John C. Wright's Blog, page 223

On Copulation Cadaver Art

In yesterday's episode, John C. Wright, windbag, made the following statement: "In Germany, meanwhile, an enemy of humanity artist poses human corpses in postures of copulation, called "Copulation Art." I notice that this offends no principle of the hedonist or utilitarian philosophy, nor can Objectivists mount a coherent argument against the practice. The article is here. (h/t theofloinn)"

A real Objectivist was kind enough to prove me wrong. </b></a>robertjwizard writes:

Do you think there ac

The state of the World as seen through an unscientific sample of links

Let us observe the state of the world.

Britain is now officially a totalitarian society according to this article here. (h/t prester_scott )
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison.Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking on

Brief Update

I am back home, safe and sound and recovering as well as can be expected. Thank you for your prayers and good wishes: More things are wrought by prayer / Than this world dreams of

Brief Update

John had his appendix out on Sunday. The doctor decided to keep him one last night, but he's doing very well. He's up and walking around and in a cheerful mood.

Thank you all for your prayers. They mean a great deal to us. Many things went surprisingly smoothly, and we really felt that God's Hand was upon us.

Mrs. John C. Wright here....

Hey Folks,

John is in the hospital. He should be home by Tuesday.

Prayers are welcome!

Jagi

Angels and Demons

Golly. I thought ANGELS AND DEMONS by Dan Brown would turn out to be just an ordinary run-of-the-mill Catholic-bashing hate-fest. But, no, the whoppers told strain credulity. Do people actually know that little about history? It seems that they do.

Here is what I picked up here and here.

Brown claims: Copernicus was murdered by the Catholic Church.
Fact: Copernicus died quietly in bed at age 70 from a stroke, and his research was supported by Church officials; he even dedicated his masterwork to

What SF is best for non-SF readers?

This is from my "not posted yet" backlog of journal articles. Unfortunately, I sometimes forget to remove pieces from the log once they are posted, so if this is a repeat of an earlier post, I hope you don't mind seeing it again.

What SF would you recommend to a non-SF reader?

This is a question I can answer from experience. Back during the Oil Embargo days of the Carter Administration, my mother, hardly a science fiction reader, asked her geeky son (me) for books to read while she waited for hou

Against Waterboarding

Here is an article by Jim Manzi, printed in the online version of National Review. I reproduce the whole thing here, without comment. Draw your own conclusions:

Against Waterboarding [Jim Manzi]

I do not believe that the United States should have a policy of using waterboarding to extract information from captured combatants in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Let me explain why.

Any decent society needs to defend itself from armed aggression without becoming a society not worth defending. Thi

Mind Meld! A Plethora of Pantheons

The fine folks over at SfSignal asked a number of SFF-fans (or "Slans" as we call ourselves) (including professional writers--just because you write the stuff does not mean you stop reading it) the following question:

Q: In a created fantasy world, gods can proliferate by the hundreds. When building religious systems for fantasies, what are the advantages/disadvantages of inventing pantheons vs. single gods, or having no religious component at all?
 Naturally, being an opinionated man, I had an op

An Ongoing Discussion about the Role of Religion in History

"Its simply common sense."

Perhaps it is common sense to say that when the state commands and the people resist, there will be bloodshed, but at that point, it seems to me that religion drops out of the equation as a variable, unless you are saying religion has more power to resist government oppression than secular ideologies -- if that is your point, I would tend to agree.

It seems to me equally common sense to say that Nazism and Communism are new fashions of barbarism, who point was to disman