Wearing the Moon

Beware the Ides of March!

2012-02-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

Great Caesar's Ghost! That's the last time I check out DVDs for Cleopatra!

Sympathy for the Censors

2012-02-17T14:37:00.000-07:00

Back in September, I got involved in a discussion about banned books on Goodreads. I took a strong book-banning is wrong position. As a result, I found myself arguing in favor of Phillip Greaves's The Pedophile's Guide to Love And Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct, the book that unfortunately became the agreed upon example of a text that deserved to be repressed. The group's moderators contacted me and advised me to tread carefully: apparently I was upsetting people and the moderators had concluded there was a need to distance the group from my comments. My last post mentioning Greaves wound up censored itself! I decided I also wanted to distance myself from my previous comments and attempted to approach the issue from a different angle by posting a bit about Tom Clancy.

It's hard to defend a book like The Pedophile's Guide because I'd actually prefer to live in a world where such a book did not exist. Most people laugh at silly attempts to ban, say, the dictionary, or the works of Dr. Seuss, and think themselves superior to the narrow-minded individuals that would suggest such things. The thing to remember, though, is that the people who want to ban the Harry Potter series genuinely believe it to be even more dangerous than a book like the Pedophile's Guide—the later may endanger a child's physical and psychological well-being, but the first has the potential to corrupt an innocent's immortal soul.

Anyone who wants to ban any book probably finds that book at least as disturbing as I found Greaves's suggestion that

You can't unread this—think twice before clicking!

I really don't think anyone should read Greaves's book and I certainly wouldn't publish it if I was in the book business. I think it is inappropriate, however, to act to prevent anyone from reading or publishing anything, no matter how disgusting or worthless I may deem it to be. My reason is a desire to adhere to the golden rule: I won't stop you from reading anything because I don't want you to stop me.

Additional reading:

Note From Lapland: "Is There Ever A Case For Banning A Book?"
Polk Law Blog: "An Initial Critique of the Greaves Obscene Materials Arrest"
Snopes.com: "The Banned Book of Dr. Seuss!"

Raptured

2012-02-05T21:56:00.001-07:00

The following was intended to be a Facebook status update on 21 October 2011. I spent too long tinkering with it and the moment passed me by (and despite my polishing it never really reached a truly satisfactory shine), but it's somewhat amusing (and probably offensive—I can't seem to help myself).

Extrapolated from Webster's:

One of the synonyms listed for Rapture is Intoxication.

Rapture of the Deep is defined as "a state of euphoria and confusion similar to that of alcohol intoxication which occurs when nitrogen in normal air enters the bloodstream at increased pressure (as in deep-water diving)."

Rapture of the Deep is also known as Nitrogen Narcosis.

Being drunk could be referred to as Alcohol Narcosis.

It would not, therefore, be unreasonable to refer to a state of drunkenness as Rapture of the Party.

Members of some Christian sects consume wine in a ritual believed to transform the wine into the blood of Jesus Christ.

The Rapture might, therefore, be referred to as either The Intoxication or Sanguinis Christi Narcosis.

Stupefacient is a synonym of narcotic; thus, narcosis—"a state of stupor, unconsciousness, or arrested activity"—is synonymous with stupefaction.

Sanguinis Christi Narcosis translates, therefore, as Stupefaction by the Blood of Christ.

The Raptured, it follows, are stupid bloody Christians.

How far, Doctor? Back, back to your beginning...

2012-01-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

Back in October, a friend asked my opinion on the best place for someone who hadn't watched Doctor Who before to start. I answered "Rose," the first episode of the 2005 revival of the series. Googling "where to start" and "Doctor Who" suggests that I'm hardly alone in making that recommendation. I'm not sure I'm pleased with the prevalence of potshots taken at the perceived quality of the older seasons of Who, though.

While the vast majority of Doctor Who stories can be enjoyed (or, at least, understood) without any previous exposure to the series—thus, cherry-picking a few of the best episodes is the most obvious way to generate an interest to see more in the uninitiated—the level of connection that a Doctor Who fan achieves with the series can only occur when there is some appreciation of the show's continuity. Watching episodes in order is important, but there are some very good reasons not to start at the very beginning. I've identified seven particularly good possible starting points below and made a few notes that might help the new to Who work out how far back they'd like to go. Obviously, the further back one goes, the more primitive the production methods utilized become. Apart from that, here are some of the other points to consider.

