Rant On Offensive Words

Earlier in the week I wrote about offensive language in a blog post regarding an Australian man found guilty of offending the wrong people in Saudi Arabia, and was subsequently lashed for his actions. Today I want to look at the somewhat curious example of offensive words, as opposed to offensive language.

There is I think, an important distinction between these concepts worth noting. Offensive language doesn’t necessarily infer the use of offensive words. I could write a wildly offensive sentence aimed at Christians or people of a specific race, without having to employ a single unsavoury word. Instead you would have to listen to what I am saying beyond the use of single words, to understand what the crux of my theoretical diatribe was.

There are however people who balk at the very mention of what they believe to be offensive words, regardless of how they are employed.

South Park dealt with the seemingly magical power some people believe curse words have in this episode. Yet Trey Parker and Matt Stone clearly understand the mundane nature of such words, and that as our languages evolve and change, these things inevitable lose their power (unlike those in their show, who retain their cursed nature, to disastrous effect).

Indeed the dulling down of offensive words over time seems to be the norm, with the graveyard of former swears being populated by such innocuous words as leg (they preferred limb in the old days, pants ("Thats pants!" was the exclamation) and even occupy, which had sexual connotations that make the Occupy Movement of last year all the more confusing. Then there are the other swears which have just been blunted, but still retain their core meaning; like crap, damn, bloody and bugger.

But the reason I have brought this up today isn't just so i can start listing curse words (though that would be fun), it is due to this story that popped up in the news a couple of days ago.

Here we have an 18 year old American called McKay Hatch upset over the fact that a toddler in a TV show says what appears to be the word ‘fuck’. The episode is titled Little Bo Bleep, and apparently handles this situation quite delicately, and presents it in a most benign way.

In actuality the young actress says fudge (so Mr Hatch can at least take solace that her mind has not been poisoned by her having to utter this four letter word) and in the show her mouth is pixilated, and the word bleeped out. I always do find it amusing that we bleep out the word, but generally allow the consonants to remain intact.

Nevertheless  Hatch  takes exception to this. As a founding member of the 'No Cussing Club', he believes that 'cussing' not only degrades people lives, but hurts the world around you, and in swearing (using the oath giving meaning of the word here) to give up 'cussing', you can improve the lives of the people around you..

Representatives of the show explained their rationale for this episode, which seems perfectly reasonable:

"We thought it was a very natural story since, as parents, we've all been through this,"
This reminds me of a proud moment as a parent when our son first used a swear word, and did so in perfect context. It was upon pulling up at a petrol station, only to find the bowser out of action (and after explaining this to Harrison), that our son disappointingly exclaimed “Not working? Oh shit”. Brilliant!

Not this Bowser obviously.

In a sense I respect those who are offended by the concepts behind statements more than those who are offended by the mere words being used. Though as I mentioned in my previous post, you still need to be able to elucidate in a rational manner why it is you are offended, and why such offence should be taken seriously.

Concepts can be offensive, but it is rare that I would think a word in itself, devoid of any meaning, should be considered offensive. And make no mistake; that is what some people believe.

Fuck is one of the greatest words around, there have been books written about it, studies done into its psychological benefits, and praise levelled on it as being the second greatest gift that the British Empire bestowed upon the world (the first of which, if you are wondering, is the great game of soccer). Such a versatile word is not in of itself offensive, I think its fucking great; and I’m not alone.

However as with most hastily thought of rules, there are exceptions. In this case I think words that may warrant a further analysis regarding their intrinsically offensive nature are those specifically designed for more nefarious means. This would include things like racial epithets, discriminatory language, and other such derogatory terms. An obvious example of this, and perhaps the most powerful in today’s society, is the word nigger.

Nigger can be seen as offensive in almost any circumstance (and I'm going to ignore the whole 'nigga' to take back the word argument for simplicity's sake), because it brings along with it the implicit assumption of a stereotype originally directly linked to the word. A nigger was less than human; a nigger was property. And to say this word to someone these days is generally an attempt to remind them of this.

