Syracuse and Lion Red

This is a photo of Syracuse. See the Lion Red can he's drinking? Let me explain...

The coooooooolest thing about Speights beer in New Zealand (apart from the taste, etc) is that it comes with questions under the bottle caps. Unfortunately - while I love questions - I'm not the most knowledgable in terms of sports.

Thus, I was ecastic when I open up a bottle of Lion Red and discovered that these bottles also had questions under their caps. What was even more awesome was that these questions were about music (and possibly other fun stuff) - so I had a greater chance of answering them correctly.

So Syracuse and I started buying and thus drinking a lot of Lion Red this year (despite the taste). The bottle caps just made it worth it.

Soon, inevitably, we stopped noticing the (kinda disgusting) taste of the beer and got used to it - in the same way that one can get used to the taste of chillis :-).

Therefore, when Syrcause and I visited the bottle store last night we immediately went for the Lion Red. We had two options: 330ml bottles (with questions under their caps); or a 6 pack of 440ml ml Cans (with no caps whatsoever). The bottles cost $15, while the 6 pack of cans cost $8.99. Syracuse soon worked out that it was cheaper to buy the cans, so we purchased 2 6 packs - one for each of us.

I expect you can also see the illogacality of this. We started drinking Lion Red for the questions - not the taste! However we've now developed some sort of obscure desire for the taste of this beer - like a desire to chop chilli vodka - to the extent that I will drink it even if it doesn't come with caps (I do have a full jug of caps with questions on them in my room so I can open a can then read an old cap :-P).

We're both silly; but it's fun this way.

Another Quote

" 'Damned, destroyed, irreovcably corrupted,' Illidge went on...

It was true, Walter was thinking. She was all that people enviously or dispprovingly called her, and yet the most exquisite and marvellous of beings., Knoxing all, he could listen to anything that might be said about her. And the more atrocious the words the more desperately he loved her. Credo quia absurdum. Amo quia turpe, quia indignum. . . .

'A perfect imitation of a savage or an animal.' The words were true and an excruciation ; but he loved her all the more because of the torment and because of the odious truth. "
Aldous Huxley, Pointer Counter Point (pg. 75)

Basically, this quote represents how I feel about stuff - it's lovely, but very sad.

I'm not in a mood to say much more...

Religion or race?

This is silly:

"John Stevens, a former British police chief, said that airport bottlenecks caused by extra security checks could be reduced by focusing on "young Muslim men"."
- http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0DBCD900-1C6E-45EC-AF49-1C449D225940.htm

But "young Muslim men" only have one common factor - they are all Muslim; thus they all are adherents of Islam. But how can you tell what a person's religion is just from looking at them in an airport line? Not everyone proudly announces their religion around their neck like many Christians do.

It is arguable whether religious profiling or racial profiling is worse - quite probably both are equally bad. The issue I have with this comment is that John is recommending racial profiling but disguising it as religious profiling.

Not all Muslims are Arabic - and not all arabs are Muslim.

Lets talk about Circumcision and the sillyness of the Media

Bill Clinton is spearheading the promotion of male circumcision in an effort to reduce HIV transmission, especially in the undeveloped and developing world (Africa, India, etc). The Guardian reported:

"There is excitement about the potential for circumcision in preventing Aids. Last year researchers from South Africa and France announced that in a trial of 3,274 men from near Johannesburg randomly chosen either to be circumcised or not, those who underwent the procedure had a 60% lower risk of acquiring HIV afterwards than those who did not."
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,,1851224,00.html

While I don't want to contend that circumcision doesn't reduce the spread of this disease, I think this test alone is far from conclusive. Where are the links between circumcision and HIV transmission? Other explanations - other than that circumcision really does biologically make HIV transmission less likely - may account for the reduced statistic,

These stem mainly from the possibility that the circumcised men in the trial simply had less sexual intercourse (thus did not have as higher risk of contracting the disease), either because:
a. they were in pain after the operation;
b. they were less attractive to possible sexual partners with a circumcised penis; or
c. they had less impetus to have sex because it no longer held such appeal (this harks back to the idea that after circumcision, there is a 60 percent reduction in sensory pleasure in the penis);

These conclusions I have drawn may be without merit - my underlying point is that the Guardian and most media outlet suffer from an inability to explain the detail behind their conclusions. Perhaps if more information about this research study was provided, my claims could be refuted and thus the conclusions reported - that the biological liklihood of HIV transmissions was reduced by up to 60 precent - could be substaintiated.

For example, if they provided info in regards to the length of the study this may refute my supposition that the men may have been less likely to have sex because they were still in pain from the operation (because this pain would subside over a period of months).

All I ask for is clarity. I'm aware that the media must sacrifice some degree of detail for convenience so that the article is easily readable in five minutes - but when articles suppose bold claims without substantiation, as this article from the Guardian has done, the scales have tipped too far.

More Quotes...

After my earlier post from Huxley I finished reading yet another book by him - in which these two quotes seem rather fitting:

"Human Contacts [including love and friendship] have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment and because books were scarce...The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As readoing becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increaseing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium...The proper study of mankind is books."
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow (pg. 304)

While I love reading - voraciously - I definitely don't agree with this character. Yes, love is much composed of "tedium" and generates, for me, a great deal of pain - but this pain and tedium (so the classic romantics [myself included] would attest) serve to enhance what is so enjoyable about love and what writing, except writing of love directed towards or from the individuals concerned, lacks.

"In my youth...I found myself, quite foruitously, involved in a series of the most phantasmagorical amorous intrigues. A novelist could have made his fortune out of them...But I assure you, while they were happening - these romantic adventures - they seemed to me no more and no less exciting than any other incident of actual life. To climb at night up a rope-ladder to a second-floor window...seemed to me, while I was actually performing this rather dangerous feat, an action as obvious, as much to be taken for granted as...catching the 8.52 from Surbiton to go to business on a Monday morning. Adventures and romance only take on their adventurous and romantic qualities at second-hand. Live them, and they are just a slice of life like the rest."
Huxley, ibid (pg. 305-306)

I wonder if this is true? Again, I hope not - I want the events of my life to entertain me more than any novel. This brings me back to my original point: life lived events, such as falling in love - even in recollection - are more entertaining than a mere book. Even a diary - recalling the real lived events of your life, while hopefully interesting in a way that this second quote denies, is less interesting to read than the events were to experience (actually that reminds me of another quote I'll go find).

Fundamentally I disagree with both these quotes. Why do I like them so much? Because I don't think Huxley writes them in order to persuade us of their validity - in fact he writes them to warn us of what we may become, unless we do strive to enjoy our interactions with other people in a way that this character denies.

Hello Again

I don't think anyone reads this yet - but unless someone randomly stumbled across it, how would they? I have no real memory of starting this blog - but as I have just been effected by the desire to start a blog I stumbled across this one which I (presumably) began several months ago.

Life has markedly improved in the last few months, yet I'm no happier. Instead of complaining, I'll allow you the pleasure of a quote by the author who I'm enamoured with at present:

"Consistently applied to any situation, love always gains. It is an emplirically determined fact. Love is the best policy. The best not only in regard to those loved, but also in regard to the one who loves. For love is self-engergizing. Produces the means whereby its policy can be carried out. In order to go on loving, one needs patience, courage, endurance. But the process of loving generates these means to its own continuance. Love gains because, for the sake of that which is loved, the lover is patient and brave."
- Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza (pg. 501-502)

This leaves open the question: what does it mean to be patient, courageous and enduring?