Commentaries on the Golden Path

Columns written for Alarm magazine between 2000 and 2010: essays on music, art and culture.

1. #37Spiritual ValuesSummer 2010Johnny Cash's "Spiritual," scarcity, and a future where entire lives are recorded, priced, and relived.
2. #36Unite and ConquerWinter 2009How civilization homogenized human culture, and the danger of a planet that all lives, trades, and thinks the same way.
3. #35Cult PsychologyFall 2009On the psychology of cults, the line between cult and religion, and why democracy depends on worshipping ideas rather than prophets.
4. #34God Particles & Black Holes2009The Large Hadron Collider as a lens on the war between fundamentalists who answer to the past and progressives who face the future.
5. #33The American Balladeer GeneralOct / Nov 2008Seeing Tom Waits live in Mobile, and finding the beautiful, real America worth fighting for against homogeny.
6. #32Hard EntertainmentAug / Sep 2008How broadcast news mutated from hard journalism into hard entertainment, a dying beast spitting blood.
7. #31The Structure of ExpectationJun/Jul 2008A Super Bowl upset as proof that the random nature of existence still beats our addiction to prediction.
8. #30Wheels out of KilterApr/May 2008Using Daniel Day-Lewis's tyrants and his years as a cobbler to ask whether American power can ever humble itself.
9. #29Movement and EscapeWinter 2008Why discontent drives us to travel through space when we cannot travel through time, caught between escape and the search for knowledge.
10. #28An All-Embracing HugFall 2007On American identity as power through inclusion, and the people who see nothing of value in our all-embracing hug.
11. #27Mysterious Cities of GoldSummer 2007How a childhood cartoon bred a lifelong hunger for context and completeness, and why most people would rather be understood than understand.
12. #26The Fall of GodSpring 2007Artificial life as the central plot of human existence, and how building our own Adam and Eve flips Genesis on its head.
13. #25The Bearded Lady of the National ArchivesWinter 2006On certainty, democracy as the sum of a billion private realities, and how the Constitution became a museum curiosity.
14. #24My War Is PersonalFall 2006A dispatch on the private battle for Order against Chaos, and why order turns to oppression the moment it extends beyond the self.
15. #23The Golden Calf of the FutureSummer 2006On gluttony, endless consumption, and how we worship the upgraded future instead of mastering what we already own.
16. #22The last national tragedyWinter 2005On Hurricane Katrina, the choice between individual and collective responsibility, and whether a nation built on alienation can still be shocked.
17. #21The Death of the MillenarianFall 2005On the generation raised after The Bomb, why post-apocalyptic dreams still haunt us, and the hope that collapse could mean reorganization rather than annihilation.
18. #20To Be a Human Is to Be a ThingSpring 2005On trading daily survival for comfort, and why creation and struggle are what keep a person from withering into a thing.
19. #19Fear the WardulakFall 2004On political polarization in the 2004 election, the fear of a country under compulsion and consumption, and why this world is still worth fighting for.
20. #18Lap DogSummer 2004A vacation high, a frantic phone call, and the longest ten days of a dog's life.
21. #17The UnnaturalWinter 2004On finding your aptitude as the only escape from a life of quiet desperation.