A week in the life of

Well I’ve had an interesting week; the main thing was the release of the Empire Total War Demo on Steam, so I’ve been playing that far too much given how little content there actually is. A while ago I mentioned that I would be going to see Rise Against and that happened on Thursday when they played the Carling Academy in Birmingham, and it was awesome. The last addition to my frankly fantastic week was going down to Oxford yesterday for an Ethics conference, which was equally awesome but in a very different way.

But first of all the Empire Total War Demo: I’ll do a full review of the game when it comes out, maybe next week, but probably the week after (my life starts getting a little busy around now, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have to play it), so this will be fairly brief. I know that, given the fact that I have not bought a videogame in literally years, I am not up to date with the latest graphics so I’m not a great judge of these things, but it looks really, really, really nice! I mean all the people don’t all look like really unresponsive clones; they are actually slightly individual and interact with each other in melee combat. You can also destroy buildings on the battle map; yay for physics engines. Leaving graphics behind because frankly they’re pretty unimportant compared to things like gameplay; the battles feel a lot more realistic that previous Total War games. This is probably partly due to the fact that a bunch of people standing in a line shooting one another is far easier to replicate that the slightly more riotous affairs of ancient and medieval combat, even so there seems to be a remarkable high casualty rate; far more than in real life as far as I know (although 18th Century warfare was a pretty bloody affair). The inclusion of naval warfare is completely fantastic and the best idea Sega has had regarding the whole franchise (and that is saying a lot). The naval battles are probably more realistic that the land battles (although I would sort of expect that). They have done the controls really well which means that it is pretty simple to get the basics of controlling a large number of ships, which means you can quickly get down to actually fighting rather than spending many pencil snapping hours trying to master which controls are locked to which keys and how the hell you avoid sitting in the water and giving the enemy firing practice.

The problem is that there in only one sea battle and one land battle, so once you’ve mastered the controls, marvelled at the graphics a little and thrashed the arse off the computer you have very little to do but sit there and kick the arse of the computer in a slightly different way. You may also have noticed that I didn’t mention the campaign game at all. That is because there isn’t any in the demo, which is really annoying because that’s mostly what I play the Total War games for; the battles are nice, but they only really support the main part of the game and the reason why the Total War series is so fantastic. Seems odd then that they would leave it out of the demo, but hey, I’m not a developer, so what do I know? I can still complain that it makes the demo too short however. Now before you inundate me with emails and comments about how it’s a demo so it’s unlikely to be very long let me just say that the demo it literally 2 hours worth of gameplay if you’re new to the franchise, if not It’s probably less than that. You can redo the battles ad nauseam but to be honest repetition of the same thing is not an extension of gameplay, it’s just pointless repetition, like beating a dead horse just slightly more entertaining. I suppose it does a pretty good job if wetting your appetite and making you more likely to go out and buy the game when it comes out in 5 days time. Given that it’s so short you should be able to play through it before then so why not all download it now and then you can pay your money to the faceless corporation on March 4th having been completely won over by it. Go on, off you go. It’s on steam so you have no excuse.

On the subject of corporations, well not really, but I had to try to link this together somehow, I was bombarded with a whole evening of socialist propaganda from a bunch of dirty, unwashed Americans. No I didn’t go to a rally, although there was one yesterday, but more on that later. I am of course referring to the Rise Against gig I went to which, despite the excess of hippies and liberal socialists, was absolutely fantastic. I’m not going to pretend than most of Rise Against is not just a series of power chords with the occasional hammer on; I think I mentioned their chronic lack of variety last time a talked about them. When you combine this with the fact that I find it completely I possible to get behind their message; I think PETA are idiots and I really hate socialism, it is a great testament to their live act that I really enjoyed the gig. Their songs are samey but they’re so energetic and Rise Against play them so well that it doesn’t really matter. It may be somewhat hypocritical of me to really disagree with their world view and still provide it with monetary support, but for me, all they are is entertainment (that was a joke for Rise Against fans).

