Archive for March, 2011

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Bill Introduced to cut free lunch for PBS and NPR

Posted March 11, 2011 By John C Wright

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Read this: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/hollywoodland/2011/03/04/demint-coburn-introduce-bill-to-defund-pbs-and-npr/#more-452344

Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-Oklahoma) introduced legislation to stop taxpayer subsidies to public radio and television.

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The Last Waterbender

Posted March 11, 2011 By John C Wright

Long ago, the Hebrews and Egyptians lived together in harmony in the land of Goshen. Then everything changed when a new pharaoh arose who knew not Joseph. Grievous was the cry of the Hebrews by reason of their taskmasters. Only the Patriarch, master of all Twelve Tribes of Israel, could stop them; but when the world needed him most, he vanished.

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Exhibit A in the Case of Christ versus Nothing

Posted March 11, 2011 By John C Wright

For those of you who think I am exaggerating when I complain about the state of the modern world, or think I mistake exactly to what destination modern philosophy and modern education leads:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chibrknews-northwestern-to-pay-for-live-sex-toy-demonstration-20110302,0,3942305.story

The money quote:

Northwestern University acknowledged that an unusual demonstration was held on campus last week in which students observed a naked woman being penetrated by a sex toy.

The sex act was performed in front of about 100 students in psychology professor John Michael Bailey’s human sexuality class. The demonstration occurred after class, and attendance was optional.

The university will pay several hundred dollars to guest lecturer Ken Melvoin-Berg, co-owner of Weird Chicago Tours. His Feb. 21 discussion of bondage, swinging and other sexual fetishes was arranged by Bailey, who gets extra funding from the university’s College of Arts & Sciences for lectures and other activities he routinely holds after class.

“The students find the events to be quite valuable, typically, because engaging real people in conversation provides useful examples and extensions of concepts students learn about in traditional academic ways,” Bailey said in a prepared statement Wednesday night

My comment: given a choice between women portrayed as objects into which to insert sex toys, and as damsels, brides, wives and mothers to be cherished and protected, which seems to be the more dehumanizing and less in keeping with the dignity and mystique of women?

I ask because the modern age has decided that these two are the only two choices: Victorian Morality, which gave the woman the vote, or Modern Antimorality, which robs women of the likelihood of finding a serious suitor, a decent & hardworking husband who has kept himself for marriage, raising descent children to maturity without their getting the clap or committing suicide, or enjoying old age with the companionship of a lifelong mate.

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Retrogressive Progressivism

Posted March 11, 2011 By John C Wright

I fear I was amused at the expense of one of my correspondants during a recent debate or discussion in this space.

Concerning the divine mystery and sacrament of marriage, and the mystique of femininity (of which the modern mind seems not to be able to find mysterious, and willing to recognize as sacred, but regards marriage as much the same as a commercial transaction for mutual benefit) one objection raised to the traditional role of wife and mother was that it was one of economic dependence, and therefore one not to be envied.

Now, this is a perfectly reasonable objection to make, particularly for someone afflicted with that colorblindness endemic to Progressives, that makes them talk and act as if the natural aspects of human nature, to say nothing of its supernatural aspects, where they cannot see the hues of human life, but blunder along by describing all things by their most crude and angular of silhouettes.

The mentally colorblind man not only cannot debate the shade of difference between azure and cerulean, he cannot even define his terms to correspond even roughly with reality, not even to tell that red means stop and green means go. The corresponding confusion regarding his mental traffic jams results.

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L Jagi Lamplighter Interview! Six Questions!

Posted March 11, 2011 By John C Wright

Mrs. Wright has also been interviewed by Hiedi Miller of FIELD NOTES.

Here is the link: http://heidirubymiller.blogspot.com/2011/03/heidis-pick-six-l-jagi-lamplighter.html

The third volume of her well-received Children of Prospero trilogy comes out September of 2011.
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Interview! Six Questions!

Posted March 10, 2011 By John C Wright

I had the honor to be interviewed by Heidi Ruby Miller over at FIELD NOTES. She even let me pick which questions not to answer.

http://heidirubymiller.blogspot.com/2011/03/heidis-pick-six-john-c-wright.html

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One More for Bill Whittle Day

Posted March 10, 2011 By John C Wright

Mr. Whittle may not speak for you, but he speaks for me. I would not have voted for John McCain had there been anyone else on his ticket aside from Sarah Palin.

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You’ve Come a Long Way Down, Baby: Marvel Girl v the Stepford Wives

Posted March 10, 2011 By John C Wright

Part of an ongoing conversation. Italic text is Rolf Andreassen, whose comment is here. Orotund text is mine.

