For a little project I’m working on I have to write something on cloning, and in particular debates about whether reproductive cloning should be legalised. It isn’t really my area of expertise, so I don’t want to form sweeping judgments too quickly. But at first glance at the literature all of the arguments for banning reproductive cloning look absolutely awful. (With perhaps one exception, which is merely an unsound argument rather than an awful one.) If anyone knows of any good arguments, I’d be rather happy to see them.
From the monthly archives:
November 2003
Brian’s post has set me off reminiscing about the first album I ever bought – and one of the best. In Loughborough, the nondescript market town where I lived, Boots the Chemists was just about the only place you could buy records back in 1972. And most albums were just beyond my means (or certainly required deferring gratification through saving for longer than I could bear). But one day there appeared on the racks some samplers from Atlantic at 99p each. The one I settled on, though I’d never heard any of the artists, had a bright yellow cover with a dragster and was called _It All Started Here_ . My urge to possess overcame the irrationality of buying something I knew nothing about and so this 13-year-old came back home with the following tracks:
Matt Yglesias links to an appallingly boring list of the top 10 albums of all time, courtesy of (who else) Rolling Stone. Because I so love lists, and because I like flame wars, I decided to commemorate the occasion by pulling out my top 10 list, tinkering with it, and posting it.
The “Constitutions, Democracy and the Rule of Law”:http://ci.columbia.edu/ci/c250/symposia/constitutions/constitutions_vid_archive.html symposium is online at Columbia. I’ve only listened to some of the October 17th proceedings: specifically Jerry Cohen’s “Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and Who Can’t, Blame the Terrorists?” which argues that those who put terrorists in the position that they can only use morally unacceptable means thereby disqualify themselves from complaining about the the morally unacceptable acts terrorists then perform. (Thanks to Lwandile Sisilana for email about this.)
[Since my purspose here is merely to link to an interesting item and not to comment myself or to start a debate on CT, I’m going to disable comments — a policy I intend to use in similar link-only items on a selective basis.]
Daily Telegraph owner Conrad Black looks to be “in deep trouble”:http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,1086980,00.html .
I’m not keen on national anthems, but I was struck before the England–France semi-final by the constrast between “God Save the Queen”:http://acronet.net/~robokopp/english/godsaveo.htm and the “Marseillaise”:http://www.acronet.net/~robokopp/french/lamarsei.htm . One a dirge like hymn to hierarchy and submission, the other an upbeat celebration of martial comradeship. There’s no question that
bq. Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
are good lines to be singing before you take the field, even if — as it turned out — it hadn’t.
“Maps and territories”:http://www.chriscorrigan.com/maps/ is an interesting new blog. Each entry features a map or a fragment of one and some commentary. Definitely worth a look (via “Davos Newbies”:http://www.davosnewbies.com/ ).
Josh Cherniss has published “the results”:http://j3.blogspot.com/2003_11_09_j3_archive.html#106891363408327776 of his top Marxists poll. I’m going to resist the temptation to sat anything about the accompanying commentary except to recommend, as an antidote, the essays on Lenin and Trotsky that feature in Alasdair Macintyre’s “Against the Self-Images of the Age”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0268005877/junius-20.
Evidence of a new irregular verb courtesy of an interview with Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, full-time Washington lobbyist and mother:
Would you like to see American products like television shows flourish in Baghdad as well?
Oh, no. I hope they don’t show ”The Osbournes” over there … Shows like that wouldn’t exist if mothers stayed home with their kids and supervised what they watched.
But you yourself are a working mother. Do you think you could have been happy as a full-time housewife?
Probably not. Probably it would not have been enough for me. I always had a desire to make a difference. That is why I love the legislative process, where you can make a difference.
Thus we have,
I am out there making a difference;
You should really be at home with the kids;
She is undermining the moral foundations of our society.
Such double standards are nothing new in the world of Ladies Against Women, of course, but the barefaced cheek of it is still irritating.
!https://www.conservatives.com/siteimages/volunteer/joinus.jpg!
