About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Testing, testing ...
Looks like Blogger is finally working again. I spoke too soon the other day. Okay, now I can start to restore normal transmission if all goes well.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Enforced blog break
I had an enforced blog break for a number of reasons ... but partly because for a while there Blogger wasn't working. People could comment but I couldn't post (apparently this was a problem affecting other folks on teh intertubez, not just me).
Now that it's working again, normal service from me will be resuming. I've spent the last few days working pretty hard on my current projects, not the least of it getting quite a bit of rough drafting done at my end for the 50 Great Myths About Atheism book. My head is spinning a bit because I'm tackling a lot of these myths at once, and have also been doing a lot of reading (partly to establish the provenance for as many myths as possible ... where possible, I'm looking for more reliable sources than relatively ephemeral ones on the Internet).
Over the last few days I've read Reasonable Atheism, by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, which is interesting in that, to some extent, it fills the same niche as our book. I.e., it is aimed at disabusing people about atheism, rather than putting a full-blooded case for it. I think this book is very well written, but also rather weak in some ways. To be fair to the authors, that's partly because it's aimed at beginners in these debates. That will also affect 50 Great Myths: we can't assume an audience that is highly sophisticated in the sorts of debates that happen here on this blog, or over at Butterflies and Wheels or Why Evolution is true.
I'm currently reading an Alister McGrath book, The Twilight of Atheism, and finding it quite good for what it is. McGrath has an off-putting manner as a speaker, I think, but he's far from being an idiot. He writes well, and this book provides a useful source of some of the misconceptions, as I see them; I expect (at this early stage) that it's one that Udo and I will be referring to a fair bit. I need to read quite a few more books of this kind - not opportunistic ones of the "flea" sort, but more respected works of apologetics (on the other hand, I'm not necessarily talking about technical philosophical works; McGrath's book is at a good level for my purpose).
Nearly bed time here, but that's what I've been up to. Back soon.
Now that it's working again, normal service from me will be resuming. I've spent the last few days working pretty hard on my current projects, not the least of it getting quite a bit of rough drafting done at my end for the 50 Great Myths About Atheism book. My head is spinning a bit because I'm tackling a lot of these myths at once, and have also been doing a lot of reading (partly to establish the provenance for as many myths as possible ... where possible, I'm looking for more reliable sources than relatively ephemeral ones on the Internet).
Over the last few days I've read Reasonable Atheism, by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, which is interesting in that, to some extent, it fills the same niche as our book. I.e., it is aimed at disabusing people about atheism, rather than putting a full-blooded case for it. I think this book is very well written, but also rather weak in some ways. To be fair to the authors, that's partly because it's aimed at beginners in these debates. That will also affect 50 Great Myths: we can't assume an audience that is highly sophisticated in the sorts of debates that happen here on this blog, or over at Butterflies and Wheels or Why Evolution is true.
I'm currently reading an Alister McGrath book, The Twilight of Atheism, and finding it quite good for what it is. McGrath has an off-putting manner as a speaker, I think, but he's far from being an idiot. He writes well, and this book provides a useful source of some of the misconceptions, as I see them; I expect (at this early stage) that it's one that Udo and I will be referring to a fair bit. I need to read quite a few more books of this kind - not opportunistic ones of the "flea" sort, but more respected works of apologetics (on the other hand, I'm not necessarily talking about technical philosophical works; McGrath's book is at a good level for my purpose).
Nearly bed time here, but that's what I've been up to. Back soon.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Sunday supervillainy - X-Men: First Class character trailers
Trailers for Beast, Havok, and Banshee ... and for Mystique!
All this supposedly happens 40 years before the three original X-Men movies, so don't ask how it is that Mystique ends up looking like Rebecca Romijn after she's depowered in X-3. I'm just going to enjoy this one for what it is and only worry too much about internal continuity with the other movies if more of these prequels get made. The The First Class movie is still looking good to me - enjoy the trailers.