Yet even in this regard, people can take it too far. While reading an article on the word nigger by the late great Christopher Hitchens the other day, I was interested and rather amused to read this passage relating his introduction to the taboo surrounding it in American society:

“I found this out myself recently, when I went on Hardball With Chris Matthews. It was just after John Kerry had (I thought unintentionally) given the impression that young people joining the armed forces were stupid. Chris asked me where liberals got the idea that conservatives were dumb. I said that it all went back to John Stuart Mill referring to the Tories as "the stupid party." After a while, the Tories themselves began to use this expression to describe themselves. I added that the word Tory was originally an insult—it means something like brigand in Gaelic—and it had also been adopted, by those at whom it was directed, as a badge of pride. In this respect, I went on to say, it anticipated other such appropriations—impressionist, suffragette—by which the target group inverted the taunt thrown at it and, by a kind of verbal jujitsu, turned it back on its originators. In more recent times, I finished with what I thought was a flourish, the words nigger and queer (and I may have added faggot) had undergone some of the same transmutation.
Very suddenly, we went to a break, and the studio filled with unsmiling people who detached my microphone and announced that the segment was extremely over. My protests were futile. Should I have remembered to cover myself and say "the N-word" instead? It would have seemed somehow inauthentic. Did MSNBC think that anything I had uttered was inflected with the smallest tinge of bigotry? Presumably not. So, what we now have is a taboo, which is something quite different from an agreement on etiquette.”

I apologise for the long citation here, but Hitchens is a man whose prose I find it hard to prune.

But even this shunning of the objective use of the word nigger in the United States pales in comparison to stories such as the Washington D.C. official who was forced to resign after using the world 'niggardly' in a conversation with some co-workers about funding. Niggardly meaning 'not generous' or 'stingy', and having no racial overtones; just sounding a bit reminiscent of another word was enough to cause offense.

There are even those who believe that simply changing the word you are saying in these instances, yet keeping the overall tone and gist of your message, is somehow preferable; particularly if you substitute gibberish, or foreign words, for your expletive. Penn and Teller featured an American lady who believed in just such things on their awesomely named show Bullshit!. She advocated using the word ‘santa vaca’ rather than any English swears, even though this is in itself a swear in a foreign language (it means 'Holy Cow' in spanish, though not that much of a swear). She even created a hand gesture called the ‘whole turkey’ to use in the place of the much more efficient middle finger, when one wants to show others just how they feel (as in her view the 'whole turkey' is better than just 'flipping the bird', as Americans like to call it). This to me is a prime example of someone missing the point. It isn’t the gestures or the words themselves that are offensive, but rather the way they are employed, or the meaning they seek to evoke.

Penn put it very succinctly at the end of the episode whilst frightening a dog all too reminiscent of my own:

Now this post has gone on far longer than i had planned, but I can hardly finish a post on offensive language without including some words from the eminent lover of language, Stephen Fry.

“The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or of a lack of verbal interest is just a fucking lunatic.” – Stephen Fry

So that's it for yet another language rant, of which there appear to be a lot popping up on here. I hope it was enjoyable, but I cant be fucked writing any more.

MM

"I'm offended by that." Well, so f#@king what?”

Is it in bad taste of me to point out that there has been surprisingly little backlash regarding the lashes Mansor Almaribe’s back was recently doled out by the Saudi government? Perhaps it is, but I can’t help think that in the face of such absurdities, perhaps an initial resort to humour is natural if only to help remind ourselves that we are so (hopefully) removed from this form of conduct as a nation.

Physical punishment sanctioned by the courts is in itself such a contentious (and contemptuous) notion, whether it be in the more grotesque manifestation of executions (capital punishment), or the more ‘mild’ examples of state sanctioned physical abuse (corporal punishment); but it is nevertheless all the more hard to swallow when it is used in conjunction with a charge of blasphemy. A charge which when you look at it rationally, is no more than the utterly harmless act of offending someone.

It brings to mind the image of a toddlers understanding of justice. You hurt my sensibilities, so now I am going to hurt you. There is no distinction between real hurt and perceived hurt.

There is a reason this picture is here, and it may become clearer at the end of this post (or if you are more studious with your link following)

The problems I have with blasphemy laws are not solely based on my atheism, though it does help. It is more centred on the fact that these laws lie upon the foundation of one taking offence against their own personal feelings, and seeking to ban this upon others. This might be seen as a rational thing to do, were it not for the fact that what offends me is not only unlikely to, but rarely ever guaranteed to offend others; even on a majority basis.

