There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

Into the Abyss

The IU Cinema, to cap off Werner Herzog's visit and their series of screenings of his films, showed Herzog's latest documentary, Into the Abyss, on Sunday. In this film, Herzog chronicles a triple murder that took place in Conroe, Texas in 2001, interviewing the murderers (one of whom was on death row and was ultimately executed), the families of the victims, law enforcement, the executioner, friends and family of the killers, and several others. Read more »

The Great Gatsby

Reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was a strange experience for me. From the very start, I was impressed by Fitzgerald's elegant prose, painting a vivid picture of 1920s New York and introducing a highly-observant narrator, Nick. Read more »

Werner Herzog comments on Aguirre: The Wrath of God

Monday night the IU Cinema screened Werner Herzog's film Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Herzog himself was in attendance, and spoke for quite a while afterwards. Read more »

Fata Morgana

A review of Werner Herzog's early film Fata Morgana. Read more »

The Library of Babel: Introduction

The Library of Babel is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges in which he describes a library (which he calls the universe) consisting of infinite hexagons containing books. Read more »

The Victorian Internet

"The Victorian Internet," by Tom Standage, is a fascinating story of the history of the telegraph, and how it shrunk our world in previously unimaginable ways. Standage draws parallels between the Telegraph of the 19th century and the Internet of today in a lively, readable, and compelling book. Read more »

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, was assigned reading in a fiction class I took. A lot of people seem to love this novel, but I found Ignatius, the main character, absolutely obnoxious. In fact, all of the characters were unlikable. I also felt that Toole's attempts at absurdist humor fell flat, which left me feeling that the characters' actions didn't make any sense. Read more »