Weather Ethics

I was going to write about Peter Singer and the intense moral and ethic questions raised by his controversial views on human life but after watching yesterday's profiles of him on BBC4, I feel that the whole topic is just too controversial and may attract some very heated replies. You will have to read about his views yourself. It even seems dangerous to link to this page. Martin mentioned about an Australian who wanted to give the Great Apes significant proportions of human rights and then mentioned the fact the Bananas share 20% of their DNA with humans and should we give a proportion of human rights to Bananas. A stupid argument of course but it was repeated in last night's programme. The whole thing seemed to be proof of Singer being quoted out of context. The issues involved are amongst those which produce more passion than anything else and yet he seemed to distil the ideas which I hear from a lot of people using a consistent morality. I said I was not going to write about it and I have - so write to me. I know my views and I am happy with them.

Everything is an inspiration. I also watched a programme on BBC3 - yes the youth channel - what are you trying to say? The programme was Body Hits which is always a bit Gee Whiz. Last Night's was about Smart Drugs. There are people who take over 100 tablets of various types per day. Some even feed them to their dogs. They then go on to take LSD in order to enhance their creativity. I have news for them - The Smart Drugs Are Not Making Them Smart. One of them told the interviewer his age and seemed proud of it as if the drugs were keeping him younger. He looked his age in that tight skinned, sun-bleached Californian way. I have decided that Body Hits is a programmed specifically designed to show how stupid people who take drugs actually are. The one on Cocaine, Cannabis and Ecstasy was a long procession of people you would really not want to meet - unless you yourself had taken something. Stupid, Stupider and Stupidest. Don't do it! Creativity is only enhanced by a clear mind.

Obviously, the Advertising person who came up with the slogan ‘Ignite Your Senses’ did not take this advice. This is for some shower gel/personal cleaning product. Please tell me what it means. It seems that selecting a few words, which suggest something and then throwing them together randomly is the solution to all requests for slogans. There is not thought to how the words fit together and what the total meaning of the phrase actually is. There is of course no literal way of igniting your senses and I would suspect that the closest feeling to that would be given by taking large quantities of illegal drugs. Let us put that to a focus group.

I can't get enthusiastic about anything else. Work is not interesting - in fact it is rather bitty but it all has to be done so I should not complain.

I was reading some of Brian Eno's A Year With Swollen Appendices
yesterday and within the first few pages he talked about watching Kavangh QC. He described the specific episode as a new story where the good guy wins but is on the wrong side, meaning, I think, that it was a completely new story on top of the supposed 7 basic stories. He then backtracked on this and supposed that maybe it wasn't new. I am sure I have seen an episode of Quincy/Kojak/Starsky and Hutch with this premise. This got me thinking about whether we all have a block in our brains when we write things like diaries and blogs which makes us write rubbish even though we know it is rubbish. Martin has just arrived and said that cleverness is relative. Brian Eno is only just cleverer than the rest of us but that is a gulf we can never cross.

Poetry at Lunctime.