| Vegetarianism and Abortion |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|01:57 pm] |
Last night I wondered if there is an ethical inconsistency between being a vegetarian (for ethical reasons, i.e, out of a prohibition on killing sentient entities) and supporting the right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy.
On what grounds can I afford the right-to-live for animals, but not to a fetus? On what grounds can I deny these rights to either?
Pragmatically there isn't a problem: I wouldn't enforce my vegetarianism on anyone, nor would I enforce a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy. That's the easy part. However, in terms of internal ethical consistency I can't see how I can reconcile the two? |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|10:00 pm] |
Advice Sought!
There is a database at my work, the kind that I'd normally rewrite myself for maximum awesome, but apparently it's going to be utterly abolished next semester. Anyway. Today I noticed that one of the images that usually gets printed on the form letter that is produced was MISSING! And instead all our letters had a big MISSING FILE tag in the middle of them.
So I send this email to our SAO (Software Assets Office), since no one seemed to know who was in charge of the damned thing, seeing if maybe he could help. Being the SOFTWARE GUY:
Hi [The guy]
[My supervisor] suggested I bother you with this before the faculty people.
The one of the images in the letter form for the Special consideration Filmaker database seems to have spontaneously gone missing leaving a nice <MISSING FILE> message under the letterhead. Let me know if this is something you can help with or whether I should go downstairs.Cheers, Kristian
To which he replied:
"The one of the images” I don’t know what you are talking about, go downstairs.
That was it. Not even a sign off!
So the advice I need was
1. Was there anything wrong with my email.
2. Was the response unnecessarily rude.
2a. If so, should I say something to this chap tomorrow.
2b. If so, should just I get over it.
3. Nuke the entire site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
*This would be an easy decision if it was any of my old jobs, but I kind of like this job apart from the jerks, and it's tough economic times, so I don't feel I can safely burn my bridges. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|04:40 pm] |
Best email received at my work (at University of Sydney).
"I've attached some pictures of some "Bird" bones and I dug up in my back
yard here in Reseda California. I don't know if they mean anything or
just stupid bird bones.
If you can tell me anything I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
xxxx
818-xxx-xxxx" |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 26th, 2009|07:27 pm] |
Asher fucking Moses says something stupid again. This time for the stupidest use of the word ancient.
Optus has been slashing broadband speeds to half the level advertised for customers who exceed their monthly download allowance.</p> Customers of Optus's "Naked" ADSL broadband plans have their internet speeds throttled down to 64kbps for the rest of the month once they exceed their 7GB, 15GB or 30GB monthly allowance.This is half the speed of 128kbps that is listed in the terms and conditions published on the Optus website and about the same speed offered by ancient dial-up modems.
Ancient dial-up modems? Like, the one's the Ancient Greeks, or, Ancient Egyptians were using? Were these found in Ancient Chinese Ruins or buried beneath an Ancient Mayan Temple? |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 23rd, 2009|01:36 pm] |
Dear Apple,
I just want to copy some mp3s onto my ipod thing. That's all. Just drag 'n drop those sons-a-bitches.
Also, I want to kill you.
Kristian. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 17th, 2009|12:47 am] |
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The hope is to take away the focus from sex and put it back into sport, writes Matthew Benns. CHEERLEADERS should be banned from rugby league as part of a campaign to give the sport an improved, sex-free public image, a marketing expert says. But the stance has forged an unlikely alliance between cheerleaders and feminists who say the real problem lies in the "blokey" attitude that dominates the NRL. Public relations and marketing expert Ro Markson said: "Rugby league needs to ban cheerleaders and take the focus away from sex and put it back on sport."
I'd like to ask Matthew Benns why cheerleaders and feminists would have to forge an unlikely alliance? Were they otherwise at war?
