Vivat Libertas

I'd like to think that I have principles: a desire to seek out truth; a desire to help others; focus on freedom of thought and expression; and questioning of authority. While they've attracted me to broadly being left of our predominantly conservative societies, they've also landed me in trouble. I'm attracted to science because it's possibly the most effective way of knowing that we have. Unlike any other way of knowing, it is self-correcting over time - not always easily or well, but it gets there. And it shows us wonders. For me, one of those wonders is a vast improvement in comfort and quality of life. People regularly live to seventy or eighty nowadays. Many more diseases are now survivable; vaccination has restricted many diseases around the world. We even managed to eradicate smallpox. Learning about science and keeping up with the news has also made me painfully aware that none of this is guaranteed. Antibiotic resistance is on the rise; antivaxx rheto...

Humans are obsessed with the idea of the End Times, the apocalypse, the concept that we are teetering on the edge of a catastrophe. Most major world religions describe some kind of "end time" or debased age, and I'd argue that this has seeped through into modern Western culture; though the specifics change (these days politics, climate change or nuclear weapons herald the end of the world as we know it rather than, say, comets), each generation is always perverting the work of the last and the world as we know it is always definitely on the verge of ending. At the moment, we have two separate Apocalypses of the Month: the US presidential election and the EU referendum. In the US, the two frontrunners are a corrupt neoliberal and a creepy orange fascist. In the EU, the perpetually sulky and disruptive UK is calling a referendum as to whether to stay in an admittedly corrupt and labyrinthine institution with many a failing but lots of positives for education, research and...

If you use any social media whatsoever, you will have probably seen quotes by people which are invariably about love, loss, and existential angst. It is optional for these poems to be in all lower case, or to sometimes include short story fragments. They are interesting; social media offers opportunities for disseminating work like no other (even when censored) and they can potentially do really cool things with images. I just wish that most of them weren't so crap. If you have bought and loved books by, say, Emery Allen or Lang Leav, you're probably furious right now. How could I , a talentless little wretch with hardly the reach of either of these authors, dare to criticise them? The answer is simple: I'm in the wrong demographic. I didn't really care that much about this genre of writing - I saw it sometimes on my tumblr dashboard and it didn't particularly appeal to me. I found it far too cloying and twee for my taste. A while ago my best friend lent...

Ah, GMOs, those things what sound scary and probably cause cancer. Also Monsanto. Down with Frankenfoods! Okay, I'll just say this now: I'm sick and tired of unscientific - indeed antiscientific - scaremongering about genetically modified organisms. I am sick of people calling genetically modified foods "frankenfoods" and implying they cause cancer. I am sick of the idea that all non-GM food is "natural". Why I'm actually sick of all these things goes beyond mere pedantry, as I'll explain later. But first, some lovely disparate sections... Monsanto I'll let you in on something not-so-secret here: I hate Monsanto and their business practices, particularly with respect to patents (trying to patent DNA is really, really scary and has serious ethical consequences). However, Monsanto and genetic modification are separate, just as medical science and Big Pharma are separate. Oh, wait. There are actually people who don't separate medical sc...

So every time a new album or novel or TV show comes out by some upstart no-one's ever heard of (rare enough as it is), the creator is instantly hailed as the voice of a generation depending on their age. People are absolutely obsessed with this concept of creators speaking for the ordinary person, with the idea that you find some band or novelist when you're 14 or 15 who like, totally gets your teenage angst and how you're so totally not like the others. However, these media are sufficiently generalist in scope that they manage to attract a significant number of suspiciously similar misfits, who then create a subculture based around being able to keep up with the same stuff. You guys are lucky. You will never need to develop the skills to speak for yourself, because there'll always be someone there to put the words in your mouth. You will always have someone else to speak for you, someone to speak for your generation. I am a part of my generation. I'd be s...

Before I start, yes, I am critical of feminism. And before any antifeminists who think that hairy-legged, unnatural lesbians have destroyed the family think they'll find a friend in me, I'd like to point out that they have another think coming; misogynists of any shade revolt me. But I would like anyone who reads this to hear me out anyway. For all my problems and disagreements, I truly miss being a feminist. A lot of the people I know who first got me into feminism are really, really cool and supportive; a lot of feminists I still know are really, really cool and supportive. Feminism is a broad tent full of bright people whom I loved (and still love) working with, and if you find the right group of people it feels absolutely fantastic just to be supported by a bunch of other people working towards the great goal of smashing the kyriarchy. So, you ask, why would I leave? Surely I'm just making this up and am a traitor to my sex by no longer being a feminist? ...

