The enviroment is the new kids

Is it just me or … (that’s an ominous way to start a blog post)

…is ‘its good for the climate’ the new ‘do it for the kids’

It used to be if you wanted to convince people do something or stop doing something one would throw in a vague reference to an ill defined benefit or detriment to future generation of tiny cute children. But now all one needs to do is introduce some vague ill defined benefit or detriment to the environment.

Sorry darling, I don’t want to walk to the shops to get some Flash wipes, because that will take energy , and then I will need to eat more food, which contributes to global warming.

I’d love to go to visit your parents tonight instead of watching the football, but think of the carbon footprint in terms of travel and rich teas.

Can I have some money please? it’s for the environment and the kids.

What happens with the online self doesnt die with its real world host?

 

is there such a thing as a will & testament for your online self?

is there a way to leave information about accounts/passwords for all your online real estate and data?

if there’s not, then there should be.

Listen or don’t listen to the BNP?

Maybe victory over the BNP doesn’t come by harassing and silencing them, it comes from answering their questions and assertions in the public arena. This week they are appearing on Question Time, rightly in my view. It’s not for the BBC to get into deciding which legally elected political party they allow on their show, it’s all very well when they ban a party we don’t like, but when happens when they ban a party we do like? If the BBC is to avoid becoming Fox News it must hold its nose and remain neutral and independent.

In the 1980s the government decided to ban the leaders of Sein Fein from being heard on British media. This became immediately ridiculous when actor’s voices where allowed to overdub the words! I propose that the reason why we banned Adams from the airwaves was because in a lot of what he said, frankly he had a point, and that made us uncomfortable. Uncomfortable because a lot of what he said was also abhorrent, as were the actions of the IRA thugs. It’s difficult to listen to someone who spouts 90% deranged anti social diatribe, but 10% reasonable truth that maybe we need to address. The adage” I’ve met with the enemy, and he’s partly right” is maybe a starting point to dealing with the BNP. Maybe it would disarm and eventually defeat them. Or maybe I’m an appeaser.

If i can’t remember it, i didn’t do it

If I don’t remember doing something, am I still responsible for it? If I only remember the past 24 hours, and I kill someone 25 hours ago, and have no memory can I still get parole from prison, even if I am unable to admit guilt and express remorse? Without memory my inner self will never feel attached or responsible for decisions made. I may be able to objectively assess the evidence and decide that I am guilty, and wish that the person I was when I made that decision hadn’t made that decision.

But ‘I’ would consider myself to be a separate ‘I’ from the person who made that choice 25 hours ago.

Is our ’self’ the sum of our experiences, remembered? Is that a description our humanity? Is a person with senile dementia still fully responsible for the person they were before?

——-

Just working out some excuses in advance.

Baby face

Mrs Monkey has a bug bear, or at least a comment she occasionally makes. When we look at a baby’s face we can tell if it’s a boy or a girl, but how? Sometimes we can’t, why?

What are the defining features. If i was any good at drawing faces how would i go about drawing a nine month old baby boy’s face as opposed to a girl’s.

Musical taste tests can make people uncomfortable

We’ve all been there I’m sure. I think it’s a situation which emerges in an office environment more than most other places. It needs a group of people who know each other quite well, well enough to care how they are perceived but not well enough to have any idea of their musical tastes.

Perhaps and example will help. I’ve been drafted in to work this morning, a Saturday (for boring reasons). A lot of people are here and there is a bit of a jovial atmosphere with teams playing music while they work. Two or three enthusiastic people get together to choose the content of the playlist. On the face of it its just background music but people start to get edgy. When a song comes on that they really like they feel the need to do a wee dance or something in a ‘I LOVE this song’ way so that people know that they know it, when a song comes on that they are a bit embarrassed about actually liking but know that its uncool they shout things at the player ‘aww no way, get this off’. Then there’s the moment when a song comes on that most people seem to know and ‘love’ so they all bond over it apart from the one guy who’s never heard of it but feels the need to pretend, to nod along and smile.

Then there are the people who take the track list and insert loads of ‘cool’ album tracks from bands no one has heard of. It’s like a scramble for the high ground and a declaration that no one else really knows what good music is. When someone shouts out ‘what is this crap’ (which just happened 5 mins ago) the response is… ‘WHAT ? you know nothing!! this is Ledbetter’s 1950s seminal classic etc etc’ “ Whatever mate!” was the response. People get uncomfortable

Me? I’m listening to the 3rd day of the test match from The Oval!

Tweet me the news

In the age of instant news reporting, sound bye headlines, twitters and Facebook campaigns it gets harder and harder to have more than a knee-jerk reaction to a news story and it becomes commonplace to sum up from within yourself a twitter-like instant opinion on a complex issue.

Here’s the story: A soldier will face a court-martial today for refusing to return to Afghanistan. Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, 27, from the Royal Logistic Corp handed a letter to the Prime Minister last week saying that the army’s mission will fail and troops should be withdrawn from the country.

My first reaction is that the moral authority lies with Genton, and that its wrong for the Army to force a soldier to fight in a war which he finds objectionable. The more complex analysis is perhaps less tweetable. What’s the rational behind imprisoning a soldier for not wanting to fight in a war he disagrees with?

Should a democracy maintain a standing army to defend itself against outside foes and fulfil mutual treaty obligations with other friendly countries e.g. NATO and UN? Yes.