ETA: Unsurprisingly it seems Matthew Benns is from the Asher fucking Moses school of Fucktardary. I think I wrote about this article recently... |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 16th, 2009|09:02 pm] |
One of the most frightening things about the debate on the use of torture, is that there's a debate on torture. Not so long ago it would have seemed absurd to think that the merits of the use of torture would be so widely, and seriously, discussed at a macro-political level. The fact that over the last few years we are talking about it again means that we are necessarily going backwards, regardless of which position you take. In the same way, the fact that a country like Australia is now having a national (media) debate about whether or not it's good for a team of 30yr old footballers to gangbang a 19yr old, means we're either going backward here too, or that we were never really as progressive as we might have liked to think. In the same way that the "Violence against Women, Australia says No" actually implies that Australia in fact says Yes, and thus, women are still the target of domestic abuse, this particular incident suggests that it is impossible to consider that we live in a "Post-Feminist" world in all but the most trivial senses of the term.
"It goes without saying that I do not deny - unless I am a fool - that many actions called...moral ought to be done and encouraged - but I think the one should be encouraged and the other avoided for other reasons than hitherto. We have to learn to think differently - in order at last, perhaps very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently." (Nietzsche, The Dawn, 103)
I think Nietzsche is absolutely right. It isn't sufficient to merely act differently (in Nietzsche's context, the denial of morality isn't an injunction to do the opposite of what is thought to be moral) but that we must become ourselves radically different Subjects. I think this demand exists also in feminism, we (as men, as a society) not only act differently, and not only that we think differently, but that we feel differently. That our sexual and gender politics be radically re-aligned.
With this in mind it's not (just) a matter of whether or not "Clare", the woman who was involved, consented to one, two or twenty men. Or whether she enjoyed it or not, whether it was a fantasy come true (and as Zizek notes, true horror is a fantasy realised), or whether she bragged about the event, or whether she later regretted it. This kind of inquisition simply operates within the same ideological sphere as the "bad old days" where a woman could be legally raped by her husband, or her choice of clothing was an issue in a case of sexual assault.
I think it is simple enough to argue that it is insufficient to claim that we must merely act differently - that if only through education or the force of law men chose to control their actions and stop themselves from this kind of activity. This would lead to a world where we merely carry out duty to others (in this case, to Women) as a matter of respect (or fear) for the Law. A legalistic basis for ethical/moral discourse is not only inherently conservative, which is to say, it effectively forbids moral progress, but it also cuts out an enormous piece of our moral knowledge (for example, it's not illegal to lie to your friends or cheat on your spouse, it can't be claimed to be nonetheless wrong). It is from this minimal moral universe that we get the kind of discourse that involves questions like;
The clear objection to this question is of course that in practice the application and/or intervention of the law is not the sole metric by which we judge the ethical or moral content of an action. We are quite capable of making, and frequently do make, moral/ethical judgments above and beyond the confines of the law, and this has in fact been the traditional driver of moral progress. If you are to going to use this as the method by which we determine whether someone should be morally condemned then we'd also have trouble issuing condemnation against those who have not been charged by police, for example, suicide bombers. We'd also be hard pressed to make a case to end slavery and so on. What a legalistic moral framework creates is essentially moral relativism by legislation.
If there needs to be a debate then the question that ought to be debated is whether the actions of these men (legal or not) were the result of a cultural disposition towards women (or just generally, towards people/a person) that is de-humanising and exploitative. My ethical responsibility towards other people isn't limited to respecting their (vocal) consent for a certain action, I am also responsible for my approach to them, as a person, and not just to their consent. (And I ought to be particularly careful they are less mature or in a state that may diminish their ability to make the best choices for themselves). This is precisely the reason we have age of consent laws, these laws code a particular instance of the wider moral issue whereby we recognise that not only is consent necessary, but that the person who is receiving this consent takes responsibilty for what they do with it. Just because I have consent to have sex with someone doesn't mean I should, and this prohibition isn't that I would be betraying a third person, or I might damage my career, but that I could be damaging the one who has given me consent. This is why we cringe when a fifty year old and a sixteen year old have sex, even though it is legal. This isn't to say those relationships are necessarily wrong, but that we have at the very least a responsibility to ask. One media commentator that has been missing is Helen Garner, in light of "The First Stone" I thought she would be all over this, with something stupid about how feminism has destroyed the natural Eros between groups of large violent men and young women. I don't know. Just sayin'.
