Author Archives: Daniel Podgorski

About Daniel Podgorski

Daniel Podgorski is a Californian author, essayist, researcher, and web developer. On The Gemsbok, he provides art analysis (on literature, games, and films) and philosophy articles. His areas of expertise are literature and philosophy, with most of his academic research (as well as most of his informal research) focusing on intersections between the two. He has had poetry, short stories, and articles published in various academic and literary journals—and his short fiction has placed first in both competition and conference settings.

Why to Avoid Bluehost as a Web Hosting Provider

  By ,

 

Introduction:

Bluehost Logo - avoid Bluehost - negative Bluehost reviewI was a Bluehost customer. This very website was hosted on a Bluehost server for the first six months of its existence. As of now, that is no longer the case. Now I am writing a negative Bluehost review. As to the form of this negative Bluehost review, I would like to tell you what happened to this site (and to me) that permanently drove my business away from Bluehost (and, just to be safe, away from all other companies under the EIG umbrella as well).

From now on, because of their inconsistent server performance, possibly shady service practices, and extremely bad customer support, I will avoid Bluehost, and I will encourage any web developers reading this to avoid Bluehost as well.

Continue reading

Why to Avoid Bluehost as a Web Hosting Provider was last modified: January 2nd, 2020 by Daniel Podgorski

[Work: Othello, William Shakespeare, 1603]
Antagonism in Othello:

Subversive and Progressive Racial Attitudes in the Characters of Shakepeare’s Othello

  By ,

 

Introduction:

The development of interpreting William Shakespeare’s plays for their progressive capabilities has been increasingly common in the modern era; Shylock, the Jewish character in The Merchant of Venice, portrayed on-stage for hundreds of years as a remorseless villain, is today played as a sympathetic and often ironic character whose persecuting is often shown to be more-or-less on-par with his persecution.

Similarly, the Othello seen in modern productions of Othello is a sympathetic tragic hero, rather than a dangerous, violent, and easily manipulated caricature. Yet, while some ambiguity about the nature of the character of Othello is inherent to the text, and even in keeping with the academic sentiment that the interpretation of art is more reflective of the morality of the reader than of any ‘opinions’ one may find in the work, Othello seems to contain a far more progressive element than The Merchant of Venice—in its antagonist, who in Othello is (of course) not Othello but Iago.

The character of Iago is unambiguously the antagonist of the play, and, beyond this, serves as both the catalyst to the events of the play and as the detractor or destroyer, either directly or by extension, of every character who falls in the play. In Othello, the title character does superficially seem to affirm racial stereotypes contemporary with Shakespeare’s writing (in particular, the alleged quick temper or ‘hot blood’ of Moors)—but the actual characters and actions of both Iago and Othello, arguably moreso, challenge them. Continue reading

[Work: Othello, William Shakespeare, 1603]
Antagonism in Othello:

Subversive and Progressive Racial Attitudes in the Characters of Shakepeare’s Othello

 was last modified: November 21st, 2021 by Daniel Podgorski

[Work: The Woman who Walked into Doors, Roddy Doyle, 1996]
Not Himself:

Roddy Doyle’s The Woman who Walked into Doors and the Ethics of Representation

  By ,

 

Introduction:

Roddy Doyle Sketch by M.R.P. - The Woman who Walked into Doors - representation abuse poverty

Sketch by M.R.P.

The Woman who Walked into Doors, written by Booker Award-winning Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, is a novel from 1996 with a strange pedigree. Its narrative began life as part of an award-winning 1994 television miniseries called Family, also written by Doyle. It was then partially ‘novelized’ to produce the work in question.

Despite being a novelization of a multimedia production—a strategy most well known for its overabundance of slapdash cash grabs—The Woman who Walked into Doors is an excellent novel. But its origin is not the subject of this article, and its quality is secondary to that subject; the subject of this article is the book’s representation of its narrator and protagonist, a working class woman who is abused by her husband, who cares deeply for her child, and who develops a drinking problem.

In particular, this article intends to consider a point of view which I have encountered over and over again in academic, professional, and casual discussions of different works of art. It is a point of view to which I am sympathetic, but with some serious reservations, and it is something that I can not help but think about when working on my own creative writing. It can be summed up relatively well as follows: ‘It is disingenuous or morally questionable for an artist to assume the perspective of a person with an identity the artist does not personally possess, especially when that identity is underprivileged, disadvantaged, or underrepresented in the artist’s culture.’ This is a delicate topic, and one I intend to give a fair consideration.

