Thistle Jelly Varnish

philosophe

2010-11-28T22:23:00.000-08:00

Que ce que c’est la idée du jour, qui est le première port, la mode du voir qu’est ce que nous emploi pour la continuer de nous relation à la monde ? Ca question n’est pas. Le première rue: il est tout un nom, ne plus. Ils ont plus rue, plus port, plus modes de voir; et qu’est ce que sais l’objet d’investigation ? Il n’est pas un objet, mais un mode de voir est un. En la cours d’une investigation nous faisons les divisions en l’une; et en l’être, nous faisons l’une avec les plus. Il est de le jeu qui nous jouons quand nous faisons la monde avec le plus en l’une qui maintenant nous question: qui est tu? Mais, les plus est les plus de l’une, donc il est l’une qui est l’objet sous investigation. L’objet d’investigation est l’une qui faire investigation possible. Qui est l’une ? C’est la question. En anglais nous avons une question célèbre, to be or not to be ? Mais non la question two be or not two be. Il est tout une mode d’être, non ? Non. Il n’est pas une question célèbre to bee or not to bee ou two bee or not two bee. Ils sont stupide, est n’ont rien intéressement. Mais qui est ca – to be ? Ah, ca ! est la question. C’est la faire, c’est le jeu d’être ? Qu’est ce que je dis ? Mais, qu’est ce que je sais ? Mais, qu’est ce que je dis ? Maintenant, je question la faire d’être, le jeu d’être, l’être d’être... Qu’est ce que l’être d’être ? Qui est ca ? C’est l’être, est ne plus. L’être est l’être est ne dire plus. C’est tout (et néant).

Je sais, je sais : ma français est terrible ! Mais avec ca est ma philosophe…

It's you!

2010-11-06T11:27:00.001-07:00

Ethics - a polemic

2010-10-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

There really is no such thing as Ethics. Not as it is normally construed. People, philosophers, have spent a lot of time discussing ethical theories, but all of this is bunk. Although it may be interesting bunk, I don't rule that out. Ethical reflection, like any other reflection, may help you see things another way, maybe that is good. However the theoretical aspect of ethics is absurd. How can we say that we could codify how one ought live their lives? Let us take the Big Three: Aristotle, Kant and Bentham/Mill. First, each has been far too vague to have really said anything at all. They have said no more than 'be good (you know what I mean)', except they have been more loquacious. What do they tell us about how to live our lives? Nothing. One may present one's actions through such a frame, if it aids sleep, but there is nothing in these theories which says that a Kantian or an Aristotelian will behave differently in a given situation, or that if they do that this difference was in any way theoretic. Bentham/Mill is slightly different, because it is really more of a political ideology. However it is just as vague, vacuous and truthless.
People do what they do. Actions are rarely considered. And even when they are, we are so steeped in prejudice, structural dogma, fears, desires and other complications that we cannot isolate our decisions for ethical consideration. Yes, we invent little games - take Peter Singer in The Examined Life with his example that you see a drowning child but you are wearing expensive shoes, stuff the shoes we all say but we still buy the shoes when we could give the money to charity. Now there are issues in this example about ethical scope but that is not the point. Singer thinks we are inconsistent, as if we ought to be consistent (in this way)!
So we can be deconstructivists instead, and we can say the only moral life is one of anxiety. Pah, this is merely asserting a new dogma. I can sleep easy at night so long as I cannot sleep easy at night. What drool.
So how should we look at ethical dogma, and I include the deconstructivists in this? It is nothing but the positing or implication of a hierarchy we claim follows from reason, thus providing the necessary distanciation, that allows its speaker to position themselves relative to others, depending on their self-image; or it is the re-assertion and re-affirming of one's childhood dogmas. There is nothing theoretical to be said here. There is nothing for ethical theories to be theories of, nothing for them to predict and nothing to contradict them but opinion. It is all opinion. And that is fine, have your opinions. What bothers me is when those opinions are used as a means to exert power, and I do not just mean in the traditional sense, but even as Singer uses them - to create guilt, self-doubt, self-loathing, inferiority. Singer positions himself as a moral compass, now we are lost (and it is he that lost us, or told us that there is something to be that is to be lost, in this way). Bush and Blair used it to justify wars, the Catholic Church to grip Europe for centuries, now ecologists use it to gain power and press their idea of what the world should be upon us. I do not care that they say this, maybe we want the world this way. I care that they dress it in normatives. I care that they say - or imply - "If you do not think like this, if you do not see this as we do, then you are wrong in the most profound way possible, you are spiritually bereft, you are below humans." This I find sickening. This is the essence of Ethics - the self-righteous degradation of others.
And that is exactly what I have just done.
So what do we want? I don't know, different things, who cares, take it case by case. What should we want? Nobody but God can tell us, and God cannot tell us (despite the pseudo works), for God is beyond us in every possible way, or else is not God.
Have your opinions, try to force them upon me if you must, but don't pretend this force is exerted by something external to us, something ethereal and mystic - be it God or reason or whatever concept you deify. "But why shouldn't we, if there is to be no should. You criticise others for telling us what we ought to do, then tell us what we ought to do." Of course, I am playing the game.What more do you want? I am human, I am bound up in these games, I don't deny that. I try to assert power, in this case of ideas. I don't deny it. I am honest about it. If you think that's a virtue the fine and if you don't then fine. I will not call you vicious for calling me vicious. O no I already have. In fact I made out that the only virtue is to not call others vicious. O what a tangled web, eh?
So can we drop ethics? No. As long as we are to live together there is ethics. It is perhaps best captured as the necessary terms of co-existence. Like house rules. What's spiritual about that? There, theory gone, tangled ethical paradox gone (don't call me vicious/don't tell me not to call you vicious/don't tell me not to tell you not to call me vicious... or, there is no ethics, so one oughtn't behave as if there were), what is left now?
How to live. Well if that is a decision, or as far as that is a decision, I guess it is up to you, in agreement with those around you, as far as such an agreement is necessary - that is if you piss everyone off they'll vary from being less receptive to ending your life, you may or may not wish to consider that, but nothing presses upon you to say you ought to care.
Of course now I am just telling you how it is to me. To me it is all about these power structures - that if you do not do what you are told there is some consequence, just as in physics if you choose to put your hand in a fire there is some consequence. What does this mean? Governments, schools etc, should stop arguing about ethics and merely make threats? Maybe. Or maybe they already employ systems of implicit threat - to conscience, to God, to good will... - and need nothing further. And what are these systems? Ethics.

2010-08-27T05:24:00.001-07:00

Ooo I'm all a Twitter!

drivel

2010-07-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

Fuck barnados he whispered in her ear fuck their shitty fucking i don’t know what fuck it fuck them he gurgled as he spoke having ingested much alcohol he drooled his mouth agape wasted trashed Cartesian fallowed through gourdy gripping the rail for ballast he balanced uneasily shh he intoned gracelessly losing his grip slipping hands dipping man tips and flat faced flops upon the tarmac gets back up bruised and confused still drooling fooling no one saying he’s sober he aint sober and shes gotta take him home this bloated moaning corpse skulking gloomily along lamp lit boulevards wet and tatty looking shop windows adorning many footprinted streets he bleats on she trudging beside him sighs at the blinking immutable stars the body of heaven lit up in the night an endless parade of fiery fission fusers full with hydrogen molecules combusting to helium particles heaving this dense fuel bending space time leaving light lines cascading upon her eyes and then he said i love you and then he threw up

2010-05-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

Songs! By me!

I thought it was just naff jokes but apparently it's

2010-05-05T15:04:00.001-07:00

Mostlypolemic

A tribute

2010-05-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

Paolo Cesare Maldini (born 26 June 1968 in Milan, Italy) is a retired Italian footballer. He spent all 25 seasons of his career at Serie A club AC Milan, before retiring at the age of 40. During that period, Maldini won the UEFA Champions League a record five times, as well as seven Serie A titles, one Coppa Italia, five Supercoppa Italiana, five European Super Cups, two Intercontinental Cups and one FIFA Club World Cup. He played for 14 years for the Italian national team, making his debut in 1988 before retiring in 2002 with 126 caps scoring 7 goals.

Wow

2010-05-01T13:10:00.001-07:00

2010-05-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

Brilliant analysis of current political issues using hard facts, how rare!

2010-04-23T15:30:00.003-07:00

2010-04-23T15:30:00.001-07:00

2010-04-23T14:17:00.001-07:00

VOTE

2010-04-15T04:50:00.001-07:00

Vote change for fair change vote change fair vote change vote hair vote change scare fair play vote nay say vote whichever way play note vote fair care vote where change fair vote YES WE CAN vote nan vote caring fairing sharing vote community vote MPs legal immunity vote impunity vote incredulity vote unity vote EU tuna sea limits vote in it not of it vote poverty out vote for an end to gout vote nowt vote spoil vote endless toil vote susan boyle vote brand vote and vote man vote economic quicksand vote trounce vote mounts vote dead cat bounce vote common sense vote impudence vote what you meant vote obsequience vote politics vote boring dicks vote sick of this vote freedom vote peace vote democracy vote patriarchy vote obsequious bastardry vote anything but fucking tory vote life

I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity

2010-04-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

So begins Bloc Party's 2007 album A Weekend In The City, in which Okereke strives to marry the complex value judgements embedded in socio-cultural norms with his personal experience of the world - a project that has thus far failed him, leading to disillusionment and numbness. While, by the end of the album, he still seems dissatisfied with the world he inhabits, he finds solace in love, if not with the permanent contentment he craves.

I thought this album crude and naive at first: "trying to be heroic"? How self absorbed can one be? Having now listened to it many times I appreciate the honesty: he's not saying that he thinks this is how one ought feel, just how he does. The feelings are not unfamiliar to me: of trying to do what's right when what's right is rarely as obvious as one would like; finding that the models (for love, life, value, morals etc) assumed in the contemporary discourse do not fit the realities as closely as one would naively believe in childhood; of feeling ostracised from a 'normal' society that in reality does not exist! Time and again songwriters, and indeed artists of all tacks, with the nerve to open up and bare themselves show that while some will reject them out of deep borne fear and anxiety, many will respond in kind, having felt ostracised themselves, questioning themselves, feeling insane and now - through someone else's expression of the same emotion - no longer feeling so alone and so wrong.

Alas, a Blog - one of my favourites - touch upon this fraudulent, meticulously maintained, isolation through moral righteousness with relation to sex-positivity - automatically associated with perversity and abuse by the indignant preachers of moral certainty and human-to-human hatred. This subject is close to my heart at present for two related reasons: one, in my own life I've been completely re-evaluating my attitudes to sex and relationships; two, I still feel guilty for the preachy discussion of prostitution I wrote on this blog not so long ago, which I am now convinced was very much wrong in approach.

So for the first: I have always had awkward attitudes to sex. Obviously I enjoy sex, as everyone presumably does since their parents obviously did... but being raised in the heart of Daily Mail Britain I felt sex was only to be undertaken with your (future - we've gotten about as liberal as the 50s here) marriage partner. Now what this meant in effect was the first f*ck I had I had to marry. I very nearly did, and we scarcely got on after the first few months of fun. Gradually I've become more an more liberal, but I've still been troubled by jealousy and anxiety around a partner's behaviour, unmitigated anger at those I judge my competition, a distancing of myself from those I find attractive and a long standing mistreatment of one of my favourite people in all the world because she didn't want to sleep with me and I couldn't act like anything other than a toddler about that. How absurd is this? And yet it is the norm: it is what we are expected and indeed encouraged to feel. Your spouse has cheated on you? Chop their balls off! NO! We do not need this moral indignation and standards that no-one ever meets. Which would you prefer: the indignation or actual happiness? Well, I would prefer the latter, and my recent thinking has made it far more possible. I'm not sure the model is perfect, it's not been in my head long and it's not been tested by much, but so far it's made me feel a lot more at ease with the world than the absurdly complex arrangement that I had been working from previously. This is it:

That's literally it. Nothing more. I like the overlap in our lives. Done. What goes on in the rest of your life is none of my business, I have no right to judge, I am only in the overlap.
It's so much more fitting. Why would I judge those I love the most the harshest on very specific things? That isn't love. Love should be the unconditional acceptance of another person, with all their complexities: love the person,the underlying judgement maker, and thus all their judgements and thus all their life; love is not taking a person, constructing a narrative around them in your own head and then chastising them for failing to measure up exactly to that narrative when it was never even present to them in the first place.

So broadly this new picture is working out well for me, and has put me at ease. As well as becoming a lot less hasty to judge those around me, I'm less inclined to judge others generally. And thus we come back to my earlier article on prostitution. Now I still think that a lot of people do get abused and that this is obviously a terrible thing that would be best eradicated. Anyone who doesn't think that trafficking, rape, psychological and physical abuse and so on are not vile stains on humanity that we would be so much better off without is presumably psychopathic. The mistake I think I made before is to then blame those who are prostitutes of their own volition for glorifying the trade. Now how absurd is that in retrospect? It was a fairly typical example of some self-righteous, ill-informed idiot displacing their own personal issues via the judgement of others. It is always so tempting to hate most in others what one fears in oneself. So let's take a step back: there is nothing wrong with prostitution; there is nothing wrong with sex; there is something wrong with coercion. Coercion is most prominently the business of money, and this article fantastically reminds me of that:

This moral indignation emanates from people who live comfortably, who are not wondering where their next meal will come from or how to pay doctors’ bills. These moral entrepreneurs do not have to choose between being a live-in maid, with no privacy or free time and unable to save money because the pay is so bad, and selling sex, which pays so well that you have time to spend with your children or read a book, money to buy education or a phone.

More and more I think that all exclusion is tied to money, and that morality - in terms of the theory and the judgemental arguments that litter our media - is little more than a device of the moneyed to distance themselves from the squalid life of the poor - see this post on the Victorian tribute act of Ian Duncan Smith. These judgements allow the rich to console themselves and appease their conscience by a trick: "the poor are poor because of their ill morals, they give this life to themselves"; further, it allows them to feel even more righteous when giving up their time to 'educate' the poor in such noble qualities as 'ambition' and 'self-respect'. That way you don't have to acknowledge that you were born rich and they were born poor and so few change their station in life as to make the notions of 'meritocracy' and 'ambition' entirely vacuous, while feeling heroic in an age of modernity.

2010-03-31T18:10:00.001-07:00

A good radio one show!

2010-03-31T14:59:00.001-07:00

F*cking brilliant. Watch this.

2010-03-31T07:03:00.001-07:00

2010-03-31T06:58:00.001-07:00

"The big challenge for us is to ensure that children have ambition; telling them not to see their future as working in a commercial outlet, but aspiring to manage that commercial outlet."

