Occasional Tales

Now what's going on? Yesterday and, it now seems, today, the mobile network was in a parlous state. My phone spent most of the day bleeping, which means that it was losing the signal and then getting it back again. I'm surfing around Cyberia, but finding several websites off the menu. No Map-Center or its successor, or Q3W forums ; the whole of MSN is down (last minute pre-Yuletide tinkering?); can't get onto The Independent (even via IE 7; I had a problem accessing the site with Firefox the other day, but no problem with IE); the formatting on The Guardian site in IE is complete shite (but all right with Firefox), as if the style sheet isn't getting rendered (which it probably isn't knowing MS's lax adherence to Web standards); no Danwei or ESWN or lost laowai . Japundit didn't even waste time dawdling and delaying before it proved inaccessible, which suggests that Japan-based sites may be blocked in general at the moment (although I'm not implyin

geocities is on; Sicilian is off. For the past few years I've assumed that geocities sites have been blocked without exception and without the on-again-off-again nonsense that has affected blogspot. But I discovered a couple of days ago, quite by chance, that geocities sites are accessible again. I don't know when they became agreeable to the mad old bat or why. On the other hand, I thought I'd drop by Ninu Russu's Sicilian language site . Could I? I've been able to in the past otherwise I couldn't have bookmarked it. But no, it's now blocked. I thought I'd double check via anonymouse in case the site had gone. No, it's still there, and definitely blocked. It seems the site was moved to a new host in October. And there's my answer. It's now hosted by Lycos. This is another instance where the wholesale blocking of a host results in websites which are of no concern to Nanny being unavailable for no good reason. If the deranged old cretin wants

Don't mention the Declaration. I'm pretty certain that when I first came to the inGlorious Motherland, it was possible to get onto the Omniglot site. It's devoted to languages and writing systems. Why should such a site be so offensive to Nanny? Since I was curious, I took a trip there via anonymouse . The most likely reason seems to be the sample text that's used to illustrate each language. Here are the "offending" sentences in Catalan and Occitan (Languedoc variety). Tots els éssers humans neixen lliures i iguals en dignitat i en drets. Són dotats de raó i de consciència, i han de comportar-se fraternalment els uns amb es altres. Totas las personas nàisson liuras e parièras en dignitat e en dreches. Son cargadas de rason e de consciéncia e mai lor se cal comportar entre elas amb un eime de frairetat. For those of us who know neither language, what do these sentences say? They are translations of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Bu

It's blogspot. Chris discovered that blogspot might be back on the menu again. Let's see whether I can say Tibet. I can. That suggests that Chris ran into one of those holes in the GFW you occasionally find. If blogspot really was back on the menu, then I'd run into some error message if I tried to publish a post with words like Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen, democracy etc.

But for how long? I discovered, although somewhat later than everyone else it seems, that YouTube has been unblocked. Obviously, Nanny thought it was safe to let the hordes back again because all those video clips of the Old Man from Tibet getting knighted by Ayatollah Dubya will now be blocked as an individual group. Besides, the boys in Zhongnanhai were probably missing videos of girls doing the nearest thing to X-rated material that YouTube will allow to be posted. Huh. That was odd. Posting glitch. The offending culprit seemed to be Далай Лама in English letters. Perhaps there were just technical problems unless blogspot has also been unblocked.

Oh thou contrary old bat. The news from Danwei this morning is that blogspot is out to lunch again now that the Party Congress is over. But that's not why I'm posting. I just want to say, "Tibet". And indeed I can without all the fuss and bother that I had a couple of days ago. I bet I can say stuff about Taiwan, too.

Redirect this! I seem to be a little behind on the news from Cyberia. I've just found out that Nanny was redirecting Google, Yahoo! and live.com searches to Baidu a few days ago. This seem to have been the petulant response to a certain sovereign nation awarding a medal to some old homeless guy from a place in Asia. Did Nanny think that the Chinese Cyberians were all dashing off to one of the foreign search engines to find out more about this event? Or was Nanny merely trying to annoy the expats again since they're more likely to be affected by such puerile doings than the Chinese themselves. Anyway, I've just checked Google blog search and have found that it's back to normal. If you search for "green bamboo", guess which two blogs are top of the list. ^_^ Appendix A Did the redirecting actually only affecting the .cn versions of the search engines or did it affect them across the board? Appendix B Hmmm. That was interesting. When I first tried to post this, I

MSN must be fiddling with the settings again. Spaces has been out of action today. They've been making some changes recently so I assume they're doing some more tweaking. Hotmail was all right, though. The good news is that I've been reimbursed for all the expenses I incurred over the summer. There was a question about excess baggage, but that was unavoidable. It was possible to box up a lot of stuff, but not everything, although there was more stuff left over than I was expecting. I'd tried to pare things down as much as possible, but I didn't want to arrive in Chengdu and then have to rebuy a bunch of stuff that I already have. We're off to see some irrigation scheme tomorrow. There's even meant to be a hill with a cable car. We're going with a group of American school kids who are over here for a month. One or perhaps both of the teachers with them want to do some teaching, which means that there's a couple of classes each of us won't have to

