(no subject)

[rant-mode]

Politics, international: The way everyone is trying to brush off the responsibility for the Iraq war now that public opinion is changing and elections are due is sickening. I was against the war, but I could at least retain a minimal respect for someone standing by the decision they took then. If we'd known... (or any of the hypocritical versions of this statement we'd been forced to endure recently) Please. It's a politician's business to make sure he/she knows beforehand or is at least reasonably well-informed, or they'd better resign. After all it's not if the UN weapons inspectors hadn't said exactly what now transpires, namely that there weren't any WMD. What is this, kindergarten? Every time I think I couldn't be more disgusted with the state of politics... :: sigh ::

Politics, local: Anything to keep this woman from presidency. The blog... the prose... :: cringes :: Sadly enough, I suspect she really writes this herself, no self-respecting publicity person would come up with such atrocious, stilted, artificial-sounding German....
The blog is good for a laugh or two (if you read German), except of course for the fact that this woman is running for presidency, which makes it... gah. What an embarrassment. I'm not judging her personally, seeing as I don't know her, but her public persona and what she stands for revolt me. This may be a personal quirk, but I certainly won't vote for someone who took pains to have her marriage annulled in order to preserve the public facade of the good catholic and be re-married in church. (I'm trying not to be rabidly anti-catholic, but the double-standards of the catholic church do make it hard more often than not.) If she is unwilling to take the responsibility for her personal decisions (marriage) how can I expect her to take responsibility for her politic acts?

And no, my definition of feminism doesn't include voting for someone for no other reason than we have the same reproductive organs.

[/rant-mode]

(no subject)

"I'm given to understand that your genetic material has become the foundation for an
entire race of warrior priests? I'm intrigued. And, perhaps, a bit jealous."

(Tyr to Rev in 'The Devil Take the Hindmost')


The existence of the Magog must be incredibly disconcerting for any Nietzschean, because in some ways they're their mirror image; an ugly distorted one, but a mirror image nevertheless. They're better and more efficient at everything the Nietzscheans value most: survival, procreation.

Western culture has always used concepts central to its self-definition -- thought, language, consciousness, feeling -- to draw (rightly or wrongly) a line between humans and animals, but if you toss all these aside, and chose to define yourself as the best and most efficient animal first and foremost? It works as long as you're on the top of the food chain (literally speaking in this instance), but must raise major issues of self-definition when this position is threatened, beyond the average human reaction in similar cases. Defeating the Magog (or not being defeated by them) isn't only a matter of survival for the Nietzscheans, I think it'd be a more viscerally felt matter of ego and self-worth, in the ‘oops, the sun is not rotating around the earth, after all’ way.

There’s another thing that struck me about the Magog in the Amdromeda-verse: whoever or whatever the 'Spirit of the Abyss' who apparently created them is, the concept is very, very human, in its equal monstrosity and pettiness. (Now of course the Andromeda writers themselves are only human, but let’s look at this from inside the story for a moment.)

( And then this plot bunny was hatched... )