Anyone can find anything offensive, that doesn’t in itself mean that anything which can be labelled offensive must be curtailed without contestation. Indeed, I am offended by the fact that such things happen. It offends me that in today’s society a country that murders its citizens because they believe them to be witches can be afforded a rational response when they then decide to physically abuse people for offending others.

It offends me, but that in itself doesn’t warrant any action by others. If you can’t back up your offense with some semblance of a rational argument, then why should it be taken seriously? I personally believe that I could very quickly come up with a rational argument supporting my views listed above, and get a hearty proportion of the public agreeing with me. I would offer the same challenge to those whose personal offense is based more on personal taste and sensibilities, than it is any recognition of universal human rights or attributes.

The Australian government has suggested that the Saudi embassy in Australia should go to more effort to explain etiquette to those undertaking the hajj pilgrimage, so that any future instances of offending the ‘companions of the prophet Mohammed’ could be avoided.

It is an interesting thing to ponder, because offense in regard to religious beliefs can be so easily taken, and is in many cases unavoidable. Indeed it only seems to be avoided either by the sloppy thinking of the ‘offendable’, or the careful holding of the tongue by someone able to offend (note: that is usually anyone holding a viewpoint that fails to exactly match those of the ‘offendable’). For instance, Mr Almaribe is a Shiite Muslim. Saudi Arabia is a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, and by predominantly, I mean legally and enforcedly. It is a theocracy where people of certain religions can’t travel to certain areas of the kingdom, and if you apostatise from Islam, you can legally be put to death. Presumably the Sunni contingent of this incident would be suitable offended simply by Almaribe’s opposing faith, were it properly laid out before them. True they are both Muslim, but then again Catholics and protestants are both flavours of Christianity, and look how well they used to get along. This is what I mean when I say that offense can only be mitigated either by sloppy thinking on the offended’s behalf, as they fail to realise the heretic in their midst, or else by silence on the offenders’s behalf, as they hide the aforementioned heresy.

This sort of offense knows no real bounds, and is limited only by how much one is willing to take their own personal feelings about something, and hold it above others rights to do, say, or otherwise express themselves, and any opposing views they may have.

Our government may very well want the embassy to point out how to behave in their country, and what is offensive to their state religion; but one wonders how they could do that in a rigorous sense, and still hope to present a place worth travelling to for the average Australian.

No doubt I would be offensive in this regard, as by my very nature I would fail to adhere to the religious norms, or observe any religious customs. It would only be a matter of how offended people choose to be, not really how offensive I was being. As given enough motivation, a modicum of offense could be found merely in my lack of faith.

Type 'offense' into Google Images and most of the resultant images are of American football....

Perhaps I have let this rant fly on for too long, and maybe I have unjustly correlated offense with blasphemy (and forgotten what I started my post on…). But in all honesty, I can’t see how blasphemy is anything but offense at the religious level.  And in today’s world, so sensitive as it is to things like insults or offense; I can’t help but remember this quote from Stephen Fry who dealt with the subject a few years back:

“It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so fucking what?” - Stephen Fry.

So fucking what indeed.

MM

(p.s. Corporal punishment - Blackadder episode - General Melchett - Stephen Fry. Get it?)

The Kim is Dead; Long Live The Kim

Dead Dear Leader on the far right, podgy new Dear Leader second from the left

In a year seemingly replete with significant deaths, the final month of 2011 has thrown up yet another surprising casualty to the list; though unlike Christopher Hitchens passing, this is one I can feel enlivened about, if only to a degree.

Kim Jong-Il has died. The North Koreans, have lost their dear leader, and the centre of their fervent death-cult. They now move one step closer to an obscene version of their own holy trinity, as no doubt their new Dear Leader (3.0?) will instill his departed father in the same mystical sense of eternal dictatorship as their previous leader, Kim Il-sung, who still technically remains as the head of state, despite his death in 1994.

Unlike the other dictators we have seen deposed, or deceased this past year, news of this death doesn’t really promise to lead to any significant changes in the situation of their oppressed peoples. There are no cheering crowds; only weeping newscasters, and jeering outsiders. There will most likely be no upheaval, but only a transferral of absolute power from one purveyor of the personality cult, on to another. So totally has the individual been replaced by the state in North Korea that one truly wonders if its people yearn for anything other than the world they find themselves in. Or has this hermit state (which sustains itself only on the persistent threat of force and the begrudging acceptance of western nations who give aid for fear of watching millions die), managed to get itself into a position where the totalitarian system has reached its zenith, and true change can never be fostered from within?

