Arts & Culture
Arts & Culture
Blazing Saddles, Directed by Mel Brooks
William Nauenburg October 21, 2020
Blazing Saddles, through humor and satire, tackles the pernicious reality of racism and shows that a man’s reasoning mind and heroic deeds can overcome bigotry and prejudice.
Arts & Culture, History
Three Symphonies to Help You Triumph
Leisa Hart October 15, 2020
Finding music that conveys struggle and eventual triumph is difficult because, to depict true triumph, one has to study it intensely and perhaps experience it firsthand. But such music is a wonderful tool of inspiration and empowerment.
Arts & Culture, History, Philosophy, Politics & Rights, Reviews
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
Timothy Sandefur October 2, 2020
In Cynical Theories, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay explore the connections between such phenomena as “shoutdowns,” “canceling,” and identity politics on the one hand and the philosophical doctrines taught in America’s universities on the other.
Arts & Culture, Reviews
Mulan (2020) Sullies the Legacy of a Heroine
Frank Olechnowicz October 2, 2020
If you’re looking for a Disney movie that conveys life-serving virtues and values, I passionately recommend watching (or re-watching) the 1998 animated Mulan—and abstaining from the 2020 live-action remake.
Announcements, Arts & Culture
Free post 2
New York: Riverhead Books, 2019. 352 pp. $28 (hardcover). In recent years, many people have embraced specialization as the preferred method for cultivating elite performance in fields such as sports, medicine, music, and robotics. Parents, coaches, and teachers are pushing children at increasingly earlier ages to become specialists through lots…
Arts & Culture, Good Living, History
How Travel Can Foster a Personal Renaissance
Joseph Kellard September 17, 2020
I once found it difficult to relate to the excitement travelers expressed at walking the same streets their heroes did centuries earlier. Not so after walking through cities where a hero of mine revolutionized art and science.
Arts & Culture, Politics & Rights
We Can’t Fight Racism by Engaging in Racism
Aaron Briley September 8, 2020
Making an individual’s race the determining factor in how we treat him is destructive and immoral—even if we think we’re helping him by doing so.
Arts & Culture, Biographies, Science & Technology
Remembering Grant Imahara: Mythbuster Extraordinaire
William Nauenburg September 3, 2020
Thanks in large part to Grant Imahara’s engineering brilliance, the myth that science is a purely academic realm reserved solely for people in white lab coats was thoroughly busted.
Announcements, Arts & Culture, Good Living
TOS-Con 2020’s Program Is Announced!
I hope you’ll join us in Boston for the most life-enhancing conference of the year—it’s gonna be a blast!
Arts & Culture, Reviews
The Witcher by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
John Doe 24 January 16, 2020
Whereas a lot of modern fiction advocates moral relativism or champions the “antihero,” Geralt of Rivia offers philosophically refreshing, action-packed rebuttals to those tiring tropes.