An Employer Has No Business In This Dispute

What business does an employer have involving themselves in a private dispute between an employee and other people, when that dispute is unrelated to their employment?

None, but Monash University seems to believe otherwise.

Monash University employee Tanya Heti told Charlotte Dawson to “go hang yourself” via Twitter. A bit over the top and excessively aggressive, particularly since it was the first communication between the two, but not sent by any Monash University media and therefore nothing to do with the university.

I suspect Tanya Heti’s tweet was provoked by (NZ born) Charlotte Dawson’s recent comments to New Zealand’s Herald on Sunday that:

"New Zealand is small, nasty and vindictive. It's a tiny, little village ... a tiny country at the end of the earth"

This is not a concerted campaign of continual harassment; it is partly a bitch with a chip on her shoulder and nothing better to do saying something nasty, but also a New Zealander defending New Zealand, so Charlotte Dawson is being a tad precious and in my opinion, not entirely honest in trying to push this incident under the umbrella of the anti bullying campaign.

Saying something nasty to someone you don’t like is not a crime and not grounds for termination of employment. Nor is responding to:

My fiancé hanged himself HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING

with

If I was your fiancé I'd hang myself too

Since when did Australia become such a nanny state that nasty retorts should be banned?

Someone being an arsehole can be upsetting, but it should not be a crime or even a tort, unless it becomes a campaign of continued harassment.

Charlotte Dawson is not averse to being a bitch herself.

One day, I watched about 15 minutes of Australia’s Next Top Model, because someone else was watching it and it was their house. A contestant, Cassie Van Den Dungen was telling the judging panel that she wasn’t sure about her commitment to modeling because she had a boyfriend.

“Ditch the boyfriend”, replied role model Charlotte, giving Cassie the benefit of her own successful love life.

Cassie Van Den Dungen and her boyfriend are still together, by the way. They have even had a child.

It appears from the linked article that Charlotte Dawson looked up Tanya Heti online, found her business contact details, rang her to remonstrate and was essentially told to fuck off. It seems the only way she knew Tanya Heti was an employee of Monash University was by actively searching. Tanya Heti did not represent herself as such during the exchange of tweets.

So what did Charlotte Dawson do?

Rang Tanya Heti’s employer and tried to get her into trouble at work over a personal dispute only related to the university because Charlotte Dawson had actively searched and drawn this connection herself.

You absolute cunt of a bitch. You’re every bit as bad as Tanya Heti. I doubt the world would be poorer if you both hung yourselves.

What if Tanya Heti had walked up to Charlotte Dawson in the street and told her what she thought of her and her comments about New Zealand? Suppose then another person recognized her and told Charlotte Dawson where she worked. Does that make it the employer’s business?

No, it doesn’t.

Monash University stated that it “encourages lawful freedom of expression”. Clearly it does not. There is nothing unlawful in telling someone publicly that you hate them or that they are a waste of space or even that the world would be better without them in it. Nor should there ever be. If you support freedom of speech, you need to support speech with which you don’t agree, as long as it is not defamatory or harassment, the latter requiring a continuing set of actions, not merely a derogatory exchange.

Finally, how about the title of the person Charlotte Dawson rang: Pro Vice Chancellor for Social Inclusion? Monash is by no means the only Australian university to create this position.

What a load of mealy mouthed, namby pamby, hand wringing, wet left crap.

We must ensure no-one who wants to go to university is excluded. Yes, of course, what a great idea … let lots of dumb people into uni, then water down the courses so they can pass them. That ought to help both our national technological development and our education export earnings.

Why Is Cannon Shooting No Longer In The Olympic Games?

Among the demonstration sports in the Paris Olympic Games of 1900 were kite flying, ballooning, fire fighting, cannon shooting and pigeon racing. Live pigeon shooting was also an event, with a prize of 20,000 francs.

How can rubbish like synchronized swimming be allowed in the Olympic Games, but fire fighting and cannon shooting are no longer?

Imagine tuning in to watch teams from some of the traditionally less well organized societies, such as Italy vs Nigeria in the repechage of the fire fighting.

Don’t tell me a large audience would not tune in to watch the cannon shooting, particularly if it were held at the same time as the ballooning.

I wonder what the rules were. There could be a large number of wooden figures, dressed as foreigners and placed at various distances in a field. The object is simply to blow up as many as possible with an allotted number of cannonballs. Perhaps different points could be awarded for different types of foreigners, with natives in laplaps being worth one point and traditional enemies scoring the highest.

Live animal shooting need not be limited to pigeons. Employing modern technology, all manner of fauna could be flung into the sky and shot down by eager competitors: chickens, toads, sheep, goats, badgers, otters, ocelots … the mind boggles at the possibilities. Larger animals such as cows and pigs could be launched and shot out of the sky with cannon in the bonus round.