Christopher Hitchens called it “...A society where individual life is absolutely pointless, and where everything that is not absolutely compulsory is absolutely forbidden.” [Why Orwell Matters].

The near total control that the North Korean state appears to have over its people’s hopes and dreams has extended to the point where, as in Orwell’s 1984, they appear to genuinely love their dear leader, and the chains that hold them down. Though deep down I can’t help but hope that such oppressive control of the human mind cannot reach the level of saturation that this would imply.

I now strangely find myself hoping for a ‘peaceful’ transition from one tyrant to another. It is an odd feeling to be hoping that a dictator can come to power seamlessly and to be actively wishing this upon those he plans to rule over, but it seems that the alternative could be far worse. At least for now.

As we have seen in previous examples, a change of power in North Korea isn’t cemented  by the exertion of violence against its own people, but rather a show of strength against those the North Korean's view as their absolute enemies; their southern neighbours. We must remember after all, that the Korean War didn’t end, and the period we find ourselves in now is more of an armistice than it is a total cessation of hostilities.

In 1983, while his father was still alive, Kim Jong-Il orchestrated a bombing in Myanmar (cf. Burma) in order to kill senior South Korean officials stationed there, with the death toll amounting to 17 individuals. Then in 1987, Kim Jong-Il raised his personal death toll to 132 after ordering the destruction of a Korean Air jetliner. It is in this way that the emerging leader shows the resolve and strength required to lead his fellow North Koreans in their bitter hatred of any ‘outsiders’, and what they view as the mongrelisation of the Koreans in the south of the peninsular.

Some analysts predicted the change of power from Jong-Il to his youngest son as being cemented when the North Koreans torpedoed the South Korean ship Cheonan back in March of 2010, killing 46 sailors on board. This act was believed to have been orchestrated by the burgeoning dictator, and was followed in September of the same year by his official anointing as the heir to the hermit state’s central position of power. This, combined with the shelling of a South Korean island in late 2010 that killed two soldiers and two civilians, was viewed as Kim Jong-un’s coming of age. A signal that he, like his father, was fit to follow in the footsteps of their Eternal president in keeping the north pure, and their enemies at bay.

That the world puts up with such blatant acts of murder and terrorism from heads of state is astonishing, though at least this year we have managed to do away with two such leaders who had ordered the bombing of passenger jets (three really, if we are willing to call Osama a leader of any repute).

Kim Jong-un is thought to be twenty-seven years old. Note the use of the word ‘thought’ there, as again we see that information is blurred to such an Orwellian extent in the DPRK, that even actual birthdates and ages are a subject of state control. For instance Kim Jong-Il’s birth was said to have taken place in a mountain cabin in North Korea during February 1942, while most analysts think it more likely that he was born in Siberia, during his father’s exile there in 1941. I think I am more willing to believe this side of the story, as the official biography comes complete with the occasion being marked by a double rainbow and a bright star; like some kind of bastardised religious trope.

Subtlety

[Note; It will be interesting to see how North Korea presents their new dear leader to the world, considering their claims of the previous one, such as the fortuitous time he picked up a golf club, and scored eleven hole-in-one’s on the first attempt.]

Though the heir’s ages may not be known with any level of complete certainty, it nevertheless gave me pause to remark to a friend yesterday at the ambivalent reaction this draws up from within me, being myself a man of twenty seven years. It is quite a young age to be put in charge of a nation, which in itself concerns me not just as it runs parallel with my own age (and I dare to say, lack of accomplishment, if hereditary dictatorship can even be mentioned in the same sentence as such a thing), but also because it gives a lot more scope for the future tenure of the reign.

Kaddafi came into power when he was twenty-eight, and managed to keep a hold of the reins for forty-two years until it all came apart this year. Though Kim Jong-un’s father ruled North Korea from 1994 to 2011, he came into power at fifty-two years of age. At the time many people thought that after the death of Dear Leader 1.0, there would be power struggles, and internal turmoil that would prevent Dear Leader 2.0 from retaining absolute power over the state. Yet he managed to do this for seventeen years, with the military firmly backing him. As announcements from the North Korean military seem to suggest a likewise supportive role of Kim Jong-un, it brings to bear the more disturbing possibility that the North Korean’s totalitarian state might continue to exert is control over its hostage population for many years to come.