The Eleventh Hour - Series Five (2010)
- The place to start if your goal is to get up to speed as quickly as possible.
- You must go back at least this far. It's only 28 episodes.
Rose - Series One (2005)
- The best place for the new to Who to start.
- Doctor Who's last regular season had aired sixteen years earlier. It was assumed most viewers would be unfamiliar with the show.
- There are five episodes between Series Four and Series Five, collected on The Specials box set.
- There are two spin-offs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, to keep track of (or ignore) as well:
  - Torchwood Series One slots in after Doctor Who Series Two.
  - Sarah Jane Series One comes after Who Series Three.
  - Torchwood Series Two is between Sarah Jane Series One and Who Series Four.
  - Sarah Jane Series Two aired between Who Series Four and "The Next Doctor."
  - Torchwood Series Three aired between "Planet of the Dead" and "The Waters of Mars."
  - Sarah Jane Series Three began after Torchwood Series Three and finished shortly after "Waters of Mars."
  - Sarah Jane Series Four aired after Who Series Five
  - Torchwood Series Four aired concurrently with Who Series Six.
  - Sarah Jane Series Five aired after Who Series Six.
- Actually, there's a third spin-off: K-9, but its relationship with its parent program is not as tight.
The Leisure Hive - Season Eighteen (1980 - 1981)
- Classic series episodes are not released as season box sets, making it more difficult to obtain stories in order.
- Some episodes have yet to be released to DVD at all!
- The spin-off K-9 and Company aired between Seasons Eighteen and Nineteen.
The Time Warrior - Season Eleven (1973 - 1974)
- The first season to feature Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.
Spearhead from Space - Season Seven (1970)
- Though originally shot in color, a number of episodes now exist only in black and white.
The Dominators - Season Six (1968 - 1969)
- The first six seasons of Doctor Who were shot in black & white.
- Seven episodes are missing from Season Six (out of forty-four).
  - The BBC destroyed the master tapes of many programs they thought were no longer of interest in the 1970s.
  - The audio of the missing episodes was preserved in recordings made by fans.
  - Animated versions of two of the missing episodes are available (completing the serial "The Invasion").
  - The other five missing episodes are all from "The Space Pirates." Just skip it, or get the audio or a reconstruction.
  - This is the earliest place you can start without being seriously inconvenienced by missing episodes.
An Unearthly Child - Season One (1963 - 1964)
- 106 total episodes are missing from Who's first six seasons (out of 253).
  - Audio versions are available, as well as fan-produced reconstructions.
  - While seasons one and two are relatively intact, seasons three through five barely exist in their original form.

From Wikipedia (you'll want to keep this handy): the List of Doctor Who serials.

This is a Fake—in Felt-tip

2012-01-27T01:19:00.000-07:00

I posted a review of Stephen Fry's The Liar on Goodreads. It's a pretty common thing to see Goodreads users complaining about the inability to give half stars when assigning ratings and I'm often torn between giving a book three or four stars; The Liar, however, represents the first time I found it difficult to decide whether to give the book two, three, or four stars—all I felt sure of was that it didn't deserve either one star or five. I had enjoyed reading The Liar quite a bit, but, nonetheless, judged it to be a pretty poor novel.

To my mind, one of the most important qualities necessary to a good novel is truth. Many would hold that fiction, by definition, is composed of untruths—lies, even—but I beg to differ. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." A novel gives us a God's-eye view of an entire universe. We will never, no matter how far our science advances, be able see the whole of our own reality from outside of reality. No mere chronicler of fact will ever have the ability to compose a complete record of any occurrence within our reality. The novelist, however, can show us how things fit together in the world of the novel and this can give us some idea of how things might fit together in our own. In order to do this, it is necessary that the pieces of the novel actually do fit together—the world of the novel must be consistent. The Liar is not consistent; it really is composed of untruths and lies are lies whether they're lies about our reality or an imaginary one.

Some interesting Liar related links:

I Hated This Book—Please Buy It!

