Category: Pop Culture

(note: no spoilers below! I haven’t even seen the new Star Wars movie yet.) As mentioned in an earlier post, a few years ago my son came home from school saying Darth Vader was Luke’s father. The problem? He hadn’t seen Star Wars. Grade school playgrounds being the source of many hard truths. As good parents we soon watched… Continue reading Why a new Star Trek is a bad idea, even though a new Star Wars is fine. Science Fiction ≠ Fantasy.

Hugo award winning science fiction author Greg Egan complained recently about science fiction movies, starting his post with the line “Why is almost every contemporary science fiction movie irredeemably stupid?” He digs into three movies: Her, Ex Machina and Interstellar. Regarding Her, he noted:

So yes I’m late to the movie Frozen. On the left are the key characters: Olaf the snowman, Elsa the older sister and snow queen, and Anna the younger sister. And on the right, well, let’s just say each of my three kids identified their favorite movie character with exactly no help from me. So maybe Frozen… Continue reading Time to accept Frozen’s greatness. And why not? John Lasseter modeled Elsa’s biggest scene.

Recently my son came home from kindergarten and told me: “Dad. Darth Vader is Luke’s father.” He had never watched Star Wars. So I asked how he knew. He said “they told me on the playground.” Hmmm….on the playground. Then I recalled the only Giants baseball game we went to this summer had a Star… Continue reading What Star Wars teaches us about being “wrong on the internet”

This post is a random list of life hacks I use on a regular basis. By “life hacks” I mean any type of shortcut or trick that saves time. Most I’ve been doing for so long I can’t recall where I learned them. But where I know I’ve linked back to the source. If you… Continue reading Life hacking tips and tricks

Orson Scott Card’s best and most popular sci-fi novel Ender’s Game is being turned into a movie coming out in November. Harrison Ford is Colonel Graff. Ben Kingsley is Mazer Rackham. I’m a fan of the 1985 book, and am really looking forward to the movie. But some people are boycotting Ender’s Game because Card is against gay… Continue reading With some sympathy for Orson Scott Card

Last year Tyler Cowen wrote a speculative piece about how football might go into long term decline due to head injuries. Then Ta-nehisi Coates, a lifelong football fanatic, started posting how he was losing his love of football as he learned more about brain trauma. This got me wondering. The right analogy here is probably boxing, which… Continue reading Football, Boxing and head injuries

Note: this 2012 post is obsolete, you should instead read my newer 2020 much improved version here. Question: Why is Christmas music terrible? Answer: television. But not today’s television. We’re talking 1950’s television. As always, xkcd is on the case. Below is the great xkcd chart showing when currently popular Christmas songs were first released. Note the… Continue reading Why is Christmas music terrible? Answer: 1950’s television.