A young leader may in some cases be viewed as a liability. But in such personality cults, there is somewhat of an advantage in the central core of your dictatorship remaining steadfast amid an ever changing background of democratic world leaders.

It is a worrying situation, but as with all the major changes in the world there is uncertainty around the edges, and as such always room for hope in the future.

Nevertheless I can’t help feel that Rudd’s call for ‘maximum calm’ commits some sort of category mistake.......

Until next time dear reader.

MM

I couldn't resist....

Remembering Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs has died.

Unfortunately I don’t feel at all qualified to write any form of eulogy on the great man, and I wouldn’t want to give it a try, only to find the resultant piece lacking the gravitas that the man is worthy of.

Instead I would like to share a famous speech he made about some lessons he learned in his life, and how he views things in general. It really is a great read, full of wonderful advice, and I think it gives a great picture of the man.

[Note: I saved this text years back, so I can’t remember the source, but it is out there, circa 2005 I think]

Enjoy!

==================================

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

 - Steve Jobs

Is it Quote-worthy or Just Crazy?

I have one of those standard day-a-page calendar things on my desk at work, and every date is emboldened with some quote or words of wisdom from one source or another. Generally they are interesting, sometimes they are inspiring, but some days I really wonder if the people compiling this list are really putting thought into it, or are they just grabbing anything that sounds quoteworthy, in order to fill the required 365 days of a year.

Take today’s instalment for instance:

 “Health is not a condition of matter, but of mind” – Mary Baker Eddy

At first I thought this interesting, perhaps it was a take on perception, or the true meaning of health. But then the more cynical side of me won over, and I began to wonder what came of old Mary, and would she have still shared this view if her health had failed her.

A quick glance at Wikipedia seemed to confirm my wariness; she was the founder of the Christian Science religion.

Now I am an atheist, and quite critical of religion in all its guises, but don’t think that I am being too quick to judge here solely on her Christian nature. Christian Science is at best a ridiculous superstition, and at worst a dangerous and immoral practise.

The crux of Christian Science ‘thinking’ revolves around the fact that Jesus didn’t use drugs, or employ any hygiene measures in promoting health, and as such they must not be necessary. Eddy and her sect instead believe that all illnesses can be overcome through proper knowledge of God, hence the quote about health being a condition of the mind.

Sit there and think about a god, or read your holy books, and magically you will get better; it is a laughable concept, especially given that this lady was living only just over one hundred years ago, and clearly had hundreds of years of medical theory available to her.

Pictured: Mary Baker Eddy

Not pictured: Sanity

Here is an example of the ‘Science’ she employed, in a passage straight from one of her texts:

“It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his healing. … The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 143:5, 367:3)

This religious resistance to medical advances is a constant theme in history, as even things like the vaccination of people against the plague was derided by zealot individuals as being against their gods will.

It should be noted that Mary once claimed to have healed herself of an injury using this method, however her local homeopath went on the record as saying that the injury itself was not chronic, and its disappearance was unremarkable.

You just know it must be humbug when even a homoeopath thinks it bunk.

It is also worth noting that though Mary claimed dot have been a sickly child throughout her life, there has also been suggestions that this was more psychosomatic than anything, and just goes to show that some illness is all in the mind, but should nevertheless be treated through medical, and not magical, means.

But let’s not forget that laughable though it is, it is also a dangerous practise. It is a practise that encourages parents and loved ones to forego seeking medical help, and to wait around, affording whatever ailments afflict them more time to do damage. It is no surprise that these Christian Scientists have found themselves in courts multiple times on charges of neglect, and failure to seek medical aid.

Isn’t it bad enough that we have religious nuts out there in this day and age that strap their 13 year old daughters to chairs and drown them trying to exorcise evil spirits, or likewise cause the death of a four year old boy by smothering his face in the dirt in the name of exorcism?

Not only do these atrocities happen, but we still have to apparently tell parents that the best hope for healing their children is medicine, and not prayer (read: sitting around doing nothing). I mean prayer is easy enough to supplement on the side, so why not simply do all you can for your child, and get a doctor around also?

And that in closing, is why I think this quote was not worth printing.......

