By Mark McConaghy
In this new series, entitled The Scene, we send our writers to spaces and cultural events around our city to report about them. What does it mean to be alive in our here and now?
Read more "The Scene: Wednesday Night Music at the Drake Hotel"In this new series, the 14th Floor presents outstanding yet potentially overlooked album tracks. In this installment, we respond to a jewel found halfway through the Matthew Good Band’s acclaimed third album.
Read more "Deep Cut – “Suburbia”"By Mark McConaghy
As we approach the end of the Ontario provincial election, one would be forgiven for wondering just why it is that so many politicians come off as so profoundly disingenuous. Why can’t they seem even somewhat genuine to us?
Read more "Why Do Politicians Seem So Fake?"By Mark McConaghy
Who are we to turn to to understand the complex and brutal forces shaping the situation on the ground in Russia and Ukraine today?
Read more "Reading Crisis: Ukraine and our Search for Knowledge"By Mark McConaghy
Two stories appeared in the NYTimes last week: a 14 year old Brooklyn boy mistakenly gunned down an innocent bystander on a bus, while in Manhattan luxury real estate prices hit new all time highs.
What does the mind-bending incongruity between these two stories tell us about the nature of the society we live in?
Read more "Apartment Sells for 88 Million, 8th Grader Shoots Bystander on Bus"By Mark McConaghy
What does the online coverage of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death tell us about the culture of the internet today?
Read more "Digital Fracture: How We Mourned Philip Seymour Hoffman"By Mark McConaghy
How can we move beyond all of our petty sorrows and vulnerabilities to gain a truly meaningful form of social existence?
Read more "The Urgency of the Unknown Future"By Sean Callaghan
No one else is trying to rewrite the future, so the rest of us should start.
Read more "Why Science Fiction is the Future"By Mark McConaghy
Martin Scorsese’s latest film is a 3 hour montage of relentless sex, drugs, debauchery, and rampant disregard for the victims of financial predation. So is this supposed to be a critique of Wall Street or a glorification of it? I weigh in on the controversy surrounding the film.
Read more "Reading Excess: On Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street"By Mark McConaghy
Despite our technological and material mastery over the world, why does melancholy still persist?
Read more "On Sadness (Part 1)"
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