2012-01-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

I use the social book recommendation site Goodreads to track what I'm reading. Yesterday, I started a book and added it to the list of books I am "currently reading"; a few minutes later, I deleted it. The reason: the book is one that I am reading for the purpose of producing a professional audiobook. When it's released, the audiobook edition will show up on my Goodreads profile; it is, therefore, redundant to have it listed among the books I've read. Also, it seems odd to rate a book that I have a financial stake in. I'm unlikely to be narrating only five-star masterpieces of literature—indeed, my goal is more along the lines of maintaining a steady work flow—but publicly rating books I'm trying to sell as less than five out of five may not be in my own best interest. Is the best thing just to keep my opinion on the works I'm narrating to myself?

None of this should be taken as suggesting that the book I'm currently narrating is lousy. So far it's pretty good. But if it takes a sudden turn towards crap, I may neglect to mention it.

Transcendence

2012-01-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another which states that this has already happened.

—Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

It may not even be necessary for anyone to figure the old one out; complexity, it seems, tends to aggregate until sufficient energy is applied to break it down. Thus, a state of nothingness requires enormous (perhaps infinite?) energy to maintain, with the universe undergoing "spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy" as it cools over time. It seems to be part of the natural order of things for something to spontaneously pop into being out of nothing. There is something, rather than nothing, because nothing is inherently unstable, it's ultimate simplicity inevitably becoming cluttered with possibilities.

The universe could not fail to exist if it tried, as, if it were able for a moment to succeed, there would be nothing, and nothing, by definition, would no longer contain anything that could continue striving not to be (or any of the energy that would have been necessary to simplify the structure of everything to the point that there wasn't anything including energy). Except that in no time at all, it continues, or begins again, or begins for the first time (the only time and every time). And when the aggregation of complexity achieves some form of sentience it wonders, "What's it all about? Why am I here? Why is there something rather than nothing?" Accepting that the laws of the universe dictate that simple systems will stabilize as more complex ones doesn't mean that we can't still wonder why there are any laws of the universe dictating anything of any kind.

There is an expectation—possibly one founded on false assumptions, but it doesn't seem particularly unreasonable to expect causality to be maintained—that there must be some sort of first cause, something that acted in some manner to bring the entire system of being into being. Something that dictates the form of the universal laws which cause nothingness to decay into structure. Whatever that first cause is, it would have to be able to transcend the laws of nature: it would have to exist independently of everything and continue to be when there was nothing. That there must be some sort of being outside of being has, historically, been put forward as an argument for the existence of God. It certainly doesn't, however, provide evidence for the existence of the sort of God that any of the world's various religions might expect; it simply states that whatever the first, sustaining cause of creation turns out to be, the word for that cause is God.

In that case, all one has to do to find God is to work out what exists when nothing exists. The transcendently simply answer is that mathematics exist independently of any physical forms and that it is possible to model any state of being mathematically. One nothing plus one nothing equals two nothings? Utter drivel, obviously, but the point is that you don't actually need concrete objects—the traditions of mathematical education would dictate apples—to add; numbers don't feel any particular drive to be attached to objects, people just find it easier to think about them after they have been. The tendency is to think of apples as being real while numbers are intangible and abstract, but if you made a complete and accurate mathematical model of an apple—which in order to be really complete would have to include the tree the apple grew in, the orchard containing the tree, the man who picked and ate the apple, and everything else connected in any way to the apple's existence or the existence of anything else in the model (i.e. the entire universe, all of space and time)—the man in the model would enjoy his apple as much as you enjoy yours.

While the laws of physics describe the way our universe has been observed to behave, and could not necessarily be expected to describe the behavior of any other universe, the laws of mathematics could be applied to model any possible universe. If we assume that an intelligence is necessary to form the equations which generate mathematical models of realities then we aren't really any closer to a first cause; however, the laws of mathematics continue to be true even in the absence of anyone who understands them. It is not really possible to create a mathematical equation, as that would imply that the two sides of the equation had not been equal until the mathematician defined them to be so. We can only discover equations. Whether or not anyone is aware of it, there is an equation or set of equations that accurately models the whole of our universe. Those equations would be true—and, thus, could be said to be, to exist—in the absence of any concrete reality. As part of the system described by the equations, we would never be able to perceive anything outside of the equations. Since we exist inside the equations and the equations must exist because they are mathematically true, we exist because we logically must and God is ultimate truth, the essence of pure mathematics.