Continue reading

[Work: The Woman who Walked into Doors, Roddy Doyle, 1996]
Not Himself:

Roddy Doyle’s The Woman who Walked into Doors and the Ethics of Representation

 was last modified: August 12th, 2022 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: The Sentient, Uncaged Studios, 2016]
Galactic Potential:

An Introduction to (and Cursory Assessment of) Uncaged Studios’ The Sentient

  By ,

 

(The article below remains in its original state for archival purposes, but work on The Sentient was abandoned by its developers in mid-2018, before it was completed and exited early access. As such, I am now forced to recommend that no one purchase the game. – The Gemsbok)

 

The Sentient screenshot with ship overview - Uncaged Studios - early access review

Introduction:

Alright, this is going to be a relatively brief article that doesn’t go into too much detail, as the game in question, Uncaged Studios’ The Sentient, is very early in its early access career. But I wanted to write this preliminary review because I have been rather impressed by what I’ve seen so far. If I could sum it up in one sentence, I would say that The Sentient has accomplished more of the things promised by the developers of Pixel Piracy before entering early access than Pixel Piracy has managed to accomplish in the year since its full release.

As you can tell if you’ve read that earlier article linked above, I am no fan of Pixel Piracy; so why even bother with the comparison? Well, as much as I think Pixel Piracy is a clunky, buggy, superficial, bad-UI-ridden mess of a game, its premise is very strong: you take the exploration and RTS gameplay of FTL, and you add in deeper crew management and ship customization features. And this is exactly what The Sentient does, putting the player in control of a fleet of human scouting parties as they search the galaxy for the means to research, expand, and survive.

Continue reading

[Game: The Sentient, Uncaged Studios, 2016]
Galactic Potential:

An Introduction to (and Cursory Assessment of) Uncaged Studios’ The Sentient

 was last modified: March 26th, 2020 by Daniel Podgorski

[Topics: Death, Materialism, Philosophy of Religion, Reincarnation]
Pop Philosophy:

The Mixed Philosophical Legacy of Alan Watts, and His Ideas about Death

  By ,

 

Alan Watts Sketch by M.R.P. - Philosophy, Death, and Reincarnation

Caricature Sketch by M.R.P.

Introduction:

Alan Watts—in his time a popular lecturer and philosopher of mind, aesthetics, metaphysics, and religion—was a bit of an oddball. I feel fairly confident in saying that Alan Watts’ interpretations and considerations of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Anglicanism, as well as his general attitude and demeanor, have to some degree shaped the popular image of the field of philosophy (and not for the better).

Much like how producers of pop culture almost always put poet characters in the emotional style and darkly colored trappings of the mid-twentieth-century confessional and beat poets, so the string of airy, unintuitive, and completely self-assured claims that constitute Watts’ works give shape to the nebulous and impractical stereotype of the discipline of philosophy possessed by so many modern students of science in the western world.

It is irrelevant that most of the aforementioned producers and students are not consciously picturing such forebears (in fact, I find it unlikely that most of them have even heard of Robert Lowell or Alan Watts); still, to find the source for a society’s image of an academic pursuit, one often need look no further than the best-selling popularizers of that field in the few preceding generations. These days, philosophical characters seem to always be a caricature of either Freud, Marx, or Watts. (Indeed, the 2013 science-fiction film Her featured an artificially intelligent philosopher who was a reconstruction of the consciousness of Alan Watts.)

Now, because I have already, on multiple occasions in this series, concluded that scientists should study philosophy and philosophers should study science, I will let go of these digressions and move on to my main topic for the day: Alan Watts’ discussion of death. I should start by clarifying that, although he and I would have no end of disagreements, I do still respect Alan Watts; he was a sincere thinker and a captivating speaker.

Continue reading

[Topics: Death, Materialism, Philosophy of Religion, Reincarnation]
Pop Philosophy:

The Mixed Philosophical Legacy of Alan Watts, and His Ideas about Death

 was last modified: October 10th, 2022 by Daniel Podgorski