Johnny Logic

Gaiman's 2004 Hugo winning short story "A Study in Emerald" is free online in both pdf and mp3 formats (the latter is a reading from Gaimon himself). ASiE is a clever pastiche of Holmes and Cthulhu mythos, with extra intertextual goodness-- highly recommended to anyone at this price!

It is too long to post here, but I had an interesting disagreement over the value of science fiction as a literature of ideas over at Library Thing.

In short, I think SF is a great genre for limbering ones mind, which is requisite for philosophy. Further, philosophy has some interesting overlap with SF, particularly when it come to much used and abused thought experiments. This overlap is pedagogically useful, as well as, occasionally, philosophically fruitful.

A few relevant links:

• The SciPhi Show: A blog devoted to science fiction and philosophy.
• SciPhi Journal Sci Phi is the journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy. Each quarterly issue contains science fiction short stories with a philosophical theme and popular level philosophy articles with a science fiction theme. The editor of the magazine is long time Sci Phi Show host Jason Rennie. (from the ‘About’ page)
• Science Fiction and Philosophy: a book (to be released in ‘09) on the intersection between science fiction and philosophy, featuring some big names in contemporary philosophy (Brian Weatherson and David Chalmers, etc).

Today is International Delete Your MySpace Account Day and I plan to I am damned tired of My Space's crappy design, banner ads, despicable parent company and spam, not to mention burgeoning privacy problems. If that is not enough to get you to delete your profile and salt the virtual earth, here is infuriating news from the Secular Student Alliance:

Cleveland, OH.— Social networking site, MySpace.com, panders to religious intolerants by deleting atheist users, groups and content.

Early this month, MySpace again deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group (35,000 members). This deletion, due largely to complaints from people who find atheism offensive, marks the second time MySpace has cancelled the group since November 2007.

What’s unique in this case is that the Atheist and Agnostic Group was the largest collection of organized atheists in the world. The group had its own Wikipedia entry, and in April won the Excellence in Humanist Communication Award (2007) from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Secular Student Alliance.

“MySpace refuses to undelete the group, although it never violated any terms of service,” said Bryan Pesta, Ph.D., the group’s moderator. “When the largest Christian group was hacked, MySpace’s Founder, Tom Anderson, personally restored the group, and promised to protect it from future deletions.”

“It is an outrage if Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the world’s largest social networking site tolerate discrimination against atheists and agnostics-- and if this situation goes unresolved I’ll have little choice but to believe they do,” said Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain of Harvard University. News Corporation, Murdoch’s global media corporation which also includes Fox News, purchased MySpace in 2005.

“My personal profile was deleted as well, and despite weeks of emails to customer service, plus a petition signed by 500 group members, MySpace won’t budge. I think these actions send a clear message to the 30 million godless people in America (and to businesses whose money was spent displaying ads on our group) that we are not welcome on MySpace,” said Pesta.

Goodbye.

UPDATE (2.1.2008): MySpace.com has reinstated the group, but not without some difficulties. Has this been a concerted effort from Myspace to discriminate against atheists? Maybe not, but their actions and inaction coupled with their other business practices continues to keep me well away from them.