The argument concerned this: I say it is abnormal to react with contempt or embarrassment at the sight of Marvel Girl doing household chores. We call feminine those qualities by which females distinguish themselves from males, and also those qualities that attract males to females. Motherhood is feminine because it is the essential quality that distinguishes the sexes. Because Mothers can nurse babies without artifices, and also because they are suited by their spirit and instinct, society expects mothers to do the mothering. Because babies are inconvenient to tote around, mothering is usually done in the nursery, which is usually at the home. This frees up the father to earn the daily bread by whatever means, hunting, farming, factory or office work, he can find. The household chores must be done by someone, and it is more convenient for the mother to do them than otherwise. While there are exceptions, this is the general course of the division of labor for all human beings of all history, including the present.

We are arguing not about a necessary but a contingent relationship. Because household chores are conveniently and usually done by mothers, they are done by wives and maidens as well.

Hence there is nothing unusual, untoward, nor sinister in expecting women to do household chores. A fortiori, there is nothing unusual, untoward, nor sinister in seeing those expectations reflected in common and popular entertainment like a funnybook.

Dr. A answered as follows. I will cover his points seriatim:

It seems clear that we were arguing past each other; some of what you label irrelevancies are quite relevant to what I was talking about.

Be that as it may, if you are talking about a different subject than I am, what is that to me? In a poem, or when relating a dream to a friend in a casual conversation, there is nothing amiss with stringing ideas together stream-of-consciousness style. In an argument, it is an informal logical error. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Quote of the Day: Evasion Without the Bad Sense to Disguise Itself

Posted March 8, 2011 By John C Wright

This is from HERETICS by GK Chesterton, published in 1905. Allow me to quote the whole paragraph, merely to astonish the modern reader that modernity, and the central ideas of modernity, are actually Late Victorian, and even at that date were dismissed with deserved joviality by Chesterton, a man saved from accusations of being modern only because he speaks of eternal things. And eternal things, it must be remembered, are always up to date, even while modern things are alway behind the times and passing away.

There is, indeed, one class of modern writers and thinkers who cannot altogether be overlooked in this question, though there is no space here for a lengthy account of them, which, indeed, to confess the truth, would consist chiefly of abuse.

I mean those who get over all these abysses and reconcile all these wars by talking about “aspects of truth,” by saying that the art of Kipling represents one aspect of the truth, and the art of William Watson another; the art of Mr. Bernard Shaw one aspect of the truth, and the art of Mr. Cunningham Grahame another; the art of Mr. H. G. Wells one aspect, and the art of Mr. Coventry Patmore (say) another.

I will only say here that this seems to me an evasion which has not even the bad sense to disguise itself ingeniously in words.

If we talk of a certain thing being an aspect of truth, it is evident that we claim to know what is truth; just as, if we talk of the hind leg of a dog, we claim to know what is a dog.

Unfortunately, the philosopher who talks about aspects of truth generally also asks, “What is truth?” Frequently even he denies the existence of truth, or says it is inconceivable by the human intelligence.

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Bill Whittle Day!

Posted March 8, 2011 By John C Wright

Only posting a link, or, rather two videos.

Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. In honor of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday, for you non-francophiles) we have a festival of Bill Whittle: End of the Beginning and Free Frontier.

END OF THE BEGINNING:

There is a rather nice science fiction story hidden somewhere in this analysis, which ties the form of government roughly to the surrounding social power structure, including the basic form of the economy, either husbandmen of the Agrarian Revolution, factory hand of the Industrial Revolution, or programmer of the Information Revolution.

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You’ve Come a Long Way Down, Baby: The Tao of Housework

Posted March 7, 2011 By John C Wright

There is an ongoing discussing on the comments thread of this piece You’ve Come a Long Way Down Baby! which I should like, for purposes of legibility, to move to its own topic.

For those of us who came in late, the beginnings of the debate was this:

The original post reprinted this panel from a comic, which, I submit, and no one has denied, the average modern reader finds mildly or acutely embarrassing (and the modern feminist reader finds outrageous and blasphemous) because it portrays a superhuman girl as a girl who does housework when not engaged in world-saving, a girl who voices no shame over this stereotypical feminine role.

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Quotes from DARKNESS AND LIGHT by Olaf Stapledon

Posted March 4, 2011 By John C Wright

First, a word of background. I was clearing out old files, and came across this oddity: my own annotations and comments on a manuscript.

DARKNESS AND LIGHT by Olaf Stapledon was a novel I enjoyed, at least somewhat, in my youth, and I was favorably impressed with Olaf Stapledon’s breadth of imagination.

Rereading it with adult eyes, I am appalled.

This book was written in 1942, during the Second World War. It consists of a tale with no characters and no plot: or, rather, all mankind is the character, and all future history to the end of man or the abolition of man is the plot. With his characteristic Stapledonian gigantism and grandeur, the author escorts us down immensities, centuries and millennia flying past in a paragraph.