Public words; private truths. I've just had the weekly meeting with Linda and 蛇夫人. "Ye shall be at school for half a day every day." Why? I wondered. To hang around just in case some kid who's skiving from class might want to use us as a convenient bolt hole? I don't generally need to be at school any longer than I'm already there. Apart from classes, there's not a lot for me to do there. The planning is all done here at home because everything I need is on my computer. The alternative would be to sit around in the office being bored and probably being a nuisance to the others. Time well spent, methinks. [ So that's sarcasm . –ed.] Later. Turns out that the catalyst for the comments at the meeting this morning was the ever reliable SEF who, it'd appear, has quite possibly had everything handed to him on a plate. I really need to sit in on one of his classes because no one's sure whether he's even doing what he ought to be doing.

For the moment. The news is that blogspot has been unblocked again. However, I note that the RSS feed from petite anglaise has been dead this morning, thus joining the inert feeds for Japundit and Tokyo Times . I suppose it's nice to have blogspot back if you haven't been using the effective Firefox work round, but it'd also be nice to have LJ and various others back as well. This on-again-off-again thing seems and is so arbitrary. Just because blogspot has been blocked, it doesn't mean that posts critical of the Chinese government or references to Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen Square will've gone away or will've stopped coming. On this occasion, my guess is that the block has been removed during the Party Congress so that the delegates can blog without the nuisance of going through a proxy.

But I'm sure it's in the public interest. While Spaces is playing silly buggers, I may as well post an entry or two here. I was just doing a search via Baidu for Zhang Zeduan's picture 清明上河, but as is typical with any search via any search engine, you often get some odd results, one of which was a picture of a hot girl lying on a bed. I clicked on the link and found myself on this page on xinhua.net, which seems to be informing us that the cutie in question has had a little surgery recently. I can't read enough of the Chinese to understand what it says, but I'd say from the pictures that 陈瑀涵 ( Chén Yǔhán ; I guess that's her name) didn't really need any enhancement in the first place and is now sporting a somewhat unattractive cleavage. How this picture ends up being returned as a search result for Zhang Zeduan, I don't know.

But not gone. I'd rather forgotten about this blog until I saw that someone visited Green Bamboo (the other one) via this blog a couple of days ago. At the moment, this place has lost any vague purpose it might've had. Perhaps I should revive the ethical and philosophical problems again. So what's been going on? Well, I spent July and the first week of August riding around Chengdu and visiting the sights (although if you want pictures, you'll have to go to Green Bamboo). I spent three weeks in Zhuhai in August doing a TEFL training course. It was a lot of work, especially because I had to do a four-week course in three weeks. Anyway, on the final day I was awarded my certificate, which means I'm now formally qualified to do my job. It also means that a job in Hong Kong is more likely than it was. I'll be talking to some people about that when I go there next week for the National Day holiday. I'm still undecided whether I should spend two years here in Chen

But something to do with Sichuanhua. When I got to Chengdu, I was keen to hear the local speech which will be the fourth variety I've been exposed to. In Beijing, they sounded like pirates. In southern Jiangsu Province, they sounded Japanese or Korean. In Fuzhou, they seem to have decided that affricates are passé, and that the /r/~/l/ allophony seemed even more extreme than it was in Jiangsu Province. A day or two after I got here, I went to a local restaurant where there were three guys speaking some language that I couldn't identify. My best guess is that it was the local version of Mandarin. The one feature I noticed was the odd-sounding tone which reminded me of what the Uighurs appeared to be doing clause-finally, although as far as I'm aware, Uighur isn't a tone language. Anyway, I was nosing around the Web, looking for info about Sichuanhua, when I found long legged fly , who's been posting a primer about the language. There. A post that isn't about the

Go about your business, citizens. Well, having established what constitutes short shorts, I realised that I hadn't covered the conditions in the arena of play. Actually, it's quite simple. You can play the game anywhere at any time, but you aren't allowed to go looking. In other words, the sightings must be random. You can't, for example, sit in a popular public place for the sole purpose of playing the game. But if you're in a restaurant and you happen to be sitting at the window, then you can play the game. Don't think there will be much chance of playing the game today. It's been raining on and off.

Quarter length? That's practically a pair of trousers. My score in the short shorts game when I went over to Carrefour this morning was a pitiful 30. I scored 150 when I went to Zoe's this evening, but as I sat there looking out the window and kind of regretting my decision to go there because I wasn't feeling that hungry and I haven't been feeling that well, I thought that the short shorts game really needs some definite rules. The basic criterion is that the shorts must have the merest hint of length. They don't have to be denim, but most of the short shorts which satisfy the first condition are. So, there's Version 1.0 of the rules. Feel free to play along if you're somewhere in China.

