In my continuing quest to watch all the movies on the AFI Top 100 list, tonight I watched North by Northwest directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant.  Hitchcock, known for his suspense and scary moments, makes in this movie more of a thriller.  While there are moments of suspense, the movie is more… Continue reading Movie Review: North by Northwest

With the help of the New York Public Library and the DVD wing of Netflix, I have set out to try and watch every movie on the top 100 list of the American Film Institute. As with any venture, however, there are some side roads one takes on the road to the final destination. I… Continue reading Movie Review: Woman of the Year (1942)

Neil Postman’s book infamous critique of the society obsessed with efficiency and technical bureaucracy through the use of ever greater amounts of technology seems more and more relevant 25 years later than it may have even seemed when first released in the early 1990s.  I read portions of Postman’s books in college, but never all… Continue reading Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (Book Review)

Synopsis Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire covers the years of 1963-1965 focusing on the intersection of an number of civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X (and the Nation of Islam), Bob Moses, and many more.  Branch’s background as a journalist takes the reader through a number of important events including the Mississippi… Continue reading Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 (Book Review)

There is a aloneness that I feel on the 4 train even when it is packed. If my mind is not distracted by a text from a colleague or family member or if I’m not reading something, my mind often wanders based on the advertisement text above the subway windows. Today I saw this advertisement:… Continue reading 9/11, Gun Violence, and Remembrance

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in an announcement at Facebook headquarters stated that the company will begin charging $2 a month to help make the app more user friendly and decrease reliance on advertising. This is obviously fake, but if you were angered by this post, could it be that you don’t actually believe Facebook is… Continue reading Facebook to Start Charging $2/Month

This second post in a series on whether Bernie Sanders could have won the election will look generally at the three “types” of voters in 2016: Bernie Supporters, Hillary Supporters, and Trump Supporters. After talking about those three voters, we will explore the general electorate through the lens of general political theory and the current… Continue reading Could Bernie Sanders Have Won? Part 2: The Vote Types

Introduction This series of posts will attempt to answer a question I’ve been seeing a lot of my facebook feed recently: Could Bernie sanders have won the election? Before we get into answering this question or whether or not Bernie Sander could have won the election, we must admit this is a question about blame.… Continue reading Could Bernie Sanders Have Won? Part 1

Russian Investigation Should not be Partisan I really love the movie “The Conversation” by Francis Ford Coppola as an interesting look at how spying ultimately creates a paranoid world where no one can trust one another.  Gene Hackman’s character in the movie is a wiretapper who comes to distrust the world so much that he… Continue reading Russian Hacking Should be a Bipartisan Issue

I recently posted this article on my Facebook about Republicans attempting to make it easier to defund Planned Parenthood by reversing a last ditch effort by President Obama to protect Planned Parenthood’s status as a provider of Title X services to women.  The article notes that Title X is the only source of family planning… Continue reading Abortion is NOT the Issue