Matt Holt of Nothingface Passed Away In April 2017

I'm bummed out about this and surprised I didn't find out about it until now. I even mentioned to people over the years that I was curious as to what he was up to these days. One of my all time favorite vocalists/lyricists to one of my all time favorite bands, he will be greatly missed. I will write more on him and the band in the future.

Thoughts On House Of Cards

I can't think of a single instance in the show where any character offered more than a sort of perfunctory mention of their party's ideology. It is assumed from beginning to end that we're involved in a Machiavellian world; it's only ever a matter of degree. What is most disturbing about the show, at least for me personally, is its ability to paint the sociopathic main character as sometimes tender; but a tenderness which only manifests when he ascertains that someone has committed to him unconditionally, or when someone is able to subordinate their self interest momentarily in the name of his circumstantially greater force. The movie It is nothing in the way of horror compared to a season of this show. 

One of the Many Reasons I Love Roberto Calasso

I'm ashamed to say I only recently got around to watching Roberto Calasso's lecture on Rene Girard at Stanford University from 2014. It's refreshing to watch him dismantle the worldviews of those delicate Ivy League sensibilities (no disrespect to the often insightful Robert Harris). The scienceers (people who think that scientists are priests and that science, just shy of sexual satisfaction, will somehow make them happy) were quite disturbed to hear him say that concern for ecology is not enough to fix our problems, nor is neuroscience the end-all-be-all in human understanding.