Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror - ToC

Table of contents announced for this book:

The stories are (alphabetically by writer):

• RJ Astruc - Johnny and Babushka
• Peter M Ball - L'esprit de L'escalier
• Alan Baxter - The King's Accord
• Jenny Blackford - Mirror
• Gitte Christensen - A Sweet Story
• Matthew Chrulew - Schubert By Candlelight
• Bill Congreve - Ghia Likes Food
• Rjurik Davidson - Lovers In Caeli-Amur
• Felicity Dowker - After The Jump
• Dale Elvy - Night Shift
• Jason Fischer - The School Bus
• Dirk Flinthart - Walker
• Bob Franklin - Children's Story
• Christopher Green - Where We Go To Be Made Lighter
• Paul Haines - High Tide At Hot Water Beach
• Lisa L. Hannett - Soil From My Fingers
• Stephen Irwin - Hive
• Gary Kemble - Feast Or Famine
• Pete Kempshall - Brave Face
• Tessa Kum - Acception
• Martin Livings - Home
• Maxine McArthur - A Pearling Tale
• Kirstyn McDermott - She Said
• Andrew McKiernan - The Memory Of Water
• Ben Peek - White Crocodile Jazz
• Simon Petrie - Dark Rendezvous
• Lezli Robyn - Anne-droid of Green Gables
• Angela Rega - Slow Cookin'
• Angela Slatter - The Bone Mother
• Angela Slatter & Lisa L Hannett - The February Dragon
• Grant Stone - Wood
• Kaaron Warren - That Girl
• Janeen Webb - Manifest Destiny

Jenny also announces it over here. "Mirror" is actually a poem, not a story, but who's counting?

Currently reading: Behzti (Dishonour) by Gurpeet Kaur Bhatti

The play Behzti, by Gurpeet Kaur Bhatti, is probably most famous for being the subject of protests in Birmingham by militant Sikhs, who objected to what they saw as an offensive depiction of the Sikh community. Bhatti herself received death threats, which is pretty much par for the course these days when you upset a religious community.

Behzti is undoubtedly sensational - involving rape and a murder - though there are also light moments, some appropriately corny stage business that would delight theatre goers, and a (somewhat) touching love story.

I have not seen the play staged, and I don't know whether there has been a stage production in Australia. I very much doubt it, or there would have been heavy publicity and public controversy.

Apparently it's been performed in Belgium and France, but I don't know where else. Thus I have to imagine how it would work on stage ... though of course we all do this all the time if we are interested in the study of drama. Bhatti's play seems to show mature stage craft and to have much potential for humour, drama, and some shocks near the end that would leave audiences gasping. It would be fascinating to see how the public would respond if an effort were made to stage it here. In any event, I'd now love to see how it would come alive with quality staging and a professional director and cast.

Behzti is, of course, in no way a racist or quasi-racist attack on Sikhs. This is not a work of racist propaganda. However, it is set in a Sikh temple and has been accused of being especially offensive for portraying violence and sexual abuse (to put it mildly) within such a location.

In case you were wondering, the Catholic Church appears to have come out firmly against the play during the controversy in Birmingham - at least if Wikipedia is reliable on this. Did the local bishop make a strong, unambiguous statement in favour of freedom of artistic expression? Ha! Wouldn't it be nice if this happened one day? I'd be happier if Wikipedia provided a citation, so we could be certain it is accurate, but it says:

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols, said the play was offensive to people of all faiths: "The right to freedom of expression has corresponding duties to the common good. Such a deliberate, even if fictional, violation of the sacred place of the Sikh religion demeans the sacred places of every religion."

In other words, freedom of expression is only freedom to express what is supposed to be for the "common good". You're not supposed to be free to express yourself if your expression - even if fictional - violates and "demeans" religious sacred places.

As always, however, freedom of speech and expression does not mean freedom of pretty, uncontroversial speech and expression, or freedom to express yourself in a way that meets the approval of the local bishop. It includes the right to express ugly sentiments in ways that might offend.

I'm not saying that Behzti should be looked on as ugly speech, but even if it were, goddammit, the emphasis in the midst of a public controversy should be on the right to utter it, not on a responsibility to censor yourself or to accept being censored. But that's the Catholic Church for you. Shame.