2010-03-31T05:07:00.000-07:00

Absolutely fantastic article in the Guardian today about the pejorative, moralistic term 'broken Britain', invented by the former Conservative leaders Ian and Duncan Smith. Look, here's the sort of lovely thing this lovely man says (why o why didn't we take to him?):

"There is a physical effect taking place in children growing up in abusive households, in places where they witness a lot of abuse, perhaps their mum having different, multiple partners. These children's brains will develop physically at a rate which is quite different from those who are growing up in a normal, balanced environment... you will find that the child's brains simply doesn't develop." (IDS)

Eeeewwww. Ok so first he brings up abuse and your first reaction is 'abuse=bad thing, really bad thing; violence, bullying, harassment etc', then he gives an example of abuse which is just polygamy. That's abuse? That's ******* abuse to you? For your mum to sleep with someone? O I'm sorry Mr IDS, did your mother love anyone other than you? Did she have her own life? Was she not a sexless angel? How could you cope! What a vile, disgusting thing to do: to equate single parents having sex with multiple partners with abuse is a) an absurd and unnecessary judgement on those faced with an astronomically challenging task b) an astonishing cheapening of the notion of abuse when violent physical and sexual abuse along with long term psychological abuse remains so prevalent in domestic settings and so under-reported and non-prevented c) only going to perpetuate the notion that the polygamy of one's mother is a shameful thing and thus play a distinct causal role in increasing any bullying that the child may suffer as a result of this situation and d) indicative of a rather hateful attitude towards sex and women on the part of IDS.

Secondly we have the 'science bit', where, like a haunting spin off of a L'Oreal advert, IDS gives us his 'facts' (apparently they're backed up by two pictures, which he presumably drew himself in crayon or faeces or something). Now I never knew that my physical brain size was directly linked to how many people my mum slept with when I was a child, but apparently it is. This is absolutely fascinating, I mean, we'll have to reshape our entire notions of biology and even causality in such a fundamental way. I had thought that brain size was mostly genetically pre-determined, with a little help from nutrition and mental exercise, and this fitted pretty well into a broadly coherent and cohesive world view in which physical phenomena can be explained almost in their entirety by reference to other physical phenomena in an incredibly detailed and consistently applicable causal network: turns out it was all bollocks - how many, precisely. Causality is actually a moral phenomena, whereby the physical world one inhabits is a reflection of one's virtue: you live in grime, you must have a grimy soul; you live in clean decadence, you must have a clean and... decadent soul. Obvious now I think of it. Sarah Palin, you are so wise - who knew that behind those stumbling, incoherent speeches lay a complex, idealist ontology comparable to those of Kierkegaard or Spinoza? We're living in a matrix designed to test our behaviour against a set of largely incidental moral values which rose to prominence in the British Empire under Queen Victoria and which are most powerfully represented by such sacred images as adverts for Bisto and Werther's Originals.

Thirdly we have the quintessential polarising of society into 'them' and 'us' - with them as usual being portrayed by people who live in flats and us being people that live in detached houses and only use the flat (pad) when we've had to stay late in town or want to throw a hookers and cocaine jamboree (this same dichotomy is often referred to by the ironic terms 'taxpayers' and 'criminals'). This is a familiar dichotomy, as it runs through almost all conservative rhetoric - see this earlier post about Bush/O Reilly covering up bad practice with notions of good and evil; it's so 1984 it's stunning! Look at the broken proles! We must fix them with such alien notions as 'fa-mi-ly' and 'wo-rk'. If only they knew that being a morally superior arsehole would solve their problems, suddenly the complete lack of available industry, the squalid living conditions and the patronising prejudice of the society they live in would stop being obstacles, for they would see that - as we have already discussed - the world is not a physical landscape with causal laws, but an imaginary kind of haunted house mirror which reflects your inner rich smug twat.

So there we go, the poorest people in a society are not, as we had previously suspected, poor because they are poor, but they are poor because their mum slept with more than one person when they were children thus leading to brain atrophy which in turned stalled their ambition to (all, obvs) run the local shop (or food delivering van, which the people of Easterhouse have instead), which would have led them to a life of moral salvation through monogamy. Thank you for clearing that up then.

P.S., while I'm here, if you want an explanation of the causes of some of the less attractive features of a society - crime, drug addiction etc - that's a bit less stupid and involves some proper research and graphs and not just IDS's hand-painted dung drawings, I once more recommend checking out The Equality Trust, whose work - along with Nudge economics - seems to be one of the most powerful and compelling socio-political realisations of the 21st century thus far.

Toodles!

2010-03-25T12:19:00.001-07:00

2010-03-24T11:46:00.001-07:00

It's not /that/ you did it. It's that you won't even admit that it was wrong...

2010-03-11T16:39:00.000-08:00

am I the only person who couldn't care less about MP's expenses? The only realistic response is to increase their salaries and decrease their expenses. The use of expenses has always been understood, for anyone who cared to look, as a way of topping up an incommensurately low salary.

2 hours ago ·

yeah god how could they survive on just the £65k (parliament.uk) they earn as a base rate, a mere £40k more than the average british citizen (statistics.gov.uk) and a mere £60k more than the average human(success-and-culture.net - from a World Bank report)?

I didn't care at first but nigh on every one of the ***** has failed to pay anything back. In fact the one's who didn't quit have just given themselves a pay rise while cutting, capping or scrapping across the rest of government expenditure. GB, DC and all the other big names came out to condemn the situation roundly while doing nothing, and now the four nominated scapegoats are claiming parliamentary privilege.

"The protection of privilege applies only to proceedings in Parliament." (justice.gov.uk). While it is ultimately at Parliament's discretion to decide what is covered (ibid), the examples presented (ibid) are all papers, amendments, motions or bills. By 'bills' I presume they don't mean receipts...

As the only noble scoundrel, Michael Martin, put it himself on December 5th 2008 (Hansard). "I should also remind the House, as stated in chapter 7 of “Erskine May,” that parliamentary privilege has never prevented the operation of the criminal law. [Interruption.] Order. The Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in its authoritative report in 1999 said that the precincts of the House are not and should not be “a haven from the law”."

They're taking the ******* piss out of us.

Category Error

2010-03-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

Academics frequently publish chats, so I thought I would follow suit.

did you see michael foot died today?

i did

heroic principled hero or harbinger of doom?

goes to show how far the labour party have moved to the right that he's now being described as a left winger

his left wing extremism has been blamed for the unelectability of a left wing govt in britain ever again

the current unelectability of a left wing government has more to do with the alienation that has come from thatcher's individualism and the atomisation of society more than anything else

and the major trade unions covering the backs of the labour shifting as far to the right on most issues as the tories

i dont know that thatcher necessarily created that

the sense of social alienation seems to me to be mostly brought about by judgement

judgement distinguishes people

for one thing

puts people into sets

in what sense?

these people are criminals, these people are black, these people are white, these people are heterosexual, these people are royalty, these people are sporty, these people are mentally unbalanced... blah blah

us and them

make people afraid and ashamed

the destruction of manufacturing industry has undoubtably reduced the ability of the left to organise as it has traditionally done since the dawn of the labour movement and has to be the major driving force behind this atomisation

people were descriminated against for whatever reason before thatcher

trying to be whatever the incidental norm of good is in the culture

exactly

i think thatcherism relies heavily on it

though those judgemental sentiments were exploited by her government admitedly

that's true, though it's fairly incidental compared to the restructuring of the economy into segments that were harder for the unions to organise

the idea of aspirationalism is itself so closely tied to the valuing of particular and contingent values attached to particular human behaviour

this was also a significant factor

the biggest victory thatcher had was over the miners, not by introducing things like section 28

hmm i dunno

they were both massive

and related

it relied on a lot of rich southern people not giving a shit about poor northern people

which i think resulted from a perceived 'otherness'

like miniature nationalism

regionalism

you might say

the things people say about the unions round bucks

unions are a wonderful thing

undoubtably there was an element of that

you only have to look at where tories get elected to see it's concentrated in teh south

right wing politics doesnt erase class but it somewhat disguises it

definitel

people in the south think of themselves as middle class

they sneer on the north

it derides anything vaguely left-wing as 'class war' when they go and carry out the most virulent form of divisive and socially counter-productive class warfare themselves

well they like the class system but they dont like to mention it

if no one talks about it it wont be so obvious that they benefit so much from it

yes, especially when you mention the gap between teh rich and the poor to tories

they who pretend to have these values, and yet will perpetually fall short of them

well its unpleasant to be reminded of your own decadent lifestyle and the cost to others

they just go on about them being obsessed with classes when everyone's middle class really

to realise your wealth can only ever be at the deprivement of someone else

aspirationalism painted everyone as middle class

'now everyone can reach for these values (but some people will be members of various randomly joined sets - by birth - and therefore have distinct advantages)

in capitalist society that's definitely true, but increasing standards of living doesn't necesarily have to entail lowers others'

not naturally determined, even, most of the time

no not at all

our standard of living has gone up largely in response to better science

aspirationalism basically is just encouraging people to not give a shit if they see others in genuine hardship

in fact solely as far as i can see

yeah it says thats a good thing to do

as a person

in some ways yes, though it hasn't lead to us having to work for less time like science and advances in technology should do

no it just gave us better stuff

all it's done is make people work harder, output more for the same or less pay

we could have less stuff and work less

yeah pay hasnt changed

and given us widescreen tvs

yup

stuff

the point of aspirationalism is to sell us the idea of excess work

stuff but not actually improved our lives interms of working conditions, society, culture, education, health etc.

no but thats largely because of govt spending

i duno it maybe has a bit

people are on the whole getting more education

and the internet allows for better education

and freedom of expression

its no cheaper than pens and paper

but its maybe easier

in some respects

science has definitely improved health

not necessarily its distribution though

which is a govt spending/taxation issue

science is also controlled by private companies and is restricted to what can make a profit

not entirely, but sadly increasingly

therefore things like cure for aids and orther deiseases prevalent in impoverished regions get ignored

but thats always been the case i guess

used to be kings employed scientist, now its the new landed gentry and the govt, to a lesser extent

always in teh era of capitalism at least

hmm

capitalism coincided with the rise of science tho

the move away from feudalism

seeing that has enabled the development of the pharceutical industry

exactly

capitalism is an expression of a new class controlling this advance in science and productive forces

or did it allow for it?

all that stuff happened together

in britain and europe

capitalism, democracy and science

out of feudalism, monarchy and religion

i dunno if there's relaly a difference to be honest

between whether it's an expression or allowed for it

sure there is

o i see

we need something new anyway

tories always want to go backwards

the opportunity arose and what happened was an expression of it

yes

fuck religion, agriculture and powerful executives

agriculture has to exist though

or we'll starve

i'm sure people would be more inclined if it wasn't a poorly paid, socially derised industry

relatively

clearly

how can you say the class system doesnt exist when some people earn £10k and others earn £1.2 billion as a year end bonus

ffs

you're living in the past obsessed with classes

can't you see the weath trickling down before your eyes?

wealth*

i see widescreen tvs trickling down

haha

when the rich are tired of the technology they let us have ot

i only thought tories believed in teh trickle down effect because people kept chucking coins at them

lol

its like the thing about charity

like charity is best, cos thats an act you choose to commit

bullshit

its an excuse for some people to be way richer to others

than, to, what difference does it make?

it does fuck all to address why people starve, are homeless, are subjected to abuse, turn to drugs etc.

and just sooths conscience of the rich

as the old adage goes, "when i gave food to the starving i was called a saint. when i asked why they starving, i was called a communist"

exactly

lol

thats beautiful

clearly not my words

but it perfectly highlights the hypocrisy of charity

Videos!

2010-02-17T13:42:00.000-08:00

Hometime - One eskimO

One eskimO | MySpace Music Videos

Now I've started embedding, I can't stop!

Also, I am reintroducing comments. I removed them to make the blog look nicer, and cos no-one was commenting, but I think the blog would be a better place with them. So I want you to comment. You can post anonymous if you want, but let me know what you think. I put some stuff up here that I'm really not sure about, and how do any of our opinions grow without debate? So let me know your opinions and let's try and work together and grow.

COMMENTS PLEASE

What do I do?

2010-02-17T13:22:00.000-08:00

I spin stories. That's mostly what this blog has been. I never set out with a goal, but it has become a very strogn trend: I take a political story from the media and spin it a different way. Usually no better justified than the media piece: I have one source, they have one source. I am not really any more rigorous, just presenting an alternative interpretation of things. I don't think this is valueless: one, alternative interpretations show that the given, standard story is *not necessarily* the one you want to accept, you should at least regard it with some scepticism; two, I am pretty honest, I don't try to claim to be an authority - I'm just offering my opinion, and I will come back and revise that opinion. So it's somewhat a train of thought, but I hope it shows something useful and is interesting sometimes. I don't (necessarily) want you to think what I think, for I will often be wrong, but I hope I'm spreading methodological scepticism.

2010-02-17T13:17:00.001-08:00

2010-02-15T15:57:00.001-08:00

What if by merely joining the debate you're reinforcing the constructs?

2010-02-14T07:44:00.001-08:00

I made a valentine's playlist

People are always telling me smoking is bad for me. Really? Shit, I never knew...

2010-02-14T06:08:00.000-08:00

I think I have to agree with this criticism of Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. It reminds me so much of this comment, which calls people who go into their overdraft 'bad'. It seems that a lot of morality is really middle class habits, ways to justify maintaining the rich-poor gap, instead of going 'well, we're all equal as people, maybe we shouldn't be so much richer than these people.' Life is easier when you have money, it's much easier to make the right choices, so then you can look at others and point out they're mistakes and be a bit smug. Well thanks but no thanks. We know that being fat isn't ideal, that it would in some sense be better to drink and smoke less etc. Thanks.
Having said that, I know for years I had no idea what eating healthily meant. Now I know, I do eat a bit better. It's a struggle, though, to change your habits. What makes it more of a structure, and what I think is actually the key to this whole debate, is the structure in which I consume. The places I shop, the food I buy, the ways I think about buying food and what constitutes a meal, all tend towards me eating a lot of carbs and junk. This is the 'prole diet'. Compare what you buy in Waitrose with Asda. And it's nothing knew. Poor people fill up on bread and butter, because it's cheap. Who buys all the junk food with no nutrition? Poor people. Who don't give a shit because they feel their life isn't worth living since they could never have all the things the TV tells them they need to be happy, and so they feel forgotten and alone against the background of hollywood etc?
Now it's not *necessary*. If you're low income, but you budget well and know what you're buying, you can do ok. Particularly if you have time to prep stuff and shop around. But that isn't what most peoples lives are like. On the whole, poorer people will be less educated, have less free time and will have less access to good food and less motivation to find it.
If you want to tackle this problem, Michelle (I'm not using your first name to be disrespectful, I'm trying not to define you by your husband), then good. But don't imply fat people are lazy and patronisingly tell them to get off their ass. Attack the supermarkets. Make it easier to buy healthy food than unhealthy food. That's when it'll change.

To the Woodlouse on the Nettle

2010-02-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

Life is perennially special,

And interests abound.

To the woodlouse on the nettle,

Life is perennially special

As the bow bends, tends to the ground;

Clambering, with arms mettled,

Arching sweat-freckled brows;

Life is perennially special,

And interests abound.

Que sera sera...

2010-02-13T18:24:00.000-08:00

Boys will be boys

And assholes will be assholes if no-one tells them to stop being assholes

I am white, middle class, male, brunette, medium tall...

