Card Cosmology, Part I

During my year abroad in Taiwan diligently studying Chinese and building Gundam models, I had a good deal of free time on my hands. That Summer I had taken an interest in Poker and other card games, and even developed a game of my own called The Duel. Taking my favorite deck with me to Taiwan, I spent many of the quiet hours of the day learning how to shuffle properly and playing my favorite card game, Solitaire.

Spurious Comments

Dear readers,

For some time now, while there has been generally a dearth of comments on my humble posts here, someone out in the vast of the net has taken it upon themselves to comment with notable regularity on each week's new article. This person or these persons, posting under Chinese usernames, have been leaving frivolous comments containing hardly hidden links to Chinese porn sites. Needless to say, I have deleted each such comment as soon as they've come to my attention, and I shall continue to do so as long as these trolls persist. Nevertheless, should you encounter any comments of this kind before my swift hand removes them, be hereby advised of their nature.

I very much hope that users with actual input will continue to feel free to leave their comments here. More than simply an outlet for my raving lunacy, it is my wish that this little project provide food for thought and foster discussion.

What If...?

Finding myself not in much of a scholarly but rather a speculative mood today, I thought to present to you, my dear reader, an idle question which has passed more than once through my mind of late: what if the Norse gods had become prevalent in Europe, rather than Christianity?

An Interesting Aside: Caprica

In a previous post, we discussed my take on one of my favorite shows, Battlestar Galactica, outlining the notion that the story is told in two conflicting genres of narrative discourse, each of which at least implies a corresponding genre of religious discourse. Subsequently we also discussed possible implications of that conflict of genres of discourse. Today, I wish to return to that discussion, this time with the spotlight on Battlestar's new prequel series, Caprica.

Naturally, spoilers follow. If you don't want Caprica spoiled, do not read on.

Leaving Home

Apologies for the delay of this post. Much has been weighing on my mind of late.

As my fellow Reedies are probably aware, a complement of Tibetan monks have been on campus this week constructing one of their remarkable sand mandalas. Apparently they've visited Reed once in the past, before I was a student. They also came to Bainbridge Island once while I was living there, and built their mandala in the public library. Unfortunately I didn't witness it at that time either.