I won't pretend like I trust or respect political art. I think it's inherently suspect. Which is not to say that art cannot have a powerful galvanizing effect on politics, or that it cannot be great art.

I have an idealistic view of what it is to have a career. I like to imagine that people are careful about choosing a life's work. I like to think that pointless activities -- while key to recreation -- are banished from the world of work. Unfortunately there is a sharp rebuke to this idea. In a word: Politics.

In his thoughtful and detailed response to my last blog postings, Lee Konstantinou further unfolds his initial remarks on my piece “The Terror of the Unforeseen: Speculative Fiction and Cinema after 1989”.

Advance publicity for Game Change, the new book by John Heileman and Mark Halperin about the 2008 presidential race, brought with it a furor about some reportedly "outrageous" racial remarks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently made about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. 

A key issue in the debate around atheism concerns what happens at a cognitive level when we say we believe something.

An uncertain faith is the title of the manuscript I am currently working on. It refers to an alternate definition of faith to that used by atheists to dismiss religious believers, namely, belief without evidence.

As the underlying structures of the war in Iraq become publicly visible, its basic logics emerge: a systematic campaign of disinformation waged at home and abroad, a propaganda machine of unparalleled sophistication, and a cultivated manipulation of fear in the interests of justifying and perpetuating an increasingly questionable war on terror.