Mountain Mellow Massacre

2011-12-28T04:40:00.000-07:00

I saw this in a soda machine at the grocery store the other day. I decided just to stick with a cream soda.

Dinosaurian Formality

2011-12-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

At the last meeting of my book club, this question was posed: why does Tyrannosaurus Rex have two names when other dinosaurs get only one? (No, our book had not been about dinosaurs; we read The Tiger's Wife). Turns out the other dinosaurs have two names too, but T.'s Rex is the only one we know about due to a scattershot education overseen by the popular media.

Tyrannosaurus Rex is a binomial name. All species known to science are known by their own binomial name; if you're reading this blog you are most likely a member of the species Homo sapiens. Note that sapiens is not capitalized; neither should rex be, so I'll do my best to present it correctly from here on. The genus Homo also includes several other species, including erectus and neanderthalensis. If one imagines an individual to represent a species, that individual's family would be its genus. So rex is the only dinosaur—correct capitalization does nothing for this analogy—with whom we are on first name terms. The ever popular king of dinosaurs is as familiar as Elvis. It's dinosaurian subjects, on the other hand, are known only by their family names: a Mrs. Triceratops here, a Mr. Iguanodon there, et cetera. Armatus, stenops, and longispinus are all seen by the wider world as three matching stegosaurians.

Fame of the magnitude of rex's can distance a lizard from his roots. At one time, Aublysodon laid claim to him, and other genera have and will likely in future challenge his position in the dinosaurian hierarchy. Rex's stature is such, however, that his is a nomen conservandum; if the Aublysodon story had held up, they would have won the right to be known as Tyrannosaurus, rather than forcing rex to reveal himself as rex Dwight.

In Search of Lost Tim

2011-12-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

Last night, while working myself up to the point at which I could begin banging something out for this blog, I tried to locate all the entries I wiped from its original version when I decided rolling around in the muck wasn't making me feel any cleaner. I was sure that I had kept copies of everything, but I can't find any of it. Actually, it's possible I found all of it, but I can't tell what may be missing because it's all such a mess. I'm definitely missing some comments. As one might expect, I found the bits that most prompted me to start again by searching around online.

About a year after I wiped everything, I decided I ought to start putting stuff back. Not just stuff that had originally been here, either, but stuff from the various blogs I had maintained around the internet pre-Blogger. There's a school of thought that holds it best to maintain multiple separate blogs with strong themes linking all the content so that readers know what to expect and can begin to find your blog valuable. I tend to think there's something to this, but the theme around here has always been me and whatever may be on my mind at the time.

I found a song last night called "Why Were You Wearing the Moon?" by the group Family Fodder. Have a listen:

Why were you wearing the moon? by The state51 Conspiracy

Animal Nature

2011-12-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

When I was in junior high, I thought of myself as a writer. I assumed then that I would be a world-famous novelist long before I attained my current number of years. I loved to write. It didn't matter what kind of writing, either: I enjoyed writing papers as much as stories; I found joy in creating outlines, essays, and poems. I wasn't much of a student, as I only did the work that interested me, but what I deigned to do I did to the best of my ability.

My junior high English teacher set us a writing prompt: choose the animal you would most like to be and explain why. After some consideration, I concluded that there was no form in the animal kingdom that I preferred to the one I fortunately already possessed. I wrote something to that effect. I do not know the whereabouts of my original composition, or if it even still exists; it would be interesting to go over it again now. I believe I praised human intellect. I reveled in our inventions. I exalted in our power to change the form of the world around us. I may have mentioned language. How, as a tiger or an eagle or a llama, would I even know that I was happier if I didn't know the word happier?

When I received my paper back, it had been marked with an F. This was justified by the claim that I had not followed the assignment. I should have complained. I should have involved my parents and/or administration. I was a quiet, timid child; I never said a word about it to anyone. Inside I seethed.

My response clearly wasn't along the lines my teacher had in mind, but I never figured out exactly what she objected to about it. Did she not consider the human animal to be an animal (we're hardly vegetable or mineral)?

Perhaps she thought my answer showed a lack of imagination. On the contrary, I had imagined myself as a number of animals during the composition process and found the notion of becoming any of these creatures absolutely unbearable. I should have written why I didn't want to be a lion, why I didn't want to be an eagle, in place of why I wanted to be a man.