Edit: Thanks, guys, for the citations for the Nichols quote and for the edit by Friend of Icelos to Wikipedia so there's now no doubt for readers over there.

Catholics militants destroy artwork

A bunch of militant Roman Catholics destroyed the Serrano photograph "Piss Christ" at a gallery exhibition in Avignon. The gallery is now displaying the destroyed artwork "so people can see what barbarians can do."

This is news worth spreading. It puts in perspective just how "moderate" the Catholic Church is. And don't give me the line that this was merely a bunch of outliers - the Catholic hierarchs have previously attempted to prevent the exhibition of "Piss Christ", calling on the power of the state to do their dirty work. It happened in Melbourne during the time when I lived there, for example. They are very happy to employ force to stop speech and expression that they disapprove of, and, despite all the historical revisionism that we see, they always have been.

Roman Catholicism has a long history of suppressing ideas and images that it considers threatening. In past centuries, it has had considerable success with this, acting through state power. The Catholic hierarchy is fundamentally opposed to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and this has been shown numerous times.

There is nothing "moderate" about the Catholic Church or the Catholic faith, despite the way it is often held out as one of the nicer religions. It's just as bad as any other - and in some ways, it's worse than most. Once again, I call on decent people who belong to the Catholic Church to leave it and join some other Christian denomination. If these sorts of barbaric actions don't represent you ... well, maybe you need to look further into the positions that the hierarchy takes on your behalf.

"Wrong or simplistic or misleading..."

Ruse:

I do dislike the fact that stuff I think wrong or simplistic or misleading gets great traction with the public. I dislike it from the Tea Party. I dislike it from the New Atheists. I think Dawkins is simplistic when it comes to analyzing the arguments for the existence of God. I think Dennett is naïve and simplistic when he thinks that so sophisticated an issue as the growth and belief in religion can be analyzed in terms of Dawkins’s cultural units of memes. I think Harris is crude beyond belief when he thinks that morality can be reduced to scientific findings. I cannot say anything about Hitchens, since I quit reading him when he supported George W. Bush’s excursion into Iraq.

Ruse is entitled to think various views are wrong or simplistic or misleading, though the usual response when we see views that strike us like that is to try to publish the views that we consider right, adequately complex, and reliable. He has no problem getting his own ideas published.

But in any event, he really ought to look in the mirror. How is his theory about the constitutional implications (in the US) of the New Atheism not wrong, simplistic, and misleading? Likewise for his theory about how the cases have been decided so far. I realise that Ruse gave evidence about the nature of science in one important case, but that doesn't make him a constitutional lawyer or even a philosopher of law. This happens to be something I know a little about, and it's pretty obvious to me who is being simplistic, etc., here.

"I will regard them with contempt."

Ruse says:

I don’t think the New Atheists are bad people. I really don’t. I think the contrary, that they are deeply moral people. But moral conviction is not enough. To answer Sam Harris: Doing the right thing is not a matter of deriving morality from the facts; it is a matter of combining morality with the facts. ——And until I get some sense that the New Atheists are going to show why their present strategy does not spell disaster down the road, why it is that they can mesh science and atheism as they do and not get into trouble in the courts when it comes to keeping creationism out of the schools, I will continue to regard them with contempt.

This is extraordinary. It boils down to, "I think that some of the views of the Gnu Atheists could lead to a bad outcome (as well as being false). Therefore, I regard these deeply moral individuals with contempt."

See what he did there?

I'll be responding formally to Ruse over at the ABC religion/ethics portal, which gets many, many times as much traffic as I get here. But I couldn't let that statement go. When you think about it, it's outrageous. Just let it soak in for a minute.

(The fact that the bad outcome would only arise from some very bad legal reasoning is independently important, but beside the point I'm making here.)

I can't help (some supervillain with a mind control power obviously has me in thrall!!) observing that the relationship between the teaching of evolution and freedom of religion, as embodied in the US First Amendment and various other legal instruments, will be among the many issues discussed in my new book (working title Freedom of Religion and the Secular State) to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in late 2011/early 2012.