I got lost. I went for a walk after tea last night and lost my bearings. However, my final score in the short shorts game was 195 points. I don't think it's really the weather for short shorts, but I don't think the girls here understand that. Nor do many of them understand that short shorts and high heels aren't really the most sensible combination. Boxes arrived today, and everything was sorted out quickly and efficiently. Some loose ends to be tied up, but the bulk of my stuff has somewhere to go.

In at least two senses. But first, short shorts news. My outing to Carrefour yesterday resulted in a score of 150 points in spite of the day being a little cooler. Not sure there will be much short shorts action today because it's raining. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, on with the main feature. It's been noted in various places (aka expat blogs) that China does appear to attract some rather peculiar foreigners. The programme I'm with has had alcoholics, drug addicts, gay child molesters, and a couple guys who apparently set themselves up as pimps. There are also the missionary tendency people who seem to be older colonial women who, at least subconsciously, appear to believe they're bringing enlightenment to the heathens. I'm told that Chengdu is full of foreign weirdos. Tësaien celmenne tei' édhi. Cadhan si·mei mé 'tei. All these sorts of people seem to think that the laws of physics don't apply in China. Somehow, what would be normal dece

Short shorts and puffy skirts. When I was doing my PhD, it was the age of 70s retro. The undergraduates of the day, who had been born at the tail-end of the 70s and thus had no recollection of flares or any other sartorial disasters, would dress up like hippies. Their ignorance was their protection from good taste. I used to play a game in which I'd score 15 points every time I saw one of these retro idiots. Tonight I thought I could do the same with short shorts or those awful puffy skirts from the 80s. Every time I see some girl in short shorts, I score 15 points. I think I would've scored about 90 points this evening if I'd started playing the game early enough. However, if see too many girls in short shorts, I think my eyeballs might melt sooner from the strain.

No delays. Unlike previous experiences in China, my departure from Fuzhou proceeded without any hiccups and a little good fortune. Internet access and a land line were already live, so none of this nonsense about China Telecom using a debt of ¥3 to cut off the phone and demand a bunch of money to get a new line installed. The flat's all right, but there are downsides. The view is awful; the shower would be better if the bracket for the nozzle wasn't broken; there's nowhere to put books or DVDs; and not really enough room for clothes. There's a large cupboard at the end of the sitting room, but it's only really good for hanging things in or for items such as towels. I need a chest-of-drawers. Chengdu feels more lively than Fuzhou ever did, although I note that there are lots of foreign tourists around. All the pretty girls? Well, there are some, but no more than anywhere else, it seems. Short shorts are on display, but that's no different from Fuzhou or Beijing.

Who's the boss? It seems that the whole matter of being ferried from the airport when you arrive and to it when you leave is a mere courtesy. Formally speaking, the people who actually employ me should be doing that, but the school has to do it in their stead. In other words, I'm on my own tomorrow when I depart. Do I have any regrets about leaving Fuzhou? A couple. One is that I never had a bike so that I could explore the city more widely. I think there's rather a lot that I missed seeing because of my comparative immobility, and once I knew I was departing, there was no point in getting a bike. The other is a couple of cute girls here, but since I'm told that the most beautiful girls in China live in Chengdu, I may find that there's ample compensation for that loss. (Yes, I know. I'm a sad old perv who knows that age, academic and cultural differences really preclude any chance of meaningful relationships here.)

Attitudes when foreigners depart. In a couple of days I'll be leaving Fuzhou. It wasn't my choice because although I said I had no objections to departing, I preferred to be spared the bother of packing everything up yet again for a second year running. Instead, Central Command asked me to go to Chengdu and I agreed. I'm still with the same programme, but at another school. I'm also still under contract. Unfortunately, the school's attitude, regardless of the circumstances of your departure, is that you're a dirty, traitorous scoundrel who deserves no help whatsoever. It doesn't matter one iota that you're still under the current contract. That's a contract which, throughout the time it covers, is used as a stick with which to beat you, but otherwise ignored when they don't think it's in their best interests. Every contract I've signed here has been violated by the schools to a greater or lesser extent. The people who actually employ us l

It was in the phial marked "Secret Deadly Formula". There's a crackdown on Death STUMP and the usual suspects get rounded up. Lina invents some super deadly virus as a kind of nuclear deterrent, but her assistant (Igor?) pours the stuff down the drain. ( I thought it was old mayonnaise , he said apologetically. He was probably right, but I think it was yoghurt-based, since hippie tree-huggers like yoghurt, the most vile-tasting dairy product known to humanity and an apt base for some sort of 100%-lethal biological weapon.) But whose fault is this mess? Ultimately, it's Lina's fault. Firstly, it's obvious that Igor is some cheap factory second that she bought from Lackeys 'R' Us. Secondly, she should've labelled the phials and she should've at least ensured that Igor (one GCSE in Media Studies) could recognise what the label said. Thirdly, she should've locked the phials away in a secure cabinet where Igor couldn't get his hands on them.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. STUMP's leader, Mad Dog, notes, as I did yesterday, that e-Ville Corporation is faking it. The reforms are a con. It's time to get radical. That splits STUMP, and Lina, who still likes it hard and violent, becomes part of Death STUMP. Lina ends up making small bombs for STUMP which are used as incendiary devices. The bombs cause varying amounts of damage, but one seriously endangers the lives of the director of e-Ville and his family (resulting, I should think, in the wholesale dismissal of his security providers who let a bunch of bomb-wielding hippy tree-huggers get past them) and the fire that resulted from another, led to the death of a fireman. Lina isn't so bothered about the former, but she is about the latter. Nonetheless, they're saving lots of people in the Third World, so it's a small price to pay. Besides, can Lina be held responsible for the unintentional death of the fireman? Well, yes. I suppose that it might be

