Thoughts on Karate Kid
Recently I’ve been interested in remakes, so I was eager to see The Karate Kid, which revisits the now-classic 1984 film of the same name. The remake is one of the most faithful I can remember; in a time (in a world?) of updates and adaptations that wax nostalgic about TV, film, and toys of the 1970s and 80s while… read more
A tiny dollop of yuletide greetings
As we do most years, we opened Christmas crackers—those little cardboard tubes that pop when pulled, revealing small toys, paper crowns, and jokes. I thought I’d share a particularly brilliant joke from one cracker, one that made me think of object-oriented philosophy as much as it did Christmas (even if it mistakes an object for its attributes). Here goes: Why… read more
A Visit to the Bestiary
When I was a philosophy undergraduate student, I had a life-changing experience in a class on the philosophy of language. It was a good class, as undergraduate classes tend to be: I learned the basics of a subject had known little about previously. The course was taught by a newly minted PhD whose specialty was that subject. She was young… read more
Graham Harman and a Tiny Horse
Today John Sharp showed me this insanely cute dwarf miniature horse, named Koda. He’s about as big as a cat, so noticeably smaller than a normal miniature horse because he is, well, a dwarf. Click for a bigger image, or see more pics here. One of my favorite sidetrips in Graham Harman’s Guerilla Metaphysics (back in print soon) is his… read more
"Do you happen to have a pair of birds that are... just friendly?"
There are lots of unusual plush toys and fancy resin dolls these days. Far more than there once were. First they were made for humor’s sake — the Albert Einstein and Shakespeare action figures. Then for education’s sake — the Presidents of the United States action figures. But now merchandising has become a parody of itself. There’s no need for… read more
Fandom and Detritus
One of my gripes with Henry Jenkins’s book Convergence Culture was its tendency to privilege pop cultural fan activity to other sorts of attention. Appealing though they may be, I wondered if Harry Potter and Survivor really sat at the pinnacle of human creativity in the way that the book implied. One of the problems that concerned me was the… read more
Opinion piece published in Gamasutra
Note: the “Spore Store” description has been updated here to account for misinformation I received researching this material. Full clarification is available at the end of the Gamasutra article. In the games industry, Will Wright’s Spore is surely the most highly anticipated title in recent memory. Everyone knows about it — we’ve been seeing previews and demos and hearing news… read more