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Hi, folks, this week I'm going to write my version of The Valley of Dry Bones in the first of a series called Close to the Bone.

When I was in my twenties, I joined a cult. It was a short lived thing that was all about religious propaganda to control others. This propaganda was wrapped up in a big quilt called the ABSOLUTE TRUTH. Of course, there was a booming preacher (a modern day apostle) called Brother because we would not want to be too familiar. He had a direct line to God; everyone needed to hear his message to be part of the true church. He answered to no one but God.

Under his guidance we learned important truths. Church had to be attended at least four times a week. Friends outside the Church weren't a good idea. Birth control wasn't a good idea. Sending your children to public school wasn't a good idea. God had big plans, and you needed to be in the Ship of Safety.  Demonic forces were roaming around out there that would take you down...Trying to live up to this holy propaganda was sort of like having all the flesh ripped from your body and leaving you as a pile of dry bones.

So I stuck to this mess for almost eight years. I never did leave; the cult imploded around me. I wish I had left, but I was shredded instead. There is nothing noble or redeeming about my story. Toward the end, my friend Barbara was losing weight. Too much. She was probably under a hundred pounds. I'd found it all. I had gained three children and seventy pounds in three and half years. Barbara, like me, would give large chunks of her money to the church. We didn't need anything; God was on our side. I'd saved up some extra money from collecting aluminum cans (five dollars) and took the money over to her house to help her meet her rent.  I also wrote a little poem about how on the other side of life we would find peace. Barbara took the money. I hugged her and said goodbye.

A few hours later, I was at church when I was told Barbara drove her car onto a train track and stopped. Beautiful Barbara was crushed by a screaming train on her way to pay the rent. I cannot not express the panic that I felt when I learned how she had died.  We were God's chosen people. Weren't we? I was numb and bleeding inside. I kept saying the same old religious propaganda but my belief in the ABSOLUTE TRUTH died with Barbara. I am crying while writing this. It was 25 years ago, but part of me always lives in that moment. My friend took her life and where was I?

I had my part in it. I'd tied myself in knots trying to support an unsupportable vision of God brought to me by an uneducated self-styled apostle who I should have declared as wrong.  Who knew there was so much power in just standing up and saying something is wrong? Everyone but me. Here is my message. If there is something you need to stand up for, please do. Please. Please. Please. Even if it sets the world on fire. I am standing here, handing you the torch.

Thanks for dropping by. I will continue with Close to the Bone.  I hope that my story will inform yours.

Instead of a doodle I'm posting a picture of Barbara.  A light lost.

Paraphrase from the book of Ezekiel 37: 2a-3:

I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. The Lord asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

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One of the most famous, and most widely discussed, paradoxes is the Liar paradox. The Liar sentence is true if and only if it is false, and thus can be neither (unless it can be both). The variants of the Liar that I want to consider in this instalment arise by taking the implicit temporal aspect of the word “is” in the Liar paradox seriously.

The post Temporal liars appeared first on OUPblog.

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When some one says to you "that's just a fairy tale," it generally means that what you have just said is untrue or unreal. It is a polite but deprecating way of saying that your words form a lie or gossip. Your story is make-believe and unreliable. It has nothing to do with reality and experience. Fairy tale is thus turned into some kind of trivial story.

The post A fairy tale is more than just a fairy tale appeared first on OUPblog.

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There’s a saying you’ve probably seen or heard before, in some form:

Before you say something, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

Ironically, this is the sort of wisdom that is captioned onto a photo, say, of a statue of the Buddha or a gurgling grotto, and posted on Facebook or Twitter where it will float along a bilious stream of untruth, unkindness, and non-necessity. But it is worth considering. I have been frustrated with how little currency truth and value have when we enter the online world; I’ve seen some of the kindest people I know disparage kindness; I’ve seen people say outright that the truth of a thing is beside the point. I have thought of this proverb when seeing waves of outrage and thought, “I would settle for any one.”

Researching the origins of the quote (Quaker school tract from the turn of the last century? Ancient midrash? Who knows?) I came across a different construct:

Before you say something, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Does it improve upon silence?

Does it improve upon silence? 

This reveals the compulsion that leads good people to be unkind and, at best, unconcerned about knowing the full truth. They want to fill the silence. Silence is associated with oppression and victimization; to be told to be kind and true is interpreted as a demand to be silent, sometimes by people who have long been silenced. I get all that, and yet I’m wary of the conclusion. Is any noise at all preferable to silence?

But this also creates a rubric for what construes necessity. It’s the best test there is for the value of an utterance. Does it improve upon silence?

Sometimes I sit one out, and let a cycle of fury rage and fizzle without me. But I realize now that failing to join in the fray is not silence, even without the public apophasis that I am not going to comment on [story of the week] because of my judiciousness and gallantry. Silence is something other than strategic noiselessness.

I have begun to think of this silence as a natural resource to be treasured and protected: the silence of a calm lake at dawn; the silence of a mind at rest; the silence of listening and waiting. This silence, like clean water and star-lit skies, is harder and harder to find. It is also a value: a decision to seek silence inside and out, to turn of all the screens and quiet your own mind. And, if such a place be found, to protect it.

