Bentley Owen reads books and lives in Tulsa, OK. He's on twitter.
Paul Wallace, a physicist and Christian, has added to the pile of obituaries of the Intelligent Design movement. Jason Rosenhouse wrote one back in November: In the mid-nineties it was possible to wonder seriously if ID was a serious intellectual movement, or just another fad that would die out on its own. That verdict is now in. ID is dead. As a doornail. Even as YEC [Young Earth Creationism] shows renewed life with the success of the Creation Museum and… Read more
In the recent film 50/50, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a young professional with his life seemingly worked out: a rewarding career, a charming girlfriend, and a nice house. But then he hears the worst news he could expect: those pains he’s been having in his back are due to a rare form of spinal cancer. It’s an R-rated comedy, and the idea was to portray illness in an irreverent and unsentimental way. Seth Rogen is on hand as the best bro, who… Read more
I’m a big fan of Chuck Klosterman. He writes about pop culture and sports from a personal perspective, documenting what it truly feels like to participate in a media-saturated culture. But a recent column he wrote for Grantland about Tim Tebow didn’t impress me. It starts with a promising thought experiment: Imagine that you’re a detective, assigned to investigate a murder in a community of 1,000 people. There’s no established motive for this crime, and no one saw it happen…. Read more
TLC’s All-American Muslim is a reality show depicting five Lebanese-American families in Dearborn, MI. I haven’t seen it, but this review from Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker sure makes it sound harmless: These “characters” are all reasonably appealing, either charming or entertainingly irritating in the tradition of reality TV, though the show is edited at a snail’s pace. All-American Muslim centers on explaining customs and beliefs, and how the people the producers have selected either follow or ignore their religion’s dictums. Despite… Read more
