What if the movie Contagion were about viruses rather than globalization?
Soderbergh’s Contagion is a movie about the ills of globalization, right down to the ridiculous closing sequence in which deforestation by a multinational...
Category: ideas
epistemology, philosophy, theology, religion
why do marketers anthropomorphize cookies and candies?
perhaps, eating is inherently social – that is, we are hardwired to eat with others. how then to justify “indulging” oneself with food? perhaps, by ...
The religious impulse
Elif Batuman in the New Yorker: The findings at Göbleki Tepe suggest that we have the story backward—that it was actually the need to build a scared site that f...
From Plato’s Republic to The Firearms Philosophy of Ivan Chesnokov
Wherein I argue that the best way to learn, apart from painful personal experience, is via a story filled with colorful characters. Exhibit A: The Firearms Phil...
A sentence about an animal that begs our species’ sense of self.
Nature: Chadwick relates the story of a wolverine kit that perished during its first winter. Researchers later found the tiny body in a depression scraped from ...
passing: looking like something, changing it in the process
Daniel Rybakken, Daylight Entrance Glass Milk Half Pint Creamer Olive, El Bulli Soy Darks The cast of Jersey Shore Italy korean tacos
why are they so religious? also, camels, needles and the 1%
Many religions offer the promise of a supreme and perfectly fair authority. Such an eternal and just arbiter offers relief for people who live daily under unjus...
on mental illness and political culture
I wonder if scientists have looked at epidemiological records for evidence – if there is any – of a correlation between political extremism and mental illness. ...
metaphors we use that belie any mind/body split
when you want to say something, but can’t, you “bite your tongue.” the sharp, quick pain of anxiety – a desire that can’t be sated. the ...
the delight of what comes next: the relief of being displaced across time and space.
watching a movie. going to church. racing a car. surfing the web. visiting a museum. playing a sport. all are ways to experience the relief of being displaced a...
Heavy makeup
In the recent movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes, an actor in heavy computerized makeup helps play out a familiar father-son drama. Fiction is often deeply mo...
Is literalism a faith? The problem with wizards and vampires.
Perhaps the reason why literalists have fretted over the popularity of books like Harry Potter and movies like Twilight is not that they fear children will lear...
“It has absolutely no meaning.” Yet.
“There’s nothing intelligent in Alien. It has absolutely no meaning. It works on a very visceral level and its only point is terror and more terror....
play yourself
stories are how we make sense of the world. they impose a structure on what would otherwise feel chaotic – “one great blooming, buzzing confusion.” ...
Bad action movie plot: Chinese hackers and Mexican cartels
The Vanity Fair expose on likely Chinese hacking of many important corporations and government agencies by Michael Joseph Gross describes a ploy I’d only ...
the microscopic battles that conquered the Americas
If the Spanish who arrived to the Americas in the 1400s had become infected with native viruses that felled them, they might never have become the conquistadore...
Why thrillers set in space can be more vivid than those set on Earth.
I came of age at a time when outer space was a potent symbol in popular culture. This quote from an interview with historian Nicholas de Monchaux sheds light on...
why nakedness?
Paul Graves and Joe Fish for Sleek Magazine Why does the Book of Genesis in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition use nakedness as the badge of shame? Could som...
Creepy TV-watching robot buddies synched with pre-programmed emotion tracks.
[I wrote the below last August but never posted it. Now, seeing the depiction of movie color palettes at moviebarcode, I’ve relented.] The Speech Analysis...
The only true mirror is the funhouse one.
In the last 24 hours I’ve had the pleasure to experience two novel and fun works of art: The Exterior World, a sarcastic animation by David OReilly and St...