John C. Wright's Blog, page 221

The Earth Moving Away From the Sun

Interesting little science tidbit:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17228-why-is-the-earth-moving-away-from-the-sun.html

This means, of course, that was have to start the process of global warming now, not to mention conserving solar power for later generations, so please go out this month and use all the fossil fuels you can!

Lewis and Clarke

From http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=31279

The quote below is from a review of Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin by Francis Spufford a book about the history of technology and society. It’s about six engineering projects that have taken place in Britain since WWII. The projects range from rockets through Concorde to computer games, cell phones, and the Human Genome Project.

Two famous figures in the science fiction world are mentioned in this anec

Wallpaper Meme

By way of Kokorognosis:Rules—
01. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!


Gladly: below the cut is the cover art for my book TITANS OF CHAOS, which I use for my wallpaper.
The art is by Scott Fisher, who outperformed even his considerable skills.
The main character, Amelia Windrose, was on

I will be on the Telly

Lorna Dueck from Listen Up TV  (a Canadian Christian news program) interviewed me for her television show. This is an episode where Robert J. Sawyer, a real science fiction writer, is also being interviewed. They asked me some softball questions, and I bunted them. Smooth a pie. I did it over my lunch hour at a little church just down the street, so my talking head should have a nice altar and stained glass window behind me.

I do not know when or where the program will be aired.I wore my hat, so

Humbug, or "If You Don't Understand It, It Must Be Art".

The Childlike Empress (or someone who looks like her) takes me to task for my condemnation of James Joyce's ULYSSES. Here are the comments in full:

I will stick up my hand in defense of "Ulysses". First off, you HAVE to read an annotated version, or read the Cliff's Notes along with it. Otherwise, yes, it will read as though it's a piece of junk that makes no sense to anyone. However, people were far better educated when Joyce was writing, and he intentionally wrote it with many, many layers of

A Comment on the Drawbacks of Modern Atheism--by an Atheist

This is a book review by Theodore Dalrymple, a man of letter of no mean accomplishment. I reprint it here in full, without comment, except to say that his sentiments are remarkably similar to my own, despite our difference of faith. If you have not read Theodore Dalrymple before, you are in for a treat: in him, the old virtues of essayist and epigrammist and student of human nature live again, an avatism from a more cultured and learned age now lost.

What the New Atheists Don’t See
To regret re

A Retraction

One duty an honest man, especially one who brags he is a philosopher, dare not shirk is to admit he is wrong with the humility of a philosopher when proven wrong.  In a posting today, I expressed misgivings about letting my kids read all about Lavender Dumbledore.

The reader </b></a> deiseach heroically steps forth to drive away the harpies of error preying on my feast of thought.

"Chastity is right: sexual perversion is wrong. Homosexuality is a sexual perversion, ergo wrong."

No disagreement ther

On Philistinism

"I am so, so glad to know that my loathing for Ulysses is not because I am uncultured Philistine. I, perhaps, made it slightly farther than you, searching for the brilliance I was told lay inside, but if I did, it was not by much."

Philistine? The problem is that I am a philistine, and proud of it. I read an enjoy Pulp rubbish like THE SHADOW and DOC SAVAGE and children's books like HARRY POTTER and THE HOBBIT, not to mention comics by Alexander Raymond and Jack 'King' Kirby. I enjoy popular acti

Dumbledore is Witty, Gay and Brave!

In a recent post I expressed reservations about reading Harry Potter to my children, since JK Rawlings decided to betray my trust in her by publicly announcing that Albus Dumbledore, one of the best and most beloved characters in the book, suffered from homosexuality. Those who point out either that Dumbledore never acts on his impulses in the book, or that the affection for Grisenwald (or whatever his name was) was not portrayed sympathetically miss the point entirely, so entirely that the fall

Ulysses by James Joyce

Here is the review I wrote for Joyce's ULYSSES:

Dear readers, let me propose to you a simple test. Below are three quotes from Ulysses by James Joyce, and a fourth written by a computer program with no human editing, merely random words strung together without sense. You tell me which is which:

1. Slowly I dream of flying. I observe turnpikes and streets studded with bushes. Coldly my soaring widens my awareness. To guide myself I determinedly start to kill my pleasure during the time that hours