There, rant nicely tied up.

MM

The Dullest Day is Actually Quite Interesting

This year has been a pretty busy one. We have had tsunamis, Arab revolutions, a new sovereign nation, nuclear scares, a royal wedding, covert assassinations, the capture of war criminals, the final space shuttle flight; and I think some guy from Australia even rode a bike in France quite well.
We should think ourselves lucky that we find ourselves in such interesting times.
In fact this clustering of seemingly significant events this year made me think of an article I read a while back about the distribution of interesting events in the past hundred years. Ironically the most interesting thing to come from this study of significance was the identification of the past century’s dullest day.

Apparently this day was the 11th of April, 1954.

According to Computer programmer William Tunstall-Pedoe, the only things of note that happened on that day was “a general election was held in Belgium, a Turkish academic was born and an Oldham Athletic footballer called Jack Shufflebotham died”.
I checked Wikipedia and couldn’t find anything else of note myself, but this study went a lot further than I did in my idle clicking. It compiled over 300 million facts about world events over the past one hundred years, and created a matrix which garnered importance from not only the events themselves, but also from how they were linked to each other.
From this the program (True Knowledge) was able to pinpoint that particular Sunday as the most humdrum of days on record.
Remarking on this fact the Cambridge researcher explained "Nobody significant died that day, no major events apparently occurred and, although a typical day in the 20th century has many notable people being born, for some reason that day had only one who might make that claim - Abdullah Atalar, a Turkish academic”.
Now I am not going to go into how objective this conclusion is, or how we define what a boring, or significant event was; after all that wasn’t even the purpose of the program to begin with. What I am interested in however is the more philosophical ramifications of this title ‘Most boring day’, or perhaps, ‘least interesting day’. Because to me, as soon as you figure out that this day was objectively the day with the least going on, well that makes it seem more interesting if you ask me.
Consider if you wrote these days down in a list from most interesting, to least. Wouldn’t you find the last entry somewhat more significant given its new position at the nadir of importance? But then what?
So it becomes more interesting, and then moves up the list, but then instantly loses the very quality that gave it importance, and is surpassed in dullness by its now slightly less important, but at the same time all the more interesting neighbour.
Perhaps I am just rambling (I have been known to do this), but this reminds me of an interesting paradoxical riddle I once heard called the Unexpected Hanging Paradox.
In this paradox we are presented with plight of a prisoner, condemned to execution, and at the mercy of a judge administering the sentence. The judge informs the prisoner that they will be executed on a weekday the following week, at noon, but that the day of the execution will be a surprise to the prisoner. That is to say, when the executioner knocks on the door, the prisoner would have been unaware that that was their final day until that point.
However the prisoner in this case is a wily character. After a quick cogitation on the subject, they conclude that they will escape from their impending hanging alive.

Pictured: the prisoner

Their reasoning starts by excluding those days upon which their hanging wouldn’t be a surprise. Offhand there is seemingly only one example of this; Friday. As if it gets to Friday, and the prisoner has yet to be hung, then surely this cannot be constituted as a surprise when the executioner knocks on the door, as it is the only day left!
So Friday is out of the question, but that still leaves the rest of the week I hear you say. Ah dear reader; the prisoner has thought of that too.
Given that Friday has been eliminated from possible ‘surprise’ hangings, the last possible day must be a Thursday. But as before, if you arrive at the end of a Wednesday and find yourself still persistently breathing, then your only other option would be a Thursday, which would be not at all that surprising!
This kind of reasoning can be extended to exclude Wednesday, Tuesday and finally Monday from the possible hanging days, until the prisoner is assured that they will survive this ordeal intact.
Generally the riddle, or paradox, ends here with a glib recount of how, confident that they would escape their sentence through this feat of reasoning, the adroit prisoner is shocked to find the executioner knocking on their door Wednesday at noon (or some other arbitrary day).
There is some innate distrust of the prisoner’s rationale in this paradox. You can’t help but feel that is something wrong with their arguments, even though each step seems to make sense. The difficulty isn’t just with this simple iteration though; it is a problem still widely debated in the academic world, with philosophers and logicians seeking the correct answer, and appealing to epistemology, or the leaky inductive argument for answers.
It seems to me that it is the prisoners own pride that leads to a life-threatening confidence in the first place.
Nevertheless, before my tangent strays too far off topic I should try and wrangle it back in to place. I brought up the unexpected hanging as a way of dealing with this, ‘most boring day in history’ thing.
The second we start to eliminate days from the category of ‘boring’, we will always leave the next likely candidate as the new dominant force of dullness, and then next in the crosshairs to be blasted with importance. This is the leaky inductive problem that is also present in the unexpected hanging case.
I guess there is at least one thing we can be certain of, and that is that there is at least one professor at Bilkent University who may take aim at the 11th of April 1954 being the dullest day on record. And that’s Professor Abdullah Atalar.

