John C. Lilly is one of my favorite “alternative” scientists. His popularity has waned significantly since his death in 2001, even as his contemporaries like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna have continued to have strong followings. Still, Lilly’s admittedly outrageous ideas and prophecies are worth remembering, not because they are necessarily true, but because, like all mythologies, they give us […]
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s early short stories. His insight into the human spirit is never tempered by the wide range of genres included within, whether he is retroflexing the boundaries of science fiction or conveying a simple love story. Almost every one can be read in about 20 minutes, but each leaves the reader with a cadre of […]
It’s becoming increasingly apparent to even the most distracted Americans that the country is falling apart economically and socially. It’s been a slow descent, but not so slow anymore. However, our problems are not merely economic. There is a shadow of social sickness enveloping the society, now becoming obvious to just about everyone. We documented this quite throughly […]
Humanist and environmental activist Jerry Mander is nearing 80-years-old, but you wouldn’t know it to hear him. In recent years he has spoken on the dangerous, unsustainable and “obsolete” system of global capitalism, but his earliest and probably most influential public work is his manifesto warning about the many dangers of television. Here in his […]
I recently finished reading the Charles Dickens’s classic, A Tale of Two Cities, a story of sacrifice and revenge before and during revolutionary France. Dickens was partially inspired to write the novel to to develop some of the themes he had addressed in previous novels, namely poverty. He insisted that if things did not change, […]
This is part 2 of 2. For part 1, click here. If the primary theme of the new Batman movies could be boiled down to one word, it would be fascism. Clearly, all superhero movies have fascist elements in them. They feature superhuman beings who through force of will and personal strength are capable of beating back otherwise […]
When I select books to read, I tend to choose one of two types: new books that are immediately relevant and old books that are immediately relevant. In other words, I read for content that I can apply, not for simple enjoyment or curiosity about other people’s lives. At first glance, Gore Vidal’s 2002 book, […]
Good art, real art that is, always reflects some greater reality about the times we live in. False art or corporate art seeks rather to distract from reality in an effort to get us to buy and consume more and more, never questioning how fragile the whole system is. We think the next Batman movie […]
Just got done watching it tonight with some friends, and I wanted to write something up about it quickly while it was still fresh in my mind. If this seems a bit less formal than usual, that’s probably why. I was amazed (yet again) how ahead of its time it is. One of the things […]
This is a repost and (one of several) reviews of the 1995 film Hackers from writer Matt Dyjak. You can read his reviews and comments at Not Only Important, But Apocalyptic and The Hackers Movie Appreciation Blog where he continually reviews the film with a highly academic tone, giving new insights into its layered construction. […]
