… where politics & culture meet
Though few of us would dispute the proposition (commonly attributed to George Santanya) that those who cannot remember the past are preparing themselves to repeat its mistakes, it’s advisable to keep your hand on your wallet when it comes up for sale in the marketplace of ideas, especially in times of open conflict. As David... Continue Reading →
SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH’S latest documentary is very likely to be his last. Released to cinemas on his ninety-ninth birthday, Ocean has the tone of a valediction: a swan song with whale song, and a shakier iteration of that celebrated reverential rasp. Notwithstanding its five stars in The Guardian and 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it is also something of... Continue Reading →
Considered in Greek mythology to be a member of the fifth generation of beings to appear after the creation of the world, Cadmus was a Phoenician prince and the founder of the Boeotian city of Thebes. A great slayer of monsters, he appears in Herodotus as the conduit through which the Phoenician alphabet was introduced... Continue Reading →
In Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool (2023), author James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is holidaying with his partner Em (Cleopatra Coleman) on the island of Li Tolqa, when he hits and kills a local man while driving back to his resort at night. The next day he is arrested by the authorities and told that the penalty... Continue Reading →
The notion of the Anthropocene was first proposed twenty-four years ago by the atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen. It denotes a geological epoch defined by human activity, and remains an unofficial designation, with the International Commission on Stratigraphy—whose processes appear to be geologically slow—yet to approve it for technical use. Nevertheless, in that quarter of a... Continue Reading →
https://paradigmshifton4zzz.com/2024/07/15/s2e30-technocriticism-with-richard-king/
Dan, a former student of mine and now an academic, activist and friend, is referring to the regular rallies that are taking place across the world in response to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza. We are talking, at my instigation, about the character of those gatherings; and while in some ways it feels indecent to focus... Continue Reading →
By the excellent Bruce Menzies, in The Fremantle Shipping News: https://fremantleshippingnews.com.au/2024/10/16/roaming-among-monsters/
Today I had the pleasure of sitting down with Michael Barker, editor of the Fremantle Shipping News, to chat about technology and the human condition. We went deep! https://fremantleshippingnews.com.au/2024/06/17/interview-with-richard-king-thinker-author-critic-poet
The best scene in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer comes towards the end of the movie. The titular physicist is talking to Einstein, recalling a previous conversation in which they’d discussed the possibility that an atomic bomb would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere. ‘When I came to you with those calculations’, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) reflects, ‘we thought we... Continue Reading →
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