Cassowaries Rant

In response to Joel Parsons again

Here we have a collection of relatively short responses to some of The Bench’s recent posts.

In response to ‘Julian and Andrew Bolt’

As an interesting note, the reason we have separation of church and state in Australia (and it is in our constitution) is more because we had people coming from England, Ireland and Scotland, which had different popular/state religions: the Anglicans would’ve been upset with the Catholic Church or the Kirk; Catholics with the Anglican church or the Kirk; members of the Kirk with anything but the Kirk. I guess the question you have to ask if you want to know if it’s a good thing is if the means justify the ends…

At any rate, as far as the rest of Parson’s post on anti-vilification laws, I’m going to have to agree with him. What was described was nothing but corruption and entirely disgusting. I’ll even agree with him that we should get rid of them: but I’ll justify this with there should be no need for them (should be as opposed to is); on the other hand, perhaps anti-vilification laws do nothing more than create what we claim they’re meant to remove. Furthermore, affirmative action probably does more harm than good; revolution cannot start from without or you get Communist Russia/China.

In response to ‘Feedback—again’

• It seems to me that Joel’s saying living in Eltham makes you more successful. I know he knows that’s utter bullshit: there’s nothing about a particular area that will make you better able to exploit others. At least, you’ve disregarded the fact that being better able to exploit others causes them to be able to afford to live there, but not moving out of an area certainly increases the prices… I guess the other option is that perhaps you have more of a community spirit then other suburbs, but I’d be surprised if this were so: most newer areas have been designed to make community somewhat difficult, in spite of claims to the contrary.
• I’m not sure what house prices were like a decade ago, but relative to other similar areas (which is not Toorak but other relatively new outer suburbs), were they higher? I think that’s the question you have to ask. People who bought houses in Endeavour Hills probably did so because they were cheaper there than in Eltham, so they were better able to afford it. You must remember that inner suburbs haven’t always been as popular as they are now.
• I’d put the Labor Party as right-authoritarians-but-relatively-centre.

In response to ‘More Feedback’

Firstly, the name of the blog was Cassowaries Rant, that being the plural of a noun followed by the third person plural of a verb. Unfortunately, there seems to be some difficulty in grasping this (I’m not sure that anyone who’s made use of my blog’s name has got it right), so I’ve since renamed it to something that should be easier to spell. Don’t feel like it was your fault, though, Joel: I’ve been thinking of renaming it for a while but couldn’t think of anything suitably witty.

Anyway, thanks for the response and nevermind the wait. Over the weekend, I came across the theory of Anarchism. While it is an extremely freedom-loving, like me, and left-wing, like me, theory, I’m not sure how far I can agree with it. I had been planning on making a longer post, but because I haven’t posted here in over a week, and because I would like a quite thorough introduction to anarchism (which An Anarchist FAQ certainly provides in its over 500 pages) before I make my decision regarding it, the longer post will have to wait. But until I’ve made it, which will hopefully thoroughly explain my ideas of how society should work, and the light all my posts sholud be read in, this post my seem slightly contradictory or surprising: this is not reflecting a change of view, but a possible change in my understanding of humanity.

Till then, some questions about your ideal government.

Firstly, I’m not sure if government is the best term to describe it with. Instead of governing, you want it to protect.

Secondly, would there be elections with this government? It seems that they would be superfluous, as there would be no policies because once you get minarchism, it would be very difficult to go back to a welfare state (and, of course, the inverse is difficult). The only question is which freedoms will need protection (i.e. the freedom to exploit people who want to live in relative comfort or the freedom to live in relative comfort, which I think summarises the right libertarian and left libertarian ideas, respectively); my curiosity lies in how easy it would be for a society of that sort to swing between the two (I don’t ask you to hypothesise on this, and whether or not elections are allowed will probably have minimal effect on it. I’m asking if you think elections will be superfluous in this scenario or if you think there will be some use for them, and if so: what?).

Thirdly, what will there be to prevent a government whose sole interest is in freedoms from removing them? We’ve seen the freedom-loving George W. Bush Administration strip back many of the freedoms enjoyed by Americans with the interestly named USA PATRIOT Act, 2001, or the DMCA, 2000. Would such a minimal government retain a monopoly on physical violence? I can certainly see legislation (or whatever equivalent may exist—and any organisation must have some) like the USA PATRIOT Act being used to argue that fighting against anti-anti-freedom fighters is illegal (who fight because they’re being fought against when trying to remind the government what ‘freedom of speech’ means). I think it best to look at all possibilities: it is things like these which make me unsure of anarchism—though by the same token, I’d feel safer with no government than with one with no distractions.