My mother didn’t work for the last ten years of her life, and spent much of that (waking) time watching television, particularly the 24-hour news networks, which sometimes blared different channels in different rooms of the house. Entering her house was to enter a churning noise machine, her own running commentary mixed in with that of various TV pundits and reporters. She took up every news cycle ready to be angry and outspoken. I now see the noise as a part of her sickness, and her inability for her mind to heal. But it’s also a metaphor for my own mind, clattering with noise, my inner muttering monologist struggling to be heard over the din. I can only quiet my mind by choice: walks at dawn, drives with the car stereo muted, the time before sleep where I listen to the breaths of family and pets around me and the murmurings of the house itself.

The proverb takes on power when it is not about manners; it is about soul-nurturing. Is this thing I am about to say worth disrupting my own calm? If I believe in silence as a natural resource, is it now worth plundering? What whispers of the universe might I hear, if I remain silent?

Filed under: Miscellaneous Tagged: kindness, silence, social media, truth

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Pig the Fibber, Aaron Blabey (author, illus.), Scholastic, May 2015.   Okay, Pig fans! He’s back! And he’s up to a whole lot of mischief…again!   Award-winning author / illustrator, Aaron Blabey, is renowned for his ability to create books with clear morals, but particularly his distinguishable style of outlandish characters in farcical situations…mostly self-inflicted! […]

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Tetralogue by Timothy Williamson is a philosophy book for the commuter age. In a tradition going back to Plato, Timothy Williamson uses a fictional conversation to explore questions about truth and falsity, knowledge and belief. Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in. During February, we will be posting a series of extracts that cover the viewpoints of all four characters in Tetralogue. What follows is an extract exploring Roxanna’s perspective.

Roxanna is a heartless logician with an exotic background. She would much rather be right than be liked, and as a result she argues mercilessly with the other characters.

Roxana: You appear not to know much about logic.

Sarah: What did you say?

Roxana: I said that you appear not to know much about logic.

Sarah: And you appear not to know much about manners.

Roxana: If you want to understand truth and falsity, logic will be more useful than manners. Do any of you remember what Aristotle said about truth and falsity?

Bob: Sorry, I know nothing about Aristotle.

Zac: It’s on the tip of my tongue.

Sarah: Aristotelian science is two thousand years out of date.

Roxana: None of you knows. Aristotle said ‘To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true’. Those elementary principles are fun­damental to the logic of truth. They remain central in contemporary research. They were endorsed by the greatest contributor to the logic of truth, the modern Polish logician Alfred Tarski.

Bob: Never heard of him. I’m sure Aristotle’s saying is very wise; I wish I knew what it meant.

Roxana: I see that I will have to begin right at the very beginning with these three.

Sarah: We can manage quite well without a lecture from you, thank you very much.

Roxana: It is quite obvious that you can’t.

Roxana: It is quite obvious that you can’t.

Zac: I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.

Roxana: Of course you didn’t. I didn’t say it.

Zac: May I ask what it is?

Roxana: You may, but it is irrelevant.

Bob: Well, don’t keep us all in suspense. What is it?

Roxana: It is ‘Roxana’.

Zac: Nice name, Roxana. Mine is ‘Zac’, by the way.

Bob: I hope our conversation wasn’t annoying you.

Roxana: Its lack of intellectual discipline was only slightly irritating.

Bob: Sorry, we got carried away. Just to complete the introductions, I’m Bob, and this is Sarah.

Roxana: That is enough time on trivialities. I will explain the error in what the woman called ‘Sarah’ said.

Sarah: Call me ‘Sarah’, not ‘the woman called “Sarah” ’, if you please.

Bob: ‘Sarah’ is shorter.

Sarah: Not only that. We’ve been introduced. It’s rude to describe me at arm’s length, as though we weren’t acquainted.

Roxana: If we must be on first name terms, so be it. Do not expect them to stop me from explaining your error. First, I will illustrate Aristotle’s observation about truth and falsity with an example so simple that even you should all be capable of understand­ing it. I will make an assertion.

Bob: Here goes.

Roxana: Do not interrupt.

Bob: I was always the one talking at the back of the class.

Zac: Don’t worry about Bob, Roxana. We’d all love to hear your assertion. Silence, please, everyone.

Roxana: Samarkand is in Uzbekistan.

Sarah: Is that it?

Roxana: That was the assertion.

Bob: So that’s where Samarkand is. I always wondered.

Roxana: Concentrate on the logic, not the geography. In making that assertion about Samarkand, I speak truly if, and only if, Samarkand is in Uzbekistan. I speak falsely if, and only if, Samarkand is not in Uzbekistan.

Zac: Is that all, Roxana?

Roxana: It is enough.

Bob: I think I see. Truth is telling it like it is. Falsity is tell­ing it like it isn’t. Is that what Aristotle meant?

Roxana: That paraphrase is acceptable for the present.

Have you got something you want to say to Roxanna? Do you agree or disagree with her? Tetralogue author Timothy Williamson will be getting into character and answering questions from Roxanna’s perspective via @TetralogueBook on Friday 20th March from 2-3pm GMT. Tweet your questions to him and wait for Roxanna’s response!