If it works on a telly… e-Ville Corporation (yes, we're back to unreality) has climbed down on a few things such as stir-fired baby koalas and whole, roasted panda chunks, but it seems to be window undressing [sic!] more than anything else. To Lina it seems that mindless violence has achieved something, and it's time to kick some more skanky corporate arse. Lawrence, all sandals, memories of being a fluffy-headed Egyptian princess, and tripitaka (well, he saw the word once when he was glancing through the Dummies Guide to Buddhism ), decides that enough's enough. Is STUMP's new policy a success? e-Ville Corporation's response to STUMP really seems to be a matter of changing their image rather than altering their substance. STUMP, on the other hand, seems to be losing the moral high ground by resorting to force to achieve its ends. Or, perhaps more accurately, STUMP seems to be joining e-Ville Corporation. Well, the saying is If you can't beat 'em, join '

The social problems of the Australian Aborigines. I thought I'd turn my attention to an ethical dilemma from the real-world. It's been reported in The Guardian ( Aboriginal abuse plan denounced as racist ) that the Australian government is trying to do something about alcoholism and child abuse in Aboriginal communities. The proposal is to ban alcohol and porn. The Australian PM, John Howard, is being accused of using this as a political opportunity since such measures are being taken ahead of a general election. The viability of the scheme has also been called into question. From what I've read in the past, the lives of Aborigines are pretty dreadful. I know that they have a low tolerance for alcohol. I didn't know about the child abuse part until I read the article from The Guardian. Regardless of the political circumstances, isn't it better that some effort should be made to alleviate the lot of Aborigines than that they should be left to pass their lives in such

Or, you do it your way. STUMP organises another protest against e-Ville Corporation, but this time it's a more traditional affair with wanton vandalism and an accidental death. Lawrence, who's obviously a sandal-wearing vegetarian who's totally into Buddhism (well, he has pictures of Richard Gere on the wall at home and is pretty certain he's the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess), is against all this violence since the result is that STUMP has lost the moral high ground in the fight against e-Ville Corporation. Lina, on the other hand, who likes it hard and rough, disagrees, and they break up. It's the old question about being nice and reasonable, or unnice and unreasonable to achieve your aims. Most people would say that violence and vandalism is a little much, but it may be the only language the boardroom understands, unless you can muster some economic clout against it. In other words, you could try to get the shareholders to do the dirty work for you.

But it's all for the good. It's a tale of whiny Sparts today. Lawrence and Lina hate the e-Ville Corporation in all its forms and join some activist group called STUMP (no doubt run by skinny boys with pathetic excuses for beards – good guess me, it seems). It's time for a little non-violent civil disobedience. Yeah, that means a bunch of dippy hippies playing guitars. If I were the e-Ville Corporation, I'd be running up the white flag so as not to suffer the horrors of guitars, caftans, and twentysomething, eunuch-like boys who strain to grow beards. The protest was a great success in that it was well managed and there was little disruption, but it didn't get much media coverage which focused on the response from the e-Ville Corporation. STUMP decides to up the ante to civil disorder (I suppose that means things like paying for something in a shop and then running away without it or the change). Lina and Lawrence are opposed to violence, but since the e-Ville Corpo

There's always one. Before the vote on the compulsory chewing of tobako leaves can be taken, there's an objection from someone who had the disease and survived. Chewing tobako leaves might kill him, but he knows that he has a natural immunity to the disease which the flies have been spreading. In spite of this hysterical outburst which ignores the fact that not everyone has a natural immunity to the disease, the Health Secretary's proposal is passed. When all the risks are weighed up, this seems to be the best option open to the Marjonians since no one knows who's naturally immune to the disease, nor who's allergic to the tobako leaves. The question is whether this is fair and democratic or unfair and despotic? The Community Council would say that it was for the good of the people and, therefore, a good thing . But that argument can be extended to all sorts of unplesantness. As far as I recall, Marjon is not a democracy, although the voting system in the Council wen

