From our alternative weekly, The Memphis Flyer:—————————- Bozo the clown, Jesse the racistLarry Harmon, the man who popularized the show business character Bozo the Clown, has died of congestive heart failure at the age of 83. Harmon did not create the flame-haired character, but played him in numerous appearances over the years. He purchased the…
Read MoreThere’s an interesting article in the New York Times today– “The 60’s Begin To Fade As Liberal Professors Retire”— that touches on a number of issues surrounding what appears to be an impending “generational shift” in the American professorate. According to the author, over 54% of full-time faculty in the United States were over the…
Read More[If you got here through a Google search for “sad songs”, you should read this first.] A while back on this blog, there was a great discussion about sad songs in response to one of my posts entitled “Sad Songs Say So Much.” I’ve been thinking about that again recently for a couple of reasons….
Read MoreI just dicovered the website Capitol Words, which provides an “at-a-glance view into the daily proceedings of the United States Congress through the simplest lens available.” What is the “simplest lens available” you may be asking yourself? Well, it’s really simple. Like, a single word. That’s right, for every day that Congress is in session,…
Read MoreHere’s a little tune from The Man in Black to make you smile on a Friday. Nevermind that it’s an execution song. (Details, details.) As I’ve said before, I think God speaks to humanity through Johnny Cash. Maybe not in this song in particular… but I don’t pretend to know the mind of God.
Read MoreLast year’s Academy Award for Best Picture went to the Coen Brothers’ haunting film No Country for Old Men, based on the novel of the same name by (University of Tennessee alum) Cormac McCarthy. In one of the most important scenes– which actually occurs twice–the film’s murderous, mysterious, and thoroughly amoral antagonist, Anton Chigurh (Javier…
Read MoreTwenty-four years ago today, on June 25, 1984, Michel Foucault died in Paris, France. In an interview with Lé Magazine Littéraire, barely a month before his passing, Foucault remarked: “The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field,…
Read MorePace the author of Ecclesiastes, every once in a while we find that there is, in fact, something new under the sun. As evindence, I refer you to the political philosophy blog Public Reason, where Simon Keller (Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) recently offered what I find to be a remarkably original “Thought…
Read MoreThe Washington Post reported this weekend that “3 in 10 Americans Admit to Race Bias.” It’s fairly amusing to watch this little piece cycle through the news channels today. Some of the reporters are saying “30% of Americans admit to race bias” like this: “Oh. My. God. There are RACISTS in this country! This is…
Read MoreSince I’m spending most of my days writing about philosophy, I’ve decided to limit my writing on this blog to the topic of film for a little while. Today, the subject is another one of my favorites, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford (soundtrack, funny enough, by Burt Bacharach)….
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