Here’s a generous chunk of a really interesting and incisive blog post by author and Presbyterian pastor C. R. Wiley, who has been articulating interesting and incisive thoughts on religion, science, culture, Lovecraft, C. S. Lewis, and an associated network of ideas and writers for a some time now: For [my scientist friends] the imagination…
Month: June 2016
Michael Dirda on mummies in pulp fiction
Wonderful to come across this new article from Michael Dirda at Barnes & Noble Review, which offers — in typical Dirda fashion — a thoroughly absorbing, insightful, and well-written treatment of a fun and fascinating subject: Over the past few months I’ve read, or reread, some of the most famous stories about mummies, Egyptian curses,…
Sadness and Awe: A YouTube playlist
I assembled this a couple of months ago, near the end of the college semester, as background accompaniment for the mountain of papers and exams that I was then grading. It also works as an expressive playlist for greeting and fulfilling emotions of cosmic melancholy and infinite solitude, with a couple of palate-cleansing musical moments…
Jan Svankmajer: “A puppet is a magical object”
A puppet is a magical object. It is not a toy, is it? Here they see it as puppet theatre, as puppets for kids. But it’s just not like that. These native tribes — in Africa or Oceania, etc. — the shamans use puppets in communication not only with the upper world, with the gods,…
Reviews of ‘Ghosts, Spirits, and Psychics’
Today I was pleased to spot a new and positive assessment of my paranormal encyclopedia from a reviewer for the American Library Association’s Reference and User Services Association (RUSA): Producing a reference book about the paranormal presents a unique challenge. Various aspects of the phenomenon — under the rubric of “the supernatural” — have been…