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I haven't been in the position of begging for food money (I've busked, but that was for pocket money, so and also it's not the same) so these reasons are from my imagination, not experience. As such, they likely lack nuance and I'm probably missing piles more.
I'm not even saying one should never offer a hamburger to beggars. Just, if they refuse it, that isn't evidence that they don't need the money.
- They don't know where that hamburger's been.
- They're vegetarian.
- They're gluten-free.
- Or lactose-intolerant.
- Or have other allergies.
- Or other medical conditions.
- Or just want to eat healthily to prevent future medical conditions which they won't be able to afford to treat.
- They've actually just eaten. It's just that they'd like to eat tomorrow too, but it's forecast for rain: miserable and unprofitable weather for begging, and a dollar keeps better than your hamburger.
- They've actually just eaten. It's just that they'd like to feed their kid too, and a hamburger is a poor substitute for formula.
- They lied. They don't need money for food. It's just that they don't have a card that says "Need money for toothpaste and toilet paper".
- They lied. They don't need money for food. It's just that begging for food money gets more money than begging for shoes-that-don't-leak money.
- Let alone for condom money.
- They'd love a hamburger right now. But begging for charity is soul-destroying enough at the best of times, let alone when someone implies they're a drunken gambling-addicted drug addict not to be trusted with bit of spare change. Honestly they'd rather starve for another day than accept your right to judge their sincerity.
- Bugger the burger. They've had a shitty week and they deserve a beer, dammit.
I'm not even saying one should never offer a hamburger to beggars. Just, if they refuse it, that isn't evidence that they don't need the money.
In which she offers a PSA
Oct. 31st, 2010 11:59 amI am, at the moment, full of fierce and heartbroken despair and rage at the patriarchy.
Nothing terrible happened. Just one little thing, no worse than every other one-little-thing-after-another, except that it came in a place that ought to be safe, from a person who ought to desire my safety and happiness.
There are excuses. There are always excuses. Plus I could have prevented it all by just keeping silent, or being politer. Well, no, politer wouldn't have worked. Silent might have. I could have responded to the things being said with silence. Your heart doesn't get broken that way; just abraded.
I also had some good support from others there. That was nice. But emotions aren't integer variables, negative and positive, that add up and cancel each other out. The strings of the heart concatenate; the hurt is still there.
So that was the trigger, but there's a whole lot more gunpowder behind it. So last night and today I rage and weep and hate with a burning hatred the whole damnable kyriarchy. I don't exactly like telling the whole world that I am at present a hysterical bitch, but there it is.
Which means that if I see someone being a jerk on the internet, I'm liable to call them out on it, and if I'm not sufficiently careful of their poor oppressed privilege I'm not really going to give a flying damn.
If this bothers you, you may want to preemptively ban me from commenting on your journal for a while or something.
Comments are off. I don't want sympathy (qv concatenation). I want someone to make the world better. Faster.
Nothing terrible happened. Just one little thing, no worse than every other one-little-thing-after-another, except that it came in a place that ought to be safe, from a person who ought to desire my safety and happiness.
There are excuses. There are always excuses. Plus I could have prevented it all by just keeping silent, or being politer. Well, no, politer wouldn't have worked. Silent might have. I could have responded to the things being said with silence. Your heart doesn't get broken that way; just abraded.
I also had some good support from others there. That was nice. But emotions aren't integer variables, negative and positive, that add up and cancel each other out. The strings of the heart concatenate; the hurt is still there.
So that was the trigger, but there's a whole lot more gunpowder behind it. So last night and today I rage and weep and hate with a burning hatred the whole damnable kyriarchy. I don't exactly like telling the whole world that I am at present a hysterical bitch, but there it is.
Which means that if I see someone being a jerk on the internet, I'm liable to call them out on it, and if I'm not sufficiently careful of their poor oppressed privilege I'm not really going to give a flying damn.
