The Crusty Curmudgeon

Mangoes, mushrooms, muesli, and marmalade are murder; or, Who will weep for the Brussels sprout? or, Switzerland jumps the shark

On Friday I blogged about recent Swiss legislation that makes it animal abuse to house goldfish in a tank that is transparent all round or for small children to cuddle their guinea pigs excessively. This bit of nitwittery may be only the beginning.

Not to be outdone, the Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology has released a report titled "The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard to Plants" [PDF]. In this document, the Committee admits, right up front:

For some people, the question of whether the treatment or handling of plants requires moral justification is a meaningless one. The moral consideration of plants is considered to be senseless. Some people have warned that simply having this discussion at all is risible. In their view, the human treatment of plants is on morally neutral ground and therefore requires no justification. (4)

The committee was unanimous that it was immoral to harm plants arbitrarily. By arbitrary, they mean "without rational reason," for example:

An example of arbitrary treatment used in the discussion was the farmer who, after mowing the grass for his animals, decapitates flowers with his scythe on his way home without rational reason. However, at this point it remains unclear whether this action is condemned because it expresses a particular moral stance of the farmer towards other organisms or because something bad is being done to the flowers themselves. (9, emphasis in original)

Actually it remains unclear why this action is condemned at all. I have a certain amount of respect for God's creation: the plants and animals he made are "very good" (Gen. 1:31), and so I don't arbitrarily step on bugs that aren't pestering me, or peel the bark of birch trees if I can avoid it.  But I don't demand that others come to the same conclusions as I do, and I definitely draw the line at questioning the ethics of picking flowers or eating my spinach. Something has to be at the bottom of the food chain, after all.

The great majority of the ECNH members holds the opinion that prima facie we do not possess unrestricted power over plants. We may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily. A minority of the members is of the opinion that prima facie we may use plants as we please, as long as the plant community or the species is not in danger and we are not acting arbitrarily. (10, emphasis in original)

Spokesmen for the plant community were not available for comment, apparently.

This committee cannot even reach a consensus on whether plants are sentient or not (14). The country that gave us Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Bernoullis, and Johanna Spyri gave us this group of geniuses? They should be embarrassed. Al Mohler gets it right: "The very idea of 'plants rights' indicates a loss of cultural sanity." What comes next? The dignity of sand? The right of a lake not to have stones skipped across it?

(H/T: The Weekly Standard.)

Labels: And now . . . this, Culture

Posted by Ransom at 11:40 PM · Permalink · · ?

And now . . . this - May 2/08

I've been too busy over the last couple of weeks for more than even sporadic blog reading, but you gotta break radio silence somehow.

It takes a village to raise a fish

And they say the Swiss obsession with rules and regulations is an unfair stereotype:

From guinea-pigs to budgerigars, any animal classified as a “social species” will be a victim of abuse if it does not cohabit, or at least have contact, with others of its own kind.

The new regulation stipulates that aquariums for pet fish should not be transparent on all sides and that owners must make sure that the natural cycle of day and night is maintained in terms of light. Goldfish are considered social animals, or Gruppentiere in German. . . .

The legislation even mentions the appropriate keeping of rhinoceroses, although it was not clear immediately how many, if any, were being kept as pets in Switzerland.

[Full Story]

That's it.I'm moving to Switzerland. I'm a social animal, and I need a beautiful blonde farm girl to bring me cheese. Anything else would be criminal.

No shortage of stupid criminals in the world

[A] 21-year-old North Texas man was arrested last week for trying to cash a $360 billion check, saying he wanted to start a record business, authorities said. Tellers at the Fort Worth bank were immediately suspicious — perhaps the 10 zeros on a personal check tipped them off, according to investigators.

[Charles Ray] Fuller, of suburban Crowley, was arrested on a forgery charge, police said. He was released after posting $3,750 bail.

"$3,750? No problem. Here, let me write you a cheque . . ."

In addition to forgery, Fuller was charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon and possessing marijuana, Fort Worth police Lt. Paul Henderson said.

[Full Story]

Sheesh! I'm beginning to wonder whether today's relative acceptability of pot smoking hasn't led to a bit of a brain-drain in the evil genius department.

Labels: And now . . . this

Posted by Ransom at 11:50 AM · Permalink · · ?