Let’s get some proper sports back into the Olympics in time for Rio.

Right Charge, Right Sentence

Should a yobbo who gets pissed, grabs a girl’s arse in McDonalds, tells her “If she doesn’t like it, she shouldn’t dress like a slut”, then continues abusing her and her friends be allowed to hold a security licence and work as a bouncer?

No! Imagine what this moron would get up to working the door of a nightclub or pub if he thought he could get away with it.

Magistrate Linda Bradford-Morgan did the right thing in rejecting Theron Turner’s application to have no conviction recorded. He should lose his security licence. Pub and nightclub patrons shouldn’t have to put up with dumb, aggressive, fuckwit bouncers abusing their positions via pathetic attempts at power trips. One less is a small improvement, but at least it’s in the right direction.

Additionally, the police did the right thing in only charging Turner with public nuisance. His actions were a (minor) assault and technically there was some indecency, since he pursued a sexual angle in what he said to the girl. However, an indecent assault charge would have been excessive, since such a conviction (or even charge) has connotations that are significantly more grubby, pervy and serious than a drunk grabbing a girl’s bum.

Labelled a public nuisance, can’t work as security staff. Probably a fair outcome.

Sensible application of the law in the more frequent, less serious criminal offences is arguably as important in maintaining community confidence in the legal system as how the law deals with headlines cases. The legal system cannot be seen as casuistry divorced from everyday beliefs, or hijacked by moral panic or particular political interests.

Minor offenders need to be arrested and prosecuted, however the police and courts mustn't overreact. People can't have their lives ruined over relatively minor offences, but perhaps in certain circumstances, it is reasonable they be excluded from some types of employment which involve authority and trust.

Oscar Pistorius Being Allowed To Run Makes A Mockery Of The Olympics

Allowing a double amputee to run against able bodied athletes in the Olympics on synthetic, carbon fibre legs and feet makes a mockery of the competition.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruling preventing Oscar Pistorius from running in the Olympic 400m, on the basis that the artificial “blade” feet “do not give him an unfair advantage”.

The Court is actually an arbitration tribunal, with three arbiters usually deciding cases. One arbiter each is chosen by both sides from a panel, with the panel president chosen either by agreement of the two designated arbiters or failing that, the President of the Arbitration Division. Thus, a completely incompetent panel is unlikely to arise via this selection process.

Nevertheless, Oscar Pistorius’ case is novel and the biomechanical evidence is in serious dispute. A ruling from the Court does not mean we should have faith that sufficient relevant, available evidence to make a correct decision was presented and understood. The previously linked article alleges that it was not.

The energy transfer and storage of the blades means that Pistorius runs differently to able bodied athletes, as the IAAF study presented to the Court showed. Suppose that just by chance, the positives and negatives of the blades approximately cancel and Pistorius runs similar times to the other athletes over a particular distance. This is in fact what happened in the 400m at the London Olympics, where Pistorius came last in his semi final.

It does not follow that the approximate cancellation of advantages and disadvantages will obtain over other distances. Suppose Pistorius decided to run the 800m and found an advantage over the final lap. Suppose in a couple of years he or someone else gets an improved set of blades. There will be no cancellation of advantages and disadvantages then. What if he gets a better set of artificial feet and runs 43 flat for a world record in Rio? It’s possible … and also ridiculous to allow.

It’s great that Pistorius has worked so hard and been successful. The development of his artificial legs will help many other amputees lead more normal and fulfilling lives. If a professional athletics meet wants to let him run against able bodied athletes, there should be no problem. Chess players have been playing computers in tournaments for years. If Usain Bolt wants to run against greyhounds and cheetahs or Michael Phelps swim against dolphins, why not, if people will pay to watch it?

But world records and Olympic medals are different. The sporting federations go to enormous lengths in their drug testing to ensure no athletes have any artificial excesses of naturally occurring hormones. But a bloke with carbon fibre feet is allowed to run against athletes with real feet, possibly setting records? This is just not a credible position.

The real reason for the equivocation and acquiescence is that disabled is the new black. We can’t stop him running because we’d be subjecting him to oppression after all the hardship he’s had to endure in his life, so let’s pretend there isn’t a problem. Just as Murali would have been no balled out of the game were he white, as happened to Ian Meckiff.

I’d like to see Pistorius get some new blades and run a world record, which of course the overwhelming majority of athletes and the general public would not accept. Then people would have to discuss this ludicrous situation with more honesty.

Update:

Oscar Pistorius has complained that "we aren't racing a fair race" after losing the T44 final in the London Paralympics. Why?