I will assume that he is saying something rather profound here. Well done Professor Atalar; you are important

Gumby Arrested!

Yet another example of a catchy headline begging for an accompanying image, which is promptly delivered in all its glory.

"Gumby robber surrenders to police"

Apparently the store owner thought the guy was a joke. The news story says "The failed convenience store robber who dressed up as the animated character Gumby has turned himself in to police"

Perhaps he would have fared better if he had a friend dressed as Pokey for a quick get away.

Bits of the World Trade Center live on

I am a bit late with my obligatory September 11^th post, but then again I was around a year late in starting this blog, so I figure I can still get this post out there.

Rather than focusing on the obvious stuff: on the regret, and the sadness, and the reflections of how this day ‘changed everything’; or the resulting wars, and other terrorist attacks; the now seldom mentioned War on Terror, or the ultimate demise of the mastermind of that horrible act a decade ago. Rather than follow suit with a similar post, I am instead focusing on some of the more interesting results of that dark day in 2001.

True to the enterprising spirit that made the United States the capitalist juggernaut of the 20^th century (I'm not extending this into the current century because I’m not that optimistic), the wreckage of the Twin Towers has been utilised in two interesting ventures.

The first is perhaps the most American of the two; the building of a warship, the aptly named USS New York. Soon to be followed by two sister ships named after the other crash sites from the terrorist attacks (the USS Arlington and the USS Somerset), the New York was created partially with steel from the collapsed towers.

Ooh-rah!

I guess it is fitting that a relic of the greatest attack on the United States homeland become a part of the navy designed to protect it, but I cant help find it amusing that of all things in Americas arsenal, a warship is probably the last thing that would be useful in combating the threat of terrorists; especially those who hide out inland, be it in caves, or swanky Abbottabad compounds.

The scrap steel utilised from the towers was melted down and now forms part of the ship’s bow, and though it only comprises less that 0.1% of the ships total mass, it was more of a symbolic gesture to go along with the ships name.

There is something true to that war hungry oriented view of the United States which goes along well with this usage of World Trade Centre scrap metal. Even if you don’t look at the militaristic nature of the U.S as a bad thing (it was a thing of pride for many people in watching the forces of ‘freedom’ rise up in opposition to the growing communist war machine many years ago), it is still somewhat fitting that what was once a symbol of American power is now transformed into another, more literal, form of power projection.

However we don’t only associate Americans power and influence with the tip of their metaphorical sword, but also with their technological and scientific reach. That’s why I was again both surprised, but also quite accepting to find out this week that there are parts of the World Trade Centre rubble now on Mars, exploring the red planet.

It seems that one of the contractors working for NASA on their latest Mars Exploration programme was able to incorporate some of the rubble from the towers in their design.

Honeybee Robotics was tasked with the creation of the drilling mechanisms for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers due for launching to the forth rock from the sun in the year 2004. Their offices are located in lower Manhattan, and as such the events of those days really hit home for them, and they decided to honour the spirits of those lost by including some parts from the collapsed towers in the rovers.

They used recovered aluminium to create the cable shield for the rock abrasions tools each of the rovers use to analyse the martial soils. You can see a picture of one of them, stereotypically adorned with the emblem of the flag of the United States, in the image below.

Via Gizmodo and NASA

Don’t Trust the Catholic Church to Seek Justice

I was reading an article this morning about Senator Xenophon publicly naming a priest accused of rape many years ago, with my initial thoughts being around the legality of naming and shaming people. I had heard his ultimatum yesterday, and was wondering not only if he would do it, but also if he should do it. As far as I know this isn’t the same as the recent kerfuffle surrounding a certain Hinch, as there is no ongoing case, but then again that turns out to be part of the problem.

