Author: Adam Lee

So, I have a teaser: I’m nearly ready to unveil a big, exciting project – you’ll all find out about it soon. And since I haven’t done one of these threads in a while, it seems only fair to offer others the opportunity as well. This is an open thread for the purposes of self-promotion.…

Atlas Shrugged, part I, chapter V Although the most vivid (and creepiest) scenes depicting Ayn Rand’s views on love and sex are still to come, this chapter offers a preview, as we find out in flashback that Dagny and Francisco became lovers during their college days. The first hint of this comes on a summer…

They say the first step to getting better is recognizing when you can use some help, and I really think Richard Dawkins needs someone to sit down with him and explain a few things. Lately, it seems that every time he says something about Islam (or feminism), he’s embarrassingly prone to putting his foot in…

I’ve been writing a lot lately about hatred and discrimination, about the small prejudices that keep humanity fractured and ignorant. It’s important to fight for reason and equality, but I think it’s equally important to remember why we’re fighting these prejudices, and keep in mind the greater things that we can accomplish if we overcome…

I’ve written about Russia’s hostile and oppressive treatment of artists and the Russian Orthodox church’s increasingly close alliance with the state, but in the last few years, things have gone from bad to worse. Journalists and anti-corruption activists have been murdered with impunity. Critics of the state have been subjected to trumped-up charges and show…

The webcomic xkcd is one of my daily reads, so I’ve been enjoying this article on Wired about its creator’s most ambitious project yet. Most of xkcd’s comics are one-panel jokes, but starting in March, he unveiled an astonishing comic called “Time” – an animation consisting of over 3,000 separate frames, posted gradually over a…

To put some swing in your step for the coming weekend, here’s a little something from Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside. I recently came across this indie rock-and-roll band hailing from Portland, Oregon and liked them a lot, which I suppose means I’ve completely succumbed to music hipsterdom. It’s good stuff, regardless: a defiantly…

Atlas Shrugged, part I, chapter V One thing about Atlas Shrugged that’s very handy for a review like this is that there’s never any ambiguity about which characters embody the author’s views. Her characters are all black-and-white, either fully consistent capitalists who are always right or fully consistent looters who are always wrong. That means…

The media has been in a tizzy these past few days over some remarks made by Pope Francis on an airplane flight back from a trip to Brazil: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using…

In Ohio, the state legislature recently approved a plan to build a Holocaust memorial on the grounds of the statehouse, with public money to be contributed towards the cost of construction. The winning design incorporates two tall structures of stainless steel, engraved with the testimony of an Auschwitz survivor, that are shaped so as to…