Burning Books In This Day and Age

Browsing through Deviantart, I came across a post where the author had taken a photograph of burning pages of a new age book. He titled it Acts 19:19 (referring to this bible passage "A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.") and went on to say how his parents had bought the book for the sole purpose of taking it home to burn it "to prevent anyone else from reading it". The author had express great pleasure about it.

Now, I got to thinking. I'd love to burn some books myself. The whole Twilight series for instance.But if I were to burn all the crap books in the world, it would cause a level of air pollution that could possibly wipe out the population due to lack of oxygen. Not just because there are a lot of crap, but because books are  MASS produced.
You see, long gone are the days where it took skilled artisans to hand letter, bound and form a book. Now we have machines that produce them by the thousands!

Despite the rather poor selection being given to us these days, I'd rather have mass produced books and the privilege of accessing them, than not. My personal  library, which only has about 150 books actually surpasses that of kings in times gone by, suck it you royal bastards!

Anywho, so for me to justify the burning of a book whose viewpoints you don't agree with by saying you want to prevent others form reading it only shows your ignorance. And intolerance. There are many in this world who feel the bible is rubbish.There are other religions, as intolerant as Christianity, who feel the bible should also be burned for heresy.

So do we continue to breed hate? well, apparently, if you are Christian then  yes. yes you do.
The thing that gets me about these ignorant and intolerant people is they are representatives of their God. If they truly want to save people, why would you behave in a way that is contrary to the message you supposedly believe in? Why show people your God is as intolerant and ignorant as you?

For all you would be book burners out there, keep one thing in mind. If your God is almighty then he wants these books (yes, even Twilight *shudder*) to be  in the world and how dare you take it upon yourself to tell God he's wrong.

Dore's Summer

I always say the best way to view and understand art is to gauge the emotional reaction you have to the art in question. I can tell you the backgrounds of the artists. I can tell you about symbols the artist used. I can tell you what it means to me but ultimately your reaction to it is the key to understanding the piece.

In this review, I have to say i was taken by surprise and awestruck by this painting.  It hangs in the delicious Museum of Fine Arts in Boston MA. When I lived there I had the privilege of seeing it often.
Paul Gustave Dore was a french artist. He was born January 6 1832 and died January 23 1883. He worked primarily as an engraver, his most well known work was the illustrations for the bible and the divine comedy. Which is how I was introduced to his work.  He was also a gifted sculpture. There is a bas relief housed in the MFA Boston that I am going to review soon.

Another example of my mad photography skills xD

This work is awe inspiring not because of the size (damn thing is huge) it the content. In the painting the startling element is the scythe. It seems out of place. Around it is vibrant lush life, but it is still too early for harvest. So the scythe lies there, impotent. However, death is patient. it will wait. it will be calm  for death knows there are cycles and seasons to everything. For now life triumphs.

All in all, it seems to me the overall message is one of hope.