his books, because it doesn't sound like you did.... you use whitley strieber's "Communion" as examples of abductions when even he has claimed his book shouldn't be used as an example of an alien abduction, since there's no way to prove it wasn't something that was dreamed.
oh, and i'll end here, but i've done hallucinogens. a fair amount of them. they fun recreationally. they are, however, not a spiritual doorway to new "consciousness". all they do is reinforce some belief that you already hold about them. jesus, the '60s sucked for a reason, don't try to bring them back you vapid, baby-boomer fuckhead.

okay, deep breaths, deep breaths...i'm done.

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i posted that review before i had actually finished the book. now that i'm done forcing myself to finish it, i have another final comment about the "sexual politics" that pinchbeck throws in at the end: "oh gosh, you have issues with monogamy? join the crowd! but don't start going off on how it's the fault of women for leading men around by their collective vaginas just because you can't make a decision as to whether or not you want to stay with your wife (who has obviously called you out on your bullshit and you can't really write that in a book about your personal bullshit). "you remind me of that handful of neo-hippie guys at vassar who talked a big game about who knows what that made some pathetic girls wet and then slept with as many of them as possible. give it up, you're no better than any frat boy ever. in fact, you're worse, because you try to veil your misogyny in postmodernisms and can't admit to yourself that all you care about is keeping your dick wet and you don't care about 'liberating women' or humanity or any other nice sentiments." i'm proud of myself, that was a pretty good part II of my rant. pat on the back to me!

New Idea!

It's been four months since I last posted anything on here. In fact, as of that last post I wasn't sure whether I wanted to post anything ever again. Well, in the off time I scored a job at a great bookstore (shameless plug for Shakespeare & Co. here) which allows me to read pretty much all day long, in between tasks of course. But basically, yeah, I get to read a lot more and after reading a few things recently, I decided it would be a good idea to start incorporating book reviews here.
As far as the music reviews go, I'll probably still do some from time to time, but for the most part I've been listening to old stuff and playing a lot of catch-up on bands that I never heard that I probably should have started listening to years ago. That was mostly the reason why I stopped posting. That and I just plain got bored of it.
So to make a long re-intro slightly less long and stupid, I'm gonna start posting on whatever I feel like now instead of just music and tidbits of other things...