On HU

Caroline Small started the week off by talking abotu ethics in Dr. Who.

Richard Cook looked at the current state of crime comics.

Blogger and Atlantic pop culture writer Alyssa Rosenberg did a guest post on pop culture and criticism.

I sneered at R. Fiore’s take on the South Park imbroglio once, and then again.

Vom Marlowe reviewed Junjo Romantic.

And I reprinted an essay on how Torchwood presages the manporn future.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Madeloud I have an intro to death metal for beginners.

Death metal has to be one of the most inaccessible forms of structured noise ever to have passed itself off under the loose rubric of “popular music”. With vocals that are more growled than sung, drumming that sounds more like a jackhammer than a beat, a brutal insistence on lack of groove, and lyrics that embrace Satanism, decay, and being torn limb from limb — well, let’s just say that the genre isn’t everyone’s cup of steaming pus.

I have a death metal download here if the article inspires you.

At Splice Today I make fun of Walter Benjamin.

Yes, 80 years ago Benjamin was touting the newspaper, or at least the Stalinist newspaper, as a truly democratic voice. Newspapers were the bright new genre that would allow the people to take an active role in their culture and cease to be the stoned recipient drones of capitalist trash. The press (or “at any rate” as Benjamin says “the Soviet Russian press”) is changing everything; it “revises the distinction between author and reader.” The means of production are now in the hands of all, and the revolution is sure to follow.

And I have a brief review of an art opening over at the Chicago Reader.

Other Links

Sort of inspired by the R. Fiore dust up, Bert Stabler pointed me to this article arguing that Christians should dispense with questions of objective truth.