All this supposedly happens 40 years before the three original X-Men movies, so don't ask how it is that Mystique ends up looking like Rebecca Romijn after she's depowered in X-3. I'm just going to enjoy this one for what it is and only worry too much about internal continuity with the other movies if more of these prequels get made. The The First Class movie is still looking good to me - enjoy the trailers.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Happy birthday, Jenny!!
(Thanks to big sis for taking it with her trusty iPhone.)
Friday, May 06, 2011
Scribble, scribble, scribble
Posting here has been a bit sparse this week. It should pick up next week, but the last few days have been busy as I'm trying to knock one book-length manuscript into shape (more on that later if anything comes of it)...
... while also doing some intense work for another one. As to the latter, I previously reported somewhere on this blog that Udo Schuklenk and I are contracted to write (not edit, write) a book with the title 50 Great Myths About Atheism. We've done a fair bit of planning, and the way things have turned out May is a very good month for me to get down some draft material at my end. I'm going to be doing that with some intensity over the coming weeks, as indeed I have been over the last few days.
I'm hoping that during the next couple of months we'll get a much clearer idea of what the book will eventually look like. We're due to submit the manuscript toward the end of the year, so we have some solid months of writing, rewriting, identifying problems, replanning, rewriting, etc., ahead of us, but I think we're going to get a terrific book out of it in the end.
Occasionally someone asks us, or we ask ourselves or each other, are there really fifty worthwhile "myths" we can tackle? Well, depending on how you count them and what you consider a "myth" ... yes. Obviously there are various ways of grouping them, consolidating them, teasing them out, and so on, so we need to be sure as we go that fifty really is a sensible number for packaging them all up. At the moment, though, we have a working list that's somewhat longer than fifty, so I don't think that's going to be a problem.
... while also doing some intense work for another one. As to the latter, I previously reported somewhere on this blog that Udo Schuklenk and I are contracted to write (not edit, write) a book with the title 50 Great Myths About Atheism. We've done a fair bit of planning, and the way things have turned out May is a very good month for me to get down some draft material at my end. I'm going to be doing that with some intensity over the coming weeks, as indeed I have been over the last few days.
I'm hoping that during the next couple of months we'll get a much clearer idea of what the book will eventually look like. We're due to submit the manuscript toward the end of the year, so we have some solid months of writing, rewriting, identifying problems, replanning, rewriting, etc., ahead of us, but I think we're going to get a terrific book out of it in the end.
Occasionally someone asks us, or we ask ourselves or each other, are there really fifty worthwhile "myths" we can tackle? Well, depending on how you count them and what you consider a "myth" ... yes. Obviously there are various ways of grouping them, consolidating them, teasing them out, and so on, so we need to be sure as we go that fifty really is a sensible number for packaging them all up. At the moment, though, we have a working list that's somewhat longer than fifty, so I don't think that's going to be a problem.
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Sean Carroll's Thor connection
H/T Sean Carroll for this. Apparently he was a scientific consultant to the moviemakers of Thor and got to read the script in advance (the bastard!), and is likewise involved in forthcoming Avengers movie. How cool is that?
Sean makes the point that some effort was put in to make Jane Foster sympathetic and believable as a working scientist, and, yes, now he mentions it I can see that. (Jane is a nurse in the comics, but she's an experimental physicist in the movie, and it makes sense the way the original continuity has been rejigged). One of the things that works well in the movie is that the scientist types (basically Jane and her supervisor, though they also have a research assistant who was actually trained in political science) are sympathetic characters.
Even though this is a world in which magic is real, there's no tendency to debunk scientists as arrogant and misguided know-alls ... which could so easily have happened once Hollywood became involved. Much is made of the fact that magic is really continuous with science within the diegesis - it's just that there are some rules about how things work that we're currently unaware of and can't readily comprehend. Sean says:
Sean makes the point that some effort was put in to make Jane Foster sympathetic and believable as a working scientist, and, yes, now he mentions it I can see that. (Jane is a nurse in the comics, but she's an experimental physicist in the movie, and it makes sense the way the original continuity has been rejigged). One of the things that works well in the movie is that the scientist types (basically Jane and her supervisor, though they also have a research assistant who was actually trained in political science) are sympathetic characters.
