Haiti Donations
Just adding to the movement of linking to donation sites here. Giving money in this way seems to be the only realistic thing one can do from so far away, in the face of such a tragedy.
For reasons I'm not entirely sure of I've always had an affinity with Doctors Without Borders, so that's where my donation money went for Haiti. You can do the same...
If you haven't yet seen in visual form the sheer gravity of the devastation in Haiti, The Boston Globe's Big Picture series, as always, has captured some dramatic shots.
I review ballet
A friend sent me a review of the Royal NZ Ballet's current piece Peter Pan. I went along to it while it was here, and thought it was great. I can highly recommend checking out one of the upcoming performances if it's coming your way.
Reading this review also reminded me of a review of a ballet performance I wrote several years ago. Not your typical review I should add. I basically took proper reviews and re-jigged them to make fun of the overly-fluffy and woo-woo language ballet reviewers love to (perhaps need to) use. It cracked me up reading it again so I'll reproduce it here below...
BALLET ASTOUNDS AND AMAZES PEOPLE
The Royal Family's NZ Ballet Company performed in the prestigious Jersey Cow Theatre in Waitrahuhugrub last night to a star-speckled audience of over 37 eager Thespians.
The Tutus For Hire tour spans the entire country, with the dancing troupe splitting into two. It’s more than half a century since Poul Gnatt first dragged the NZ Ballet around the small towns in this country. Then, as now, the company’s visit was the highlight of the calendar for many of those settlements, whose other highlights included gumboot throwing and pig wrestling.
The dancers are no longer billeted with the locals due to reports of indecent exposure and overfeeding, but they are, for 48 hours, welcomed as family. This is unique among other world-renowned ballet companies, who would view such a tour as below them.
The opening, Pas de Quatre, is a feminine cameo of four leading dancers from the romantic ballet era. They are here given a poetic perfume, which helps mask the smell of sweat emanating out from the stage. However, this fragrance does not deliberately distinguish the contrasting qualities of the original ballerinas who were arch-rivals.
The second work, Theme and Deviations, is choreographed by company dancer Andrew Simmons, here in its premier performance. As a piece, it is awash with temperate colours which give it an almost prosaic texture while maintaining an effervescent glow reminiscent of a turtle at night. Brendan Bradshaw identifies with this turtle particularly well.
The most astounding and amazing part of the evening was the Concerto Pas de Deux by Kenneth MacMillan. Immaculately crafted sequences and positions that melt and flow highlight this piece, illuminated further by the Shostakovich score. Catherine Eddy’s line is, as per usual, absolutely amazing. It’s not hard to see why it’s been called the best line in the country. Her line shines with the light of a thousand gypsies, while at the same time, holds the austere presence of several sheep in a barn. Qi Huan is good too.
Equilibrium is choreographed by Cameron McMillan, returning to New Zealand after several years with Thug Dance Company in Harlem, to stage this premier. Borrowing from quantum physics the notion of a “superposition of states”, the work makes uncompromising metaphysical demands on the performers – proposing the question through dance of how fundamental elements can exist as waveforms and matter in symbiotic duality, and what this means for multiple realities or universes. The striking costumes designed by Moana Nepia support the choreographic concept, although the Philip Glass score was a terrible choice of accompaniment. Philip just doesn’t get it.
The final work, Raymonda Variations, re-staged by Craig Lord and Nadine Tyson, evokes the grandeur of the Russian Mafia, though here, in splendidly styled tutus with hidden gun holsters and hammer and sickle imprints. Designed by Gary Harris, the work is not weighed down by the bloody history of the Russian Mafia, which is a good thing; it would have really brought down the tone of the piece. Qi Huan delivers great pyrotechnics with bravura, although concerns were raised about her use of fireworks in an indoor theatre. Abigail Boyle, trying to one-up Qi and her use of pyrotechnics, brings crazy arm movements to the party, which grace her impressive technique. There’s also the fresh meat, Ingrid Gow, who offers an aristocratic line coupled with a naturalness that already makes her one to watch. Ingrid’s line is no match for Catherine Eddy’s however, whose line is so powerful she can catch Fish with it.
From the forced smiles seen on stage, the dancers seemed to really enjoy the programme. It is a good balance between the antiquated and beautiful to something new and edgy. Tutus For Hire will be hitting your town soon!
Why keyboard Cat sucks
Just a random musing on internet memes here. Specifically the "Play him off, Keyboard Cat" meme.
To explain why I don't like this one, I need to introduce a few ideas. Well, just one actually. Basically that a meme can be divided up into its "concept" and its "content". The concept refers to a meme's central idea, its uniqueness. The content refers to a meme's actual substance.
The thing is, a good meme has a disconnection between its concept and content. This allows the concept to continue being recognised with fresh content every time. Instant lol. For example, see Xzibit Yo Dawg and You're Doing It Wrong.
Keyboard Cat however has no disconnection between concept and content - both are the same every time. Not so instant lol after the 3rd or 4th times viewing. Lame.
Phew...glad to get that uber important thought out there.
Tamiflu sensibility
I was very glad to read in this Stuff article how Tamiflu is being well controlled by pharmacists and all those without obvious symptoms are denied the drug.
This is essential to prevent the wide scale unnecessary use of the drug which tilts the balance from prevention over to significantly increasing the risk of Tamiflu-resistant mutations developing. That'd be a bad thing mmmkay.
Plus it lessens the chance of swine flu hysteria where people storm the pharmacy wanting the magic cure.
