From an American Ex-Moonie — I once read a book called The Middle East Crisis Factory, which was written by Palestinian Arab Spring activist Iyad El-Baghdadi and British-Libyan Arab Spring activist Ahmed Gatnash. The aim of the book is to look at the roots of the problems plaguing the Middle East and provide democratic, human…

Maybe the best video game movie ever! — The Super Mario Bros Movie is a pure sugar rush, like watching an exciting Saturday morning cartoon with a fresh bowl of Lucky Charms. I cannot think of any other film which has so perfectly captured the thrill of playing a video game. The Mario movie is a near-perfect celebration…

My other nominees include How To Play Football, Seven, and But I’m A Cheerleader — NOTE: This year, I decided to remove four of my selections from The Mind’s Eye series. The reason being that I discovered that these films were exclusively released on VHS. While home video recordings are not expressly forbidden by the National Film Registry, they are not prioritized, so I made…

Will human creativity survive the 21st century? — The Chef, the Runner, and the Chessmaster “Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. …

You can support the Internet Archive and authors at the same time — Introduction I would like to amend my previous criticism of the Internet Archive (IA). While I praised the IA for preserving invaluable artifacts, such as old websites, Grateful Dead concerts, and Balinese writings, I criticized its Open Library (OL) for not acquiring official licenses for ebooks which are still in-print and…

“Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light” is an inspiring story about how a video game brought a father and son together one last time — SPOILER ALERT: Plot details for FFXIV: Dad of Light follow. NOTE: In this essay, I will sometimes quote or refer to a 2015 interview in the online magazine Inside Games. The interview was originally in Japanese and I translated it myself. My Japanese is far from perfect, so I cannot…

I spoke with the author Lisa Kohn about her memoir of her life in the Moonies — I found a lot to relate to in Lisa Kohn’s memoir, To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under The Influence. Like me, she was an ex-member of a cult known as the Unification Church. The cult was founded by the late Korean billionaire Sun Myung Moon, in 1954, where…

Gangsta’s Paradise, The Mollusk, and American Idiot — It’s that time of year again, folks. Every year, the Library of Congress selects 25 American recordings to be preserved in its National Recording Registry (NRR), which are historically, culturally, or aesthetically significant to American life. …

Zelda’s revolutionary debut on the Wii — SPOILER WARNING: Plot details for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess follow. PLEASE NOTE: For the purposes of this review, I played the Nintendo Wii version of Twilight Princess. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is one of the few Wii games that fully utilized the revolutionary motion controls of…