Happy New Year, first of all. The other day I happened upon a 2008 paper by Large, Nielssen, Ryan, and Hayes, entitled “The danger of dangerousness: why we must remove the dangerousness criterion from our mental health acts.” (J Med Ethics 2008;34:877-881). I won’t link to it, as it’s not freely available. However, I will...
Merry Christmas (almost). Time for carols, perhaps… He watches when you’re sleeping He knows when you’re awake He knows if you’ve been bad or good So be good for goodness’ sake STOP!! In what universe can that be seen as being good “for goodness’ sake”? The song celebrates being good expressly for the sake of material reward, based on the...
Here’s an odd thing: a guest blog on Scientific American, calling on us to consider the possibility of a Creator of our universe. Mmmmmmkay…. First of all, Stephanie Zvan, likewise writing a guest blog on Scientific American, has neatly deconstructed the failure that is Naff’s rather, well, naff, post. Go read that. I’ll wait …. Back? Cool....
The news recently has been fired up by footage of appalling brutality in a slaughterhouse in Indonesia. As a result the Australian government has suspended live export to those abattoirs. What doesn’t appear to have been said anywhere near as prominently or loudly is that Halal slaughter is fundamentally sick and messed up. First let...
I walked past a sign this morning outside the train station on my way to work. It’s a sign I’ve walked past quite a few times without noticing it terribly much. This morning I did notice it, and having been reading George Orwell’s 1984 just five minutes earlier, was rather taken by its Newspeak-ness....