The post Trains of thought: Roxanna appeared first on OUPblog.

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Imagine that Banksy, (or J.S.G. Boggs, or some other artist whose name starts with “B”, and who is known for making fake money) creates a perfectly accurate counterfeit dollar bill – that is, he creates a piece of paper that is indistinguishable from actual dollar bills visually, chemically, and in every other relevant physical way. Imagine, further, that our artist looks at his creation and realizes that he has succeeded in creating a perfect forgery. There doesn’t seem to be anything mysterious about such a scenario at first glance – creating a perfect forgery, and knowing one has done so, although extremely difficult (and legally controversial), seems perfectly possible. But is it?

In order for an object to be a perfect forgery, it seems like two criteria must be met. First of all, the object must be a forgery – that is, the object cannot be a genuine instance of the category in question. In this case, our object, which we shall call X, must not be an actual dollar bill:

1.) X is not a dollar bill.

Second, the object must be perfect (as a forgery) – that is, it can’t be distinguished from actual instances of the category in question. We can express this thought as follows:

2.) We cannot know that X is not a dollar bill.

Now, there is nothing that prevents both (1) and (2) from being simultaneously true of some object X (say, our imagined fake dollar bill). But there is an obstacle that seemingly prevents us from knowing that both (1) and (2) are true – that is, from knowing that X is a perfect forgery.

Imagine that we know that (1) is true, and in addition we know that (2) is true. In other words, the following claims hold:

3.) We know that X is not a dollar bill.

4.) We know that we cannot know that X is not a dollar bill.

Knowledge is factive – in other words, if we know a claim is true, then that claim must, in fact, be true. Applying this to the case at hand, this means that claim (4) entails claim (2). But claim (2) and claim (3) are incompatible with each other: (2) says we cannot know that X isn’t a dollar, while (3) says we know it isn’t. Thus, (3) and (4) can’t both be true, since if they were, then a contradiction would also be true (and contradictions can’t be true).

Thus, we have proven that, although perfect forgeries might well be possible, we can never know, of a particular object, that it is a perfect forgery. But an important question remains: If this is right, then what, exactly, is going on in the story with which we began? How is it that our imagined artist doesn’t know that he has created a perfect forgery?

In order to answer this question, it will help to flesh out the story a bit more. So, once again imagine that our artist creates the piece of paper that is visually, chemically, and in every other physical way indistinguishable from a real dollar bill.  Call this Stage 1. Now, after admiring his work for a while, imagine that the artist then pulls eight genuine, mint-condition dollar bills out of his wallet, throws them on the table, and then places the forgery he created into the pile, shuffling and mixing until he can no longer identify which of the pieces of paper is the one he created, and which are the ones created by the Mint. Let’s call this Stage 2. How do Stage 1 and Stage 2 differ?

At Stage 1 we do not, strictly speaking, have a case of a perfect forgery. Although the piece of paper the artist created is physically indistinguishable from a dollar bill, the artist can nevertheless know it is not a dollar bill because he knows that he created this particular object. In other words, at Stage 1 he can tell that the forgery is a forgery because he knows the history, and in particular the origin, of the object in question.

Stage 2 is different, however. Now the fake is a perfect forgery, since it still isn’t a dollar, but we can’t know that it isn’t a dollar, since we can no longer distinguish it from the genuine dollars in the pile. So in some sense we know that the fake dollar in the pile is a perfect forgery. But we can’t point to any particular piece of paper and know that it, rather than one of the other eight pieces of paper, is the perfect forgery. In other words, in Stage 2 the following is true:

• We know there is an object in the pile that is a perfect forgery.

But the following, initially similar looking claim, is false:

• There is an object in the pile that we know is a perfect forgery.

We can sum all this up as follows: We can know that perfect forgeries exist – that is, we can know claims of the form “One of those is a perfect forgery”. But we can’t know, of a particular object, that it is a perfect forgery – that is, we can never know claims of the form “That is a perfect forgery”. And it is this latter sort of claim – that we know, of a particular object, that it is a perfect forgery – that leads to the contradiction.

The post The impossibility of perfect forgeries? appeared first on OUPblog.

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One of the central tasks when reading a mystery novel (or sitting on a jury) is figuring out which of the characters are trustworthy. Someone guilty will of course say they aren’t guilty, just like the innocent – the real question in these situations is whether we believe them.

The guilty party – let’s call her Annette – can try to convince us of her trustworthiness by only saying things that are true, insofar as such truthfulness doesn’t incriminate her (the old adage of making one’s lies as close to the truth as possible applies here). But this is not the only strategy available. In addition, Annette can attempt to deflect suspicion away from herself by questioning the trustworthiness of others – in short, she can say something like:

“I’m not a liar, Betty is!”

However, accusations of untrustworthiness of this sort are peculiar. The point of Annette’s pronouncement is to affirm her innocence, but such protestations rarely increase our overall level of trust. Either we don’t believe Annette, in which case our trust in Annette is likely to drop (without affecting how much we trust Betty), or we do believe Annette, in which case our trust in Betty is likely to decrease (without necessarily increasing our overall trust in Annette).