Fourthly, I’m not sure how you conclude that taxes are the only bills we’re forced to pay. Explain to me how I’m able to get out of paying for my food without (a) going hungry or (b) stealing (remembering all the while that food isn’t magickable up out of nowhere, and requires, among other things, land to be grown on, something to start its existence, and, in general, time before it becomes self-sustaining). If anything, I’d say that food and water bills are closer to the only ones we’re forced to pay: plenty of people live without a roof over their head, without a job; how many live without food and water?

Finally, the point about Nazi Germany almost doesn’t justify your belief when taken from a broad enough perspective. But, after all, it was governments that limited Germany’s ability to prosper hence sticking the German people between a rock and a hardplace that lead to the Nazi Party being voted in. Though IIRC Germany wasn’t especially democratic before the war that lead to it all… At any rate, in Usenet and forums with geeks and similar venues, there is a general rule that (1) the longer any discussion goes for, the higher the chance the Nazies will be mentioned and (2) once this has happened, whoever made mention of them has officially lost the argument and everyone can pack up and go home. I recommend avoiding the use of Nazies: they are an appeal to irrational emotionality, hatred, and violence, rather than to intellect and thought. Yes, you will be bagged for bringing them up: but you certainly deserve it. Nazies are not an argument.

Mozilla Firebird

Mozilla Firebird is a Windows app. Go home Firebird.

Beyond my comprehension

It’s amazing to think that that black Stuff on my Hand was only Moments before a living, breathing Creature. I need another Solution to the Problem of Insects, lest it drive me Mad.

The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel and The Zahir, I think, will haunt me till the end of my days.

Two new sections

Because I’m sure you care so much, I have two new and incomplete sections on my website: Surveys and Codes, which has, surprisingly enough, the results of surveys and things like the geek, blogger and conlanger codes; and a Colophon. If you don’t know what a colophon is, it’s basically an about page, except that it’s the older term, used when the only written medium was printed.

Peanuts

Do you know what I just read in a medical journal? It said that a person who is deprived of his blanket by a stupid beagle who has it made into a sport coat cannot survive for more than forty-eight hours!

That must be an interesting medical journal.

More Discrimination

Now in response to Mason’s post. He’ll probably stop posting on this topic because everything he says will be argued against or something… People have a habit of giving up on conversations, which rather bemuses and disappoints me.

It may be a transitional period in the 2000s now, but has anything really changed? Like a seesaw, the balance is shifting, but not to the middle - it’s just swung to the other end. You can’t have you cake and eat it too - there still isn’t equality in today’s society, the roles have merely been reversed.

There has been no swing. Men, I hope I made clear, have always suffered, and continue to suffer. Now we’re stereotyped too; so be it. Women are still not in the best position: when briefly flipping through the thing about high earners in the Age today, I noticed a dearth of females. In fact, I was surprised and then surprised at my surprise (metasurprised?) when I noticed a photo of one on the second spread.

As long as equality is defined as a monogendered culture, and as long as discriminations against one group don’t cancel out discriminations against another, there will be no equality. I think that in any group of more than a handful of people, there will inheritely be inequality. (I don’t necessarily think that we should therefore not work against any inequalities that we can, au contraire, but surprise at it I think is a waste of time.

A quote I can agree with :)

Thus quoth wackybrit on the Slashdot article about the existence of Tomacco:

Everyone seems to set about making the impossible things in TV shows become a reality. Perhaps we need to start a TV show where geeks get laid by hot chicks all the time?

Discrimination

(Just a note about this and every post: if it’s indented, it’s a quote. If it’s indented and in quote marks (and, now, italicised), it’s a quote of a quote. These are the general rules of typography.)

Joel Parsons, who I went to school with, wrote this on his blog, The Bench. (Sorry, that’s almost a direct quote from his page, but I felt like doing it :) It is sometimes in response to Julian’s comment to Joel, but this is my site and the only people who can stop me opining on it are Jon Washington and Brandeis University in the US, who provide the bandwidth. Though the US government may be able to because I think the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 in its wisdom limited the constitutional freedoms to American citizens, and I’m not one of them. But then it’d only be a matter of time before I got another site somewhere else…

Anyway, enough rambling.

Now, leaving aside the question of who created us

God invented the passive for a reason. Who implies a creatorbeing. I think you meant leaving aside the question of how we were created, but that’s just me and irrelevantly included because I’m most punctilious.

Australia has a rich tradition of self-parody, not just among people from anglo saxon backgrounds, but among other groups as well. Just check out a TV show like Fat Pizza, or a movie like The Castle to see this. It would be a tragedy to see this destroyed by the anti discrimination bureacrats.