Here we go again, part MCMLXXXIV

Fred notes the story of the hospital in Orlando, Florida where apparently a window was recently Jesified. He wants to know who you see in this image:

My vote goes to the Green Arrow:

On the brighter side, since it's a Seventh-day Adventist hospital, it's a fair guess that hordes of Roman Catholic faithful won't be inundating the prayer garden with candles and other Jesus Junk - what with Sunday worship being the Mark of the Beast, and all.

Labels: And now . . . this, Current events

Posted by Ransom at 5:45 PM · Permalink · · ?

FridayMonday in the wild: April 14, 2008

Way back in time, about when I first hit my stride as a blogger, it was my weekly habit to post a weekly "Friday in the Wild," highlighting the best reading I had seen in the blogosphere in the previous seven days. I felt it was a good way to encourage others to read blogs I also found interesting, and it was a decent way to wrap up a week in case I didn't have anything to say over the weekend.  Now that I'm starting to get back into the habit of regular (or at least semi-regular) posting again, I think it's time to start this again. Only this time, I'm starting the week this way, rather than ending it. For now.

Some of these stories might be a little old by now, but who cares?

When I teach Sunday school, contextualizing means I take my passage and explain the historical, social, political, or literary circumstances that surround its writing: pointing out, for example, that to understand the book of Jeremiah properly, it is necessary to know the following:

• Jeremiah's ministry was to Judah about 100 years after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel.
• In his lifetime, Judah had five kings, all of whom were deposed or destroyed by foreign powers.
• Israel was then a vassal state of the declining empire of Assyria.
• To counter the rising threat of the Babylonian empire, the Hebrews were forging political alliances with old enemies such as Egypt.
• The patriotic Jeremiah saw, firsthand, the destruction of his nation at the hands of Babylon in 586 BC.

Contextualization also involves bridging the historical and cultural gap between his day and ours: what similar circumstances are there between 6th-century BC Judah and 21st-century Canada that make the ministry of the prophet relevant to us?

However, Phil Johnson points out that contextualization means something quite different in our postmodern age:

In the early 1970s, left-leaning missiologists made contextualization into a religious shibboleth. They also turned the dictionary definition of the word inside out. They weren't talking about studying or explaining biblical truth in its own context; instead, what they wanted to do was adapt and stylize religious ideas and symbols to fit into the cultural context of their target audience - namely oppressed and marginalized people groups.

It wasn't long before hip, young evangelicals discovered and embraced the basic concept, and then franchised it. Instead of targeting impoverished and downtrodden people, however, they turned contextualization into a tool for attracting Yuppies.

[Read Context and Contextualization]

While this article is somewhat older (there's no way I can claim something published nearly a month ago is a highlight of my week!), it was the start of a series on Acts 17: Paul's apologetic before the Areopagus in Athens. Today, Phil closed off the series with a post on "charitableness," the definition of which will look familiar to anyone who's had to endure the works of Brian McLaren and friends:

"Charitableness" (the postmodern substitute for charity) is something altogether different. It's a broad-minded, insouciantly tolerant, unrelenting goodwill toward practically every conceivable opinion. Its twin virtue - often labeled "epistemic humility' - is a cool refusal to hold any firm and settled convictions. These cardinal postmodern moral values are both seasoned with blithe indifference to the dangers of heresy.

[Read Paul and Charitableness]

You can also read the entire series in one fell swoop. Good stuff.

John Piper posted C. S. Lewis' five rules of writing for children. While I've never read this list, as a professional communicator I have always tried to achieve the same goals, though not always successfully.

Suzanne of Big Blue Wave comments on a recent challenge to pro-life bloggers by feminist bloggers opposing Bill C-484, to "[f]ind one reputatable [sic], established organization working against violence against women that publicly endorses this bill."  When I first heard of this, I saw it as a good example of the so-called No True Scotsman fallacy: the ones issuing the challenge are most likely the arbiters of what constitutes a "reputatable [sic], established organization."  Suzanne says as much herself:

This "dare" by the feminists is ideologically motivated. They're trying to pretend that the feminists who are dominant in among those who combat women's violence are the arbiters of what is and is not in the best interests of women.

[Read The Only People for Whom C-484 is About Abortion are Feminists]

The best reason to support C-484 is not that "reputatable [sic], established organizations" also support it; it's because in addition to the harm to her own person, an expectant mother who is assaulted until she miscarries, or murdered, loses something very valuable to her. The increased severity of the punishment ought to be proportional to the increased severity of the crime.