I was given an F because I failed to produce what was expected, despite the fact that I had produced that which had been requested. I wonder if she asked more clearly for what she wanted from the next group of students given the assignment, if she learned that it fell to her to craft a prompt that could produce the result she wanted. I wonder what I was supposed to learn. That the things I love, believe in, and desire are wrong? Not to be so foolish as to answer a question honestly? To answer only what the asker desires to hear?

Good and Evil? Who Says?

2011-11-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

It's clearly going to take some effort to get into the swing of this regular blogging thing. I've only got about half an hour of this Sunday left and I'm still way up here at the top of the page.

Do things become moral because God approves of them or is God moral because he approves of good things? A quick search on Google tells me that this is a version of the Euthyphro Dilemma; I can't remember at this point if I came up with it on my own or read it somewhere, but I answered it to my own satisfaction and my answer is a defining part of my personal philosophy.

My conclusion: if what is right is so only because God wills it to be, then God is an absolute dictator, a tyrant. Tyranny is evil. As I identify a possible action of God as evil, my perception of morality is clearly not defined by the will of God (or God has some pretty severe, self-destructive personality issues). Morality, therefore, exists independently of God and God is only a moral being insofar as he behaves according to moral dictates. While God may know more than I do and possess unimaginable powers I could barely dream of, he isn't necessarily a better person on any fundamental level.

This rather knocks the poor chap down a peg. If he goes around demanding people worship him, he comes off as little more than a big bully. If there really is a God, what's he up to? What's he for? If the sun would still rise and set, the stars still shine, the wind still blow, and what's right would still be right if he wasn't there, it hardly makes any difference if he's real or imaginary.

Draft Dodging

2011-11-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm making old year's resolutions, fueled by desperation and fear because hope tends to be full of itself, an attribute it shares with art; I'm throwing off hope so that my art can be full of itself again. Resolution number one is: new blog post every Sunday.

Now that's decided, what shall I write about? I've got six unfinished drafts for posts already started: one on the similarities between the teachings of numerous self-help gurus and those of Aleister Crowley; two on vegetarianism (which I'm not so interested in finishing; read The Omnivore's Dilemma if you want to think about food); one on the relationship between music and freedom; one about the junior high English writing prompt that I'm still pissed off about; and one which might have been going to be about the inverse proportionality of rights and freedom, but was off to a pretty weak start and it's anybody's guess where I planned to go with it at this point. I'm also interested in building up a comprehensive picture of just what it is that I believe in.

Any other requests?

My Exciting Wordpress Adventure

2011-05-12T10:20:00.000-06:00

The day before yesterday I moved my blog to Wordpress. Yesterday I moved it back (well, it was here all the time, so really I just stopped fiddling with the unnecessary new mirror site). It's highly doubtful anybody noticed.

I had been frustrated by the difficulty of creating a sticky post on Blogger. As it's easy to do with Wordpress, I found myself thinking that the easiest solution would be to move all my existing content to a new platform, redo all the design and layout work, set up redirection from the old site to the new one, and then - easily and without fuss - create the sticky post I wanted. Luckily, a night's sleep cured me of my delusion and I set about constructing my sticky surrogate out of a page and a widget. It should, shortly, be just about possible to comment on it, even.

This current post is the first I've written using my phone. I think I'll be able to get a few things written in my odd spare moments this way.

The Wheel of Lost Time

2011-01-29T23:17:00.002-07:00

There are two competing definitions of the word adult, as it is applied to literature, film, and other arts. It may signify a thematic complexity and denseness likely to be off-putting to younger folk; or, it may mean the sorts of things you would have really enjoyed when you were twelve if only your mother had let you get your hands on them. I suspect most of the books using the anti-Tolkien label to sell themselves fall into the second category rather than the first. (I've hardly performed an exhaustive survey of the genre. I'm planning to read Moorcock's Doctor Who novel when it comes out, if that counts for anything. No? Thought not.)

As influential and defining a figure as Tolkien undoubtedly is, he doesn't seem to me to be enough of an extreme to be seen as one end of a spectrum, something with a clear opposite. Having given this some thought, I've come up with two figures who, perhaps, could be seen as opposing bookends, existing on opposite sides of all their literary fellows. Both are known primarily for producing an extremely long multi-volume work, but that is as far as I can stretch their similarity: Robert Jordan, author of The Wheel of Time; and Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time.

