May 17, 2005

D.T. Suzuki and the Art of Zen

I’ve been very focused on Zen Buddhism this weekend. My tireless efforts have produced two quality entries to the growing list of LearnOutLoud.com awesomeness. The first page I want to mention is the new author entry for D.T. Suzuki. He’s one of the biggest popularizers of Buddhism in the west. Did your brother come back from college one time and drop words like Koan or Satori without explanation? He probably skimmed one of Suzuki’s introductory books and is trying to make you feel inferior. Don’t worry, we can help you bone up. Then again, it isn’t really Zen to learn something for the sole purpose of retaliating a slight to your ego. Food for thought.

Anyway, this entry ties in with the Zen Buddhism topic page I made yesterday as well. If you are wondering what Zen is about or already have read about it and still don’t know what the heck is going on, here’s my stab at it. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I don’t know how easy it is to really write about zen anyway. It isn’t a religion that fits easy description. Nevertheless I will admit I’m personally intrigued and will be adding some of the audio books I found to my must-listen list.

May 11, 2005

New Topics at LOL

Are you in the position to start looking for a new house? Do you want to start renting out apartments? Well, I can’t even begin to fathom such decisions personally, but if you are finding yourself financially flush, you might want to think about investing in something worthwhile. Real Estate seems to be a real safe bet these days and we here at LOL HQ decided to give everyone the leg up with our Real Estate Topic Page. The Topic Pages are sort of like articles designed as a guide to whats available on audio for a given topic of general interest. We’re starting to think up new topics to write about for your listening pleasure and we’re open to requests. Do you have a hobby or topic that you want to know more about on audio or video? Let us do the research man. We’re happy to help and besides, we learn a ton when we make them. So yeah, tell us what you think of these topic pages. There’s only two so far but we’re going to be bringing in alot more this month. You’ll like what we’ve got cooking here, believe me.

May 9, 2005

The Far East gets that much Closer

There have been a few new author pages put up for you to see. These two guys are somewhat related in that they are two westerners that became infatuated with eastern religion. The first author page I’ll point you to is the one for Ram Dass. While once a big advocator of that whole turn on, tune in, drop out thing that happened in the 60’s, Dass soon tired of blowing his consciousness with psychadelics and replaced it with the more healthy psych-bombs offered by Hinduism. I won’t go any futher from that except to say he seems very centered.

Next up we have a page for someone that has one of the coolest voices ever: Alan Watts. Watts was sort of a religious jack of all trades. He was a minister at one point, and basically became a genius in the field of comparative religion. His focus was on Buddhism, but if you go through his titles you’ll notice he tackles almost every major belief system at some point in his career and considers each one carefully. I have to admit to liking this guy; he’s a rock star academic if there ever was one.

May 9, 2005

Funny…

Just saw this in the latest online edition of The Onion. All kidding aside, this is the sort of thing we want everyone to start realizing. Commutes need to be livened up all over this fair nation. Too many people are bored every day on our highways.

May 5, 2005

Author Pages are Going Up Like Crazy!

What can I tell you, I’ve been inspired. I’m creating these author pages at a regular clip now and it’s getting addictive. I’m probably going to cut back a bit to tend to other things as the weekend rolls around, but I wanted to make mention of the latest author page I made for Napoleon Hill tonight. He’s the writer of what is probably the most famous self-help book ever “Think and Grow Rich“. On a related note, I’m still deciding on what my relationship is with money right now. There’s obviously always a need for it on a practical level, but I also tend to think of it as more of a means towards a goal rather than a goal in and of itself. Does that make sense? Whoa, went off on a tangent there. Anyway, I think the Napoleon page is looking pretty good there. Tell me what you think.

May 4, 2005

Dr. Phil McGraw

I just finished a page for one of those guys you hear about, but never take real notice of except for on TV every once in awhile. I don’t exactly know why Dr. Phil hasn’t hit my radar, but he is a big thing for many people and it looks as if he’s been a big help to them. Maybe I’ll have to give him a futher look in the future. He’s sort of physically imposing, I don’t know if I’d be able to be very forthright with him on a sofa. He’s sort of pushy from what I can tell based on one, admittedly distracted viewing of 10 minutes from his TV Show. All kidding aside, I welcome your comments on the author page.

May 2, 2005

Leo Buscaglia

Man. I remember The Fall of Freddie the Leaf from when I was a young kid. It was the perfect formative way to learn about death. I’m not a parent yet, but I know that will be one of the first books I read to my son or daughter. For sure. I forgot how much that book meant to me. Anyway, just wanted to make note that I’ve created a Leo Buscaglia page tonight. He’s a real important writer to me personally and I hope you enjoy the information.

April 29, 2005

Atlas Blogged

I’ve been putting some special effort into these two new author entries. I remember when I was a senior in high school and I decided to dive into my mother’s battered copy of “Atlas Shrugged“. I was an ambitious reader from an early age, and this book was one of those classic tomes that everyone recommends but hardly anyone has actually read. I’m not sure the philosophy would have worked very well for my mother, but for some reason she had it and I remember getting through most of it. Anyway, that brings me to the Ayn Rand page I recently put up. I know there are many Rand fans out there so I hope my Biographical Sketch has done her justice. If I had included everything I could have written a block of text that was the size of Atlas, and “The Fountainhead” combined. I’m dead serious.

Btw, if you are interested in more about Ayn Rand’s life, I found this link while I was snooping around the net for information on her. It’s actually pretty interesting to see those pictures of her in New York.

The other page created was a little lighter for those that may not be interested in lofty terms like Objectivism. Don’t get me wrong, Al Franken is just as interesting as Rand. It’s just on a different level. Hey, I’m sure he’d admit as much too! I recommend you listen to all of Al’s Audio books. He reads them all and I’ve never laughed more listening to an Audio Book.

April 26, 2005

Rent Me

Sometimes buying an audio book is just too pricey. I mean it’s about 10 bucks more than a CD and you might not even like the book after you’ve spent alot of time on it. Well, now there’s a few options for those that don’t like to buy audio books. Netflix showed the renting over the internet can be big business and now tons of audio book rental outfits are showing up like crazy. In the future me and david will be recording a podcast that will try to navigate a path through the murky world of online audio book rental services, but for now I want to give you some links to pages I created as guides to a few of them:

April 26, 2005

A Challenger Arises to Fight Audible

Just did want to notify you all who’s going to be Audible’s main competition in the digital downloading of audio books sector. Media Bay is joining forces with MSN Music to create the largest downloadable audio book fleet this side of Audible‘s union with Apple iTunes.

Media Bay powers their Audio Book Club which is sort of like the clubs you get through Columbia House or BMG Music if you ever got suckered into those.