Finally, Jay at the venerable LTI Blog has this to say about the Robert Latimer case recently back in the news:

Mark [Pickup] published the trial evidence that Tracy was not miserable all of the time and actually enjoyed life as reported by her own mother in a communication book. This is the same mother that characterized her daughter’s life as torturous meaningless suffering at the trial of her husband. Mark reports that Robert Latimer considered poisoning Tracy or shooting her in the head before deciding to gas her to death during his two weeks of planning the murder. Finally, Mark expresses the “uncharitable” opinion that Tracy’s disabilities did not define her value as a human being and that her father was wrong to murder her. . . .

Hey Latimer-heads, Robert Latimer decided that Tracy’s life was not worth the trouble and pain her living caused him and he killed her. He murdered his daughter and that is not heroic. Murder is not mercy. If you are too morally confused to see that, then I pray that you never find yourself an expendable inconvenience in another’s eyes. You may suddenly see the inherent danger in the precedent Latimer is now trying to set.

[Read Undisputed Fact: Robert Latimer is a Murderer]

Mark Pickup's original post may be found at HumanLifeMatters for reference.

On the search engine front

Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it: Awhile back, I remarked that the weird search hits seemed to have disappeared.  I spoke too soon.  Here are some of the ways that people have found help (I hope) on this site, and if not, it's an opportunity to make snide remarks about them.

• organized and forced harassment through female seductresses: That turn of phrase sounds like a fluffy bit of empty rhetoric from a perky Women's Studies undergrad.  Out of context, would you have guessed it was actually said about gay penguins?
• waterman phileas cigar ring band does not go all the way around: Well, I just checked mine. Speak for yourself, buddy.
• how to speak like a crusty old lady: Say "sonny" and "Heavens to Betsy" a lot.
• what does it say about a women who has crusty feet: What does what say about it, sonny? Heavens to Betsy!

  (See, I knew choosing this name for this blog would pay off eventually.)

• pro choice abortion supreme court of canada sets a precedence: Well, no, actually, they didn't.
• why is the battle on the plains of abraham the bloodiest battle fought on the canadian soil: Well, no, actually, it wasn't. The Battle of Lundy's Lane was, in 1814 in Niagara Falls. Maybe it's somehow related to how many people died.
• in many of shakespeare's plays the women seem to loose their personality and become robotic stepford wives: Uh, maybe, if by "many" you mean The Taming of the Shrew, and by "women" you mean Katherina.
• Brian McClare and the emergent church: Interestingly, most people mistakenly substitute McClaren for McClare; this is the first time I've ever seen it go the other way around.

So until Friday (or maybe next Friday), Share and Enjoy.

Labels: Blogging

Posted by Ransom at 7:16 PM · Permalink · · ?

And now . . . this - Apr. 9/08

Um . . . silence pollution?

A bill intended to protect blind people and other pedestrians from the dangers posed by quiet cars will be introduced Wednesday in Congress.

The measure would require the Transportation Department to establish safety standards for hybrids and other vehicles that make little discernible noise, including an audible means for alerting people that cars are nearby.

[Full Text]

Great! After 100 years of the automobile, we finally invent a silent car, and we're immediately forced by law to make it make loud "putt, putt" noises. Or maybe car owners should hire some sort of flagman, like the kind that had to walk in front of horseless carriages?

Everything's bigger in Texas

Booyah!

The brightest light on Earth now shines in a laboratory in Texas, one which will enable scientists to create a tabletop star. . . .

The laser is brighter than sunlight on the surface of the sun, but it only lasts for an instant, a 10th of a trillionth of a second (0.0000000000001 second). This is the key to the laser's power - it delivers modest energy in a microscopic unit of time.

[Full Text]

But avoid staring directly into the beam . . . unless you like watching your eyeballs evaporate and float away.

Yes, Arkansas . . . anyone surprised?

Arkansas' marriage-age crisis is over. A law that mistakenly allowed anyone - even toddlers - to marry with parental permission was repealed by a measure signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Mike Beebe, ending months of embarrassment for the state and confusion for county clerks.

Lawmakers didn't realize until after the end of last year's regular session that a law they approved, intended to establish 18 as the minimum age for marriage, instead removed the minimum age to marry entirely. An extraneous "not" in the bill allowed anyone who was not pregnant to marry at any age with permission.

The bill read: "In order for a person who is younger than eighteen (18) years of age and who is not pregnant to obtain a marriage license, the person must provide the county clerk with evidence of parental consent to the marriage."