The British Conservatives have recently been trying to get more bright young people to “join the party”:https://www.conservatives.com/join/. It looks as though they’ve got some way to go. It’s no secret that the Conservative party is getting a bit long in the tooth (the average party member is “over 65”:http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tories2002/comment/0,12295,805968,00.html years old). But “Matthew Turner”:http://mattysblog.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_mattysblog_archive.html#106786054030485225 really brings their problems home when he takes a look at the products that advertisers try to flog to Conservatives. Turner provides a complete list of the ads in this month’s issue of _Conservative Heartland_, the official party rag. So what are merchants trying to peddle to the Tories? In consecutive order, it seems to be:
Accountants
Retirement investment advice
Vitamins ‘for a healthy lifespan’
Wine
Savile Row shirts
Medical insurance for the over 50s
Retirement homes on the South coast
Leg ‘relaxa-stool’ supporter
Margaret Thatcher books
‘Back-care’ chairs
‘Easy-bather’ bath aid
Typewriter
Pensioners hearing aid
Branded ‘comfort stretch’ trousers
Reproduction antique gramophone
This is so perfect (especially the comfort stretch trousers, hearing aids and gramophones) that it nearly sounds like a hoax. Apparently it’s not though, and indeed it’s been picked up by _Private Eye_. Found via “Harry’s Place”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2003/11/13/shurely_shome_mistake.php
The Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation invites you to apply for their latest round of grants. Once you have satisfied the 27-point checklist for the application, you must send “one (1) original and ten copies (10) for review by Friday, January 30, 2004.” Do not keep calling to ask whether your application has been received.
I’m sorry. I’ll have to make a donation to them now or something.
Robin Ramsay, editor of the excellent Lobster magazine, and co-author of an equally excellent book about Harold WIlson, makes a useful distinction between “Conspiracy Theory” and “Conspiracy Research”. According to Ramsay, the difference is that conspiracy theories are simple, interesting and leave you thinking that you understand it all, while consipracy research is difficult, boring and leaves you thinking you understand less than you did before you started. Given this, it is hardly surprising that the theoretical side of the academic discipline of Parapolitics is both far more popular than the empirical, and largely worthless.
However, the pollution of the well of parapolitical research by the theorists is pretty unfortunate, as means that the “loony” label tends to stick to a few dedicated journalists who often ask questions that really desperately need to be asked. The final stage in the disgraceful attempt to smear Gary Webb for uncovering documented evidence of Nicaraguan Contras with good political connections being given carte blanche to smuggle cocaine into Southern California, for example, was to paint him as a “consipracy theorist”. The attempt to rebrand conspiracy research as “parapolitics” (the study of those parts of the political process in democracies which involve illegal or covert activity) is probably a dead duck as with most rebrands, but men of good sense and good intention can do their bit to help by not making things worse.
Which is why I have a bit of a problem with this post from Daniel Drezner‘s site.
Mary Kaldor (an opponent of the war) has “an interesting piece on Iraq on OpenDemocracy”:http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-95-1579.jsp . One of her observations concerns the extent to which both the neo-cons and the Democrats are fixated on how it all plays “back home” :
bq. When I was in the CPA offices in the palace, the Green Zone was hit by mortar fire and we were evacuated to the basement. There, some of the American officials were overheard discussing how ‘the Democrats’ would play it back home, with their eyes on the election not the current situation in Iraq.
and
bq. Third, there is a presidential election coming up in America. Some people want America to fail in Iraq so that George W. Bush will lose the election. This kind of thinking prioritises domestic US concerns above the fate of Iraqis. It is as sick as the preoccupations of the Republicans in the CPA about ‘how will this play in the election?’ No one should support the military opposition to America. And there should be no immediate withdrawal of US troops until a framework for democracy is established.
Words fail.
A quick calculation from Mike Hout, via the sociologists at Kickass Women:
• Median income of American households: $42,000 [1]
• Average tax cut for members of Bush’s cabinet: $42,000 [2]
[1] Median household income after adjusting for taxes and benefits, U.S. Census Bureau, Money Income: 2002 (Current Population Report P60-221).
[2] Analysis by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-California), posted on his website.
Having the cheek to claim you put money back into the hands of regular Americans: Priceless.