A great skit on this weekend’s Saturday Night Live suggested an Adele song as a cure for obnoxious and endless Thanksgiving dinner arguments about politics.
Adele is great, but here’s a more substantial (though simple) thought experiment that can produce amazing results. It works great if you’re going to be … Read the rest
“I’ll meet you under the words”. There’s a large building in Cardiff, Wales with a poem embedded directly into its front wall. The poem is written half in Welsh and half in English by Gwyneth Lewis, who is part of a vibrant Welsh-speaking renaissance that draws in families, musicians, writers, … Read the rest
It’s easy to get angry when listening to Sam Harris, a stubborn young philosopher who recently made headlines for joining Bill Maher to condemn the entire religion of Islam on TV (Ben Affleck took the smarter side in this debate). Sam Harris is a pop-culture philosopher with a message … Read the rest
“It was a lust for political power.” – Bob Woodward
“There is no simple answer.” – John Dean
President Richard Nixon, caught in a big lie, resigned in disgrace forty years ago. As we commemorate our shared memories of this astounding political scandal today, we are unwittingly basking in a … Read the rest
Exactly 150 years today, the most grueling and relentless eight days of the Civil War in the United States of America began. These are the opening days of the Overland Campaign, in which two armies rampaged south through north-central Virginia in their final race towards Richmond, capital city of the … Read the rest
(This remarkable article by Lance Loud was originally published as ‘The Velvet Underground: A Skin-Deep View’ in Hit Parader magazine, June 1975, five years after the Velvets broke up. See below for the story of the article’s publication on Litkicks today.)
Right from the start, Lou’s first band was labeled … Read the rest
I can’t write a Philosophy Weekend blog post this weekend. I’ve been working too hard on some tech changes to the site that will finally launch on Tuesday or Wednesday … and I’m also too broken up about the final show of the final season of my favorite TV show, … Read the rest
Caryn and I watched an old movie on cable TV recently that left us traumatized for days. Ironically, the movie was trying to be a light-hearted and whimsical children’s musical. It was written by Dr. Seuss in 1953. The movie left us traumatized because it was so very, very bad.… Read the rest
While we’re watching counterculture moments on television from the 1960s,here’s something else I just stumbled across: the joyful jazz composer, performer and beatnik David Amram on the kid’s show Wonderama. He demonstrates his favorite instruments, and naturally leads a jam session with the kids, who are way into it.… Read the rest