That’s what I kept asking myself as I was watching the PBS Nova episode Petra, Lost City of Stone, which I somehow missed when it first aired six years ago. This amazing archaeological site in Jordan competes in quality with… Read More ›
Movies & (occasionally) TV
Science fiction? Greek mythology? Philosophy? All in Jo Walton’s The Philosopher Kings
Three months ago I reviewed Jo Walton’s The Just City. Recently I finished reading the sequel, The Philosopher Kings, which is equally fascinating and equally worth reading. “We don’t know when we are,” as one character remarks. When, not where. The gods live “outside… Read More ›
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra… and Gavagai… and intertextuality!
Hmmm… how can you communicate with someone when the two of you have no language in common? In linguistics this has been a major conundrum, especially in earlier centuries when there was no worldwide communication; in science fiction it has… Read More ›
The Answer is… “Who is Alex Trebek?”
No, the title of this post is not the title of a book, despite the italics. More specifically, it’s not the title of a book: it’s a portmanteau of the titles of two books: The Answer is… (by Alex Trebek) Who is… Read More ›
Buffy and Star Trek — and the Jews
Until recently I hadn’t thought about any connections between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek, nor about any connections between Star Trek and the Jews. So what happened recently to update that pluperfect verb “hadn’t realized”? Well, as I’ve mentioned before, one of my… Read More ›
The Existential Joss Whedon: Evil And Human Freedom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly And Serenity
Don’t go away! OK, a reasonable response to this book title might be “How geeky can you get‽” I mean, the pop-culture-plus-intellectual combo inherent in The Existential Joss Whedon: Evil And Human Freedom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly… Read More ›
Grim fairytales
That’s grim, not Grimm. Well, both, actually. As some Americans — and all Germans — know, the Grimm fairytales can be quite grim. Some of us have gained a particular perspective on this point from Stephen Sondheim’s wonderful musical, Into the… Read More ›
Leonard Cohen; The Doors; Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; Jimi Hendrix; The Who; and so forth
It seems that everyone in my generation was at Woodstock in 1969. Or so they claim. Except me. I wasn’t there. Apparently 400,000 attendees really were there, although well over a million people say they were there. But that’s not what I’m writing… Read More ›
Seán Mac an tSíthigh tells the story of Boston’s Irish.
How do you pronounce “Seán Mac an tSíthigh”? Don’t ask me. I’ve been attempting to learn something about the Irish language, but the spelling and pronunciation are daunting, as I suggested in a post I wrote a couple of months… Read More ›
Contagion
If you haven’t seen it — or even if you have — this is the time to watch Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 movie, Contagion. (Or maybe it’s the time not to watch it, if you worry that it’s going to trigger you.) As you may… Read More ›
