Exercising Demons

I had concluded not to see the Golden Compass movie, but then a small mouse in my study reasoned with me thus, saying "being as you are a virgin mind in this matter, never having been sullied by the books, you are in a special position to evaluate the movie as a movie." And so it was that I went to see the film, and after doing so I said unto the mouse, "Get real; you are supposed to be my demon? My demon is a twelve ton dragon that can slay armed hosts just by farting." "Yes" replied the mouse, "but conceptually that would not fit inside your study now would it?"

Frances Schaffer once said "An artist's creativity shows his world view, his world view almost always shows through." Philip Pullman however has all but stated that his art is merely a vehicle for his world view. However, my purpose here is not to critique Philip Pullman's world view, I am not even critiquing his book, I am critiquing a film based on his book and I shall try to evaluate it purely on its own artistic merits.

SFX
The special effects are impressive, which is a problem. You see if you are paying more attention to the special effects then the story they are supposedly telling then something is amiss. For example, the polar bears were extremely well rendered very realistic digital polar bears, and that is exactly what I was thinking every time they were on screen, oh and the fact that the king polar bear apparently likes to play with dolls does not help the suspension of disbelief any. Also the view from the air ship's observation room was quite memorable, which is more then I can say for any of the dialoged that was spoken there. And so I have to give the movie high marks for technically good special effects but they were special effects that replaced the story rather than told it.

CAST
Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra is fairly good, at least she is pretty enough to look at for two hours and she avoids hamming and seems to know how to curtsy. As far as her realization of the character goes, that is a bit more difficult to analyze. This is not a "classical" scenario of a girl and her polymorphic, talking pet going on an adventure. The bond they share is deeper and more mysterious, yet at times this is not very apparent. Whether Richards has sorted it all out in her own mind is not clear, but at least her confidence keeps there from being any real problems. As for the rest of the cast, they are adequate though largely irrelevant. Though I would like to give Christopher Lee and Sir Derek George Jacobi an honorable mention, the problem is that they were ask to sell a moral wait and expositional gravity that the script had not actually given them.

THE STORY
I must say that I find the "demons" (interdependent incarnate spirits dwelling alongside each humanoid) as a literary device, intriguing. The fact that children have polymorphic demons suggests even more possibilities. Unfortunately the story that is being told here generally reduces the demons to mere sidekicks, or more often just character traits that fade into the background shortly after being introduced. The plot that seems to emerge is the idea that children are being kidnapped so that their polymorphic demons can be harvested for some nefarious purpose apparently involving spice (the spice is the worm the worm is the spice) sorry I meant dust of course. I say "the idea" because one is largely left trying to peace to gather what it is all really about and there seem to be a few peaces missing. There are some vague indications that the sequels have these missing peaces, but this is hardly satisfactory, if NL is thinking LOTR here, I have to say there is a big difference, delayed resolution is one thing, delayed explanation is quite another.

Reactionary Weekly indorses Tom Tancredo for US president!

What? You were expecting maybe John Edwards?

Silly Grownups

“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grownups have another kind.” – C.S. Lewis

A while back I said something to the effect that I was sure Professor Dawkins could tell us all sorts of fascinating things about amino acids and helixes and chromosomes, and not come anywhere near all the nonsense he becomes entangled in when he talks about God.
Well I am afraid that after watching his lecture series Growing Up in the Universe, I must say I may have been mistaken. First though let me say that when it comes to telling us things about biology and ethology, he is really rather good. But he just cannot seem to keep from straying into more philosphic matters. At the end of the lecturs he saluts our ponderusly larg brains and proclams that at last there is a truly “grownup” specis in the unavers.
Now, I may be wrong, but is this not exactly the sort of conceit that he warns us against in The Ancestor's Tale? Is not the wasp “grownup” compared to the bacteria? Might we not be infantile compared to some other being?
The Ancestor's Tale, was apparently written well after the “growing up” lectures, perhaps Professor Dawkins’ worldview is evolving.

