Joe Allen

Joe Allen

Joe Allen is a fellow primate who wonders why we ever came down from the trees. When not climbing, he writes about race, robots, and religion.

Varanasi, India

India Welcomes the American Maharaja

On Monday, President Trump addressed over a hundred thousand Hindoos of every caste and Vedic creed. Liberal bubble-dwellers were stunned that so many brown people would exalt our Orange Maharaja, but for anyone who’s visited the subcontinent, it makes perfect sense. The people of India love ...

The Disgust Reflex

My friends on the far right see Marxists under every bed. But that's crazy, because everyone knows that Marxists don"€™t hide under beds"€”they bang their grad students on them. Just don"€™t say that aloud in polite company. If you dare mention that academia has become a decadent nest of ...

T.G.I. Fridroids

Recruitment software start-up Entelo just released a brave new product: Diversity. This "€œproprietary algorithm"€ scours the Internet to determine the sex and ethnicity of prospective employees, then assembles an all-star equality team with the power to satisfy any government or media ...

Russell Crowe

No Room on the Ark

Darren Aronofsky's Noah accomplishes what any great myth should: it communicates moral truths through a fantasy. Mankind has destroyed the Creator's creation, and so Man must be destroyed. Women and children will not be spared. Every person must die except Noah and his family"€”and who knows? ...

No Light at the End of the Cosmos

There is no magic in the new Cosmos"€”no angels or demons, no dragons in Eden, just cold dust and burning gas viewed through rose-colored glasses. No creator gods dominate the production, unless you count the divinized Carl Sagan. His monist prophecy resounds from the outset: The cosmos is all ...

Learning to Laugh at Stereotypes

Of all the millions of ways to be an asshole, the status quo regards "€œracism"€ as the most alarming. Put on your X-ray specs and you’ll see the contagion everywhere. According to a recent study, 10,000 "€œracist and ethnic slur terms"€ are hurled on Twitter daily. Imagine all the ...

Roger Waters

Mr. Waters, Tear Down Your Own Wall!

I watched Pink Floyd's trippy rock opera The Wall on VHS at least a dozen times as a kid. So when I heard that Roger Waters was dragging The Wall Live stage show out of the 1980s and bringing it to Atlanta last month, I had to buy two tickets. Nostalgia compelled me to lay my dollars down, and ...

Losers at the Game of Life

People often compare video gamers to crackheads, but that’s unfair. Crackheads are way more motivated to get out of the house. While gamers cozy up on the couch to battle orcs and inhale their own farts, crackheads dart through shadowy housing projects, use their wits to find the next $20 ...

Pop Evolution: The New Evangelicalism

Did life evolve by purely natural processes? Could random mutation and natural selection really generate the human brain or the electrosensory system of the duck-billed platypus? Or did an intelligent force shape our universe? Am I a total retard for asking? As of April 20, Tennessee teachers ...

Resurrection of Christ by Rafael

Fundamental Contradictions About Easter

"€œWhat day did Jesus die on?"€ my friend asked. "€œIt was on Christmas, right?"€ He wasn’t pulling my leg. We both grew up in a vipers’ tangle of Southern Baptist fundamentalism, but obviously he was better at avoiding church than I was. He never had to endure relentless ...


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