The website of John C. Snider
When Joe Biden won the presidential election in November 2020, liberals across the nation started daydreaming about what Uncle Joe might do to erase the toxic legacy of his predecessor, to make things right (or at least, make them less terrible). There was a lot of (in hindsight, laughably naïve) optimism that Biden’s victory would …
I have been inspired lately to revisit the question of the “great” sci-fi films. (See my previous posts on the Top 10 Sci-Fi Films of the 2000s and Top 10 Sci-Fi Films of the 2010s.) Others online have taken some pretty good recent stabs at this (see, e.g., “Moid Moidelhoff” at Media Death Cult, who …
A review of Benjamin Labatut’s award-nominated collection. They are well-worn clichés: the scientist as tortured genius; the idiot savant who peers unblinkingly into the secrets of the universe while forgetting to eat or bathe; or, at the most superficial, scientists as hopeless nerds, whip-smart but clueless when it comes to “regular” people and their quotidian …
Happy New Year! May your 2022 be (at least marginally) better than 2021 and 2020. One line that has repeatedly popped into my head over the last five years is from William Butler Yeats: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” I fear that future historians will mark the …