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The Face on the Barsoom Floor

By on November 9, 2008 5

Under Too Many Moons of Mars Check out the latest update on the upcoming John Carter of Mars movie.

Man, I’d really like to see them do this right; but I’m a bit worried that the guy who’s going to write and direct it has so far been involved only with animated films (albeit really good ones) aimed primarily (though of course not solely) at fairly young audiences. Still, he seems to be saying the right things. Keeping my fingers crossed – all twenty of them ….

Addendum:

Okay, I just read this related story and now I’m more worried. The Frazetta approach is “stale”? Grrr ….

A Heap of Slavery

By on November 9, 2008 6

Nozick’s Tale of the Slave is online. You should go read it (it’s short) before continuing this post.

 

 

heap of slaves Okay, welcome back. Although the story ends with a question I think it’s clear that the intended answer is “none of them,” and that the sequence of cases is meant to be a kind of argument for that conclusion.

It’s important to see, then, that Nozick’s argument is not merely a Sorites argument.

A Sorites argument has the structure “A isn’t different enough from B to belong to a different category; B isn’t different enough from C to belong to a different category … and so on … so all the instances A through Z must belong to the same category.” Thus a pile of three pebbles isn’t a heap; a pile of four pebbles isn’t different enough from a pile of three pebbles to be categorised differently – so no number of pebbles can ever be large enough to count as a heap.

Although there’s philosophical disagreement as to how to describe exactly what’s gone wrong, that kind of argument is clearly fallacious; so if that’s all that Nozick’s argument were doing it wouldn’t be very impressive. But I think there’s a more charitable way of understanding the argument – namely that in each transition from one case to the next we are meant to recognise that the essence of slavery has not been affected – that slavery isn’t at all about how kindly or cruelly one is treated, for example. In a Sorites, each stage is a bit more heaplike than the next, whether it gets all the way to heaphood or not; but – Nozick wants us to see – each stage of his story is not any more freedomlike.

Ere Your Pulse Twice Beat, Act II

By on November 8, 2008 0

The Great Maker speaks:

Altair 4, some time prior to blowing upThat report [that the Forbidden Planet script JMS is writing is going to be a) a sequel, and b) stylistically retro] is totally incorrect. It’s not going to be retro, and it’s not going to be a continuation. When Altair 4 blows up, it blows up.

Ere Your Pulse Twice Beat

By on November 5, 2008 2

My boyfriend's back and you're going to be in trouble JMS is slated to write the screenplay for a remake – or maybe a sequel (I mean, another sequel, in addition to the original sequel) to the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. The original film is famous for a) being based on Shakespeare’s Tempest with a dash of Freud added; b) inspiring the look and some of the plots of Star Trek; c) introducing the later oft-cameoed Robby the Robot; and d) featuring Leslie Nielsen back when he played it straight. (Plus leading lady Anne Francis is not uncute.)

JMS reportedly plans to keep the retro look of the original film. (Hopefully he won’t keep the retro dialogue in the romantic scenes; why do male-female interactions from 1950s movies seem so much more antiquated and, well, alien than those from 1930s movies?)

Incidentally, JMS is a longtime Planet fan (as might be suggested by the pics below) and says he’s been “chasing this one assignment for over a decade.”

ancient alien complex

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