Are You Who You Pretend To Be? The Social Media Masquerade.
Do you know the difference between you and your online persona? Do you believe you are who you pretend to be? You probably know that you’re not quite as filtered…
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Why Neuroscientists Still Cannot Read Your Mind
Last October, in a live demo, Neuralink finally revealed their new prototype: a coin-shaped device that connects with the brain by means of electrodes thinner than a human hair. The…
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Does Darwinism Conflict with Religion?
When my dog chases the ball, does she do so with purpose? Or is she more like a windup toy, going through the motions, along with all the other atoms…
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Liberalism and the Threats It Faces
Liberal democracy is under threat. Over the last decade, a democratic recession has swept across the world, as once liberal democracies like Turkey, Poland, Hungary, India and the Philippines flirt…
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“Troubled Blood” by J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling’s fifth Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood, is a brilliantly successful literary work. It engages the reader on intellectual, emotional and aesthetic levels. It is a long novel—927…
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Karl Marx on Value
Many conservative pundits love to attack Karl Marx without really engaging his work in any depth. This is unfortunate since Marx deserves high calibre critics—and once received telling critiques by…
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How AI Can Change Your Mind
Last month, Microsoft made a move to license GPT-3, a powerful artificial intelligence model built by OpenAI, a company founded by Elon Musk. The move has focused renewed attention on…
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The Work of Art in the Age of the Subscription Economy
Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) is highly relevant to our current cultural and political situation, since aspects of fascist era history are…
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Beloved Child of the House
All parts of the house are repeated many times, any place is another place. There is no one pool, courtyard, drinking trough, manger; the mangers, drinking troughs, courtyards, pools are…
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“The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” by Michael J. Sandel
In his 1931 Epic of America, James Truslow Adams describes “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity…
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Charlie Hebdo and the Hypocrisy of the Fight against Islamophobia
On Friday, a Pakistani man attacked the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, injuring two journalists from an unrelated TV channel with a meat cleaver. The attacker claimed that…
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How Cousin Marriage and Polygyny Impair Modernisation
Cousin marriage is increasingly being legalized around the world, yet it remains illegal in most US states. But do American legislators have good reasons to outlaw it?
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Self-Defeating Polls and the Uncertainty of Predictions
A Californian plans to vote after work in what she believes to be a close presidential election … The day is rainy and as she approaches the polling place she…
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How Individualism Created Our Postmodern Culture
Have the courage to use your own reason was never intended to be a cruel slogan, but it was meant for simpler times. The complexity of twentieth century institutions combined…
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Why More Democracy Is the Last Thing We Need
The masses are respectable hands at fighting, but miserable hands at judging.—G. W. F. Hegel misquoting Goethe Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There…
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The Delight of Sentience: “Inside Story: A Novel” by Martin Amis
Martin Amis opens and closes Inside Story by addressing the reader directly. From the beginning, then, we are confidantes of the author and the implied promise of the book’s title is fulfilled—this…
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The Complex Roots of Black Conservatism
Few fixtures on America’s political and cultural scene tell us more about the perilous state of our racial discourse than the phenomenon of black conservatism. While virtually every other confluence…
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Adjunct Instructors, Class and Power in American Higher Education
Two recent stories involving adjunct instructors have made clear something that most of us in higher education have known for a long time: most Americans, whether college graduates or not,…
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