Via Castalia house, an excellent post on how pop culture is more accurately, as Brian Neimeier puts it, Pop Kult (or "Cult"). > The Epistle of Captain America – The Pop Cult is Truly a Cult [https://dvspress.com/the-epistle-of-captain-america-the-pop-cult-is-truly-a-cult/] That said, I do think he's overlooked something: > When my viewers were upset about the corporate destruction of Star Wars, calling the franchise a cultural institution, I thought it a bit hyperbolic – after all, these are j…
All posts in books
One thing I often get - most recently regarding the show "Succession" and mostly from people who don't know me that well in my circle of acquaintances - is shock that I don't like [Stephen King | Game of Thrones | Whatever piece of dross that's popular today that involves horrible people being horrible to each other ] "But you should try it out instead of dismissing it right away / after a few minutes" The answer I give echoes Alexandru Constantin's [https://barbarianbookclub.com/2019/12/20/en…
I keep tabs on Bruce Charleton's blog, and so the recent post on Phil K Dick [https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2019/12/philip-k-dick-overview-so-far.html] caught my eye. > In the past couple of months I have read/ listened-to a dozen Philip K Dick novels, and most of the Exegesis - his philosophical and spiritual journal written during his last eight years. I haven't enjoyed a fiction writer so much, in such quantity, for several years. Certainly, I appreciate his work more fully this tim…
John C Wright recently reviewed The Hidden Truth [http://www.scifiwright.com/2019/09/book-review-the-hidden-truth-by-hans-schantz/] by Hans Schantz, describing it as "part alternate history, part coming-of-age story, and part techno-thriller, peppered with wry observations about the nature of people, politics and power as seen through the eyes of a youth learning a hard lesson about the evils men hide." He is entirely correct. I found the first book engaging enough to go ahead and buy the sec…
First, Brian Neimeier discusses that "works of art last" [https://www.brianniemeier.com/2019/03/ars-longa.html] - the second half of an old saying many of us, including me until recently, only knew as "life is short." > The equivalent Greek word is techne. That's a big clue that everybody before the Modern era would have put Michelangelo and Steve Jobs in the same general category. Both made stuff according to a standard. That's really what writing is. A carpenter makes a birdhouse by putting…