Thoughts on Gillard’s speech

I am so angry right now. The backlash by the Australian media over Julia Gillard’s speech against Tony Abbott in parliament a couple of days ago has made me positively livid. I’m not affecting a faux interest in the issue of feminism, in which as a man, I have no stake or claim. Rather, I am enraged by the continued efforts of the media to mislead the public on issues that have a huge negative impact on how our country is governed.

Articles in the mainstream media focused on how Gillard used her speech to vent her spleen at Tony Abbott’s expense, labelling the Prime Minister a hypocrite for “supporting” Peter Slipper, the Member for Fisher. In doing they they completely missed the context that the Opposition had recently tried to raise a motion to dismiss Slipper as the Speaker of the House – a particularly douchey move considering that parliament cannot simply vote to dismiss a member. It was a wedge tactic designed to force Gillard to be seen either as supporting Slipper by opposing the motion, or else having to concede that she made a mistake by installing Slipper as the Speaker in the first place by voting with it – ultimately forcing her into a no-win situation.

Hence it was a shocking surprise that the Prime Minister managed to pull a Jesus and the Adulterer on Abbott.

The Opposition has been using destabilising tactics on the already-shaky minority government through their acts of chaos in Parliament, as well as their constant undermining of Gillard’s authority using tactics that amount to “because she’s a woman” and causing the media to incite sexist and misogynistic sentiments from the electorate. At this point some of you are probably thinking “what a load of crap, Australians aren’t that small-minded!”, but as Anne Summers shows in graphic detail in a speech titled Her rights at work: The Political Persecution of Australia’s First Female Prime Minister, the point is undeniably true.

Therefore those who criticise Gillard of using her speech to gloss over the Peter Slipper issue are missing the point. It was calling attention to the dirty tactics that the Opposition use to ensure that this country continues to remain in turmoil. Every make-believe crisis of leadership and claim about a lack of personal integrity that the Liberal Party successfully perpetuates – followed along by their all-too-eager co-conspirators in mainstream media – reinforces the self-fulfilling prophecy that our country is in trouble. The government is therefore, constantly on the back foot as it tries to convince its cynical constituents that we are actually in a very good position (which we undeniably are).

The fact that the motion to dismiss the speaker lost by a vote of 69:70 is irrelevant since party members are required to vote with the party, so in a minority government this is an entirely unremarkable result.

Meanwhile, the Coalition have barely updated any of their policies since they lost the 2007 election and continue to campaign on making the other team lose, rather than winning on the merits of their own platform. Truly, if this country (and its politics) has descended into farce, Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party have the most to answer for.

In-tolerance we must

I once read a question on Quora where somebody asked why Christians in America feel like they’re a persecuted minority. The answer written by Robert Hegwood is intriguing: in a nutshell, he describes how Christians were used to living a certain way of life, behaviours that had been acceptable – expected, even – for a long time, but because of the rise of Atheism they now find themselves suddenly forced to dispense with hundreds of years of accumulated history (dating back to before America existed), simply because it offends modern sensibilities. Christians are essentially being forcefully told “you can’t do that any more”.

Is it fair to ask a person, or even a significantly large group of people, to change, when what they were doing has been acceptable for decades prior? Supporters of Atheism will likely bring up all kinds of anachronistic behaviours, and social norms of past eras which now seem ludicrous, to justify a general purging of all belief even if they aren’t practiced any more. Granted, situations like the recent riots in response to a sacrilegious Youtube video do little to help, but using this as a argument for banning all religion is like pointing to soccer hooliganism as a reason for banning all sport.

Religion is more than fad or fashion – it is peoples’ way of life, moral compass, worldview and belief system. One could reasonably argue that religious belief is no more or less dangerous than a political ideology. Both have their good and bad – wars have been fought for both causes – so why is one “politically correct” (ba-da-boom) while the other isn’t? It brings to mind the famous Stephen Roberts quote:

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

… except I contend that we are all religious. I simply believe that an atheist’s “god” is ideological rather than metaphysical. Let’s be clear: I’m not saying an atheist “worships” their ideology as one would a deity, but a rational person must accept the existence of a system greater than themselves, of which they are necessarily a part – whether they choose to accept that or not. I don’t buy existential nihilism, which – to bring this post back around full circle – Nietzsche believed to be a widespread phenomenon of Western culture, and that it was an unsavoury yet inevitable phase that humanity must go through on the path towards transcendence.

In other words, let’s not get too carried away with this current zeitgeist of non-belief – it is just part of humanity’s journey, not the destination.

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This post is part of the series An Atheist in God’s Kingdom.

Old McDonald had a… problem

During a recent dinner, a friend asked me whether I would eat artificial meat – i.e. that which is created in a test tube rather than coming from a slaughtered animal. I said that I would, so long as it tasted identical to the real thing. Would you?

Before I get into the meat of the post (ba-da-boom), it would probably be useful to elaborate on my stance regarding animal cruelty because I can almost feel the heat of indignation caused by my many animal-loving friends. Clearly I am a meat eater, which means I haven’t had an epiphany about the ethics of how my food is sourced. It doesn’t mean I think it’s right that animals should suffer for my sake, just that I have not yet found a compelling reason to weigh my rights vs. responsibilities in that area (read: it’s in the “too-hard basket”).

So getting back to test tube meat, something that occurred to me: assuming it were to take off, and the farming of chickens, pigs, cows and other “meat producing” animals was no longer required – what would happen to those species? As far as I know, these animals are complete domesticated and don’t exist in the wild at all. Does it mean that they’ll effectively become extinct, other than the few that might be kept by zoos and as pets or for personal consumption?

Also on the endangered list would be derivative industries such as “organic” manure, gelatin, leather, and a whole host of other products derived from the meat industry or its by-products.