Thus, accusations of untrustworthiness tend to decrease the overall level of trust we place in those involved. But is this reflective of an actual increase in the number of lies told? In other words, does the logic of such accusations makes it the case that, the higher the number of accusations, the higher the number of characters that must be lying?

Consider a group of people G, and imagine that, simultaneously, each person in the group accuses one, some, or all of the other people in the group of lying right at this minute. For example, if our group consists of three people:

G = {Annette, Betty, Charlotte}

then Betty can make one of three distinct accusations:

“Annette is lying.”

“Charlotte is lying.”

“Both Annette and Charlotte are lying.”

Likewise, Annette and Charlotte each have three choices regarding their accusations. We can then ask which members of the group could be, or which must be, telling the truth, and which could be, or which must be, lying by examining the logical relations between the accusations made by each member of the group. For example, if Annette accuses both Betty and Charlotte of lying, then either (i) Annette is telling the truth, in which case both Betty and Charlotte’s accusations must be false, or (ii) Annette is lying, in which case either Betty is telling the truth or Charlotte is telling the truth (or both).

This set-up allows for cases that are paradoxical. If:

Annette says “Betty is lying.”

Betty says “Charlotte is lying.”

Charlotte says “Annette is lying.”

then there is no coherent way to assign the labels “liar” and “truth-teller” to the three in such a way as to make sense. Since we are here interested in investigating results regarding how many lies are told (rather than scenarios in which the notion of lying versus telling the truth breaks down), we shall restrict our attention to those groups, and their accusations, that are not paradoxical.

The following are two simple results that constraint the number of liars, and the number of truth-tellers, in any such group (I’ll provide proofs of these results in the comments after a few days).

Result 1: If, for some number m, each person in the group accuses at least m other people in the group of lying (and there is no paradox) then there are at least m liars in the group.

Result 2: If, for any two people in the group p₁ and p₂, either p₁ accuses p₂ of lying, or p₂ accuses p₁ of lying (and there is no paradox), then exactly one person in the group is telling the truth, and everyone else is lying.

These results support an affirmative answer to our question: Given a group of people, the more accusations of untrustworthiness (i.e., of lying) are made, the higher the minimum number of people in the group that must be lying. If there are enough accusations to guarantee that each person accuses at least n people, then there are at least n liars, and if there are enough to guarantee that there is an accusation between each pair of people, then all but one person is lying. (Exercise for the reader: show that there is no situation of this sort where everyone is lying).

Of course, the set-up just examined is extremely simple, and rather artificial. Conversations (or mystery novels, or court cases, etc.) in real life develop over time, involve all sorts of claims other than accusations, and can involve accusations of many different forms not included above, including:

“Everything Annette says is a lie!”

“Betty said something false yesterday!”

“What Charlotte is about to say is a lie!”

Nevertheless, with a bit more work (which I won’t do here) we can show that, the more accusations of untrustworthiness are made in a particular situation, the more of the claims made in that situation must be lies (of course, the details will depend both on the number of accusations and the kind of accusations). Thus, it’s as the title says: accusation breeds guilt!

Note: The inspiration for this blog post, as well as the phrase “Accusation breeds guilt” comes from a brief discussion of this phenomenon – in particular, of ‘Result 2′ above – in ‘Propositional Discourse Logic’, by S. Dyrkolbotn & M. Walicki, Synthese 191: 863 – 899.

The post Accusation breeds guilt appeared first on OUPblog.

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By December 1914 the Great War had been raging for nearly five months. If anyone had really believed that it would be ‘all over by Christmas’ then it was clear that they had been cruelly mistaken. Soldiers in the trenches had gained a grudging respect for their opposite numbers. After all, they had managed to fight each other to a standstill.

On Christmas Eve there was a severe frost. From the perspective of the freezing-cold trenches the idea of the season of peace and goodwill seemed surrealistic. Yet parcels and Christmas gifts began to arrive in the trenches and there was a strange atmosphere in the air. Private William Quinton was watching:

We could see what looked like very small coloured lights. What was this? Was it some prearranged signal and the forerunner of an attack? We were very suspicious, when some­thing even stranger happened. The Germans were actually singing! Not very loud, but there was no mistaking it. Suddenly, across the snow-clad No Man’s Land, a strong clear voice rang out, singing the opening lines of “Annie Laurie“. It was sung in perfect English and we were spellbound. To us it seemed that the war had suddenly stopped! Stopped to listen to this song from one of the enemy.

On Christmas Day itself, in some sectors of the line, there was no doubting the underlying friendly intent. Yet the men that took the initiative in initiating a truce were brave – or foolish – as was witnessed by Sergeant Frederick Brown:

Sergeant Collins stood waist high above the trench waving a box of Woodbines above his head. German soldiers beckoned him over, and Collins got out and walked halfway towards them, in turn beckoning someone to come and take the gift. However, they called out, “Prisoner!” A shot rang out, and he staggered back, shot through the chest. I can still hear his cries, “Oh my God, they have shot me!”

