Disqus - Latest Comments for adamhenne

Re: Eschaton: Success

adamhenne — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 15:44:24 -0000

The thesis of Pierre Clastres' classic "Society Against the State" is that this sociopathic drive for success is in fact a death drive, and healthy societies remain that way by rewarding it with death.

Re: Protests end with arrest at the PSB; another protest planned

adamhenne — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 09:29:23 -0000

Also, reporting on police claims of assault and supposed injury to police officers without speaking to any of the protesters present to hear the whole story? That's irresponsible journalism. CITY can and must do better.

Re: Protests end with arrest at the PSB; another protest planned

adamhenne — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 09:26:24 -0000

To be clear, the protest did NOT end with the arrest as stated in your headline. The protest ended at ~11:30pm when Nick Wilt was released.

Re: The Case of the "Brutal Savage:" Poirot or Clouseau? Or Why Steven Pinker, Like Jared Diamond, Is Wrong

adamhenne — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:26:56 -0000

Stephen Corry has done a great job highlighting the pseudoscience and backwards logic that constitutes Pinker's work. With their veneer of good intentions and rhetoric of scientific authority, public intellectuals like Pinker and Diamond do a terrible disservice to real scholarship. Books like these have a much wider audience than academic writing, but Pinker's influence does far more harm to public discourse than it does good. Teaching anthropology and international studies at the university level, I am regularly forced to help college students "unlearn" the sloppy habits of thinking and outright misinformation they acquire from books like Pinker's. Kudos to Corry for pushing back.

Re: Fork in the Road - Lauren Shockey - 5 Reasons Why Brunch Sucks

adamhenne — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:32:05 -0000

"When did it become OK for parents to down Bloody Marys while their kids run around the restaurant?" -- gee, I don't know, about 1950 or so; where you been?When did it become OK for parents to down Bloody Marys while their kids run around the restaurant?" -- gee, I don't know, about 1950 or so; where you been?

Re: Chile approves huge dam project on wild rivers, opening remote Patagonia to development :: The Republic

adamhenne — Tue, 10 May 2011 09:41:40 -0000

The
article states, "Some threw rocks at the cars of commissioners,"
which is incorrect. The commissioners were all escorted off the
CONAMA premises in police vehicles. Although some protesters threw
rocks at police vehicles, none were thrown at or near the
commissioners themselves. The article should also note that police
deployed tear gas and water cannons before any rocks were thrown,
without any warning or order to disperse, against a peaceful crowd
that included small children and the elderly.

Re: The Animal Researcher Will Not Be Deterred

adamhenne — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:33:38 -0000

You're not paying attention, panacea. Or rather, you're insisting that certain acts are violence because they just are. Why? How? If you're so sure your understanding is correct, it shouldn't be hard to explain and justify it. I wouldn't accept "Webster's defines violence as..." from my intro students, so surely at the Chronicle of Higher Education we can perform better.

Vandalism is violence. So when I was 16 and I stole the street sign for "Adams Road" to hang in my bedroom, I was committing an act of violence? I've written on lots of walls, too. And arson is violence -- does it matter whether someone is hurt? Whether someone _might_ get hurt? Whether someone is supposed to get hurt but doesnt, or wasn't supposed to get hurt but did? What if it was a homeless squat by accident or an abandoned outbuilding for fun or a condemned tenement for the insurance or an empty laboratory as a political statement? If you can't say anything meaningful about these distinctions, you can't say anything meaningful about the politics of animal research or animal rights activism either. Critical thinking is not tap dancing. If it were, I'd have a lot more fun.

Re: The Animal Researcher Will Not Be Deterred

adamhenne — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:01:56 -0000

"This subject of the article was not the philosophical underpinnings of animal activism, but the struggles of a university professor against a campaign of home grown terrorism."

That's not actually true, panacea. Leaving aside the loaded term 'terrorism,' which I think is a discussion for another day, look at the article again. Jentsch's persistence in the face of threats is the primary subject, but what else does the author discuss? There's actually lengthy discussion of Jentsch's work itself, its ethical implications, the opinions of several other scientists and advocates about the ethics of animal research, and disagreements within the scientific community. The "philosophical underpinnings" of animal research are well covered, as are the differences and divides amongst those who do that research.

As you correctly point out, Jentsch does not practice vivisection. This is an important distinction: a critic who lumps all animal research together with vivisection is ignoring a relevant internal ethical debate and variations in practice. On the other hand, the article does NOT provide equally thoughtful distinction between animal rights activists who burn cars and those who don't, or those who refer to "David Tiller Jentsch" and those who would be absolutely horrified at the comparison. I think that's relevant and important.

