Posted inEntertainment

“Shrek 2”

Movie companies who are making a comedy should hire Laurel to do their pre-release audience testing. She is not usually a laugh-out-loud woman, so when she chortles exuberantly while watching a movie, that’s a good sign this is a comedic hit. "Shrek 2” is one of just a few films in my recent memory that have earned the Laurel Laughed! Stamp of Approval. Another was “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” But Shrek 2 has to get the smiling nod over South Park because using farting jokes to induce a laugh is like using chocolate cake to get someone to…
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Posted inBooks Philosophy

The mystery of suffering

Why do we suffer? There’s no better question to ask, because a search for the answer leads into the deepest mysteries of life, death, God, existence, body, soul, meaning, purposelessness—the whole shebang that philosophers ponder, mystics meditate on, scientists study, and preachers pontificate about. Bill Long’s recently-published book, “A Hard-Fought Hope: Journeying with Job through Mystery,” examines suffering through a biblical lens, the book of Job. Yet Bill, a Salem resident and friend of mine, doesn’t take a traditional religious approach to understanding Job. He starts by laying out a legal complaint against God, Ruler of the Universe on behalf…
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Posted inMiscellany

Congratulations to new black belt Dave

Here’s a photo of Dave Jones (in the blue gi) and the rest of our motley Pacific Martial Arts dojo gang. Dave was awarded a well-deserved black belt by Sensei Warren Allen (in the middle) last Saturday. He’s expert at a variety of weapons and a highly skilled ground/jujitsu fighter. Plus, a great guy with a laid back personality and some cool tattoos. My description of ourselves as “motley” is a compliment. When I got home and looked at the photo of (from left to right) Bob, Dennis, Warren, Dave, me, and Mike (kneeling), I realized each of us is…
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Posted inMiscellany

Stupid me, I follow my own advice

Jeez, after I installed Windows XP’s Service Pack 2 on Laurel’s computer and got to view the dreaded Blue Screen of Death on a restart, I cursed, “Who was that damn blogger who wrote a post called ‘Feel the fear and install SP2 anyway’? I’d like to wring his freaking neck!” Then I remembered: it was me. This brought the object of my rage wonderfully close to hand, but as soon as I started to strangle myself I felt a strong urge to forgive. Which I have. Anyway, it is Microsoft whose neck should be wrung, notwithstanding the difficulty of…
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Posted inFamily

Images of Venice and Florence

Here's a glimpse of Venice and Florence through the camera lens of my daughter, Celeste Vos, and her husband Patrick. I've selected six photos from their Ofoto album that struck my eye. A self-portrait of Celeste and Patrick at Venice's Piazza San Marco. What a great-looking couple! Don't you think it's time for them to reproduce their obviously exemplary genetic heritage into the form of a child (and grandchild)? This father thinks so. Celeste lost at night in the streets of Venice. I like the gloomy atmosphere of this photo. Having been lost in Venice myself back in the late…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Wisdom from a boy with AIDS

"Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are." These are the words of Nkosi Johnson, a South African boy born with AIDS who died at the age of twelve with more wisdom than most of us accumulate in a much longer lifetime. I heard Jim Wooten recite Nkosi’s mantra as I was driving home tonight. Wooten has written a book about Nkosi and the South African AIDS crisis, “We Are All the Same.” The title is how Nkosi ended his speech to an international AIDS conference. I don’t know much…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Aghast at Hastert’s partisan policy

Over the weekend I was aghast to read a brief mention of House speaker Dennis Hasterts’s new atrocious policy: only allow votes on bills that are supported by a majority of the Republican majority. Good god.

It was bothersome enough to think that we’ll have at least two more years of Republicans ruling Congress. But there was some consolation in knowing that this would be rule by a democratically elected majority.

Now Hastert is planning to allow a minority of House representatives to call the shots, since 51% of Republicans could stymie a bill that has the support of 49% of Republicans and 100% of Democrats. He would rather trash democracy and bipartisanship to avoid the prospect of, heavens, a bill passing because of Democrat votes.

If you want to let Hastert know what you think, send him a message.

Here’s a copy of a Washington Post article on the subject. I placed it in an extended post so people could read it (and weep) without registering at washingtonpost.com.

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Posted inUncategorized

Dispatch from the War on Blackberries

South Salem, Oregon. 11/28/04. 17:51 hours. Report by Col. B. Hines (no snickering if you read the name out loud—I had enough of that in high school gym class). Commanding officer, also sole soldier: Hinesland Anti-blackberry Special Forces. Good progress has been made in freeing Hinesland from the invader who crossed our borders many years ago—Himalayan Blackberry. May Luther Burbank rot in his grave for unleashing this despicable vegetation upon our defenseless natives. The values of Himalayan Blackberry are beneath contempt, as the above-referenced intelligence analysis describes: “It is capable of sexual and various types of asexual reproduction.” Various types,…
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Posted inEntertainment

“House” is must-see TV

Laurel and I heartily recommend “House” (Fox, Tuesdays at 9) for those who tire of the usual bland and predictable network television fare. We’ve watched two episodes and I have come to love the utterly unlovable Dr. Gregory House, a brilliant infectious disease specialist who would much prefer that diseases could be treated without the annoying complication of having patients attached to them. House, ably played by Hugh Laurie, walks with a cane and a limp. In the first episode we learned that he was poorly treated by an incompetent (but probably nice and warm) doctor for a leg problem.…
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Posted inMiscellany

