Mortality Blog

I might sound like a broken record here (playing the same thing over and over again, for those of you in the audience who have only heard of what a record is) but stupid shit like this wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have such stupid arbitrary laws concerning how old you have to be before you can consent to sexual activity:

Normally, getting back at your girlfriend by posting naked pictures of her on the internet is one of those mastercard ‘priceless’ moments - but if your girlfriend is 16, just two years younger then the age-of-consent, you are in deep shit, because you’ve ceased to be a jerk ex-boyfriend, and instead you’re a child pornographer who has sexually exploited a kid. What the fuck.

See? The assumption that all photos or videos of nude underage people is a problem, isn’t it? How can they be exploited when they took the photo themselves? I mean, have you seen Chris Crocker naked? He’s got a picture of himself when he was 17 - if you poke around a little in google image search you’ll find it. He took it himself, and chose to distribute it over the internet - but legally, he didn’t have the ability to take the photo, or distribute it. How fucked up is that?

It’s insulting the level of irresponsibility our government assigns to people younger then 18. It’s total bullshit. My imaginary punk rock band ‘bullshit policy’ probably has a song called ‘your body is not your own’ or something. Seriously.

I’m thinking about my country and government - especially our current government - and there are some things we disagree on. It’s kind of a weird position. I like our system of government (though I would like to see how things would work if we swung a little closer to a true democracy rather then a republic) because I think it’s more realistic then Marx’ socialism or a totalitarian structure - and I don’t want to deal with survival in anarchy.

That is to say, I really like the United States, but we’ve got a long way to go before we’re perfect.

Lately I’ve been thinking about civil disobedience. I’m sort of chafing under all of the rules and regulations, because there are a bunch of issues that bother me. Off the top of my head: separation of church and state, copyright infringement, illegal substances, xenophobia… and I think that these are social issues, not government issues, but they’ve somehow become (or in some cases, are in the process of becoming) a part of our laws.

So when I see a sign that says “no minors allowed” I ignore it. If I want to listen to music or watch a movie I download it. I don’t have much interest in most illegal substances, although given the chance to do something hallucinogenic I wouldn’t say no. I don’t really care one way or another whether our pledge of allegiance contains the phrase ‘under god’, but then again I feel uncomfortable about lots of ritual activities.

It’s sort of a self perpetuating cycle - each rule I break further confirms my belief that the rule was meaningless.

I’m probably going to get in trouble for this sort of attitude eventually, which is why it’s something that I need to think about. Sometimes when I’m second-guessing my own motives I wonder if my problems are trivial. However, it makes more sense to think of these problems as a symptom of a much bigger social attitude - conservative reasoning. Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on the bus - and where you sit on the bus seems like such a trivial thing to get upset over. She did it because of the reasoning behind it. I want to go get lunch at a bar with my friends at work, but it’s three weeks before my twenty-first birthday - and just waiting a few weeks seems like a trivial thing to get upset over. But I’m doing it because arbitrary age laws are flagrantly discriminatory towards members of a minority group which has almost no course for redress.

I want to have more time - but thanks to mortality, I’ve only got so much to spend on things. I want to live a simple immaterial life, I want to buy every new video game console that comes out, I want to be a social activist, I want to just live on my own little island somewhere and not be bothered - but I don’t have enough time to that, since I’m busy going to class and working part time. I’m excited for the future, which I expect to be lots of fun, but for now I’m stuck with civil disobedience, and a sort of general dissatisfaction with the world around me. How depressing.

Here’s an interesting idea that struck me just now (while sitting here at work playing around with Flash and listening to incredibly fun and catchy The Hidden Cameras’ album ‘Mississauga Goddamn’).

Religious groups ought to believe in freedom of religion, right? As much as I find that kind of irony amusing, I wouldn’t be at all amused at the hypocrisy of one religious group that wanted to deny rights to another.

And what is religion? It’s all about belief in something. Belief about the way that the universe works - explaining the otherwise inexplicable, solving questions of morality that would otherwise be impossible to answer, and providing a sense of purpose for our lives.

I’m not a participant in any organized religions, but it’s fair to say that I still have certain beliefs that meet that criteria above - do I have the right to keep those beliefs and not be persecuted for them?