What doesn't kill us makes us more susceptible. The Marjonian Community Council decides to opt for majority decisions rather than unanimity. They've also built themselves a network of irrigation channels, which would be all well and good, but they're a breeding ground for flies which spread a lethal disease throughout the population. Two-thirds of the population is going to die. Anyway, the Secretary of State for Health (aka the Druid) says that if the people chew the leaves of the tobako [sic!] plant, they'll be immunised against the disease. The Council is about to pass the proposal for the immunisation programme when someone mentions that some people react badly to tobako. The Health Secretary admits that about one in twenty might die, but that seems to be a better proposition than two-thirds succumbing to the disease. And just to twist the tail a little more, the disease is highly infectious and once you have it, chewing tobako won't help. So, should the scheme

If you can't share the breadfruit, you can at least share the water. One obvious solution to the water shortage in Marjon was an irrigation system. I was going to mention this yesterday, but fortunately looked ahead in the book. Seems like a good idea, but some people have got used to the changes that have happened because of changes to the climate, and are opposed to this newfangled idea. The Council shows the sort of inertia which is typical of a government, and the proles walk out to take matters into their own hands. Are they justified? Well, if everyone else is going to sit on their arses and expect breadfruit to come falling like manna from heaven, then perhaps the peasants need to take matters into their own hands. Irrigation would solve a problem, although that's not to say it wouldn't create further problems, because their might be a point at which the amount of water becomes insufficient and replacement of the supply cannot keep up with demand. In other words, the

Perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea. There's been a shift in the Marjonian climate so that most people are now unable to grow enough food, while 10% who have access to springs can produce more than they need and use that power to control the rest of the population. They also say that even if the breadfruit was shared out, there still wouldn't be enough. Besides, what's their motivation to do any work if they don't benefit from it? The Community Council doesn't know what to do. The head of the Council suggests that hardship is a price worth paying so that no one's forced to do what they don't want to. Is the Community Council still right? Is hardship a price worth paying to stave off tyranny? If you're one of Marjon's starving masses, then it'd probably be tyranny all the way, although tyrants don't seem to be bothered about fairness, even the ones who claim they're acting on behalf of the people. But ordinary people are not renowned for

And why do they call it breadfruit? We take a trip to the tropical paradise of Marjon. The people live an idyllic life and are governed by a Community Council. All decisions must be unanimous. One night someone proposes that their crops should be owned collectively and shared out evenly according to need. The Marxists have been in town peddling their own brand of pseudo-religious irrationality. No one is much interested. It seems to promote laziness since anyone can help themselves to the communal store of breadfruit. No one is in need anyway, and if they want more, they can grow more. Is the council member right? Well, in Marjon, the answer seems to be yes. If no one wants food, then there seems no point in a communal store of food. Society seems happy and stable, but if things went pear-shaped – unlikely though that prospect seems to be – then the Marjonians might be up in arms and down in breadfruit. But even if everything wasn't so idyllic, why should there be any sharing? My s

When students can't make their minds up. We finished yesterday's story with the stupid dog getting itself drowned. It seems that Professor Purple's students were less inclined to be charitable about the dog after the first occasion. But the next day one of them reads out a statement that the prof. flouted his fundamental duty to save the life of a sentient being. Sentient? It's a dog and a very stupid dog at that. It seems that Professor Purple is going to be damned for having done and done not. He rescues the dog – they complain; he doesn't rescue the dog – they complain. I must admit that this is the sort of irrational response I'd expect from the more hysterical members of the student body. Anyway, the result of all the whining is a bunch of protests. What did the professor miss? Well, prof., you should've done what I suggested yesterday. By removing the dog to a place where it either couldn't get into trouble or to a place where it'd become someo

He's fallen in the water. Professor Purple, already a little late for his lecture, is delayed further by his rescue of a dog which has fallen into the university lake and can't get out. His students forgive him when they learn why his arrival was delayed. The week after, the dog has fallen into the lake again and again the professor's arrival is delayed. His students are now generally feeling less charitable towards the dog. The week after, the stupid creature has done it again. Professor Purple merely informs a porter and gets on with his lecture. His students agree with his policy, and the dog drowns just in time to prevent a rescue. The question is whether there's a flaw in the reasoning of the prof. and his class, or whether the dog's been unlucky. My inclination is that there's a flaw in the reasoning, but pragmatics glosses over it. We've all been in situations where we attempt to help someone or something only to find that we've wasted our efforts

Don't just eat your veggies. Eat granddad as well. In spite of Nanny's permanent brain sickness and an initial general uncertainty about the likely prosperity of this blog, I find I've reached my 100th post. Today's dilemma is about eating granddad. Or relativism. Professor Quesay has been invited to Granddad Alloi's 70th birthday. But the prof notices that at the celebration itself, Granddad's strangely absent. Actually, he ought to be reconsidering whether he's such an expert in the customs of his hosts because he's forgotten the unforgettable – when someone reaches the age of 70, their children kill them and eat them. The professor isn't so keen on the main course, although it'd be an insult to decline grandpa stew, or his rissoles. Worse than that, the failure to eat granddad is to put a curse on him in the afterlife. So, why shouldn't the prof eat granddadburgers with the same pleasure he had before he was reintroduced to the entrée? I&#

