On Shane, toxic masculinity, violence, and vicious cycles
I think it’s fascinating to observe toxic masculinity in action in Westerns. (Some quasi-spoilers here for Shane (1953).) In this...
Archive for Improving Society
Underground’s metadiscussion of slavery narratives
I'm watching Underground season 2, episode 1, “Contraband,” and I just got to a scene in which one of the...
Tesla Model 3 info
Several interesting and informative Tesla Model 3 links: Specs and prices, including prices for various options, from the official Tesla...
They were the dispossessed, reclaiming what was theirs
I've long loved John McCutcheon's 1991 rendition of Leon Rosselson's 1975 song “The World Turned Upside Down” (not to be...
Nichelle Nichols on naming and being cast as Uhura
Nichelle Nichols on naming Uhura and on getting the part (transcribed by me from a making-of segment on the ST:TOS...
On the difficulty of recognizing one’s own biases
Another lesson for me on the difficulty of seeing outside your own cultural context: In Delany's City of a Thousand...
Agents of SHIELD political commentary
I've been really enjoying the current storyline in Agents of SHIELD. It's doing a virtual-reality take on a sort of...
Speeding to a stop
I was driving along in the right lane of a Mountain View street the other week when I passed a...
Mysterious Island, colonialism, and translators’ agendas
The other day, I pulled Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne, off my unread-books shelf. I decided that I didn't really...
The lifeboat scenario
My 9th-grade English teacher, Mr. Eymil, gave us a surprise in-class writing assignment one day in 1983. He told us...
In defense of Marvel and diversity
This is a long impassioned post in which I try to come to the defense of Marvel comics. The TL;DR...
Hold the line: How best to contact Congress
Long but fascinating article about the effectiveness of various means of contacting US members of Congress. It contradicts some things...