Confessions of a Conservative Atheist
The world’s only one man media empire
On the surface, Hamlet ponders life and fear of death, but the subtext veers far beyond that into morality and conscience, reflecting the themes of the play and the broader range of the human condition. Not bad for a speech that seems almost accidentally stuck into the final product, as if Shakespeare wrote it for… Continue reading “To be or not to be” is the most famous speech in the English language, but what does it really mean?
For years, progressives have advocated increasing the cost of gasoline and other fossil fuels via a “carbon pricing” scheme, but now that prices have spiked, President Biden is blaming Russia, begging communist dictatorships to produce more dirty fuels, and lying about the insanity of his own energy policy. Earlier this week, President Biden blamed the… Continue reading The backwards insanity of our energy policy
You can consider The Power of the Dog an arthouse western with a star in the lead role and recognizable actors in the supporting cast. It’s a character study more than an epic. Unforgiven, on the other hand, is a blockbuster western with a rich, dark underbelly. Later this month, Jane Campion’s disturbing The Power… Continue reading The Power of the Dog is all the rage, but Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven remains the undisputed anti-western masterpiece
The world has no shortage of horrors, once you expand your lens beyond Western Europe. Horrors and humanitarian crises caused by repressive, authoritarian regimes are the norm in fact, not the exception. We should do what we can, but we can’t save everyone. Europe is supposed to be different. These things don’t happen in the… Continue reading Ukraine: Don’t let Eurocentrism or even outright racism dictate our response
It’s an intentionally provocative question, but one that should be asked in a world when there are no good or guaranteed options to prevent bad actors like Vladimir Putin from invading neighboring countries, committing war crimes, causing untold bloodshed, and disrupting the entire globe. If we could go back in time, what would you do… Continue reading Is it time to reconsider the US ban on assassinations?
We are hesitant to target Russia’s oil industry or to eject all Russian banks from international transactions for fear of negative global impacts, and yet we’re implementing policies and considering others that could result in downing Russian planes and starting a war directly with Russia, which would be the worst global impact imaginable. On Tuesday,… Continue reading To fly or not to fly, that is the ridiculously dangerous question the world is asking when it comes to Russia
It took close to 350 years for mathematics and philosophy to catch up with the ideas about the human mind explored in Shakespeare’s classic tragedy. From computer science to the study of language, the opacity of other minds remains at the forefront of our understanding of each other and at the center of Iago’s scheming… Continue reading Shakespeare’s Othello, the Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence, and the indeterminacy of radical translation
The announcement that there will be elves, dwarves, and other species of color prompts Tolkien purists to claim Amazon Studios is destroying the franchise, which of course prompts accusations of racism and bigotry from the usual suspects. Of course, few bother to consider that elves and dwarves aren’t real and aren’t human at all… Last… Continue reading Amazon’s woke take on Tolkien provokes another racial controversy
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 