I've read the first volume of both works. Jordan's The Eye of the World marked the moment I decided to stop reading popular fantasy novels. Upon finishing the book, I thought to myself, "Ungh. I bet this series drags on forever. I bet the author dies before finishing it." I listened to an audiobook of Swann's Way a few months ago. I thought it was delightful. What Jordan's and Proust's works have in common is length; their most significant difference can also be summed up in one word: urgency. People are always going on about how the world could end any minute in Eye of the World. In Swann's Way, life simply carries on as it always has. People have their private little dramas, but the world is untouched.

Tolkien's focus was on the good people who struggled against evil in the world. The anti-Tolkien view is that to show the world as it really is there has to be a focus on the evil as well. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but it's just as ridiculous to show a world without any good in it as one where good always triumphs. It seems less that one of these depictions is more realistic, and more that there is a desire in many of us to revel in wickedness once in a while; for some, that is what fantasy is for, and Tolkien can't provide for that need.

Contrasting Proust and Jordan, it's not about good and evil. In Jordan's fantasy world, the characters' actions matter and not just to themselves and those immediately around them; the fate of everything lies in the balance. None of Proust's characters' actions shape the world around them in anything but the most insignificant ways. The world rolls by; time marches on and is lost. The fantasy that our actions matter, more than just in this brief moment and only to ourselves, that we are somehow the most significant people at the center of our universe, is at the heart of adventure fantasies of all kinds. That we will inevitably be forgotten, in most cases sooner rather than later, as soon as we depart this life, is the real opposite to the concept of the fantasy heroes and villains who—rather than canceling each other out—are actually totally dependent on one another in order to exist.

Per Ardua Ad Astra:Christian Attitudes Towards Violence

2011-01-16T18:12:00.001-07:00

Per Ardua Ad Astra: Christian Attitudes Towards Violence: "I've been pondering a question for a long time and was hoping you might give me some insight. The question is: How can any Christian condone, support, or encourage physical violence against any person, for any reason?"

I commented a few times on this, and I think I had some interesting things to say. Anyway, I enjoyed saying them. :-)

Servants of the Anti-Tolkien

2011-01-16T02:58:00.003-07:00

Looking online for some background on Mervyn Peake—I just read the first of his Gormenghast novels, Titus Groan—I found myself wandering into the strange territory of the cult of the anti-Tolkien. Apparently, some consider Peake to be the anti-Tolkien, though others bestow that honor upon Michael Moorcock or George R. R. Martin (or various others). The effect all this had on me was to cause me to wonder if I somehow had been born with no discernment at all, as what other explanation could there be for the fact that I was capable of enjoying Titus Groan and The Lord of the Rings as if they were on, more or less, an equal footing (rather than being works so fundamentally opposed that if you were to place them next to each other on a bookshelf your entire library would implode in an unflash of verbosity)? Or, to put it another way, what's all this Tolkien bashing about and where does it come from?

I suspect the publishers are partly to blame: every fantasy novel to appear since the mid-60s has been hailed by someone as the best since The Lord of the Rings. It was inevitable that, at some point, this statement would wind up on the back cover of a book by someone who didn't care for Tolkien all that much. Of course, to that author, his book is being ridiculously compared to a dissimilar and (possibly) inferior work; to the publishers the statement just means that they're expecting it to sell well. For example, this is what was meant when many media outlets pegged Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books as the successors to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series; no one thought that Meyer had decided to start a career in writing because she'd enjoyed Rowling's books so much. I suspect that is exactly what anti-Tolkien writers are afraid people might think about them, though.

While some modern fantasy writers were inspired by Tolkien, many were not, and none of them ever produce anything really similar to Tolkien's work—most likely because it is not possible to approach writing the way Tolkien did and make a living at it (he published only two novels, and they only began to achieve popularity shortly before he died). It was never really the case that fantasy novelists only appeared after Tolkien arose to inspire them; rather, publishers sought out greater numbers of fantasy works after The Lord of the Rings proved commercially successful.