Beneath the Waves

"It's worthless - ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless."
So said Dr. Rene Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well, time after all is relative and about ninety years at the bottom of the north Atlantic is probably roughly equivalent.
Yesterday day I went to see the Titanic exhibit at DMNS and was struck by a rather curious irony. You see Molly Brown was bringing some artifacts to the Denver Museum on board the Titanic when she sank. Now the most common items from that ship, many costing a good deal less then ten dollars at the time, are an exhibit in the very same museum* and have become priceless.
There are of course a number of things that make one think, a pair of spectacles, a gage from the engine room where the firemen stayed behind to keep the generators running. But for me the most sublime was the two ton piece of Titanic’s hull, perhaps because it was not sequestered in an antiseptic case, but merely hung there as a monument to man’s arrogance. As a musician I was somewhat disappointed that there were no musical instruments among the artifacts. The brass and woodwinds I would think might have survived. But upon reflection it is most likely best that they stay where they are, with the musicians who played on…perhaps to the very end, and perhaps on a clear moonlight night on the north Atlantic you hear them playing still. 
But what I found to be the most thought provoking part of the exhibit was the replica mailbags. Though the ship carried over a thousand passengers and no small amount of cargo, it was these bags of Dears and Sincerelys that gave it its designation, RMS Titanic. In a way they represented something almost mystical, the union of democracy and majesty. It might be a letter from some East End charwoman to her wayward son seeking his fortune in America, but once in the bag it became, along with letters from Dukes and doctors, princes and millionaires, the Royal Mail. These letters, or rather their spectral implication, speak to us of a lost time and humanity in a way even more than the artifacts. Written with quill and ink the letters in such bags contained much more than sentences and paragraphs. Indeed Sherlock Holmes once solved a mystery partly do to an unsigned letter being written in a lady’s hand…try doing that with an E-mail. Back in Perry Mason’s day the handwriting expert was indispensable, now they are all but extinct. The world now has more people but less character, as communication is now filtered through a one size fits all keyboard and spell checkers stamp out any remnant of personality. Regardless of class or station, letters are the communiqués of ladies and gentleman, not as clumsy or random as a text message; they are an elegant form of communication, for a more civilized age.

*Yes, I know it is a new wing and would have been a botanical garden at the time but still.

Blank Post

There is nothing to see here, you can go about your business, move along…

The Fall Classic

Well I hope all those crazies who put on the freak show at Coors Field over the weekend are happy with themselves. After fourteen years of people saying that Rockies fans are just a bunch of Bronco fans who got lost, we finally have a World Series and what do they do? Go and prove everybody right, or at least the ones that could afford $200 a ticket to get on television in their stormtrooper gear. And what that Penguin guy all about? The only thing I can think of is perhaps Little America Wyoming; it is only about tow hindered miles away as the crow flies, I am not sure about penguins. Then there was that kid who kept sticking his face in the center of the target, one might almost excuse it for the cuteness factor if it wert for the mugging for the camera factor.

More than meets the Eye

Despite having seen countless comic book characters (alright three to be precise) "come alive" on the big screen, not to mention Pirates of the Caribbean, I still could not help but chuckle when I saw Hasbro® on the screen. But I guess now I have seen it all, unless of course they make a major motion picture based on the Geico cave men.
Transformers, I am afraid starts with a rather unsatisfying back-story. Which leaves many questions unanswered. Is this CUBE of intelligent design? The fact that it has hieroglyphs would seem to indicate this. If so, what became of this intelligence? Has anyone ever tried to decipher the hieroglyphs? Why does Bumblebee keep transforming into that junky old camaro? And did we really need all those movie references? (I suppose the ET one was obligatory, but six? Two or three would have been quite enough.) A lack of a sound foundation regarding the principle dialectic leaves somewhat of a quandary in the body of the narrative. What reason do we have for thinking that the Autobots are "good" and the Disepticons are "bad"? Besides the rather pragmatic and even narcissistic principle that the Disepticons kill humans and the Autobots don’t. This problem might have been overlooked (this is after all a movie based on a line of toys) had not Optimums Prime decided in the middle of everything to get philosophical, borderline preachy. He tells us that all sentient beings have the right to chose, blah blah blah. Where is he getting this? Was there some Mosesatron, who climbed up Mount Siniatron and brought back these transcendent truths to them, or is Prime just making it up as he goes? And although Magatron certainly fits the typical villain profile in our post post post western culture, one has to admit that his hatred for humans is at least partly justified. One notable good thing about the movie is Starscreem. Though he does not get a lot of screen time, his character seems to have transformed from a whinny ass, ambitious lieutenant to a credible rival to Magatron. And since he seems to be the only Disepticons to escape, he should play a more significant and pivotal roll in the next film, which I'd bet my ridiculous blogger salary is coming.

