The Illustrated Man
My dad foisted Dandelion Wine on me when I was young and still homeschooled. It was to be, appropriately enough, the first book in my list of self-imposed summer reading. His copy was old, and...
Author: Ethan Gach
Considering Violence, Rape, and how we Interpret Media
When IO released their new Hitman: Absolution trailer last week it made a lot of people angry. Rhetorical guns blazing, they took to their respective forums and articulated their disgust. For those who don’t...
The Oatmeal isn’t God and Alex Knapp isn’t the Devil
The Oatmeal published this, Alex Knapp took The Oatmeal to task, and The Oatmeal subsequently responded with a defense of the earlier comic. Some further tweets and hundreds of thousands of page views later...
How The Avengers Succeeds
“They’re a mash-up; they’re insane,” Whedon says. “But the beauty of that is as exciting as the problem of that is daunting.” Marvel’s The Avengers is an impressive monster. A juggernaut at the box...
Conflicting Accounts of Obama’s Foreign Policy Achievements
Andrew Sullivan wants Obamaites to more aggressively tout the President’s foreign policy achievements: “I think the Obamaites need to be more aggressive in foreign policy arguments. Obama ended one war in Iraq, dispatched Osama bin Laden...
Why Are These Two Things Different?
At Rortybomb (which has migrated to Next New Deal), Mike Konczal takes arguments against lower rates on student loans to task. My only question is this: Are taxes owed to the U.S. government a kind...
“Girls be making HBO shows, am I right?”
This gives a brief (if overly patronizing and insensitive) summary of what bothered me about HBO’s new show: Girls. I didn’t know much about it going in, other than I was pretty excited. Anyone...
Intellectual Art, Popular Media, and Getting Away from Aesthetic Subjectivity
In the May 2012 issue of the Atlantic, writer Taylor Clark has an excellent profile of videogame developer Jonathan Blow. He’s misanthropic, severely thoughtful, and somewhat abrasive. But he’s also a brilliant creator and a near...
How Not to Discuss Whether We Need Stories
“Do we need stories?” asks Tim Parks. An interesting question. And an important one. But not a matter easily resolved within the confines of a few tweets, a couple Facebook updates, or an entire blog post...
A New Ending Couldn’t Destroy Mass Effect’s Artistic Integrity
[Note: This is a companion piece to something I wrote earlier this week on the same subject but from a different point of view. In addition, while there are no spoilers per say, the way...
Don’t Fear Me
I won’t go into any of the details surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin. First of all because many of them are in dispute, but more importantly because none of them really matter, or...
A Peculiar Kind of Reasoning
I’ve been MIA recently, most due to some other projects I’ve been working on. But I’ll have some deeper thoughts on the following later on…right after I’ve succeeded in picking my jaw back up...
In Which I Discuss Jonathan Franzen’s Remarks at Length
Speaking recently at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia, American novelist, Jonathan Franzen, attacked what he identifies as the impermanence of ebooks. His following remarks are what Andrew Sullivan recently dismissed as “Wieseltierian piffle,”
Something’s Rotten in the State of Our Union
Many have debated the President’s remarks from last Tuesday night’s State of the Union speech. E.D. Kain thought it was very successful, providing the American audience with a “rousing speech about the American dream,...
2012 Oscar Nominations Have Been Announced
I’m sad to say that I haven’t had a chance to see a majority of the films listed here. Especially over this past year, I’ve taken to spending my money on seeing movies that are...
Anarchy, State, and Batman
The discussion between Taylor Marvin, Erik Kain, and Jamelle Bouie about Nolan’s Batman films is already superb. I’m not sure how much I can add to the conversation, but as a long time Batman fan...
Sullivan, Obama, and Elections
Let me get this out of the way first. I like Andrew Sullivan, appreciate a lot of the work he produces, and can cite the Dish as an enormous triumph in blogging that is both...
How Much Better is the United States?
A week or so ago, Tom Van Dyke linked to this NYT piece exploring Europe’s economic troubles. The article, by Adam Davidson, posited that the Eurozone suffers from economic woes that go deeper than...
When the Fourth Estate Fails
Reading the article by Eric Schmitt that ran in last Sunday’s New York Times under the headline, “Lull in Strikes by U.S. Drones Aids Militants in Pakistan,” one gets a sense of just how...
