It’s a little late, given I had my first exam yesterday, but here they are:
Tags: school
http://achallengerapproaches.com/ With thanks (and a bullet in the post) to Sean, Ben and whoever else chipped in to the domain, and Jim who took the photo. I HAZ A MEME!
Today is the day history is made. Today is the day we’ll tell our kids about (with apologies to Sean and James R) — “Where were you when Prezzy-dent Obama got innorg-erated, daddy?” Today’s the day, if you believe some of the hyperbole, Superman takes over the Oval Office. I quote from the Private Eye of 14th November 2008, which carried a special “Obamaballs” section:
“Police are urging fans to travel by rail to football matches this Saturday to emulate the Americans and turn a page in history. ‘The election of Barack Obama to the White House has turned a page in world history – now’s the time for football fans to do the same,’…”
— Press release, British Transport Police
Leaving aside the obvious absurdities, there does seem to be an attitude, especially among “lazy liberals”, to coin a Freudian slip, that Obama can do anything, and, importantly, will. The song “Barack the Magic Negro”, distributed among (US) Republicans, was distasteful, but hit upon a point. Yes, Obama can close Guantanamo, yes he can encourage a legislative program containing (insert your own desires here). No, he can’t wave a magic wand and make everything better. Obama, let’s remember is a rich (dare I say nearly white?) conservative, elected by a horribly conservative, and as he so rightly said, bitter about guns and religion, electorate.
Even in closing the abomination that is the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Obama faces obstacles. First, there is the idiotic “We can’t try terror suspects from Guantanamo on the US mainland – that would be letting them in!”, and its slightly more reasonable, but still disproportionate, cousin, the worry that trying or releasing the inmates will lead to the acquittal (due to the inadmissibility of evidence obtained by torture, which can only sensibly be ruled to include waterboarding) of some potentially dangerous people. Obama himself, in what we can only hope is not a climbdown, has said that there may be difficulties due to “tainted” (ie obtained by torture) evidence, which, while it may be true, is inadmissible and probably irreplaceable. This, of course, shows the folly of the Bush administration in allowing the use of torture knowing full well it would probably lead to acquittal in a fair court, on suspects it knew were unsafe to release and who could only be kept outside a fair legal system for so long.
There is then the problem of finding countries to take those detainees judged safe for release. The US is unwilling to take them – while not dangerous, they are votelosers, and expensive (thanks again to Bush), and for the same reasons, so are other countries. The efforts being made by the EU are admirable, and would be aided were the US to offer to pay the associated costs – benefits, medical care and so on.
Another hope for the early days of Obama’s presidency is an executive order repealing Bush’s ban on federal funding for stem cell research. it would be a common-sensical move, and the proportion of those who would be offended by it and are potential Democratic voters is probably low enough that it isn’t too much of a voteloser. But Obama has made some fairly equivocal noises on abortion. Yes, we hope he is more liberal than that, and they were and effort to keep anti-abortionists (I will no call them pro-lifers, especially while Sarah Palin considers herself one) on board, but he has a second term to run for.
For similar reasons gun control is tricky, money here being almost as big an issue as votes. The National Rifle Association provides huge amounts of political funding to both sides, with the threat of withholding it from those who support the right of Americans not to be murdered by maniacs who bought everything they needed for a killing spree legally for $500.
Yes We Can, but unless we get off our backsides and do some lobbying, No We Won’t.
“Chemical” does not mean additive. It does not mean an artificially synthesised substance. It does not mean something with the potential to harm. It does not mean toxin.
It means a pure substance comprised of atoms or molecules. It is not a perjorative. Use “synthetic chemical”, “harmful chemical”, “dangerous chemical”, “carcinogenic chemical” (although the “-ic chemical” is redundant). Not just “chemical”. Water is a chemical*. Air is a mixture of chemicals. “Chemical” is not shorthand for “nasty industrial solvent”. Learn that.
*Dihydrogen monoxide is a good example of how easy it is to scare people by using “chemicalish” names. Use the term “amino acid” in a non-scientific context and you’d probably have to explain they’re not like sulphuric acid. I won’t continue this rant onto standards of scientific education, but I could. So easily.
[Note: this was sparked by a Food Tech mark scheme which allowed "don't use chemicals" (meaning artificial additives) as an answer. All food contains chemicals. All food is organic (contains carbon).]
I’ve been thinking about socialism quite a lot recently, and it’s occurred to me that, while there are many fine lefty-liberal minds at school, the time we spend philosophising is largely wasted. Why? Because it’s spent in Debating Society, tearing down, rather than building, arguments.
The adversarial debating format is a great way to test who’s the better orator. Done well, it’s great theatre. But it isn’t efficient at producing original thought and ideas. Yes, some occasionally come out (by original I here mean points we as a group haven’t thought of yet, but the argument applies to true originality too), but I daresay they’d come out more often if we didn’t devote so much time to the lower-level points required of debating. Pragmatic points can be important in , say, parliamentary debate; but as a society which aspires to higher-level, philosophical thinking, why don’t we cut to the chase?
Another issue is that, while the large majority of us share essentially the same views, the format forces us to take opposite sides. Devil’s advocacy itself isn’t a problem, but combined with the requirement for stubborn tenacity and refusal to concede anything, it leads to dull, unoriginal ping-pong on points that would long ago have been conceded in an informal discussion.
Adversarial debate is bad enough in philosophical discussion, but in court it endangers justice. All too often, especially in jury trials, rather than those before harder-to-influence judges or magistrates, quality of advocacy takes importance which should be given solely to evidence. Top barristers don’t win more cases just because they know the law better – their success is due at least in part to the fact that they are better orators. I’m undecided on the French investigative magistrate system, but in this respect it has advantages – a judge is less swayed by oratory than a jury, and anyway more importance is given to the evidence than its presentation.
Adversarial debate has its purporses — in Parliament it is useful for bringing up the pragmatic points that need to be considered in lawmaking, and I have intentionally gone too far in my condemnation of the adversarial format in order to provoke discussion (I almost said debate). So comment, and tell me why I’m wrong, but do so constructively.
Tags: debate, philosophy, politics, school