More powerful than a Presocratic. Aristotle, Rousseau and Kant are going for a walk when Rousseau notices that a slave girl (wearing a sexy bikini, of course) swimming in the lake has found herself in difficulty. Rousseau has merely made the observation, but is otherwise not inclined to endanger himself. Kant jumps into the water, but finds himself in difficulty in short order. Aristotle rips the branch off a tree, and throws it unerringly to Kant who then extricates the slave girl, and they return to the bank safe and sound. Aristotle praises Kant for his intentions, but is less forgiving about his lapse in common sense. His good intentions just weren't enough. Rousseau, meanwhile, says nothing and merely cops a sneaky feel. Who's the hero? Overall, if we're scoring this on points, then Aristotle. Kant comes second for attempting to be heroic. Rousseau doesn't exactly lose, because he's most likely to score with the slave girl afterwards. That is, of course, unless

Those bargain executions in full. Another ethics problem, but this time from the book on philosophy problems. You can wait for the conclusion to the story about the magnanimous man until tomorrow or perhaps the day after. Today's story takes us to the fun-loving People's Republic of Diktatia (formerly the Autonomous Soviet Republic of Diktatskaya) where the national pastime is attacking the government. After one attack, the President orders the Security Minister (aka Uncle Bttplgg – yes, they speak one of those languages which thinks vowels are for sissies) to round up the thirty most likely suspects. They're given an ultimatum. They can either tell the authorities who was behind the attack, or they'll all be shot. If they feel like sharing, then two names will be expected. In fact, none of them have the faintest idea who was behind the attack, but they're left with the question whether to save themselves, they should sacrifice two of their number. That seems better

Magnanimity. John Donne famously told Death not to be proud; but according to one definition of pride, Death could justifiably be proud, because what is not to say that Death doesn't have a good and noble character? That is, goodness and nobility are necessary prerequisites for pride. A proud person is moderately pleased when they are praised by their peers, but not remotely interested when they're praised by lesser mortals or for lesser actions. In other words, pride is not one of the Seven Deadly Sins of snivelling Christian tradition, but a kind of virtue, albeit one that's limited to a small number of allegedly deserving people. The idea comes from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics . Is pride such a bad thing? If I've achieved something difficult, for example, is it wrong to be proud of my achievement or of myself for achieving it? Or should I only be proud of the thing achieved and let others be proud of me for my achievement? What if there's no one to be prou

The Pursuit of Constant Pleasure. I know. You're all going to accuse me of being an Epicurean (and thus misunderstanding Epicurus) or a hedonist (and simply misunderstanding me). Today's ethical issue brings us back to the Greek proverb I mentioned a couple of days ago – μηδὲν ἄγαν "nothing in excess". In other words, the happiest state is one where we're satisfied. Wanting more makes us unhappy, although this seems to condemn people who don't have enough to say stupid things such as "At least we have each other". Similarly, an excess of pleasure is merely a temporary state which, again, leaves us wanting more. Am I generally satisfied? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Or bears? (I'm not sure which is the right answer.) I'm more satisfied than I was a few years ago, but still less satisfied than I might be. My expectations of life are still a long way from being fulfilled. But I'm used to being in a situation where my desires are never go

Or disgrace? Chrysippus the Stoic said that pleasure is not good. There are disgraceful pleasures and nothing disgraceful can be good. Are we talking about you or me, Chrysippus? Your morality or mine? If I assume that someone else will enjoy what I enjoy, then I may be disappointed. Just look at my classes. The book has many exercises of the sort that I enjoyed doing in English class when I was at school, yet I know from long experience that the odds of them enjoying some unit or exercise which I think might stimulate their interest are already against me. In general terms, of all the things which humans find pleasurable, most of us find only a subset of them to be enjoyable. It should be remembered that our subsets don't always coincide. Just because you might like it, doesn't mean that I will.

Advice to the emperor. One day Qin Shihuang was wondering why people didn't live as long as they used to. His chief minister, Qi Bo, should've said, "Well, dude, if you keep massacring whole families, it's no wonder no one's living as long. This is the age of Butchery, Buggery, Burning and Burial. And that's just a fun afternoon out for you. No one else enjoys it. So long as people live in absolute terror of you, they're going to be dropping like flies." But Qi Bo, knowing that the emperor was never in a mood to be gainsaid, waffled on blandly about moderation, regularity, and balance, perhaps hoping that Qin Shihuang would moderate his human rights abuses; be regular in them; and let everyone share in them. Can you imagine the disgrace for prominent families of the realm if the emperor wasn't even bothering to execute any of them? Should the emperor have followed Qi Bo's actual advice? That was his choice. Besides, Qi Bo was just making a few

