Economic Rationalism And Smoking

In what is perhaps the greatest news story/public policy on the face of the planet, read the following excerpt from an article in today's Age titled Chinese Ordered To Smoke Until They Drop:

LOCAL government officials in China have been ordered to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packets of cigarettes to boost the local economy during the global financial crisis.

The edict, issued by officials in Hubei Province, in central China, threatens to fine officials who "fail to meet their targets" or are caught smoking rival brands manufactured in neighbouring provinces.

Even local schools have been given a smoking quota for teachers, while one village was ordered to buy 400 cartons of cigarettes a year for its officials.

This is part genius and part rational. While the absurd(ist) moron in me is giggling with excitement about this, I find it hard to see how this is very much different from Rudd's cash-splash. Spend, dammit, spend. Don't save, don't invest in the future, spend now. Even if it means putting a shotgun to a child's head and screaming at them to start smoking, (slight exaggeration here), we must support the economy at all costs.

In fact, if you expand this out a little, this is the very argument put forward by the Australian coal lobby et al. that we can't afford to impose hefty carbon debts on high polluting industries. Jobs (as an abstract economic quantifier) are for more important than the health or well being of the people inhabiting those jobs, their families or those in their community. So smoke up, kiddoes, because Jobs are jesus, and the Economy is god.

Basic Human Rights in the U.S. Election.

Well. Its about time someone stood up and offered some words of truth in this U.S. Election. Finally, 'Joe-The-Plumber' a.k.a. Joe-SixPack a.k.a. Average Joe has put the voice of common people into the mouths of those talking man shaped puppets, Obama and McCain.

Observe the wisdom of Our Joe, quoted in today's Australian: “Because you're successful, you have to pay more than everybody else? We all live in this country. It's a basic right,” he added. “And Obama wants to take that basic right and penalise me for it, is what it comes down to.

“That's a socialist view and it's incredibly wrong. I mean, 250,000 dollars now. What if he decides, 150,000 dollars and, you're pretty rich too. Let's lower it again. It's a slippery slope. When's it going to stop?”

I think its about time that we, as philosophers and ethicists pulled ourselves down from ivory towers and confronted 'the battler'. Yes, being successful is a basic human right. Much more so than eduction, healthcare, fair and equal representation, partner choice in marriage, blah blah blah. All these things that bleeding heart lefties yabber about day in day out.
As for slippery slopes, well, Our Joe has really found his mark as a philosopher there. What starts at taxing 250,000 dollars could end up with poor students like ourselves having our money theived from us, by a Socialist Government. Castro would be laughing in his grave (if we had been allowed the right to 'ventilate' him like Che Guevera, John Lennon and JFK).

I think its high time that human rights and slippery slopes were brought to the front of this election campaign, to show us what real applied philosophy is like. When Obama (who is clearly a commie-monster-in-waiting)says things like "its time to share the wealth around" we all know it is time to arm our bears.

Palin into insignificance

I just red some leftist propaganda about my sweet love, Sarah 'I-can-see-Russia' Palin.

Supposedly, McCain's (i.e. Palin's boss) support among women is far behind that of Obama. One poll puts 55% of women backing Obama, while 38% back McCain. I must admit, I am a little bamboozled. She is a women, a pretty one too. Isn't this enough for women to support her? Why are they so stupid. She is a women and so are other women. Women should vote for her, that's how it works. (Ignore her failings as a politician, her inexperience, her jarring ignorance and general ineptitude and vote her in dammit!)

Tonight Sarah Palin gets to go toe to toe with Joe Biden tonight. Fairness dictates that no-one will ask her any questions that she cannot answer. It will be telling to see how the heartless baby-murdering democrap sympathisers show their hands by asking questions that they know she cannot answer. I mean, sure, she may not know much about foreign policy, economics, health care, but she was a beauty queen. And as George W has shown, a lack knowledge of foreign policy, economics and health care is certainly no impediment to a successful presidency.

iViva Life!

Ethics And Politics?

Yes, though strange befellows they may be, it looks like some people are trying to arrange a marriage between the most unlikely of partners: Ethics and politics.

This brings to mind the old joke - How do you know if a politician is lying? Their lips are moving.
Also bings up a new joke - How do you know if a politician is acting ethically? Their lips are moving, but no forks are involved, and they are standing.

What?

