At the end of the service, after the monks left with their stern but beatific expressions, I stepped out to the terrace, hundreds of feet from the sea. At the distance the sun shimmered, calming the waves of the Aegean. The morning was all aglow. Was I beholding a revelation?

Joseph Vogl discusses Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis and the semiotics of speculative finance markets in the introduction to his brilliant interdisciplinary book.

No, she insisted, she could never go back to Zanesville. Of course, she would continue to visit her hometown but she would not live there again. My student’s words were adamant but her voice broke with undisguised sadness.

Recently I had reason to reminisce about hardcore, a music very close to my heart. Want proof? Pictured below is the wall of my bedroom.

Apologies for being somewhat slack on the blogging front these last few weeks. Exciting activities among the family of musicians I've been working with the past few years have kept me away from computers more than usual. I spent much of the last week hanging out in the American South -- a part of the country I rarely get to see -- on the occasion of Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The current wave of revelations concerning child abuse by Catholic priests and the subsequent cover-ups by the Church hierarchy is, predictably, turning into a field day for atheists.

When we believe something in a moderate, as opposed to a fundamentalist, way, we tend to think of it as subject to contestation, to correction by further or better knowledge, to discussion and interpretation. When we believe something in a fundamentalist way, in contrast, we think of it as ultimate and unchanging, never subject to further interpretation or discussion.

José María asked: Do "fundamentalism" and "moderation" take on the same "connotations" (to use your word) when the "doctrinaire faithful" are seen as existing within a so-called "pre-political" realm (they are thus gathered as an "ecclesia" proper) as they do when the "state" makes its appearance as "the" overarching and all-encompassing form of community?

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

Maybe you heard about Sufjan Stevens' recent US tour. Maybe you read my braggadocious post about the (tiny) role I had in kicking off this latest round of shows.