If this bothers you, you may want to preemptively ban me from commenting on your journal for a while or something.
Comments are off. I don't want sympathy (qv concatenation). I want someone to make the world better. Faster.
In which she opines on freedom of speech
Oct. 22nd, 2010 10:47 pmFor the purposes of this post I shall focus on freedom of speech in the USA, whose First Amendment states:
Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press [...]
People abiding in the United States are constitutionally protected from the specter of a law forcing them to say one thing or forbidding them to say another thing. They are likewise constitutionally protected from the specter of a law forcing the press to espouse some point of view or to suppress some other point of view.
This means that people abiding in the United States need never fear being arrested or prosecuted by the government for what they say or don't say, and this is a very good thing indeed. It also means that people can trust that US newspapers and TV stations aren't all just mouthpieces for the government (unless of course those newspapers and TV stations all individually choose to be, which seems unlikely) and this is also a very good thing.
Note however what this amendment doesn't say. It doesn't say that a press may not espouse a point of view or suppress a point of view. (If it did say such a thing, that would be a law abridging freedom of the press, and it's just said that there shall be no such law.)
It doesn't say that a non-governmental organisation may not espouse a point of view or suppress a point of view. It doesn't say that a person may not espouse a point of view or suppress a point of view. (If it did say such a thing, that would be a law abridging freedom of speech.)
It doesn't say that a media channel may not fire someone who has said nasty things. It only says that Congress shall make no law that a media channel must, or contrariwise that it must not, fire such a person.
It doesn't say that a convention may not refuse to honour someone else who has said other nasty things. It only says that Congress shall make no law that a convention must, or contrariwise must not, refuse to honour them.
Even if you count "honouring someone" as a speech act or as enabling a speech act, which I think is stretching things rather a lot.
Because the fact that one person has freedom of speech does not mean that someone else is obliged to pay for or otherwise actively support that speech. It doesn't give anyone the right to demand a column in the newspaper, or a segment on Fox News, or a minute on the radio airwaves, or comment space on someone's blog, or a podium at Wiscon.
Wiscon/SF3's decision to disinvite Elizabeth Moon as Guest of Honour does not abridge her freedom of speech, even if you think that organisations as well as government bear some moral responsibility for upholding that freedom. She can still write books. She can write blog posts. She can call up talkback radio. She can chat with her friends in the coffeeshop. She can speak at any other convention that's willing to have her. She can even, I believe, attend Wiscon and speak with people there; she just won't be officially honoured for it.
So she can still say anything she wants to say, and she will never, in the USA, be arrested for it, because Congress shall make no law abridging her freedom of speech. She just has to find somewhere else to say it than Wiscon's Guest of Honour podium (nor will she find this hard).
And if anyone really thinks that everyone everywhere in the US has the moral obligation to uphold everyone else's freedom of speech by providing them a platform to speak on, then six weeks before Wiscon/SF3 made their decision you should have been protesting Elizabeth Moon's mass deletion of comments from her post. Wiscon/SF3 aren't the ones engaging in censorship here.
(Personally I think she not only has the legal right but also the moral right to censor and otherwise control what's said in her own space. That she chose to exercise this right in this way and this context, however... was not the most constructive way to show respect for the people involved, shall we say.
(--Incidentally, my own personal policy on censorship is that if someone posts a comment to my DW or LJ which I feel I cannot in good conscience allow to remain here - which will generally be because it's hurtful to some third party - then I'll delete it and, where possible, email the text back to them so they can repost it to their own blog if they so choose. People are free to speak, and I'm free to refuse to host that speech.)
Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press [...]
People abiding in the United States are constitutionally protected from the specter of a law forcing them to say one thing or forbidding them to say another thing. They are likewise constitutionally protected from the specter of a law forcing the press to espouse some point of view or to suppress some other point of view.
