My friend from skating has started a shop selling her handmade art.
This includes tote bags, badges, and prints of her art.
Check it out, they're adorably cute.

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7163528

Uroboros came today! I ordered it from amazon.co.uk and it shipped from Europe. I haven't listened to it yet, despite aquiring the illegal rip some weeks ago. The first thing I have to say is that the packaging is shit. I ordered the 2 disk edition with dvd which came to some £20. Both disks are held in a cardboard case. It's like the free CDs you get with newspapers. It doesn't include your regular plastic case. How am I supposed to keep my CDs from breaking when all they're surrounded by is flimsy cardboard? For that price, I'm disapointed. Does anyone know why this is? I can see an argument in it for environmental reasons.

On the upside, though, the cover design imho is the best they've ever done. It's so elegant, detailed, simple and clear for once. Remember the eye-squinting Marrow of a Bone? Yeah, none of that here fortunately. The lyric booklets are in the same style of Withering and Marrow; lyrics, translations, on a black background with one small dark band picture.

More later, on the actual songs~

yougenkyou posted this and I'm going to have to post it again because it's just the epitomy of intelligence and compassion.

Can everyone in the UK please consider signing this petition to the govement:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/schoolsout
What this petiton is asking for is education of homosexual issues to be included in sex education in schools. Such issues may include: equal rights and discrimination, bullying, history, safe sex, and STIs.

Now you may think homosexuality should not be encouraged, and you may think that is what this petition is doing, but that's not quite right.
What this petition is asking is for people to be educated about homosexual issues.
Your average teenager becomes aware of homosexuality around age 12. But unless they have a gay parent, brother, sister or relation they are unlikely to understand/accept it because it's not something they have come into contact with before.
Homosexual bullying is rife in schools partly because people don't know enough about the feelings/transitions gay people may be going through.
This kind of education is seriously what we need right now.

A quote from afterellen.com
"I find it quite interesting that anyone who agrees that gays have REALIZED their orientation believes that it is somehow different for a person of ANY race to realize their race. At birth you have no idea who you are. Every facet of your identity, even those that are inherent and overtly evident, enter your consciousness far after birth. Many individuals of colour (which is a category that encompasses many of my closest friends) have no idea they are different from the "white ideal" until they are at the age where other schoolmates inform them of the "discrepancy.

One of the main issues here is that whereas race is an external realization (meaning that most likely someone else points it out to you, and it exists external of your own internal identity until you are informed of it), sexuality is a much more intuitive matter. Granted, sexuality is a matter of "feeling", however there is no proof that that feeling is a choice. "

Another quote, a different take on the issue this time:
"A way to remove the controversy from "gay marriage" would be to:
Let everyone have "civil unions" (from a legal aspect)...whether the couple is straight or gay (to ensure legal rights) and...let "marriage" be a religious ceremony.
A couple's marriage would be recognized by their church, but their civil union would ensure their legal rights.
It would separate the "legal" recognition from the "religious" recognition."
I really like this idea. Because I'm not religious, but I want to get married.

The Moral Sense Test:

http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/eric1/test/testP.html

Harvard is looking for volunteers to take a short survey, in particular looking for Philosophy graduates. The test gives you short hypothetical situations and you need to rate how morally good/bad they are.

An interesting way of answering the test, which I found made it easier, was to answer whether you would do those actions are not. Put yourself in that situation (aside: in the format of the test, is this test not in itself consequentialist?!).

The three most common ethical theories are deontology (i.e. Kant, Christian/Muslim/Jewish ethics), consequentialist (Utilitarianism), and virtue ethics (Aristotle, modern theories).
At the moment I'm more of a consequentialist, but obviously I see the huge problems with it, which I'm looking to solve (currently taking a degree in Philosophy, including a semester in moral philosophy. However our next step is to study modern (interpretations) of virtue ethics.

I am so happy right now. Obama won! Though I wish he'd got 60 seats, but he wasn't too far off...

And Colorado went blue! My god, that's a suprise but I'm thrilled. I guess Boulder really spread its wings.

And I stayed up 'till 3am and it's now 8.30 and I'm shattered. >

iber: "The Republican party itself is definitely going to be in a position of reform, and will see the rise of the new generation of Republicans. It is very possible will see Sarah Palin at the forefront of this movement."

This is something not everyone is talking about, as it's all Obama-mania at the moment and tension, tension, tension.

But leaving Obama aside, what would a republican loss (and let's face it, it's very likely at this point) mean to its party? I predict (and will be watching to see if this comes true) that the republican party is going change as much as Labour in England did in the 21st century. Labour became New Labour (and put a lot of old supporters off, while drawing in the centre, even centre right).
I think the republican party is going to need to be The New Red.

And who's going to lead it? Well, I think one person stands out, the very person who said themselves they could be president "Maybe in 8 years"; Sarah Palin. She's not going to give up. She's not going to quit. I think she's going to shrug off the VP loss as McCain's loss.
The people know her, the press knows her; she's a celebrity. She's pushing for the Alaskan senator to stand down, and can we imagine who will take their place? She's learnt a lot in these past weeks and she's got a lot more to learn but I can definitely see her pushing for the senate.

The republican party, to me, is made up of two groups (with some overlap, of course): the Christian right and the conservatives. The party is going to need to shed its fundamentalist image to appeal to independent voters and the middle class. It's going to need stronger candidates with more experience (ahem). If Obama wins, it's going to show that the majority of Americans don't support the underlying principles of the republican party. That party is going to have to move much more centrist if it wants to reclaim (how suppositional of me) the white house.

Abortion: interesting quotes for self-reference. Made public for interest.

http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=407

Q: "The fetus is, as Wayne says, a baby in the making, a future good, while the mother’s choice is a present good and it is a certain good (there is no doubt that the mother is a rational being). A certain present good (the mother’s right to choose) trumps a possible future one (the fetus turning into a normal baby).

This quote is interesting to me because of how it describes philosophy. (I'm pro-choice; I think illegalizing abortion is abhorrent, but this post isn't about 'taking sides' or ethics.)
It's about whether present goods are of a higher value than future goods, and its relevance for philosophy i.e. you can never know the future, consequentialism and teleology. And of course, what 'value' is and whether it is simply perspectivism as Nietzsche proponented.

Also interesting: Q: "But do you have to be a rational being to be a person? There are many cases where beings that are not necessarily considered rational are still granted personhood (new-born babies even)."
The 'rational being' definition of personhood is very common in philosophy. But is it a) true and b) how does it change the issue of abortion (i.e. the personhood of the fetus, if it is non-rational or pre-rational.) Pre-rational depends on the issue in the above paragraph.

However: If we take our rational being def. as assumed, does it logically follow that we ought not protect things that are not rational. Reasons for this may be because...of their capacity to suffer (not just physiologically- psychologically (which is often much worse)), and for other defs. of personhood listed below.

Other "non-philosophical" (note speech marks- this is arguable) definitions of personhood: Q: "when they can move inside the womb? Is it when the person can think independently and feel pain and happiness and hunger? It’s morally and ethically wrong to kill another human being (although some of mans laws contradict this), but it isn’t morally and ethically wrong to kill a collection of cells and DNA."

In relation to personhood: are 'human' and 'person' the same thing? Instincively I'm inclined to agree that they are.

Also I'm wondering how the arguments relate to sperm as a potential person, for all of those guys who spend a lot of time with their hand?

Watch this, it's so funny! It's a Saturday Night Live spoof of Palin and Biden's VP debate. :D