mushinnoshin

Sad news — Killing Joke / Ministry bassist Paul Raven dies.

Damn. According to last.fm, Killing Joke is my third favorite band. I’d certainly put ‘em in the top 5 at least.

Here’s an excellent track from one of the Raven albums. I was really hoping to find Age of Greed, but this one’s good too.

edit: replaced removed video

So having had a few more than a few too many at last night’s bash for Brittney, I’m waaaay too hungover to be much good with all the logic needed to write code. So instead I’ll talk about abortion. You know, seeing as abortion discussions are generally devoid of anything approaching logic or reason.

Nah, I won’t really get into it. But I will mention that I went to see Lake of Fire Friday night (in my twisted mind it was a great opening act for Rocky Horror). It was definitely a balanced film — which basically means that ranting psycho jeebus-cult prohibitionists were given equal time against the intelligent and thoughtful commentary of people like Noam Chomsky. So it was balanced, but the fight was hardly fair :)

The film gave me my first introduction to Peter Singer, who was probably the sanest voice on the subject. From what I’ve gleaned so far we seem to share strikingly similar views on rights theory & ethics — on the surface. We definitely seem to reach similar conclusions, having some of the same notions regarding who has rights, variations in extent, “equal consideration”, the question of speciesism, etc. However it sounds like we might have some disagreement over the fundamental paths that we take to get there. From the wiki: “Singer rejects rights as a moral ideal independent from his utilitarianism based on interests” — whereas I hold rights primary and consider utilitarianism to be nothing more than what it is: utilitarian, meaning that although we may ultimately have to make utilitarian choices that conflict with rights, I see no reason to bestow moral “rightness” on those choices, nor do I believe utilitarianism can ever satisfy the is-ought dichotomy. But I digress significantly. Anyway I will definitely have to put some of Singer’s work on my reading list.

Oh what the hell, we’ve come this far already, might as well lay out my position in brief:

• All entities have equal natural rights. But those rights only matter if the entity in question wants the rights respected. Ergo the natural (negative) right-to-life requires sapience — self-awareness.
• We can as a society create and grant artificial (positive) rights over and above natural rights if we collectively so agree, provided said positive rights do not unreasonably conflict with the natural rights of another.
• We don’t know when sapience begins. But direct observation suggests that it probably isn’t until long after birth.
• Therefore, while a person’s natural right to life likely begins sometime after birth, we are justified in granting a positive right to life to a developing baby; but not prior to birth, which would make potential slaves of half the human race.

Fair warning: comments are welcome, but jeebus-loves-fetuses- and -you’re-a-murderer style ranting will most likely be edited to make it funnier.

Get Our Troops Out Now

But hey, what does he know. He’s just an experienced former ambassador who actually understands Middle Eastern culture. Surely a bunch of Senators know better.

Last night I indulged in a much needed night-at-home-doing-squat, and popped in a DVD of the Birdman of Alcatraz. Good film, interesting story about a man finding his humanity in solitary confinement by raising birds, eventually becoming a renowned expert who cured a number of avian diseases. It’s based on the true story of a convict named Robert Stroud, though there seems to be some consensus that he never did become quite the kindly, sympathetic character that the movie portrays. Nevertheless I’m sure the work he did and the resulting help he gave to birds and bird lovers went a long way towards balancing his karma. And I suspect the film may have had some influence on Shawshank (note the similar speeches on “rehabilitation”), so there’s that.

Of course it does so happen that this makes a good lead-in to an overdue post getting us back into the diary of the California trip — we did leave off at Alcatraz. I took a lot of pictures again so I’ll just post a few of my favorites here and point you to the Flickr set for the rest.

Shots of the island & prison exterior:

Alcatraz is also yet another story about European Illegal Immigrants screwing over the natives. This probably deserves more attention, perhaps in another post sometime, for now I think the sign says a lot:

Famous inmates, including the Birdman:

Random shot inside a cell:

From the LOLcat Bible:

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat waz invisible, An he maded the skiez An da Urf, but he no eated it.

2 The Urfs wus witout shapez An wus dark An scary An stufs, An he rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.

4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stufs, An seperatered teh lite from dark An stufs but taht wuz ok cuz cats can seez in teh dark An not tripz ovr nethin. an Ceiling Cat sayz u mus hav da moneyz 2 git da milkz.

5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. Teh evning An morning was teh first day.

[via (evil)amy]

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