"I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves." - Bruce Grocott

Random Playlist Song: King's Singers - The Pirate King (from The Pirates of Penzance)

***

Low redefinition is often more brazen and without any good justification. When people say "chocolate is an addictive drug, "everyone is bisexual" or "altruism is ultimately just self-interest", they are in each case broadening the meaning of the central concepts to make what would otherwise be an outrageous claim plausible. In order for low redefinition to be a legitimate argumentative move, we need to know why the broader meaning is preferable to the usual, narrower one. Otherwise, it's a bad move. (Bad Moves: Low redefinition, By Julian Baggini)

"People who tell you they're not superstitious are lying." - Frankie Dettori, Jockey, Observer Magazine, 5 January 2002.

Dettori... believes that everyone is superstitious. The problem is, of course, that some people claim not to be. If, however, he adopts the maxim "People who tell you they're not superstitious are lying," then no such avowals count as evidence against him. Accepting you are superstitious supports his thesis; denying that you are simply shows you are a liar, and again fits the thesis. (Bad Moves: Immunisation against error)


HWMNBN seems to commit a lot of bad moves.

And an interesting argument against political correctness/censorship for fear of offence:

As John Stuart Mill persuasively argued, mere offence cannot be the basis for a restriction of action, or else we'd have to ban anything that anyone takes offence at. Which given the variety of human responses means just about everything. (which does need qualification, but I shan't bother)

***

Something I posted in a comments box on marriage:

"From a realist’s perspective, marriage is really a holdover from the old days when society needed people to form childbearing units for the good of society. Now besides contraceptives we have, if anything, too many people.

Even if you want to talk about commitment and such, I’d argue that marriage actually demonstrates a lack of commitment. It is easy to sign your life away on a piece of paper, chaining you to some other person, but to actually put in the effort to make a relationship work, and stay with your partner through thick and thin over decades – now that is what I call commitment.

A silly analogy might help for those who are befuddled – if you lock someone in a room and he doesn’t leave, you cannot say that he was staying the room of his own free will. But if you leave the door open and he doesn’t leave, you can then truly say that he didn’t want to leave.

Marriage is really just symbolic (unless you want to apply for a HDB flat). What’s in a name?"

***

The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense: A Guide for Edgy People

Book Description
Have you ever wanted to impress your friends with your erudition and sophistication? Are you edgy enough that you could pass muster as an innovative and original thinker, if only you knew what to say? If so, this is the book for you. Within a few short minutes, you’ll have learnt all you could surely want to know about the thoughts and language of the world’s most fashionable intellectuals. Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, even Alain de Botton, they’re all here.

The world, of course, is full of fashionable nonsense. Feng Shui, pilates, Naomi Campbell, Pop Idol, Manolo Blahnik footwear, the list is endless. However, this dictionary is concerned with one particular species of fashionable nonsense, the kind found in certain unswept corners of academia.

Have you ever wanted to know what phrases like scopic drive, subversive performativity, hegemonic discourse mean? No? Well that’s sensible, and fortunately this book won’t tell you. What it will tell you, however, is how to salt them into your conversation should you ever be trapped at a party with a crowd of trendy academics.

So here you have an ironic user’s guide, a slim volume of cod pedantry. It offers an array of ludicrous, exaggerated, self-contradicting definitions and explanations of jargon popular amongst trendy academics and intellectuals. The result is very funny. But there is a serious thought here; much of the language in question is in the service of ideas that are not only silly and wrong, but also bad and harmful. This book is a contribution to the fight back on behalf of reason and truth.

Synopsis
For decades academics in many universities have been churning out fashionable nonsense, creating entirely new academic disciplines such as difference feminism, deconstructionism, the sociology of knowledge. Common to all is clotted jargon, tortured syntax and an unreadable style hiding the fact that these writers are not actually saying anything. In The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense two of Britain's leading cultural commentators provide a handy, accessible guide to the various trendy "discourses" that have steadily eroded our culture's foundation of reason.

***

Eton or the zoo?

"The discovery of a new species of human poses exciting questions about who we are. How would we treat this close relative if one were found alive today?

[...]

His very existence among us would make us question all over again, what it is to be human.

We are not used to this because our ancestors successfully killed off all our close relatives.

This has created a chasm between us and the other animals, a chasm so big that religion went as far as to say that we are not even related to them. Humans have souls and they do not.

Darwin put a stop to this nonsense with his theory of evolution, but amazingly the blindingly obvious truth he discovered is still resisted by large sections of the human population.

They stubbornly continue to insist that we are some kind of special creation.

The arrival of "Mini-Man" is going to give them nightmares.

How can he be "semi-special"? That won't make sense. He can't very well have a semi-soul.

[...]

Personally, I long to be told that he can talk.

It will make him a much more effective bridge between us and the apes, forcing religions to re-examine many of their basic beliefs.

In theory, the existence of Mini-Man should destroy religion, but I can already hear the fanatics claiming that he has been put on earth by the Devil simply to test our faith.

Which brings up an even more intriguing question: does Mini-Man perform special burial rituals and does he therefore believe in an afterlife? "


Those who wrote in to contest that mini-man will destroy religion forget that most religions claim that we, humans, are special in some way.

Mini-man does not just prove evolution (yet again), it challenges the presumption that humans are special, and specifically the presumption by the followers of the three main monotheistic faiths (which aren't actually representative of most other religions) that we were created to rule over all other species.

***

Abortion row fears over eye cure - "US scientists have successfully restored a woman's vision using eye cells taken from aborted foetuses."

Mark Henderson: Junk medicine: Anti-vaccine activists - "Homoeopathy is not the only source of magic and miracles in which McTaggart believes. She is also keen on spiritual healing, psychic powers and other paranormal bunkum. The reasons are spelt out in The Field, a triumph of pseudoscience purporting to chart discoveries that “seemed to overthrow the current laws of biology, chemistry and physics”. The Universe, she argues, is pervaded by a field of vibrations “like the Force in Star Wars”. This connects human minds and bodies in “a packet of pulsating energy constantly interacting with this vast energy sea” and explains the supernatural phenomena she accepts as real. There is no evidence for such gibberish, which rests on misconceptions about quantum mechanics. This bit of physics is so weird that the great Richard Feynman famously pronounced that nobody really understands it — but it is often invoked by believers in the paranormal. About the only thing experts agree on is that quantum effects do not support homoeopathy, extra- sensory perception or any of the other nonsense in The Field."

Colostrum Cookies (Colostrum - The thin, human breast milk produced shortly after delivery and before the regular breast milk is produced. Colostrum is rich in protein and immune factors that can help the infant resist infection.)

Thanks to "Zero Tolerance", You are Not Safe - Zero Tolerance is reminiscent of the SAF's security policy.

Board game cheats keeping children on their toes - "All young people need preparing for the outside world and playing board games with tricky adults is a useful introduction to that."

Nipple Piercing Led to Lactation - "Doctors in Boston report that a young woman began producing milk, apparently because her nipple rings stimulated her breasts into thinking she was nursing. This is believed to be the first time that anyone has reported a connection between body piercing and lactation."
This makes Milkmen: Fathers Who Breastfeed just about plausible.