[Full Text]

Yeah, I blew a lot of tests in school by forgetting the stupid minus sign, too. Hey, I'm an editor - let's discuss rates.

OK, one more. It's been awhile.

Good thing it wasn't a stoat

A New Zealand man has been accused of assault with prickly weapon - a hedgehog. Police allege that William Singalargh picked up the hedgehog and threw it several yards to hit a 15-year-old boy in the North Island east coast town of Whakatane on Feb. 9. . . .

Worst Ending Ever for a news story:

While using a hedgehog as a weapon in an assault is uncommon, Jenkins said, "People often get charged with assault for throwing things at other people."

[Full Text]

Yeah, words fail me too.

Labels: And now . . . this

Posted by Ransom at 10:42 PM · Permalink · · ?

Charlton Heston (1923-2008)

No sooner do I finish writing about the anniversary of my favourite science-fiction movie, than to learn that the star of another favourite has passed away.

Charlton Heston starred in many great epics, SF and otherwise - including Bible epics such as The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur (for which he won the Best Actor Oscar for 1959), historical drama such as Khartoum, and lesser SF classics such as Soylent Green and The Omega Man (one of three film adaptations of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend). In recent years my favourite film in which he appeared was Kenneth Branagh's incredible 1996 adaptation of Hamlet, in which Heston had a cameo as one of the players in the acting troupe.

But for me, the essential Charlton Heston role was as the misanthropic astronaut Taylor in 1968's Planet of the Apes.

In later years, Heston was probably better known for his conservative political activity, such as the presidency of the National Rifle Association, than his acting. Nonetheless, Hollywood has lost yet another of its legends. Rest in peace, Mr. Heston.

Labels: Culture, Movies and TV

Posted by Ransom at 11:26 PM · Permalink · · ?

To infinity and beyond!

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the theatrical release of the seminal "quintessential good science-fiction movie," 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Director Stanley Kubrick collaborated with legendary SF novelist Arthur C. Clarke to create this film. Kubrick died in 2000, shortly after the completion of his final feature, Eyes Wide Shut. Sadly, Clarke, too, died only a few weeks ago, at the ripe old age of 90. Clarke was the last of the "Big Three" giants of SF, being predeceased by Robert A. Heinlein in 1988 and Isaac Asimov in 1992. (Understandably these were the first three SF authors I started reading as an early teen, as well.)

Viewers have been polarized by 2001, either finding it intensely profound or intensely boring. The latter find the plot boring or incomprehensible - primarily because the meaning of the action isn't spoon-fed to the audience, nor is it punctuated with violence or explosions. 2001 is one of those rare SF movies that simply requires you to think about what you are seeing. And in a sense the movie is less to be analyzed than simply experienced. Giant habitats float in space! Men walk on the ceiling! Spaceships fly to the farthest reaches of space! Like the Odyssey of Homer, 2001 is an epic that shows wonders and marvels its viewers have never seen.

2001 opens four million years in the past, with a tribe of cavemen who discover that a mysterious rectangular black monolith has been deposited in their midst. The seemingly intelligent monolith begins to teach them the use of tools, culminating in the tribe fighting off a rival tribe with bone clubs.

Flash forward to the year 2001, when American astronauts living on the moon discover another monolith buried 40 feet beneath the surface. When the sun's rays touch it for the first time, It transmits a radio signal to the planet Jupiter. An expedition, comprising astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea), Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), and three scientists in hibernation, is sent to Jupiter on the spacecraft Discovery to investigate. En route, the ship's artificial intelligence, HAL 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain), becomes erratic, then psychotic when Bowman and Poole consider shutting him down. When HAL kills Poole, Bowman is left to deal with the murderous computer and learn the connection between Jupiter and the monolith.

Or, as I like to encapsulate the plot in a nutshell: 2001 is the story of mankind's evolution being directed by god-like aliens, as told by an author who doesn't believe in God.

It is now 2008, of course, and I am sitting in my earthbound basement, typing this article up on my 2003-vintage desktop PC, which isn't feeling very conversational. (Fortunately, on the other hand, it isn't trying to kill me, either.) Needless to say, as a predictive work, 2001 wasn't particularly successful. For example:.