This was not a unique incident. Yet, despite the obvious risks, men were still tempted. Individuals would get off the trench, then dive back in, gradually becoming bolder as Private George Ashurst recalled:

It was grand, you could stretch your legs and run about on the hard surface. We tied an empty sandbag up with its string and kicked it about on top – just to keep warm of course. We did not intermingle. Part way through we were all playing football. It was so pleasant to get out of that trench from between them two walls of clay and walk and run about – it was heaven.

The idea that football matches were played between the British and Germans in No Man’s Land has taken a grip, but the evidence is intangible.

The truce was not planned or controlled – it just happened. Even senior officers recognised that there was little that could be done in this strange state of affairs. Brigadier General Lord Edward Gleichen accepted the truce as a fait accompli, but was keen to ensure that the Germans did not get too close to the ramshackle British trenches:

They came out of their trenches and walked across unarmed, with boxes of cigars and seasonable remarks. What were our men to do? Shoot? You could not shoot unarmed men. Let them come? You could not let them come into your trenches; so the only thing feasible was done – and our men met them half-way and began talking to them. Meanwhile our officers got excellent close views of the German trenches.

Another practical reason for embracing the truce was the opportunity it presented for burying the dead that littered No Man’s Land. Private Henry Williamson was assigned to a burial party:

The Germans started burying their dead which had frozen hard. Little crosses of ration box wood nailed together and marked in indelible pencil. They were putting in German, ‘For Fatherland and Freedom!’ I said to a German, “Excuse me, but how can you be fighting for freedom? You started the war, and we are fighting for freedom!” He said, “Excuse me English comrade, but we are fighting for freedom for our country!”

It should be noted that the truce was by no means universal, particularly where the British were facing Prussian units.

For the vast majority of the participants, the truce was a matter of convenience and maudlin sentiment. It did not mark some deep flowering of the human spirit, or signify political anti-war emotions taking root amongst the ranks. The truce simply enabled them to celebrate Christmas in a freer, more jovial, and, above all, safer environment, while satisfying their rampant curiosity about their enemies.

The truce could not last: it was a break from reality, not the dawn of a peaceful world. The gradual end mirrored the start, for any misunderstandings could cost lives amongst the unwary. For Captain Charles Stockwell it was handled with a consummate courtesy:

At 8.30am I fired three shots in the air and put up a flag with ‘Merry Christmas!’ on it, and I climbed on the parapet. He put up a sheet with, ‘Thank you’ on it, and the German captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches – he fired two shots in the air and the war was on again!

In other sectors, the artillery behind the lines opened up and the bursting shells soon shattered the truce.

War regained its grip on the whole of the British sector. When it came to it, the troops went back to war willingly enough. Many would indeed have rejoiced at the end of the war, but they were still willing to accept orders, still willing to kill Germans. Nothing had changed.

The post The Christmas truce: A sentimental dream appeared first on OUPblog.

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Kylie Westaway is the author of her popular debut picture book, Whale in the Bath. She has literally travelled far and wide, worked in foreign schools, events and in theatre. But there’s one thing that has remained constant in her life; her love of writing. Here, I’ll give you the brief run-down of her captivating […]

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Imagine being named Rump.  Imagine it.  Imagine what other kids could do with your name.  Especially when you live in a place that believes that your name is the key to your destiny.

Rump lives on the Mountain with his Gran.  His mother died when he was born, and Rump just knows there is more to his name, but his Gran does not know what it is.  Life in the Mountain is rather bleak.  The residents almost all work in the mines looking for the ever elusive gold to trade in to the miller for food.  One day Rump notices an old spinning wheel in with the firewood.  He asks his Gran about it and it turns out this was his mother's spinning wheel.  Even though it is beaten up, Rump polishes it up, thrilled to have something that belonged to her.

On rations day, Rump and his friend Red are on their way home when they see Kessler the peddler.  Aside from the regular wares, Kessler also deals in magic.  Against Red's advice, Rump trades some grain for a bit of magic.  The trick does go a bit wrong, and Red states that there are consequences for *all* magic, no matter how small, but Rump finds himself hungry for more.

Soon enough Rump discovers why the gold loving pixies of the kingdom have always favored him.  He finds he is able to spin hay into fine gold thread.  He promises himself he will only spin enough to get more food for him and Gran, but promises to oneself often go unfulfilled.  Before Rump knows it, he is bargaining away his own magic for a fraction of what it's worth.

This new twist on the Rumplestiltskin story will have readers looking at Rump with fresh eyes.  This magical world with its gold hungry pixies, message delivering gnomes, magic hoarding trolls, magical aunties and fierce best-friends pretty much begs for a film treatment.  There are pearls of wisdom dropped throughout the text, and readers will likely have many moments of taking pause to ponder over some of the ideas.  Happily, I read on twitter that there will be more titles coming from Shurtliff - one featuring Jack and another featuring Red.  I for one can't wait!

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TweetThe Infinite Wait by Julia Wertz Koyama Press I have a complicated and knotty relationship with auto-bio comics, beset by apprehension and cynicism. There’s no doubt the genre produces some interesting material- Art Spiegelman, Seth, Robert Crumb, to name but a few, but more recently I’ve found a lot of it to be, quite frankly, boring. The [...]

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intimacy it takes to write.

