ideonexus

interweaving ideas

  • I Hate Homophobes

    I’m at the YMCA, just finished my workout and I’m waiting for my wife to get out of the locker room and I overhear a man complaining to the manager that an another man was staring at him in the showers. The janitor comes out and asks if it was me. I just look at…

  • Playing With Fire: The Dilema of Portraying Fascism In Film

    “The cinema is the most powerful weapon,” Mussolini proclaimed in 1922, but it was Germany’s Third Reich that produced the film with the most influence on modern day cinema. Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of Will cast the mold for fascist style. The influence of her film is recognizable in films as wide and diverse as Charlie…

  • Chaos Theory

    What is Chaos Theory? Chaos theory deals with the ultimately unpredictable nature of our universe. The Principles of Chaos Theory were discovered by a meteorologist named Edward Lorenze, who was working on the problem of predicting weather patterns in 1960. One day in 1961 he ran a mathematical sequence through a computer that he had…

  • False Dichotomies: Capitalism VS Socialism

    What’s the best market model? While pundits scream words like “Communist!” and “Fascist!” across the isles in an attempt to demonize the opposition, the reality is that civilization requires a balanced market with both Capitalist and Socialist aspects. Both economic strategies require a healthy Democracy to work. The result of splitting the debate over government…

  • New Speak

    Words are not defined by what the dictionary says, but by how they are used in daily life. How people use words decides how they are defined, and thus another battleground is forged on the landscape of the mind. We see it everywhere in our political discourse. One Democrat’s “Tax Cut” is a Republican’s “Tax…

  • For Writers Who Aspire to Inspire

    Here’s my compilation of various resources in which I think writers might be interested. They are in no particular order or categorization. The Literary Market Place Get to your public library first thing in the morning to get your hands on this book. Otherwise all of the other writer’s in your local community will grab…

  • Gaining Perspective Through Astronomy

    The Inner Ring Sun Size: 1,300,000 Earths Equatorial Radius: 695,000 km Rotational period (days): 25 (equator) – 36 (poles) Minimum Surface Temperature: – – Maximum Surface Temperature: – – Age (Billions of Years): 4.5 Composition: Hydrogen (92.1%), Helium (7.8%) Description For many, the center of our world is the Earth, but those with perspective know…

  • We Don’t Know the Things We Don’t Know

    I have a rather embarrassing confession to make. Until recently, I had no idea what the phrase, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” meant. You read me correctly. I did not understand why someone could not simultaneously have their cake and eat it until I was 30 years old. Before that I…

  • Great Books: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

    Born in 1922, Kurt Vonnegut is a representative of the “Greatest Generation,” that group who saved the Earth from evil in WWII; yet, Vonnegut’s writing style speaks best to my own generation “X.” He is funny, edgy, off-color, yet poignant, matching the minds of a Generation skeptical of authority and a tendency to ridicule the…

  • Great Films: “Run Lola Run”

    “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” “Lola Runs” is the literal translation of Tom Tykwer’s energized masterpiece, and I think it far more apropos than the title given…

  • False Analogies: Party VS Ideology

    Normally when I put the “VS” into a title, I am referring to a False Dichotomy — reducing a debate with many degrees into two extremes. Here I wish to illustrate a False Analogy, making two things equivalent when they are in fact very different. In this case, the difference between a Political Party and…

  • The Virus of the Mind

    With five known senses we take in the world around us. We see, hear, feel, smell, and taste our surroundings, scribbling all of these experiences down in our Cerebral Cortexes. There, this information is analyzed, cross-referenced, conclusions are drawn, and a worldview is established. We think we think, therefore we think we think we are.…