I don’t mean, of course, that he doesn’t really know what science is. If someone were to prod him to unpack what he thinks I’m sure he could make a coherent case, but the quote is nonsensical. Science is a method and a process that’s neither true nor false. There’s nothing about it to “believe” … Neil Degrasse Tyson Doesn’t Know What Science Is
Halper, who plays in the band Periphery, is sponsored by Mapex and had the neat idea of setting up his set out in the busy streets during the music industry gathering SXSW. Thank God the police were there to stop this immoral act from continuing. The look of horror on everyone’s faces is heart-wrenching. This … Cops Shut Down Criminal Drummer Playing in Public
I first heard Melt-Banana when a fellow grocery store warm body lent me their Scratch or Stitch release. It held my interest for a few listens: an album full of layered ray gun guitar effects, fuzz bass pounding, ADHD drumming, insane cat-bark yipyap vocals, song titles bordering on Engrish hilarity. Something that was experimental but … In Which I Bloviate About Melt-Banana
I just bought these used but brand new at Half Price Books. There were other editions that were a dollar less but I bought these because I liked their covers. This is what “splurging” means when you have a mortgage and two kids.
Click here or up in the menu if you have a manuscript that needs the once-over. If you have no interest or need for a beta reader, please enjoy some music timed to the video of the Fraggle Rock theme song, performed by your friends in The Locust.
From Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. Reading this paragraph put me in another place. I was sitting under a tree, naked, in 140 degree weather, with a large block of ice resting on my belly. The recent warm turn of local weather didn’t hurt, either. At eleven o’clock I was sitting in the third booth … The First Paragraph of Chapter Thirteen of Someone Else’s Book
From near the end of The Abolition of Man (read it free online here). Emphasis mine. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. It … C.S. Lewis on the Soft Dictatorship of Objective Values
Buckell posted a few days ago that Arcitc Rising is now out, and I felt bad because I had the book for review but I was (unwillingly) dragging my feet on it. But now I will drag my fingers over it, and by “it” I mean my Macbook keyboard. Arctic turns UNPG (United Nations Polar … Book Review: Arctic Rising
I’ve noticed a tendency of modern writers to write clipped sentences and paragraphs. Like this. One or a few in each paragraph, for certain scenes. Not even action scenes. Ones where there’s supposed to be descriptive of a scene, or internal thought development. I can understand if it’s first person from a certain kind of … Have No Fear, This Is an Easy Read
If you’re a great writer, and I know you are, then you should be able to take a personality type that has been known to really boil my goat in the past, and eventually turn me sympathetic toward the character holding that personality. One recent example for me was Dio from Last Exile, which is … I Hate Your Guts, But Give Me a Few More Episodes
While trying to escape that weird part of Youtube, I landed on the first video posted below, of C.S. Lewis on the problem of evil. He explains, with much better clarity and elegance, what I mentioned before about God having preferences (he even used the same word), and that He prefers free moral agents over … Nothing Racks Up Adsense Money Like Another Post on Theodicy
I’m due for another one of these, and I kind of miss blatantly stealing images of beauty without attribution, from bloggers and websites that did the same (I did steal some of them from The Gentleman). Of note are the reprisals of Chesterton, looking as crabby as ever, and Alan Moore with his life-long imitation … A Compendium of Smoking Writers, Part Four or Five or Around There
I recently replaced my copyright disclaimer on my blog with a Creative Commons license. Coincidentally, my friend Seth, who has been publishing Buzzgrinder for over a decade, ran into a trademark issue with the buzzgrinder brand name and the twitter.com/buzzgrinder account. It turns out someone had secured the buzzgrinder name on twitter before, and Seth … If Your Hands Were on My Trademark I’d Smack Them
I’ve thought before that, sociologically speaking, people look to attribute God’s qualities to other phenomena, like the universe, politics, aesthetics/art, or science. People much smarter than me have undoubtedly come across this before, like Voltaire when he said that if God didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent him. I like that quote because … An Inexhaustive, Scatterbrained Post on Atheism and Science Fiction
Whenever you want to get a lot of response from religious people, ask something basic yet broadly-defined and colored by perspective. At the Christian Libertarians group on facebook, someone asked what faith was. The responses were varied as you’d expect with such a word with varied usage. I was surprised there wasn’t the guy that … A Very Clear Post About the Definition of Religious Faith
Almost a year ago I posted about the typical alien invasion scenario one sees in sci-fi books and films, and how those scenarios were unlikely versus possible non-coercive interactions. In a Stefan Molyneux speech I was listening to the other day I was surprised to hear him mention it, though it was only as an … More on Alien Invasions, Moron Alien Invasions
One way struggling artists assuage a stunted career is to summon da Vinci Leonardo’s “art isn’t completed but abandoned” quote. Its dogged overuse has erased its profundity and replaced it with irritation as it’s thrown in with other quotes on facebook profiles to justify unwanted, and sometimes unacceptable, behavior. But I’d like to take it … A Dead Italian Philosopher Says You Can’t Finish a Novel
2011 was a mostly-arbitrary division of time just like any other, but things happened within that duration in my life that are worth noting. My son got borned in August and I got canned from Noisecreep in the Great AOL/HuffPurge. On the literary side I released Bored in the Breakroom as a free e-book (rave … Annual “Click All My Amazon Affiliate Links” Post, 2011 Version
Like someone else in a similar position recently posted, I’ve decided to suspend A Season Underneath indefinitely. The reasons are legion, but the biggest is that I am on my fourth rewrite and it doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot better. The chapters are just sort of there, with no real story to … I Used To Write Her
Writers love to hi-five each other with permalinks instead of dollar bills in our hands, then we return to our dens and badmouth others’ sentence structures and word choice into half-empty coffee mugs. This post is different because I’m referencing a comment that I made and liked, posted on someone else’s site. Mike Duran’s blog … A Post Where I Feature a Comment I Made About Car Accidents