February 23, 2016
Postscript to My Kanye West Posts
I’m a human being. . . I’m an artist, bro . . . —@kanyewest, February 13, 2016 Since I wrote about Kanye’s arrogance, based mainly in interviews and lyrics from […]
October 29, 2015
Hard and Brittle Religions
Why do some religions die out, while others persist in the face of brutal persecution? Religious diversity, while not completely analogous to biological diversity, has drastically diminished over the […]
September 30, 2015
Gods on Earth: Sports Heroes and Human Limits
Apparently, running a four minute mile is still pretty hard. The other day I ran a mile as fast as I could in order to find my baseline. I won’t […]
November 24, 2014
Metafascistical: On Christianity and Marxism
The gospel of radical equality: Whether it’s the community of the Faithful or the united workers of the world, Christianity or Marxism, this is a key selling-point. All […]
November 29, 2013
About the “Singularity”
To decide whether Kurzweil’s idea of the Singularity is “true” or an “accurate” depiction of our future is to mistake the nature of prophecy. Imagine someone in 1914 predicting the […]
September 2, 2013
Drug Culture and the Nature of an Elect
To “open the doors of perception,” to recognize the futility of getting and spending and focus on experiencing the moment, to access superhuman reserves of strength or love—such are […]
August 25, 2013
The Nature of Authority
A book describing the afterlife has been on the bestseller lists for some time, a first-person account by a neurosurgeon. It’s one of those books I’ve read reviews of, but […]
January 7, 2013
Shakespeare’s Mystical Rhyme: On “The Phoenix and the Turtle”
For a writer frequently claimed to represent or comprehend all of human experience, there is remarkably little theology, mysticism, or overt religiosity in Shakespeare. We have his audience to thank […]
August 12, 2012
What is Truth?
Let us conceive of the mind as a weave of two fibers, as we consider muscle a weave of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles. The relative composition of a muscle is genetically […]