Fluuuuuuy
So I got the flu vaccine yesterday. My left side still is a bit sore, under the arm as well, presumably due to lymph nodes etc. there.
It's weird how the effect is so localised to the side of the injection. Maybe I should take advantage of this in these early days. For example face anyone who I suspect might be sick with my left side and only touch foreign objects with my left hand.
That'd be a nightmare in a crowded room though...would have to keep spinning around..."hey, hey, keep to the left!"
On a more serious matter. I partly got the vaccine because I'm super-busy with Uni this year and it'd would really suck to be out of action for a week or so. So it's a case of all relatively straightforward precautions.
Now I must read, and read and read...
Abortion
I originally wrote about my thoughts on abortion after coming across a Youtube video which showed Christian fundamentalists in the US protesting against abortion. Some sneaky guy was exposing issues with their views by asking them "what do you think should happen to the woman that still have abortions when it is illegal? Jail?"
All the woman (which he edited to include in the video) had not thought this far ahead, stumbled and had no good answers. This does make a tidy point but also isn't too surprising - these people were going on gut ideology not exactly rational legal thought (it was a protest after all).
Anyway, this spurred me on to finish solidifying my own thoughts on the topic. My original attempt was a bit of a mess - internally contradictory and unfocused. In this second attempt I've hopefully got my ideas clearer and cleaner...
For liberals in the western world, the legality of abortion seems fairly certain - almost a knee-jerk reaction to issues such as woman's rights and the bleak outlook of bringing a baby into an impoverished world.
Steven Novella makes the claim that all arguments of abortion ultimately come down to a personal moral choice: which should have greater value, the mother's right to make choices regarding her own body, or the unborn foetus' right not to be killed.
My view is that the mother's right to make choices regarding her own body is greater. I support this view with the idea that abortion is justifiable killing. In this post I'll outline my thoughts further.
To explain my view at length, first I need to define what I think killing is. Putting aside the academic issues around defining life from a biological sciences point of view, I see everything that isn’t inanimate (e.g. rocks) as having life. Therefore, ‘killing’ for me is taking/removing/stopping the life of a plant, cows, human, etc. We kill all the time – for warmth, for shelter, for food. While I follow the path of self-interested speciesism and agree that human life has the highest value, I don’t believe it’s beyond justification for killing.
Therefore, I believe that using this definition, abortion can only be seen as killing. Stopping the organism at any point from fertilisation onwards is killing as it will continue to develop into a human without this critical intervention. The view here is that the foetus = the baby = the person. The progression is evident and is programmed to occur, and will occur without significant external impact or internal destruction (e.g. genetic disorders).
I see a continuum of killing existing in terms of the implications. This is necessary given my broad definition of the word. So killing bacteria is different from killing plants which is different from killing mice, which again is different from killing humans. This continuum is relative to our species of course.
Consistent with this continuum it's necessary to make a distinction between the killing of an adult human and the killing of a foetus. These clearly exist in different places on the continuum of killing and are markedly different in their implications. The killing of an adult human with all its memories, relationships and experiences has far wider and deeper implications than the killing of a foetus in the womb. Hence I believe these differences in implications alter the significance of the word usage and therefore it is not possible to compare such diverse instantiations of killing.
The "justified" of my original term refers to at which point on the continuum killing is justified and for what justifications. This point is necessarily at large determined by one's position on the fundamental moral question raised at the start. As I already stated, my position is that the mother's right of choice over her own body is greater than the rights of the unborn foetus.
So now that the moral position is covered how does one move to the actual decision to abort or not? I don't see this moral position as being able to justify an abortion in and of itself. There are other factors which require consideration prior to making a decision on abortion.
The first additional factor is the input of those close to the woman, for example the father. Clearly the decision to abort or not can impact greatly on the father and hence he must, if possible, be considered in the decision. Other family members might also be impacted.
Another additional factor are the medical and support services. The doctor and/or psychologist/psychiatrist must cover the medical ethics component and ensure that the woman is medically suitable and in a sufficiently stable state of mind to have an abortion. Additionally, support services should be available to guide woman through this decision, giving them all the information to make informed decisions.
Although, ultimately, and especially from a moral argument point of view, the woman is the most significant person in an abortion decision. They have to make the final call, they have to go through with the abortion procedure, or if deciding to carry the baby to term, they have to go through the pregnancy and the potentially life-threatening birth.
Abortion is a complex issue, an issue where black and white dogma ignores the obvious human realities. Moreover, any view held always comes down to the personal moral choice: are a mother's rights over her own body greater than the unborn foetus' right to live. All objective arguments come down to this eventually. It is for this reason that abortion arguments between people who disagree are essentially unresolvable.
Perhaps the most important point is something that can easily get lost in the rhetoric of abortion debate. It is something that both sides can generally agree on. That is, that numbers of abortions need to be reduced. No one argues that high numbers are a "good thing" for society.
Abortion Revisited
So I wrote about my personal views on abortion early this year. After publishing this it definitely made me think more about what personal views I'm comfortable sharing online. Also why I'm sharing these views in particular.
There's no easy answer to this. I like to write my views in order to solidifying and make sense of them, and I'll happily talk to another about them, but somehow publishing them in text online is a significant leap into the uncomfortable zone.
I did decide however to republish the abortion piece, albeit with some changes brought about by comments on the old one. So maybe that is a good enough reason to publish - it lets your views get scrutinized a bit which is always a good thing.
I just need to finish making the changes now... 