Author: Moby

Business As Usual

Another glaring example of how corporations are out-of-control in this country.

(story)

Internet phone providers were ordered Thursday to begin supplying reliable 911 emergency call service after regulators heard an anguished Florida woman describe how she was unable to summon help to save her dying infant daughter….

…Her voice breaking, Cheryl Waller of Deltona, Fla., told the commissioners before their vote that “120 days is seven days longer than my daughter lived.” Julia Waller “died at 113 days old because I can’t reach an operator,” she said.

Waller said she got a recording when she used her Internet phone to call 911 after her daughter stopped breathing last March. By the time she was able to summon help with a neighbor’s phone, the child was dead.

Instead of focusing on issues like this, our leaders are worried about who I’m poking at night or who I choose to marry. Where were the morals of the company exec’s who rolled out this service knowing that it was missing a critical component? Once again, we wait until a problem bites us squarely in the ass before we act. Shameful to say the least.

Hon! Have You Seen My Morals?

I often find that conversations involving morality (and monogamy but thats another rant ) always seem to end up in a bitch fight. Neither side is willing to listen or relent and both end up vehemently attacking the other.

I’m trying to collect my thoughts to make this rant sound coherent but ideas keep colliding w/each other so I’ll ask you to bear w/me. . . I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m tired of the factions within the gay community constantly at war w/each other. One side uses their morality as a shield w/their self-righteous speeches proclaiming they’re superiority because they have morality on their side. The other side uses their sexual freedom as an ax to chop away at the traditions society has built up for years and years. Yet, neither side really tries to listen to the other. No one tries to find a middle ground. It’s always “my way or the highway!” Ya know what folks, that same attitude is what has this country in the political quandry its in today!

I still feel like I’m still missing my point. Maybe I can focus on the term itself.

Morality is defined as

1. descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or,
1. some other group, such as a religion, or
2. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.

At first read, both definitions sound the same. If you read it that way, re-read it until you see the difference. It is pointless to read further until you understand the above definitions differences.

*ok I stopped here out of frustration. I couldn’t find the right words so after several hours of reading, I found what I was trying to say, albeit not so elegantly.*

…. it is not useful to adopt a definition of “morality” as meaning the code of conduct accepted by the members of a society because in many large societies, not all members of the society accept the same code of conduct. Nor is it useful to adopt a somewhat more general definition of “morality” as the code of conduct accepted by the members of a group because it is not only always possible, it is often the case, that not all members of any group accept the same code. A natural outcome of these problems is to switch attention from groups to individuals. If what is important is what code of conduct people accept, and members of a group do not always accept the same code of conduct, then why be concerned with groups at all?

This consideration leads to a new descriptive sense of “morality.” “morality” is taken to mean that guide to behavior that is regarded by an individual as overriding and that he wants to be universally adopted. [See R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking] In this sense of “morality,” it refers to a guide to behavior accepted by an individual rather than that put forward by a society or any other group. But “morality” does not refer to just any guide to behavior accepted by an individual, it is that guide to behavior that the individual adopts as his overriding guide, and wants everyone else to adopt as their overriding guide as well. This sense of “morality” is a descriptive sense, because a person can refer to an individual’s morality without endorsing it. In this sense, like the original descriptive sense, morality has no limitations on content. Whatever guide to behavior an individual regards as overriding and wants to be universally adopted is that individual’s morality.

This quote was taken direclty from Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Now we are getting somewhere! The picture once fuzzy becomes clear. (well at least for me.) We begin to see that morality is an ambiguous term at best. How can we expect to come together as a group if we are all focusing on our morality instead of our equality. It should be quite clear that we’ll never have the same morality as those who oppose and hate us.

If we don’t learn to move beyond our multi-cultural/racial views on morality, frankly folks, I think we are doomed as a species.

Well, I’ve beat this horse to death so I’m moving on now. Discuss, comment, or bitch as you will.

Star Wars

None of my cohorts are free to go w/me this weekend to see the new Star Wars flick. *collective awwwwww*

So, I’m forced to go on my own tomorrow during the day before work. Aren’t you sad for me?

Blog Rules

I’ve been developing a list of blog rules. After seeing some of the pissing fights on several blogs lately, I thought I’d post it. I tried to keep it short and sweet.