• No doubt the future looked a lot brighter in 1968, when NASA was on the brink of putting men on the moon. Had the space program continued at the same fervent pace as it did during the height of the space race, we could well have had giant hotels in orbit and passenger flights to the moon by now. As it is, however, we haven't set foot on the moon in well over 30 years; indeed, we haven't even left low-earth orbit, and the closest we've come to orbiting Hiltons is the rotating crew of the International Space Station.
• 2001 showed people in space solving the problem of zero gravity by walking on Velcro shoes that kept their feet on the floor (or walls or ceilings). Now that we actually have people living in space (albeit very few), as we've seen endless times on the news, zero gravity isn't a problem: astronauts have simply learned to float from place to place.
• Kubrick and Clarke didn't foresee the microcomputer revolution or distributed networking. The computing paradigm of their day was timesharing on a powerful, central mainframe; hence HAL 9000 pervades Discovery and controls its every operation.
• For that matter, they were over-optimistic about HAL's life cycle: he was supposedly brought online in 1992. How many 10-year-old computers are still state-of-the-art?
• They didn't see the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War in the early 1990s, which rendered the political tension of 2001 obsolete.
• How could they have predicted the bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie that ultimately led to the demise of Pan Am World Airlines, or the breakup of the telephone company in the early 1980s? Pan Am will never fly us into space; nor, when we get there, will we find a Bell video phone booth.

But even if 2001 failed as prediction, it is nonetheless prophetic. It seems to me that the primary theme of 2001 is not godlike aliens, or homicidal computers or even the Wonderful World of the Future. Rather, it is a warning about the dehumanizing effect of over-reliance on technology. The invisible aliens gave prehistoric man knowledge of tools so he could hunt for food; instead he learned to use it to kill other men. With HAL running Discovery, Bowman and Poole are practically only caretakers - indeed, since HAL is capable of carrying the mission out himself, they are redundant. The most "human" character is the machine, and it takes a fight for his own survival to break Bowman out of his complacency.

2001 stands as the milestone in cinematic science fiction. No more would space travel be attempted in unlikely chrome-plated rocket ships piloted by foil-clad spacemen armed with Art Deco ray guns. Alien beings weren't scaly, antennaed green monsters in foam suits anymore. Kubrick and Clarke went to great lengths to inject realism into the way their subject matter was portrayed. Douglas Trumbull's visual effects made their vision take shape; he later went on to make movie magic in other groundbreaking SF features such as Silent Running, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and, of course, Blade Runner.

I could say much more about 2001, but it will have to wait until later this year: I plan on blogging extensively on my list of favourite SF films - something I've been planning to do for many moons.

Labels: Culture, Movies and TV

Posted by Ransom at 7:09 AM · Permalink · · ?

I love stats

Conventional wisdom says that links are the currency of the blogosphere.  Highly regarded sites such as the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, for example, rank blogs according to metrics such as page visits and inbound links. (I presently rank #10,826 which, considering there are millions of blogs out there, is in my opinion fairly respectable.)

I don't live by my stats - what I say or do on the blog depends on little more than what's on my mind that motivates me sufficiently to broadcast it to the world.  But I do like to know who is visiting, where they are coming from, and what draws them to the Curmudgeon, and thanks to tools like Sitemeter and Google Analytics, I can do that.

I've noticed that in recent months, the kinds of search engine "hits" that have brought people to this blog have largely stabilized. I wonder whether an extended hiatus from blogging has somehow cut down on some of the oddball searches I used to get? Anyway, it gives me an opportunity to take a look at the biggest reasons people visit here, as well as the pages they visit most (apart from the root page). So, just for fun, here are the top five:

1. are matt stone and trey parker gay: Variations on this theme - I probably get half a dozen such searches daily - bring people to this page. In fact, I'm inexplicably the number one hit on the subject. Since I have made exactly two posts about Stone and Parker out of nearly 1,000 since 2003, the interest in this subject is disproportional to its relative importance to the blog overall. Moreover, the two posts were about South Park's treatment of Scientology.  Reading the excerpt of the page that Google provides, I can understand why people would want to look here. Something tells me I need to take some steps to "bury" this one.  Also, for the record: no, they aren't.
2. God's perfect will: I'm a little more satisfied with this result, as variations on this search bring people to this page, a bit of theological exposition that I'm happy with.
3. Gideon's fleece: Ditto this search and this page. Combined, this one and the above beat out #1.  Still, I'd like to find a way to bump them both up to the top.  The fact that people come to this blog looking for information on knowing and doing God's will is a motivation to continue to expound on that subject (as well as other theological topics in general). As I said, I don't live by my stats, but when I see someone responding to some of the better parts of the site, I want to do what I can to improve them.
4. if you want to leave take good care: I don't know why, but it seems that two people a day stumble across me while searching for this line from Cat Stevens' song "Wild World," for which cruel, cruel fate has made me the top site out of more than three million hits. They find this page, which again isn't particularly important. This seems to be another one of those statistical anomalies that can't be helped. Well, I hope you find a lot of nice friends out there.
5. life of pi analysis: Finally, people looking for information on, or an explanation of, Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi come looking, and find my review. I hope it is helpful; seeing these hits just keeps reminding me how much I enjoyed the novel (weird theme aside) and writing the article. Life of Pi seems to have some enduring popularity. And indeed, I've recently read some Canadian novels that I found very satisfying, whereas even 15 years ago I wouldn't give a book a second look at the library if it had a maple leaf on the spine. Maybe I should review more, if it encourages college students to read more closely.