Even though this is a world in which magic is real, there's no tendency to debunk scientists as arrogant and misguided know-alls ... which could so easily have happened once Hollywood became involved. Much is made of the fact that magic is really continuous with science within the diegesis - it's just that there are some rules about how things work that we're currently unaware of and can't readily comprehend. Sean says:
The thinking here is very much based on Arthur C. Clarke’s “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In the trailer above [i.e. embedded in Sean's post], Thor basically gives exactly this pitch to Jane Foster.Kudos to the folks at Marvel Studios - especially, it seems, Kevin Feige - for taking these issues into account and bringing in science consultants, and to the consultants for helping to ensure that this was not (even inadvertently) an anti-science movie. As Sean observes, the magical world of Thor has to integrate with the high-tech world of the Iron Man movies, since Thor and Iron Man live in the same fictional universe and will be meeting in The Avengers. I'm now more sensitised to how the latter will treat the interface between magic and science when it's released next year.
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Thor
Anyone else seen this yet? I went and had a look this afternoon through the 3D goggles conveniently provided with my ticket. I give it, um, about three out of five stars. It was a lot of fun, with some nice humorous moments, and it certainly looked good. Asgard was visually impressive; Loki was suitably badass as the main villain; the human characters (Jane Foster et al.); were likeable; and Anthony Hopkins made a convincing Odin. Most of the characters, especially the big three of Thor, Odin, and Loki, looked pretty much as I'd have imagined them. I was perfectly happy with Heimdall's skin colour - Asgardians seem to differ among themselves quite a bit in such characteristics, especially since we were given a clearly Asiatic Hogun the Grim. It's a pity that there's been some apparently racist backlash about Heimdall's portrayal by Idris Elba.
On the other hand, the character development was pretty thin and unconvincing even for a superhero movie: the idea that Thor learned to be less arrogant and headstrong so quickly was more told to us than really shown.
Oh, and the Destroyer proved to be a disappointingly incompetent secondary villain, despite appearing intimidating in the trailer. As all fans of the franchise know, the Destroyer should be more than Thor's match in raw power and weaponry - in the comics it once even destroyed Mjolnir with its disintegrator ray. When confronted by it, Thor should be forced to do something, y'know, heroic: something that takes him beyond himself or that requires real resourcefulness. In this version ... well, not so much.
Of course, see below, the movies can create their own continuity, but even without any background knowledge I think I would have found the Destroyer a tad disappointing, in my role as a general aficianado of supervillainry - especially after it gets a big build up.
If you do go and see Thor, remember to stay until the credits are over for a final scene that puts things in a somewhat new light.
Anyway, I also saw the X-Men: First Class trailer. I've watched this before, on YouTube, like most of the rest of the world, but I've gotta say that it looks even better on the big screen. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing in a few weeks' time. This movie absolutely plays hell with the continuity of the comics, but I don't really care about that: movies and movie series can have their own separate continuities as long as they do something interesting with the characters and mythos that they're based on. In that respect, an X-Men movie set back in the early 1960s - at the time when the team was actually created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby - should have a lot of possibilities. And I'm not the first to say it ... but it looks at the moment as if Michael Fassbender is going to steal the show.
On the other hand, the character development was pretty thin and unconvincing even for a superhero movie: the idea that Thor learned to be less arrogant and headstrong so quickly was more told to us than really shown.
Oh, and the Destroyer proved to be a disappointingly incompetent secondary villain, despite appearing intimidating in the trailer. As all fans of the franchise know, the Destroyer should be more than Thor's match in raw power and weaponry - in the comics it once even destroyed Mjolnir with its disintegrator ray. When confronted by it, Thor should be forced to do something, y'know, heroic: something that takes him beyond himself or that requires real resourcefulness. In this version ... well, not so much.