This means that people abiding in the United States need never fear being arrested or prosecuted by the government for what they say or don't say, and this is a very good thing indeed. It also means that people can trust that US newspapers and TV stations aren't all just mouthpieces for the government (unless of course those newspapers and TV stations all individually choose to be, which seems unlikely) and this is also a very good thing.
Note however what this amendment doesn't say. It doesn't say that a press may not espouse a point of view or suppress a point of view. (If it did say such a thing, that would be a law abridging freedom of the press, and it's just said that there shall be no such law.)
It doesn't say that a non-governmental organisation may not espouse a point of view or suppress a point of view. It doesn't say that a person may not espouse a point of view or suppress a point of view. (If it did say such a thing, that would be a law abridging freedom of speech.)
It doesn't say that a media channel may not fire someone who has said nasty things. It only says that Congress shall make no law that a media channel must, or contrariwise that it must not, fire such a person.
It doesn't say that a convention may not refuse to honour someone else who has said other nasty things. It only says that Congress shall make no law that a convention must, or contrariwise must not, refuse to honour them.
Even if you count "honouring someone" as a speech act or as enabling a speech act, which I think is stretching things rather a lot.
Because the fact that one person has freedom of speech does not mean that someone else is obliged to pay for or otherwise actively support that speech. It doesn't give anyone the right to demand a column in the newspaper, or a segment on Fox News, or a minute on the radio airwaves, or comment space on someone's blog, or a podium at Wiscon.
Wiscon/SF3's decision to disinvite Elizabeth Moon as Guest of Honour does not abridge her freedom of speech, even if you think that organisations as well as government bear some moral responsibility for upholding that freedom. She can still write books. She can write blog posts. She can call up talkback radio. She can chat with her friends in the coffeeshop. She can speak at any other convention that's willing to have her. She can even, I believe, attend Wiscon and speak with people there; she just won't be officially honoured for it.
So she can still say anything she wants to say, and she will never, in the USA, be arrested for it, because Congress shall make no law abridging her freedom of speech. She just has to find somewhere else to say it than Wiscon's Guest of Honour podium (nor will she find this hard).
And if anyone really thinks that everyone everywhere in the US has the moral obligation to uphold everyone else's freedom of speech by providing them a platform to speak on, then six weeks before Wiscon/SF3 made their decision you should have been protesting Elizabeth Moon's mass deletion of comments from her post. Wiscon/SF3 aren't the ones engaging in censorship here.
(Personally I think she not only has the legal right but also the moral right to censor and otherwise control what's said in her own space. That she chose to exercise this right in this way and this context, however... was not the most constructive way to show respect for the people involved, shall we say.
(--Incidentally, my own personal policy on censorship is that if someone posts a comment to my DW or LJ which I feel I cannot in good conscience allow to remain here - which will generally be because it's hurtful to some third party - then I'll delete it and, where possible, email the text back to them so they can repost it to their own blog if they so choose. People are free to speak, and I'm free to refuse to host that speech.)
Do they still make those bubblegum wrappers with the jokes on them? You know those jokes that had been carefully selected from a jokebook entitled The World's Unfunniest Jokes, by people who've heard of jokes but maintain their impartiality through a strict and willful ignorance of what this joke thing is all about, and who then painstakingly rewrite them so as to leech from them any remaining hint of comedy?
Well, for those of my readers who don't themselves experience that time of the month when you pour blue fluid(*) onto a Feminine Hygiene Product and then go out and ride a horse in white pants, let me just say that FHPs often come wrapped in a similar manner. Except instead of unfunny jokes, we get unfactual factoids.
The ur-FHP Factoid for me will always be "If you put a grape in the microwave it will explode." To be fair, this would probably be true if you inserted the important clause and then turn it on. And "A full moon always rises at sunset" is true for values of "always" that include "at certain latitudes, or at least at certain times of the year", so I'll pass these ones by.
I'll also pass by those familiar factoids like "The human body is made up of ninety-random percent water" and "When you sneeze, the air comes out your nose at randomty miles an hour."
But every so often my eye gets caught by something like "23% of all photocopier faults are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their buttocks." Which. I. What? I mean. I'm pretty sure that ninety-random percent of all photocopier faults occur at my workplace alone and I'm also pretty certain that I would have noticed if any of our students had decided to drop their pants, sit on the copier, and attempt to scan their buttocks and do you know how I'd know? Because then they'd have to jump off and waddle across the library casual reading area and main entrance to me at the help desk in order to tell me the photocopier wasn't working, and I'd come back across the room and discover that the photocopier was flashing a "Cannot recognise paper size" error message on its clever little screen.
Maybe this statistic was collated in the first week after the first photocopier was bought by the first company ever to use one, which coincidentally happened to be the week of said company's annual Christmas party?
Because otherwise I can only presume that the writer of this factoid has never actually used a photocopier. Other than, perhaps, to photocopy their buttocks.
And when they print stuff like that, it causes me serious doubts about the scholarship behind their claims that "Human thighbones are as strong as concrete" or that "The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by the Egyptians in 2000BC". Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that these things could be true! But so easily is scientific integrity shattered that I'll never again be able to take it on faith from my [brandname] Feminine Hygiene Products.
(*) Actually I just remembered an ad in New Zealand a few years back in which someone murders someone, disposes of the body, but just as the police sirens approach she notices a small but incriminating pool of blood remains. Oh noes! But wait, she has a brilliant idea! She grabs a [brandname] pad, quickly soaks up the blood, and we cut to the police leaving again, thwarted. Ladies and gentleman, Feminine Hygiene Products, your ultimate murder alibi! (Possibly works with Handee towels too.)
Well, for those of my readers who don't themselves experience that time of the month when you pour blue fluid(*) onto a Feminine Hygiene Product and then go out and ride a horse in white pants, let me just say that FHPs often come wrapped in a similar manner. Except instead of unfunny jokes, we get unfactual factoids.
The ur-FHP Factoid for me will always be "If you put a grape in the microwave it will explode." To be fair, this would probably be true if you inserted the important clause and then turn it on. And "A full moon always rises at sunset" is true for values of "always" that include "at certain latitudes, or at least at certain times of the year", so I'll pass these ones by.
I'll also pass by those familiar factoids like "The human body is made up of ninety-random percent water" and "When you sneeze, the air comes out your nose at randomty miles an hour."
But every so often my eye gets caught by something like "23% of all photocopier faults are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their buttocks." Which. I. What? I mean. I'm pretty sure that ninety-random percent of all photocopier faults occur at my workplace alone and I'm also pretty certain that I would have noticed if any of our students had decided to drop their pants, sit on the copier, and attempt to scan their buttocks and do you know how I'd know? Because then they'd have to jump off and waddle across the library casual reading area and main entrance to me at the help desk in order to tell me the photocopier wasn't working, and I'd come back across the room and discover that the photocopier was flashing a "Cannot recognise paper size" error message on its clever little screen.
Maybe this statistic was collated in the first week after the first photocopier was bought by the first company ever to use one, which coincidentally happened to be the week of said company's annual Christmas party?
Because otherwise I can only presume that the writer of this factoid has never actually used a photocopier. Other than, perhaps, to photocopy their buttocks.
And when they print stuff like that, it causes me serious doubts about the scholarship behind their claims that "Human thighbones are as strong as concrete" or that "The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by the Egyptians in 2000BC". Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that these things could be true! But so easily is scientific integrity shattered that I'll never again be able to take it on faith from my [brandname] Feminine Hygiene Products.
(*) Actually I just remembered an ad in New Zealand a few years back in which someone murders someone, disposes of the body, but just as the police sirens approach she notices a small but incriminating pool of blood remains. Oh noes! But wait, she has a brilliant idea! She grabs a [brandname] pad, quickly soaks up the blood, and we cut to the police leaving again, thwarted. Ladies and gentleman, Feminine Hygiene Products, your ultimate murder alibi! (Possibly works with Handee towels too.)
