John C. Wright's Blog, page 185

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Finally, this favorite book in the Chronicles of Narnia was made into a film.

I always wonder what the star did wrong to get himself exiled to earth...

www.scifiwright.com/2010/05/voyage-of-the-dawn-treader/#more-1526

Anyone out there speak Latin?

So I am writing the following scene, which takes place in a Confessional booth, and the Priest lets slip that he heard the dying words of the main character's brother:

“I cannot reveal what was said to me under the seal of confession, which I heard as his dying words. But it is a matter of public record that he was present when you met Mr. Michael Nails in a contest of honor, and you were severely wounded.”

“He cannot blame himself for that! What—did he think he did?”

“I cannot say.”

...

Personal Appearance!

I wanted to tell the ten people who read my blog (thanks, Mom!) that I will be making a personal spectacle of myself, I mean a personal appearance on May 25th -- I will be giving a Lecture at the Catholic Information Center. I have been asked to tell my conversion story and speak about the Science Fiction and Christianity.

This is a Tuesday evening, one week from today, at The Catholic Information Center 1501 K Street NW, Washington, DC. 20005. I think it starts at 6.00.

This is pretty short...

Cads and Dads

Part of an ongoing conversation. I regret I have not time to answer in more detail: I can only give a summary of my conclusions without laying out the steps.

artimaeus writes:

 "In a nutshell, the traditional sexual mores glorify chastity, abstinence, and virginity because it is in the interests of both a woman and her neighbors that the man who gets her pregnant doesn’t leave her to raise her children alone. Marriage is a device to keep the father close by, increasing the odds that the...

Nebula Awards!

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of SFWA. The selection process is relatively simple: the survivors of a Deathball tournament are examined by the Colossus-Skynet system for irregulationary defects, and if found acceptable, are sent to the haunted planet Arisia for mind-to-mind examination by the alien superbeing known as Mentor, and those who return sane are conducted to Wallach IV where the Bene Gesserit Witches test the candidate with a "gom jabbar" and the B...

Horatio, the Bard, and the Ghost

Part of an ongoing conversation.

deiseach  : "Usually I've seen it in the context of "There's no such thing as the supernatural!" "Well, what about ghosts?" "They don't exist!" "And if you got good, solid, undeniable evidence that they did?" "Then they would be part of nature, and therefore not supernatural, and therefore once again, I declare that there's no such thing as the supernatural!" I have no position for or against ghosts - there seem to be a range of options for such experiences, ra...

An Example of Statistics in Action

An anecdote, related to an earlier discussion of divorce statistics.

Once upon a time, I was sitting at a table with eight friends.

There were three sets. Set one had one member: an unmarried male. Set two had six members: three couples married to each other, with no divorces. Set three had one member: a young lady who had been married six times, and divorced four times. (She was currently married, and had been widowed once.) 

Eight people and four divorces meant that the divorce rate at that ...

True Atheism and Ideologopathology

A reader named after a burning lexicon of telephone numbers writes this:

It's this sort of thing that leaves me without a home in the religious debate. I find kindred spirits in neither the religious nor in the Hitchens-Dawkins atheists. Mr. Savage is indeed being arrogant and condescending, particularly in his attempt to pigeon-hole religion as a psychological concept. But, his critics repeat his error when they doubt the sincerity or the efficacy of an atheist's reasoning. That is to say...

Me Too Smart For Religion!

The good Doctor Rampage, Metahero, with considerably more patience than yours truly could bring to bear on the question, dissects the polemic of Adam Savage, Mythbuster Extraordinaire, where Doc Savage is savages the religions of the world with more enthusiasm than wit or logic.

Some of the many nice points made by Doc Rampage:

As people give up mysticism, they do not give religion. Instead they replace mystical religious beliefs with pseudo-scientific religious beliefs. I call these...

For Those of You Not Impressed with Raquel Welch

In a recent article in this space, your humble perpetrator of sciffy space opera opined that the Sexual Revolution was no friend of Feminism, since the object of the first was to reduce women to objects, and the object of the second was to elevate women to equality.

To bolster my argument, I linked to an Op-Ed by Sex Goddess Raquel Welch, who agreed with me. I admit this indulged in the informal logical error of 'argumentum ad buxom', which is to say, an appeal to the sex appeal of the author...