Of course Rise Against were not the only band to play; they were supported by The Flobots and Anti-Flag; both of whom where distinctly average. If you combined Linkin Park and Rage Against the Machine and turned down the quality considerably, you would have The Flobots. They did have a couple of redeeming features though; they had a really good female violinist. Not only was she probably the best musician on the stage at any time during the evening, she was also by far the best looking. Then again the competition was pretty rubbish; if she wasn’t there I would be giving the award to one of the guitars. Another plus The Flobots had was that some of their lyrics were so painful that they almost made me burst out laughing; then again it was rap, which is just really bad poetry put to music, so I’m unlikely to be impressed. One of their songs was interesting; they had a sign with IRAQ on and every line only had words beginning with I R A and Q (well they weren’t all that strict on the last one…). It was an interesting idea, but to be honest it was never likely to work; there just aren’t enough words that make sense together in that way to make a song than isn’t painfully forced. The other support act was Anti-flag, who get the crowd going and were slightly less painful than The Flobots, but I’d probably not rush to buy any of their music.

Any attempt to lead on from that onto the ethics conference I went to yesterday in Oxford would be as forced as The Flobots lyrics, so I’ll just move on. Yesterday I went to Oxford (which is the most awesome place on the planet or at least in England) for an Ethics conference for A-level students. I mentioned earlier that there was a rally, which there was. It wasn’t much of a rally really; about 5 people standing around with banners one of whom was yelling inane nonsense into a megaphone. There were more police on the street than actual protesters; all told it was pretty pathetic. The conference itself was pretty interesting, but I won’t go into the details because to be honest it I doubt you would care and it would be far too intellectual for a Saturday morning. It was thought provoking and I enjoyed it and I got to go to Oxford so it was a pretty damn fantastic end to a very good week in my life.

Animal Rights and Wrongs.

I’m moving away from my pseudo-political ranting this week and onto something slightly different. I am going to try to take head on the strange combination of militant fanaticism and ultra-fluffy liberalism that is the Animal Rights Movement. It is amazing just how worked up people can get over such a compassion fuelled issue like Animal Rights. It’s like going on a violent terrorist campaign to promote peace and harmony between all of mankind, except this time it’s a violent terrorist campaign (at times) to promote the prevention of cruelty to animals. Seems paradoxical but hey, that’s the fucked up, two-faced, utterly bewildering world we live in!

The thing I, and they, get confused about is what Animal Rights protesters are actually campaigning for. I suppose there is probably a lot of disagreement between activists as to what they actually stand for, some want the complete liberation of all animals, from your pet dog to the cow that you will at some point eat (unless you veggie, in which case you’ll probably just drink the milk, unless you’re also a vegan, in which case you can go fuck yourself you presumptuous twat.), to simply treating the battery chickens with a little more compassion; killing them before boiling the feathers off for example. The latter I sympathise with (obviously, I suppose you would probably stop reading this if I didn’t), but the former and most of the people in between those two extremes tend to get on my tits.

It’s not that I want animals to suffer or anything; I’m not some sort of sadist, I’d just like to think that the human race is slightly more sophisticated than a rat, so our needs should probably override the rat’s. However this is all scratching the surface thus far, what we need to do in order to see why some people think that rats should have the same rights as humans and why I think people who believe that are morons we need to look at the issue deeper. That involves using the grey stuff that sits up in our skulls using a hell of a lot of energy rather than the big muscle that pumps the red stuff (no not wine you alcoholics) round our body.

Ok, this may get a bit conceptual, so brace yourselves (as if that’ll help). The problem as I see it is twofold; one an unclear definition of rights, and secondly a disagreement over what gives us (and/or animals) rights in the first place. In true scatological fashion (by the way, that word doesn’t meant what you think it should mean in this context, for a few extra giggle look up what it actually means. Yes you have to work for your kicks today!) I am going look at the second problem first and the first problem second.