1) It is your blog, you blog about whatever makes you happy.
2) Never link to an article requiring registration/fee w/o providing a warning or log in info
3) Be respectful when posting a comment even if you disagree.
4) If you link to someone don’t expect a return link just because.
5) If you don’t want constructive criticism, don’t ask for it.
6) At least pretend you know how to create paragraphs.

I’m sure I have more but that is all I can think of at the moment.

Weekend Wanderings II

Well, the weekend was blissfully uneventful. After a hard week, it was more than welcome. Saturday was spent hanging out w/Bobby. We took in a flick, House of Wax. You can definitely wait for DVD on this one. It had a decent plot but the movie dragged along until the end. There were some good scary scenes toward the end.

Sunday, I met up w/Mostovic and we hung out at the Eagle. The weather was kinda overcast so it wasn’t overly crowded for a change. It was so nice just to hang out and socialize. A group of the BCC boys were there as well.

Afterwards, Mostovic and I had dinner in the Castro. Not too bad of a weekend if you ask me.

On a side note, I got an email from the ex this morning. Apparently, someone cut the convertable top on his car over the weekend. He needed help getting a police report filed. The irony is back when we were together, our place was sort of on the outskirts of a bad neighborhood. His vehicle was never once broken into. Now, he lives in a sorta well-to-do spot in the city and his soft top gets sliced. I would have been just as upset so I tried to help the best I could. As luck would have it, he got a report pretty quickly and his insurance is on top of it.

This week, while not as busy, is going to be interesting. I have a new trainee tomorrow. I have no idea of her skills so time will tell. More importantly. the city is also submitting a proposal to our Union on Wednesday in regards to our raise. (Our job duties were doubled almost tripled two years ago. This is to address that) As a union officer, I will have first hand knowledge Wed. night. I’m hoping they come up w/a good offer so we don’t have to bicker back and forth about it. Keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed.

New “Stuff”

I’ve been tinkering w/some of the freebies that come w/my hosting package. I had originally planned to swap out the shoutbox for one of my own but, the one provided is very limited in its scope. The biggest issue being I can’t resize it which made putting in my sidebar impossible.

I did however add a local weather and tech news section. I’ll confess mainly because I’m lazy and hate logging into weather.com every day. This way I can just log into the domain and voila!

I’m just full of cool stuff this week.

No Tramp Zone

I’ve been catching up on my blogrolling and I stumbled across Dunner’s posts on gays and public sex. On his first rant, I think he sorta failed to explain himself. I guess after a spirited debate he decided to clarify his positon. On his second rant, he is much more to the point. That said, I still think he is missing the bigger picture.

First off, I have a lot of respect for Dunner and he is one of my favorite reads. I often find his rants to be very insightful and fair minded. I’m usually in agreement w/him on most topics. I think he is more articulate than I am which only serves to increase my interest. That said, I do find at times, like today, our opinions differ. I think it has a lot to do w/age. Granted at 34, I’m only 10 years his senior. But 1o years on the hard side of life can be a good teacher. From what I’ve read of Dunner, his life, while not w/o tribulations, has been blissful by my own standards. If anything, I’ve learned that when it comes to life and society, there is never an easy answer or quick fix as it were.

In a nutshell, Dunner states that if we ever expect society as a whole to accept us then we have to curtail our promiscuity in public.

It’s the same reason why we need to expose hypocrites like Jim West, politicians who spit antigay rhetoric and then expect pity when they own up to their homosexual behavior. If we create a society where it’s clear that gay relationships and gay sexuality are to be as respected as their straight counterparts, life will be easier for all homosexuals, and true equality will be found. But if we’re to expect to gain equal respect for gay sexuality, we gotta cut out the tomfoolery in the public steam room and instead find healthy ways to express it.

As I see it, that is sorta putting the horse before the wagon. If we are still battling for the right to even get married, how can we expect to “find healthy ways to express it.” Our over zealous need for sexual release stems from our constant repression. So from my perspective, we have to fix the problem itself before we can work on fixin the symptoms it has created.

Pop on over and have a read if you haven’t already. Andymatic also weighs in on the subject. What say you?