Architecture and Morality

BM093 New York Skyscrapers, listentoreason, 2005

Back when I was studying social sciences at college one of the classes would assign reports on an issue of our choice relevant to the course. Possibly overreaching into doctorate territory, I repeatedly tried to investigate religion and morality, or more correctly disprove the correlation between them. In fact, one of my lecturers told me it was a good idea but way beyond my means and the scope of the course. I later threw in some swear words and just published my opinion on this blog.

The claim of ownership on morality by religion in general is without substance. The Archbishop of Cantebury, Rowan Williams, in particular irritates me. Softly spoken, every time he pops-up it's to say things would be nicer if we'd just listen more to that swell fellow upstairs (but don't expect him to lift a finger). The Abrahamic religions have spent centuries now claiming that armed with their unique truth and moral compass, the ills of the increasingly secular world can be cured (secularism being equated with materialism). Problem is, this moral compass has been spinning around for millennia. What may have been permissible then is not now, and vice-versa.

Something to Sing About (The Spell We Cast With Buffy)

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards
-Kierkegaard

Willow Rosenberg promo photo, Trekkie Gal

Whenever I watch a film trilogy or a tv series boxset, I reach the end and want to start over again. A good test of the quality of the material would be whether it could stand up to an immediate repeat viewing. I've never done that - when I've finished watching Back to the Future, for example, I always leave at least a few weeks before watching it again. It is possible to ruin a good thing and I hate to spoil BTTF like Jurassic Park. Considering most films have a runtime of roughly 100 minutes, you'd need to set aside close to five hours to revisit a trilogy on DVD, easy enough. Now consider revisiting a long-running tv show on disc: nearly forty-five minutes for American network productions with twenty or so episodes a season comes to fifteen hours. Now you need to justify watching all the way through an old series.

Words Can Put You On The Run

Russians were here, quinn.anya, 2007

I've been making my way through the Battlestar Galactica series boxsets recently, and coincidentally there's a moral panic over the film Kick-Ass. What the two have in common is bad language, if there is such a thing.

The quote the BBFC's
rating of Kick-Ass (link may contain spoilers):

The film contains multiple uses of strong language. [...] KICK-ASS contains one use of very strong language. The word is spoken by a young girl who, like Kick-Ass, has become a makeshift superhero. Although some people might be offended by a child using this type of language, the predominant effect is comic. [...] The remark is delivered in a throwaway fashion rather than aggressively directed and the unexpectedness and incongruity of the use provides a comic justification for its inclusion.

Then Your Children Will Be Next

There are 58,789,194 people in the UK at the last census in 2001. Along with 92.1% of that number I have classified myself as white. Specifically, White British, and only because I'm not White Irish or White Other. I'm obviously white and since I live on this island called Great Britain I suppose British is a suitable enough adjective, so what is it I have in common with all those other white people? Some sort of racial heritage? Some sort of national identity?

The Bitterest Pill

Royal Mail Success - This Letter Reached the Right Person, Neil Boyd, 2009

I've been working at Royal Mail for nearly three years now, but I've never really written about the job. I could swear like a sailor about management and the way RM is being intentionally driven into the ground, but I really like the job and wouldn't want to risk it over a bunch of rants - hard to believe this is from the man who wrote this at school and deliberately got suspended twice.

Actually, when I say I like the job what I mean is my walk, and the reason I'm writing this is because I've been moved off that delivery after 21 months and today was my last day on it. If I sound bitter it's not only because of my reputed early finishes (during the summer! Was I the only one who had a lull during the summer?), but because I had actually got to know a lot of people in the area. I greet the same faces each morning, residents say hi to me in the streets, one lady gives me an apple and a mars bar every Saturday, I see Mrs ABC nearly everyday for her sign-for packets, and so on. In fact, so long was I on that walk that I became less focused on finishing as early as possible and began to chat with Granny Smith.

Where Do I Start, Where Do I Begin?

Part One of Three.

The Flag of The Polity of Star City

Since I last wrote about NationStates four years ago, I've noticed that the governments of many regions ceased to function and slid into informal gerontocracy as the numbers of residents declined. Well, as I write this on January 30th, my nation Star City is just over seven years old. When this is published my home region The Proletariat Coalition will also be seven years old - though the exact date in March is long-forgotten, it was contemporary with the invasion of Iraq; as such I tend to set the anniversary on the 20th. To mark this, I'm republishing my memoirs from five years ago. You can read the currently outdated history of TPC at NSwiki.

Magic Window

Parabola tree, am4ndas, 2009

Having suffered through a three year long mild writing-block, I've suddenly found myself back on a roll. Maybe it was my brief experiment with Twitter that did it: that whilst you can throw any old combination of 140 characters together on Twitter, there's a satisfaction that comes from turning your thoughts and ideas into actual sentences and paragraphs that communicate those concepts. Also I'm a contrarian.

Rejuvenated, I've got through a number of long standing drafts that were featured in a filler-piece from two years ago. So here's another filler telling you what ended up where: