How the Surrealists Used Randomness as a Catalyst for Creative Expression
it’s important to recognize that embracing randomness allowed these artists to think outside the box
Read more...Category Archives: Curiousities
My Life So Far in Type (Partly, at Least)
Reminiscence of the transition from analog to digital in the publishing world.
Read more...Book Review: The Mysterious Impact of Music on the Brain and Body
Daniel J. Levitin’s “I Heard There Was a Secret Chord” explores the many ways music can help heal our bodies and minds.
Read more...Satyajit Das: New Asian Cinematic Obsessions
A discussion of recent Japanese and Korean films, and the origins of this cinematic vogue.
Read more...Book Review: Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential”
A ramble about food (and ultimately kindness).
Read more...The Chokepoint: A Ubiquitous and Powerful Tool for Strategic Analysis
The chokepoint concept with a lot of maps and many examples
Read more...In Praise of the Weird
The weird is that which introduces cracks into the edifice of the status quo, liberating possibilities for different futures.
Read more...Culture Clash: What 14 Million Images Tell Us About Times A-Changin’
An effort to track culture changes over time via diversity of coiffure and attire….but the data has some not-acknowledged biases.
Read more...Book Review: You Talking to Me? How Human Language Evolved
Prehistory professor Steven Mithen’s “The Language Puzzle” explores the mysteries of when and how we began to speak.
Read more...Spook Scholarship: A Prominent Former CIA Analyst and Project Ukraine Backer Moonlights as a Collegiate Textbook Coauthor
Students lucky enough to be assigned the books will learn that foreign countries resisting US imperialism aren’t the only danger to “democracy,” but the American people are as well.
Read more...Is EU’s Fuzzy Natural Gas Math Leading to Major Minuses in the Caucasus?
Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process gets tangled up with the EU’s desperate ploys to kick Russian gas reliance.
Read more...Sixteen Dad Jokes in Honor of Father’s Day (with Zeisgeistiana)
What will a future Zeitgeist historian think?
Read more...Death and the Cinema
A discussion of film, even films about death, will hopefully come as a distraction from turbulent news.
Read more...“It’s Not Just Ideology: Why the U.S. Is Hard-Wired to Be Hostile to Autocratic Regimes”
An, erm, novel exercise to present Americans as always on board with good-thinking values like opposing autocratic players.
Read more...Book Review: How Plants Experience the World
In “The Light Eaters,” Zoë Schlanger considers the evidence for plant intelligence, and what that means for humanity.
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