The estimable fjm points us to this piece by Dan Simmons, and describes it as "racism mongering."

"Racism?"

That word is bandied about almost as much as "fascism," and is beginning to be almost as much misused: any semantic stick will do to beat a dog, right?

I can think of a lot of things to say about this piece, but "racism" just isn't in it ( Read more... )

...at how little I'm seeing on my friends' LJs about the "Gospel of Judas" foofaraw. Only ursulav seems to have said much about it so far, and she mostly spends it busy being her usual clever and funny self.

( long and quasi-scholarly religious stuff here. )

( ...the response from Time is behind the cut. )

In his own LJ, supergee wrote:
[S]ome libertarians see government as an armed gang, even when it's healing the sick and feeding the hungry.

OK, here's a stfnal challenge for supergee and anyone else with an interest in liberatrianism ( Read more... )

In responding to a comment on his LJ, fr_john asks, rather plaintively, Why is it that we have had precious little SF on film that isn't mindless fluff?

I suspect, fr_john, it's because you are looking at the empty part of the cup. Yes, there has been a lot of mindless fluff, but there has been a lot of good, thoughtful SF over the years, too ( Read more... )

Thanks to supergee for the initial pointer.

Please, before reading this post, go and read this fascinating discussion on men, women, and casual sex ( Read more... )

There's a lot of whuffle in the SFF part of the blogosphere right now about fanfic, due in large part to an essay fantasist "Robin Hobb" posted on her website, lambasting fanfic. Some of the discussions resulting from Hobb's essay are here and especially hereMy own takes ( Read more... )

polymathematic in another thread quoted his local newspaper as follows:But in a split decision yesterday, the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada exposed that rhetoric for what it plainly is: A lie, a shallow promise, a political tactic employed by the federal Liberals to gain, and retain, the keys to government ( Read more... )

Kurt Vonnegut, in his classic novels of the '60s, created the concept of the chronosynclastic infundibulum, a kind of flaw in spacetime. If one enters one of these infundibula, one sees all points-of-view at once.
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There is in most of us a kind of tension between these two statements:

I respect people who take a stand for what ( Read more... )

In a response-thread to another post, I found myself writing that I [...] believe that Christianity is not about how governments should be run, and that those who try to run a government based on it are focussing on "this world" instead of heaven ( Read more... )