Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question. Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. Samuel Butler; Darwin Among the Machines ; 1863 "You can't Un-thunk a Glunk!" Dr. Seuss; The Glunk that got Thunk ; 1969 You may or may not be familiar with the poet Dorothy Frances Gurney, but ...
Movie Nights at the Victoria Park Baptist Church And so life goes on. Some of you may remember that our film series in early 2020 was rudely interrupted by a Global Pandemic. The subsequent year and a half has been, well... You know things are pretty bad when you find yourself wondering if there is a plural for "Apocalypse". But at any rate, here we are ( Apocalypses? Apocali? That's going to bother you now, isn't it?) facing the prospect of attempting to pick up the pieces of Civilisation - assuming of course we don't go into another Lockdown first. ( Apocalyae? Apocalim? ) Movie-going, like so many communal activities, has taken a severe hit during the Pandemic, and I'm willing to hazard a guess that most of the films you have watched over the last eighteen months have been from the comfort of home, with, at most, a family member or two. But watching a film like this: ....isn't really the same as watching a film like this : Sadly we don't quite...
Does it bother anyone else that "Raise the Roof" and "Raze the Roof" have opposite meanings? It's just me? Okay, then. Those of you who have been attending our weekly film nights will know that the roof of the Church has been quite exploded lately. Perhaps this is one of the more obscure side-effects of COVID, but for whatever reason, the Church roof has thoroughly failed to fulfil its obligations as a roof, and consequently we have been assembling in the basement (which would seem to be a reasonably safe distance from a recalcitrant roof). Unfortunately, the roof appears to have caught up (or down , presumably) with us. For the next two weeks, the basement of the Church will be out of action while the construction crew install scaffolding down there, as part of their efforts to repair the afore-mentioned roof. I'm still not completely convinced by the idea that repairing a roof requires scaffolding in the basement , but who am I to second-guess the noble ...
In 1954, the psychologist Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent , his infamous diatribe about the incipient dangers of allowing young children to read comic books. Seduction of the Innocent has gone down in history as a reactionary screed that predicts doom and despair if we do not act to ban comic books immediately, or at least strip them of the insidious subtext that was so objectionable to the Fredric Werthams of the world. The character of Batman was singled out by Dr. Wertham for especial outrage, mostly because (he felt) the character was dripping with gay messaging that would turn young boys into raging homosexuals. This is only one aspect of Dr. Wertham's book, but it's the one that tends to get the most attention in hindsight. His warnings were taken very seriously, both by the general public and by the US government, and the comic book industry was ultimately regulated and sanitised, exactly the way he wanted. And then society went on to decriminalise h...
As I have discussed before, the New York Times has described Cancel Culture as "The public shaming of those deemed moral transgressors". "Public Shaming" can take many forms. It can be a social media campaign to boycott JK Rowling because of her perceived opinions about transgender issues, or it can be the dismissal of a music professor because he screened the wrong version of Othello . It can be the blacklisting of suspected Communists, or it can be the condemnation of a film director because he allowed others to be blacklisted. One of the ugliest manifestations of this type of public shaming has to be the phenomenon politely known as victim-blaming. Our next film takes place in post-war Germany, and tells the story of a group of off-duty American soldiers who brutally rape a 16-year-old girl. Although they are quickly caught and charged, the local townsfolk are (understandably) outraged by the atrocity and demand swift and brutal justice. The American Army is ...
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