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Tag Archives | Jove’s Witnesses
A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One
For theocops in Saudi Arabia. (CHT LRC.)
Put the Blame on Maryam
Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi has been making news for his pathbreaking discovery that immodest women are the cause of earthquakes.
But I believe Rita Hayworth beat him to it.
One Good Thern Deserves Another
While the upcoming John Carter of Mars film has been described as an adaptation of the first novel only, the appearance in the cast list of the character “Matai Shang, ruler of the godlike Therns” suggests otherwise, as Shang and his merry band of Therns don’t show up until the second and third novels. And the “Civil War colonel who comes into conflict with Carter” corresponds to nothing in the books whatsoever.
I fear that the faithful movie adaptation that fans have spent nearly a hundred years waiting for (admittedly treating “fans” as a collective of variable composition) is not on the way.
But wait, it gets worse. Actor interviews (see here and here) reveal that the Therns are beings like “Olympian gods” who “travel round keeping order in the Universe” (they do no such thing in the books) and that the aforementioned Matai Shang (a fairly minor character in the books – it’s his daughter Phaidor who’s important) will be “John Carter’s nemesis” and a shapeshifter who “can adapt into anything.”
Talk about missing the point! The whole idea of the Therns is that they’re false gods – they’re just ordinary human beings who have set themselves up as gods. Giving them supernatural powers of shapeshifting and starhopping defeats their literary purpose. Burroughs structured Barsoomian society so that the religion of the red and green Martians would be a hoax perpetrated by the white Martians (i.e., the Therns), the religion of the white Martians would be a hoax perpetrated by the black Martians, and the religion of the black Martians would in turn be a hoax perpetrated by their own rulers. (Burroughs, as you may have guessed by now, was not a fan of religion; see also Savage Pellucidar and The Return of Tarzan.) If the Therns are now going to have magical powers, or be aliens with more advanced technology, or whatever it is that’s being planned here, then the story that Burroughs actually wrote is evidently being fairly thoroughly jettisoned.
My enthusiasm for this movie is rapidly dropping.
Rand Unbound, Part 7
Two more Cato Unbound posts from me, one a reply to Mike’s latest on whether it’s conceptually incoherent to be indifferent to one’s own interests, and one a belated response to Doug’s earlier question about religion.
Pat Robertson on, Like, Haiti
Before Ken MacLeod pointed to this video, about the Haitian response to Robertson’s garbage, I’d never actually heard the exact words of Robertson’s remark:
Notice, then, that one of Robertson’s claims is that the Haitians (who revolted in the 1790s) had been under the rule of Napoleon III (who came to power in 1851).
Well, Robertson does say “Napoleon III or whatever,” so I guess his statement is saved by its second disjunct.