Food for thought, or thought for food?

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Interesting reading:

The Conversation: What is the value of an animal’s life? http://theconversation.edu.au/what-is-the-value-of-an-animals-life-4412

Scientists working on $330,000 test-tube-meat burger http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/20/business/la-fi-mo-test-tube-meat-20120220

Trigger-nometry

By now you’ve probably heard the news about the shooting at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. Unsurprisingly, the public discussion quickly turned into a gun debate – a highly contentious topic in the United States due to the tension between violent crime involving guns, and the country’s constitutional right to bear arms. While mulling over the tragedy of the situation a few thoughts occurred, which I thought I’d put out there – seeing as I haven’t posted in quite some time.

My dad’s always been a stickler for security: prior to ol’ Johnny Howard’s Gun Buyback Scheme in 1996, he used to own a shotgun for “hunting”. I can’t remember whether he actually ever took it out (for recreational purposes or otherwise), but I do remember the gravity of its presence in the house. My own personal firearms experience is going pistol shooting for a friend’s bucks. I’ve lived with a gun in the house, and I’ve held and fired a gun – so I feel somewhat qualified to speak about it, although any American (and probably no small number of Australians) would laugh in my face for making that claim.

Fear dominates both sides of the debate, whether they care to admit it or not. On one hand, fear drives gun ownership – guns are used for protection, be it from physical injury, or as a “big stick” to enable a person to speak boldly and exercise their personal rights. It’s fitting that the right to bear arms is second to Free Speech in the US Bill of Rights, as human tendencies will typically necessitate the former as a result of the latter.

Guns are as much a symbol of authority as much as they are a tool for violence. Note how despite the highly publicized tragedies that occasionally pepper the news, most Americans live in relative peace and safety with firearms – so long as it remains largely symbolic.

Take the guns away and people live in fear, literally powerless. The population becomes meek and subservient to any kind of power, with rhetoric being the tool of choice. Without force behind it, this is easily ridiculed – I hazard that this might contribute to the explanation of why “tall-poppy syndrome” in so pervasive in Australian culture.

Like how money used to be backed by gold prior to fiat currency, authority in the US is backed by firepower. Until some other form of individual empowerment materialises with sufficient clout to replace the brute force of firearms, I think it will be largely futile to try and annul the Second Amendment – its influence on the psyche of the average American is far too strong.

Why I don’t have an iPad yet

How are you guys? Long time no see… I’ve been so busy with real world stuff that I haven’t had much chance to blog. Don’t worry though; I’m still jotting notes and adding to my ever-increasing list of draft posts faster than I’ll ever be able to clear them.

Alright. Let’s talk about monopolies.

I’ve been thinking at great length about buying an iPad. So much thinking, in fact, that after 3 generations I still haven’t bought one yet. I’ve bought an iPad for each of my three sets of parents but not myself. In theory it should’ve been a no-brainer after Apple released the New iPad with the retina display. After all, that was the one feature I’d been eagerly waiting for. I already own an iPhone and Macbook Air, and spent copious amounts of time and money accruing apps and content through iTunes and the Mac App Store so it’s not like I haven’t already sold my soul to the cult of Jobs.

But therein lies the problem. I feel like I’ve unwittingly invested too heavily into the Apple ecosystem without proper consideration, and I’m wondering whether I’m putting all my eggs into one basket.

Let me back up a bit and explain what I mean by the Apple ecosystem – I’m not just talking about owning a bunch of iDevices. Those are just a variety of different-sized windows into the content world that Apple has built. Media (music, movies, games, etc.) isn’t what it used to be. CDs are likely to be the last of its kind, a brand-agnostic platform that can be played on hardware manufactured by any company (most likely Sony, who we’ll come back to in a bit). Today, when you buy something from iTunes, you’re no longer receiving a physical product, but buying into the company. Sure, progress in the area of digital rights means that you can get a file in a standard format, without restrictive Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes so that can be played on devices from other manufacturers, but ultimately if you accidentally lose the file, you’ll go back to Apple – why would you pay for a replacement copy when you’ve essentially purchased a life-long right to it so long as you keep using their system! How is this a bad thing, you say?

It’s that old saying: the medium is the message.

We think we’re buying songs, movies and games, but really, the content itself is free (another topic that I hope to cover in depth in a future post) and the money that you pay goes entirely towards building the ecosystem through which it is distributed. The money that artists and developers receive isn’t payment for their intellectual property – it’s a commission, albeit a fairly large one, for helping Apple to sell their platform.

Taken to its logical conclusion, Apple’s success reduces choice. The bigger they get, the harder it becomes for anybody to compete with them. Like the banks, Apple too will become “too big to fail”.

In all seriousness – and this has nothing to do with my being a member of one of their social media marketing groups – Sony is the only company in the world with interests in the critical parts of the content ecosystem to be able to take Apple on. The reason why they’re struggling is because they haven’t been able to corral their offerings to deliver a consistent customer experience. Both Google and Microsoft lack coverage in the consumer electronics space, and must partner with other companies such as Samsung and Nokia to even be in the game. Likewise for content – merely providing a conduit (marketplace) for content to be sold is nowhere near the same as being able to offer an integrated multi-device platform (both Apple and Sony), or actually owning the content (Sony).

Content is the lifeblood of devices, and with each additional device I buy (i.e. the New iPad), the more I must invest into buying content from Apple to make that purchase worthwhile. I’m not so loaded that I can afford to buy the same content through both iTunes as well as Sony’s ecosystem (in order to be able to watch shows on TV through my PS3). If I buy the iPad, then I’ll be more inclined to also buy an Apple TV so that I can watch iTunes video content on TV.

Hehe… given the above, can you imagine what kind of buyer’s remorse I’ll suffer after buying an iPad? And that’s why I don’t have one yet.