Should the army or the elected representative government of the people decide what constitutes a threat? The Govt of course.  People tend to cheer a solider or a general who speaks up when THEY agree with what the solider or general says… not so much when they stage a fascist coup or start killing people because they thing the government policy is too soft.

The Government might make bad decisions and get engaged in unpopular wars, but as long as anyone is free to form a political party and canvas for votes, unelected army personnel shouldn’t have a say in the country’s foreign policy.

When a solider signs up should he be able to make personal judgments on what wars he fights in? No, not without facing harsh punishment. If a solider isn’t willing to fight he shouldn’t join up, a solider needs to be willing to kill and potentially be killed on the order of the elected government through the chain of command. Without discipline its impossible to have an army at all.

What happens if the government asks him to guard a concentration/death camp or target civilians?

hmmm dunno. Should bomber pilots in 1944 have refused to fire bomb Dresden even though it would quicken the end of the war and thus close down Auschwitz and Dachau quicker? Hmm let’s see you Tweet the answer to that one!!

At some point, we all outsource our intellect and opinions

My knowledge and interests are limited to a few things that I’m happy to have relatively independent options on and argue the merits with all comers. I do of course accept and believe a plethora of other received wisdoms, as we all do. For example I ‘know’ that breathable air is mainly Nitrogen and Oxygen but realistically I know this because clever people over hundreds of years have worked this out and passed down that knowledge. If someone comes up to me and whispers in my ear that there is a big conspiracy and that actually air is mostly carbon, what am I to say? I’m not a chemist or a biologist is it really worth my while arguing with him when all I’m really doing it pointing him towards the received wisdom that I have accepted. Similarly if a creationist tries to argue that the earth is 6000 years old rather than 4.4 billion is it really worth the argument given that we’re both outsourcing our views and opinions, him to Answers In Genesis and me to empirical and peer reviewed scientific orthodoxy. It becomes problematic when the ear-whisperer has demonstrably more personal knowledge about the subject. But just because you’re David Shayler and used to be in MI5 doesn’t mean I have to accept your lunatic 7/7 conspiracy theories. Reason: there are a lot of smarter and more credible people that have discredited you; those clever people are my proxy in this argument.

Scientific and historic orthodoxy can of course change and be found wanting, the point is that I don’t have the time or the brain power to work out every single historical or scientific fact from first principles by myself – I outsource that job. I guess the question then turns to how we trust them? I guess its through peer review, enforcement of objectivity and a thorough demonstration of their ‘working out’.

Realising this is maybe I good way to stop myself getting involved in pointless arguments about ideas which I have been ‘convinced by the arguments for’ rather than formed from first principles. We’re all just midgets standing on the shoulders of giants; it’s just that some of us have chosen different giants. Some times I think we may as well let the giants fight it out for themselves while we just go for drives in the country and sample a selection of ales and cakes. Then again, I do love a good old bar debate.

PS: Whilst I use Wikipedia every day i do have a problem with its philosophy, facts are not an average  summation of world wide opinion of the masses. I’d like a way to judge the validity of each wiki entry depending on the qualifications of the editors.

Soccer Science Stats

When it comes to supporting a football team, having your expectations exceeded is key to happiness. As I said before Newcastle United fans would have been dancing in the streets last season if they had finished fourth bottom last season, once they had started to expect to be relegated. Whereas a few years earlier they were in the depths of depression after finished second, as they expected to win the league.

Given that, there must be some way we can analyse the league tables over the past few decades and come up with the most satisfying team to support. You think I’m joking, and should have better things to do with my time? QMonkey’s reprehensive in the real world is actually a computer software writing monkey so I should be able to come up with it!! But what is the criteria? he’s my first thoughts…

A team that does slightly better year on year but occasionally has a really really bad year or two just to lower expectations then continues to slowly climb again. The lows however are vital, as the great bard Robbie Williams said, if you wanna get high to gotta taste the lows.

Jamone Mutha Fucka

I find the phenomena of mourning a celebrity, fascinating. What’s that all about then? I don’t mean to belittle it and I must admit then when Diana died I felt genuinely sad about it which makes no real sense.

Is it that we think of a celebrity as less a person more of an immortal icon or archetype, a totem of our zeitgeist. (even I don’t really know what I mean by that, but I’ll leave it in!). Let’s be clear, the death of Michael Jackson is absolutely NO loss to music. He hadn’t recorded anything in more than a decade and was unlikely to do so again, he hadn’t created any art of any note since 1991.

So its not like we’ve lost an artist at his prime, and its not like he was living a particularly happy or beneficial life, and its not like we knew him personally, so why do people cry and mourn his passing more than the thousands of others who died on the same day.

(sorry about the title, couldn’t resist)

A.N Wilson finds his lost faith

Definitely an interesting article if a little disappointing that it boils down to the ‘there must be something more’ argument. I wouldn’t be overly shocked if there are one or two more flip flops before the grim reaper tells him for sure.

He’s quite an interesting character, having converted in and out of the Anglican/Catholic churches a couple of times and now in and out and in again to theism,  fascinating really, certainly a searcher.

update: His Daily Mail article though, is venomous and quite confusing. Then again, i guess the daily mail readers expect some blood on the carpet.

Individual freedom vs society

Question of the day

 

In a society can the individual ever truly be free?

Or by the act of liberating the individual do we destroy collective society?