Cartoons for carnivores

Here are some cartoons for carnivores to contemplate before devouring the turkey (or whatever other hapless animal is on your plate) tomorrow. Hey, there's still time to run out and get a tofu turkey! I recommend the Now and Zen Unturkey. Its crispy unskin and delightful stuffing make it our traditional Thanksgiving main dish. These cartoons were included in my book about why it makes good karmic sense to be a vegetarian. "Life is Fair" was published non-commercially in India in 1999. Over twenty-five thousand copies were sold around the world. I love the idea that a guy from the…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Church of the Churchless opens its doors

I’m pleased to announce that the Church of the Churchless has opened its doors. This is a spin-off HinesSight weblog devoted to preaching the gospel of spiritual independence. Until today I’d been plugging away on making the Church of the Churchless a regular website. But frustrations with the website creation software I had been using, coupled with a wave of fondness for the simplicity and power of weblogging, led me to recast all of the content into its present form. Which, naturally, will evolve. If you want to explore the current Church offerings, entirely logically I suggest you start with…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Gnat, or not?

I passed by a window on my way to meditating this morning. Outside, a barely visible swirl barely caught my eye. Gnats, merrily gnatting in a swarm above and around the rhododendrons. Newly born, I assume. Exploring a cold new world where their life likely is measured in days, maybe hours. Each little gnat was flying around doing what it knew how to do: not much. Each little gnat was experiencing what it was able to experience: not much. And there I was looking through the window at them, doing what I knew how to do and experiencing what I…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Tree planters are lovers

This fall-bright weeping willow is on a small island in the middle of Spring Lake, a short walk through the woods from our house. Every time I walk by the tree I mentally thank Denny Nielsen, who planted the tree and regularly rowed a boat out to water it during the willow’s infancy. Denny and his wife Laurie were some of the first people to start living in Spring Lake Estates (south of Salem, near the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge) when the development sprang up in the early 1970s. They have moved out, but won’t be forgotten by the neighborhood weeping…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Bill Long, a friendly reviewer

Yesterday I was pleased to have Bill Long tell me that he had posted a review of my book about Plotinus, “Return to the One,” on his web site. Bill is a friend, so I sort of expected a friendly review. But Bill also is a most straightforward and honest guy, so the “sort of” was a necessary qualifier. Bottom line: Bill liked my book, though he has some reservations about what he considers Plotinus’ excessively abstract approach to spirituality. Bill is an ordained minister, an attorney, and much more besides. He has as much capacity for abstract thought as…
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Posted inHome life

Give me liberty or give me gerbil

It’s fortunate that Patrick Henry didn’t have the same attitude toward death as I do. Or, as I did. For yesterday’s visit to our attorney showed that I’ve become more accepting of my own death—or, as I used to call it, my own gerbil—than was the case eleven years ago. Laurel and I needed to update our living wills and directives to physicians that express how you want to be treated at the end of life when hope is gone. This also was a chance to check on the status of some living trusts we barely understood that we had…
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Posted inFamily

The Tao of Paris Hilton

It’s dawned on me that I should pay more respect to Paris Hilton, my dear second cousin who, sadly, I have never met. In the past Laurel and I have enjoyed making catty observations about Paris’ seeming vacuousness. Though undeniably beautiful and sexy, her persona has a Barbie Doll quality that makes you wonder, “Is there anything there?” However, a recent Oregonian article about Paris led me to look on her in a different light. Her emptiness is the key to her recursive ability to be famous for being famous. Not just for fifteen minutes, but for…who knows?...perhaps a lifetime.…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Mini-secret of universe revealed

Back in the late 1960’s, illicit pharmacology brought me regularly to marvelous “Aha!” insights into the ultimate nature of the universe. The reason I currently neither have a Nobel prize in physics, nor am I recognized as a great spiritual sage, is that the insights were only insightful while in my artificially altered state of consciousness. They could be shared, though, which lent them more validity than they probably deserved. One moonless night in 1968 a friend and I were rolling rocks off the edge of a ravine in the Santa Cruz mountains, marveling at how long they took to…
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Posted inHome life Philosophy

For want of a zipper, an hour was lost

I’ve always enjoyed the familiar fable that begins with “For want of a nail the shoe was lost” and ends, after the horse is lost for want of a shoe, and the rider is lost for want of a horse, and the battle is lost for want of a rider, with the loss of a whole damn kingdom. Nail. Kingdom. One so slight, the other so tremendous. What sort of connection could exist between them that causes a single small horseshoe nail to have the power to overthrow a vast kingdom? Science would call it chaos theory or non-linear relationships,…
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Posted inHome life

“Playbuck” press release: What do does really want?

For immediate release by Playbuck magazine “Where all our girls are buck-naked and doe-eyed” Playbuck magazine, the leading voice for male deer, is pleased to report the results of recent in-depth research into the all-important question for our readers, what do does really want? Interviews were conducted with a random sample of 462 female deer, all of mating age. They were asked what turns them on, and what doesn’t. Surprisingly, 86% of these tawny beauties said that they like their bucks to sport some macho antler velvet in the fall let’s-get-it-on season. “I can’t stand the clean antler look,” said…
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Posted inPhilosophy Writing/Weblogs

“Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing”

When is it wiser to not know something? What distinguishes scientific knowledge from spiritual knowledge? Could I cram an Oscar Wilde quotation into the essay right off the bat? These are some of the questions that I pondered when I began to work on “Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing” some years ago. Here's the PDF file. Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing It is 24 pages long, so takes a little while to download on a slow connection (you know the mantra that accompanies PDF files: “get the free Acrobat Reader if you don’t have it already”).…
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