For instance - I have no scientific proof that homosexuality is morally acceptable. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to ‘prove’ moral issues empirically. However, I believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable, without any proof. I take it on faith.

The ‘Employment Nondiscrimination Act‘ just passed a House vote (after several decades of work), and will prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. Trans-gendered people aren’t included, which sucks, but at least it’s a start. Naturally, conservative religious organizations aren’t happy about this bill, and they’re complaining about it.

They are hypocrites. They believe that sexual preferences other then heterosexuality are wrong, while I believe that all sexual preference is right.- we both have our beliefs, and we have faith that we are right, but they think there’s something wrong with what I believe. It’s may be tough for you to believe this: I actually don’t have a problem with their belief in the immorality of homosexuality,
I only have a problem with that idea put in to practice. It’s fine if they’re repulsed by gay guys - as long as they act polite and don’t let that effect their judgment, which would result in prejudice.

While I’m at it, random question, true or false: “Being permissive by default regarding rights and rules is a superior system to being restrictive by default.”

I say true - I would rather start at the ‘everything goes’ stage and pare things down until it works.

So, I’ve heard lots of stuff about Britney Spears’ new album. I really have nothing  her (although I did just realize that her initials are B.S.) In fact, if I liked it enough I’d even buy myself a copy from Amazon for like $10 - even if I only liked it a little I’d keep an eye out in CD/Game Exchange.

But how can I tell if I like it? I’ve got to listen to it first, obviously. I don’t have a copy, and I don’t know anyone that does. So what do I do? Now I’m really curious!

So I run ‘britney spears blackout’ through google, I get a few sites that offer ‘previews’ of the album - amazon requires RealPlayer which is bullshit, and it’s the only one in the first few results to offer previews of the tracks. And they’re just previews, you don’t get to listen to hi quality full length versions. How can I tell if I like them music from some crappy RealPlayer-driven previews?

At this point, I’m already fed up with finding a legitimate way to listen to the album, and I’m still curious, so it’s time to turn to the illegitimate ways. YouTube has some stuff, but it’s still crappy, and I have to listen to it streaming through my browser, as opposed to playing through a flash player embedded in a web page streaming a heavily compressed .flv.

Hello, Pirate Bay! In literally five seconds I ran the same search as I did on google and found a torrent - there are nearly 500 seeders, which means it’s going to download as fast as my internet connection can transfer it. Look how easy that was! And now I can listen to it, and make an informed decision on whether I should spend money on it.

Do you see what’s wrong with this picture? I’ll give you a hint - nothing! It’s an ideal situation for the consumer and the merchant, because it decreases my chances of making a poorly-informed purchase (which might cause me to be more wary of buying CDs in the future) while increasing the merchant’s chances of me giving them money. Everyone is happy.

Except, of course, for the RIAA. They’re close-minded conservative assholes who are now becoming extinct. Like the dinosaurs, they’re unable to adapt. They’re caught in quicksand, and they don’t know enough not to struggle - they keep trying to get out, when in reality there is a happy new world just beneath the surface of the quicksand pit (not unlike a certain level in Super Mario Bros. 3)

So when I copy music it’s because I don’t have time or money to waste - I want instant gratification, and I’m willing to take risks in order to get it, because the time I might potentially spend arguing the ethics of downloading music in court is far outstripped by the convenience of being able to listen, watch, or play anything I want before I buy it.

This was actually going to be a big long thing, but myspace errored out and lost it. So here it is in brief - I’m pretty sure that it’s wrong to kill. I’m really sure in fact - it makes me sick to think of death, my own or anyone else’s. If there isn’t any heaven or hell to live out the rest of your eternal existence (since God isn’t availble to refute me on this one, I’m going to go ahead and assume I’m right) then this mortal lifetime is all we’ve got - which sucks, I know, but that’s the situation.

And if this life is all we’ve got, just about the worst thing that anyone person could do to another is to take that life away.

There are of course ramifications. Can anyone guess which hot political topics this impacts? Abortion, capital punishment, war, and doctor-assisted suicide. Since all of them involve killing someone, I’m now opposed to them. The only situation in which I would be willing to make an exception is killing in self defense - if it’s your life or theirs, you’ve got every right to pick your own. Survival is our most basic instinct - in fact, I might even argue it’s our highest purpose in - well, life. Reproduction is a close second, with the betterment of our species or something like that coming in third.