2010-02-13T18:12:00.000-08:00

I keep telling myself I'm a freak.

I have been reading A Softer World, which is brilliant.

I am incredibly *normal*, according to my local culture's conditions of normality. You know, women, homosexuals, people who aren't white etc all get treated differently, all get defined by that particular aspect of themselves. People also talk about them as if the rest of their identity and personality could be discovered by merely knowing in what way they deviate from the sort of people that make up most of our MPs. Like gays are emotional and fashion conscious, girls are emotional and like chocolate but hate being fat, black people like rap and guns. Whatever. There are a lot more subtle ones as well. Oddly it tends to create a feedback loop, since people tend to become what is expected of them, to varying degrees. It takes a conscious will to defy expectations of societal norms.
Anyway, it must be annoying, to have people assume they know all about you cos they know one thing about you. I have been experiencing this a bit at my new job. I work pretty much entirely with women, and they like to say the boys are rubbish and the girls are much better. The funny thing about this is it creates lower expectations for the boys, so they don't have to try as hard... o well. Anyway, it bugged me a bit, but I can't complain. I generally don't get any persecution. Which is a bit dull really. It means I constantly have to define myself, which is a responsibility I don't always want. Can't you just stereotype me and I'll just rebel against each thing you assume of me and accuse you of being lazy? To an extent I do this anyway. I question my sexuality, my mental health, my religious views, my tastes, my practices... whatever they actually are, I always want to 'other' myself from everyone else. I guess really I just have to live with being the norm. It entails a little middle class guilt, you know? What group do I represent? The one that is excluding people from wealth and stuff. I guess this is why I became quite left wing etc. How can I stand on the outside with everyone else? O crap, I'm that guy from Avatar. I'm the self-proclaimed hero from the one side leading the other side (who couldn't have done it by themselves, apparently). Ah well, whatever, I'm broadly happy with my identity, and I can continue to tinker.

Investigative journalism

2010-02-13T16:56:00.000-08:00

Ever see those ads on youtube: 'what will you look like when you're older?', 'what would you look like as a cartoon?'?
I figure this ad space must be pretty expensive. How do these novelty things make money? Surely not *that* many people would click on them, and even if they did, how are they making money off these things?
Well, it turns out that to make a cartoon of yourself, or whatever, you have to download the software, which then collects data on your internet browsing habits. This data is then sold to other companies, who use it to tell other companies how to best market there product. The apps also feature ads, which other companies pay for. These apps are *not* adware, or any other *bad* software, stress their parent companies, because the user downloads the software consensually and all the information concerning what the software does is available to the user. Never mind that it's marketed to small children, who we don't normally tend to assume have the same knowledge of contract law and the way it operates. Yet more examples of how difficult it is for guardians to monitor their protectorate's use of the internet I suppose.
I considered sending this 'story lead' to Breakfast - the BBC breakfast 'news' show - considering how much they seem to love fear-mongering re children's internet activities. Did anyone see the one the other day with the video that's being shown in schools to kids about avoiding paedophiles on the net? There was the usual 'Well isn't talking to kids about paedophiles corrupting them/is this really necessary?' type guff, as if speaking about paedophiles was almost as bad as committing acts of paedophilia - made particularly ironic by the fact that they were talking about paedophiles on breakfast TV, which is hardly post watershed - I guess in a sense this is breaking the fourth wall... like next week they'll show some bestial porn while Bill Turnbull just tuts - much like the Mail showing a picture of a 15 year old Charlotte Church talking about how she's 'filling out' right next to an article villifying 'paedophiles'. Anyway, they're wittering on about how old kids should be before we start telling them not to talk to strangers, and I'm wondering why they're running with this. You may have noticed that I am an increasingly cynical sod - or perhaps a slightly better informed one, whatevs - "All romantics meet the same fate: cynical and drunk someday, and boring someone in some dark cafe." Then this guy comes on, sat on their orange sofa, and he's talking about it - why? - well, he says, what they can do is use this button that we have yadadada and all websites should have this yadadada all you do is download the browser AHA! That was what it was all about! You have to download and use a specific browser. Now as Google have demonstrated, having lots of people use your browser is very profitable in any number of ways. So this is why! The browser company sit there going 'How can we compete with Google et al?' and then they twig: we put spurious resources into the browser which no other bgrowser has, and then claim them as fundamental and necessary on a level which is undeniable. Their PR then plonk Mr Expert on the orange sofa et voila! News is made. Brilliant.

In other news, Chet Baker is brilliant.

2010-02-11T16:15:00.001-08:00

A song!

2010-02-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

My iLike page has a new song! The first new one since 2005. It's called 'Peg' and it's about a clothes peg. I was challenged to write it and I turned it around in 30 mins, including a lot of time looking for a mic. These are my excuses.

2010-01-30T04:46:00.001-08:00

Read this

This is funny cos where I live they just put a gate on the back of a row of gates

2010-01-30T03:32:00.000-08:00

A Brief History of The United States of America

Just a reminder

2010-01-30T03:28:00.000-08:00

Until the Terrorism Act (2000 - pre 9/11), we had:

freedom of speech
freedom to join organisations
rule of law
habeas corpus

now you can't even take photographs

I just want to ask again, what is terrorism, what is it threatening, and what exactly is being protected here?

News Round-up

2010-01-30T03:05:00.000-08:00

Morning all! What better way to start your day than with American far-right journalists calling your continent anarchist and implying you're a terrorist by association!

"In a newly released tape broadcast on Al-Jazeera televison, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden expresses views that are nearly indistinguishable from those of radical environmentalists, European anarchists, or many Congressional Democrats."

Wonderfully helpful stuff for the redstate news there. This argument from analogy (not strictly logical, since 'X is like Y in n respect, therefore X is like Y in any respect whatsoever' can easily be proved to lead to endless contradictions) only works, of course, if you engage with the rhetoric of good and evil (probably why religion is leaned on so much by both far-right Americans and extremist Islamist groups such as the Taliban), another example of that in this interview (which is admittedly not new), where Bill O'Reilly stops a man from giving a balanced and considered opinion - that other religious leaders in the Arab world may agree somewhat with Bin Laden's gripes but not with his violent actions - by claiming they can only be scared of his 'evil' and that if they were less cowardly they would say he was going to 'hell'. Remember Bush's speeches about good and evil?

As we address these challenges — and others we cannot foresee tonight — America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.

Well what luck we didn't kill nearly 800,000 Iraqis to win their 'hearts and minds' to 'democracy' then! Cause of peace! Cause of peace! Cause of peace!

I have often thought of the way we talk about Hitler as unhelpful in a similar way. Was he evil? No, although a lot of the things he did were almost unprecedented in their vile inhumanity and we should condemn these actions totally. He wasn't evil, though, because he was a human being, and human beings are complex biological organisms. Only characters can be evil. Characters are capable of being two dimensional exhibitions of an idea, but people can never be. Distorting the likes of Hitler, Mugabe and Bin Laden into two-dimensional faces for primitive moral dichotomies (with whoever is making the comparison cast as the wholly distinct alternative: the good) solely serves to obscure the truth: that we all commit both good and bad acts. Of course, if you are the President and you want people to follow you, you don't want them to believe you have committed a bad act, so you appeal to the notion of good vs evil and paint your enemy as evil. That way you must be the good.

If your actions have clearly brought terrible consequences, but you wish to preserve the notional goodness of your character, you can always claim that your intentions were good, and no-one can ask more than that (I've used this - even invoking Kant to support my claims - during a very messy break up when I acted like a complete arsehole and didn't want to admit that I had been bad). And so to possibly the most self-righteous man in the world - let alone the most self-righteous war criminal - Tony Blair, who this week gave evidence at the Chilcott enquiry. Blair is a master story-teller, and he is always the hero. He was such a post-modern PM - plausible things Blair could have said: 'I don't believe in beliefs, but I believe them very strongly', 'truth is just belief multiplied by conviction', 'the facts are whatever we tell you they are, and anyone who says otherwise is lying'. It was never about truth, it was about conviction. As long as he believed himself to be right, and followed that belief to whatever disasterous consequences, he was right, in his own eyes. Good job he wasn't a mathematician or a scientist or a chef then. Much better to be a PM, where even if everyone tells you you're wrong you can just say "Well I'm the PM, so I actually get to decide what's right and wrong." Like a God, but a really shit one.

Talking of story-tellers (that was pretty smooth, right? Look, I'm still learning here), Michael Moore has a new film out soon - Capitalism: A Love Story. I always used to think of this man as an annoying childish irritant, immature and unrealistic and just not playing the game. But then I used to be a right wing young tory from Beaconsfield with his head up his ass. The guy may be irritating, but good! He is making some good points, and if you don't think so, have a look at this from an interview in the Guardian today:

The film is certainly shocking. Early on, Moore sets out the meaning of "Dead Peasants" insurance. It turns out that Wal-Mart, a company with a revenue larger than any other in the world, bets on its workers dying, taking out life insurance policies on its 350,000 shop-floor workers without their knowledge or approval. When one of them dies, Wal-Mart claims on the policy. Not a cent of the payout, which sometimes runs to a $1m (£620,000) or more, goes to the family of the dead worker, often struggling with expensive funeral bills. Wal-Mart keeps the lot. If a worker dies, the company profits.

Wal-Mart is not alone. Moore talks to a woman whose husband died of brain cancer in 2008. He worked at a bank until it fired him because he was sick. But the bank retained a life insurance policy on the unfortunate man and cashed it in for $4.7m (£2.9m) when he died. There were gasps from the audience in a Washington cinema at that.

Right, off to the shops! Weekend!

Obama, Fox, branding, Haiti, polling and race

2010-01-18T14:26:00.000-08:00

Fantastic article in The Guardian from Naomi Klein this week, I learnt a lot.

So what's happened to brand Obama? He is not polling well. Look, he was never going to live up to that hype. Campaigning is about dreams, government is about compromise. But look at what he's actually done: pretty much gotten out of Iraq, closed Guantanamo and pushed America close to universal healthcare. Not only that, he's pulled the rest of the world back on board, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the process. What did you want from the first year?

So the polls are not amazing. Unsurprisingly, Obama has slowly lost popularity as the reality sets in: that he alone cannot end wars, reverse economic trends and create the world's greatest healthcare system in the face of extreme opposition. This app from Fox let's you compare Obama and Bush, and you can see exactly the same slide under Bush - until 9/11. I'd say this suggests the best thing that could happen for Obama's popularity is another major terrorist event, but I suspect that it would be interpreted as somewhat his doing (that even happened to Bush, and no-one thought he was a Muslim and an illegal immigrant, as around a quarter of American's think of Obama). I imagine a huge invasion of another country - some more 'us' and 'them' politics as practised so well by Bush - would win him a couple of red votes, but most of those voters would never vote Obama because of his race and his party. I still think Obama, though not the superhero he may appear in our wildest fantasies, is doing an incredible job, and I can't think of a better first year in office of any politician.

O and just to balance that praise for Fox News, here's an article where "'Critics' Decry Decision to Halt Deportations of Haitian Illegal Immigrants". A nice example there of using the 'someone else' (and we're not saying they're right, but we are saying that they are experts, and we are putting them as leader) is saying something that *someone else wants you to believe* is extreme and ridiculous - we're just saying' method of endorsing-without-being-accountable-for a position.

"The paradox of the first black president is that it is not nearly enough for him to be merely the first black president."

Robert E. Pierre and Jon Jeter

2010-01-13T15:39:00.001-08:00

What do you think about stoploss?

The following is actually true (the bits which can be true and aren't just opinion)

2010-01-11T17:27:00.000-08:00

Alan Johnson is "expected to sign off a parliamentary order later this week", or so says the Guardian, which will ban groups which are deemed to "glorify" terrorism.

As David Mitchell articulates so entertainingly in his comment, this is a removal of freedom of speech. Not all freedom of speech, but nonetheless of freedom of speech.

Why do the BNP get a slot on Question Time when members of Islam4UK will be punishable to ten years in prison? And where are we suddenly getting prison space from?
There are currently over 80,000 men, women and children in prison in England and Wales, The prison population has been rising steadily since 1993, increasing from 42,000 to today's unprecedented levels. This means that there are now a higher percentage of people in prison here than in any other country in western Europe.

Do we need more reasons to put people in prison? Is saying stuff going to be the next reason? What next? Hell, let's put everyone in prison. That would be very ******* safe.

But we need a balance of opinions here. What do the major news outlets (UK) have to say?

Interesting to see Reuters has no section on the UK but does have sections for Oddly Enough, Sarah Palin, and Wine! So there ya go. Really special relationship. Mmmhmm. You know, you get to that page from "All Countries" from the News & Markets tab. Can you believe everyone else copies a news outlet that only recognises eighteen countries outside of U.S.A.?

Not many papers were running with this story when I checked: The Independent did choose to feature an article discussing Russell Brand and Katy Perry holding hands and exchanging tweets; The Times instead discussed kids learning to meditate at school "to reduce stress"; and the Telegraph chose "Middle class professionals in tax evasion crackdown". So I have to give The Mail credit for actually running the story -

Guilty? It's a badge of honour say Muslim hate mob (and because we're on benefits, the state will pay our costs)

No hate in that.

Opinions opinions opinions

2010-01-11T11:44:00.001-08:00

Bit like onions

2010-01-10T09:58:00.000-08:00

Definitely was wrong about prostitution. Withdraw all previous comments. While I would rather it didn't exist (for all the violence and coercion it entails), shame and guilt aren't going to help. Probably better to be above ground, legalised, strictly monitored. Though I still think it shouldn't exist.

Educashun isn't working

2010-01-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

That's what Britain thinks!

Much later:
In retrospect, this was a brilliant idea, cos it got their named mentioned A LOT, and was not quite offensive enough to get them in trouble, just to 'start a debate', winning them lots of free publicity. Slick gits.

If the Bible has taught us anything—which it hasn't—it's that girls should stick to girl's sports like hot oil wrestling, foxy boxing and such and such.

2010-01-06T17:29:00.000-08:00

You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel.

MANCESSION

2010-01-03T15:06:00.000-08:00

Quickly, feel sorry for all the men, for they are being persecuted by economics!

Yes, this is the story that men are bring downgraded in the employment stats, almost to the level of women! By 2008, less than 1% separated men and women on US employment statistics.

This terrifying situation has caused an outbreak of consternation amongst the media, who have labelled this gender-disparate trend 'The Mancession'. While characterising one of the most significant recessions of the western world (by this I mean the USA and Europe) as if it only affected men, this term perpetuates patriarchal hegemonies by obscuring facts to perpetuate misleading narratives.

The graphs below show that while male unemployment works with slightly larger numbers than women's (presumably due to a much larger number of women being designated housekeepers and thus not actively looking for work, though there are probably a wide range of factors that contribute to this), the overall trends within each graph are pretty similar. Unemployment rates across both genders have roughly doubled.