The second problem is a disagreement over what gives us rights. To understand the Animal Rights Movement we have to understand why they believe we have rights and to understand why the Animal Rights Movement repulses me you have to understand the problems with their definition. Right, so the filthy liberal types who think animals have rights base this on the undeniable observation that animals can feel pain. Their argument goes somewhat like this: humans feel pain, humans are animals, humans have rights, therefore animals have rights. Sounds logical doesn’t it? Unfortunately there are several mistakes; primarily the argument assumes that the ability to feel pain is a prerequisite for rights. Wrong. This is completely unfounded and is little more than an assumption. Using pain here is arbitrary, we could replace it with anything and the argument would still work in format and give us some really odd conclusions. Lets play with the idea: Humans can reproduce, humans are living, humans have rights, therefore all living things have rights (including bacteria). Looks like we aren’t going to be able to eat today, because plants have rights too you know.

So, silliness aside (for now), pain, as a prerequisite for rights, makes no sense. But what is the alternative (other than ability to reproduce, which also makes eunuchs fair game by the way)? I would argue (and plan to) that consciousness is a prerequisite for rights (and that does not mean that when you’re asleep you have no rights, a different application of the word conscious, dimwit). Consciousness in this case means the ability to reason and make a conscious decision about our lives and how we should live them. One could argue that this is as arbitrary as pain, but I can actually rationalise it so bare with me. In order to do this however we need to establish a definition for the concept of rights.

According to our old friend Wikipedia (citation needed), a right is a ‘moral entitlement’. So it is fundamentally associated with ethics, which we knew already. We have to understand that (in my view) ethics are a human construct. They concern themselves with human actions and establish how we should and should not treat our fellow man and the world around us (it is to be noted that, just because ethics are a human construct does not mean that there are no absolutes, but that is another blog altogether). If ethics, and therefore rights are a human construct they do not concern animals. Human beings are the only living organism that has the ability to make a conscious choice; we can choose to do what is right or wrong. Animals on the other hand live purely on instincts; there is no choice involved and, because ethics are reliant upon volition, anything that an animal does is entirely amoral (so a dog that mauls a man is not immoral per se). So moral entitlements only apply to beings whose actions can be considered on a moral level, which relies upon it’s ability to choose, which relies upon it’s ability to reason, which in tern relies on it being conscious. So consciousness is a prerequisite for rights. Simple eh?

So what exactly are these rights? We’ve established that human being are entitled to rights, and we’ve established what the definition of ‘rights’ is in the process, but we’ve not touched on what those rights are. Rights are a moral entitlement, so your views are depends upon what moral standard you uphold. Such a question would have to be discussed at length and would take up a lot of space. I do not want to distract from the main thrust of this entry because that would be counter productive. I leave it up to you for now to establish what mankinds moral entitlements are, I may write a sequel entry discussing my own views, but until I do you’ll have to guess them.

I want to round off by discussing the consequences of the Animal Rights Movement. I have touched upon the extremes, and these are extremes; there is plenty of middle ground that most activists occupy. This middle ground is just as dangerous as the extreme however. The fluffy compassionate filthy liberal don’t-hurt-the-poor-chicken extreme is fairly docile (it fails to take the ideas behind the movement to their logical conclusions so nullify their effects) however their seeming harmlessness allows for the fallacious ideas to become acceptable to us, allowing the more extreme (or consistent if you’re being cynical) element to thrive behind a façade of harmlessness. ‘But what harm do they cause?’ I hear you ask in an overdramatic fashion more at home in a Greek Tragedy than my blog. In trying to elevate animals to a level on a par with humans, they actually drag the value of human life down, rather than bring the value of animal life up. While they sound fluffy and compassionate, the consequences of their beliefs are the downgrading of human life from a magnificent achiever, who, while not without its faults, is the most successful creature on the planet, to a ruinous monster that is enslaving animals for it’s own selfish aims with no regards for the animals assumed rights. I don’t know about you but the latter does not sound all that encouraging to me.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the Animal Rights Movement (I’m getting bored of typing that) would have us living in perfect harmony with animals scratching around in the dirt, trying to come up with a basic meal.