A recent essay in Toronto Life magazine with the provocative title (the incendiary tone of which is probably invisible to the author, Jonathan Kay) “Almost Rich: an examination of the true cost of city living and why rich is never rich enough” has drawn the bilious scorn of Gawker editor Hamilton Nolan (and the commenters [...]
Archive: February 2012
Willam Boyd Watterson II, the J. D. Salinger of the strip cartoon, has blocked all merchandising of his characters and has apparently only been photographed once (the 1986 “file photo” above). Like Salinger and Pynchon and Kubrick (and Alan Moore), Watterson not only prefers that his work speak for itself, he insists on it; his [...]
2012-02-10 ::
Jordan //
Politics
Religious politics vs. Hegelian “philosophy of right” in the courtroom
Religious politics vs. Hegelian “philosophy of right” in the courtroom
Thanks to the Indiana Senate (and their tactical regrouping over “creationism-in-all-but-name,” last month) I ended up “wasting” a spectacular amount of time poring over the actual court transcripts of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (the famous 2005 “Intelligent Design” Federal Case). (The rest of that site, talkorigins.org, is worth exploring in penetrating — or, [...]
If you want to actually see and hear Alan Moore discussing his work and other topics (which is not easy to do), Here’s a two hour chat with Moore (who’s lurking in some Alan Moore steampunk castle somewhere in foggy, soggy England, hunched close to the camera with a light shining upwards on his face, [...]
The cover page of Charles Darrow’s 1935 patent application for the Monopoly game. Apparently the origins of the game are in dispute — the game was invented years before Darrow’s Atlantic City version (and the game’s concept has straddled the edges of intellectual property definitions since its creation). The original version of the game had [...]
Of course we all remember John McTiernan’s strangely Pirandellesque 1993 Schwarzenegger vehicle Last Action Hero, and how that movie shows two worlds; a “movie world” and a “real world” (and how, of course, they’re both “movie worlds” is a strict sense). There’s exactly the same contrast going on between two Fincher movies: Se7en and Zodiac. [...]
2012-02-04 ::
Jordan //
Politics
The Indiana Senate forces “alternatives” to evolution into classrooms
The Indiana Senate forces “alternatives” to evolution into classrooms
According to Ars Technica (last Thursday), “Yesterday, after almost no debate, the Indiana State Senate approved a bill that would allow its schools to teach the origin stories of various religions when a class touches on the origin of life. It now moves on to the state’s House, where one of its cosponsors is currently [...]
So everyone’s up in arms and conflicted (including Jonathan Lethem) about DC Comics’ plans to release various Watchmen prequels. Alan Moore told the New York Times that the idea is “completely shameless” and pointed out that there were no sequels to Moby Dick (which I think is a bit much, but that’s the way he [...]
Elizabeth Drew has a new piece in the New York Review of Books about Romney and the election, which deviates pretty far into the “Greenwaldian” zone of near-existential dread that used to be the exclusive province of Noam Chomsky types. I actually have loved Drew ever since she was in The New Yorker comparing Ed [...]
