News
I’m pleased to announce that Kailyn Kent will be joining us as a regular columnist. At the moment, she’s planning for her column to focus on the links between comics and the fine art world. Kailyn’s written several posts for us already, and we’re very excited to have her appear here regularly.
In other news…I’ve mentioned this here and there already, but thought I’d semi-officially let folks know that I’ve gotten a book contract to write about the William Marston/Harry Peter Wonder Woman. As is always the case with these things, it’ll be several years before it’s written and available — but you can start hoarding your pennies now, I suppose! In the meantime, if you can’t wait for WW copy, you can read my past posts on her here. And we’re also going to have a roundtable in the beginning of May celebrating my having blogged my way through all of the Marston/Peter WW.
And…we got our first link from the Dish! To Michael Arthur’s Kpop article (I’m a fan of Andrew Sullivan’s, so I was excited.)
On HU
In our Featured Archive Post I talk about Art Young and the black humorist as Christ.
I talked about Marston’s vs. Azzarello’s Amazons.
Erica Friedman talked about the big and small of conventions, from the enormous Comiket in Tokyo to the tiny Yaycon in the Netherlands.
Richard Cook expressed some skepticism about Downton Abbey.
I talk about incest in Twilight and the Hunger Games.
I posted a download mix of Neil-Young_Like music.
Eric Berlatsky on Gilbert Hernandez, fetishes, and phallic mothers.
Eric Berlatsky on Jaime Hernandez, fetishes, and phallic mothers.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Washington Times I talk about the movie Bully and the case for homeschooling.
At the Atlantic I review the strikingly crappy film Lockout.
At Splice I talk about Derbyshire and the right’s anti-anti-racism.
At Splice Today I discuss Neil Young and the black metal band Drudkh.
Other Links
Ms. magazine on Katniss as a nonsexualized action hero.
War mongering and atheism apparently go together now.
Alyssa Rosenberg with a really depressing story about the Obama administration harassing journalists.
Matte Harrison on the TV show Bones and birth.
David Olsen on how he learned to love Power Girl.
Newsflash: speakers at atheist conference are complete fucking arseholes. Full story at 11.
I don’t know which to be more embarrassed about: that my fellow Australians are running this self-congratulatory wankfest, or that my fellow atheists are smug douchebags…aw heck, why choose?
Atheist conferences are places where you can date people wearing pocket protectors who say things like, “no, I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in Zeus or Odin either!” And so they lose the Darwinist reproductive race they enshrine. It’s no surprise that many leading atheists are hot on war in the Middle East, and I point the finger of blame for all those problems straight at our secular fascist machine state. True religion can rest easy for having no responsibility for any problems in the Middle East.
“True religion can rest easy for having no responsibility for any problems in the Middle East.”
Heh. Touche.
There’s probably enough of a mess in the middle east that we can blame everyone, whatever their beliefs or attitudes towards pocket protectors.
Congratulations Kailyn, and huge congratulations Noah! I’m looking forward to your book!
Thanks! I’m finding the prospect of writing it a bit terrifying at the moment…but presumably that will even out into dull panic at some point….
Noah, that’s fantastic news about the book. Looking forward to it.
Accept repros from the first editions only. You know that the other editions are unacceptable.
I’m skeptical that I’m going to have that kind of power, Domingos…but I’ll do what I can….
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…thought I’d semi-officially let folks know that I’ve gotten a book contract to write about the William Marston/Harry Peter Wonder Woman.
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Awesome, and congratulations! Your expertise, passion and perceptiveness on the subject are nonpareil. (And yes, I’m planning on getting it…)
Good one, Noah!
Gosh, after the Wire parody, this is the second book contract stemming from HU.
Way to go!
Thanks all. I’m actually writing my second chapter as we speak (more or less….) Just revisiting the seal men…I love the seal men.
Congratulations, Noah! I thought you’d write a Wonder Woman book eventually.
Rocking good news Noah!
I just read the atheism/war piece. All I take from it is that you don’t need God to be a reactionary, and that dogmatic adherence to any creed is probably predictive of intolerance.