Re: The Animal Researcher Will Not Be Deterred

adamhenne — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:50:58 -0000

I'm glad I can make y'all laugh. Please note that I'm not arguing these actions were good, smart, ethically correct, etc, and certainly not that they were legal. But relying on definitions that are "common" or "usual" is hardly a smart way to analyze a situation.

As far as I know, there is no _legal_ definition of "violence" -- if caught, these activists will be charged with vandalism, harassment, even conspiracy to commit blah blah, but not "violence." In the absence of a legal definition there's no other absolute authority to refer to, so any use of the term is subjective and historically contingent.

Which is to say, it's rhetorical. This report, like many others, uses the same term ("violence") to describe broken windows and damaged property that would be used to describe war, murder, bloody beatings, etc. The author could have chosen to describe the damaged property with the term "vandalism," which we also use to describe graffiti and stolen street signs. Both terms are equally accurate insofar as the law and measurable facts are concerned. To use one term rather than the other is to choose which set of associations you want your reader to make. The author of this piece effectively said, "I want my reader to think of these actions against Jentsch as similar to murder and bloody beatings, rather than graffiti and stolen street signs."

Maybe that's a good choice -- I'm not necessarily saying otherwise. But it's an uncritical one, a choice that tends to allow readers (edwoof, acorn and panacea at least) to avoid thinking seriously about the actions of these activist. Violence is bad; these actions are violence; these actions are bad. Again, that may be a reasonable response to the events in question, but it also may not, and the uncritical use of powerful words has encouraged us to skip an important step of analysis and judgement.

Try a little thought experiment: go through this article again, and replace every instance of the word "violence" with the word "vandalism." Be honest -- do you feel exactly the same way about the events with the new word? I don't mean that one word will change your entire opinion about who's right and who's wrong and what's legal and so on, but do you think you'd feel as _strongly_ about it? Now multiply this article times twenty. Now imagine that you're on the jury.

I don't expect that anyone else to accept the activist ideology that distinguishes sharply between "property destruction" and a definition of "violence" that only applies to harming a living creature. They've got their values and you've got yours. But they know about yours, have learned them and thought about them, understand why they believe differently and what impacts that has on the world. So long as we use powerful words like "violence" without thinking about we really mean, we can't say the same.

Re: The Animal Researcher Will Not Be Deterred

adamhenne — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:37:33 -0000

With small state-to-state variation, US law defines assault as "a threat or attempt to inflict bodily injury upon another person, coupled with the apparent present ability to succeed in carrying out the threat or the attempt if not prevented". At the very least both parties need to be present at the same time to meet this definition. A threat by mail or over the phone, although criminal, is not an assault. Even burning someone's car, absent "apparent present ability to succeed" in causing "bodily injury," doesn't qualify as assault. Now, violence =/= assault, which is more to the point; if you're using the two interchangeably you've already proved my point.

Re: The Animal Researcher Will Not Be Deterred

adamhenne — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:11:21 -0000

I don't want to downplay the significance of fear and intimidation, nor do I endorse any of the tactics used by animal rights activists in this article. But I would like it if the Chronicle would be a little more discriminating in its use of the term "violence" to describe them.

Within the animal rights, environmental and other radical activist communities, there is a very well-policed line between violence against people and attacks on their property. From this perspective, smashing windows, destroying lab equipment, even burning someone's car -- these are not "violence."

I think the value of this distinction is debatable, especially in the pretty extreme examples that appear in this article. But the Chronicle is capable of some pretty nuanced reporting, as demonstrated by the attention paid here to multiple perspectives on the medical and ethical aspects of animal research itself. I think this excellent piece, and Chronicle coverage of the issue generally, would be much improved by closer to attention to what constitutes "violence" from various perspectives, and why.

Which is to say, although this is a profile of Jentsch not the activists, it loses something without an informed consideration of the activist perspective. For example, even amongst the most militant animal rights activists, the diversity of ethical perspectives is as broad as it clearly is among the researchers in this article. I know people who have undertaken actions as militant (or "violent") as those described in this article -- but the reference to "David Tiller Jentsch" and the reference to "AIDS" razor blades would horrify those activists as much as they horrify us. These are clear political statements that demarcate distinct ideologies, separate populations of militants. That diversity, and the perspectives on what constitutes violence, are as relevant to this story as the diversity of opinions among scientists.

Re: www.anthro.pophago.us

adamhenne — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:37:35 -0000

These buildings are amazing - your site is like the squatters' Multiple Listing Service.

Re: anthropophagous

adamhenne — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:31:50 -0000

One of my very favorite places on Earth, and if something bad has happened to it I'll be pretty damn disappointed in the world.

Re: anthropophagous

adamhenne — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:37:22 -0000

Holy crap - anthropophagous, you're my new favorite internet person.