Evil – I'm lovin' it! St Augustine began life as a fairly normal sort of chap and then got religion. He might've been remembered as the most fun person in history. Well, he'd probably be remembered for stealing pears and for enjoying the act rather than the fruit, which was fed to the pigs. The dilemma in the book is whether Augustine knowingly chose to do evil when he became the Pear Tree Raider. But this situation makes me wonder about motivation. We tend to judge people's actions in terms of the reason for that action. It's clear that we have a gradient scale where this reason is sufficient, but that reason is not. We like to know there's a good reason for something. Gustino's reason was the act itself, but this is regarded as weak motivation, and although we might disapprove of theft, we understand if there was some utilitarian purpose behind it. But Gus didn't want the pears for himself or for anyone else; he didn't even steal them for the

Now you see me; now you don't. What would you do if you had a ring that made you invisible? Would you go round saying "Yesss my preciousss" and falling into rivers of lava? Gyges was shepherd who found a magic ring and abused its power, which culminated in the murder of the king and the usurpation of his throne. I should note that Mrs King was in on the plot and had put out to the invisible man. How easily could we be tempted to do wrong if we had such a ring (provided, of course, Sauron – bit thick if you ask me – hadn't put much of his power into it)? My inclination would be to keep the ring secret for a start. What would I do with such a ring? I don't know. I'm not inclined to larceny; I'm not a stalker; I couldn't use such a thing to eavesdrop because I don't understand Chinese well enough. I couldn't sneak into and out of the airport because I'd still give off a heat signature and thus register on the cameras that check people's t

The Man is still a Machine. Today's problem is that Dr Descartes is talking about the division of body and soul, which makes the former little more than a machine controlled by the latter, which is independent of it. The question is that if the body's a mere machine and the soul is independent and immortal, then is there any reason why people could not be killed as freely as animals? Of course, this would assume that animals don't have a soul or, at best, have lesser souls than ours, which makes them fair game. When you live a short, miserable life, where Death waits round every corner with Famine, Pestilence and War, perhaps you want some reassurance that there is something beyond death to make the brevity of life seem less of a waste of time. Also, what an odd sort of existence, to be alive so briefly and then spend eternity either strumming a harp on a cloud or having demons prod your arse with pitchforks. The afterlife does seem sadly unproductive, pointless and rather

Tighten the nuts. Dr Descartes is now putting forward arguments about how to distinguish people from mere mechanoids. One is that they'd be incapable of using language creatively (i.e., language use that goes beyond what could merely be learnt), even although they might be able to give a verbal response to various stimuli. ("Ouch! You should not poke my diodes like that." "Check out the software on her.") The other is that a machine wouldn't have our range of capabilities, although there might be one thing at which it excels. Unless our brains are badly miswired, humans can produce novel utterances, whereas creatures which can "speak" merely mimic human speech, but are incapable of producing new strings of words. People who are born deaf and dumb still manage to communicate creatively. The question is whether the gulf between humans and animals is that great. Animals have ways of communicating and they aren't exactly wholly specialised in their

What are we? We continue with the slightly deranged ramblings of Dr Descartes. This time, it's that little matter of free will. If we didn't have free will, then what would be the difference between humans and animals? What's to say that we have free will at all? I'm not saying that some god is the puppet master and we're the marionettes, but what I am saying is that we don't have as much free will as we like to believe. What we do have is choices. If I had an infinite number of choices open to me every time I made a decision, then I'd have free will. But I don't have such choices because my actions often lead me in very specific directions. If I do A, then B is going to result. The only choice I might have is not to proceed to B, although I might, and probably want to do that anyway. Or perhaps we always have infinite choices, but we can instantly exclude 99.99999…% of them. For example, I might need more breakfast cereal. My obvious course of action is

Continuing from yesterday. I didn't realise that there was a bit more to yesterday's problem than the picture by Hogarth. The next part is about a lecture which involves the lecturer, Dr Descartes, an obvious subscriber to the Confucian School of Animal Rights, cutting the heart out of a live chimpanzee to demonstrate that animals are just machines. But one student notes that what can be said of non-sentient animals can also be said of human beings. The little swot has a point, of course, although while I recognise that humans are part of the animal kingdom, I recognise that we have more going for us than mere instinct. Humane or ethical treatment of animals, yes; but to give them right equal to that of humans is to overpromote them. Besides, Nature's a hard bitch. If lions were the dominant species on the planet and we were still humans anyway, they'd be snacking on us because that's what lions do. It wouldn't be a matter of lions thinking they're better, t

Make your mind up, you deranged old crank. My second port of call this morning was Danwei, where I'm greeted by the story Blogspot blocked again – ongoing saga . Fortunately, as I've just discovered, the proxy I've been going through is still working its magic. Of course, as I know from the previous occasion, it's possible to post here whether you use a proxy service to view blogspot or not. And so the mad old bat continues to be unable to make her mind up.

