Chris Braak's Blog, page 7

On Shakespeare, Relatability, and Ira Glass

I am taking a break from expounding my LIFE PHILOSOPHY to talk about some other things, as a kind of intellectual palate-cleanser.  Today’s subject on which I will now go on at length, pulled randomly from the heaps of garbage that I read every day, is this article by Colin McEnroe over at Salon. For […]

Religious but not Spiritual, Part Three: Mysticism

So, here I am, continuing on with my PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. I talked before a little bit about what I think the world isn’t, and how we can have a functional morality within an atheistic context; then I talked a little bit about what I think the world is, and about how we navigate it. […]

Religious but not Spiritual, Part Two: Materialism

So, prompted by some comments about how certain atheists (*cough*richarddawkins*cough*) tend to make all atheists look bad by acting like huge pricks all the time, I figured I’d participate in the process of the differentiation of atheists by laying out what my own philosophy of the world is, rather than according to one particular thing […]

Religious but not Spiritual, Part One: Atheism

On the internet today, someone that I know said that, even though she wasn’t an atheist, she thought we all deserved a better atheism than Richard Dawkins gives us.  I am an atheist, and I’m inclined to agree — I think Dawkins (et all those guys — Hitchens, Harris, &c) did an important service by […]

Causality: A Game for Time Lords

This is the game they play on Gallifrey, to teach young Time Lords how to start thinking along timelines, instead of within timelines. The Short Game of Causality is played on 18 boards.  The long game is played on 1,534.  The boards are arranged above and below a line called the Horizon.  Below the Horizon […]

Aphra Behn, Empress of the Moon!

Hello friends of the theater, and of me, and of threat quality!  I am here to tell you about Aphra Behn, British playwright and spy, historically the first woman to make her living as a writer, generally speaking a hero to the people.  You may remember Aphra from the play that I have talked about […]

Ways In Which Ruth Graham’s Article Could Have Affected Me, But Didn’t

In response to Ruth Graham’s article at Slate, “Against YA“, but REALLY in response to the sudden eruption of hand-wringing defenses of why it’s okay to read Young Adult books. 1.  I am in a bookstore and I see a book in the Young Adult section that I think about buying. Another customer looks at me […]

On Elliot Rodger, Isla Vista, Patriarchy

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about Elliot Rodger and his murder spree in Isla Vista, and how many, many signs point to the fact that this was motivated by a violent misogyny that had at its root a staggering entitlement complex.  You may have also heard of the many, many men who have been […]

Privilege: Roll to Save Versus Getting Fucked

The funny thing is that I was thinking about how to explain privilege the other day, and I wrote this without any particular incident in mind, figuring to myself: “Give it time; eventually SOMEONE is going to act like a jackass in public and make this piece topical.” And lo, the universe gave me Tal […]

On History, Historicity, and the Responsibility of Art

I caught this article from Gabriel Valdez’s Wednesday Collective in a sort of a roundabout way – it’s a defense of something like “The Expert Review”, in which a reviewer criticizes a work of fiction with some level of expertise – pointing out historical errors and the like. Some people think the Expert Review should die; […]