But yeah. I had always kind of wondered exactly how I felt about abortion. After thinking it through, I’ve got my answer. Yuck. Killing people is wrong. Killing baby people is really really wrong. And killing them before they even have a chance to become anything more then a helpless little bundle of cells - yeah, that’s pretty much the worst kind of cold-blooded killing. I know, there are so many arguments in favor of allowing abortion - but I can’t even imagine anything (besides that self-defense caveat) that would justify murder. Murder is what you do when you’re crazy.

Which brings us to doctor-assisted suicide. What is suicide? Killing yourself. So that’s obviously not okay. And if a doctor gives a patient who expresses a desire to end their life a lethal does of chemicals, then they’ve committed murder. It doesn’t matter if the other person wanted it, or even if they were asking for it - the simple fact is, up until that point, they were alive, and afterwards they were not alive. Totally absolutely wrong.

And ultimately, why would I think this way about killing? Because I’m completely terrified of my own mortality, and people are crazy - if they start to think that SOME killing is okay, it’s not that big of a leap to decide that MORE killing must be okay. Including killing me, or other people that I like. So let’s avoid that, okay?

Well, you know how I feel about capital punishment - I’m convinced that killing people is absolutely wrong, and should only be considered in the context of weighing one life against another.

Of course it sounds like a good idea - nobody likes those child-rapists, right? Of course they deserve to die! Rather then arguing that no one deserves death, I’m going to point something else out - not everyone defines ‘child’ and ‘rape’ the same way.

How young is a child? Below 18? Maybe 16? 14? 8? 4? Right off you’re going to have to pick an arbitrary number - what if you pick 15 as the magic number, and then some kid who’s 15-and-four-days gets raped? Is that somehow less worthy of death then the kid who’s 14-and-363-days?

And what’s rape? That should be obvious, but it isn’t - you know why ’statutory rape’ is considered rape? Not because there’s neccesarily any coercion involved - but because the ‘victim’ is unable to give legal consent to having sex. So does this mean that we can kill a 19-year-old who has safe. consentual sex with his 17-year-old boyfriend? At 17 he’s still a child, and that’s rape - punishable by death?

Extreme examples? Of course they are - but you know that they’re going to happen, and innocent kids are going to get killed. Our justice system is good, but it’s not perfect - and would you trust an imperfect system to sentance criminals to death? Because I sure wouldn’t. I would feel guilty as hell about it. I do actually feel pretty guilty that we still have the death penalty here in the US, and that people would actually try to expand the territory covered by that act of cold-blooded murder.

Mmmm. Well, that’s all the politics i’ve got energy for tonight.

I read this cnn article about sex offenders living near child car facilities, in homes with children, et cetera -

Sex offenders living at child care facilities, audit says

Am I missing something? Are all sex offenders potential child-rapists? Are they all even potential people-rapists? Let’s say you raped a woman, and you’ve served your time, and now you’re out of jail. Is it okay for you to live next to an elementry school? Let’s say you molested a little boy - is it okay for you to live next to an all-girls school? How about if you just flashed a bunch of people at a bus stop? What about consentual-yet-underage sex? Are we just assuming that a sex offender at any level is potentially a sex offender at every level? And - is that a neccesary assumption to make?

So, I was kind of thinking about writing a quick letter to my state rep, Earl Blumenauer. From what I’ve read, he’s a pretty cool guy. But I’m not sure I really want to write him a letter. Maybe I will. I’ll try it out as a blog post first, anyway.

Salvia divinorum is a plant that contains a chemical called ‘Salvinorin A‘, which is a hallucinogen. It’s normally available in concentrations (5x, 10x, 20x, etc), and most often smoked (preferably at a higher temperature then normal lighters). It’s also legal in the state of Oregon. Sounds kind of weird, huh? Kind of inconsistent? Or even hypocritical? The thing is, if we choose, Oregon could keep it legal. And who gets to decide stuff like that? Our buddy Earl.

On a related note, consider this Latin proverb - abusus non tollit usum, or “abuse is not an argument against use.” What do you think?

edit: on a related note: legal status of Salvia in Oregon [wikipedia]
‘nother edit: “firearms to fireworks” is a pretty good phrase, if I do say so myself. Gotta love those alliterations.