Philosophy should never be reduced to a mere intellectual hobby, and those who would make it one might be better off finding a different hobby. Could there be anything more foolish, then the man who talks often of philosophy – great teacher of how to live a good life – when in fact his own life is in ruins? What of the man who can recite philosophical treatises, debating skillfully on this point or that, but lives not a single one of those principles – regardless of whether he prefers more to argue for or against them – in his own life? The ancient Stoic philosophers were clearly oriented thus; that philosophy is a means to the best possible way of living, and that a philosopher in word but not deed is not a philosopher at all. The Stoic philosopher Aius Didymus emphasizes this point well when he writes that “It is not the person who eagerly listens to and makes notes of what is spoken by the philosophers who is ready for philosophizing, but the person who is ready to transfer the prescriptions of philosophy to his deeds and to live in accord with them. (Sellars 44)” This sentiment has been echoed throughout the ages of human history by some of the greatest philosophers in our written history, and is particularly central to the Stoic school. For the Stoics, the culmination of philosophy, and it’s fundamental goal, is best expressed in the idealized image of the Stoic sage (Sellars 36).

Life in the mid-1800s was vastly different from life today. To give you a reminder of this time period, consider that the United States was less than a century old, and slavery was still a common practice. The U.S. Civil War occurred from 1861-1865, with two world wars that would not occur until a half-century later. The French Revolution had just ended in 1799. In London and other crowded European cities, widespread epidemics that caused massive deaths occurred frequently. Germ theory had not yet been widely accepted, and illness was mostly attributed to the wrath of god. The light bulb was not invented until 1876, automobiles were not invented until 1885, and airplanes were not invented until the early 1900s. These were the good old days when it was dangerous to travel, and easy to die. Alexandra David-Neel was born in Paris in 1868, and lived for over one-hundred years until her death in 1969. She traveled extensively, most notably spending a collective fourteen years in the snowy peaks of Tibet. Crossing the treacherous Himalayas disguised as a Tibetan man, she was the first and only western woman to ever see the forbidden city of Lhasa. A scholar and adventurer, she spent much of her time actively studying and practicing the secret Buddhist teachings and rituals of the region. She had a big influence on the heroes of the American beat generation such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Alan Watts. Her life is a true story of the indestructible spirit of adventure, and illuminates an era of human greatness now lost to us forever in the melting snows of ancient Tibet.

Upon recently installing Drupal 6.13 on my shared web host - Hostgator - I was faced with the challenge of setting up a new Cron Task in the cPanel controls, and immediately I encountered the big question: What am I supposed to type into the bloody command line field?