Peace in Our Time

The Nobel peace prize was the brainchild of the same guy who invented TNT. The idea supposedly was that a more powerful explosive would lead to fewer wars. It is rather like the scientists who urged the development of an atomic bomb because the Germans were working on one so we needed to have one as well. I suppose we should remember that their expertise was since not geopolitics. But in the end it probably does make more since than the "Peace Prize".
After all MAD may be madness but at lest to a certain extent it worked (although it is unlikely that this tactic would work with ideologies that delight in their own death as much if not more then their enemy’s).
The "Peace Prize" is really a negotiator prize. Since "peace" in this since is really just a commodity, it can always be achieved, for the right price. If you have negotiated a good price, or in some cases simply willing to pay a high one, then you get the prize. Perhaps next William Shatner will get the award.

To Mr. McCaughan

Since Mr. Rilstone has disabled the comment feature on the particular part of his website, I decided to respond to Mr. McCaughan here.

(You can find the complete conversation at http://andrewrilstone.blogspot.com/index.html )


Gareth McCaughan said...

“I think you may be conflating two things.

1. Dawkins doesn't assume that his readers are atheists, or skeptics, or biologists, or members of any other similarly narrow group.

2. Dawkins does assume that his readers share some of his values.

There's no incompatibility between these, and (at least for me) #1 would need to be false for "preaching to the choir" to be a good description of what he's up to.”


Well of course as my old logic professor use to say, “to assume makes an ass out of you and me.” But that aside, why would Dawkins think that his readers share some of his values? More to the point, what are his values, and what are they based upon? And while we are at it we could even ask what he means by “values”?
Now any thing that I hold that I would call a “value” is based on acceptance of the God proposition. But since Dawkins clearly rejects this then I am understandably curious as to as to what he uses instead. If it is not some concise or “narrow” worldview or system of thought, then what is it? Are his “values” simply an arbitrary collection of things he happens to like or dislike? If this is the case then I do not see that any of his “values” amount to anything more then preferring blue to red for esthetic purposes.

13s are wild in Colorado!

Rockies manager Clint Hurdle wears number 13
The Rockies had to win 13 of 14 to force a tiebreak.
They won the tiebreak in the 13th inning.
Hummm….

One must feel sorry for Hoffman; after all he should not even have been in the game. Atkins HR that was called a double should have ended the game at 8 ½ innings. And for that matter the game should not have necessary at all if the correct call had been made on the HR in Philly. Well now it is back to Philly, whom should actually have been the ones playing the tiebreak, with the Mets…poor Mets.

Call your Senators and Representatives and tell them to denounce Reactionary Weekly

General David Howell Petraeus has kind of a funny last name and I find it rather hard to believe that MoveOn.org are the first to ever poke a bit of fun at it. I also doubt that Mr. Petraeus got to be a full blown General by being thin skinned. If you were looking for anything but tacky tasteless gags from MoveOn, then you are obviously intellectually challenged or…well I guess there is no "or". However, you might expect, or at least hope, they’d try something at least less obvious.
Fox News seems to think they should be denounced. Perhaps they should.
Perhaps they should be denounced for being lazy and hackish and filling the public discourse with meaningless tripe. There are plenty of good arguments to be made about the US deployment in Iraq, MoveOn's ad made none of them. General Petraeus is soldier who takes orders, and to that existent, he is a good soldier. President Bush is a head of state, who cannot possibly tell us everything he knows.
TNYT and MoveOn on the other hand are privet institutions, they could have actually said something meaningful and they chose to make a silly joke instead.
So who exactly has betrayed us?

Moral Quandary

The other day on Chris Matthews' television program, there was a brief discussion about whether homosexuality is immoral. This discourse, though brief demonstrated a severe flaw in western morality. It is not whether homosexuality or any other act is moral or immoral, it is the means by which morality is defined. The general idea being that if one is biologically inclined to certain action that makes it moral. The only problem with this is that if it were consistently applied, it would make pretty much everything moral. Since almost every act is to some existent motivated by our biology. But the problem with this sort of ethical principle is not that it is to broad of vague, it is that its proponents do not consistently apply it. Those who want everything with a biological motivation to ethical at one point will want some other ethical standard at another. The result of course is something wholly arbitrary, and morality as morality is lost.

The Rise and Fall of the Universe, or Who Put the Cause in Cosmos?