As I read further the more striking issue seems to be how the Catholic Church likes to see itself as somewhat anterior to the normal routes of justice in our, or indeed any, country.

For instance the insidious George Pell had the following to say about the way the Church deals with ‘complaints’ (a rather benign word when we are talking about child rape I think):

“When someone who has been abused chooses to bring his complaint to the church rather than to the police, the integrity and implementation of the church's protocols (Towards Healing in this case) are of first importance in achieving justice for the complainant, and indeed for all concerned."

Oh really? Because I would have thought that the thing of foremost importance in this country would be ensuring that justice is sought through the proper channels, and through institutions that are designed, and one would hope qualified, to meet out justice.

All pretence aside; I have no idea as to the legality of this case, or whether the Senator should be giving this information to the public. But I think it is somewhat overshadowed by the constant behaviour of the Catholic Church all over the world in putting their own rules and regulations above that of not only the nations they live in, but the societies they are a part of.

In the Church’s letter to Xenophon pleading that he not go ahead with the naming, they pointed out how an investigation had already been conducted by the Archdiocese in question, making reference to the fact that they wanted to ensure “natural justice and procedural fairness”, perhaps not realising that in Australia we have actual departments centred around both of these principles. But then again, it’s all in the term ‘natural’ I guess.

Australian justice would be seen as paling in comparison to the justice of an institution that believes it has its own communication line to the answers of the universe, and that one slightly sinister looking guy in Rome has his ear to the lord of the universe. Considering this mindset I am not surprised that they seek to circumvent our own earthly legal institutions.

That's the Pope on the right I think

The letter also goes on somewhat absurdly to state that "The priest concerned has categorically denied the allegations and, objectively speaking, it is not irrelevant that he has been a priest of good standing in the Archdiocese for almost 50 years". Now I am no expert on the matter, but I don’t think that a priests good standing is enough to absolve them of any accusations leveled their way, after all there are numerous examples throughout the churches history of seemingly upstanding members of the church being anything but upstanding behind the scenes.

Honestly, I don’t know how anyone can trust the Catholic Church these days, and given the recent opposition in Ireland, a former stronghold of the Church, it seems as if less and less people are trusting of them.

I read another article recently that goes over the way the Catholic Church words its official responses to make it appear more cooperative, regarding compliance with the laws of whichever country it finds itself infecting, than it actually is.

In a recent response to the Cloyne Report (an investigation into sexual abuse (cf. Rape) into a diocese in Ireland), the Vatican said:

“From the foregoing considerations, it should be clear that the Holy See expects the Irish Bishops to cooperate with the civil authorities, to implement fully the norms of canon law and to ensure the full and impartial application of the child safety norms of the Church in Ireland.”

A seemingly innocuous response, I thought, which even gives a hint of proper cooperation on the Churches behalf. That is until I read Michael Nugent’s thoughts on the matter. Apparently the important thing to notice here is the use of the word ‘full’ or ‘fully’. Note its absence when talking about cooperation with civil authorities, but its adhesion to anything Church related.

Nugent compares the lack of the adverb when dealing with civil authorities to an example from another abuse case the Church faced, again in Ireland, back in 1997:

“This missing word “fully” is the exact formulation that the Dublin Archdiocese used in 1997 to mislead people about its response to the sexual abuse of Marie Collins. When the priest who had abused Collins was convicted, the Archdiocese issued a press statement claiming that it had cooperated with police in relation to her complaint. Collins was upset by this and told her friend Father James Norman. Father Norman told police that he had asked the Archdiocese about the statement and the explanation he received was that “we never said we cooperated ‘fully’, placing emphasis on the word ‘fully’.””

So here we see again that when it comes to matters of justice, the Catholic Church cannot be trusted to be forthright and open with the civil authorities, and is more than willing to hold back information which might throw them in a bad light, than it is to help those who have suffered sexual abuse and rape while in their supposed divine care.

In this case the Church was made aware of these accusations, but it was ultimately the civil authorities who ensured justice prevailed, through no help from the Church. Oh sure they cooperated, but just not fully. And to me it seems that anything but a full cooperation with the law smells of an intent to hide things, and circumvent the proper channels of justice and truth.

Well I think that’s the end of that rant. I suppose after two more laid back posts, it was about time I let fly with a rambling rant.

Cheers

MM