Responses to reports of NSA surveillance of Americans runs the gamut from outraged to blasé. I fall more on the outraged side, with the caveat that such wide-scale snooping isn't particularly surprising,...
Blame the Boomers for a Hyperviolent America
The most recent installment of the New York Times' "Opinionator" column features an impassioned piece by Todd May about America's culture of violence. The article posits that our brutishness is rooted...
Advanced Magick for Beginners
From our partners at Lux Eterna Records:
It’s finally here: the new full-length from The Contrarian, Advanced Magick for Beginners. The most personal Contrarian album to date, Advanced Magick boasts...
Higher Ed in the Age of TED: MOOCs Go Mainstream
If you work in education (or pay attention to this stuff), you've probably heard of MOOCs — so-called Massive Open Online Courses. Their aim is to make advanced learning broadly available to the masses,...
If you work in education (or pay attention to this stuff), you've probably heard of MOOCs — so-called Massive Open...
Vocational Respect in the Arts and Sciences
The notion that creative expression has value is not something that should be controversial. Throughout history, creativity has been rewarded in various ways, not all of them monetary, and none of them perfect. From patronage during the Renaissance to the guilds of the Middle Ages to the major label cartels to contemporary crowdfunding, artists have been the beneficiaries — and sometimes the victims...
A common line of thinking in capitalist society goes something like this: without proper incentives, people will cease to produce useful items. Putting aside counter-notions such as the altruistic impulse, this mostly bears true. Materialism reigns supreme in our modern world, and value reflects what can be produced, sold, acquired and consumed.
Yet some things that can be produced are not necessarily...
Over the past four years, interest in paranormal television has vanished like, well, a ghost.
It wasn't always this way. At one point, TV producers across the country were practically falling over themselves to create insipid shows from virtually the same mold. Now, it seems, the bubble has finally burst.
It's easy to see why: schlocky execution and an aversion to risk turned what I once saw as entertaining...
You get the feeling that something interesting is going on, but you're not sure of what it is. You take refuge in nostalgia. You cease to comprehend certain new trends. You can wait for the next version; chances are it'll be better. Everything seems like a watered-down version of stuff you heard, saw, experienced at an earlier stage in your life.
Obviously, this isn't true across the board....
