Six months ago I made a blog post here that I called: Fear of Fluing. If you haven't had a chance to read it, feel free to go back and look at it now. In that original post I talked about the Swine Flu, now more frequently referred to as the H1N1 strain of the flu. At the time, the media was—and still is—claiming that this was going to be a massive "pandemic." What's the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic? This source states, "when an epidemic gets out of hand, it is called a pandemic." In my original post, I pointed out, "In the U.S. alone, the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] estimates it [the annual regular flu] causes about 36,000 deaths yearly. Worldwide, the

If you are in the Southern California area next weekend, please come to the 6h Conference on Current Pagan Studies at Claremont Graduate University. There are some great presenters and I'm honored to be the keynote speaker on Saturday the 30th.  T. Thorn Coyle is the keynote speaker on Sunday. This is a serious weekend conference for $50 or less. The schedule for the event can be found here. Please come by and say hello. I'll also sign books for people, and I'll have my books available, too. See you Saturday the 30th!

Mr. Gillette's Revolution About 100 years ago, a man named King Gillette patented a small invention that revolutionized the world. The invention, as you may have guessed, was just a slight improvement on the "safety razor," a device that wouldn't slice open a man's throat if he slipped while shaving. But the real revolution was not the device. Rather, it was in the way it was marketed. There were two aspect to this. First, although the razor itself was designed to be kept, the replacement blades were disposable. This virtually began what has been called, "the disposable society." For example, if your grandparents' families bought milk, they probably bought it in bottles that were

There is a story, found in the Jewish Talmud, that four great rabbis entered the orchard (Hebrew: pardes) known as the Kabalah. These were mature and wise men. Yet one, unable to deal with what he experienced, died. Another became a heretic. The third went insane. Only the famous Rabbi Akiva (or Akiba) "entered in peace and emerged in peace." There is one aspect of the Kabalah that seems to bring out the crazies. Specifically, that aspect is the manipulation of letters. There are three primary methods of letter manipulation: Gematria: letters are given numerical values and words or phrases of equal sums replace each other in passages, giving new meanings to those passages Notarikon: