James

Didn't Robert Ashley interview that guy?

That's a joke about racist/sexist jokes, and therefore a joke about sexim/racism.

You're assuming that whatever our forebears decided about morality was correct. Moral standpoints and related beliefs often shift, particularly with regard to who or what are to be assigned particular rights or obligations. To defer purely to historical beliefs without critical thought is not a strong ethical position. To defer to our biology as an omnivore is an appeal to nature, an example of the naturalistic fallacy. From what I can tell, my position is similar to Miffy's: I eat meat, but am not entirely comfortable with the fact, and don't feel able to satisfactorily justify it. I enjoy eating meat, but I'm aware that that's a motivation, not a justification. A large portion of the stuff we do, good or bad, is done because we like it; that it suits our tastes has absolutely no bearing on its acceptability.

It's a shame they didn't go with the goatse proposal.

No no, there's no ill will between us; if my post implied that, it was entirely unintentional. He's an old friend and we'd even talked about the eventuality of somebody wanting to move out when we first moved in together, and the possibility of leaving before the year was up was mentioned when we last renewed. The contract has a clause allowing for early termination (which is just as well, as otherwise it'd mean we'd only ever be able to move out at a specific date); it just requires two months' prior notice. My distress is more a product of the length of notice required (for understandable reasons) and my disorganization and inability to make important decisions (which are indefensible personal faults). I just don't like the situation, but it was one that was bound to come up eventually. It kind of amazes me that people manage to move from one abode to the next so seamlessly, without ending up living on the streets in-between.

I find this to be a common source of misunderstanding in all sorts of apparent disagreements: group A are unhappy with how some people act, and group B think people should be entitled to act that way. These two, while suggesting differing underlying viewpoints, are not actually mutually exclusive. A lot of the time group A has no interest in legislation; they are just hoping for what they see as a better world, and are attempting to bring it about by explaining their point of view. Group B, however, misunderstands, and recoils at the idea of restriction of freedom. People are entitled to be unpleasant, but no-one has to like them for it, or respect their decision to do so. But that's probably all obvious, and besides, the IMPORTANT ISSUE is already RESOLVED. Sorry!

Not to my knowledge, but there have been several big fusses about putting SAMs on people's roofs or something.

That seems far too much like university activity. I can't be having with any more of that.

The cycling relay is going near my flat and right past my mum's house! But she'll be on holiday and I'll be at work. I get the train away from London to work, so hopefully I shouldn't be too badly affected. Hopefully.

I've known for a little while that my flatmate was thinking of moving in with his girlfriend, and suspected for even longer, but tonight he announced that his tentative plan is to leave at the end of September. Since there is a two-month notice period for terminating the contract early, that means I have about two weeks to work out whether to try to find a replacement, or to look for somewhere else myself, with both of these options having to be resolved within a couple of months (unless I want to keep paying for the flat on my own, which would be pretty much all my money). I'm hopeless at this stuff (i.e. being an adult and making decisions).

I enjoyed that more than I ought, perhaps because I used to make similarly horrible sounds with a friend, mainly using computers. I once saw a more recent but essentially identical experiment in projected video. Excellent stuff. I love that people go to the effort of achieving something something trivial in the digital world using much more time-consuming real-world effects. It's a strange intersection between the very natural qualities of the environment with the very unnatural technology that is sound and light recording. Regardless of Lucier's intention (which he makes clear), for me it's most special as an expression of something that's always there but only perceivable with intelligent intervention.

As I already said, whilst it would be an excellent solution, Amazon Cloud Drive is not yet available in most territories outside the US. I believe it's mainly tedious legal wranglings that perpetuate all that regional bullshit. Intellectual property law and differing licence holders and all that.

That was great, but he missed out on a perfect opportunity to give himself co-writer and co-star credits.

A qualified word of warning about Amazon: as far as I can tell, in some territories your ability to re-download your purchase depends on your keeping around the original .amz file. It seems like a weird requirement, but when I looked into it I found several people apparently confirming it. EDIT: It turns out the downloads expire, so there's no point in hanging on to the .amz files. Since there's no DRM, you can back your music up, but it's a bit of a pain to have to consider that. It's nicer not to have to blow a load of backup space on media that exists elsewhere (i.e. online). Aforementioned qualification: I don't think this applies in the US, as all music purchases are automatically added to your Cloud Drive account. That sounds like a perfect solution; it's a shame it's not available here. I split most of my digital music purchasing between Amazon and Bandcamp. Amazon has most things and is my default online shop, but Bandcamp is preferable, in that it offers FLAC, and the artist probably ends up with more of the money. Both are DRM-free. I also use Spotify, but probably not very cost-effectively. I have the expensive account because I only use it on my phone, but really I've just been listening to the same few albums over and over. I need some prompting as to other things to investigate. Perhaps I should look back through the music thread.