In which she vents and recites Latin
Feb. 18th, 2010 02:02 pmDear colleague,
You've never managed to get a foot in the door at this event [tomorrow]. When I suggested trying again this year you said they just wouldn't want us. Last Thursday morning you finally said you'd email the head honcho. Then on Friday and Monday you were on leave so I thought I'd better follow up with him in case he'd emailed you back, so I phoned him. It turned out you hadn't emailed him yet, but I managed to get us our 3-minute timeslot in the event anyway.
I admit I screwed up in not showing you yesterday a copy of the powerpoint I threw together. And when, having created a 15-slide show (I go through photos quickly), I suddenly got told by the organiser that we were limited to 4 slides, or could I get it down to 10? I admit I was kind of flippant in just scrunching a bunch of those photos with timelapse onto a single slide so we'd keep the same 3-minute content.
But I was under a time constraint to get it to her, so I did it as quickly as I could. So when you then saw the slides and said it was off-message, and then refused to tell me in what ways it was off-message, only saying that we should talk about it with our manager 'later', that's really not helpful. If you'd told me the problems I could have fixed them and sent it immediately to the organiser, but 'later' is too late. As I told you but it apparently didn't change your mind.
So now, later, I finally know what you meant when you said that. And, duh, it's too late, though I've fiddled with the script as best I can.
And anyway if we don't cover all the things you want to cover, what's the difference? If I hadn't forced things along we'd never have got permission to even come to this event anyway.
<deep breath> It's the crazy time of year, and we're merging two teams together, so culture clash. And delays in construction making everything crazier. So stress. If it weren't Lent I'd go for chocolate about now...
Oh, hah. The thing I worked out about giving up chocolate for Lent last year is that when I want chocolate I remember to think about Lent and stuff. So thinking about chocolate now reminds me that I want to read through the Psalms, and then Psalm 8 comes into my head, and Psalm 8 is just awesome, so now I feel quite an awful lot better.
You've never managed to get a foot in the door at this event [tomorrow]. When I suggested trying again this year you said they just wouldn't want us. Last Thursday morning you finally said you'd email the head honcho. Then on Friday and Monday you were on leave so I thought I'd better follow up with him in case he'd emailed you back, so I phoned him. It turned out you hadn't emailed him yet, but I managed to get us our 3-minute timeslot in the event anyway.
I admit I screwed up in not showing you yesterday a copy of the powerpoint I threw together. And when, having created a 15-slide show (I go through photos quickly), I suddenly got told by the organiser that we were limited to 4 slides, or could I get it down to 10? I admit I was kind of flippant in just scrunching a bunch of those photos with timelapse onto a single slide so we'd keep the same 3-minute content.
But I was under a time constraint to get it to her, so I did it as quickly as I could. So when you then saw the slides and said it was off-message, and then refused to tell me in what ways it was off-message, only saying that we should talk about it with our manager 'later', that's really not helpful. If you'd told me the problems I could have fixed them and sent it immediately to the organiser, but 'later' is too late. As I told you but it apparently didn't change your mind.
So now, later, I finally know what you meant when you said that. And, duh, it's too late, though I've fiddled with the script as best I can.
And anyway if we don't cover all the things you want to cover, what's the difference? If I hadn't forced things along we'd never have got permission to even come to this event anyway.
<deep breath> It's the crazy time of year, and we're merging two teams together, so culture clash. And delays in construction making everything crazier. So stress. If it weren't Lent I'd go for chocolate about now...
Oh, hah. The thing I worked out about giving up chocolate for Lent last year is that when I want chocolate I remember to think about Lent and stuff. So thinking about chocolate now reminds me that I want to read through the Psalms, and then Psalm 8 comes into my head, and Psalm 8 is just awesome, so now I feel quite an awful lot better.
