"'I was just being polite,' Dreyfus replied. 'My personal belief is that beta-levels have no claim on consciousness. As far as I'm concerned, you're just an item of forensic evidence. The fact that I can talk to you - the fact that you might claim to feel alive - is entirely irrelevant.
'How reassuring to meet someone with such an enlightened viewpoint. What's your opinion on women? Do you consider them capable of full sentience, or do you have lingering reservations about them as well?'
'I don't have a problem with women. I do have a problem with software routines that pretend to be alive and then expect to be accorded the rights and privileges of the living.
'If I'm not alive, how can I 'expect' anything.'"
Alastair Reynolds, The Prefect.
There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any over large concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
PJ O'Rourke
A very pleasant person, in the secret gardens, in the only places he had ever felt safe. The decay had set in. His secretive nature had come to the fore. In the past these personality formations had served him well. Nobody could get to him, nobody. Behind each layer lay another shield. If an attack got through the outer, public layer, another protective shield lay immediately behind. If, in the earlier days, he ventured out this far, near the surface, he would immediately step back behind the masks at any sign of danger. And the world was filled with danger.
The giant coca cola sign swirled above his head as he collapsed to the ground. Even its bright, primary red was threatening. He could hear the voices of the crowd that had gathered around him as he lay semi-conscious on the pavement. "He's so young, he should be at home with his mother," one said. They were all so comfortable, they had their personalities, their physical forms, their lives, their loves, their professions. He was barely here and subject to repeated assault. There was something about him that encouraged the repeated attacks.
Later in life he realised it was vulnerability. People are like dogs, when you're vulnerable they attack. And they could sense his own cringing nature, the fear that ate away at his core, the willow the wisp flimsy of his certainties. He could drape himself into other lives, the books, the films, the characters and the plots. But when it came to himself, he was barely there. So if the world was going to do it, he might as well do it to himself. He could feel the blood soaking into his hair from the bump where he had hit the ground.
Should we get an ambulance? he heard a voice ask. He could feel strong arms trying to lift his slight frame. He opened his eyes and he could see more than 20 people standing around him, looking, a few with concern, most out of curiosity. He shook his head and could feel the pain in every sense, tried to open his eyes. "Are you alright?" an adult asked. The coca cola sign reared above them, and of everywhere tin the world, attention was focused here. No doubt they could smell the alcohol on his breath. He was worried about whether there was anything left in the bottle, if these people would get in the way of his oblivion.
"I'll be alright," he heard his voice saying. "Don't worry, I'll be alright." One of the adults clearly didn't believe him, persisted in his concern. The crowd started to dissipate. The man led him to a bench and made him sit down. About for or five people remained, while the shifting crowds of the Cross ebbed and flowed. He was sacrificing himself on the Cross, the name of the city's red light district, the little joke went. Sacrificing himself on the Cross. At the Cross. His girlfriend was tugging at his sleeve, suggesting they go. Clearly they had a night planned. Fun, laughter, adult games. A concrete world he would never be a part of.
"I'll be alright," he repeated. "Are you sure, we can stay here for a little while," the man said. Ironically, perhaps, he pressed a can of coke into his hands. "Drink it," he said. "It will make you feel better." He almost laughed at that. Nothing would ever make him feel better. The crowd had gone altogether now, and finally there was only the small group of suburbanites who had stopped originally. "Honestly, I'll be alright, don't ruin your night on account of me," he said. They left, the women getting increasingly angry at the time being wasted on a street boy.
But the man had kept persisting, offering to do things, offering to ring his parents. Right, that was a good idea, he thought. They must be Christians or something. The world swirled around him in its sickening sludge. The fabric of things was malignant, and he would never get over that. He could feel the mauling tide and the great sadness that crept through everything, the threat of the physical world, the danger of life as it was lived. "Thanks," he said in his tiny voice, as they took their leave. The man looked back concerned, and his girlfriend hooked her arms through his. One of the group made a joke, and they laughed as they disappeared into the seething crowd. He could see where the bottle had rolled into the gutter after he passed out. Checking that no one was watching, he went to collect it, draining the dribble that was left at the bottom down his throat.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23879485-2,00.html
AUSTRALIANS are no longer starry-eyed about Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his moralising is starting to wear thin, Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said today.
Dr Nelson said "notwithstanding a couple of polls", there was a sense of disappointment with the new government.
He did not refer specifically to today's Newspoll which showed Labor increasing its lead over the Opposition on a two-party preferred basis to 59-41....
"Australians are no longer starry-eyed about Mr Rudd," Dr Nelson is understood to have told the meeting.
"There is a sense of disappointment, there's a sense of great unease about the economic environment.
"Kevin Rudd raised expectations before the election that he would deal with interest rates, grocery prices, fuel prices and other cost of living issues.
http://news.smh.com.au/national/sibling-found-dead-emaciated-twins-20080617-2rrj.html
The mother of 18-month-old twin toddlers who lay dead in a bedroom for a week allegedly told police: "I don't think I fed them enough."
Their father had walked past the children's room but said he didn't know the boy and girl were dead, and hadn't seen them since Christmas, a Brisbane court also heard on Tuesday.
The children's deaths emerged after their 11-year-old sibling - alerted by an unusual smell - found their decomposed and emaciated bodies in the front room of the rented house in Brisbane's Sunnybank Hills.
The child allegedly said to her mother: "I know why you have been crying now."
Police found the toddlers' bodies at the couple's house around 7pm (AEST) Monday.
The 28-year-old man and his 30-year-old partner have been charged with failing to provide the necessities of life.
But the charges could be upgraded to murder, Brisbane Magistrates Court was told.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7b4c2270-3c99-11dd-b958-0000779fd2ac.html
Nobody is yet calling John McCain a “flip-flopper”. But the Republican nominee’s increasingly finely balanced efforts to shore up his support among the shrinking Republican base while reaching out to independents is starting to fire up the critics.
On Tuesday morning, he launched an advertisement reminding voters of his repeated clashes with President George W. Bush over climate change, which Mr McCain believes is real and requires urgent action.
In the afternoon, he delivered a speech to the oil industry in Houston, calling for a lifting of the moratorium on offshore drilling in order to reduce petrol prices.
Mr McCain’s shift on offshore drilling – which contrasts with his strong support for upholding the moratorium in his 2000 bid for the Republican nomination – could further chip away at his reputation for being a “straight talker”.
Some even compare his shifting stances with those of John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate, who was skewered by Mr Bush for his contortions over the Iraq war.
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