I’ve been re-reading the lectures of Robert Olen Butler and he talks about how honest writing doesn’t come from thinking or ideas, but from feeling and dreaming. This is a difficult concept for many of us because there is a lot to think about when we write. But it’s possible we protect ourselves through that thinking and never really dig deep into the white-hot center of our work.

Butler quotes Akira Kurosawa, who says, “To be an artist means never to avert your eyes.”

There’s two ways I interpret this quote in regards to my writing. The first is to be brave. To face the intimacy it takes to write. I think we write to explore the human condition, but often we don’t want to look at the hard truths that make our characters who they are. Or we don’t want to let our characters move honestly through their worlds. We protect them. In many ways we are protecting ourselves. We avert our eyes, because really looking means facing secrets about ourselves. These can be personal secrets or larger truths about humanity that challenge our beliefs. Writing forces us to look at issues we may not be ready to face.

It’s scary. It takes courage.

My second interpretation of Kurosawa’s quote is about experience. We interact with our world sensually through our bodies: the taste of papaya, the texture of soft gooey fruit, the tremble of a lip in the face of bad news. The writing I love to read (and strive to write) grounds us in our bodies and its interaction with the physical world. To never avert your eyes is to be in the body of your character from moment-to-moment. It means never glazing over the emotion, but being present to feel the world through your character’s skin. It’s easy to analyze when we write and pull back and summarize. The second we step back and look at the character from the outside, discussing emotion rather than allowing a character to sensually feel it, we’ve averted our eyes from the experience and are labeling it. Controlling it. I think we do this because to truly feel something with our character means we must make ourselves vulnerable.

Robert Olen Butler says: “If I say art doesn’t come from the mind, it comes from the place you dream, you may say, ‘Well, I wake up screaming in the night. I don’t want to go into my dreams, thank you very much. I don’t want to go to the white-hot center; I’ve spent my life staying out of there.”… Here’s the tough part: you have to go down into that deepest, darkest, most roiling, white-hot place … whatever scared the hell out of you down there – and there’s plenty – you have to go in there; down to the deepest part of it, and you can’t flinch, can’t walk away.”

I believe there’s a point in your writing when you will be ready to do this. It’s not something anyone can force on you. It’s your choice. But when you decide to open up and enter this dark place – it will scare you. You might reject it and want to stop writing.

Don’t.

Be fearless. Face the intimacy and bravery your work demands. Don’t avert your eyes. This is the place where your best work will come from.

Photo Credit: Beth Retro Photography, Digital Vision

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intimacy it takes to write.

I’ve been re-reading the lectures of Robert Olen Butler and he talks about how honest writing doesn’t come from thinking or ideas, but from feeling and dreaming. This is a difficult concept for many of us because there is a lot to think about when we write. But it’s possible we protect ourselves through that thinking and never really dig deep into the white-hot center of our work.

Butler quotes Akira Kurosawa, who says, “To be an artist means never to avert your eyes.”

There’s two ways I interpret this quote in regards to my writing. The first is to be brave. To face the intimacy it takes to write. I think we write to explore the human condition, but often we don’t want to look at the hard truths that make our characters who they are. Or we don’t want to let our characters move honestly through their worlds. We protect them. In many ways we are protecting ourselves. We avert our eyes, because really looking means facing secrets about ourselves. These can be personal secrets or larger truths about humanity that challenge our beliefs. Writing forces us to look at issues we may not be ready to face.

It’s scary. It takes courage.

My second interpretation of Kurosawa’s quote is about experience. We interact with our world sensually through our bodies: the taste of papaya, the texture of soft gooey fruit, the tremble of a lip in the face of bad news. The writing I love to read (and strive to write) grounds us in our bodies and its interaction with the physical world. To never avert your eyes is to be in the body of your character from moment-to-moment. It means never glazing over the emotion, but being present to feel the world through your character’s skin. It’s easy to analyze when we write and pull back and summarize. The second we step back and look at the character from the outside, discussing emotion rather than allowing a character to sensually feel it, we’ve averted our eyes from the experience and are labeling it. Controlling it. I think we do this because to truly feel something with our character means we must make ourselves vulnerable.

Robert Olen Butler says: “If I say art doesn’t come from the mind, it comes from the place you dream, you may say, ‘Well, I wake up screaming in the night. I don’t want to go into my dreams, thank you very much. I don’t want to go to the white-hot center; I’ve spent my life staying out of there.”… Here’s the tough part: you have to go down into that deepest, darkest, most roiling, white-hot place … whatever scared the hell out of you down there – and there’s plenty – you have to go in there; down to the deepest part of it, and you can’t flinch, can’t walk away.”

I believe there’s a point in your writing when you will be ready to do this. It’s not something anyone can force on you. It’s your choice. But when you decide to open up and enter this dark place – it will scare you. You might reject it and want to stop writing.

Don’t.

Be fearless. Face the intimacy and bravery your work demands. Don’t avert your eyes. This is the place where your best work will come from.

