Monday, 30th of January, 2006

Now here’s something interesting.

The Secular Party of Australia. They seem to mostly have similar opinions to mine, although I’m mostly happy with the Australian Greens, give or take a few points.
I’d like to see more detailed policies from the Secular Party - something the Greens have in extreme detail on their site. But let’s say I’m certainly interested.

(I should add that a Secular Party actually getting off the ground just about anywhere in the world is a very unlikely prospect, but that shouldn’t stop us supporting them…)

Saturday, 28th of January, 2006

In an article from the The Chronicle of Higher Education, adapted from his new book Breaking the Spell : Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel Dennett argues that even those who believe that the morality of their actions is dependent purely on the word of (their) god must back up their moral beliefs in the court of reason if they are not to do themselves and their own religion a disservice.
It’s an interesting article, although I wonder what people of a religious persuasion will make of it. I would guess that moderates would largely agree, and zealots of all colours are not going to be moved…

Wednesday, 25th of January, 2006

New music reviews! Could it be?! Yes!
I review music for Sydney-based (mostly electronic-)music mag Cyclic Defrost (run by my friend Seb Chan of Sub Bass Snarl), and for a while they’ve had a blog up - Thermostat.

Seb invited me to put reviews up there a while ago, as a precursor to appearing in Cyclic. And finally I’ve been putting them up. I think I’ll probably continue there, as it’s a nice centralised place for music reviews… I’ll put notifications here whenever I’ve done a few…
Oh! And you can read just my reviews there if you like! Go to this link. Cool hey? And if you *really* want, you can subscribe to the feed of just my posts(!) - rss2 and atom.
Otherwise, subscribe to the rss2 or atom feed for Thermostat as a whole - well worth it.

Tuesday, 24th of January, 2006

Here’s a New York Times interview with Daniel C Dennett, in which he’s asked a whole lot of fairly dim questions regarding his new book, Breaking the Spell : Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. While I always look forward to a new book by Dennett, I’m certainly looking forward to giving this one a read soon!

The Graundiad has just published a new 8-page comic by Joe Sacco, about Iraqi victims of US torture. You can download a pdf here - much recommended.

Friday, 6th of January, 2006

OMFG.

I always thought, in the back of my head, that I could be a writer. I have 3/4 of a short story on my hard drive that I must finish sometime. Meanwhile, I take heart at the utter utter crapness of the slush-pile excerpts in Miss Snark’s excerpts from sumbissions to Asimov’s Magazine.

…
Just so you know, Asimov’s is one of the best science fiction and fantasy magazines in the world, but all publishers have piles of crap in their slushpiles. I am a subscriber to Asimov’s, F&SF, Interzone and Postscripts, and a reader of various others, and I recommend them to anyone interested in SF, especially now that various online venues for genre short stories have gone - I’m thinking of SCIFICTION (particularly sorely missed, but the archive is still up for now) and The Infinite Matrix (please go and read Cory Doctorow’s I, Robot immediately!)
There are some great free fiction sites on the web still, such as Futurismic (some brilliant stuff there), Strange Horizons (ditto) and The Fortean Bureau - search all of them for stories by Jay Lake, Ruth Nestvold and Jason Stoddard, for a start.