Anti-discrimination bureaucrats would not seek to destroy self-parody (which is not discrimination). What we did at Melbourne High was not (always) self-parody. It was parodying others. Like you, though, and most sane people, I say that parodying others isn’t wrong. It’s this thing called humor. My younger brother especially bemuses me on this front. He’s not a Yank, a Wog, an Pom, a Frog, so even if there was anything wrong about making a joke about Yanks, Wogs, Poms, Frogs or whatever, I don’t see why he should then turn around and call me racist for it—it’s not like I was hurting someone on the grounds of place of birth (which I would say is utterly stupid). I’m just being more of a pedant, mostly to include some sort of a reply to this section.

The word discriminate means to make a choice. So when we see the Government appointing bureacrats to and giving funding to anti discrimination boards, then you have to wonder why it is they don’t want us to have a choice.

And the word sinister means left-handed (this is more extreme than your example, but that’s it’s point). Going to a very basic and misleading definition of something to prove a point isn’t helpful, to your argument or to yourself. We know what discriminate means. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to discuss discrimination. If discrimination was simpling mak[ing] a choice, then positive discrimination would be making a positive choice, and I think you and I will both agree in disputing that.

Here beginneth a more interesting reply, hopefully, to a later post.

Whilst there is a rich vein currently being used for comedy in regards to the dumb, working father, do you feel at all offended by this? Truly?

I’m personally concerned by the way people think it’s okay to paint me with one brush because I’m a white male, while painting others with a different brush because they’re not.

[Snipping observation of using women to sell things. But by the way—maybe it’s just the train line I’m on (Dandenong), but I would say that the Pepsi ads with the annoying guy are the more common.]

The point is, there’s a hell of a long way to go before the balance of discrimination remotely tips towards the other side. Women are continually in the 21st century in our so-called civilised society used as attention grabbers to sell goods. Making fun of recurring themes is not heading down a misandrist path.

My understanding is that ours is the only society that has tried to be monogendered. Most societies have probably had two, some three, and a few with more. But the idea that a single gender can work seems incredibly stupid to me. There’s but two possible ways it can work, that I can think of:

1. We can all work at home, all looking after the kids etc. While this might seem to be a very nice solution, it would require us to limit what our children can do. In order to have anything like the levels of learning we currently have, everyone would have to be an expert in everything. While being an expert in everything is one of my dreams, I find it highly unlikely that the majority of people would ever care. People who I’m IMing will sometimes ask me what I’m looking at, and when I say I’m reading about konstruktivist typography, they’ll wonder why they ever asked.
2. A child will not receive it’s mother’s love (or some similar equivalent), because childhood caring will be farmed out like a business. Socialist Governments tried this, I understand, and the general picture it was painted in is certainly as negative as I feel towards it. (Not that a mother will never see her child—she’ll just be at work all day and it’ll be being cared by carers. Nor that a mother is the only person who can provide this kind of love, just that it’s the prototypical one.)

I’m not entirely certain that these can work.

Next point, the sexualisation of women. I’m afraid to tell you that there is nothing uncivilised about this. Oh, and there’s nothing that says in the twenty-first century, we have to be at the peak of civilisation. In fact, many people would have it that many of us were uncivilised, because their parents weren’t born in Europe or in America or Australia of parents born in Europe. Kenan Malik wrote an article on why all languages need not be preserved which quite nicely expresses this view, though with a different intent. I think he might have more articles on a similar theme, though I haven’t yet read them. Nonetheless, and while this is a very minor accident by the original poster, but I’ll point to my introductory paragraph, let’s all do away with the ‘in the $n$th century’ argument.

Back to the next argument. It is not discriminating against women when we use them as advertisements. In fact, it’s probably discriminating against men because we won’t be able to pick up these jobs. I can’t entirely argue against this point, and even Joel Parsons’ reply of very true can’t be used because it might relate solely to the last sentence. I’ll just mention the fact that advertising wouldn’t work without attention grabbers. If men and women alike respond to pictures of women (the pictures of men that men are allowed to respond to are limited much more in variety, but this couldn’t possibly by an example of discrimination against men, could it?), it isn’t discrimination to use women. So long as these women made the choice to be used in this advertising (Joel, I think, should agree here if he’s consistent, but to my next conjunction he shouldn’t require) and had ligitimate alternatives, I would go so far as to say there was nothing wrong with it.

(I don’t like those ads using children as sexual items, or in ways that reflect adults being used as sexual items. In fact, and I realise this is being very conservative of me, I would be so bold as to say that it shouldn’t happen. I would say that Condura is an example of using this kind of advertising at South Yarra station, but I’m not entirely sure if it’s Condura or not and don’t want to commit libel or whatever it is.)