So, in true Kantian form, to discern the morality of the act we not only have to discern what happened, but why it happened. That is to say, why did this group of men want to do this to this nineteen year old woman? I think it is fair to say that they were not indulging in some kind of exploration of inter-subjective eroticism, they weren't playing out a Sadian experiment into the human capacity for jouissance, these were footballer players, not french existentialists. There has been no pretence or explanation that this was something other than, to put it crudely, a gang-bang. I think Annabel Crabb here is way off the mark, even though she is being (I presume) facetious, when she writes;
"Strip away the fame and the adulation and all the trappings. Strip away the girl, even, and ask the obvious question. Which is: Why would a group of blokes come together, as if drawn by some invisible gravitational force, and gather in a room to masturbate with each other? ... Those girls are being used all right, but I reckon they're being used as beards to disguise the otherwise perfectly obvious, screaming queerness of what's going on."
I think this line of thinking does a create dis-service to the situation not only because of it's facetiousness but because it continues doing what the men themselves have done. I think "Clare" cannot be removed from the situation, as if she were just some mediator of a circle jerk, she is absolutely required to be there so that she can then be made absent. This is de-humanisation as team building, the kind of thing we also see in military training where the enemy is rendered as a kind of homo sacer, de-humanised and deserving whatever is coming for them. By mutually exploiting and symbolically destroying this girl (referring to her during the event in the third person, not referring to her as a person after the fact) the "natural" male heirarchy is flattened in the presence of the mutual recognition of the triumphant male sexuality. It's a kind of perverse inversion of The Last Supper where Christ brings diginity, hope and equality to his disciples by sharing himself with them whereas here we have the group taking from another.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) eclipsedeyes raises the interesting issue of the response from the NRL heirarchy, which is in effect a continuation of the military style command structure. She questions the effectiveness of the Coach, the NRL bosses etc, imposing a top-down set of rules "you can't do this, you can't do that" as it simply re-enforces the heirarchy that must be flattened if a team is to be built. One can imagine solidarity building up between players in response to the increasing pressure (maybe signified in the Silence of those who also participated and the refusal of the one thus far named to name others i.e a code of silence). I think she is pretty much right on this, it is a case of Rumsfeldian Epistemology (again!). Known Knowns, Known Unknowns, Unknown Unknowns and the most important, the one that Rumsfeld missed: Unknown Knowns - Ideology. In Zizekean/Lacanian terms, the ideology that the NRL structure repeats is returned to them in it's true form when the players themselves establish their own hierarchy that necessarily has at it's base the Other (Woman).
Just another bit of media commentary I want to mention, from Karen Willis, Manager of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre. I don't actually have anything to say other than to be a pessimistic cynic about her final words;
If we want to reduce violence against women we need the silent majority of ethical men to take a stand. We need them to say the jokes about women, the mistreatment, and the violence are no part of being a man. We need them to say to unethical men that it is all utterly unacceptable.
I am quite serious when I doubt the existence of this silent majority. A silent minority, perhaps, but a majority? I'm not sure. This isn't to say I think the majority of men think that gang-banging a nineteen year old woman is a good thing to do, but by the same token I don't think there is a majority that think's it's a bad thing to do if she's not said no. And I think that is essentially what needs to be changed.
A little bit more:
Adele Horin has a reasonable piece, including the radical but not actual radical idea to turn proof of burden in rape around (You prove it wasn't rape!) ... but then it kind of goes a bit naff, again failing to question the MEN's role. The question of pleasure again puts the woman as the required and sole respondent.
Oh, before I forget.