Unemployment rates:

Men

Women

From the excellently malleable Bureau of Labor Statistics One Screen Data Search

So stories like this may be somewhat misleading. Why are redundancies concentrated amongst men? Because employment is concentrated amongst men. Whilst it may be true that certain industries are taking more of a hit than others, and it may also be true that women are less likely to work in those industries, can this account for the 82% of job losses being men's? It doesn't seem sufficient. What about women earning on average 20% less than men? I know which employee I'd cut...

Women are more likely than men to work part time, as they are more likely to share their career with family chores. This means they tend to do different jobs - with lower wages, security and benefits. Such jobs are less likely to face large-scale cuts. Having said that, women are not 'safe' because they're all working as primary school teachers for the state. 39% of employed women work in management, professional and related occupations and they account for 51 percent of all workers in such roles. As we have already seen, unemployment is actually hitting the sexes fairly evenly, in terms of the rise of unemployment as a percentage within each gender. So why focus on the percentage of job losses by gender, instead of the percentage of job losses within each gender? For the narrative. Shocking figures are an excellent way to make stories like this look factual, nay scientific, when in fact they are pure commentary. By spinning the story as a patronising congratulations, it is easy to discuss, and thereby reinforce, gender roles. When we talk about a Mancession, we can talk about Men's Jobs and Women's Jobs, we can say that women aren't doing as much about the home as they used to (and men are incompetent), we can raise childbirth and the impossibility of choosing between kids and a career. Hey, we can make it 1994 again! Before you know it, we'll be back in the nice cosy 50s.

Well, that's one way you can spin the narrative anyway.

One of the most aesthetic moments of my life

2009-12-23T19:55:00.000-08:00

This video with this song

The Army again

2009-12-23T17:09:00.000-08:00

An excellent point from my friend Will, who says that army recruitment drives are always aimed at those least likely to find any other kind of employment. Not all soldiers choose freely.

A standing army is like an erect member: while it provides for domestic tranquility, it provides a temptation for foreign adventures

2009-12-23T16:58:00.000-08:00

From the excellent Stand Up Economist.

Seriously though, who needs an army?

More specifically, do we?

My friend justifies her friend's career choice by 'Someone's gotta do it.'

I disagree.

Any country big enough to actually threaten Britain wouldn't be so stupid. The economies of major nations are so intertwined, their politics so delicate, that it just won't happen. The only reason I could see any major nation declaring war on us is the same reason a whole load twice declared war on Germany in the twentieth century: because we're too bloody aggressive and it's getting silly. What have we used our army for in the past fifty years? Mugging middle eastern countries, out-cocking Argentina, playing chess with China, Russia and the USA in Africa... we don't *need* to do this shit. It just makes us look like arseholes. We could just behave like grown ups and stop bullying everyone, like everyone else in Europe (bar the half a dozen spaniards who promised that they would come to the middle east, maybe after lunch).

So we don't really need an army, except maybe as a deterrent.

Which brings us onto the main point. Why should we 'support our troops'?

These are not conscripted soldiers fighting to save their families from an invading force: these are people who chose a career of travelling to other countries to massacre the locals with our vastly superior weaponry (we know it's superior 'cos we sold them theirs when we made this new stuff). They have chosen a life of killing. There is no necessity in this, and thus no bravery. They are subjecting their families, friends, lovers to anguish and worry so that they can go play hubristic soldiers and pretend they are brave. Well fuck them. Do you know what's braver? Resisting. We all have that urge to go be a big cock, to live a hero or die quickly with honour. Fuck that. Do something constructive. Improve the world. Don't just kill people and say it's justified by the colour of your flag or the name of your god. Fuck you.

Yes, I am once again in sanctimonious twat mode.

What you upto?

2009-12-18T17:18:00.000-08:00

I busk for husks of rusk, whittle tusk, wear musk (even though it turns a lady's nose up in disgust). I do what I must, try not to rust, go bust or get too crazy in lust. So I hustle in the bustle of this constant tussle without fuss all day to chase the blues that prey away. To stay sane I refrain from self-blame and I campaign in any name so I don't feel ashamed in my own frame. I work days, get paid, don't get laid. My brain, staid, feigns disdain and I could retrain but I came with no aim and every game feels the same. So I get bored, and more and more I'm sure that I am insecure, that I had more fun before, that I am a crushing bore, that I could be more and thus I implore myself to help my mental health. I seek wealth. I come home, get stoned and do nothing else. I am alone and tired of the shelf. Tired, wired and living in stealth. Hiding from my mother and myself. I chide my self and everyone else and I live in sin. Like a protestant born again, hating all persons for what they have done and what they have not done and I shun and I come and I am no-one, just like everyone.

Language and politics

2009-11-29T16:59:00.000-08:00

I've been having a loooong argument on facebook recently about this article about the use of the phrase 'flesh coloured' to describe Mrs Obama's dress at a recent event. At 45 comments, it's probably the biggest facebook debate I've ever had. I initially re-posted the article simply because I found it hilarious. My friend, however, got on the defensive and argued that the term 'flesh coloured' had nothing to do with the colour of flesh. After a lot of debate about the need to be sensitive with language, I eventually decided to try and find a more solid argument, so here it is.

Let's set aside the emotive, political stuff for a second. I contend that the statement 'her dress was flesh coloured' is factually inaccurate, and here's why.

Grammatically, the phrase 'flesh coloured' could be read in two ways.

In one reading, the phrase acts as a single sentential object, 'flesh coloured', which is a label which refers to a specific colour, a shade of peach. In this reading, the phrase acts in a similar way to 'red', 'blue', or 'green'.

In the second, the phrase is in two parts, 'flesh' 'coloured'. In this reading, 'coloured' acts as a quantifier to describe how 'flesh' relates to 'dress' - the relation of colour. By this reading we could re-arrange 'flesh coloured' to 'the colour of flesh'. This looks weird if we were to replace 'flesh' with 'red', since you wouldn't say 'the dress was red coloured'. But I argue that this is because you know 'red' is a colour, since it doesn't refer to anything else - so you drop the 'coloured' quantifier as it is unnecessary (this fits with Chomsky's 'the language faculty is economically thrifty' explanation of sentence structure). But you don't know flesh is a colour, since it also refers to skin. You could say 'her dress was red', but 'her dress was flesh' has a rather strange initial reading.
By this reading, 'flesh coloured' would equate to 'sand coloured'. Similarly, you might use other objects, such as they sky, to illustrate a colour, 'sky blue'. In this case the colour is an analogy - 'the colour of the dress was similar to the colour of sand/the sky/flesh'. In this case the statement 'her dress was flesh coloured' is false, because not all flesh is that colour, so the analogy doesn't hold - or at least is insufficiently specific, like saying 'her dress was car coloured'.
The sky is not always blue, hence 'sky blue'. If one said 'her dress was flesh peach', it would be more accurate, since 'flesh' would quantify over 'peach' (and, less obviously, vice-versa) in the same way 'sky' quantifies over 'blue', to give a particular shade of blue, and a particular hue of sky.

While I can see why you would think the first is the true meaning of the phrase, I think it makes a lot more linguistic sense to view the second reading as more grammatically accurate. 'Flesh coloured' is, to me, a compound phrase where 'coloured' denotes an analogical relationship between flesh and the object described as 'flesh coloured'. By this reading the statement 'Mrs Obama's dress was flesh coloured' is obviously false, and the humour derives from the very obviousness of this in the case cited.

I would re-paste the whole debate, but I'd have to edit out the names and that would take a long time. If anyone wants to read it, just ask and I'll either do the work or add you as a friend on facebook. For those already my friend, you can find it here.

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

2009-11-24T20:21:00.000-08:00

Yeah right. That's why you didn't pull.

Nothing to do with trying to chat up girls in Latin. Oh no.

Me either

2009-11-24T19:39:00.000-08:00

Ever see something someone else has done and wonder, just a little, if it was actually based on your own life?

He knew he was the superior athlete, but he also knew the Tortoise had the sharper wits, and he had lost many a bewildering argument with him before this.

2009-11-23T16:31:00.000-08:00

You know Zeno's Paradox? It could work backwards, right? So if Achilles starts in front, the tortoise is always catching up, but will never catch him. This version's better cos it actually works.

2009-11-23T16:04:00.001-08:00

lolz

I'm not that hot on simple redistribution of wealth but

2009-11-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

income equality certainly looks to be the best way of dealing with most of our political problems

You know how economics always looks really dull?

2009-11-23T15:39:00.001-08:00

Pretty

The thing about prostitution

2009-11-23T15:20:00.001-08:00

I think I've been moralising. I was largely saying reasonable things, but I definitely went a bit Victorian.

Got to my mickey, found me way up the apples, put on me whistle and the bloody dog went. It was me trouble telling me to fetch the teapot

2009-11-23T14:02:00.001-08:00

Cockney represents the basilectal end of the London accent. The word "Cockney" literally means cock's egg, a misshapen egg such as sometimes laid by young hen. Some of the more characteristic features of the Cockney accent include the following: Monophthongization, Glottal stop, Voiceless glottal fricative, and Prosody. FACT

2009-11-22T07:24:00.000-08:00

An excellent essay by Zadie Smith about essays vs novels

This touches on some important issues about the distinction between fact and fiction; the essence of narrative; the desire for truth; all touching on the contemporary outlook post-post-modernism etc. A thread that binds science, politics, sociology and history, as well as literature.

2009-11-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

Jon Stewart is brilliant

Induction from a single case/women should be seen (for a nominal fee), but not heard

2009-11-22T05:17:00.000-08:00

"Common sense tells us that..."
Actually, hard facts tell us that between 3/4 and 9/10 of prostitutes are beaten and raped, a prostitute is around 40 times more likely to be killed, and that almost half of people trafficked into prostitution are minors; common sense tells us that fantasies backed up by a single case are misleading, and that portraying such as informed analysis on one of the world's most pervasive media outlets is terribly irresponsible: journalistically, morally, politically and socially.
The introspection of someone who - by their own admission - is entirely ignorant of the subject is worthless (unless, perhaps, the subject is mathematics, logic, or something else purely analytic, but I suspect the reality of prostitution is not an a priori synthetic truth). If we want some understanding of this subject matter, I suspect facts may be more helpful. Research, reports, and facts, gathered from a range of expert bodies invariably show that Dr Magnanti is an exception, and Mr James is mistaken.

Only ignorance will allow one to speculate that the vast majority of prostitutes do not lead lives of pain, misery, exploitation, rape, assault and exploitation, because all research says they do. There are exceptions, but accounts such as Dr Magnanti's do not begin to nullify the horrifying experiences of so many who live a life of brutal, violating slavery. Mr James spins from this account a misleading global narrative that perpetuates myths which many wish to believe, but which defy the facts; by doing so, he, and by his actions Dr Maganati, contribute to this abuse.

Beyond suffering and victimhood, beyond each individual's experience, is the broader societal context in which these events take place: we live in an unequal society, where women are paid around a fifth less than their male counterparts, occupy a lot less of the top jobs, and account for more than half the politicians in only one country in the entire world. Such cold statements reflect a more pervasive, every-day problem: women are not being treated seriously as people.

Women-as-objects are still more common in our media, advertising, entertainment and, therefore, consciousnesses, than women as thinkers. In fact we are far more accepting of women as objects. Any woman ascending to power herself will quickly be savaged or ridiculed (look at all those female Labour MPs of the last ten years, who upon touching cabinet were torn to shreds by the media), but the wives of politicians may be lauded - but only for their choice of outfit, or for having a nice smile, i.e. in their capacity as eye-candy. Watch any news coverage and you'll see Michelle Obama as the beautiful, well dressed saint, while Harriet Harman is portrayed as a crazy witch with extreme, yet trivial views. For an example, see The Independent's reaction to reviewed rape laws which aimed to prevent women being convicted of murder when they kill their husbands following years of physical and psychological abuse, while making it a crime for a man to kill his wife because of infidelity; Harman the grinch; Harman interrupting the men in that silly way girls do; Harman indoctrinating children; "Harriet Harman is either thick or criminally disingenuous"; Harriet Harman's use of facts completely disguises the truth (with a wonderful link to "Prostitutes are, in effect, blackleg labour, strike breakers. They undercut middle-class women. If men can go and pay for sex with someone like Brooke Magnanti, why on earth would they bother to put up with the endless screaming demands, the controlling behaviour, the constant low-level mental abuse, the endless tears and hissy fits of the average middle-class princess?")
Such drivel is easily satirised and the dubious journalistic standards held to account.

Behind this lies the ever popular Madonna/whore complex (and yes, I have exhibited elements of this myself), which is so deeply ingrained into our collective moralities one wonders if it may ever be removed. Women ought be saints like Mrs Obama, or Lady Diana, and be chaste, quiet and pretty, or they ought be whores and thus give up their rights to human decency. Either way they are not people, we do not treat them as ends in themselves, but as furnishings. This is what must end. This is why a handful of 'happy hookers' will make up for the exploitation of so many: the oppression is not merely an issue for prostitutes, but for us all.

When I worked on a till in Sainsbury's, I made the most of it - I was happy as I could make myself. This does not mean I would choose to be till staff. Choosing to be happy in one's situation does not make one's situation desirable in itself. If you find someone interned in Guantanamo Bay, who's determination makes them happy, does that mean they wouldn't rather be free?

But if freedom is the issue, shouldn't Dr Magnanti be free to do as she pleases, opine as she pleases, and share this with the world? Yes, yes of course she is free to do so, and ought be. But freedom entails responsibility. I am free to step into the nearest pub and kill everyone in it, but I oughtn't.

Though I ought avoid using morality as a stick with which to beat Dr Magnanti. She released her story early as someone else was about to anyway, and it's better to have some control over the presentation. Similarly, I ought be careful about judging her for entering prostitution. PhDs are incredibly expensive (why??). Funding a PhD is a huge challenge to any wannabe academic. Those with inherited wealth needn't worry, while the tiniest minority may get funding because of their exceptional record (this number is infintessimally small), most must beg wealthy corporations to allow them to research, essentially as a slave (working to not get paid, working without employment rights), whatever may be of use to that corporation. All for three letters than give some academic credibility. Dr Magnanti's part-time job at least gave her academic freedom.
And Dr Magnanti ought not be expected to lie. If she enjoyed her work, then good for her. The issue I take is ultimately not with her, but with those who wish to use her story - which endless research reveals to be an exception - as the sole evidence upon which to base a pre-conceived narrative to mislead the public, obscure the truth and justify sex slavery, rape and assault as a 'profession'.

The morality of someone selling their own body, entirely of their own volition, is a divisive issue complicated by the subtlety of societal repercussions; what is indubitable is that the cases in which this question is relevant, where the paid participant can be said to have meaningful agency in the act of prostitution, are the minority.

Vetiver

2009-11-14T06:24:00.001-08:00

Not only a type of grass

“The so-called ‘poverty of stimulus argument’ is quite unconvincing, for it simply presupposes that the child’s linguistic data is poor.” Discuss.

2009-11-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

(1) The so-called ‘poverty of stimulus argument’ is quite unconvincing, for it simply presupposes that the child’s linguistic data is poor.

What is the logical form of (1)?

The conclusion is that:

(2) The so-called ‘poverty of stimulus argument’ is quite unconvincing.

