Sunday, December 09, 2007

Various Links

* The Prince Caspian trailer

* You can also see The Golden Compass trailer (you'll have to click the link yourself), if you haven't yet. It's apparently not doing well in the North American box office, although it is doing somewhat more respectably elsewhere. Unless its fortunes improve, it may struggle to reach profit, which will be a major factor in determining whether the sequels are put on screen.

* Pullman's interview with Peter Chattaway.

* A good post on the myth that Kierkegaard advocates a 'leap of faith', at "Bosphorus Reflections".

* "Self and World" has a post on a myth about Hegel, namely that his dialectic is in terms of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

* Currently reading: A Review of Extended Probabilities (PDF; ht)

Toby Ord, The Scourge (PDF) (This argument seems to me to involve the same dubious moves as Bostrom's dragon story; and, moreover, it makes the mistake of taking 'moral status' to be a serious moral category rather than a colloquial phrase that can summarize a number of completely different issues. It is noteworthy, in any case, that people who are worried about the 'full moral status' of embryos tend to be pro-choice; pro-lifers tend to worry instead about whether the embryo is human enough to have rights.)

Anna Christina Ribeiro, Point-of-View Shots, Symbolic Perspectives and Imagining from the Inside (Word)

* Facts, Ideas, & Logic is an interesting website for reading about philosophy in the news and online.

* Daniel has an interesting post on Kant and transcendental realism at "SOH-Dan".

* John Wilkins has placed Gosse's Omphalos online at the Internet Archive.

* Incidentally, I find that St. George Mivart is well-represented at the Archive.

* I was amused by this news story and even more by the campaign on which it reports. Yes, that's a real issue with global warming: all those Jews lighting the menorah. I very much like Rabbi Lau's response to it, about tikkun olam. In any case, I think a more sensible campaign would have been to advocate more use of olive-oil based menorahs (olive oil is a potentially carbon neutral fuel) plus some program for developing and increasing olive orchards (a potentially carbon negative practice) plus serious observance of some of the restrictions of the Hanukkah Sabbath (potential emissions reduction) plus information about Jewish approaches to linking Hanukkah with environmental activism (consciousness raising). It would still be a little silly, as a matter of overall priorities, but it would be a much more competent statement of concern and action on the matter of global warming.