A thought, a farewell, and a song.
“Christmas is hard for everyone. But it’s particularly hard for people who actually believe in it. . . . In a sense, of course, there’s no better time to be a Christian than the...
Author: William Brafford
William Brafford grew up in North Carolina, home of the world's best barbecue, indie rock, and regional soft drinks. He just barely sustains a personal blog and "tweets" every now and then under the name @williamrandolph.
“Happy Moscow.”
Sam Frank’s account of an experience with a Russian online dating service ends up touching on one of Barrett Brown’s interests, but to say any more would ruin the effect of a rather touching...
Little Match Girl Passion.
What I like most about the An die Musik performance space in Baltimore is the low stage, which to me represents the basic spirit of the place. It’s no more than two feet high,...
Notes on video games as culture.
My co-Gent Barrett, in his post “Computing in virtual worlds,” writes: “…there exists a faction represented by such people as Roger Ebert who believe that one may refer to one’s self as cultured while...
Ludwig und Yeezy.
I’m at my desk listening to the new Kanye West album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I’m not going to argue with the pop critic consensus: it’s good. When the staff of the music...
“Their money did not stink.”
I don’t have anything to add to the Great Sanitation Throwdown, but I have to note that basically everywhere in the USA we’ve got it pretty good whether our sanitation is handled by authoritarian...
Thoughts about the League.
Tim Burke’s recent meditation on the future of blogs has got me thinking about the evolution of The League, and not just in terms of format and color scheme. Though this blog hasn’t yet...
Charles Taylor Saturday #5: Purposes and buffers.
Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. His most recent book, A Secular Age, is an examination of modern secularism and the cultural conditions that gave rise to it. First, an administrative...
“Stick” it to the spambots!
If you don’t hate sticker puns, you should head over to the American Scene’s “Stick with the Scene” competition. It really needs a boost. Judging by the comments section, only three contestants are vying...
Charles Taylor Thursday #4: Define your terms! (Plus, voting.)
Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. His most book A Secular Age is an examination of modern secularism and the cultural conditions that gave rise to it. There’s a phrase that...
Charles Taylor Thursday #3: How Calvinism eats itself.
Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. His book A Secular Age is an examination of modern secularism and the cultural conditions that gave rise to it. Last week I wrote about...
Charles Taylor Thursday #2: Against subtraction stories.
Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. His most recent book, A Secular Age, is an examination of modern secularism and the cultural conditions that gave rise to it. I want to...
“T.I. just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
So I guess Atlanta rapper T.I. may be going back to jail soon, but at least he got to do a little bit of police-negotiator work before his hearing: “Police were trying to talk...
Charles Taylor Thursday #1.
From Canadian philosopher/theorist Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age, p. 258-9: That this achievement was possible [i.e., exclusive humanism] is an important fact about human beings, albeit it is open to different interpretations. We...
Empty days.
In the comments to Jason’s post on gay teen suicide, cruelty, and high school, R. Pointer posted a link (by way of David Friedman) to an old essay called “Why Nerds Are Unpopular.” The...
Our awesome culture.
The entertainment industry, apparently not satisfied with turning Dante’s Inferno into an Xbox game, has set its sights on Milton’s Paradise Lost: “The project tells the story of the epic war in heaven between archangels...
Nietzsche, brought to you by Heineken.
Is Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals too long for you? Good news! Now you can just watch this Heineken commercial:
Kain’s wars.
I’ve been watching this debate about different kinds of wars (Erik, Erik, Will, Erik, Erik, Will) get muddier and muddier, and I want to try to clear things up if I can, but without...
“Nuclear chivalry.”
As many have said before, it’s no coincidence that in the world of Hollywood blockbusters the last decade has been the decade of the superhero film. In the nineties our blockbusters brought us fantasy...
Free parking and/or markets.
I was interested to see Tyler Cowen take the high-cost-of-free-parking argument to the pages of the New York Times. In short, many cities require that new development projects, especially commercial ones, provide a certain amount...