Everybody’s got some creed, even if it’s just eschewing all creeds (which is sort of what liberalism is — the view from nowhere.) I think the kind of intolerance you practice often has something to do with what you believe in and how. The recent connection between atheism and warmongering is meaningful, I think — which isn’t to say that atheists are more likely to be warmongerers than anyone else.
3000 words on the chapter today…but alas I probably need to do work I get paid for the rest of this week….
Yeah, everybody’s got a creed, but some people are more flexible or apt to change than others, and certain creeds are more apt to admit of revision. Anyhow, you make a good point that the type of creed and strength of adherence will affect the character of your intolerance (or vice-versa maybe).
At http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/11/in-chilling-bully-child-who-fares-best-leaves-publ/ …
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Administrators at Tyler’s school failed over and over to prevent the attacks on him; school officials even fail to show up at a town meeting discussing the tragedy after Tyler’s death.
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Sure; even back in the ancient, relatively innocent times when I was at school (and somehow escaped anything other than mild, occasional harassment [which still poisoned much of the experience] by cultivating invisibility), it was evident the system was like a series of warehouses/factories, its workers’ interest in students — unless they might be star athletes — nil. Discipline problems were a concern only if they might negatively reflect back on school staff.
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In some cases, kids are being tormented not in spite of their communities’ wishes, but, rather, with their complicity, whether tacit or overt. This is especially obvious in the case of Kelby, an out lesbian in Tuttle, Okla. Kelby is singled out for violence and harassment by, yes, her fellow classmates — but she’s also verbally abused by teachers and widely shunned in her town. She was kicked off the basketball team, for which she had been a star player, and was made to feel unwelcome in church and in neighbors’ homes.
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Well, that’s Bible-thumping Middle America for you! What the parents should’ve known is, if your kid is anything other than all-American wholesome and “normal,” don’t raise them anywhere that isn’t liberal.
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Perhaps we should at least consider the possibility that the best way to improve schools is to empty them. And if home-schooling and unschooling aren’t for you — well, Internet distance learning programs have made it easier than ever for kids to take courses at an accredited institution without leaving the house for the day.
Not everyone is going to want to have their kids learn at home, obviously. But it might help a lot if parents and kids were more aware that the option is available…
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The mind boggles! You’re working on the premise that all kids come from two-parent households, where one of the parent makes enough for the other to stay at home to home-school. This isn’t the 50’s any more. It’s not a matter of there being a choice available for the majority.
Isn’t it a tad more realistic, “workable” for parents to demand that schools crack down on bullying — enforced by financially-punishing lawsuits against schools that don’t — than to suggest that parents abandon the schooling system, and mothers (who by some mysterious coincidence, will overwhelmingly end up stuck with the non-paying task) all quit their jobs, to devote themselves to “educating” their sprouts?
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Though most mothers are in the workforce, Americans remain trapped in a time warp, convinced that women should and will care for children, the elderly, homes and communities.
…Men in dual-income couples have increased their participation in household chores and childcare. But women still manage and organize much of family life, returning home after work to a “second shift” of housework and childcare — often compounded by a “third shift,” caring for aging parents.
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http://www.alternet.org/story/48370/why_working_women_are_stuck_in_the_1950s/?page=1
Moreover, as odious as the school system is, and mediocre the caliber of teachers might be, parents are an even bigger bunch of idiots. Do we want a group of which a huge portion believes that evolution is “just a theory,” gays are sick, vile sinners, the world is 10,000 years old, to be educating our future generations? And the very fact of mothers giving up their jobs to homeschool gives girls the vivid example that “a woman’s place is in the home.”
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Everybody’s got some creed, even if it’s just eschewing all creeds (which is sort of what liberalism is — the view from nowhere.)…
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Ah, we’re back to the old “there’s no difference between scientists and religious fundamentalists; they’re all just ‘true believers’ in their respective dogmas” bit. Which the Right has no monopoly on, it appears.
From dictionary.com:
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creed
noun
1. any system, doctrine, or formula of religious belief, as of a denomination.
2. any system or codification of belief or of opinion.
3. an authoritative, formulated statement of the chief articles of Christian belief, as the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, or the Athanasian Creed.
4. the creed. Apostles’ Creed.
