December 2019

Since it was always a matter of contingent decision, the arrival of January 1st, 2020 was foretold the moment that the Gregorian Calendar was adopted...

It was 11.30am and the temperature was airport. There is nowhere colder or warmer inside the totalizing monochrome space. There is just airport climate.

This book tells the unlikely story of a Latvian-born ex-patriot, Valdis Āboliņš (1939-84), exiled to Germany during World War II and remaining there after the war

In Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, God gathers the archangels and announces that He has made animals. Satan—who else?—asks, “What are they for?”

Humanity’s fate, as fans of NBC’s The Good Place well know, is a subject for moral philosophy, whether through stacks of frayed library books, constant references to philosophers, or tension-filled replications of famous thought experiments.

I once bought a shirt at an outdoor market in New Orleans that I still wear pretty regularly. It’s red plaid flannel with a hand-stitched Sasquatch in classic mid-stride on each shoulder.

Winétt de Rokha taught me intensity, the slide from idea to idea that connects images as in dreams, with an overlap of meanings that shifts between...

It is raining in Crissy Field and you are not allowed to leave the car. It is sunny in the Mission and you are not allowed to leave the car.

People, of course, have always travelled. In earlier times, they did so mainly for conquest, for trade, for survival and occasionally to learn technical skills or philosophies from people of distant lands.

I have recently been informed that I am “outside of the sociology” of academic philosophy. The person who said this of me is someone I like and admire...

Recently, I learned of the passing of Fakir Musafar, the renowned body artist whose professional and creative life (and, as far as I know, personal life, as well)

Companies compete for consumers via the aesthetic presentation of their packaging. One type of water, for example, advertises itself as ‘artisan’ and includes a bright pink flower on the plastic wraps of its twelve packs.

The immediate, clear consequence of the UK election of December 12, 2019, is that Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has succeeded where Theresa May’s failed in the last general election, in 2017—by winning an emphatic parliamentary majority...

As an Advent rumination, I’d like to consider El Caganer. In the accumulated cultural esoterica of the Christmas season, from the horned and fearsome demon...

The title of Perry Anderson’s book certainly captures his gloss on the uniqueness of the Brazilian experience. It speaks to a multifaceted Brazil.

First, some facts, as they are in precious short supply. Around noon on Sunday 8 December, Daniel Sheridan of the Yorkshire Evening Post published a story about Jack Williment-Barr

A year ago, I came across an article by Stephen Elliott, a writer I’d admired. There were plenty of disturbing things about the piece