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If you’re going to run a campaign guaranteeing that I won’t find more minutes for £30, you might first want to check that I can’t. Otherwise the ASA might want a word.

(no subject)

Delighted to see this in Pseuds Corner in this week’s Private Eye:

Eating the Other: deconstructing the ‘ethics’ of cannibalism

This paper uses the work of Jacques Derrida to ‘read’ the consensual cannibalism of Armin Meiwes and Bernd Brandes that took place in Germany in 2001. In particular, the paper aims to create a dialogue between Derrida’s notion of symbolic cannibalism and the actual real case of consensual cannibalism, in order to potentially offer critical insights into the humanist ethical responses and discourse that surround and contribute to a dominant thinking on consensual cannibalism, but also, more importantly, to shed light on the ways in which ethical dimensions are not only made on a day-to-day basis, but how they are constructed, embodied and ‘voiced’, more generally, in Western society.

Thanks for helping, academia!

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Yet more proof of what happens when you convince the young and devout that a hedonistic paradise awaits them just the other side of this detonator. All the rage and hate of the genuinely downtrodden, along with the riotous energy and frustration of adolescence, can be fast-tracked into violent upheaval with a simple injection of folklorish babble. If there were ever a pressing need to persuade five year-olds to run amok with automatic weapons—which might yet happen if the mujahideen were to use up their stock of enthusiastic young men—the story would have to be altered a bit: instead of the virgins, you are guaranteed 72 vats of ice cream.

The people who sent them will have encouraged them to think of themselves as brave warriors, and the smile on the guy on the right displays his pride in what he’s doing. But shooting into crowds of unarmed commuters or hotel guests can hardly be described as going into battle. It tests your mettle about as much as scrubbing mould from your fridge, especially when you’re certain that as soon as the situation starts to get a bit tough, you have only to press a button and instantly it’s wall-to-wall virgins and/or ice cream. When you do not fear death, there is no bravery.

That’s why the hostage-taking is really unsettling. It’s not as if the gunmen are going to request a few million rupees and a helicopter. They went to Mumbai to die, and they wanted to take as many people with them as they could. This “spectacular” isn’t over until the last of the gunmen are dead or in custody. Meanwhile, there will be people all around the world not seeing the wanton, cowardly destruction of people’s lives but rather believing that they are watching the deeds of heroic martyrs, poster boys for their cause who are setting out a new blueprint for how their struggle must be conducted. That doesn’t bode well for the rest of us just trying to live some kind of life, the god-fearing and us unsaved heathens alike.