Photo Credit: Beth Retro Photography, Digital Vision

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By E. Tory Higgins

“Our country is divided.” “Congress is broken.” “Our politics are polarized.” Most Americans believe there is less political co-operation and compromise than there used to be. And we know who is to blame for this situation—it’s our political opponents. Democrats know that Republicans are to blame, and Republicans know that Democrats are to blame. Not only do we know that our political opponents are to blame, but we are suspicious of their motives, of why they take the positions they take. Bottom line: we can’t trust them.

This is a serious problem for our country. One source of the problem is a misperception of what really motivates people’s political opinions, judgments, and actions. People often assume such opinions are all about self-interest or all about “carrots and sticks.” As Romney recently put it, “What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked.” Plenty of commentators criticized the reference to minorities, the poor, and students as essentially being paid off for their votes, but few if any disputed the overall assumption that the “carrots” candidates offer voters determine the vote. Indeed, the field of ‘public choice’ in economics assumes just this, that voters are guided by their own self-interest and “vote their pocketbooks.”

What does it mean for our political conversation to assume that the opinions, judgments, and actions of our political opponents are motivated by self-interest? It means that their stands on political issues are selfish rather than being in the best interest of our country. We can’t trust them to be concerned about what is best for the rest of us because our interests are different than their interests. We assume that they do not have good will. But what if people are not primarily motivated by self-interest (by “carrots”) in the political domain or in any other domain of life? In fact, there is substantial evidence from research on human motivation that what people want goes well beyond attaining “carrots” (or “gifts”). What they want is to be effective.

Yes, one way of being effective is to have desired outcomes, which can include attaining “carrots” (and avoiding “sticks”). But there is much more to being effective. People also want to be effective at establishing what’s real or right or correct (being effective in finding the truth), as when people want to hear the truth about themselves or what is happening in their lives even if “the truth hurts.” Indeed, people want to observe, discover, and learn about all kinds of things in the world that have nothing to do with their attaining “carrots” (or avoiding “sticks”). And people also want to manage what happens, to have an effect on the world (being effective in having control), as when children jump up and down in a puddle just to make a splash. Indeed, people will take on pain and even risk injury to feel in control of a difficult and challenging activity, as illustrated most vividly in extreme sports.

It is establishing what’s real (truth) and managing what happens (control) that often are our primary motivations — rather than self-interest — and this is both good news and bad news if we are to change the political conversation. The bad news is that humans, uniquely among animals, establish truth by sharing reality with others who agree with their beliefs (or with whom they can establish agreed-upon assumptions). And when they do create a shared reality with others, they experience their beliefs as objective — the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This means that when others disagree with these beliefs, as when Democrats and Republicans disagree with each other, each side is so certain that what they believe is reality, that they infer that those on the other side must either be lying about what they truly believe or they are too stupid to recognize the truth or they are simply crazy. These derogations of our political opponents don’t derive from our self-interests being in conflict with them. It is more serious than that. It derives from the establishment of a different shared reality to them, a shared reality that we are highly motivated to maintain because it gives us the truth about the how the world works.

This is bad news indeed. But if we understand that out political opponents just want to be effective in truth, there is a ‘good news’ silver lining. The good news is that we need not characterize our political opponents as being selfish, or liars, or stupid, or crazy. We need not question their good will. Instead, we can recognize that they, like us, want truth and control, and they want truth and control to work together effectively. They want to “go in the right direction.” They, like us, want our country to be strong. They want Americans to live in peace and prosperity. Yes, they have different ideas about what direction is the right one to make this happen, but this is something we can discuss. In order to establish what’s real, manage what happens, and go in the right direction — which are ways of being effective that we all want — we need to listen to one another and and learn from one another. This is a political conversation worth having. Let us have that respectful, serious conversation in the New Year and search for common ground. Good will to all.

E. Tory Higgins is the author of Beyond Pleasure and Pain: How Motivation Works. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the William James Fellow Award for Distinguished Achievements in Psychological Science (from the Association for Psychological Science), and the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. He is also a recipient of Columbia’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.

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My latest Strange Horizons column is about John D'Agata and Jim Fingal's book The Lifespan of a Fact, which has been provoking a lot of discussion.

My favorite of the responses to the book is Ander Monson's "The Skeptical Gaze", because not only has Monson read Lifespan with some care (which cannot be said for many of the people punditing about it), but he's also done some wonderful work himself to explore the possibilities and boundaries of fact and fiction (I wrote about his excellent book Vanishing Point a couple years ago for Strange Horizons). (Pardon another parenthetical, but I also want to add that comparisons between Mike Daisy and John D'Agata are superficial and fundamentally wrongheaded, as Josh Voorhees pointed out at Slate. Daisy hid his lying and worked hard to do so, D'Agata has put his fictionalizing front and center and let the world respond. I wrote the column before the Daisy scandal broke, however.)

Anyway, my own take on The Lifespan of a Fact was written about a month ago, but for scheduling reasons couldn't be published till now, so it feels a little bit superfluous to the conversation. I'm glad it's out there nonetheless, because I don't think mine is quite the same perspective as many of the others.

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My previous post about The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction noted that it is in beta-text mode and so quite obviously incomplete. Among the lacks are entries on either Jeff or Ann VanderMeer. I am not a contributor to the encyclopedia nor am I in any way affiliated with it, but I do have a great interest in all things VanderMeer.

