GENERAL COMMENT FROM CARDIN: There’s a new world a-comin’ Various life obligations have kept me from composing a detailed comment for this week’s installment of Headlines from the Meltdown, so I’ll let others do the talking for me, including Carolyn Baker, Richard Heinberg, and Eckhart Tolle (see below). But if I were to write up…
Author: Matt Cardin
Teeming Brain founder and editor Matt Cardin is the author of DARK AWAKENINGS, DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP, A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO THE INNER GENIUS, and TO ROUSE LEVIATHAN. He is also the editor of BORN TO FEAR: INTERVIEWS WITH THOMAS LIGOTTI and the academic encyclopedias MUMMIES AROUND THE WORLD; GHOSTS, SPIRITS, AND PSYCHICS: THE PARANORMAL FROM ALCHEMY TO ZOMBIES; and HORROR LITERATURE THROUGH HISTORY.
Bernankenstein and the Economonster from Hell (Headlines from the Meltdown)
GENERAL COMMENT FROM CARDIN: Bernankenstein and the Economonster from Hell Okay, so that’s a silly title for this week’s comment. But I still like it. For one thing, I’m hugely fond of the Hammer Horror films from Britain’s Hammer Studios back in the 1950s-1970s. All of their horror series started out strong — the Dracula…
Is this “The End”? (Headlines from the Meltdown)
GENERAL COMMENT FROM CARDIN: Is this THE END? We’re all familiar with the stereotypical cartoon figure of the ragged, shaggy prophet wearing a sandwich board with the blaring painted message, “The end is near!” By all rights, that prophet ought to be wandering the sidewalks of Wall Street at this very moment in order to…
A lesson in dramatic structure — and why we’re in the final act (Headlines from the Meltdown)
GENERAL COMMENT FROM CARDIN: We just entered Act Three of a three-act economic disaster movie It’s illuminating to consider the unfolding economic disaster in narrative terms. That is, it’s illuminating to look at it as a story, because although life isn’t stories (an insight that post-modern theory has helpfully established), you can still get your…
Is the new golden age of movies worth it?
I seem to have hit a winning streak with my movie choices lately. So much so, in fact, that I’m really starting to think in terms a new golden age in American filmmaking, or at least in films that are achieving wide release in American theatres. Yes, that might seem to run counter to my…
Primed and ready to blow (Headlines from the Meltdown)
General comment from Cardin: Primed and ready to blow Beware the coming week. If you’ve kept even one eye and ear on any news outlet, you’ve seen a swelling flurry of events and stories indicating that the excrement is starting to sail toward the propeller at high speed in multiple clumps. Several clumps have of…
Virtually invincible ignorance in America’s public schools
From time to time I check out the latest activity at Education Conversation, a blog by Tammy Brennan about the problems in America’s current state-run education system. Today I stopped by and found a post from February 17 titled “The End of Literacy” that describes a situation and an experience that I have personally encountered…
Peak oil rising
Lately there’s been a slew of articles, columns, and essays beating the peak oil drum. It’s easy to understand why, with the price of oil reaching new record highs every day and economic stormclouds gathering like divine judgment over America’s head. Nor are these issues unrelated; as James Howard Kunstler said a couple of weeks…
On the wisdom of welcoming doom (Headlines from the Meltdown)
General comment from Cardin The past seven days, February 24-March 1, made up a fairly extraordinary week in terms of both news and events. (And it’s always prudent to make a mental distinction between the two, since the former has become its own self-generating industry that often deviates from actual events; a very attentive rereading…
The spiritual wisdom of disaster (Headlines from the Meltdown)
GENERAL COMMENT FROM CARDIN (two parts) 1. This is real life, not a disaster movie — and that’s frightening In my February 6 “Headlines from the meltdown” post, I linked to and quoted from an article by economist and NYU professor Nouriel Roubini, the arch-pessimist of the current economic environment. The article listed what Roubini…