Sunday, June 24, 2007

The Abortion Controversy


A new classroom textbook has just come out called The Abortion Controversy, edited by Lucinda Almond, which includes as a chapter an old paper I wrote years ago, along with other papers from a wide range of perspectives taken from many different sources. The book is intended as a classroom reader wherein all sides of a debate can be explored.

I haven't read the other chapters included in the collection, beyond a good skim, so I can't say whether the book has other merits, but the way my contribution was treated does not inspire confidence.
As the Secular Web owns my original essay (and it's already available for free) I didn't ask for a royalty, which is fine. But I carelessly didn't ask to see a galleys before approving publication. Lesson learned. I'll have to be an asshole in the future.

For my part I have nothing good to say about this book and
I don't recommend it. As for the rest, the one good thing I can say is that it includes papers one might not readily encounter elsewhere (such as an article defending the murder of doctors who perform abortions), but if these have been treated as mine was, their authors might not recommend this book either.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

O Hammers, Head...

I read something today that just made me laugh. Pretty hard, at first. Then I thought about it...and lost a few sanity points. It's dark. So dark it almost passes from dark back into funny again. It sounds like something right out of a Douglas Adams novel...if it was made into a movie by Terry Gilliam. And yet it's totally true. I thought maybe some of you would laugh as much as I did at this bit of quirky, creepy trivia, and then feel just as icked. So here it is.