I fucking love negative people. I know it sounds strange, but I felt I had to say it. You see, our society seems to have an utterly irrational hatred and fear of negative people - by which they mean...well... ...Honestly, I don't know. The broad definition seems to be something like people who aren't always happy-happy joy-joy-joy. You know, normal people. Now, the hatred and fear of toxic people I understand. This is because the idea of toxic people actually makes sense: toxic people are manipulative, abusive, and are generally shitmunching bastards that you should get the hell out of your life before they mess around with your health and happiness any more. I also understand the dislike, if not the hatred, of mean people, because they're arseholes and no-one wants to be around a self-important busybody who treats everyone around them like shit. I still understand the desire to cut negative people out of one's life, don't get me wrong. I understand the ...

Trigger warning for discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation. People trying to stop suicide on Twitter are admirable; hell, people trying to stop suicide anywhere are admirable. There are some pretty brilliant Twitter projects out there, like Don't Lose Your Grip , that have helped me and a lot of other people out there in our recoveries, and some pretty brilliant support networks too - as well as the admirable #opstopsuicide , which does exactly what it says on the tin. All the same, I've noticed that a lot of anti-suicide tweeters rely on platitudes. Pretty pictures. Things you can fit happily into 140 characters. Given that you can only fit that many characters in a tweet, this is not particularly surprising. All the same, I still take issue with it. This isn't because I love encouraging people to commit suicide or because I hate new media; I certainly don't hate Twitter. Rather, it involves me and my personal experiences with suicidal ideation and intent,...

Something upset me. That's pretty normal; a lot of things upset me, because I'm a very negative person. It's also pretty normal that I blog about things that upset me, because I have to get them out of my mind and laid out properly somehow. Not so long ago, I was on a CERN trip with my school to Geneva. (End result? I'm not a fan of Geneva, but CERN is an awesome place even if it does look like a bunch of industrial sheds.) When getting from the airport to the station side of the city - which is the side with a lot of shops that all close at 1 in the afternoon - we decided to plop ourselves down outside a Starbucks. Now, we're all English-speakers. I get that people don't like English and American tourists for various reasons, but normally the English are treated civilly if coolly by the rest of Europe. Such was the case in Geneva, too (well, for me anyway, because I was speaking French for most of the trip)...except for one woman in Starbucks who over...

...So Islamophobia really has passed the dinner-table test after all. Otherwise liberal, open-minded people universally denounce Islam as evil, out to corrupt Europe, inferior to the West, a terrorist organisation, paedophilic...you name it, they probably have an accusation out there. Even a recent campaign designed to get people to think "hey, maybe Islam isn't  uniformly evil" instead met with accusations of Islamophilia and indignant comments about how morally wrong  and hypocritical  it is that Muslims should dare  to ask for the respect we accord to other cultures. The thing is, the Muslims they're denouncing - the ones who beat women and fly planes into buildings - are the extreme ones, not the moderates or the mild ones. This is not news. As anyone with even an iota of religious education knows, not all Muslims are sexist or uneducated. A great majority are not trying to take over Europe. How do I infer this? Because it's pretty idiotic, logically speakin...

The Activists now has its own tag. It's about time I got round to it. Those of you who followed the blog (hi, Mum) probably know about my affair with it, from my initial starry-eyed swooning over its tweets  to my growing doubts, then my cooling towards it...and finally our split. This article was the last straw. I'll wait while you read it - or attempt to. It's very short. As well you know , doubt is a central part of my being . I cannot go a day, an hour, a minute without thinking and doubting and reflecting on things...and, if you'll pardon my language, I'm bloody proud of it. I'm bloody proud of having to think to justify my beliefs, of having enough intellectual fibre not to take things at face value. Here is what the article says about doubt: " Those who doubt the revolution are liars, deceivers, charlatans. Those who doubt the revolution are nothing more than addicts to comforts and material indulgences. " I have a damn  good reaso...