So in a nutshell, people come to the Crusty Curmudgeon looking for celebrity gossip, helpful theology, and book reviews. Two out of three ain't bad, I guess.

Also fun are the searches I get where it's obvious someone is looking for me. Once in awhile I can even figure out who you are. Hello out there.  It's good to know friends and acquaintances are keeping in touch, albeit indirectly. Don't be strangers.

Labels: Blogging

Posted by Ransom at 11:04 PM · Permalink · · ?

Quelle coincidence!

This from the Calgary Herald:

Several Muslims say their lives are at risk because they dared speak out in what has become an ongoing dispute in their community.

Yesterday, one of the people claiming to be victims of ongoing violent attacks, Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed, watched in horror as a car pulled up outside his Panatella Blvd. N.W. home and a man armed with a jerrycan and booze bottle got out, scaled the fence and set his home ablaze as seven children and three other adults slept. . . .

"Within two minutes, we had a big fire," he said.

[Source]

Dr. Ahmed's wife is one of the three women who filed a human-rights complaint against Calgary imam Syed Soharwardy, alleging discrimination within the mosque. She also happens to be the second of the three whose property has been invaded by violent persons in recent weeks. The first was Robina Butt, who was supposedly assaulted and beaten in her own home by burka-wearing thugs.

The article also says:

Arson Det. Scott Sampson said the family was definitely targeted and the fire could easily have been deadly. . . .

Cops are investigating several other attacks against members of the Muslim community with the help of RCMP, Services Alberta and the National Security investigation section.

There's a well-known saying about two and two that applies here, I should think.

Meanwhile, the third complainant, Qasira Shaheen, might want to look into hiring a few heavies of her own to walk around with her - strictly as a prudent precaution, of course, because as I said awhile back, I'm sure it is nothing but the purest coincidence that these attacks are taking place.

(H/T: Ezra Levant and Jihad Watch.)

Labels: Canada, Current events

Posted by Ransom at 1:05 PM · Permalink · · ?

It's on

Jojo Ruba has confirmed (via mass email) that the abortion debate at York University between himself and Michael Payton has been rescheduled:

Event: Abortion - A Woman's Right or a Moral Wrong?
Day and Time: Tuesday, March 18th at 5:30-7:00pm
Location: Curtis Lecture Hall E, Keele Campus at York University; the building is by Scott Library

All the publicity over the YSF's 86ing of the original debate has surely earned them a greater audience, and I hope they're up to it.

Meanwhile, Jojo's colleague Stephanie Gray will apparently be debating here in Ottawa on Wednesday, at Carleton University. It's unfortunate that I'm otherwise occupied that evening (pesky Easter stuff!), because not only have I wanted to see her in action, but it, too, might be a significant event given the Carleton University Student Union (CUSA)'s attempt in 2006 to squelch the pro-life voice on campus.

Erratum: In my previous post on this topic, I called Kelly Holloway, Student Centre vice-chair at York, a "student blackshirt." I have since learned otherwise:

Kelly Holloway is a doctoral candidate at York University, studying women’s health care. She is a member of the International Socialists and active in the student, anti-war, and pro-choice movements. [Emphasis added]

[Source; H/T: Blazing Cat Fur.]

For the record, that makes Stalinism, not Fascism as originially implied, her particular brand of censorious totalitarianism. The Crusty Curmudgeon apologizes for the oversight, and will endeavour to keep its tinpot dictators straight in the future.

Labels: Pro-life

Posted by Ransom at 12:38 AM · Permalink · · ?