How much of the Book of 5 Rings can we apply to the modern Dojo of soccer moms, office workers and children? What can we risk in a world of American lawyers and lawsuits? Musashi was in the business; to the extent he trained people, of turning out killers. He lived a life, often devoid…
The question is, does the “Book of Five Rings” have meaning in our modern world, in the martial arts as we practice them, and even in life more generally? It is important in reading the Rings to understand what Musashi has to say to our modern world, and what he does not. As such, it…
I’ve seen the movie, and yes, it is as deeply emotional and cerebral as all the previews and reviews make it out to be. Praiseworthy? Certainly. But startlingly original? Well….. The premise of ARRIVAL is that 12 mysterious spacecraft (gargantuan split ovoids) touch down (actually hover several feet off the ground) across the globe and…
IT WAS A LONG TIME COMING, but the Sorcerer Supreme of the planet Earth has finally made it to the big screen! Doctor Steven Vincent Strange, decades-long mystic hero from Marvel Comics is gracing 3-D Cinema all over the world, and raking in the big cash hand over fist… and rightfully so! The special effects…
Musings on Miayamto Musashi and the Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho) Statue on Ganryu Island depicting the duel between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro A long time ago in a land far, far away, there lived a very strange and dangerous man. He is known to us as Miyamoto Musashi (also called…
THE MORNING AFTER! The candy haul is in, gourds need to be bagged and disposed of, and for those unpopular neighbors trees and lawns have been decorated in long white streamers. Halloween is over, and those post-scary-night blues are starting to hit you. Some words of advice, get up an hour or two earlier. If…
I recently saw the movie Shin Godzilla. http://www.funimationfilms.com/movie/shingodzilla/ (Warning possible spoiler alerts) This was less of a monster movie then an exploration of how a bureaucracy copes with a crisis. For me, interested in all things Japanese, the movie was enjoyable and I found the background fascinating. For those looking for a standard Kaiju movie,…
Space is not simply a hole into which money that could be better used for food stamps or worker retraining is flushed. It fundamentally helps economies and the poor. The single most powerful example of this is the weather satellite. Storms that sank ships and destroyed cities are now spotted early enough for avoidance and…
A mere chunk of rock is survivable. It’s not likely to get all of us, though it could. Even if it didn’t wipe us all out, would a technic civilization ever arise again? We’ve mined most of the easily reachable resources around. Could we start over again? There are greater terrors in space that could…