The last episode of The Universe premiered on the History Channel last Tuesday and after two hours of following the thread of thought through human history we find that despite some new discoveries and CGI graphics, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is still by far the best film series on the subject.
Sagan’s series is much more dynamic, delving deeper into the subject matter than the simplistic; “this guy discovered this so that guy could discover that” of The Universe. Although Sagan is always trying to shove his materialistic worldview down our throats, at least he gives you enough nice pictures and pretty music to make it go down easer.
The Universe does not seem to have a particular worldview. It does pause to give homage to the fact that the universe having a beginning indicates some sort of creation,* but then wisely observes that science is not equipped to handle metaphysical matters. The real problem with The Universe is that it spends precious little time on real science.
Take relativity for example. Without getting too technical or going into unnecessary details Sagan demonstrates the fundamental principles and why they must be the case. While The Universe on the other hand, literally turns it into a circus, a fairly incoherent circus.
The last episode of Cosmos ironically begins with a quote from Deuteronomy. Of course Sagan would have accepted any source that agreed with his basic premise that we should avoid wiping ourselves out. He apparently thought that it was much better to let our local star or some other natural phenomena do it instead. Perhaps in the meantime we could putter around some tiny percentage of our galaxy, and maybe even feel so much less lonely by discovering bacteria on Europa or perhaps even Alpha Centauri!
But The Universe has no cold war to worry about, and with general stagnation in space exploration on most fronts, there is not much room for propaganda there either. So The Universe takes a more sublime approach. It leaves us with the thought that no matter what we do all humans and human endeavor, all terrestrial life, even the microbes on Europa and untold alien civilizations scattered across the galaxies, even all the constituent particles will ultimately come to naught and be dissolved.
There. Wasn’t that worth waiting for generations of geniuses to build relentlessly on each other’s knowledge to find out?


*Carl Sagan, in his effort to avoid the implications of the cosmos having a definite beginning, dabbled in some rather strange and exotic hypotheses, particularly the “oscillating universe”. The oscillating universe requires an infinite chain of Omega over one universes. Now pretty much all observable data points to our universe not being an Omega over one universe. So either we are the last link in an infinite chain, which is a philosophically difficult position to maintain or there is some other explanation for our universe’s beginning.

My Fellow Star Wars Fan*

As the small number of people who watch Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday and the even smaller number of people who watch Bill Moyers on PBS already know, there is a bit of a spat going on between the two. One might suppose that this rather silly business is just a collusive attempt to cannibalize each other’s audience, but I doubt either would care much for that adventure.
To call Chris Wallace a bad journalist, is of course unfair. It would imply that he is a journalist, when he is actually a talk show host. And as talk show hosts go he is pretty good. Bill Moyers however, is a bad journalist. Not because he does not check his sources, but because his sources are irrelevant, because what he writes about is irrelevant. Does anyone care that Karl Rove is an agnostic? Is anyone shocked! SHOKED! That he stitched together a coalition to gain political power and influence? No.
Moyer’s article is not only transparent it is sloppy. Moyer starts by telling us that he and Rove are both from the great state of Texas. Other than that they are both apparently unable to pronounce a long vowel sound at the end of a word I fail to see what this has to do with anything. But Moyer’s purpose here seems to be to establish the pretence that this article is about Rove. If Moyer had wanted us to believe the article was actually about Rove, I am sure he could have come up with something interesting or at least relevant to tell us about him. He did not. Instead Moyer uses Rove in a poorly executed gambit in order to attack his real target, people who believe in God. It is these who bear the brunt of Moyer scorn, since of course they are all just stupid dupes willing to follow anyone who waves a Bible in front of them. Rove on the other hand is not accused of actually believing in an authoritative Creator Who can say “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not”, he is even presumptively awarded the honor of “intellectual honesty”. His only real “sin” it would seem, is associating with those silly Christians.



*This is the only thing that I am aware of that Moyer and I have in common.

The Dawkins Talk Crisis

Richard Dawkins was on television the other night and as usual he was jawing about God again. I suppose this is because he wrote a book recently that has “God” in the title. I read somewhere that Professor Dawkins is a biologist. I must say, why does he not write a book about biology? Then perhaps he could get on the telly and talk about something he might actually know something about. I am sure he could tell us all sorts of fascinating things about amino acids and helixes and chromosomes, and not come anywhere near all the nonsense he becomes entangled in when he talks about God.
To begin with, he says that science is very close to explaining questions of ultimate reality, without the “God hypothesis”. Now even as a scientist Dawkins should know that we are as close to this as we were a hundred years ago or five hundred years ago or three thousand years ago. The fact is, we are living in a bubble which we, for want of a better name, call “the big bang” and there is simply no way for us to scientifically study what is outside this bubble. But even if we could somehow penetrate this finite but unbounded world we find our selves in, we would probably be left with the same dilemma we have had since antiquity, either an infinite regress of finite propositions or a finite regress to an infinite One.
But ontology aside, Dawkins’ bigger problem is ethical. He keeps acting as if there were some objective morality; but (like every atheist I have ever known) he gives no indication as to where this might come from. Naturally the root of any moral paradigm must be its creation myth, since teleology is central to any ethical principle. But Dawkins’ creation myth (if you can call it that) is apparently evolution by natural selection. Now this is not really a creation myth but rather an epic story, which is not to say one cannot draw moral principles from it, it is just that those principles would be somewhat borrowed capital. However, the real problem with the moral principles one might glean from the proposition of evolution through natural selection is, they have very little to do with what Dawkins apparently thinks is rite or wrong.
For example Dawkins apparently thinks there is something wrong with slavery. Now I would like to know how exactly he gets this idea out of natural selection, whose primary ethical principle is, “live long* and procreate”? How is it fundamentally different for me to use a member of my own species** to achieve longevity and progeny than for me to use a member of another species, or an inanimate object for that matter?
He also fusses about proper treatment of the female. Now proper care of the female is important, indeed critical for the fundamental ethic of evolution. But this does not seem to be what Dawkins is referring to. In fact he seems to want to take an evolutionary step backwards, and make our female more like our male.
Finally, just what is Dawkins point? I can understand the theist’s urge to evangelize; after all, if there really is a God, then it follows that we should all strive to be pleasing to Him. But if there is no God, then who really cares?