The argument is that:

(3) The so-called ‘poverty of stimulus’ argument... simply presupposes that the child’s linguistic data is poor.

As a hypothetical the argument can be expressed as a modus ponens:

(4) If the ‘so-called ‘poverty of stimulus’ argument... simply presupposes that the child’s linguistic data is poor, then the so-called ‘poverty of stimulus argument’ is quite unconvincing.

This can be expressed symbolically as:

(5) (3)→(2)

If (3) is the case then (2) will also be the case; though (2) may be true while (3) is false, so merely disproving (3) is insufficient to disprove (2). This makes the falsifying of (2) rather difficult, in that the falsification conditions are not adequately stipulated in (1). I contend, however, that both (2) and (3) are false: the poverty of stimulus argument is in fact very convincing in the case of a child’s language learning; poverty of stimulus arguments do not ‘presuppose that the child’s linguistic data is poor’, but rather observe that the linguistic understanding a child demonstrates in the first few years of their life goes far beyond what has been discovered in centuries of study into human language. Arguments from the poverty of stimulus presuppose nothing of the ‘poverty’ of the data beyond what is demonstrated in any attempt to study it: the ‘linguistic data’ presented to the child is the same as that presented to the linguist; it is not so much that this data is poor in any objective sense, whatever that might be, if anything it is too ‘rich’, in that its formative complexities are not explicit in the data itself. In this essay I will discuss some examples of the complexity of natural language and argue that these features are best understood as resulting from the natural structure of the physical organ from which language emerges, the brain.

Contents:

I. Natural language grammars are not explicit.

II. Grammars are too complex for a child to discern from the phenomenal data alone.

III. Linear sentence structures encode complex semantic relations.

IV. Linguistic competence is the product of a specific language faculty.

V. ‘Knowledge of a language’ is a metaphor.

VI. No amount of time can tell.

VII. Natural languages are not objects of knowledge.

VIII. Language is a feature of human nature.

IX. Natural languages are not taught.

X. The language faculty is perfect.

Natural language grammars are not explicit.

“... the linguistic data normally available to the child... would be consistent with innumerable generalisations over and above the ones that speakers unerringly converge to.” [Chomsky, 2002. p6]

The problem of the ‘poverty of stimulus’ is that there is nothing in the data, where it is ‘consistent with innumerable generalisations‘, which determines which of the potential generalisations is ‘correct’; there is no negative evidence, or at least there is insufficient negative evidence to entail the specific grammars that ‘speakers unerringly converge to’. One example Belletti and Rizzi use to illustrate this point [Chomsky 2002 p6] is the inconsistency of reference of the pronoun ‘he’ in:

1. John said that he was happy.

2. He said that John was happy.

In 1, ‘he’ is co-referential with ‘John’: both the pronoun and proper name refer to the same object. In 2, ‘he’ refers to someone else; while it is possible to construe the ‘he’ in 2 as referring to John, it is counter-intuitive and requires a fairly complex explanatory scenario. Exceptional circumstances aside, speakers ‘unerringly converge’ on the interpretation of ‘he’ in 1 as co-referential, i.e. they read 1 as featuring only one ‘object’; the opposite is true for 2. Why should this be the case? Chomsky’s view is that this intuition is not accidental, nor is it a feature of the language in itself, but rather it is the natural product of an underlying ‘language faculty (LF)’ which is an abstraction from the biological structure of the mind/brain to a set of common features or rules of language acquisition and use, these are the rules of ‘Universal Grammar (UG)’. This feature of co-reference is just one of a number of features of languages that all language learners appear to understand and adhere to without sufficient instances of experience to form such specific generalisations. In other words, the corpus of information presented to a child is insufficient in isolation to account for the complex, specific abstractions that would constitute ‘knowledge of a language’. To present this more clearly, compare the task of a child to the task of a linguist: modern linguistics has hundreds of years worth of data and analyses to call upon in attempts to construct a grammar, or theory, of a language, and yet a fully explanatory, generative, grammar has yet to be settled upon for any or all natural languages; the child, by comparison, has a relatively small set of linguistic experiences from which to form ‘linguistic competence’, yet intuitively develops a competence with any natural language in an incredibly short space of time; further it’s reasonable to say that the child has a smaller conceptual intellect than that of the combined minds of all the linguists attempting to formulate such a grammar. It would seem sensible, then, to assume that the child has an innate capacity to learn languages. Such a capacity we could compare to a child’s innate capacity to understand spatial relations: Newton was forty-four when he published the Principia, but I presume that at the age of four if he saw an apple fall from a tree he wouldn’t have expected it to float.

Grammars are too complex for a child to discern from the phenomenal data alone.

In his 1957 work, Syntactic Structures, Chomsky demonstrated the inadequacy of ‘left to right’ grammars, such as the finite state model or ‘Markov process’, by reference to the theorem ‘English is not a finite state language’[1957, p21], proved in his 1956 essay “Three models for the description of language.” From this Chomsky developed a theory of a ‘phrase structure grammar’ complemented by ‘transformational rules’. This led to his conception of ‘surface structure’ and ‘deep structure’: surface structure is the apparent form of the language, the linear progression that is spoken, written, heard, read etc; deep structure is the underlying form, that part of the syntactic description of a sentence that ‘determines its semantic interpretation’.

We can characterise this process as beginning with a ‘thought’, or base component, which undergoes transformation such that it becomes a well formed formula of the language we are speaking in. To justify such a conception, consider sentences such as:

3. Bill seems to be agitated.

4. It seems that Bill is agitated

The surface structure in 3 suggests that ‘Bill’ is the object of ‘seems’ rather than ‘agitated’, whereas if we rephrase 3 in the passive 4, we see that ‘Bill’ is actually the object of ‘agitated’ and the subject of ‘seems’ is a dummy pronoun. We can further demonstrate that Bill is not the object of ‘seems’ by attempting to remove the apparent kernel of 3:

5. Bill seems.

Plainly, 5 has no semantic value, although it follows the standard sentential construction of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase. Compare this to the kernel of 4:

6. Bill is agitated.

6 is a perfectly understandable sentence to anyone familiar with the language. We could express this relationship in terms of the scope of the smallest semantic units and represent the syntactic hierarchy in a phrase structure tree diagram. This structure would present ‘seeming’ as appearing higher in the structure than both ‘Bill’ and ‘agitation’; one could say the verb phrase ‘seems’ scopes over the well formed formula ‘Bill is agitated’. For the conjunction of ‘seems’ and 6 to be a well formed formula, however, ‘seems’ requires an object, so ‘Bill’ is displaced to the front of the sentence. While this operation gives ‘seems’ an object, however, it is taken away from agitated, leaving a ‘gap’.

Linear sentence structures encode complex semantic relations.

Subject-verb agreement, like subject-object agreement, is not immediately obvious from the linear presentation of sentences.

7. *The threat to the presidents of the company are serious.

8. The threat to the presidents of the company is serious.

9. *The threat to the president of the companies are serious.

10. The threat to the president of the companies is serious.

The examples are taken from a study by Franck, Vigliocco and Nicol [2002] that “found that agreement errors were more frequent following an intermediate modifier [7]... than an immediately preverbal modifier [9]”. The main verb of a sentence must agree with the ‘subject head’ of the sentence; what is not explicitly presented to the would-be speaker is which part of the sentence is the subject head. The occasion of this type of ‘error’ on the part of the language learner could be attributed to excessively complex sentence structures overloading the speaker’s memory- ‘if the verb comes long after the noun, there is no more mental energy left to remember what was the number of the subject’’ (Jespersen [1924], p. 345). Although the pattern found by Franck et al suggests that Jespersen’s answer is too simplistic and that these types of error “... provide further evidence for the psychological plausibility of assuming a stage during which hierarchical relationships among phrases are encoded. The position of a potentially interfering noun in this hierarchical structure would determine its influence over the agreement procedure: while such a noun situated high in the tree structure would interfere strongly with verb agreement, no interference would occur with nouns situated low in the structure.” [Franck, Vigliocco and Nicol, 2002]

Errors could also result from differences in the conjugational regularity of the languages comprising the speaker’s linguistic background: not all natural languages have the same specificity of subject-verb agreement. Such features appear to be somewhat contingent; the extent to which subject-verb conjugations vary in English has diminished over time: old and middle-English had more conjugational variation across subjects than modern English- where modern English doesn’t inflect the infinitive ‘have’ across first and second person singular instances, old and middle English used ‘hast’ for the second person singular. Furthermore different languages require different agreements on their verbs: Spanish, for example, inflects for mood, tense and aspect; some languages, such as Basque and Georgian, have polypersonal agreement, where the verb must agree with the subject, direct object and even the secondary object where applicable. While natural languages differ, however, it is always within a narrow spectrum of possible changes: certain structures cannot be found, or cannot be parsed, in any language.

We can begin to see the wealth and complexity of the information presented to the child, and consequently why we may be justified in assuming an innate framework in the child’s mind/brain that would organise such input such that the child becomes ‘competent’ with the language: that is, an innate language faculty.

Linguistic competence is the product of a specific language faculty.

“Many, like Chomsky, have been further impressed by the seeming observation that the data available to the child from adult utterances seems to be inadequate to account for the knowledge acquired... There is now no doubt about this: children take the clues available to them and use these clues to construct their own grammatical rules, rules which grow in sophistication as acquisition proceeds.” [LaL p. 132]

The mind is not a tabula rasa, no one can argue coherently for such a position, but what kind of tools does the mind possess at birth such that it can, in this case, acquire language? We can characterise a set of responses to this question as ranging between two poles not entirely unlike the two poles of the epistemological debate in the early enlightenment, empiricism and rationalism. All sober philosophers will acknowledge that a speaker’s ‘output’ will be the product of an integration between their mind/brain and the information presented to them; this integrated product comprises the speakers competence with the language, the lexicon from which their sentences are formed. The debate concerns which of these two factors, the nature of the mind/brain or the information presented to the language learner, most strongly determines the nature of the acquired lexicon. The debate is superficially ridiculous, we may as well ask ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ Either pole of the debate can be reduced to linguistic solipsism, either in trapping the language in the head of every individual or in making it noumenal, the first incurring the other minds problem and the second the original question of epistemology. The ‘epistemic’ debate is a red herring, the genuine question concerns the extent to which the ‘language faculty’ is special, i.e., does it function according to general laws of cognition, or is it a specialised ‘module’?

‘Knowledge of a language’ is a metaphor.

The epistemological metaphor above is not redundant: how do we know a language? The phrasing of the question is leading here. It would seem to suggest that a language is something, an object, in the world that we, as learners, inquire into. This would lead us straight to the ‘noumenal’ conception of language, but we are then presuming our answer in our question. This accident of language has been seized upon by Fodor [1983]:

“... what Chomsky thinks is innate is primarily a certain body of information: the child is, so to speak, ‘born knowing’ certain facts about universal constraints on possible human languages. It is the integration of this innate knowledge with a corpus of ‘primary linguistic data’ (e.g., with the child’s observations of utterances produced by adult members of its speech community) that explains the eventual assimilation of mature linguistic capacities.”

It should be immediately evident to any rational thinker that such a conception of the language faculty is ridiculous. To use Chomsky’s own analogies, would we argue that the eye contains a ‘body of information’ that delimits its visual field, or that an apple falls to the ground from a tree because of the knowledge it possesses? Fodor’s misconception of Chomsky’s position rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific process so basic as to be embarrassing; in fact the mistake lies at so profound a level of conceptual confusion that we do not even need to bring science into the argument: Fodor has confused things with things that can be said about things. It is not as if when Kepler formulated the mathematical principles underlying the movements of celestial bodies, what he had discovered were propositions ‘known’ to the planet. By Fodor’s own admission “Chomsky is himself quite prepared to give up the claim that the universal linguistic principles are innately known.” But he insists that Chomsky’s position, one he calls ‘Neocartesian’, is based on the “...story that what is innately represented should constitute a bona fide object of propositional attitudes; what’s innate must be the sort of thing that can be the value of propositional variable in such a schema as ‘x knows (/believes/cognizes) that P.’ The continuing insistence on the use of intensional verbs determines Fodor’s continuing misrepresentation of the nature of human inquiry. Chomsky is attempting to determine the nature of the language faculty by the, so far incomparably successful, reductive principle summarised by Einstein [1954 p282]:

“The grand aim of all science... is to cover the greatest possible number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms.”

Would Fodor accuse Einstein of presenting the universe as a ‘bona fide object of propositional attitudes’?

No amount of time can tell.

It has been contended[1] that Chomsky exaggerates the problem of the ‘poverty of stimulus’: a child spends a great amount of time in an active ‘language environment’ before it comes to speak. The implication of such arguments is that while it might be crazy to think that a child literally learns words at a rate of one an hour, learning an entire lexicon, canon, grammar and the notion of communication before they have mastered the seven times table is perfectly reasonable.

“A careful look at the interpretation of expressions reveals very quickly that from the earliest stages, the child knows vastly more than experience has provided... At peak periods of language growth, a child is acquiring words at a rate of about one an hour, with extremely limited exposure under highly ambiguous conditions. These words are understood in delicate and intricate ways that are far beyond the reach of any dictionary... Language acquisition seems much like the growth of organs generally; it is something that happens to the child, not that the child does.” [Chomsky 2000 pp. 7-8]

Chomsky uses the word ‘acquiring’, but it is impossible to tell at what rate, if at all, the child is acquiring the underlying concepts; what Chomsky is observing is that at these ‘peak periods’ the child is learning to use words ‘at a rate of about one an hour’. It may well be the case that the child has already become familiar with the words in hearing them spoken, she may even have begun to use them internally before venturing to speak them. However, even if we give the child an extra year, or two, or three, the ‘poverty of stimulus’ problem remains intact: the principles of human language are too complex to be discerned a propos of nothing from basic general learning principles attributable to a child.

This argument is not entirely novel, in Descent of Man Charles Darwin argued that one year old humans and dogs have the same linguistic competence, but that man differs from beast in “his almost infinitely larger power of associating together the most diversified sounds and ideas” [Chomsky, 2002, p46]. Darwin is broadly right in his distinction, but wrong in his observed similarity- “It is now understood that the linguistic achievements of infants go far beyond what Darwin attributed to them, and that non-human organisms have nothing like the linguistic capacities he assumed.” [Chomsky, 2002, p48] It is, however, easy to understand why Darwin may have thought along these lines as he predated (modern) cognitive science and psycholinguistics by a century; from ordinary everyday experience such a claim seems reasonable, for the dog and the pre-linguistic infant display comparable language understanding (though in the case of the dog, or possibly even in both, it may be that no linguistic process is undertaken whatever, and that all the information gleaned is entirely discerned from body language, tone of voice, context and so on). The very obvious difference is that the child, presuming it to have no serious pathological problems, will come to speak the language fluently within a few years, whereas the dog never will. If the difference were merely the result of the human’s ‘infinitely larger power of associating together the most diversified sounds and ideas’ then one would expect the human to display a more complex variant of that which the dog speaks, but plainly this is not the case, the dog does not come to speak a basic human language and the human does not speak an advanced form of ‘dog’. Further, much research has been done in the twentieth century into the linguistic capacities of animals, and the discoveries have borne out the distinction between human and animal linguistic capacities. What has been demonstrated, in examples such as Kanzi, a bonobo, and Rico, a border collie, is that many larger animals can understand symbols as standing for objects and can memorise a great number of these, some, as demonstrated by Louis Herman’s research with bottlenose dolphins, can even understand nouns paired with verbs in short but complex arrangements. However, interesting the similarities, however, the differences remain stark: no animal, no matter how much time and attention is put into its teaching, will ever be able to encode or decode some of the most common features of human language, such as inflections for tense or case. Animals simply do not have the resources to comprehend hypotheticals or subjunctive mood. What is more it is not merely that humans and animals share the same basic faculties but that those of the human are more advanced, the vast majority of the syntactic nuances of human language have no comparable analogue in the animal kingdom or elsewhere.