Asher fucking Moses aka bloody Asher Moses. Who is a dickhead of immoderate proportions, had this marvellous piece on his twitter...
Yes, Asher, that's exactly it.
On the plus side, the Twitter response to this was pretty clear in the "You're a dickhead of immoderate proportions" kind of way. Also, lead me to Hoyden About Town blog, which I just discovered, and is apparently one of the most Famous Australian Feminist Blogs. Reading that blog I felt really, really positive and excited "Feminism is so inspirational!" I thought to myself. And it is. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 3rd, 2009|07:53 pm] |
Funniest thing I've read about Swine Flu:
Mexico's death toll rises to 19 but outbreak appears to be easing.
Thank fucking god it's easing off. I mean, with 19 deaths, I was beginning to the it might be the end of the world! Christ. That was close. So much destruction in so little time. Now life can return to normal. But after such a catastrophe it might take some time. A few minutes maybe. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 1st, 2009|10:39 pm] |
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Claire Hooker, a senior lecturer on medical ethics and law at the University of Sydney, said some blame for the media's coverage lay at the feet of governments. "It's not that the mass media has been outrageously sensationalist; after all, editors do have to sell newspapers
I'm glad that a senior lecturer in ethics has such clear thought. Is this the logic of the comment...
1. The newspapers have not been outrageously sensationalist
2. The newspapers have been outrageously sensationalist but they have to because they need to sell newspapers
3. It's only outrageously sensationalist if you give your newspapers away
So which one is it Claire Hooker, Senior Lecturer on Medical Ethics?
I'm being too harsh. It's not that the Senior Lecturer in ethics is making contradictory statements of an ethically dubious nature, after all, Senior Lecturers in ethics have to raise their media profile. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 28th, 2009|11:30 pm] |
When a journalist says something like this;
"In Mexico, where the outbreak has closed schools and businesses in recent weeks, the number of suspected swine flu cases has risen to a staggering 1614, including 103 deaths."
They don't leave themselves much room for further hyperbole when say, an actually staggering figure comes out, like say, 10,000,000 confirmed cases. That'd be 1 in 10 Mexicans with Pig Flu. In a population of 100,000,000 having 103 people die of a new disease isn't staggering. I'm willing to bet that many people die of regular flu every year.
You'll probably also see the claim WHO raises pandemic threat indicator to LEVEL 4. No one bothers to explain what level four is. It is sufficient to imply that level four is pretty high up as far as the levels go, maybe even the top of the range. They need to quantify the levels better, for example, they could use the trusted Star system. Everyone knows that a Star based rating system has 5 stars. That's the kind of context we need to be able to make informed irrational decision. So in this case we might have a 3 1/2 star pandemic threat. It isn't mind blowingly bad, but it's a bit serious. Then someone else can say, well hang on Margaret, I found this pandemic threat trite and cliched, I'm giving it 2 1/2 stars. And then you could make a television show about it. |
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| A legal retraction. |
[Apr. 18th, 2009|11:24 am] |
In my previous entry I made the allegation that SR7 allegedly hid Evil Capitalism in their butts. I have been contacted and corrected on the facts of this matter.
It has come to my attention that SR7 actually does hide Evil Capitalism in their butts.
Thus, I publicly retract my statement that SR7 allegedly hides Evil Capitalism in their butts.
The evidence from some of their "Solutions" on offer:
- Online risk management: auditing, monitoring and managing online conversations about your company or brand; providing early warning about potential issues SPYING ON PEOPLE FOR PERSONAL GAIN IS EVIL!