*Actually living long is wholly relative to procreating.

**Since nature’s sole means of sorting living things is the species, it may seem as though there may be a difference here. But since according to evolution, one species can become many over time, and thus my progeny and my slaves may be of a different species in the future, my chauvinism would still be appropriate.

Socialist or Progressive?

Among a certain political sect it is fashionable to call oneself a progressive. Of course the term “progressive” like the term improvement or advancement is, of itself, rather meaningless. One cannot make abstract progress, there must be a specific proposition, not currently realized, that one is progressing toward.
Now most would identify the position most progressives are progressing toward, as socialism, and I would have to agree with that, but that does not mean that one should identify progressives with socialists.
True socialists are actually rather rare, in fact there are a great many people who claim to be socialist, who in fact are not. A true socialist is some one who follows the principles of socialism to their logical conclusion, and desires that conclusion. Now the fundamental principle of socialism is that an elite (the government) should control and manage all resources, and thus naturally also the life of the individual, including, or rather primarily regarding, procreation (since obviously in any sound economic system involving humans, who ever controls the recesses must control procreation).
The progressive on the other hand, though he likes the socialist’s principle, gets squeamish when it is carried to its logical conclusion.
Of course many who call themselves progressive would probably not balk too much at the idea of a general restriction on the number of children a woman can have. But such would hardly be adequate for responsible socialism, and would really be no better and probably worse than letting women procreate willy-nilly. It could function as somewhat of a clumsy emergency shutoff mechanism, but one could hardly call an automobile operator a good driver, if his sole ability were to hit the breaks.
Making the restriction disproportionate, so that the prime females could have more children than the culls might appear to be progress, but this could still leave the society inadequately, and inappropriately populated if the prime females did not choose to procreate enough.
If the elite (the government) is to be truly responsible it must not merely restrict procreation for the culls, it must compel it for the primes, so that an appropriate population can be achieved. But it is pointless for the prime females to have more children if their mates are culls. So a responsible government must not only dictate how many children a woman has, but also who she marries.
It is this, the logical conclusion of socialism, which the progressive does not like. And that is why he calls himself a progressive. If he were a socialist, he would desire its fullness and nothing less. But where the socialist desires a sound (if fairly abominable) economic system. The progressive desires neither soundness nor stability but merely an endless Zenonean progress towards socialism.
Or perhaps more close to reality, the progressive is looking for a free lunch. He wants resources, but he does not want to pay for them, either by being responsible for them himself, or surrendering that responsibility to another. There is, of course, a way to get a free lunch, and that is to steal it. This is what the progressive truly is, not a respectable advisory like the socialist, but merely a despicable thief. He wishes to steal from both sides and escape before he is caught. If there are any true socialists, they should despise the progressive as much as we do.

Welcome to Reactionary Weekly

Hello every one and welcome to weblog. My name is Al (aka Tpolg) and for the following (or preceding depending on how you look at it) pages I will be your host and guide though the malaise and morass of cyberspace as we strive to…

Umm, Al who are you talking to?

Well, I am not really talking I am typing, and I am typing to all the people who are reading my blog.

But nobody is reading your blog, so is it not a bit embarrassing to be talking to people who are not there?

Yes but the only people who know that I am talking to people who are not there is the people who are not there, and in order for them to know I am talking to them when they are not there, would be for them to be there and not be there at the same time and in the same relationship, which is a rational absurdity. But in any case, log on next week when there will hopefully be something more interesting to read.