Languages are not objects of knowledge.

In Knowledge of Language Chomsky argued that the traditional philosophic conceptions of language were fundamentally mistaken. Philosophers and linguists had worked from the underlying assumption that languages were real objects of knowledge that their speakers had a partial and incomplete knowledge of: when a child came to learn a language its ‘mission’ was to discern the characteristics of this body of knowledge, in the same way a child may learn a game, such as chess or poker. There is a long-running joke popular among introductions to linguistics that languages have an army and a navy. Any serious research into dialects will show that the contingencies of geographic borders do not correspond to dialect borders: some dialects of northern Germany, for example, are much more similar to those spoken in Belgium, Switzerland and Holland than dialects spoken in southern Germany. This regionalisation in fact extends all the way down to individuals, for no two people will have precisely the same lexical canon or syntactic motifs. While most speakers in a ‘linguistic community’ will use a very similar language, there will be subtle differences between every speaker depending on background, environment, personality type and any other factors that determine the differences in individuals generally. To illustrate and clarify this point Chomsky made a distinction between I-languages and E-languages. I-languages are intensional, internal and individual. They are physical states of the mind/brain and as such may be genuine objects of linguistic, empirical enquiry. E-languages, by contrast, are abstractions over a collection of I-languages and as such are not genuine objects of empirical enquiry, they are at best ‘pseudo-objects’. When I speak to my friend in the pub, then, it is not that we communicate as a result of our both speaking the same E-language, for there is no such thing, but rather that our I-languages overlap making communication possible.

“[Michael] Dummett (1986) argues against internalist approaches to language that they fail to provide an account of notions like ‘language of a community’ or ‘community norms’ in the sense presupposed by virtually all work in the philosophy of language and philosophical semantics. These notions, Dummett claims, are required to provide a notion of a common public language which ‘exists independently of any particular speakers’ and of which native speakers have a ‘partial, and partially erroneous, grasp’” [Hornstein §4]

Dummett’s accusations, a typical defence of an externalist approach to language, are frankly absurd; in fact they extend no further than decrying Chomsky’s approach for not actively recognising precisely those aspects of thought on language he sought to escape. Dummett is stuck in the past. (Implicitly) externalist conceptions of language worked up to a point, but Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and so on all failed to give a strong account of semantics within this model. If they had sufficiently explained semantics within the externalist framework this would have served as a strong argument against Chomsky’s position. There is no reason whatsoever, though, to preserve this model on the basis of some small progress which translates for the most part into the internalist perspective. It is not as if we would write off twentieth century logic: the work done by Frege, Russell and so on continues to inform both semantic and syntactic theorising, even if some of the more ‘metaphysical’ aspects of their thought are now considered to be ‘off the mark’. The ‘big questions’ explored in the early twentieth century have remained for the most part unanswered, in semantics particularly. What it is that allows for humans to use symbols and sounds to denote objects and make observations and so on remains largely a mystery. The great advantage of Chomsky’s relocation of the problem from an inquiry into a platonic object which no one person can have a complete understanding of to an inquiry into a feature of physical objects, brains, is that it allows for questions in linguistics to be problems rather than mysteries; an inquiry into a physical object can yield genuine discovery through empirical observation, it gives linguists something to be right or wrong about as their theories can potentially correspond to an object of empirical inquiry.

Language is a feature of human nature.

Chomsky has often made the analogy that just as birds have wings and can fly and fish have fins and can swim, so humans have a language faculty and can communicate their thought in this advanced system joining sound (or symbol) and meaning. As a mentalist and a proponent of the view that language is a feature of the mind which is only an abstraction over a physical organ, the brain, Chomsky locates this linguistic capacity in “The language organ, or “faculty of language” as we may call it, [which] is a common human possession, varying little across the species as far as we know, apart from very serious pathology.” [Chomsky 2002 p47] This ‘faculty of language’, then, is a feature of human nature. The subject of human nature is somewhat controversial in the history of philosophy: one may contrast the ‘essentialist’ view of Aristotle with the ‘existentialist’ view of Sartre. A sensible approach, however, lies somewhere between the two: there are features, faculties, traits and so on common to all humans (excluding cases of ‘very serious pathology’)and there are features, faculties, traits and so on which are more pronounced in some than in others; humans are both alike and different. One may wish to describe this as a ‘family resemblance’ amongst humans. Some predicates will apply to all humans, some to almost all humans, some to many, few, some and some to none. This is true also of human language: there are features of human language which are true of all languages and features which are only true of some. Those principles which describe all human language will be the principles of Universal Grammar, the fundamental features of the language faculty. These principles will describe the nature of the ‘language organ’ and will be entailed by its physical structure.

Natural languages are not taught.

“Every speaker implicitly masters a very detailed and precise system of formal procedures to assemble and interpret linguistic expressions...How can it be that every child succeeds in acquiring such a rich system so early in life, in an apparently unintentional manner, without the need of an explicit teaching?” [Chomsky, 2002. p5]

Languages are not taught to children in the same way that mathematics or science or the humanities are. If it were necessary to teach children natural language in this manner the task would be impossible for two reasons: firstly the principles that govern any natural language are not known in their entirety (and if Chomsky’s distinction between E-languages and I-languages is correct, which seems almost indubitable, then there is no actual object the principles of which could be known), making the teaching of them rather difficult; secondly even if these principles were known in their entirety the system is so vast and complex that it is very doubtful that a child will be able to master its intricacies before it has learnt to properly tie its shoelaces, as it in fact does.

Even in second language learning the teaching is not explicit in the same way that it is when studying history or economics or biology. The principles of the language to be learnt are never explicitly stated beyond a few incidental features such as whether the language has regular or irregular verb conjugation or whether its nouns have genders. For the most part students are encouraged to listen for the ‘gist’ of what is said, then through listening to examples of speech and practising the vocabulary regularly they become ‘familiar’ with the language, which ultimately leads to their competence with it. This suggests that a linguistic framework is present in all humans, and that when a new language is learnt it is like a new ‘dressing’ is acquired for this frame.

The language faculty is perfect.

In his recent work Chomsky has argued that, viewed from the minimalist perspective, language is ‘perfect’. This seemingly bizarre view stems from the minimalist program, which aims to reduce all empirical frameworks to the simplest explanatorily sufficient alternative, essentially the principle of Ockham’s razor. The simplest way to understand syntax is as a computational device interfacing between sound and meaning. Lexical items, atoms of meaning, are inputted to the syntactic module which transforms them into phonic objects, phonemes, which constitute the linguistic output. Language is ‘perfect’ in that viewed from this perspective we can understand the syntactic module as economically thrifty: it makes the minimum of syntactic operations necessary in order to convert semantic input to phonetic output. One of the developments in this minimalist framework has been a shift from trace theory to copy theory in sentences such as 3. The traditional account of 3 would be that ‘Bill’ is displaced from his verb, agitated, to the front of the sentence, preceding seems, leaving a ‘trace’ by the second verb. This was a rather ungainly explanation, however, as it required an extra, invisible sentential component which was present to both speaker and listener, yet not explicit in the conveyed material. This was a violation of the Inclusiveness Condition, which “... requires that an LF object be built from the features of the lexical items of the numeration.” [Bošković and Lasnik 2007 p343] The new solution offered was to replace trace theory with copy theory. The syntactic module has the verb phrase, ‘(to be) agitated’, and corresponding noun phrase, ‘Bill’, but it also has a verb phrase, ‘seems’, with no object. The syntactic module copies its initial object, Bill, and uses it as the object of both verb phrases.

Conclusion

‘The so-called ‘poverty of stimulus’ arguments are not unconvincing, in fact quite the opposite. It is not that the child’s linguistic data is poor, but rather that it is insufficient. The “‘gap’ between what in the way of information about the world is provided by sensory experience and what we end up knowing” [Cowie 1999 P31] is best explained by that mechanism or faculty through which speakers of a language interact with the ‘linguistic data’ presented to them: the brain. Further, minimalist inquiry into the structure of this faculty has yielded the simplest explanatorily sufficient accounts of the empirical phenomena to date. Insofar as our aim ‘... is to cover the greatest possible number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms’ then, I advocate the continuing procedure of naturalistic inquiry along the lines of the minimalist framework into those features of the faculty posited in response to the problem of the poverty of stimulus which, in conjunction with the ‘linguistic data’ presented to us, determine the nature of our linguistic competence.

Symbolically:

¬(3)&¬(2)&¬(1).

References.

Bošković and Lasnik. [2007]. Minimalist Syntax, The Essential Readings. Blackwell Publishing.

Fodor, J [1983]. Modularity of Mind, Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, N [2002]. On Nature and Language. Cambridge 2007.

LaL [1999]. Language and Linguistics, The Key Concepts (Second Edition). Routledge 2007.

Chomsky, N [1957]. Syntactic Structures, Mouton de Gruyter 2002.

Franck, Vigliocco and Nicol [2002]. Subject-verb agreement errors in French and English:

The role of syntactic hierarchy, http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/language/papers/fvn_langcogprocesses.pdf (9/3/08)

Einstein, A. [1954]. Ideas and Opinions, New York: Bonanza Books.

Chomsky, N. [2000]. New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, Cambridge 2007.

Hornstein, N. http://www.chomsky.info/bios/1998----.htm (28/4/08)

[1] Catherine Osborne, during an informal talk at philosophy society, 2008

A link to

2009-11-10T13:57:00.001-08:00

Something lighter

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights forbids prejudice, unless you're gay, then you're on your own

2009-11-10T13:42:00.000-08:00

1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

7. All are equal before the law.

10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

16. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Two videos to make you fucking angry

2009-11-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

What the fuck is the point of being insured?

I am getting really fucking sick of other fucking jerk offs setting such a fucking ridiculous precedent for my gender. Can we please grow the fuck up, guys, and start acting like reasonable fucking human beings?

All we need are sales and recruitment. If you're good, maybe we'll call you marketing and let you out once in a while

2009-11-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

If you want to be a professional artist, move to China.

Stephen Fry

2009-11-08T15:53:00.000-08:00

AFTER BEING TOLD, BY ONE OF ALMOST ONE MILLION FOLLOWERS, THAT HIS TWEETS WERE "A BIT BORING"
You've convinced me. I'm obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter. Bye everyone (2009)

On the one hand, harsh.
On the other, a million people read, and then wrote about, your tweets. Dude.

2009-11-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

Stories are more important than facts

I bet this is what Descartes did of a weekend

2009-11-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

"You know, it''s our imagination that distinguishes us from the animals because it allows us to come up with amazingly complex things, like Dundee, or, Shirley Bassey..."

From two of my favourite artists - who can name them, huh?

2009-11-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

shoes come from leather leather
comes from cows come from milk no
no milk comes from cows come
from shoes baby shoes
come
from there to here hear
the shoes of blind children shoes
shuffling tripping a blind child falls into a cement mixer
a deaf child is crushed by the ambulance racing to the blind child who is
the child of some dumb man who makes shoes

that evening he cries over a piece of leather stained with milk
the tear marks make a pattern he tries to read to read
he wants to cut the leather into the shape of a gingerbread man

he wants very much to have his child back
to ride on the cows back

In Wandsworth Park

2009-11-06T08:40:00.003-08:00

It’s colder out than in, and the chill wind tugs at conversation. Pulls of smoke crust alveoli, crestled with frosty dew drops. The air tingles. A, shimmering, smog, crystallised in streetlight beams, lingers over the dull, gurgling river. Flowing locks of darkest Thames water lap, bright crested, upon the hulls of dull marine vessels, humming to the gloam.

In other news I've considered getting pizza delivery guys to buy me smokes on the way if they could, so that I could maybe start smoking. I assume that it’s a lot more fun when you've got time to prepare.

2009-11-03T14:50:00.000-08:00

What I really don't like is being made to feel uncomfortable by someone else saying things about me that I don't want to think about. Like saying things about how my emotions work or how I hurt someone else.

You know that fear of anything you might have said before which doesn't quite fit with your idea of yourself (one guy on chat said that was your Ego) will be seen by another later. I'm quite scared of this. Which is why I don't talk much to people.

I prefer to rely on instinct and blind prejudice

2009-10-31T04:54:00.000-07:00

"I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy" and have therefore decided to do away with science; Alan Johnson in "I don't like facts, I find they tend to cloud my judgement" outbust.

2009-10-28T12:29:00.001-07:00

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Morality

2009-10-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

For so long I believed my life didn't have an aim since I had no particular career goals. Well, I do have goals, I just won't get paid to undertake them (directly). My principle aim is to understand: life, consciousness, rationality, language, humans... and like any good philosopher, I supplement that with a sideline in justifying whatever-morals-I-have-at-the-time (ie, a reflection of what i am doing/have done) as if they were a priori synthetic truths about humans or the world or the nature of reality or nature or god or whatever happens to seem to justify whatever I want. Mostly it's just a way of describing everything so that I am the most virtuous. In fact, sometimes my whole ontological perspective is shaped around justifying the contingent characteristics of my personality. It's good to be part of a tradition.

Lust

2009-10-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Time to drop wild proclamations
Of love, and just relax.
Let’s forget “love”, “lifelong” and “children”
And just enjoy each other.
I still enjoy your company,
And you enjoy mine.
We still have similar pleasures
And priorities.
We can still pursue our own lives
And sleep together.
Face it, there’s no-one else you like
To be with as much.
So let’s make love, and sleep, and in
The morning, breakfast.