If I don't get to flog my book out of this, what's the world coming to?

Oh noes, ah iz a Junior New Atheist

According to Michael Ruse.

I'm more amused by this than anything else. But what's a bit annoying about the whole thing is that Michael Ruse is better than this - I used to count myself as something of a fan of his work. He's written some very good books. At the moment, as things seem to me, he's doing himself a disservice. Oh well, more later no doubt.

Sunday supervillainy - A review of Thor plus a special bonus or two.

This review of Thor is making me salivate (kind of) - it sounds like a heap of fun. I guess I'll go along and see it in a couple of weeks when it's released here.

While “Thor” is not a perfect film, it is the best from Marvel Studios yet. The lessons learned from their previous attempts are evident here, with a strong storyline that doesn’t have any major weaknesses. The film deftly expands the Marvel Universe in film, taking bold steps to set itself apart from the pack, with a great set-up for what may be the ultimate super hero cross over.

Which leads me to this piece of nostalgia from my childhood - an old (1966) Thor cartoon available on YouTube. As usual, our hero is engaged in conflict with the cunning god of mischief, Loki. Gotta love the voices, especially Loki's. 

For those who are wondering - and I assume that most of my readers are too young to have seen this when it first appeared - the animation style was clunky even for the time, in fact deliberately so. There was plenty of slick animation on television in the mid-1960s. The idea was not only to save money, though it certainly must have done that, but also to present something much more like the experience of a comic book than an ordinary cartoon.

Enjoy!

Or for metal fans, try this Thor-oriented rock video, which guest stars Thunderstrike and Beta Ray Bill.

More reviews of The Moral Landscape

Kenan Malik and Ophelia Benson have their say.

Edit: And here is Simon Blackburn. Harris has certainly gained the attention of some high-quality reviewers. (H/T Marshall.)

Wilders hate speech trial resumes

I guess we should be watching this - whatever individual opinions we have formed of Geert Wilders. The trial has recommenced after screeching to a halt last year and having to start from the beginning. Once again, it's bogged down in debates about judicial propriety.

As always with the ongoing Wilders debacle, we have the spectacular mix of free speech issues, extreme-right perspectives lurking around the edges, clashes between classical liberal values and post-modern ideas of how to enforce social harmony. All grist for the mill. Hopefully, the Dutch judicial system will eventually extricate itself with honour from this mess which it brought on itself (recall that the prosecutors never actually wanted to prosecute this case).

"Envy"; "jealousy"; "spite"

While we're talking about envy, jealousy, and spite, I'm interested in how people distinguish among these and related concepts.

Robert Nozick has a famous discussion of them in a (very) long footnote in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (page 239 for those who are interested). He makes some subtle distinctions, and they do seem to correspond with concepts that we actually have. I'm not sure, though, that his explications of envy, jealousy, and spite match my intuitive ones.

Nozick has this little matrix that applies to some sort of good, whether it's money, fame, success, sexual desirability, or whatever. The possibilities that he imagines boil down to these:

1. Both you and the other person have it.

2. The other person has it and you don't.

3. You have it and the other person doesn't.

4. Neither of you has it.

The question is: What are your preferences among 1., 2., 3., and 4.?

Nozick has a complicated analysis that has now left me wondering, though I do think that someone who prefers 4. to 1. is spiteful. Nozick defines spite as preferring 4. to 1. while preferring 3. to 4. I guess that's fair enough.

But what about jealousy and envy? And Nozick adds a couple of other categories - someone who is begrudging and someone who is merely competitive (which he doesn't really disapprove of).

What if you prefer 4. to 2. but prefer 1. to 4. (while your favourite is actually 3.). Is that jealousy or envy? Is it a form of spite? What if you're neutral between 1. and 3., both of which you prefer to 2., while putting 4. last? That's okay isn't it? There are lots of possibilities. What if your preferences are, in order, 1., 3., 2. 4.? That would seem fairly normal and healthy to me. Yes? But some people might list their preferences as 3., 1., 2. 4. Is that jealousy?

Anyone who prefers 4. to 2. seems very worrying, and someone who prefers 4. to 1. even more so.

Just asking.