An wonderfully-written excerpt from Ballard’s Super-Cannes. Content warning: We were married within three months. I was still on my crutches, but Jane wore an extravagantly ruched silk dress that seemed to inflate during the ceremony, filling the register office like the trumpet of a vast amaryllis. She smoked pot at the reception held at the … “We were married within three months.”
Some decent thoughts here, with requisite spoiler warnings if you haven’t seen the entire film. The film is, however, must-see for science-fiction or technology/futurist enthusiasts, as long as you’ve already gotten past the “animation is for kids” reservation that you may have. If you haven’t yet, please do get past that assumption before watching it … Video: Ghost in the Shell vs. The Matrix Analysis
From Chapter 3 of Lost Horizon: He was also interested in the mountain beyond the valley; it was a sensational peak, by any standards, and he was surprised that some traveler had not made much of it in the kind of book that a journey in Tibet invariably elicits. He climbed it in mind as … Monasticism and Trigonometry
The first interview I did for Noisecreep was with David from For Today. We were in the room were the touring bands kept all of their gear went they weren’t playing their sets—basically the closest thing to backstage there can be at a venue with a capacity of only a few hundred people. In the … It’s Okay, I Didn’t Want To Interview Your Band Anyway
An overlooked film from 1987, about an alternate history space program. It comes off, to me, as a precursor to Contact but without the latter’s stupid heavy-handedness of the conflict thesis binary. Science and religious elements play hard in the story but their treatment is far from Hollywood’s childishness. Like Magentic Rose, the mechanical designs … Free Movie Time: Wings of Honneamise
Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook might know I took up a project to summarize all 66 books of the Bible, roughly one book per day. I recently finished all the books and I thought it would be best to publish them all in one grand blog post. A tweet-dump motherlode … Bible Book Summaries: The Criterion Collection
Below is a comment I posted on a blog post written by a Facebook friend of mine, Jason (from Becoming the Archetype—a reference point for those of you who are familiar). The post was a response to a video titled “My Question For Theists,” which I haven’t watched yet—my comments were general and more in … Religion and Science Blah Blah Blah
He says we’re just too stupid for aliens to bother. Too stupid, except for probably him, his fans, his publishing agent, the colleagues still in his good favors, etc. The idea gets some traction because he’s being half-humorous and it plays well with the scientism crowd as a safe criticism. It’s not aimed in a … Neil Degrasse Tyson Trolls the Human Race
The nicely-done Your Logical Fallacy Is commits an unfortunate logical fallacy: Here are some reasons you might want to order one of these pretty great posters: … 2. To put up in your kids’ bedroom so that they get all clever and whatnot, and are able to tell the difference between real news and faux … Website About Logical Fallacies Pretty Much Commits Logical Fallacy
From Chapter 10 of Gulliver’s Travels: No man could more verify the truth of these two maxims, “That nature is very easily satisfied;” and, “That necessity is the mother of invention.” I enjoyed perfect health of body, and tranquility of mind; I did not feel the treachery or inconstancy of a friend, nor the injuries … Gulliver on the Good Life
I doubt the collapse of nations occur as they do in movies. Things would more likely end gradually, with a quiet, undramatic whimper (sorry, doomsday preppers, and people who think The Purge is realistic). This holds true if the collapse occurs via the government’s own hand—enterprise-wide, self-inflicted failures and arrogant largesse—as opposed to armed revolution. … Not Your Parents’ Government Collapse
After raiding the newfound Language Log’s archive for a few minutes, I found this post, on the increasing usage of the “We are all x now” snowclone. Quoting from a Jeffrey Kluger article in Time: “This increasingly common trope has an easy, fill-in-the-blank quality to it that allows us to affect a bit of purloined … We Are All Something Agreeable Now
Most of these recommendations come with the territory of “living in a society flush with books.” They are a given, yet I want to assume that, if you want to write a fiction novel, you are out-of-this-world stupid and in need of guidance. The links are to free copies online where available, otherwise it’s an … Read These 50 Books Before You Write Your First Fiction Novel
A bit late in mentioning this, but Tom Woods addressed Slate’s “unanswerable” question to libertarians nicely here (with some follow up here and here). An introductory quote is below. The scattery Stefan Molyneux also provided a decent video answer here. If I can offer an uneducated answer: the reason nations don’t “do” libertarianism is because … An Unanswerable Question Rebuffed
Via Media Bistro, an infographic (.pdf, ugh) on how high school reading lists have changed over time. The immediate conclusion is that kids aren’t as easily attentive to words on a page as they are to whatever shiny device is eating their free time up like so many Pringles, so they aren’t able to process … What High Schoolers Read Now
I got rid of the annoying Google ad in the sidebar, for no other reason that I just didn’t like the aesthetics of it. I was actually starting to make some money off of it but it would be another few decades until I would see some return from it. In its stead I replaced … A Blog Design Update of Some Interest
I rewatched this movie last night on the Crunchyroll channel, but it’s also on Youtube for free in its entirety (see above), in decent quality. It’s worth watching, even if anime isn’t your thing, because it has the sense of a semi-sci-fi movie from a Western producer…but animated. It helps to think of it as … Movie: The Place Promised In Our Early Days
Related to one of my recent posts about art inside the church, I came across this gem posted in a Facebook group. While not really single-church related it bears out the attitude of gatekeeper Christians needing to sanitize expression. Here we have Vengeance Rising’s Destruction Comes, released in 1991, with the cover as it should … Vengeance Rising’s De-Awesomed Artwork
Consider the first two paragraphs of this post, “How to Discourage Artists in the Church” from The Gospel Coalition: Many Christian artists live between two strange worlds. Their faith in Christ seems odd to many of their friends in the artistic community—almost as odd as their calling as artists seems to some of their friends … Why Your Pastor Thinks Your Painting Is Stupid
From a NYT article on the decline of certain word usage in literature: I’d like to tell a story about the last half-century, based on studies done with this search engine. The first element in this story is rising individualism. A study by Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell and Brittany Gentile found that between … Those Words Do Not Mean What You Think They Mean