Has Brad Bird read Superfolks?
I would guess so, since The Incredibles shares much thematically with this 1977 novel by Robert Mayer. I discovered Superfolks recently myself, and I find the concepts familiar – but…
Tag: criticism
The Iowa Legislature – Big Government Job Killers
The activist Iowa state legislature – aka job killers – has created a new level of bureaucracy by inventing “agricultural production facility fraud,” which essentially deprives us of our God-given…
The Challenge of the Cheese Sandwich
It takes a good writer to make a good paragraph about a cheese sandwich. And George V. Higgins does just that in The Friends of Eddie Coyle. The following awesome…
Douse your Pizza with Pepper Spray
Fox’s Megyn Kelly classifies pepper spray as a food product. So how long before we start putting it in school lunches?
The Living Structure Meme
If you want to prepare for a new and illustrious career for future, I would recommend bioengineering, since future ships and buildings will be living things. Paolo Bacigalupi’s “A Pocketful for…
Bovary and the Beatles
Near the end of Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, in the translation by Geoffrey Wall, there is a line, describing Charles’s inability to cope with the loss of his wife:…
Rage against the Teacher
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court cleared the way for Scott Walker’s anti-union law to go into effect. At the same time, legislation against unions – namely teachers and firefighters – is spreading…
A Worthy Quote from Borges
From “The Immortal,” by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley: “I have noticed that in spite of religion, the conviction as to one’s own immortality is extraordinarily rare. Jews,…
It All Starts with Sturgeon, sort of…
Science fiction took a big step toward modernity (actually postmodernity) with Theodore Sturgeon’s “Unite and Conquer,” which I read recently in the collection A Way Home. Within that story, the…
Sweat of (Something’s) Brow
There has been much criticism over the recent Supreme Court ruling in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Unfortunately, critics have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Court…