John C. Wright's Blog, page 220

My Invasion Plans (Courtesy of Meme Theurapy)

This is a re-post from three years ago, for those of you had not seen it.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but the planet Earth is scheduled for alien invasion. Your species’ custom is important to us. Please leave a message at the tone indicating your preferred choice of alien invader and why.

1. The aliens we MOST want to be invaded by are, of course, the organ- harvesting poison-gas-spewing gray aliens from M. Night Shyamalan’s SIGNS. This, for several reasons. First, they seem unable

Library Journal Likes Us

"Us" being the contributers to George RR Martin's Jack Vance anthology.

A starred review from LJ:

Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance. Subterranean. Sept. 2009. c.632p. ed. by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois. illus. ISBN 978-1-59606-213-9. $40. FANTASY

Of the many novels written by sf Grandmaster Vance, his "Dying Earth" series remains the most popular and most memorable of his oeuvre. Now top sf and fantasy authors including Tanith Lee, Mike Resnick (Hazards, reviewed abo

It is indeed typical that you Earthpeople refuse to believe in the superiority of any world...

Below is thirteen minutes from THIS ISLAND EARTH, starring Faith Domergue and an actor who rejoices in the name Rex Reason, which sounds like a superhero name if ever I heard one.

("Dr. Reason! Can you explain why you and Captain Reason are never seen together?" "Why, of course, clueless but beautiful spunky reporter girl! But first--I see police Commissioner Armstrong is shining the A=A signal on the bottom of a conveniently lowhanging cloud! (aside) Quickly Syllogism Lad! To the Reason poles!

Nature Cannot Have a Natural Origin

In a recent discussion in this space, I made the argument that the Big Bang posed a particular problem for dogmatic naturalists.
A naturalist is someone who holds that all events in nature have a natural explanation.
A dogmatic naturalist is someone who holds that all events whatsoever, whether in nature or out, have a natural explanation, or, to put it another way, that even things which seem at first glance not to allow for a natural explanation must be assumed to have one, despite any evidence

Listen Up!

The television show which interviewed yours truly just posted their segments to the internet. Now find out what I really look and sound like (HINT: I look and sound exactly like Robert J. Sawyer, real science fiction writer! I am not the guy in the hat!)

Part 1 (Robert J. Sawyer's segment):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vuj_eSqc0E&feature=channel_page
Part 2 (Gabriel McKee segment):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54GuZof1Kto&feature=channel_page
Part 3 (Guy in the Hat segment):
http://www.youtube.co

The Designer Universe, Uncanny Luck, and the Anthropic Principle

I have three comments on the last topic, which I here draw out.

The Designer Universe Argument.

I have heard my fellow Christians argue that since life could have arisen from and only from this universe with its unique combination of physical constants, ergo the universe must have been intelligently designed. If every other possible combination of physical constants is equally probably, so goes the argument, that the chance of this universe having this particular set of constants is one in zil

Before there was Time, there was no Time

. jordan179 opines:

I don't think that the Big Bang was a "miracle" in the supernatural sense -- I think the laws of physics embrace more than one Universe, that's all. And I don't have the foggiest idea how big is the Multiverse; my suspicion is "bigger than I can possibly imagine."

But I do suspect that something very like our concept of thermodynamics applies to the whole shebang.

The problem with this posture it that is asks us to accept something that is hard to support, namely, the idea that

How I met the Superman

During an ongoing conversation concerning C.S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke, jordan179 asked

"I'd gather then that Lewis would have been opposed to transhumanism if the idea had been widely known at the time?"

My answer was this:

I cannot speak for Lewis. My own brief brush with transhumanists was an eye-opening affair. It was my first encounter with people who try to deck out scientists and engineers with the hairy coats of prophets or the canonical vestments of archbishops, and end up merely emb

Busting out the USA

A friend of mine sends me this letter. I submit it to your candid judgment, dear reader, to see if you can deduce a more reasonable explanation of the current and ongoing destruction of the once-great republic of the United States. He writes:

I'm not an economic expert by any means.

I’m just a guy who watches movies. But I noticed something from a couple of Mafia films that seems to explain our current predicament. It’s called ‘busting out.’

In GOODFELLAS, mobster Henry Hill and his pals get c

Earth Moving Away from the Sun -- an Untruthful Convenience

As a follow-up to the ongoing story published in the last post, vitruvian23 has this to say:

At 15 cm per year, I'm not sure it's a huge problem. Let's see, even letting this continue for the next million years, that's an increase in the size of the astronomical unit (AU) of 150 kilometers. By contrast, the current dimension of the AU is a little short of 150 million kilometers. So, in a million years, we'll be one millionth of the current distance further from the Sun, on average - our orbit has