A Very Merry Christmas to All!

To the sales clerks, the waitstaff, the utility workers, and everyone else in the service industries who put up with our impatience and seeming indifference to them; to the drivers, the loaders, and the bus conductors who keep us company while we travel home; to the soldiers, the police officers, the coastguard men, the security […]

Bravery

“We wuz robbed” was the consensus when Catriona Gray didn’t win Miss World 2016. And you know where the outrage stems from when you see that the fourth auto-complete question on Google is “cartoon gray answer.” So here’s what she said: Was this a good answer? Before I go any further, however, I have to say […]

The futility of emotional tests

Yo, Past-Me. Remember that last big exam you took? You and your friends spent hours reviewing each other and trying to predict what the questions were going to be. You came up with all the difficult questions – the ones that had all of you sweating bullets by the time the teacher came and distributed the […]

The Mystique of Secret Covenant

“How could you win the loyalty of such men?” “There are proven ways: play on the certain knowledge of their superiority, the mystique of secret covenant, the esprit of shared suffering. It can be done. It has been done on many worlds in many times.” Frank Herbert Today, a friend of mine just got elected […]

What lies beneath

Visual representations have always run the entire gamut from hyper-realism to the soul crushingly abstract, and each point along that spectrum will have its faithful acolytes and sworn enemies. Michael Capili’s art is no exception, but it is exceptional. At first glance, a typical person would cringe as he realises that there is something not quite […]

The Bro King

Let’s face it. If you were looking for a modern day treatment of the story of King Arthur – or at least the most commonly held version of it, taking into consideration the fact that scholars can’t even agree if he existed at all or was entirely imaginary – then King Arthur: Legend of the Sword […]

The Last Jedi

The teaser trailer for The Last Jedi dropped today and it looks real good! Just a few quick points: The trailer opens with Rey (Daisy Ridley) still on the island where she found Luke (Mark Hamill), at the end of The Force Awakens. Then we hear the voice of Luke – you can hear the Joker […]