Yeah, my local supermarket's shit as well

2009-10-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Socrates' walk

2009-10-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

In a forest near Arnheim there lives a man who spends his hours trying to make his picture of the world fit coherently and perfectly. He turns ideas in his mind like a many-layered puzzle - its teeth jutting this way and that, carved from logic and hard and square like marble - and like a rubik's cube each twist yanks one piece from rest. The day I met him, he was trying to make night into day. I asked him why. He said all was one under the Lord God. I asked him why. He said the Lord God is and made all, and so all is one. He seemed so certain I dare not question him again. I once found a man I thought ridiculous so I questioned and questioned him 'til he finally snapped. Absurdity dribbled out of him like melting blemonge, seeping through the cracks in his skull. It wept with a silent howl. I wouldn't do that to this man. I was in awe of him. The vast weave he held before him, and only he could see, was so magnificent and fragile. I saw the focus and intensity in his concentrated stare. If he lost it for a moment it would smash upon the frosted flooring. I moved towards the coast.
In Prague I met another man who only ever held one belief at a time. 'Consistent but inconstant', he told me proudly. There was something natural about him, perhaps the warm, contented smile that lashed across his face like sea-rain. He was friendly enough, but aloof verging on cold. He greeted you with a warm hand and left you to leave with eyes like shining stones. Those who lived and worked in the harbour said he never moved, or not that any of them saw. He stood all day, smiling into the ocean. He ate fish or bread without looking at his meal, just tearing out chunks with his teeth, still staring straight ahead.
In Athens a man was jumping frantically from step to bench to table, screaming and pulling at his hair. He yelled 'DO NOT STAND' until he fell flat with exhaustion, then he'd quickly raise himself again. 'DO NOT STAND OR SIT OR LIE! LYING IS DEATH, ONLY THE DEAD LIE!'. I felt irked by his exertion.
What had happened to these fools gripped by ideas, passions, fears and furies? What makes a man abandon normal human motives and behaviours? I thought perhaps their minds had become divorced from their bodies, and so they never felt the passions of the animal, or that they had been so flooded by these passions that they had become confused and lost all reason. One was so evidently intelligent yet turned his mind to an obviously futile puzzle of his of devising. Another lived in limbo to avoid the tangled web of life. The third was pure energy and vivre, afraid of the very contemplation which had gripped the first and stunned the second. Were they related, as I had made them? Why should they be, I am going as mad as the first. Perhaps I oughtn't consider it, like the second. No, I mustn't consider these three. They'll drive me insane. I know, I'll go make a drink. Best keep busy.

Late.

2009-10-12T11:13:00.001-07:00

“I’ll never be happy with you.” He said. Cold, clinking words. “You’re not for me.”
I paused, scraping butter on toast. He said ‘for’ without stress.
“I kept thinking you would, in time.”
I took jam from the top shelf and poured the kettle.
“You think I’ve snapped.”
I didn’t respond.
“I know you look at them. I see your eyes flit and your motions stop. I know what you’re about.”
My eyes flicked to a glass on the bottom shelf. I wanted to pick it up and howl. I wanted to shatter it against his head, to gouge his eyes with the shards, to scream words at his crumpling frame, but I didn’t know what to say so instead I took a spoon from the jar and stirred coffee.
“If you left now I wouldn’t mind, I wouldn’t be angry.”
I’d made toast I didn’t want anymore so I put it in the bin and began folding clothes.
“I know you’re not angry.”
I seethed.
“You’re upset.”
I wanted to bludgeon his torso. I wanted to mash his intestines with a fork.
“I’m sorry.” His head fell loosely on his shoulders. “I don’t know why I said that. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” He took a gulp of coffee, sighed gently into himself and walked out of the room. I took a pencil from the sideboard and held it between my thumb and forefinger. I considered snapping it, but instead I wrote ‘milk, cheese, apricots, fennel’ on a post-it and put another slice of bread in the toaster. 7.14. Late.

2009-10-12T11:12:00.001-07:00

Who's to say moderation isn't the enemy?

The best video ever

2009-10-06T14:09:00.001-07:00

David Thinks About Things

You Walked In

2009-10-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

I sat there
The blinds drawn
The smoke curling into the soft guitar as they slowly chased each other round the room
Busy, but slow
There was peace in the air
But not the good kind, not like a Sunday afternoon
This was Saturday night
And I was edgy
I could hear voices outside
Whistling, shouting
I’d had a little drink and it made me sleepy
But how could I sleep now?
Just as my eyelids were losing their last glimmer of resistance
She walked in
And I don’t think I’ve closed them since
She was stunning
She looked like all the women I’d ever dreamt about
At least that’s what I assumed
She wore a blue fur coat that fell about her feet
Exposing her poor bare legs to the cold autumn night
She walked like she was on a tightrope with no fear of falling off in nine inch stilettos
She had her hair cut just above the shoulders so it curled in
Invitingly
She smelt like warm evenings in front of the fire
Just a hint of orange and vanilla
She looked around the room quizzically
Then she sighed, threw her cigarette butt to the floor, ground it down
(two strokes, swish swish)
Hung up her coat
And made her way over to me
Taking a seat she quickly smoothed the most beautiful blue silk dress I’ve ever seen
Maybe because it was gathered round her like fresh water rolling down a pebble dam
Anyway she looked at me with her rich green eyes
And she leaned across my desk
And she whispered
Stop
Staring
At
Me
And, to be honest, I was rather taken aback
Stop it
I duly did, admiring instead the lovely brown stain that generously spread itself across the faded green carpet
Not faded here, under my desk
Here it was a thick, rich, redolent green
She was still staring at me with a gaze that made my knees weak and my stomach turn so I returned my eyes to the floor
She coughed, lightly but with intent
I looked back up at her
How did you enjoy the view?
She spoke in a way that I was sure was intended to make me nervous
But her voice was so soft and tender that it made me write forgiveness across my mind
Would you like a drink?
I rose to the cabinet I kept for occasions such as this
Whiskey, with ice please
A man’s drink, but she was no man so she could get away with it
I poured myself the same and rejoined her at the table
She cupped the glass in both her hands as if it were a beacon in a dark dank cave
She had both her elbows on the table and she looked relaxed but ready, eager to discuss whatever she was here for
She sipped the whiskey
Outside the kids were still screaming and I could hear a siren in the background
The city’s second sun had dawned and flooded the streets with a dull orange glow that filtered through every curtain and blind available
Luckily my night-time beacon had fell prey to the cowboy electrician so the light in the room was ambient but not intrusive
Inch wide beams of beauty filled my eyes
And that’s all I remember

Fuel drilling in Nigeria

2009-10-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

I always say it's cost since I don't ever feel like I can win the argument, but this is the real reason I won't drive. An innocent drive to the supermarket - multiplied by hundreds of millions of consumers and set against falling supply, rising demand and the interests of some of the richest and most powerful people in the world - kills. When you drive your car or play playstation or turn on a light... even typing this right now I am - from a sufficient distance to make it seem palatable - causing wars, pollution, fires, death and misery. We are all the fatcats and we are the bringers of the "Flames from Hell."

I'd also like to draw your attention to the excellent Nneka, who - through her music - first drew my attention to the plight of Nigeria, alongside the Middle East, in the oil wars (and these are wars in the same sense that the USA vs. Iraq was a war, Israel vs. Palestine is a war or Britain vs Nigeria over a hundred years ago was a war.)

We all live in sin.

Blog review

2009-10-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

So it's 3am and once again I can't sleep. I refuse to compile any more stats for work, so I've been blogcasting. I thought I'd share some bits that I found interesting and some comments of my own.

So for a while now Alas, a blog has been my number one source of interesting links and cultural commentary on a broad range of issues, and their current instalment is a series of links to their favourite blogs, which opened up some interesting new territory for me.

Great comment from Independent Gay Forum about this story, cutting through the superficially persuasive argument from the hospital to expose what is a frankly sickening case of double standards. Homophobia can be understandable (though perenially lamentable) when couched in a belief set made superstitious by fear of death, but doesn't the confrontation of mortality make you want to lay aside your prejudices and merely allow people to be? I ask anyone who thinks the hospital's decision was right to consider how you would feel if the person you loved most in the world were dying just a few feet away from you and all that seperated you from their sharing their final moments was someone's unsubstantiated belief.
As an individual has to be considered innocent until proven guilty, so should an action be considered legal until proven beyond reasonable doubt to be of serious, illegitimate and consistent damage to mankind. Since whenever homosexuality is considered wrong it is on wholly metaphysical grounds, I contend that there is no justification for perpetuating any legal difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Besides which, what bearing would such concerns have over the right of someone's partner in life and parenthood (and power of attorney) being allowed to visit them in their dying moments? Would any other supposed criminal or moral deviant be forbidden visitation rights? No. A straight man who regularly rapes and beats his wife would most likely still be allowed to be at her deathbed, since the hospital staff would likely be ignorant to his crimes. But where crime is gender it's all too easy to play judge.

More gay bashing bashed at Box Turtle Bulletin, and I'd draw your attention to the comments on this one. Website comments are rarely worth reading, but these are pretty funny. Personal highlights include:

"If porn made everyone gay.. well.. then we wouldn’t have to worry about equal rights any more. We’d be the VAST majority of the population!"

"I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of the Values Voters crowd share a belief system that is largely delusional and superstitious, thereby creating a reality for themselves that is mostly fabricated from Magic Truth. So, in their world it doesn’t feel bizarre when one of their leaders asserts that all porn is gay porn. Beliefs that cannot be supported by evidence/reason/logic is perfectly normal for them. Things become true through magic."

I won't bother joining in on the 'porn makes you gay' theme, since it's so very, very dumb and these guys have already demonstrated that as far as rational enquiry requires.

What I would like to discuss is the notion of masculinity, raised and barely challenged at The American Scene. Now these guys (inf. people) quite rightly undermine the suggestion that being a 'real' man is about how many girls you sleep with. I can see where the idea comes from, spreading your seed for the greatest chance of gene survival, but am amazed by how blind people can be to the counter-productivity of taking one of the fairly basic tenets of gene survival and making it a foundational belief to the detriment of the person as a whole. Ok guys, one) it makes you look and sound like a total dickhead, two) it entails a laughably simplistic understanding of human beings, three) most people extrapolate their view of humanity from their own experience, so if you think humans are superficial, simplistic humping machines with no capacity for qualitative judgement whatsoever... four) it's going to end in STDs, that's just statistical probability.
Nowhere has this dunderheaded idea been more glorified than on trashy Hollywood testostorama Entourage, where the *not-quite-but-almost* of Beverley Hills strut about like peacocks with painted tail feathers 'banging' every, *entirely* characterless, girl in town. The great part is, if a guy fucks 50 girls a day, he's a MAN, if a girl sleeps with anyone who happens to know anyone else, she's a slut. Isn't that liberating? Oo look I've come, best pout and tell someone they're an idiot ('cos that's how business works).
So what do we want a man, not a MAN, to be? Well, for my part I'd rather stay out of it thank you. Why do I have to have a gender identity? I have plenty of things from which to self-define already, and I'd rather lose them all (or at least all the ones that I was allotted by default). I don't particularly want to be defined by everyone who happens to own a pair of testicles, or for that matter anyone of my race, nationality, music taste... I understand this will happen to an extent but never understand the need for a group to assert a collective identity. It's just a fallacious concept. Men have a collective identity insofar as they share some biology, no further.
This brings me onto feminism. Now I would say I'm a feminist but one thing really grates on me, and it's something I've seen this at times on I Blame The Patriarchy and other passionate blogs: glorification of women acting like assholes in the same way men are criticised for. By this I mean things like seducing a whole load of people. In fact that was what I read about the other day, on another blog. Unfortunately I now can't find it, so I can't go into detail and this whole paragraph becomes a bit vague and unfounded, but I'd still like to make my point: guys being assholes is not good, but neither is girls being assholes. It's exactly the same as when a guy I knew once told me that he didn't see any problem in misleading the girls he slept with into thinking that he has an emotional attachment to them given that a girl once did that to him. Nevermind that each of the girls he slept with was an individual, who had different character traits and had never done him wrong. Now this may be my personality type, sexuality and prejudices bleeding into my arguments (I don't sleep with many people) but it seems to me part of a wider subtrend of feminism that I don't like. I can understand why people get angry, it's very much provoked, and it's really difficult to work out what the line ought to be now (given that it revolves around the concept of what a person should be and do, which in two millenia of serious thought we've made very little progress on), but to my mind feminism is part of a wider scheme with two aims: liberating everyone from inherent restrictive cultural frameworks and making everyone treat each other better. I don't think it's about justifying women being shitty to men on the basis of a history of oppression (in the same way black people would not be morally justified in enslaving white people, or Islamic fundamentalists are not morally justified in committing acts of terrorism, even if their motivations and their oppression can be clearly demonstrated). However, I Blame The Patriarchy is well worth reading and the sentiment which I attack here is limited.

For an uncommonly detached and empirical blog on all things oppressive, I strongly recommend Sociological Images, which does an excellent job of demonstrating the infinite array of subtleties in advertising and media which in isolation appear harmless but, as extensive reading of this blog brings home, dictate a culture in a surprisingly pervasive manner. It was this blog which really made me understand the concept of a cultural construct. If you have any serious thoughts about discrimination of any kind, read!

Ok so now it's five am and my writing has degenerated. Time for bed.

Alright, one more.

Congratulations to PJTV for excellent use of piggybacking unsound arguments onto sound arguments and putting them all under one umbrella, so either you accept both or neither, and accepting neither's dumb. Why don't us shameful liberals ever use such tactics? O yeah, cos its cheap and its tacky and it doesn't get you any nearer the truth.

Jimmy Footballboots

2009-10-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

So the other day I’m in Dexter’s – home of the Dexter’s burger, which is apparently unique because it has cheese and chillies and other things people put in burgers – eating the disproportionately large pear & chilli chocolate ice cream sundae while my mother eats their uniquely thawed cheesecake and we’re discussing gay footballers.

He can’t be gay! He has a wife and children!

So? If you were a gay footballer you would want to do everything possible to hide that. It’s not a universally accepted combination.

That kind of thing, right? Anyhoo we banter along this speculative polemic and my mother says something rather off (I meant to write odd there but miss-keyed, off seems more appropriate in retrospect). I can’t remember the exact phrasing, which is annoying (I shouldn’t be stoned before dinner with my mum. Seriously, I got off work an hour early to smoke a joint on the common. How cool am I?), but it ran along the lines of:

Footballers are less likely to know they’re gay, as opposed to media types and whatnot who are much more likely to experiment.

Experiment? It’s not a fucking quirk! It’s not like discovering you like having the back of your heel licked or finding you have a taste for grilled olives, right? Which poncey fucking journo floundered about fucking girls for 25 years before discovering they actually preferred cock while fact finding in Soho? I mean, sure, you’re more likely to discover you’re bi if you’re open minded, but then would you get involved if you didn’t already feel inclined? You’re maybe more likely to affirm that you genuinely are bi and not just pretending to be bi to try and fuck someone else altogether. Or because it’s cool. Or because you just don’t want to offend anyone. Make them feel left out. But you’re not going to find ‘gay’, like spirituality, or dreadlocks. Unless...

Imagine the scenario: a bunch of straight guys are on a gay tour of London and their rep takes them to some secretive side road. ‘Guys, we have to go in here. You have to try their cock; it really is the best in London!’ So the guys all go in and they’re seated round a table by a pleasant, mildly camp waiter who offers them menus and drinks, presumably Lambrini or baby shams. While the swagger of straight men marvel on the novelty decor, the rep selects something appropriate and after a short wait a guy comes out with his cock out. One by one the guys all give it a good suck. Most of them find it not unpleasant but neither particularly arousing, except one of the group who has realised he’s gay. Never and inkling before now but one taste of cock and he’s not going back.