Earlier this year, I wrote a biography of Jeff for Fogcon, where he and Ann were honored guests. (Eric Schaller wrote the biography of Ann, which I hope he will allow me to reprint here, but he's not returning my calls or email at the moment, probably because I suggested that for Halloween he should dress his dog as a character from Twilight.)

I hope the information provided below will prove useful to the encyclopedists and any future scholars. My only goal in life is to be helpful. Jeff VanderMeer will, I expect, deny the accuracy of some of it, but I believe such denials only confirm the truths I am here able to provide to the world...

By late adolescence, VanderMeer was living in Florida, primarily on a houseboat off the coast of St. Petersburg, the fourth-largest city in the state and the second largest city in the Tampa Bay area. VanderMeer's actual activities during this time are unknown, though he has variously claimed that he was working as a merchant of dried squid, an icthyologist, and a decoy for the Witness Protection Program. Whatever he was doing, we know that he was writing, because it wasn't long before his first book, a monograph on herpetology titled The Book of Frog, was

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Last month, we posted about Demi Lovato's grateful and encouraging statements as she thanked her fans for supporting her through her recovery. Then we watched her appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, where she was very candid about her struggle with eating disorders and with cutting.

Sometimes, the truth can be the hardest thing to admit - but it's the most important. If you find yourself in an unhealthy situtation, don't be afraid to reach out for help. The people who truly love you will be there for you, no matter what, and they can help out. If you are hurting in any way, reach out to someone you trust and take the first step towards a brighter tomorrow.

If you don't see the video below, click here to watch it on YouTube.

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Eric Schaller and I have been working on creating an online version of a magazine some of our ancestors  were involved with in 1876, and after a long period of work, with the brilliant and invaluable help of Luís Rodrigues, THE REVELATOR can now be revealed.

In it you will find two new short stories, "Gaslight" by Jeffrey Ford and "Nick Kaufmann, Last of the Red-Hot Superwhores" by Nick Mamatas; an essay about the relationship between Salem, Massachusetts and witches by Robin DeRosa, poetry by Lillian Aujo and Beverly Nambozo, an interview with and comix by Edward Bolman, an account of The Spleen Brothers by Brian Francis Slattery, paintings by Michaela D'Angelo, and an eyewitness account of the James/Younger gang's raid on the bank in Northfield, Minnesota -- an account unlike any others, and till now lost in the archives of The Revelator!

A theme of twins, doubles, and doppelgangers runs lightly through this issue of the magazine. It's present in the fiction, there's the idea of historical doubling in Robin's essay on Salem, etc. We got creative with the doubling in the poetry department -- I knew Beverly had a lot of poet friends, and so we asked her to be the commissioning editor for the second poem, and she brought Lillian to us. Never having met Lillian in real life, I don't know if she's Beverly's doppelganger, but I do know we're thrilled to be able to publish the work of both. And of everybody else who was brave enough to want to join the old, weird tradition of The Revelator.

There will probably be future or past issues. Please note though that because of limited resources, we are not open to unsolicited submissions. We would love to get to that point eventually, but right now we just don't have the ability to read through a lot of unsolicited work.

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Hello, friends, hope you had a creative week. I've been thinking a lot about honesty lately. Here is a thing I've learned -- if I am brave and write down the things that I'm afraid to write down, then I find that my writing stretches beyond me. Locked doors open inside me as I let the deep things I think live on the page. I find this whole bravery thing snowballs into my work. My vision clears. Writing what I think helps me. I see what is right and true. And if anything is wrong with what I am thinking that comes out to. Putting my thoughts on the page helps me get at heart of things.

I've also found all this honesty spills into my work. I am more willing to take risks. I don't feel the weight of censors or critics, and I get to the business of shaping my stories the way they want to be shaped. I'm able to make my way into the deepest water of understanding. Emily Dickinson wrote a little poem that sticks with me. "I never saw the moor. I never saw the sea. Yet know I how the heather looks and and what a wave must be. I never visited God, nor visited in heaven, but sure am I of the spot as if the chart were given." Her assurance of things unseen gives me boldness. Her truth changes me. I hope you are getting the sense of the absolute power of writing what needs to be written.

So this week, write down your secret, write down that thought you don't write down because you know it will offend others, write down your anger, your grief, write down something hidden. See what happens when you open wide the door of honesty. I'm just saying, try it. Seize the day. See you next week.

My doodle this week is a little collage. I call it "Sunrise".



The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Unconventional advertising for 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' (To promote this week's opening of the adventure film, Disney rolls out an interactive window display at the 34th street Macy's, as well as purchased ad space on Twitter) (Adweek) (AdAge, reg.... Read the rest of this post

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A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA happening this week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference.  I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC.  The site allows citizens outside of the UK access to the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists.  It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism.  At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks.  To start us off I have posted a clip which emphasizes the value of truth in journalism.  Read Kevin’s blog here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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'Glee' returns (and critics are still singing its praises. Hurrah. Also MTV shows Green Day dude-sical "American Idiot" promotional love, boosting the show's profile before its Broadway debut. MTV launches jerseyshorecasting.com, (a site dedicated... Read the rest of this post

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