- Online PR: Blogger relations; mobilising online communities and advocates; creating conversations TROLLING THE INTERNETS EVIL
- creation and placement of banner and other online advertising formats COVERING UP MY PRON WITH BANNER ADS ... EVIL
- Email marketing: developing, managing and optimising email newsletters and campaigns AKA SPAM ... SPAM IS EVIL
- Grassroots marketing: threading company or brand narrative over a variety of social media platforms, utilizing the nature of social media CALLING A CORPORATE MARKETING CAMPAIGN GRASSROOTS ... EVIL
- seminars and workshops for executives and employees to increase awareness and understanding of the new communications environment and tools. RE-EDUCATION CAMPS FOR INCORRECT THINKING EMPLOYEES IS EVIL
- Search Engine Management: organic search engine optimisation; paid search engine marketing; directory/index placement; search reputation management MAKING IT SO YOUR SHITTY PRODUCTS COME BEFORE MY GOOGLE PRON IS EVIL
I have to confess I added the statements in bold. But nonethethus.
Evil.
Hot linking to someone else's bandwidth. EVIL. but less so. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 18th, 2009|11:03 am] |
So, Fucking Asher Moses, in a rare display of not writing retarded articles comprised of Twitter posts, has written this article about a new online security business called SR7. http://www.sr7.com.au/index.html
SR7 specialises in "online risk and reputation management" and claims to be the only company in Australia that actively monitors social networking sites on behalf of companies. David Vaile, executive director of UNSW's Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, believes SR7 may be acting unethically and said he suspected companies were using dirt gathered from social networking sites as an excuse to fire people due to the challenging economic climate ... He said the issue raised questions over where the boundary is between public and private comments.</p> "The boss is operating on the basis that this is some sort of global publication that reflects on their company, but that's not the intention of the person," said Vaile.
David Vaile has got it all wrong. Free Speech is a universalising principle, that is, it takes the particular (I should be able to say anything to myself) and makes it universal (Everyone should be able to say anything to anyone). In any society with a functioning princip0le of free speech there is no question of "the boundary between public and private comments" because there is no segregation of the two. By raising this as a public/private issue Vaile is still working within the ideological grounds that he seems to want to question. The only question is "Should a corporation have the right to prevent you from an act of free expression?". Now, if we ask this of an employee of the corporation we might be tempted to say Yes, but if we ask a non-employee, the answer would probably be no. So the question Vaile should be asking is "for how much of your life does a corporation own you?". Or a little more aggressively, for how much of your life does a corporation have the right to suspend your right to free speech? Or... for how much of your life is the corporation you work for sovereign over you? The only possible answer is NONE. If your answer is anything other than that, YOU BE UP AGAINST THE WALL WHEN THE REVOLUTION COMES!
SR7, I read this on wikipedia, is actually an alleged front for the Molvanian Catholic Mafia. They are alleged to eat babies and keep Evil Capitalism stored in their butts and are generally responsible for the Decline of the Internets.
Sometimes I'm sad I don't work for corporations anymore. For example; it was really fun busting previous managers to the ethics committee. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|09:10 pm] |
Has anyone else noticed the disjunction between the reaction to Pirates of the Caribean and Pirates of the Somali Coast?
In the cinematic romance of Pirates, the villains are the ruthless State Powers that have no problem in killing / executing the pirates who are ultimately just trying to make a living.
In the cinema of the Real, the villains are the pirates just trying to make a living while the State Powers are the heroes taking action against common criminals.
By making the Fantasy into Reality, the Somali pirates are horrifying - as Lacan observes, the realisation of Fantasy is ultimately Terror (You might have a fantasy of being raped or committing suicide, but the actual enactment of that Fantasy is the pinnacle of Horror). And not only are they horrifying, they are ruining the Fantasy that we can strike against the State, that we are ultimately free, etc etc. Likewise (according to Zizek), in Titantic, the death of Leonardo DiCaprio's character Jack is not a tragedy at all, but is the necessary sacrifice to prevent the true tragedy - that Rose and Jack do make it to New York and find that their love is ultimately destroyed by the class/social distinctions that their story gives us hope of overcoming. Jack dies so that the fantasy is preserved.
Something Something...
What do should we do? Stay faithful to our fantasy in it's realisation, now is the time to be cheering for the pirates and thinking about why there is piracy.