Thirdly (I think it’s thirdly), there are many things men aren’t allowed to do by society. These are the unwritten laws of man. We’re much less able to seek the comfort of someone who’s had the same experiences as us because we’re men. We aren’t as able to be as concerned about our health. One of the areas of Health Psychology that Health Psychologists are concerned about is getting men to the doctor. We just don’t go. Sure, it might be stupidity, but it might also be ignorance. How many times have you been to the library and seen advertisements telling women that they should have their breasts scanned for breast cancer?—I haven’t been to the library recently, but when I used to, they were all over the place. Did I ever see warnings about prostate cancer? My sisters and me and my brothers used to argue about which sex was better. They used the argument that women live longer. I didn’t know it then, but the reason isn’t because they’re built better. It’s because of something that obviously isn’t discrimination, but must be bloody similar.

But perhaps it’s not as real. That males commit suicide more often than women is obviously not a fact. We can ignore:

Based on the latest mortality rates, a boy born in 2000 was expected to live to 76.6 years, on average, while a girl would be expected to live to 82.1 years, on average. However, a boy and girl aged 15 in 2000 would be expected to live to ages 77.2 and 82.6 years, respectively.

[Not seeing the source? Perhaps you need to upgrade your browser to one that supports standards.]

can’t we? Of course, I don’t pretend that the entire difference is due to discrimination. But some of it is (I would cite my source, but unfortunately you need a password to access copyrighted information here).

At least discrimination against women in our civilised society doesn’t result in them dying earlier. At least discrimination against minority groups happens by other groups who realise what their doing. At least society (though not necessarily every member) looks upon other discriminations in negative ways.

The line between fair and unfair is so blurry, it isn’t funny.

Actually, in my view, the line is perfectly clear. Those who discriminate with the intention of harming the discriminatee are doing something bad. Those who want to a Dutch helper because their Dutch should be at liberty to do so. I will admit that it might become a bit difficult when a society thinks it’s right to discriminate against a particular people, but generally the reason for such apparent rightness is something like they killed our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s dog or they discriminate against us or they were our slaves; apparent rightness isn’t the same thing as with-no-harm-intended. (Apropos of the Dutch, Oom Harrie en Tante Mien, a great-uncle and great-aunt from Zeeland (Oma’s—grandma’s—brother and his wife) have come over to Australië for a month.)

It is incredibly subjective as well, so that it may seem okay to some people for the medical clinic with Italian patients to discriminate against non-Italian doctors, but the same people would be shocked if a medical clinic with Anglo-Saxon patients was allowed to discriminate against non-Anglo-Saxon doctors.

That isn’t the example of the subjectivitivy of fairness; it’s an example of the double standards some people deem it right to apply. From a more objective perspective, that would be entirely legitimate.

[…] Thus, if a person wants to become an alcoholic and spend their whole life either drunk or hung over, then the liberal government will not stop them, as long as they aren’t infringing on the freedoms of anyone else, because the liberal government understands that this person cannot change until their decisions change, and while the government could force their hand (i.e. banning alcohol) it cannot change the source of that decision (i.e. their heart or mind).

I think, though, there’s the problem that someone might enjoy being a drunk, but not realise that (a) they’re doing themselves a disservice and (b) they can have a better time if they aren’t drunk. Furthermore, what brought them to decide that life seems good drunk has to be countered. If I’m in an ASC when I make the decision, and by staying drunk, I won’t leave this ASC, I think that there’s certainly a responsibility for the government to help correct this (though they might just start an organisation that’s supposed to be as independent as possible). But outlawing alcohol is certainly not the best idea. Are the ads telling us to slip, slop, slap or stop smoking wrong?

Even though I don’t have a headache, I hope that made anywhere near as much sense as Joel’s post, or was anywhere near as eloquent and intellectual as his. I also hope that I did not bore you to death with what is surely the longest post I’ve ever made. Nevertheless, the bulk of this was intended to show that men, and at least as often white men as not, are the butt of sexism, but the very nature of the sexism prevents us from having or seeking out as many avenues of support as women and minority groups have. Additionally, I sought to show that there is a form of discrimination that should be illegal and a form that should fall into the same basket as discrimination based on skill.

Why the links are still blue and red.

If you’ve wondered why the new Design here hasn’t been finished, the Answer is that I’m a Procrastinator. I put up the new Site before it was finished and now finishing the Design is something I need to do. Unfortunately, this Ploy to get me to Study won’t actually work because (a) I have nowhere to move in my Room because I’ve been tidying it up (it’s almost finished so there’s a lot of Stuff on the Floor waiting to go to the recycling Bin—this is the first time I’ve cleaned it up since god-knows-when), and (b) there’s no Due Date on getting my Webpage done, but there is a Timelimit to studying for Exams, so I can’t procrastinate from Webpage with Exams.

I mention this because Structured Procrastination may be an Answer to my Problems. I’ll probably start using it just after I’ve converted my Website to XHTML/2.0…

Actually, I think I made the Links all Blue, but that’s also not finished. Visited Links need to be another Color. Not to mention the Footer is very ugly looking.