Of course, see below, the movies can create their own continuity, but even without any background knowledge I think I would have found the Destroyer a tad disappointing, in my role as a general aficianado of supervillainry - especially after it gets a big build up.
If you do go and see Thor, remember to stay until the credits are over for a final scene that puts things in a somewhat new light.
Anyway, I also saw the X-Men: First Class trailer. I've watched this before, on YouTube, like most of the rest of the world, but I've gotta say that it looks even better on the big screen. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing in a few weeks' time. This movie absolutely plays hell with the continuity of the comics, but I don't really care about that: movies and movie series can have their own separate continuities as long as they do something interesting with the characters and mythos that they're based on. In that respect, an X-Men movie set back in the early 1960s - at the time when the team was actually created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby - should have a lot of possibilities. And I'm not the first to say it ... but it looks at the moment as if Michael Fassbender is going to steal the show.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Bob Carr slams funding for school chaplains
Former NSW premier Bob Carr has weighed in against government funding for school chaplains, saying that "The notion of the state funding religious activity is abhorrent."
Meanwhile, the High Court challenge to the school chaplaincy program goes ahead next week, in what will be a critical test of section 116 of the Australian Constitution (which provides for some separation of church and state at the federal level). We'll see whether section 116 has any real teeth - it hasn't seemed that way in the past, but perhaps this is a stronger case. I'm not especially optimistic that the funding scheme will be struck down, as section 116 has been interpreted in the past as doing no more than forbidding the creation of a European-style established church, which the chaplaincy scheme does not do. Nonetheless, the High Court has an opportunity to give close attention to what it might regard as the true purpose of the provision.
Meanwhile, the High Court challenge to the school chaplaincy program goes ahead next week, in what will be a critical test of section 116 of the Australian Constitution (which provides for some separation of church and state at the federal level). We'll see whether section 116 has any real teeth - it hasn't seemed that way in the past, but perhaps this is a stronger case. I'm not especially optimistic that the funding scheme will be struck down, as section 116 has been interpreted in the past as doing no more than forbidding the creation of a European-style established church, which the chaplaincy scheme does not do. Nonetheless, the High Court has an opportunity to give close attention to what it might regard as the true purpose of the provision.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Sunday supervillainy - Age of X concludes
The event has been, in part, a detective story, as the main players have sensed something "wrong" with the reality they've found themselves in - aspects of it haven't added up, and we've seen several characters trying to figure out why. The mystery is now solved, and I gather that the "normal" reality of X-Men is restored by the end of the story ... along with the characters' original memories. As revealed in the previous episode, it all involved Professor Xavier's crazy, ridiculously overpowered son, Legion.
Since the characters actually lived in the altered reality for a full week - this wasn't a dream or immersion in cyberspace - with different relationships and responsibilities, there's now plenty of opportunity for Age of X to have lingering effects. Apart from that one week, each character also has memories of years of events that never happened.
E.g., Storm and Namor, who've been shown to have a certain admiration of each other in the past, were made lovers in the Age of X world. How are they going to be affected by their memories (both true and false) of that? Come to think of it, Cyclops was paired off during that time with the brash supervillainous Frenzy, the outcome of which should be amusing if they're going to retain the memories of what happened (as it seems they will).
Emma Frost is Cyclops' lover in the normal continuity, but she's also had a past love affair with Namor, the undersea superman who rules Atlantis, and the two of them have an ongoing erotically-charged friendship. Throw in the newly-established Storm/Namor connection, and Emma is going to be sooo pissed off by all of this.
All of which just proves, folks, that the soap-opera element of X-Men is the most fun part - more than the superhero/supervillain battles and even more than the continual political and philosophical conflicts. Onward, now, to see what the fall-out might be, though first I need to read Carey's final chapter to get a better idea of what actually happened here.
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