Random Rules V

• "How did the United States, the world's scientific powerhouse, reach a point at which it grapples with the ethical challenges of twenty-first-century biomedicine using Bible stories, Catholic doctrine, and woolly rabbinical allegory?" Steven Pinker has some ideas.

• Ostensibly "about sex offenders and the art of photography," Peter Sotos' forthcoming book, Lordotics, promises to bring poor Lyndie England into the frame.  With Errol Morris's captivating apologies back on the festival circuit, white people may want to prioritize their attention carefully. At least Andrea Dworkin isn't around to complicate matters.   

• Jim Crawford continues his exceptionally perceptive chapter-journal on David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been. You can catch up, here, here, here and here.

• Twenty minutes into a radio interview with Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson, the French government's editorial ombudsman pulled the plug, apparently for fear of running afoul of France's Fabius-Gayssot law (or Gayssot law), which, like similar statutes across the globe, imposes criminal sanctions upon those who publicly contest "crimes against humanity" as defined by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal of 1945-46. Courtesy of the stalwart racialist thought criminals at The Civic Platform, you can now read an English translation of the banned interview, in which Faurisson provides a scathing account of anti-denial laws without contesting one word of Nuremburg scripture.   

• Schopenhauer understood the sufferings of the world. But does the plight of wild animals and insects count for anything at all?  What about plants? Are you sure?

Here's another one from the abridged and updated Lexicon:

Zygote, n. - A human being, just like you and me. Hath not a zygote eyes? Hath not a zygote hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? And if you wrong them, shall they not revenge? 

Memento mori.

Comments

[jim]

Thanks for the plug, Chip. As you and I have talked about before, it'll take clarity and emotional impact to get people to look beyond their biases; the arguments themselves are rather simple and self-evident, I think. But antinatalism is far from the feel-good philosophy most folks go for these days. David Benatar deserves kudos for stepping out like this; I'd imagine he receives more than his fair share of flak for taking such a controversial position. It's been a pleasure showcasing his book on my blog...I only hope I'm doing it justice.

[TGGP]

Speaking of Abu Ghraib and radical feminism, check out this:
http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/calhoun/feministmystique/index.asp?page=1

[TGGP]

I'd also like to note that the folks at the Civic Platform are willing to limit access to their own expressions as they've banned me from even viewing their page:
http://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/banned-from-utopia/

[Chip Smith]

TGGP,

Good point about TCP. I had forgotten. People can be very silly, can't they?