Perhaps the point is that casual statements that have an implicit negative tone regarding a minority group are lay the groundwork for pernicious social prejudices: by equating something associated with a particular minority with something bad, we are contributing to a pervasive message that this group has an undesirable outsider status. I'm still not entirely decided on much of this stuff, but it certainly seems more complex and subtle than people taking simple offence at individual statements. None of these things exist in a vacuum.

Are two of them covering their nipples with eyewear?

You're right; I'm sorry. I guess my point is that I don't like the idea of things being offensive by association. As I see it, the idea of re-programming gay people is offensive because it suggests that homosexuality is wrong, not that it suggests re-programming is possible in the first place. I think that's the real target. After all, if it were found that sexuality re-programming were possible, would we all just give up and go home? That seems a far more risky position to take. Pragmatically speaking, however, this article (I know, Wikipedia, I'm sorry) mentions a study that found that people who ascribed sexual orientation to a biological cause had significantly more positive views of homosexuality. I find this very sad, as it doesn't seem like true acceptance to me. Other than that one post, you have indeed been referring largely to scientific sources, and I should have acknowledged this. My only excuse is that I was posting in a hurry, but that's a shitty one. Sorry again. But that's what made this sudden change in direction seem so weird to me. In my eyes it harmed your argument. I obviously wasn't reading it as intended. I'm no biologist, but you're asking to prove a negative, and that seems like a rather unfair request. As far as I'm aware, the human genome is a hugely complex thing the vast majority of which is not understood. Is it possible to prove that a gene doesn't exist without a much clearer understanding of the genome? Sorry again for the direction my previous post took. I mean no harm by it, and hope we can continue this discussion in a civil manner. I'd certainly like to know if I've been treading on any toes at all.

Surely that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of the claim: just because unpleasant people could capitalize on a truth, it doesn't make it any less true (not that I'm confident that this particular claim is true). It seems as though you're trying to scare people off even considering a potential objective fact because of a hypothetical social reaction to it. Homosexuality is acceptable. Full stop. Talking as though its legitimacy depends on its unavoidability suggests that it's something bad that we just have to put up with, rather than something of neutral moral value. Dismissing things because of how people might react seems very dishonest. Of course, it's pretty apparent that you are genuinely convinced that sexual orientation is biologically determined. I just think you should argue that from the evidence, rather than trying to frighten people into feigning agreement.

While I understand uneasiness around this incredibly touchy subject, I'm not sure I find your response much less unsettling. Specifically, the implication that homosexuality is only acceptable in as much as it's biologically inevitable doesn't sit well with me; furthermore, the idea of protecting children from homosexuality very heavily implies that it's an undesirable path. As far as I'm concerned, the origin point of homosexuality has no bearing on its legitimacy. I'm not accusing you of thinking otherwise; just cautioning that your line of argument could lead to what I consider some quite dodgy places. All this said, I should clarify that I don't claim to know where sexual leaning is determined. Perhaps homosexuality can be "de-programmed", perhaps it can't. Even if it is possible, there's no reason to actually do it. Besides, I thought the reason the question of nature versus nurture came up was not to determine why gay people are gay, but to determine why some gay men act in a particular way (with regard to promiscuity and the anecdotal blow job line and all that). Even if homosexuality itself is entirely biologically determined, the behaviour of gay men is still subject to cultural conditioning, which may tell them they're expected to be promiscuous. Anyway, sorry for continuing the tangent.

Wait, are the ants copulating with one another, or is mierenneuken an advanced form of bestiality (requiring, one would imagine, remarkable precision and patience)?

Today I listened to this many times over: http://youtu.be/xoH5MPIgM7c

I believe the point was that your references to activities in gay clubs is not necessarily indicative of any biological differences; social factors may be the cause.

Vegetarians and vegans do consume about 2000 calories a day, but the manner in which they eat (i.e. the food they select) is informed by their principles, which are in turn coloured by societal influences. And that the Etoro boys engage in male-only sexual activity without necessarily being "actually gay" is the point: their sexual activity is due to a cultural belief, and therefore (at least partially) a product of the society they're in; similarly, all this blowjob queue stuff, and all other sexual activity, is subject to environmental forces. As brkl says, the societal and biological causes are not easily separable.

No, he's still one of those.