
Examined Worlds
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My name is Ethan Mills. This blog represents the convergence of two aspects of my identity: science fiction fan and philosophy professor. I've been a science fiction fan as long as I can remember, and I later realized that I was also interested in philosophy all along.http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/p/about.html
Random Thoughts, Part 26: Being a Weirdo, Dune, Billionaires, Leaf Blowers, Diversity, Mustard, etc.
Examined Worlds
1d ago
Welcome to Part 26 of my Random Thoughts series! Life keeps on happening, and the random thoughts keep on coming. With this entry, I'm up to 751 random thoughts, so maybe I'll hit 1000 random thoughts at some random point in the next couple years. This also continues to be an excuse to share memes and things that I liked. Enjoy! Happy Black History Month!
711. A side effect of being weird is that people often misunderstand you. But being weird also means you become accustomed to bein ..read more
Examined Worlds
1M ago
MLK Day Parade, Chattanooga, TN, Jan. 20, 2025
Today the United States simultaneously observes two things: 1. A holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 2. The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second, non-consecutive term as US President. This coincidence offers as succinct a summary of where my country is morally and politically as anything I could imagine: many of my fellow Americans both claim to admire Martin Luther King, Jr. and voted for Donald Trump.
How did we get here? And drawing on the title of King’ s most challenging book, where do we go from ..read more
Examined Worlds
1M ago
The Chattanooga MLK Day Parade wraps up with the Howard High School Marching Band near the mural at the corner of MLK Blvd. and Peeples St. (Jan. 20, 2025)
It's a chilly afternoon here in Chattanooga, TN, and I went down to watch our local MLK Day Parade. It's in the low 20's Fahrenheit (around -5 Celsius), which is considerably colder than usual for this part of the world, so the turnout was lower than usual. In the past, I've participated in the parade with my local chapter of United Campus Workers, but we didn't get organized in time this year. Since MLK Day is my favorite h ..read more
Examined Worlds
1M ago
One of my favorite New York landmarks: The Empire State Building
Happy New Year!
After a nice, but all-too-short winter break, I'm hitting the ground running this week with a start to my spring semester as well as travel to the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Conference in New York City! I'll be chairing a panel called "Building a Network of Scholars in Indian Philosophy: The Indian Philosophy Blog and Beyond" on Thurs. Jan. 9. I've been part of The Indian Philosophy Blog since 2015, so this will be a nice time to celebrate the blog as well as a chance to mee ..read more
Examined Worlds
1M ago
I'm getting to my Holiday Horror post a little later than last year's post, but it's New Year's Eve and it's still Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, all of which I include under the banner of "the holidays," so it's not actually late (although I seem to have watched mostly Christmas-specific movies this year). What better way to deal with my conflicted feelings about this Most Wonderful Time of the year than lots of blood and guts and tinsel?
Krampus (2015)
Starting with the movie that probably made me start this holiday horror tradition in the first place, I decided it was time to revisit Kramp ..read more
Examined Worlds
2M ago
"Welcome to Examined Worlds: Philosophy and Science Fiction! This blog will consist mainly of my ruminations and explorations concerning two of my favorite things: philosophy and science fiction."
With these words, Examined Worlds was brought into this universe ten years ago today! The inaugural post on Tues. Dec. 23, 2014 was called "Philosophy as Science Fiction; Science Fiction as Philosophy."
After briefly introducing myself, I said a bit about philosophy as a type of science fiction and science fiction as a type of philosophy. I ended with a Star Trek-inflected mission statement.
S ..read more
Examined Worlds
2M ago
Don't Fear the Reaper is Stephen Graham Jones's sequel to My Heart is a Chainsaw. As with the first one, I'm not sure I'm quite a big enough slasher fan to fully appreciate this and the characters other than Jade/Jennifer aren't as memorable for me, but Don't Fear the Reaper is still a really fun and interesting book overall.
I had to put this down for a few weeks to read other things, which probably resulted in losing a lot of my momentum. Especially for a long book that takes place over a day or two, which is a sequel to a book I read over two years ago, it was hard to k ..read more
Examined Worlds
2M ago
I meant to review Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Gods of Jade and Shadow soon after finishing it, but alas, here I am over a month later, so I'll have to keep it short. This was a lot of fun. I love the Mayan gods and the setting in early 20th century Mexico.
The main character felt sort of like a "rough draft" of the main characters of Moreno-Garcia's later books like Mexican Gothic or The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. Not that that's a bad thing by any means: this one is perfectly fine, it's just that the later ones are a bit more polished. I see why some people think this felt a bit YA ..read more
Examined Worlds
2M ago
In recent years (see here and here) I've made a tradition of watching Thanksgiving horror movies around US Thanksgiving. As with other holiday horror, this is a fun way to process my complex thoughts and feelings about this horrific, delicious holiday. And this year I discovered a film about that most uniquely American of holidays, Black Friday, in which we trample each other to buy stuff we don't need immediately after a holiday about giving thanks for what we already have.
I'll start and end with the movies I watched for the first time with a nice leftover sandwich of movies I've wa ..read more
Examined Worlds
3M ago
Dear reader, the last month has been ... a lot. I lost two friends in October, and then there was the US election (I wrote about the election and Plato beforehand, and post-election thoughts may be coming soon). I admit I've had trouble finding the energy and time to do much with the blog lately (although I keep reminding myself that my tenth blog-aversary is coming next month!). Part of my blog-based reticence has been dealing with the aforementioned events. Some of it is that I've just been busy: there was Halloween, the election, and then in the last week, my Horror and Philosoph ..read more