You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November, 2007.
One of the major ethical concerns over therapeutic human cloning may soon be over. Just a few days ago, independent research teams in Japan and the US announced that they had successfully transmuted ordinary human adult skin cells into pluripotent stem cells - that is, generic or undifferentiated human cells that can be triggered to grow into any type of human tissue - thus opening the door toward therapeutic clone technology such as the cultivation of replacement organs grown from the recipient’s own tissue. Just two years ago I wrote an essay on what I saw as an ethical problem with one extreme implication of clone therapy: immortality. I still see that particular concern as valid. But the more immediate qualm about destroying a human embryo for its stem cells seem no longer to be a live issue, with even the most vocal opponents of stem cell research appearing to be mollified by - even supportive of - these latest developments.
At this stage, the techniques involve retroviruses, something that renders the resulting cells unsuitable for direct human applications. But one gets the feeling that the holy grail of medical biotechnology (or should that be Pandora’s Box?) may be within reach very soon.
Like most of the western world (and much of the developed eastern world, it must be said), we in this country face the phenomenon of “boy racers”. I’m sure I don’t need to describe them; one generally needs only to head downtown on a Friday night to see convoys of exhaust-gate lifting, baseball cap-wearing adolescents cruising past the most populated cafes and nightclubs. The gaudy chrome rims and booming stereos of their pride and joy are only part of the boy racer’s attention seeking arsenal; obnoxiously loud big-bore exhausts frequently annoy.
Some months ago, an advertising campaign designed to combat this urban cultural weed began in Australia. Because the behaviour is (when you come right down to it) basically a display of sexual availability and prowess, the campaign seeks to undermine this by utilising the now-familiar innuendo of “small penis syndrome”. The TV advertisements feature people reacting to high-risk boy racer behaviours by waggling their pinky in a derisively suggestive manner:
Normally I roll my eyes when someone makes a “..must be compensating for something, hur hur hur!”-type comment, as I think it is now clichéd at best and at worst, misandrist. But I’m willing to make an exception in this case. On Campbell Live tonight, an expat-Californian (now a New Zealand citizen) initiated his own version of this anti-boy racing campaign by standing in town with a placard saying “Big Loud Exhaust = Small Penis”. I have to applaud him as frankly, I too am sick to death of the farting trumpet notes emanating from overclocked rice burners; I just wish he hadn’t used the heinous Comic Sans font. Barf.
More on the terrorism raids court case that was recently quashed. Within 24hrs of the Solicitor General’s decision not to prosecute the arrested activists under the Terrorism Suppression Act, an anonymous source illegally leaked evidence collected under authority of that legislation. Many supporters of the arrested group were predictably outraged, as this evidence would never otherwise have seen the light of day, and is not even in the hands of the defense counsel.
This has interesting parallels with an earlier case in which a high profile rape case involving former police officers Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum and then-current police Assistant Commissioner Clint Rickards, was marked by the illegal release of the former two’s conviction history. At the time the people who committed the act - and many others were sympathetic with their actions - felt it was morally correct to release this information. I wonder though if all of the people who supported the leaking of information in the rape case would also morally support the release of evidence of the Terror trial, if they knew it to be equally damning?
Today we interviewed a new flatmate, one that will be replacing another who is leaving for India next weekend (no, not the one I had the argument with in the previous post).
When asked what sort of work she did, she replied that she was a “woofer”. Now due to her german accent I had earlier assumed she meant “roofer”, but by the second or third time it was unmistakable. A woofer, apparently, is someone (often a tourist) who lives temporarily at a home-stay while working around the house as payment for their food and lodging. I had never heard the term before in my life, but apparently it’s quite well established, so there you go.
It was all over the news here today: The Solicitor General has declined NZ Police permission to prosecute the group of arrested individuals under the relatively new Suppression of Terrorism Act. This was a major blow for the New Zealand Police as they have had a lot of negative publicity and scandals over the last couple of years. However, Police Commissioner Howard Broad seems to have taken the decision with professionalism and grace, accepting that there were some elements of the operation in Ruatoki (the settlement closest to where the supposed Military-style training camps were ensconced) that he finds regrettable, talking about the need for the rebuilding of relationships between the police and affected communities.
It’s interesting to me how everyone reacts to these types of issues. I just had a brief argument with my flatmate over the emotiveness of Pita Sharples (Maori Party co-leader, and a strong critic of the whole operation) when his opinion was sought on the current events show Campbell Live. Sharples has a very melodramatic style that really gets on my nerves. The thing is, I might have been more sympathetic with the substance of his comments had they been made with a little less of the hyperbole in which he seems to often indulge. A couple of weeks earlier he had famously claimed that race relations in this country had been “set back 100 years” by the actions of police, and on this occasion he used language like “police ninjas” and “gung ho” and all the rest. Just not necessary, in my view. But my flatmate, who knows a few of those arrested, is very much against the case, and was agreeing wholeheartedly with Sharples. A brief but uncharacteristically heated exchange followed between us; let’s just say that we disagreed over the significance on how something is said, over what is said. It left me wondering what it is that we are reacting to when we can become polarised so easily even when many of the facts are not in dispute.
Well, this being my first post ever on a blog, I thought I’d give some of my impressions. I must say I’m pleasantly surprised; I had no idea that so many functions are routinely automated at the point and click level, within a browser window. It just shows how long I’ve been out of the IT loop.
Ultimately - that is, if I stick with this beyond a month or so and develop these pages into something approaching a useful resource - I will need to actually start paying money to someone for a proper domain name, and will probably need a change of host. But, first things first. It looks as though a lot can be accomplished with WordPress’s free features alone, and so it is perhaps appropriate that a journey of a thousand miles begins in my case with baby steps.