Is that how it works? No it’s just a cock and balls story.

Now I imagine that it is the case that poor old Jimmy Footballboots doesn’t want to be gay and has probably spent his adult life trying to run it off or magic cloth it away, which is the sort of thing people do. Just like I never want to confront the fact that I want to fuck Jim Davidson. Not in a shove-a-pool-cue-up-his-arse-and-snap-it way, but gently, lovingly, with caresses and everything. However, Jimmy knows he’s gay. If he’s actually gay he discovered it quite a long time ago, right?

I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea that maybe I’m actually gay when I’ve played with dildos or watched some guy jacking off on webcam from his bedroom in Leeds. I’m not, much. A little, but not really very gay at all. I’m almost disappointed. Why can’t I just find everyone sexy, like Russell Brand? That would be easy, ... *groan*. Really though? Could I be secretly gay? Have I been socially conditioned into being straight? Am I lying to myself as, to be fair, I do all the time? No. If I were gay I probably wouldn’t have drawn all those tits when I was 14. Did Jimmy Footballboots draw tits? That’s probably the test.

Now, I’ve been treating my mum’s argument with open disdain, but every genuine assertion has some morsel of truth that has convinced its speaker, or at least initiated the thought process from which the ultimate false proposition eventually arises. In this case there is a clear factual element: there are more openly gay people in the creative industries than in sport. This may be because the first industry does not require a certain public machismo, in fact it would probably just seem crude (there are of course exceptions. I’m not naming any names but he writes for a weekend driving supplement and wears jeans with a dress jacket. You know. You didn’t even need the clues.) However, I don’t think machismo is the biggest factor: for one, if you came out as a footballer you’d only be proving your balls and two, if a Keane or a Vieira or a Jones say they were gay I would not be the first one buying them village people outfits. Likewise nothing could make me less afraid of Arjen Robben. I personally blame the parents. Thing is, see, if you’re a creative industrialist, you’ve already let them down. They already think you’re a tosser. They don’t proudly tell their friends that their little darling writes all the reality TV goss in Metro. So fuck it, you might as well tell them you’re a lesbian as well and if they never talk to you again then balls to them.

Now ultimately my mum’s a very liberal minded person, a feat made all the more spectacular by her weekly dose of the Daily-hate-Mail from Sainsbury’s in I-normally-shop-at-Waitrose-you-know Beaconsfield. This is why when she said something I considered to be rather ill thought through and offensive (anyone notice the missing premise? It was the old 'everyone’s straight until...', like vampirism or bird flu) I pointed this out to her and we discussed it. You can’t always do that with your parents though. I had such trouble with my Aunt on immigration (she would welcome ANYONE to her house with the greatest warmth and kindness and hospitality but blames ALL the woes of Broken Britain on Bloody Immigrants. I’m almost tempted to sue the fucking Daily racism indoctrination journal (Mail). They should be tried for crimes against humanity, or at least humanism) that we just had to give up in the end. That’s the thing with the patently irrational, you can’t argue with it.

So imagine if your dad were an active BNP exponent with a penchant for hitting people and breaking things, who gave up smoking after someone waved a pack of cigarettes in his face saying ‘fag?’

One of my friends from school came out when he was 13 or 14. Obviously he didn’t sing and dance about it (he wasn’t Big Gay Al), he told a couple of us but it was an all boys school so it was bums against walls time for most – especially one particularly homophobic lad. I used to think he was a prick but then one day he got dumped and he carved the girl’s name into his chest with a bread knife, so he was clearly a holy fucking twat of Hollywood proportions.

So this guy’s been out for ten years now but neither of his parents knows. They’re not scary, they’re some of the least scary people I’ve met, but his mum frequently talks about how all the gays should be killed, so it’s hardly something you want to discuss over dinner. ‘O mum, by the way, you know that particular subset of people that you wish to exterminate, turns out I’m one of them! What are the chances of that, eh?”

Of course we all bullied him. We used to play in a band (I say band... two songs then it was booze and football and betting on who’d be the next person to get laid) and we’d give him shit. “Don’t sit there, Will sat there. You’ll catch gay.” “Don’t drink from that bottle. Will drank from that bottle. You’ll catch gay.” But it was ironic. It was the 90s. It was post-modern, self-aware bullying. And we didn’t do it much, it got tired. If I sound overly defensive it’s only because I know that’s not strictly defendable, the argument has the same form as the less bad Nazi interment officer – I didn’t kill many Jews... Equally it’s not equivalent to the less bad Nazi interment officer, so I don’t feel that bad.

He also faced badgering of an entirely different kind from our wonderful host: our bassist’s mum. “Will, eat some noodles! You’ll starve! Will, do you want some chips? Do you like pork, Will?” She didn’t care that he was gay. Not so when her own daughter came out though. Between that and her other daughter marrying a Saudi guy she almost white dwarfed.

I’d like to think that if I were gay I could tell my mum and it’d be fine. She is one of the most amiable, tolerant people I know – at least on a personal level. But I’ve seen enough people ripped in half by that conflict between their personal outlook and stuff they’ve read and heard enough times to believe unthinkingly to know that it’s not always that simple. In fact I used to live with a guy who clearly had something deeply troubling that he was permanently trying to cover to the world – perma-glow fake tan, pristine white teeth, super healthy, photos of himself in his graduation outfit beaming from his bedroom wall but every now and then he’d get drunk and go to say things then stop himself saying his mum would not approve. Also once he got an earring and wasn’t sure about it: “I feel like it just screams gay.” I strongly suspect he was gay but born and raised in a place where you couldn’t be gay – o and guess what he read...

In an article for the Guardian recently, Stephen Fry mentioned that a number of his gay friends wouldn’t come out but not because of the reception they’d receive from the press, public, friends and colleagues, but from their parents. Homophobia, like racism and sexism, is mostly challenged and changed over generations. Having grown up in a generation where a much greater number of people are openly gay, from friends and family to celebrities, I hope that we as parents are more approachable and more tolerant so that when our kids become the overpaid, overhyped sports celebs of the future they don’t have to marry and procreate with someone from a sex that doesn’t sexually excite them just to dampen suspicion.

Rejected Daily Mail pseudos

Daily Mailstrom

Daily Mailice

Daily Mailignant tumour

Daily Fail

Daily Shit

Fucking Haterag

Evil Fucking Lyathon

Daily Smail (smell? No, not really)

Daily Mailbomb

Daily Grail (too obtuse)

Samey Stale

Gamey Tale

Also, I hope that by the time we’re parents the Daily Mail has not only gone bankrupt (financially, not just morally) but that it’s bilious, vitriolic and consciously contra-factual segregationism is forever expunged from our journalism and humanity. The same goes for the other great vehicle of Satan: the Catholic Church. O and the Republican Party. And may Robert Kilroy-Silk all lead them on a flying fucking carpet woven from their own self fucking righteousness[*].

[*][*] Yes, I see the hypocrisy there. No, I don’t care.

2009-09-30T12:32:00.001-07:00

Pride and Prejudice: Why I no longer believe in trickle down economics (using 'believe' in the sense of 'having faith in')

Tuesday, 10 March 2009 at 15:24 | Edit note | Delete

For a long time I have been considered politically right of centre among my peers: to the extent that a hush has descended upon a room as I’ve entered it. However, I’m becoming increasingly left-leaning with age and, perhaps – and I only say perhaps – more tellingly, increase of education.

I have always supported a right of centre economic policy as I believed it led to an increase of wealth for any individual by increasing the overall wealth. I held that this was achieved by the ‘trickle down’ mechanism. To illustrate this mechanism, choose any luxury item, say a television. When the television comes out it will cost a great deal of money, say £1500, and only the very wealthy will buy one. Once everyone who is going to buy one at this price has done so the price is reduced and the product becomes available to the next socio-economic class. This process is repeated until the market is saturated and the product is terminated.

This system is not the result of technological or qualitative production potential. For while this stratification occurs amongst TVs, food and beverage products and so on, it is also prevalent amongst trainers, where the technological and qualitative factors remain essentially unchanged amongst any two instances of a given brand’s flagship output year on year.

I have long defended this system on the argument that the start up cost of production of any item is always a great deal higher than the maintenance of that production. A new product must be researched, designed, tested, marketed and so on; there is also the initial expenditure on fixed costs, such as the equipment used to make the product. Thus, I reasoned, the initial cost reflects the initial investment. Furthermore, it is only through this initial skimming of the market that it becomes possible for the poorer elements of society to have access to the products, for if the companies were only able to sell the products at the reduced price throughout the product’s entire life cycle then they would not be able to generate sufficient starter capital to make a worthwhile return on their initial investment, rendering production either unviable or undesirable.

The point is that none of this is the point. That one person’s wealth allows for another to receive hand-me-down trainer fashion when it is his turn does not equate to an overall raising of wealth. During boom years everyone annually upgrades their phone/trainers/car/TV/computer/iPod and during the busts we all realise that we never really cared anyway and that the job we spent 80 hours a week wishing we weren’t at and whatever remainder we were awake trying to forget we were ever at was not worth the extra £10k we only spent on booze, coke and the latest model iPhone. Consumerism is the new opiate of the masses, or at least the middle classes. The consumer is temporarily placated but their quality of life is not improved.

Just because everyone in this country now has a sky dish and a replica football shirt and branded footwear does not mean that there is no working class. People, if they are lucky enough to be afforded the opportunity, work obscene numbers of hours and destroy themselves with stress to ultimately achieve nothing more than trinkets. Will that be your life’s worth: a house stuffed with old, outdated memorabilia that your grandchildren will puzzle at and your children will continually try to dispose of, just like the cluttered old messes you remember visiting in your youth? If you have children, that is. You might decide you’d rather be a careerist than a parent. Who needs reproduction when you can have the satisfaction of a job well done? Of course you work will be under-appreciated and under-compensated but children are so expensive and they’ll only turn against you in the end. You might as well devote your life’s energy to building a career only to receive enforced redundancy at the point at which it is all you have.

I’ve descended into hyperventilating hyperbole. The mixing of passion and argument can be very dangerous. It can be misleading and obscuring. It is often the case that the more passionate one gets in making one’s argument, the less of an argument one has: the passion often covering up the lack of clarity or rational justification concerning one’s position.

I will endeavour to regain some focus in my conclusion. As I said in my introduction, I have become increasing left-leaning in my outlook as I have experienced more of life and read more of others’ reflections on what they have experienced. I think I can sum up what is becoming increasingly palpable to me in one sentence:

Some values aren’t quantified.

2009-09-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

Pride and Prejudice: Sort of like the heap problem, but in reverse

Saturday, 14 March 2009 at 11:04 | Edit note | Delete

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bailout-money-is-flowing-abroad-1644887.html

The British State has a hole in it's pocket and those last few pennies are burning it. Quickly! Quickly! Take them!

What the f*ck are we doing?

The british economy is screwed, mostly because there hasn't been such a thing as british industry in twenty years. We've been living off foreign confidence, which has shattered. Let's be clear: britain has nothing to sell. We used to have a brand and a very strong currency, now all we have is lit grads who want to be 'creative' (and were too busy not doing their GCSE revision to notice the 2001 mini-crash that has already crushed their dreams). Brown, Darling and King are desperately trying to reinflate the souffle of our economy but it's not going to happen because that is not the 'real' level of the british economy. We're going to find out what the 'real' level is over the next few years as the go-lightlys go elsewhere.

This is a plea to the three mentioned above: STOP THROWING THE F*CKING MONEY AWAY!!! It's like watching that Steve Coogan show about the gambling addict. Britain won big year on year, kept making money no matter what it did, now it's run out of luck and raiding the family savings to throw on the 4.15 cos we know we can get it back, we can get it all back and more, if only our luck would change.

STOP IT!!! While we've still got anything left! We should spend, I agree. For one thing we might as well use the last of our money while anyone's still willing to accept it. We should not, however, keep throwing it at the city. It's as if someone's pulled the plug from Alistair Downing's bath and he's turned both taps on full in the desperate hope of blocking the drain. I don't know if you've ever seen those charity donation bins where you put in a 2p coin and it spirals round and round until it eventually drops into the collection bin. Rumour has it Mr Darling once put £400 into one shouting 'it'll have to clog eventually, it's only a finite space!'. All for a good cause though, so nevermind.

We should be spending this money on long term investments for the protection of the weaker/poorer members of our country (the one's that pay or have paid tax, not the non-domeciles who own all the businesses and are the only one's that ever profit from the city. The casino owners, metaphorically). It should be spent on things like lagging peoples' lofts. That's the kind of thing Obama's doing: spending money that creates jobs and improves the lives of the people most vulnerable to economic contraction.

2009-09-30T12:30:00.001-07:00

pride and prejudice: a country regressing

Saturday, 14 March 2009 at 11:47 | Edit note | Delete

The government must be so scared of these rich guys (see 'bloody immigrants...') leaving and exposing the UK as a regressive, backwards country. I wonder, if they all left would we still have a 'stronger' economy than Poland? Or would we be exposed for what we are - probably the most poorly managed country in Europe? Plus what would Peter Mandleson do for a holiday?

For a long time we have proudly declared ourselves as a developed, or first world, nation. What does that mean? Well you could argue that it's relative wealth. We have more money than Peru or Namibia so we're better than them.

How?

Is it really just how much money we have? What if it was all concentrated on one person, would that count?
No, that would be stupid, because he could easily leave and then we'd all be poor again. Development implies work and progress over a period of time. So what's developed? Is it just our economy? No, that's at best a side effect of other factors of development: increase in education, aspiration and facilities. Admittedly growth feeds growth though - the more money you have the more you can invest...

What we actually mean by claiming that our country is developed is that the lower standards of living in this country are high relative to the countries we describe as developing or underdeveloped. We would include factors such as the relatively low level of homelessness, universal education and healthcare, public transport and so on. But these things are on the slide. Our homes are sh*t, our schools are sh*t, our hospitals are sh*t - and more to the point there aren't enough of them. The money isn't being put in. We are no longer at the forefront and we're fading fast.

What can we do? Not a great deal, we're gonna slump for a while. What we can do, though, is start taxing our rich more and our poor less, invest wisely and seek help. That last one's a big one. We're very proud, the british. We're so f8cking proud that we've made all our money in the last few years as consultants, and before we were making our money telling people how to spend theirs (give it to us!) we were telling other countries how they should live, who they should worship and who to sell their natural assets to (us!). Well noone's listening to us any more. Noone's buying our bullsh*t so it's time we got off our victorian high horses and went to the IMF and the EU and said 'look, guys, we've ballsed up. We're sorry. We followed those crazy American's and it's buggered us up royally. We're sorry we spurned you for so long, moaning about your attempts to try and rescue us. Please help us.' But then we would be hypocrites, since that's what we're all moaning about the bankers for doing. But if we are willing to let go our pride and ask for help it would be there for us. We've invested a great deal in the EU and IMF and barely taken a thing while other countries have used the money available for worthwhile projects, such as Portugal using IMF money to build quality housing for their poor.

We could also pull out of those two wars we can't really afford to pretend are relevant to us anymore.