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(Emphasis added)
The difference is that scientists or other “reality-centered” folk as a group don’t simply go by blind, unquestioning Faith (which in religion is considered a great virtue rather than an intellect-deadening flaw). Their explanations for natural phenomena are constantly open to challenge, testing. Even when a radical new theory (Disease is caused by germs! The universe is expanding!) comes along and is resisted, eventually it wins acceptance.
Yes, there are fanatics among them who will dismiss all contrary evidence, but are a rare, looked-down-upon minority, in comparison with religion, where loudly proclaiming Santa Claus-type idiocies is the overwhelming norm.
Tim Kreider did the comparison best: http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly041229a.htm
Just quickly Mike; there can be a lot of logistical difficulties in homeschooling, especially if you’re a one parent household. However, I would contend that if your child is being tormented literally to death, homeschooling is still a better option (at least for an intermediary period while you figure out other possibilities.)
There is a difference between science and religion. There is much less of a difference between atheism and religion. Science and atheism aren’t the same. Which is why atheism can provide you with ideological reasons for bombing people.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…I would contend that if your child is being tormented literally to death, homeschooling is still a better option (at least for an intermediary period while you figure out other possibilities.)
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Good Lord, yes; damn near anything is a better option…
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There is a difference between science and religion. There is much less of a difference between atheism and religion.
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Mmm, yes; and indeed, while some of atheism at least is more “reality-based,” it makes the mistake of attempting to disprove the existence of God/the spiritual realm in the same dumb-assed, materialistic fashion as the Russian cosmonaut who looked out into space from his capsule and, laughing at the believers, said he didn’t see any sign of God!
Not that the conventionally religious are any better at proving God’s existence: “I know it’s true, because it says so in the Bible!”
At least the Dalai Lama, who argues that science and religion can enrich each other, maintains that religious beliefs should evolve, progress; that if past dogma, no matter how well-established, as our understanding and wisdom grows, is seen to to be reactionary/backwards/wrong, then it should be discarded.
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…Images of a tranquil Buddha sitting placidly among nature couldn’t be more starkly juxtaposed with white lab coats practicing rigid sterile technique. But according to the Dalai Lama, these two fields—which evolved from, separate historical, intellectual and cultural roots—have grown to share basic philosophical methodologies. Both modern science and Buddhism share a deep suspicion of absolute notions and support ideas that organisms and the universe emerged as part of an evolutionary process.
Science continually renews itself by encouraging the questioning and correction of long-standing beliefs. Buddhism, he points out, does the same through a glorification of the investigation of reality that triumphs over even the most deeply venerated spiritual authority.
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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/uncommon_ally.html
The Dalai Lama writes:
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Some might wonder “What is a Buddhist monk doing taking such a deep interest in science? What relation could there be between Buddhism, an ancient Indian philosophical and spiritual tradition, and modern science? What possible benefit could there be for a scientific discipline such as neuroscience in engaging in dialogue with Buddhist contemplative tradition?”
Although Buddhist contemplative tradition and modern science have evolved from different historical, intellectual and cultural roots, I believe that at heart they share significant commonalities, especially in their basic philosophical outlook and methodology. On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualized as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. Both Buddhism and science prefer to account for the evolution and emergence of the cosmos and life in terms of the complex interrelations of the natural laws of cause and effect. From the methodological perspective, both traditions emphasize the role of empiricism. For example, in the Buddhist investigative tradition, between the three recognized sources of knowledge – experience, reason and testimony – it is the evidence of the experience that takes precedence, with reason coming second and testimony last. This means that, in the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be. Even in the case of knowledge derived through reason or inference, its validity must derive ultimately from some observed facts of experience. Because of this methodological standpoint, I have often remarked to my Buddhist colleagues that the empirically verified insights of modern cosmology and astronomy must compel us now to modify, or in some cases reject, many aspects of traditional cosmology as found in ancient Buddhist texts.
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http://www.dalailama.com/messages/buddhism/science-at-the-crossroads
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Science and atheism aren’t the same. Which is why atheism can provide you with ideological reasons for bombing people.
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Joining you here in the in the casting stones at science bit, science — when divorced from humane, moral considerations — can also provide reasons to bomb people too! “We need natural resources; that country has what we need; therefore, it’s logical to kill its people and take their resources!