This is instead a history book of two fictional histories of the future, two branches of the time stream, one leading to darkness, and the other to light. As best I know, it is the first science fictional presentation of the theme of parallel and alternate timelines.

To my mind, Olaf Stapledon is nearly as inventive as HG Wells: galactic empires, dirigible planets, cosmic evolution, superhumanity, artificial elements, disembodied brains, and other basic science fiction tropes are his inventions. And yet he is rarely brought to mind as one of the founding giants of science fiction: Perhaps that is because his ideas were rarely brought to the public through radio or motion picture. There is no Orson Wells or George Pal that dramatized LAST AND FIRST MEN, or ODD JOHN, or SIRIUS before the ears and eyes of the general public.

The Narrator is an unidentified man of our era perceiving these things in a vision, perhaps the same man who performs a similar ‘framing sequence’ function in STARMAKER by the same author.

For the purposes of savaging him in this commentary, I called him ‘Olaf.’ Whether the opinions of Olaf the Narrator are the same as those of Olaf Stapledon the Author, I leave to wiser heads than mine.

Second, a word of explanation:

Any reader taken aback by the venom of my comments must understand that mine is akin to the fury of a fanboy scorned, of whom it is said Hell hath no Fury. Olaf Stapledon, if I may use the embarrassing metaphor, was a childhood crush of mine, an author beloved of my imagination.

But when I read him back then, in the innocence of youth, the political references sailed lightly over my head. Now that I am taller, they slap me in the face.

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You’ve Come a Long Way Down, Baby!

Posted March 1, 2011 By John C Wright

(This is a repeat of last Friday’s post with some new paragraphs added)

A few comments, in no particular order, sparked by this article:

Guys versus Men: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146321725889448.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Hat tip to Catholic and Enjoying It. http://markshea.blogspot.com/2011/02/fascinating-piece-on-guys-vs-men.html

The money quote:

I see [puerile shallowness] as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. It’s been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.

Today’s pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn’t say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can’t act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky. To deepen his predicament, because he is single, his advisers and confidants are generally undomesticated guys just like him.

Single men have never been civilization’s most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with “Star Wars” posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

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The Select Committee on Pedological Maturation Affairs

Posted March 1, 2011 By John C Wright

Robert J. Wizard writes in with this question, concerning this article discussed previously in this space:

Who decides what is “childish”? Is it confined to Star Wars, or science fiction in general? Comic books and Star Wars (leaving out the prequels) are meaningless tripe? Conversations about them are immature?

I think the current administration is appointing a committee whose rulings on what is childish and what is mature are definitive and binding. It will be a cabinet level position. Since the state is now our Nanny, who better to decide whether we are growing into adults at the correct rate?

No, no, just kidding. The committee on childishness is actually appointed by the Science Fiction Writers of America, under its President, Damon Knight.

By some odd coincidence, they decided all of Damon Knight’s works are mature and grown-up, whereas the work of AE van Vogt is childish tripe. Hmm.

The committee also ruled that Kyle Raynor is the real Green Lantern and Hal Jordan is a has-been; that Roger Moore is a better James Bond than Sean Connery; that Jar Jar Binks is a really cool character, and made Phantom Menace better than Empire Strikes Back; the Halle Berry is the best Catwoman; that Michael Moorcock and China Mieville count as grown-up and serious writers, whereas CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien are immature and trivial.

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Space Rubbish!

Posted March 1, 2011 By John C Wright

The esteemed Isaac Wilcott, who helped me with my research when I was writing NULL A CONTINUUM, has decided to venture onto the opinion and editorial pages of the Internet. He has begun his own blog at

http://spacerubbish.wordpress.com/

I suspect that he lacks that personality defect of shameless exhibitionism which makes men become actors, opinion-makers, pundits, science fiction writers and ax murderers, so it behooves us to click through and visit and leave a word of encouragement.

Wilcott is, after all, a fellow fan of A.E. van Vogt. Van is the writer of all writers who shaped my youthful imagination and persuaded me of the infinite potential of the human spirit. In the time of John W Campbell Jr., Van was as big as Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov, but while these two authors have withstood the test of time, or even grown to legendary stature as the year flee, poor Mr. Van Vogt lingers neglected and foresaken.

So anyone who does not forget Van Vogt has earns special and grateful admiration from me. (And that includes the midget monster Harlan Ellison, by the bye, who fought like a tiger to get Van his well-deserved Grandmaster award from the SF Writer’s guild.)

And, so far, Mr. Wilcott is the only person I’ve ever met who read more Van Vogt than I have, even coming into possession of unpublished (in English) van Vogt manuscripts, and rareties from his pre-SF sales to True Confession magazines, and so on.

In any case, if you are wondering why Mr. Wilcott named his journal after killer space screwdrivers or wandering debris, or if you like his Van Vogt Info pages, you owe yourself a visit.

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