The Scientist’s Worst Nightmare: A Poem
Captured and shackled by the Devils of Night a tattered rag on my eyelids to cut off the light a spear in my side, crude instructions to walk I try […]
Category Archives: Art & Literature
Proust Can’t Change Your Life: A Review of Alain de Botton’s “How Proust Can Change Your Life”
Marcel Proust is commonly known as a consummate genius for his magnum opus: In Search of Lost Time. This novel is among the best examples of involuntary memory and a […]
What Margaret Atwood’s Speculative Fiction Has to Say About Storytelling & Humanism: Book Review of “MaddAddam”
The final installment of Margaret Atwood’s speculative fiction trilogy finally arrived this year, thus concluding her series which functions as a hypothetical answer to what may happen if we don’t […]
Playing the Godgame in Greece: Book Review of John Fowles’ “The Magus”
Happily nestled between spot 92 and 94 on the Modern Library’s list of 100 Best Novels, The Magus by John Fowles is a disorienting psychological thriller detailing the misadventures of […]
Forty Days of Dating: An Experiment in Performing Intimacy
Once upon a time there lived two young, hip, successful New Yorkers. Their names were Jessica and Timothy. Jessica and Timothy were each tired of the dating scene – it […]
Tendentious Art and Political Games: The Olympics of Sochi 2014 & Berlin 1936
Fewer than six months from now, the 2014 Winter Olympic Games are scheduled to take place in Sochi, Russia. Russia, already under criticism for the rigid censorship being imposed by […]
Nordic Larp: What It Is And Why It Matters (Part II)
Last week, I gave a brief introduction to an immersive, dramatic, and academic style of live-action role-playing known as Nordic larp. This week I am going to share more about […]
Nordic Larp: What It Is And Why It Matters (Part I)
About six months ago I participated in a game called “Mad About the Boy”. I’d like to share with you how that experience changed my perceptions both of myself and […]
“Of Our Spiritual Strivings”
By Raj Gopal Rutgers University Check out this classic essay by the great African-American scholar and writer W.E.B. Du Bois, entitled “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”. It’s the essay that engendered […]
To Walt Whitman, From Mark Twain
By Raj Gopal Rutgers University Here’s a letter from Mark Twain, perhaps the greatest American novelist, to Walt Whitman, perhaps the greatest American poet. It’s a movingly sincere ode to […]
Applied Sentience 