The Expanse and Philosophy “We Can Be Our Own Gods!” Jeffery L. Nicholas In Season 3 Episode 1, “Fight or Flight,” the crew of the Rocinante change the name of the ship, partly to disguise themselves, to the Pinus Contorta. Prax, the botanist they picked up on Tycho, believes the name is fitting; “Pinus…
Darwinia and Simulation A World Virtually Akin to Ours Brandon Packard Darwinia holds its own as a cult classic video game. In this game, Dr. Sepulveda has created a purely digital universe known as Darwinia. The inhabitants, the Darwinians, are self-learning pieces of code. However, they have been bred and enhanced over so many…
Russian Doll, Fate, and Stoic Acceptance RK Taylor The Netflix original series Russian Doll tells the story of Nadia, a video game programmer who repeatedly dies through a hodgepodge of unfortunate and inevitable circumstances. After each death, she wakes anew at the same point in spacetime: a bathroom during the night of her 36th birthday. After her…
No, Thanos Couldn’t Just Double the Number of Resources ***This post contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.*** Armond Boudreaux Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted a couple of days ago that “if you hold the power to snap your finger and end half of all life in the universe . . . then surely you have the power…
Call for Abstracts Black Panther and Philosophy Edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written to engage the intelligent lay reader. Contributors of accepted essays will receive an honorarium. While this volume will feature the signature…
Monty Python and The Meaning of Albert Camus By Luc Pelletier Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life is a disjointed, confusing piece of cinema. The sketches presented hang together by a thin thread, namely the quest for the meaning of life. Sometimes, without warning or apparent reason, the movie interrupts itself to take us in…
Guardians of the Borderlands Figure 1: Borderlands Gameplay By Brandon Packard One of the many endearing qualities of Borderlands is the diverse plethora of inhabitants on Pandora and its moon: everything from the dog-like skags to the aptly (albeit it literally) named spiderants. Of all the different species, I would argue that the Guardians…