Normally I have DF plonked but he replied to something Irina said and I wanted to know how obnoxious he was going to be. It wasn't too obnoxious except that he said:
The bizarre way in which systems of taxation intertwine with voluntary arrangements among human beings.
Which is the sort of thing that makes me want to say, "But taxation is a voluntary arrangment among human beings too!"
But then someone would say that the state enforces taxation on pain of death. You what? was my response when I first heard this concept, but apparently it breaks down like this: you don't pay your taxes, therefore the state imposes penalties, which you ignore, so it confiscates your property and/or comes to arrest you, therefore you defend yourself and your property with a gun, therefore the state shoots you in defense of its officers. Personally I think that the step where you defend yourself with a gun is not strictly under the control of the state, but I've never yet managed to make this clear to someone holding this point of view.
Next time someone tries to convince me of taxation-or-death, however, I think I'll complain that the state has everyone enslaved. After all, if I choose not to work, then I won't get money (even this great socialist country of New Zealand will stop a person's benefits if they don't make some kind of show of looking for work) and if I don't get money then I can't eat and I'll starve to death. The state is forcing me against my will to do work on pain of death! Oh noes!
I probably won't say this, actually, because it's as stupid an argument as taxation-or-death. Maybe I should instead counter by nodding wisely and saying that New Zealand forbids littering on pain of death: you litter, and a police officer asks you to pick it up, and you draw a gun, and the police calls the SWAT team in, who, when you refuse to put your gun away, shoot you in self-defence.
I mean, seriously, guys, there is a piece of logic here that is missing.
The point is that society has to organise itself somehow, and our society has organised itself (by the combined choices of its constituents over the years - it's almost like market forces, really) such that people who can work generally work and pay some percentage of their money for a) the support of people who can't work, including b) themselves when they were children and when they will be elderly, as well as for c) large-scale projects which are more likely to be organised by the state than by unrestrained market forces.
It doesn't work perfectly, of course, because it's got humans in it. But it does work, which is why it's still here.
The bizarre way in which systems of taxation intertwine with voluntary arrangements among human beings.
Which is the sort of thing that makes me want to say, "But taxation is a voluntary arrangment among human beings too!"
But then someone would say that the state enforces taxation on pain of death. You what? was my response when I first heard this concept, but apparently it breaks down like this: you don't pay your taxes, therefore the state imposes penalties, which you ignore, so it confiscates your property and/or comes to arrest you, therefore you defend yourself and your property with a gun, therefore the state shoots you in defense of its officers. Personally I think that the step where you defend yourself with a gun is not strictly under the control of the state, but I've never yet managed to make this clear to someone holding this point of view.
Next time someone tries to convince me of taxation-or-death, however, I think I'll complain that the state has everyone enslaved. After all, if I choose not to work, then I won't get money (even this great socialist country of New Zealand will stop a person's benefits if they don't make some kind of show of looking for work) and if I don't get money then I can't eat and I'll starve to death. The state is forcing me against my will to do work on pain of death! Oh noes!
I probably won't say this, actually, because it's as stupid an argument as taxation-or-death. Maybe I should instead counter by nodding wisely and saying that New Zealand forbids littering on pain of death: you litter, and a police officer asks you to pick it up, and you draw a gun, and the police calls the SWAT team in, who, when you refuse to put your gun away, shoot you in self-defence.
I mean, seriously, guys, there is a piece of logic here that is missing.
The point is that society has to organise itself somehow, and our society has organised itself (by the combined choices of its constituents over the years - it's almost like market forces, really) such that people who can work generally work and pay some percentage of their money for a) the support of people who can't work, including b) themselves when they were children and when they will be elderly, as well as for c) large-scale projects which are more likely to be organised by the state than by unrestrained market forces.
It doesn't work perfectly, of course, because it's got humans in it. But it does work, which is why it's still here.
