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The Uncanny Valley
[Update: This post is the first in an ongoing series about the Uncanny Valley. Click here to read them all.] A couple of weeks ago when I was teaching Descartes’ Meditations, one of my students made reference to something called the “uncanny valley,” which I had never heard of before but which sounded really fascinating….
Read MoreThe Uncanny Valley 2: Racial Appearances
[This is a continutation of my previous post on the uncanny valley. If you don’t know what the uncanny valley is, you may want to go back and read the previous post first.] In 1931, at the beginning of the dénouement of the Harlem Renaissance, conservative (some would say “reactionary”) African-American author George Schuyler penned…
Read More“Heart of Stone” Music Video
You may remember my mentioning a couple of months ago on this blog (“Video Killed the Philosophy Professor“) that I had my first experience shooting a music video for one of my original songs. Well, here’s the final product. Directed by Dana Gabrion and Chris Morgan. Photography by Chris Morgan. Starring: Max Maloney, Marlinee Iverson,…
Read MoreThe Tie That Binds
At the beginning of the 2008 film Doubt (an adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s play by the same name), a priest challenges his congregation with an unorthodox sermon about the nature of the ties that bind us together. Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) asks his flock: “What do you do when you’re not sure? ”…
Read MoreHuman, All Too Human (In Memorium: Michael Jackson)
The memorial service for Michael Jackson is being broadcast on television here in the United States today and, not surprisingly, there is mixed reaction from talking heads and the public. There is no denying that Michael Jackson will go down in history as the archetype of a “pop icon,” nor that he was an almost-unrivaled…
Read More“Weak Humanism” Interview on Digital Dialogues
I recently had the good fortune of doing an interview with Chris Long (Penn State University) for his “Digital Dialogues” philosophy podcast discussing my work on “weak humanism.” (You can listen to my interview here.) I’ve been working on the Weak Humanism manuscript all summer now, so it was a welcome respite from that work…
Read MoreOn Puppies, Trees and Fetuses… or, What I DON’T Mean By “Weak Humanism”
I’ve gotten some interesting feedback from my “Digital Dialogues” interview with Chris Long on weak humanism, including several questions about my work (and its implications) that I had not anticipated. So, I thought I’d take an opportunity here to try and clear up some things. I may need to split my response to the concerns…
Read MoreDistrict 9 and Science (Non)Fiction
I went with a friend to see the new sci-fi film District 9 last night, despite the fact that, as a rule, I’m not a huge fan of science fiction. It was a great film. It was produced by Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame), and South African writer/director, Niell Blomkamp, makes his…
Read MoreTorture 101
A friend and colleague of mine invited me to come speak to his class about torture last week. The class was a writing seminar, organized around the theme of “citizenship,” and my colleague was feeling (understandably) frustrated because– in his words– he “just didn’t feel like [he] had the tools or the knowledge to counter…
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