I don't know.
Snaff? |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 5th, 2009|12:08 pm] |
Now I understand why the SMH has managed to keep this story going for so long... the story is basically; Kevin Rudd didn't get the meat-free meal ordered on some kind of international flight. Kevin Rudd casts Reduce To Tears on Flight Attendant, Flight Attendant fails save. Flight Attendant is reduced to tears for three rounds.
This all happened on a flight to PNG, which was three months ago, so who could have suspected that it'd be raised just in time for something like... I don't know...
The PM has apologised for blowing up at the woman after he did not receive the non-red-meat meal he had requested on a VIP flight from the Pacific Islands Forum in Port Moresby in January. The controversy has boiled to the surface as the Meat and Livestock Association begins an advertising push - including a supplement in The Sun-Herald today.
Meat and Livestock Association gives money to the newspaper. Newspaper runs stories about how terrible it is to not eat meat! The beauty of the situation is that there is no need for a secret arrangement between the two organisations, not even a nod and a wink between knowing friends, it's just The Way Things Are Done.
In the past Mr Rudd has denied he is anti-lamb. Late last week his office said he was not on a meat-free diet, but "follows a healthy, balanced diet including red meat, other meats and of course plenty of fruit and vegetables".
Read: Mr Rudd is anti-lamb, but in the past he has denied it. It's like one of those non-accusations "In the past Asher Moses has denied he rapes boys". Of course, only someone who knows they've been found out would deny it...
Opposition agriculture spokesman John Cobb said a lack of red meat explained the Prime Minister's "toddler tantrum" and why he was "as weak as a limp lettuce".</p>"Without iron in their diet a person will become pale, insipid, wishy-washy, anaemic and prone to outrageous outbursts," Mr Cobb said. "A lamb chop or steak would put colour in his cheeks and iron in his soul. If you denied me a chop, I'd have serious anger management issues."
Oh, where do I start? I think this is one of the most stupidly confused things I've ever heard someone in a position of responsibility say. Someone makes an outburst about someone else making an outburst, blames it on iron deficiency (which apparently only and always happens if you don't eat meat), and then says they would make an outburst if they were denied meat. I don't really understand how this works. Iron in his Soul? He's angry at Kevin Rudd for being angry, but freely admits he would get angry because for meat? Even though meat is supposed to cure you of being angry? ? ?
This is why I recommend people read The Australian. Oh wait, The Australian is a hot bed of political conservatism? Well, of course, but they don't pretend not to be! Give me the devil with the Satan namebadge than the devil that calls himself Jesus.
Just to be sure, the article in question was written by Matthew Benns and not goddamn Asher Moses. Interestingly, they would both deny being involved in a drug fueled gangbang with Harold the Horny Horse and John Cobb. I can't believe they did that! Fiends! |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|07:48 pm] |
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In light of the recent influx of stories about Corporations punishing employees for comments posted on social networking sites it is now more evident than ever that a large number of corporate managers ought to be cut up into tiny pieces, loaded into a rocket and launched into the sun. It's the only way to be sure. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|09:08 pm] |
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Sometimes when we were living in Prague we could hear our neighbours fucking. For some reason I am missing that? |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|08:51 pm] |
So, apparently Earth Hour was some kind of big success. People were "Voting" for Earth.
For an hour.
Like the 'Anti-war' movement and charity, we can happily make our contribution and feel safe in the knowledge that there's no blood on our hands, and we can carry on with scheduled programming.
You want to get something done? Throw the baby out, because we're running out of clean bath water. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|08:27 pm] |
Tonight is eclipsedeyes 2nd of some 7,3000 injections. Apparently, tonight it has to go into the left buttock. First night was the upper left abdomen, apparently you need to rotate or you'll end up looking like the kids from Requiem for a Dream (well, that's what I'm imagining the reason is). I look forward to learning the procedure myself and then injecting her!
Well, you need to make good of what there is to be made good of. |
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