Here are a few related articles if you're still interested:

"Ad effigiem: the strawman fallacy in Utopian fiction"*: this is tackling a broader subject, but mentions Moorcock's anti-Tolkien stance as part of a bigger picutre. It put me in mind of the following line (one of my favorites) from T. H. White's The Once and Future King: "Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical—as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can’t exist."
"Rape in MY Anti-Tolkien?": about the tendency of so-called anti-Tolkien novels to be pretty much like the so-called Tolkien-inspired novels, but with more rape scenes.
"Children of Húrin or, Tolkien: The Scholars and the Critics": on the failure of Tolkien's critics to consistently apply their own rules to Tolkien's work.
"How to Critique Tolkien's Prose Style": thoughts on how critics could better interact with Tolkien.

* I disagree with the assessment of James Randi's methods in "Ad effigiem". I'm a big fan of Randi; I even bought a Randi fish, but I haven't gotten around to putting it on my car. I urge anyone unfamiliar with the James Randi/Uri Geller business to read this entry in The Skeptic's Dictionary. Watch the video at the bottom of the page, too.

Jack, the Pump King's Kin

2010-10-31T20:50:00.000-06:00

Happy Halloween! Thanks Angela, for the nudge in the right direction (well, this direction and I'm happy where I wound up at any rate).

Reaching into the Current

2010-10-06T11:37:00.002-06:00

I posted the following paragraphs on Facebook earlier this morning (last night from my point of view as it was just before I went to sleep). Earlier in the discussion, I'd said that what made Packer's talk dangerous was not any part of the message he intended, but that his words were regrettably easy to misconstrue. One response to that was that the HRC actively wanted to misconstrue his words to further their own devious purposes and, while I suppose that could be possible, I rejected the notion thus:

I wouldn't say that the HRC are jumping at the chance either, but I would agree that they are jumping. A small, but vitally important distinction. As none of us are either part of the HRC group that drafted the article or Elder Packer, we are forced to make assumptions based on what information we do have as to what ends they intended to achieve by making their statements. I currently assume that both parties are laboring to improve the lot of humanity.

As I followed it, Packer said that God doesn't make mistakes; therefore, homosexuals are, like everyone else, fully capable of attaining the highest degree of salvation - a requirement of which is a heterosexual temple marriage. Homosexuals can, through God, become heterosexual.

The HRC’s position, again, as I follow it, is that homosexuality cannot be cured. They fear that when LDS homosexuals attempt to pray themselves hetero and fail, they will come to the conclusion that since they can’t make themselves straight, Elder Packer must be wrong and God must have made a mistake creating them after all. Obviously, this reasoning is insane (on the part of the hypothetical LDS homosexual), as if Elder Packer is wrong on one count he’s probably wrong on the lot, but, it’s in line with typically observed behavior of depressed people. The HRC’s fears are not totally unfounded.

Elder Packer’s message seems to be (to me) that no one needs to settle for the small rewards offered by the world; everyone is capable of achieving exaltation through Christ. It takes a lot of boiling down to get to that, though. While I’m not sure that it would be possible to rework Packer’s talk to the point that the HRC would be really happy with it (without reworking major points of doctrine), I’m certain that he could have found better ways to put the things that he wanted to say.

The message a speaker intends ceases to exist at the moment he speaks; it is forever lost in the endless sea of messages received. Effective speakers account for that sea’s currents and steer accordingly. While I can appreciate the argument that those currents are hardly enough to in any way shift the course of an almighty God, that hardly justifies blind sailing. The object, surely, is to pull people free of the currents and into understanding. This, necessarily, entails reaching into the currents.

The Natural Man

2010-10-05T06:03:00.000-06:00

The Natural Man: sounds like a good name for some sort of gay website or magazine, doesn't it? The kind of thing with lots of fit young men out in the woods putting up tent poles. But perhaps you prefer your fit young men to start out neatly dressed in a suit and tie. Perhaps you prefer the sort of thing that a cheeky pornographer might entitle Elder Packer. Not that it matters to me what you get up to; I've got my share of quirks too, to say the least.

Anyway, before I allowed the aforementioned quirks to lead me astray (will I still respect that first paragraph in the morning?), what I wanted to remark upon was Boyd K. Packer's total failure to refer to Mosiah 3:19 in the little talk he gave the other day which has since set the blogosphere alight:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

Instead, he flew in the face of reason, declaring homosexuality to be unnatural. As if everything that is natural is good. The urge to separate us from them seems, unfortunately, to be natural. If we ever want to build ourselves some kind of heaven we'll have to get over it, though; the natural man is an enemy to God.