Because the winner had longer artificial blades. Tu quoque, Oscar? Usain Bolt has longer legs than Yohan Blake. Is that fair?

Lefty Feminists and the Suffix '-man'

The English suffix -man means “one who does something”. It came into English from Old Germanic via Anglo-Saxon, where it meant the same thing. For example, in Anglo-Saxon, a waepman was a husband and a wifman was a wife.

The word or suffix has always had the dual meaning of either adult male or someone of unspecified gender. In Old English, the words wer (from where we get werewolf) and wif were used to refer specifically to a man or woman.

The word has persisted in the same usage in modern German, eg. Landsmann = compatriot, Mannschaft = team and also as the third person pronoun man, meaning one, as in “from the hill, one can see the entire town”. The English plural men derives from the German plural Männer (pron. menner).

This is why in modern English, we say batsman, chairman and so on.

Left wing feminists have tried to coin new words to counteract the perceived gender bias. Thus, we have batter and chairwoman, chairperson or simply chair.

If you want to replace the Germanic ending with a French one and say batter, then the batsman should stand in the French cricket stance. Chairwoman is just plain ugly. Chairperson is both ugly and ridiculous. Chair does not generalise eg. fire, police.

Given the patriarchal nature of Indo European societies, it is probably true that the word which can mean adult male and also refer to a person in more generality is evidence of deeply ingrained sexism within the culture. If used without knowledge of its etymology, it is also probable that this could have a psychological effect of reinforcing gender stereotyping and the notion of the superior suitability of men for certain roles. Perhaps there is such a subtle psychological effect, even with an understanding of the word’s history.

On the subject of “history”, I recently heard an ignorant bitch with a bee in her bonnet claiming this word as a shining example of inbuilt linguistic gender bias because it means “his story”. This ridiculous non-example surfaces every now and then amongst people who value diatribe and polemic over research and education.

I responded that it is remarkable modern English was spoken by the ancient Greeks, died out, then re-evolved in identical form two and a half thousand years later, which must be the case for Heroditus of Halicarnussus to have written his Histories, if that is indeed the meaning of the word.

Of course, history does not mean “his story”. It cannot, because it came into English from the ancient Greek ιστορειν (historein = to enquire). Thus, Heroditus’ Histories were the results of his “enquiries” during his extensive travels.

So, if we don’t want to even subconsciously reinforce gender inequality, what should we say when referring to a woman’s (or even a man’s) role?

Since language is constantly evolving, there is no “correct” answer if multiple synonyms are in current usage, even if the different words are not exactly synonyms because they convey the same intended meaning on an operational level, but different meanings in terms of a world view. It depends on your politics. However, the situation is not so equivocal as different people use different expressions, so freely substitute them because it doesn’t matter. It does matter, because each choice of either batsman or batter, chairman or chairwoman or chair represents a political viewpoint which is strongly opposed to the alternative.

It is not necessary to change a word to alter its meaning. Many words alter their meaning naturally over time. For example, egregious used to mean remarkable or distinguished in the sense of great importance, hence Gauss’ Theorema Egregium in differential geometry. Now it means remarkable or distinguished in the sense of outstandingly bad or wicked eg. an egregious lie. Meanings of words can also be deliberately changed by certain groups claiming them, for example gay and queer.

One possible approach is to educate people on the true meanings of such charged words as man. Have a campaign to preserve some of the cultural history of our language within our modern tongue, while at the same time using that education to claim the meanings of the words as their intended ones, but in a modern social context.

The history of languages is important. It tells us about the history of cultures. Thus, we would educate schoolchildren that the suffix -man does not mean a man, but rather a person who does a particular task. It would in fact be more elucidating to an open mind to be told the history of the word, to have a discussion of the then current cultural views of gender roles, to compare them with our different views today and to perhaps finish with some positive reinforcement that if we use -man at the end of a word, it means either a male or female, because anyone can perform that role.

The left would have it that since man has the dual meaning of adult male and an operant of unspecified gender, this is an example of culturally ingrained sexism, reinforced via language. This device to entrench privilege must be removed from the language by a direct, concerted campaign to use “politically correct” alternative words. Change the language, change the set of expressions available to parse thought, change the culture. There are some on the left who would also argue that the very wish to keep using -man in its current form is evidence of the user attempting to maintain some inherited privilege.

That’s the left for you: rather than educating people about the history of certain words and then reinterpreting their meanings in a modern, pluralist social context via free and open discussion, we must assert a new set of politically correct words and expunge the others from the language, so that people will not be able to conceive of the wrong ideas which they represented.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

                - George Orwell, 1984