Mehdi Hasan has provoked a big online debate about abortion, after publishing a column in the New Statesman on whether abortion is a Left/Right issue in politics. Mehdi says that although the Left is usually identified with the pro-choice* argument and the Right with pro-life*, the arguments deployed are (in his view) the opposite of what the Left and Right usually deploy. The Left use the language of individualism and choice, while the Right use the language of vulnerability and equality.
This article sparked a furious online debate about the central issue – Kenan Malik has an excellent pro-choice rejoinder to Hasan’s piece. There has also been a meta-debate about whether it was even possible to have a reasoned debate about the issue. I was taken with Hopi Sen’s analysis, comparing what a person thinks they said with what people on the opposing side actually hear (see these amusing stanzas for a shortened version).
I tend to think of the central question as a Devil’s Alternative type question. Whatever you choose, the outcome is bad. Trying to devise rules – legal or ethical – for a Devil’s Alternative problem seems futile. Is abortion right? is a trick question: The stuff of utilitarian philosophy lectures and episodes of 24, where you try to work out the course of action that causes least hurt… Knowing full well that any choice you make leads to permenant unpleasant consequences. Perhaps the only way out of the mire is to punt on the central ethical question, declaring it essentially incomplete in Gödel‘s sense: we are not equipped to process such a question properly. It is undecidable. A paradox that exposes the limits of our language and ethical structures. Continue reading
Category: Diary (Page 107 of 301)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
While all manner of scandal engulfs politics and the media, and while the British Twittersphere gets angry about abortion, I’m considering the weather. Or at least, two competing attitudes to those who predict it.
First, a fascinating extract from Nate Silver’s book The Signal An The Noise looks at the art of weather forecasting, and the psychologies at play.
Catering to the demands of viewers can mean intentionally running the risk of making forecasts less accurate. For many years, the Weather Channel avoided forecasting an exact 50 percent chance of rain, which might seem wishy-washy to consumers. Instead, it rounded up to 60 or down to 40. In what may be the worst-kept secret in the business, numerous commercial weather forecasts are also biased toward forecasting more precipitation than will actually occur. (In the business, this is known as the wet bias.) For years, when the Weather Channel said there was a 20 percent chance of rain, it actually rained only about 5 percent of the time.
People don’t mind when a forecaster predicts rain and it turns out to be a nice day. But if it rains when it isn’t supposed to, they curse the weatherman for ruining their picnic. “If the forecast was objective, if it has zero bias in precipitation,” Bruce Rose, a former vice president for the Weather Channel, said, “we’d probably be in trouble.”
Feminist punk group Pussy Riot members, from left, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.
Yesterday in a Moscow court-room, two of the three Pussy Riot convictions were upheld. Nadezha Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina will serve a two year sentence for hooliganism. The appeal of Yekaterina Samutsevich was granted and she was released.
The three members of the Pussy Riot punk art collective had previously been convicted on a charge of hooliganism, for a political protest staged in a Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The English PEN website has more detailed information and suggested actions to take in support of the two imprisoned women.
The Russia Legal Information Agency published a live-blog of the appeal hearing yesterday. One entry stands out:
13:11 [Prosecutor] Alexei Taratukhin is up. He negatively assessed the request for a special ruling to restrict President Putin from expressing sentiments about the trial. “Everyone has the freedoms of thought and speech. Should we force the highest official in the country to give up his opinion?”
(Emphasis added).
So: The prosecutor in a trial seeking to suppress protest cites the value of free expression, but only when applied to the President. The hypocrisy here is breathtaking. Continue reading
I couple of few weeks ago, I pasted into my Commonplace Book this delightful take on eBooks from China Miéville:
We are, at last, leaving phase one of the ebook discussion, during which people could ritually invoke the ‘smell of paper’ as a call to cultural barricades. Some anxieties are tenacious: how will people know what a splendid person I am without a pelt of the right visible books on my walls, without the pretty qlippoth husks? A hopeful future: that our grandchildren will consider our hankering for erudition-décor a little needy
This point clearly touched a nerve. It went semi-viral with 104 people reblogging it.
I confess to being precisely the kind of chauvinist for the physicality of books that Miéville mocks, though his framing makes me think I am being unnecessarily sentimental.
One argument in favour of physical books: they demand to be read. Sitting on the shelf, they are a Constant reminder of their unreadness. A physical book may inspire or guilt-trip its owner into picking it up, merely by virtue of its existence.
This is not the case with virtual books. Last week, I downloaded free e-book versions many of the classics featured on this Observer list of essential novels. However, the electronic files sit hidden away, in a virtual folder, within an app, concealed on the third screen of programmes on my device. Out of sight, out of mind. They cannot command my attention like tangible objects.
Another person has received a criminal conviction for something they posted on a social media site. Matthew Woods received a 12 week prison sentence for posting a message about missing schoolgirl April Jones on his Facebook page. At 20 years old, Woods sits in the same young and foolish male demographic as Azhar Ahmed, @Rileyy_69 and Leo Traynor’s troll.
The media have refrained from reporting Wood’s comments. This is a good thing. The joke assumes the guilt of the person accused of April Jones’ murder, so reporting it would prejudice a trial. Media restraint also minimises any distress to April’s family, and denies the attention-seeker further opportunities to provoke.
However… The only reason this Woods has received any attention in the first place was because he has been hauled before a magistrate! Had he not been arrested and charged, the comment would have been lost in the obscurity of his Facebook timeline after a couple of days. The comment obviously violates Facebook Terms & Conditions, so he might have been banned from using the site. We might describe that as a contractual matter, not criminal. And he might have lost a lot of friends (both in the real sense and the Facebook sense). But this is a social sanction, not criminal. Continue reading