Fay Heaver

2010-08-13T14:11:00.001-06:00

With apologies to Richard Doyle.

How to be Free

2010-08-11T13:57:00.000-06:00

People define themselves in terms of what they are not. If I am forced to accede that one who is not like me is like me, it cancels out my concept of self and I cease to exist. I am frightened of this, but must learn not to be; it is the definition of freedom.

People define their needs in terms of what they do not have. If I see that you have something I do not, I am oppressed by my lack. I allow my lack to rule my life, seeking always that which will fill the gap, but I must learn not to; this is the definition of slavery.

The Midges of Bradison County

2010-07-15T07:31:00.001-06:00

Lop Sweaters

2010-06-28T17:46:00.000-06:00

Dear Mr. Spooner,

I must admit that I may not have fully grasped what was meant by your suggestion that we "lop sweaters," particularly as you said you'd be waiting expectantly for mine to arrive in the post. Anyway, I've sent along this drawing, which I hope you may appreciate even if it isn't remotely what you had in mind.

Ever yours,

R B

Conspiracy Theory

2010-03-15T08:44:00.001-06:00

This is going to be one of those pieces that start off with the definition of a word. Casting my mind back, trying to remember some of the various times I've encountered this technique, I asked myself whether I thought this approach was more often clever and successful or tacky and redundant. I either can't remember or can't decide, I can't decide which. Anyway, here goes (definitions courtesy of The Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary):

con·spir·a·cy
1 : the act of conspiring together
2 a : an agreement among conspirators b : a group of conspirators

Wow. That's compelling stuff. But lo! Conspiring is a hyperlink; we shall follow where it leads.

con·spire
1 a : to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement b : scheme
2 : to act in harmony toward a common end

Ah ha! Much more the sort of thing I was after. Definition one is what immediately goes through the average person's head, but definition two is what the word really means (as far as I'm concerned) or, at the very least, what it originally meant. The breakdown of the word's etymology makes that quite clear: "Middle English, from Anglo-French conspirer, from Latin conspirare to be in harmony, conspire, from com- + spirare to breathe."

So, I enjoy imagining you ask, what are you getting at with all this? Well, I like to think that I keep a particularly open mind. When I hear outrageous accusations—the government is setting up death camps for old people; 9/11 was an inside job; vaccines are to make us sicker; fluoride in the water is used for mind control—I may scoff at the foolishness of such things but, nonetheless, I file the suggestion away and see how the evidence stacks up. That's what I strive to do, at any rate; that's my ideal.

Sometimes these ideas really are just foolish nonsense; sometimes I can see what people are getting at, though the evidence is often spotty and circumstantial. I have never been convinced of the existence of a global conspiracy of any kind, however, and my contention is that a global conspiracy to destroy/enslave the world is an utterly ludicrous thing because you just don't get people who are motivated either by a desire to win power and glory for themselves or by a drive to cause chaos and devastation acting "in harmony toward a common end." A secret shadow government would splinter into bickering factions and ultimately self-destruct, rendering it quite incapable of carrying on a nefarious plot spanning centuries.

There are, of course, smaller scale conspiracies of the wrongful and unlawful variety: bank robbery immediately comes to mind. Even though bank robbers are clearly involved in definition one conspiring, successful conspiring has to incorporate definition two. To successfully get their hands on the loot, the bank robbers must act in harmony with one another. Obviously they are not acting in harmony with the bank or the people who have accounts there, but those aren't members of the conspiracy. With conspiracy on a global scale, if the conspiracy is to be successful everyone in the world must conspire to make it so. That would include the people who are uncovering the truth about the conspiracy. It would take the joint efforts of everyone in the world to bring about the total destruction of freedom throughout the world.

None of that means the death camps aren't being readied as we speak, however. It just suggests, quite strongly, that most of the evil and awful things that go on are not part of a larger scheme. The traditional idea is that the typical conspiracy theorist is an extremely paranoid individual; perhaps not. The belief that everything ties together neatly could be viewed as a sort of optimism which, in turn, would explain why they tend to be so undauntable about spreading their truth to the world in the face of contempt, derision, and indifference. Evil seems so much more manageable if it's all in one place; we have to know where it is before we can conspire to do away with it.