Check out this article in The Washington Times: “Scientists doubt climate change.” Even in the midst of reporting on this important fact, green-media bias is evident. The title alone slants the story, as if all 400 scientists doubt that the climate changes! Or even that they all doubt global warming, or…gasp!…that man is the cause! No. What they all have in common is a rejection of the alarmism being peddled by Gore and his ilk.

Scroll down to the bottom of the article and you’ll see a typical tactic, both of the media and of the alarmists. The writer gives the final word to the alarmists. Their standard opening gambit, a tactic which reveals the weakness of their position: They immediately seek to publicize any possible (it doesn’t even have to be proven as actual for them – who cares about truth when the planet is in peril? but is it?) funding of the scientists from Big Oil. Gore’s spokeswoman is only able to make even this weak claim about some unidentified 25 or 30 scientists. Well, that still leaves 370-375! And as I’ve pointed out before, pointing out someone’s source of funding is not a valid argument against their substantive claims. It’s just a logical fallacy, slander, and a cheap political ploy.

Exxon-Mobil denies funding scientists to bash global warming theories, of course. It says its concerned about climate change. Of course it is, because it stands to make money rent-seeking in Washington on the climate change bandwagon.

For more information, follow the link.

I’m not optimistic about their chances of success – the United States government is a jealous god – but one can hope.

“Lakota group pushes for new nation“

“Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US“

And here’s some commentary on the plight of Native Americans: “Native Americans: Victims of Bureaucracy.”

Great satire of government education indoctrination.

Fans of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series were saddened by his death recently in September. Although his illness had been public for a while, he had hoped to finish the 12th and final volume of his epic fantasy series before his death. Alas, it was not to be. Fans of the series have been understandably worried about its completion. Some of those worries can now be put to rest. It was recently announced that Brandon Sanderson, author of Elantris (which I have read and greatly enjoyed) and the Mistborn series (on my list), has been hired to write the final volume, A Memory of Light. While there is no denying that the series would have been best completed by Jordan himself, I think the conclusion is at least in capable hands.

You can read more about the announcement here and more about Jordan, his series and his illness here.

Sanderson echoes my sentiments here:

“I’m both extremely excited and daunted by this opportunity,” Sanderson said in a statement. “There is only one man who could have done this book the way it deserved to be written, and we lost him in September. However, I promise to do my very best to remain true to Mr. Jordan’s vision and produce the book we have all been waiting to read.”

[Update (12/23/07): A little more info here.]

Terry Pratchett, author of the famous Discworld series, has unfortunately been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. For more information, click here.

Pratchett’s novel Night Watch won the Prometheus Award in 2003. Other novels of his that may be of interest to libertarians are Going Postal, a humorous novel about the dysfunctional post office, and the recent Making Money, a jab at fiat money and federal control over the money supply. All three are Discworld novels.

Excerpt:

Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have reached agreement to make J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” a planned prequel to the blockbuster trilogy “The Lord of the Rings.” Jackson, who directed the “Rings” trilogy, will serve as executive producer for “The Hobbit.” A director for the prequel films has yet to be named.

Two “Hobbit” films are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, similar to how the three “Lord of the Rings” films were made. Production is set to begin in 2009 with a released planned for 2010, with the sequel scheduled for a 2011 release.

Click here for full article.

[Update: A revised and expanded version of this post has been published at The Libertarian Standard.]

Are there any major differences between American and British SF? If so, what are they and what is the reason for them?

In the latest issue of Locus Magazine (Dec 2007), reviewer Graham Sleight says a couple of interesting things about the differences between American and British SF:

One of the interesting tensions in [Greg] Bear’s work is between the American and British strains of SF. Broadly (and here I’m borrowing from Brian Stableford’s The Scientific Romance in Britain (1985)), British SF derives from the scientific romance tradition of Wells and Stapledon, in which protagonists observe (often in wonder) but do not change the world. In American SF, they do, and the future is something to be worked on, conquered, perhaps owned.

I definitely have a greater affinity for the American strain. The British strain seems to lend itself well to cynical or satirical dystopian stories; the American strain more likely to be hopeful and productive of a libertarian future. Ayn Rand’s Anthem is a dystopian novella with a distinctly American ending.

In a sense, [Alastair] Reynolds’s book [Revelation Space (2000)] should be seen here as emblematic of what other British writers have been doing recently: taking the props of American SF and putting a distinctive dark perspective on them. …. The end of the book opens up the sort of cosmological perspectives one associates with Stapledon (or Baxter), but does so in a story where individual actions make a difference.

I’m not a huge fan of the cosmological perspective stories in which individual actions don’t make much difference. They’re dreadfully pessimistic and dark. And while a cosmological perspective, used in moderation, can offer us a wider perspective on the present, it is a mistake to think that this perspective is primary for telling/showing us what is really important and valuable. I think some SF authors make this mistake. Is it a distinctively British one?