In the U.S. the 2007 'Honest Leadership and Open Government Act' has had what some would consider a strange effect on the current electioneering process. As reported in the NY Times article "Corporations and convention party planners are scrambling to comply with sweeping ethics rules in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 that prohibit lobbyists from paying for gifts, including meals and music, for members of Congress and their staffs." Some lobbyists are finding it so hard to work out what is allowed (hence ethical) that they are having to resort to talking to lawyers to find loopholes to exploit. And in the worse case scenario, the poor lobbyists have had to cancel events.

Boo hoo. In a system where there are more lobbyists than congresspeople and where almost US$3,000,000,000 was spent on lobbying politicians in one year, perhaps these parasites, predators and vermin can do with a little less food, and a little more self reflection.

Whether legislating 'ethics' will actually work or not, is a different question. As we all know, basing laws on good intentions can have some horrible results. As the old saying goes, if you outlaw ethics, only the outlaws will have ethics. Spooky eh?

The apocalypse

Hello.

I read in the paper today about a robot controlled by brain cells.

"A multidisciplinary team at the University of Reading has developed a robot which is controlled by a biological brain formed from cultured neurons."

Looks like humans are soon to be outdated. I for one hail our new robo-rat cyborgs as gods and masters, and renounce all humans as egotistical meat-bags.

Huzah!

One final postscript: The scientists used rat neurons on this one. Perhaps to prevent our imminent collapse, in the future they could use puppy neurons?

Olympics and the Two Child Policy

Yes. What a joy to behold, the world together as one, capitalist, communist, hedonist, all united as sportists under a banner of corporate sponsorship and nationalism. Finally, we all come to believe in peace as determined by gold medals. Joy.

Despite this glowing sense of hope and unity springing from corporatised nationalistic sporting fervour, a little cynicism creeps in. I don't know if China are telling the truth or not. What? No, this is not some violent Tibetan media conspiracy.

First, there was the digital footprints left by the opening ceremony. And now I am thinking more of the One Child Policy being enacted by the nonahe(a)dral politburo in China. That vision of sweetness in the little red dress who sang so beautifully, turns out to be chimeric construct of voice and face. As the Spice Girls once sang, 'Two become one.' Now, don't get me wrong, this is not a moral travesty of the level of Milli Vanilli, (but that's just because Germans are evil.)

Perhaps the truth of the Chinese agenda is being uncovered in ways that the politburo could not forsee. Oh well. All we can do is hope, like the Dalai Lama that Chinese Democracy will come soon.

SPORT!

Ethical DNA - what a load of shyte

I recently completed this online questionaire. I don't have time to go into the problems I have with it yet, in terms of surveys, questions etc etc. The thing that gets my goat the most is the term 'moral DNA', which really goes into reinforcing the folk conceptions of genetics.
For those of you who are interested in this type of stuff, check out Paul Griffith's site, in particular this article.
There is a stack of links to his publications on his site, and for anyone interested in genetics, in particular folk conceptions of genes and 'public understanding of science' type stuff, his work is pretty cool.

That is

Politicians and integrity

This topic could run on for ever, but I just read this rad thing on Victorian politicans. In particular, I would like to call your attention to this awesome factoid:

"The Government's reliance on the car came under fire in April when Premier John Brumby used a chauffeur-driven car for a 400-metre trip from Parliament House to 55 Collins Street — to sign an agreement to cut greenhouse emissions."

I don't know why, instead of getting angry about this, it just makes me feel warm inside and very smiley. Like my blood is made from puppies.

Anyone else get that feeling, or have I completely lost the plot?
Also, if anyone else finds such beautiful factoids about politicans and integrity, my eyes would like to look at them in order to maintain this PFB delusion (PFB being 'puppies-for-blood').

The Measure of a Robot (from io9)

io9.com gives us this amazing chart, The Measure of a Robot:

I find it intriguing how they explain the placement of the robots on the good/evil axis: they explain that some robots are good because they were just programmed to be evil, yet many of those far on the evil scale are just pure evil. How do they know? Surely those robots are as much a victim of their programming as the good ones?



I'm sure there's some dual-use dilemma stuff in here, Nick!



But what I want to know is, where does GladOS fit? :) (and since when is a "box" a robot? HAL & MCP & the Wargames computer were computers, not robots...)

(Via io9.)