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Work Update, Bad Politics and Bad Religion, Amazing Rats
Two weeks since my last update?! This more than full-time work is for the birds, I swear. OK, three work changes worthy of note. One was discovering I'd signed a contract that included G.S.T. rather than excluding it. Damn nuissance and rather careless of me, but I suspect will soon be fixed. Second was pushing myself too hard on Friday afternoon after migrating some fifty sites, suffering from a pounding headache and thus accidently deleting the entire site of a major client. Yes, we had a backup, but not the best one possible. Third was recovering our mail system this morning after a the database in postgrey was hanging and thus refusing incoming mail to a large number of clients. Life really never is a dull moment as a sysadmin, it really isn't.
Reactionary feminist Mary Sullivan argues against the rights an desires of sex workers and receives justified responses. I take the opportunity to agree with her; to the 'logical' conclusions.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iron_orchid alerts me that nutbar Catharine McKinnon will be at ANU in a few days. Do keep in mind this is the sort of person who will argue for a global and legal ban on all "pornography". Have fun Canberra people!
On-topic on the subject of ridicule and contempt, the Melbourne Unitarian Church has published Dr. Helen Szoke's speech supporting the Racial and Religious Vilification Act (2001). My response argues that many religious and racial beliefs deserve ridicule and contempt. A little less on-topic, The Age published my letter on the alleged requirement of an "Eternal God" for the universe to exist.
You have to see this; surfing rodents!; but wait, there's more. If you're called a rat, take it as a compliment. The full journal article, "Generalized Reciprocity in Rats", is available.
Reactionary feminist Mary Sullivan argues against the rights an desires of sex workers and receives justified responses. I take the opportunity to agree with her; to the 'logical' conclusions.
iron_orchid alerts me that nutbar Catharine McKinnon will be at ANU in a few days. Do keep in mind this is the sort of person who will argue for a global and legal ban on all "pornography". Have fun Canberra people!On-topic on the subject of ridicule and contempt, the Melbourne Unitarian Church has published Dr. Helen Szoke's speech supporting the Racial and Religious Vilification Act (2001). My response argues that many religious and racial beliefs deserve ridicule and contempt. A little less on-topic, The Age published my letter on the alleged requirement of an "Eternal God" for the universe to exist.
You have to see this; surfing rodents!; but wait, there's more. If you're called a rat, take it as a compliment. The full journal article, "Generalized Reciprocity in Rats", is available.
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If only she was arguing on a pro forma basis.
It's not the relative popularity or lack thereof that concerns me. It's more that the person has responsibility, authority and even academic credibility.
If she was just another random fool, I could treat the comments as such. Unfortunately, espousing said views rather brings both feminism and academia into disrepute.
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Holy misplaced sense of outrage.
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Many, many years ago I read a book (iirc) "Feminist Epistemology" by Harding and Hintikka (again, iirc). The introduction made a most outstanding and accurate remark; feminist theory is strong on ontology but weak on epistemology.
In other words, the facts are correct but the causes are not.
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besides ratties are one of my favourite subjects,
I was born in the Year of the Rat..so anyone who calls me a Rat gets a genuine grin from me and maybe a hug if I feel generous! I did read that article and recollecting that the Rat kids I had were very sweet towards each other..I also observed one or two to be a bit crafty in hording a few sweets if they wanted to be a bit selfish. However, If one of their litter mates wasn't feeling well, I have seen a few push bits of cookie and lay next beside them. Just because of the comfort factor... I must say that Rats are my favourite pets...errr Friends!
The surfing rodents? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WAY too cute for words! I enjoyed that.
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It is a hot topic, but one must be careful to differentiate between:
a) I don't like content 'x' therefore content 'x' is universally wrong and
b) I don't conditions of production in 'y' therefore all content produced 'y' is wrong
c) Some people, without thought, follow social norm or visual presentation 'z' ("monkey see, monkey do"), therefore visual presentation 'z' is universally dangerous.
I worries me that some senior academics don't (or won't) address these fairly trivial logical questions.
But yeah, surfing rodents rocked.
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Likewise right back at you. :-)
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Heh. And here I was thinking I was being a bit slack on said matters over the past fortnight.
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your posts are inspiring though. i gotta figure out somethin i'm good at and do it. i keep drifting from idea to idea never really settling.
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Hey, I'm glad that they're inspiring.
Don't worry too much about figuring out what your particular skill set is... The very fact that it's on your mind will generate sufficient ideas in its own right. Experiment! Find out what you like doing and you'll inevitably end up being good at it as well...
(As a high school student, I had a particular skill at accounting - to the point that I received the school award for it... but damned if I could actually enjoy doing it)
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Incidentally, I didn't know she was in town. Given I'm in Canberra at the moment, you've done me a favour by alerting me to her presence. Tah. :)
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"Presented together with the Centre for International Public Law (CIPL)" plus "created ordinances recognizing pornography as a civil rights violation."
I can see where this is heading.
My main concern with McKinnon is that she seems to think that only an elite group (presumably of people who think like her) can determine what sort of literature (or film) we can or cannot produce or watch.
I wonder if such beliefs will extend to bans on the C and F# tritone?
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Just brief; after all, the link on the Online Opinion piece should make my views on the matter clear enough.
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It's poisonous.
We have a number of well-intentioned but pernicious laws like that in Victoria, eh.
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One thing I can't work out is whether the laws were drafted by well-intentioned but foolish people, or with bad-intentioned and clever people who knew that they were attract a certain number of the political left in support.
We certainly do have quite a number of laws of that nature.
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Bad-intentioned peole could have gamed the whole thing..they question is, would they have bothered?
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Because social systems require stability and control more than anything else. Innovation, debate and particularly heated debate, leads to instability. Hence legislation often protects one from "offensiveness" rather than lies, or provides "dignity" rather than freedom.
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As I sure you know, it's the lies and lack of freedom that are truly Bad things.
Given human frailty, lies and indignities are inevitable: but we need paths for redress at a public and institutional level, in my view.
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You are quite correct. The problem is that the majority view is still a preference for lies and restrictions as long as they're protected from "offensiveness" and can pretend they are "dignified".
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Lawrence Kohlberg and associates once pointed out that only about 35% of the population use adult moral and cognitive processing, despite the biological capacity to do so. Rather wryly the suggested "environmental factors" were to blame; which is of course, "social factors" in the lexicon of psychologists.
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Me, I wouldnit say I used adult dognition and/or moral reasoning *all the time*.
Sometimes it doesn't matter, (eg I'm chosing a book to read)
Sometimes there's no time (eg traffic jumbles)
and sometimes I'm functioning below par.
I do hope I realsie when I've done the latter.
On other people: a good few have no real idea, were never taught this stuff and didn't work it out for themselves.
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Also, as a female, I would like to go on the record as enthusiastically defending porn.
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Looks like el-jay ate my reply this morn..
I wonder why it's become cool for 'feminists' to claim that women can't think or make decisions..
The theory is that some women are gender traitors. They make bad decisions which apparently defame and damage all other women in the process. Thus the only women who can make "good" decisions are the "true" feminists.
If it sounds rather like the rantings of a political sect, that's because it is.
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