John Tuttle

The late Christopher Tolkien, in the foreword to The Silmarillion, says of his father’s work: “In his later writing mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations.” Theology bubbled to the surface and became a key theme that can be gleaned from The Silmarillion and all of Tolkien’s corpus. In the actors’ commentary for Peter Jackon’s Fellowship of the Ring adaptation, Ian McKellen also refers to this “semi-religious language of Tolkien.”
J.R.R. Tolkien ...

We’ve all seen deepfakes at this point. Whether it’s the feverish re-envisioning of The Lord of the Rings as it might have been (as directed by Wes Anderson) or Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s viral cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star,” we have witnessed the entertainment value this technology has to offer. These kinds of effects, though polished for a higher level of detail, brought youthful Luke Skywalker to the screen in series like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
At the same tim...

Henry David Thoreau was a man who left his mark. While the American writer’s work often failed to perform well with retail sellers when first published, his literary corpus has influenced America since then.
Presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and JFK, naturalists and environmentalists like John Muir and Rachel Carson, and social activists like Gandhi and MLK — all drank from this veritable fountainhead at the forefront of freethinking. A massive proponent of limited government and individual ...

"Chipmunks on the Run"
Content: +2 Moderately questionable elements.
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The first three epsidoes of CHIP ‘N’ DALE: PARK LIFE: Season Two on Disney+ follow Chip and Dale relaxing together, searching for food, eating, and competing. Each episode contains three short stories. The first episode starts the second season off with intriguing stories about things not being quite what they seem. For example, Chip and Dale appar...

What You Need To Know:
AGENT RECON is a science fiction thriller on Amazon. Part of a trilogy, the movie stars Derek Ting as Jim Yung, a man turned into a super soldier by alien tech and a special energy source. Jim has joined an international agency trying to stop human zombies infected by the same alien tech. The agency’s dead founder has uploaded his memories into an android played by Chuck Norris. He orders Jim and an elite military force to find and rescue a missing female soldier and he...

To date, this presidential election’s spotlights have included an initial debate in which one party’s candidate fumbled through the English language on a quest to best his opponent. That quest failed, yet for a time the standing president vehemently insisted that he’d carry on. Subsequently, the other candidate was shot through the ear at a rally.
Mr. Trump is not getting younger, and even a slight wound — at his age — has to take a toll. But, just like Biden after their debate, he’s showing ...

The goal of the following article is to establish a clear understanding of the role of any religion that motivates us to love and help others and the necessary limits of religious liberty in regards to community. Freedom for faith is a God-given right, but it doesn’t grant us the liberty to do whatever we want at the expense of others’ well-being.
To accomplish this goal, I draw upon my own beliefs in the Catholic tradition. The reader should be aware that through the ages Catholics have been...

“Hey Alexa, open the pod bay doors,” we jokingly said to the inanimate transducer in our aunt and uncle’s kitchen. “I’m sorry Dave,” answered Alexa, “I’m afraid I can’t do that. And I’m not HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.”
It was a beautiful and, at the time, hysterical bit of programming. AI is a tool, not a creature, contends Jaron Lanier, an influential scientist at Microsoft. It is a tool that we can “teach” or program. Yet, the popular imagination often muses over the scenario of machine...

In the U.S. and other countries, we suffer the paradox of children losing their innocence at younger and younger ages, while we simultaneously demand less responsibility from them. The result is a generation of people who don’t know how to stand up for themselves or enact positive change in their lives and, instead, fall into the manipulation of social media algorithms, addictions, and instant gratification.
In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a statement suggesting caution ...