First catch a cat or dog… You'll need to have a look at William Hogarth's First Stage of Cruelty . The question is what the other three stages are once you've graduated from cruelty to animals. Stage 2 Cruelty to children. Obviously, making them eat pumpkin (major human rights violation), cauliflower (who on earth would want to eat the head of a giant, malodorous, mutant flower?) and cabbage (disgusting and smelly). Stage 3 Cruelty to adults. Making them teach Classes 1 and 2 for three years, and Class 13 for one. Stage 4 Cruelty to divine beings. (Well, I've run out of humans.) Apparently (according to Hogarth), the second stage is beating a horse with a stick; the third is murder; and the fourth is being dissected by anatomists after you've been executed. So my guesses were quite close, then.

Pushing granny under the bus. Three dilemmas this time, although I've already discussed a couple of them here or somewhere else. Dr Dedicated has five patients who are in urgent need of organ donors. He has a sixth patient who's recently been cured and who he could use as a source of organs for the other five. If he were to use the sixth patient in this way, that person would die, although five lives would be saved. Would it be right to kill one person to save many? This is the old Star Trek (aka Spock) Dilemma. You know the line, "The needs of the star outweigh the needs of realism". Well, he probably said something like that. Actually, there was something like this in the paper yesterday. The news was that the former head of China's food and drug agency has been sentenced to death. Some of the drugs which he authorised caused the deaths of ten people. It was felt that 10 out of 1.3 billion wasn't really sufficient to be of any particular concern. I'd say

Boy meets girl. Bernard is having a casual affair with Ethel, who is married. His girlfriend, Zjamel, asks him whether he's having an affair. He doesn't want to lie, but he doesn't want to upset her either. He decides that avoiding the latter is better than avoiding the former, and thus denies the affair. Zjamel is happy and the affair ends not long afterwards. Did Bernard do the right thing? I suppose this is getting into the world of times when it's better to lie. In other words, we tend to think lying is a bad thing until confronted by a situation where telling the truth would be cause distress to others. Bernard's lie makes Zjamel feel better, and since happiness is the highest good, and lying makes you feel good, then we should lie all the time. Girl: Does my bum look big in this? Boy [lying]: Yes. Girl: Bastard! All right, perhaps that wasn't such a good idea. There are occasions when, I think, a lie is justified, just as there are many occasions when it&#

But it comes with bells and whistles. All right, so you have this girlfiend, sorry, girlf r iend who insists on buying trendy crap that doesn't work. You've got the hi-tech toaster that doesn't toast bread properly and a fountain that got clogged up and sank to the bottom of the pond. (You've got a pond that deep?!) One day a catalogue for Bright, Shiny Useless Crap (does sound like the Innovations catalogue, doesn't it?) drops through your front door. It's full of those toasters, fountains, deck chairs with GPS navigation etc. and it's addressed to your girlfriend. Do you dispose of it or do you hand it over only to arrive home one day to a loo which announces how much weight you've lost every time you have a shit? There's too little info in today's problem to come to a judgement. Who's paying for this stuff? Whose house do you live in? Is your girlfriend buying this for you (major guilt trip if you reject it), herself (dump her 'cos she

How could it have slipped my mind? Today's scenario assumes that you bought a computer online. It's arrived, but you haven't paid for it because you forgot to send a cheque. What do you do? Say nothing or phone the company and tell them the cheque is on its way? I'd do the latter, although I know of more than one person who'd do the former and then wriggle like hell to avoid people coming to repossess said computer. These are also the sort of people who believe that once something is in their possession, regardless of the means by which they acquired it, it's inalienably theirs. The discussion talks about what most people would do as a basis for deciding what your course of action might be, but I merely thought what I'd do when I considered the situation. It didn't even cross my mind to consider what the general custom might supposedly be.

It's what they do. Today's ethical problem is a customary guide to human rights. Human beings have some pretty odd and iffy customs which might result in The right to torture people. The right to own slaves. The right to infanticide. The right to kill and consume the elderly. If human rights was based on customs, then this is the sort of ethically dubious list you might end up with. And all these things have been and are still being done. The first three are alive and kicking, and I'm sure there's still some bunch of cannibals regularly serving mutton dressed as lamb. Of course, the custom-based rights above are all contrary to what we regard as decent behaviour in the West. The discussion in the book notes problems in formulating the UN Declaration on Human Rights because what we might regard as universal such as freedom of religion (aka the right to be wrong) and women's rights (although it should be unnecessary to have specific rights for half of humanity ) were

I am a free man. You've probably heard about the experiment Dr Robert Zimbardo conducted in 1971 in which he divided students into "guards" and "prisoners" only to find that the former group rampantly abused the power they'd been given over the latter. Both groups were depersonalised, but the "prisoners" also wore masks concealing who they actually were. The experiment is merely another manifestation of what happened during WW II in the extermination camps in Europe and Japanese POW camps (especially Camp 731). It seems that when one group of people depersonalises another, the latter group seems to lose something of their humanity in the eyes of the former, thus, apparently, excusing the treatment of one group by the other. It's alarming that such a thing should happen in an experiment involving students who were probably against the Vietnam War and would've deplored such brutal behaviour in others. Without being put in such a situation, I