Hi. I'm a teenage girl; I don't claim to be ordinary or average, and some - perhaps many - would call me a freak, but I'd like to think that I'm recognisable as a human being and a member of Western society. I count on my fingers sometimes, but I'm also good at maths. I can go from normal to bitch in 0.5 seconds, but I try not to because I'd like to be a decent human being, thank you very much. I don't always act sentimental and weepy, nor do I act passive-aggressively. I've made stupid mistakes, but I've tried my damnedest to fix them and move on with my life. I don't go in for soppy stuff or cheesy pick-up lines, and I try to communicate my feelings rather than expecting everyone to be psychic. As long as my lungs are fine, I can breathe perfectly damn well  without a guy, thank you very much, and I certainly don't need him to "complete me". I do want to be loved - I won't deny that - but it's pretty low down on my list ...

I'm sick of liberals and I'm sick of conservatives. I'm sick of Labour and I'm sick of the Tories. I'm sick of the Republicans and I'm sick of the Democrats. I'm sick of fascists and I'm sick of anarchists. I'm sick of the Left and I'm sick of the Right. I'm sick of people refusing to look at the facts, in fact cheerfully ignoring them when they get in the way of political ideologies. I'm sick of people making shit up because it's easier to blame an ancient conspiracy than admit that there's no-one to blame. In fact, I'm sick of people - liberal, conservative, Labour, Tory, Republican, Democrat, fascist, anarchist, left, right - not looking at the truth. I've always believed that you can only fix the world if you actually know what's going on in it. It makes sense, right? If I didn't accept the truth of basic principles, like needing oxygen to respire, I'd die pretty quickly. If you don't understan...

At the end of the day, at the end of that long road, fine words are just those: fine words. Empty rhetoric. Nothing more. And perhaps for a time they will soothe you and paper over the cracks in your consciousness. But if you've looked into the darkness where nothing looks back...that fine rhetoric does very little. Only logic, a powerful, blinding logic, will help, and that logic is difficult to come by. In other news, I have my results for C2 and P2 - both 100% A*. (Slap me if I'm boasting too much.) The modules do seem to be quite easy, as I know loads of other people with A*s...

Increasingly, I find myself wanting to die young. This isn't because I'm depressed, or because I have some kind of death wish. It's because I think that a short life full of worthy acts (such as protesting) is better than a long, quiet life lived doing essentially nothing (i.e. what most people do), and because I fear growing old. But why would I, a future scientist - not a model or actress - fear growing old? Because as well as being a future scientist, I might just be a future activist. I've gotten myself involved (foolishly, some might say) with radicals and motivated people. It's...it's best described as enlightening. I've learnt so much that I never could have in the classroom; I've met people from all walks of life who share my crazy views, and it doesn't matter that other people think us crazy because at least our beliefs can get a proper airing here. I try to think critically, evaluating everything I come across, and I try to join in the ...

Let's get a couple of things straight. I'm a godless egalitarian liberal who distrusts big corporations and has a virulent hatred of Rupert Murdoch. So far, so good, right? I fit in quite well amongst the crunchy-granola ranks of fashionable liberals - perhaps, with my political compass score, I stand out from them a little: In short, I'm a die-hard left-libertarian. But now things get a little more problematic. You see, apart from being a perpetual doubter , I also like science very, very much - to the point where I'd like to be a physicist when I'm older. This already annoys some feminists - thankfully very few of them - who think that some of the most basic principles of science, such as scientific objectivity, are geared towards men. They're pretty much the reason why I self-identify as an egalitarian rather than a feminist. It also seems to annoy members of the wider liberal community, who think that the scientific method and academia are the stomping-gr...

I post too much but... ...I believe that one should work for one's treasured goals. So far, so good. Very few people would disagree with me. I also believe that one should work for these treasured goals even if one believes that they are impossible to achieve. This is the part where people start to look at me weirdly and ask "Why would you do that? Dear God, why?" After all, why should one sink time and effort - perhaps a life's worth of time and effort - into an unreachable goal? Why should one try to do the impossible? Well, pardon me for saying this, but that's based on fallacious reasoning: that either one accomplishes the goal or one does not accomplish the goal, with nothing in between. If that were true, there would indeed be no point in working towards it and we should all give up now. But that's not the case. We don't live in an all-or-nothing world; we can still get partway to a goal, still do a good turn for a society desperately in need...

If you have Twitter, follow The Activists . It is a VERY cool left-wing account and if you are a left-winger, you really should be following it. However, some of the things it says are questionable - not least what it says in this blog post . Go on, read it, take your sweet time. I'll be waiting. For those who didn't read it, it talked about how death "is a meaningless concept with the intention of making people afraid". There is a lot wrong with this, firstly and most obviously that death is neither meaningless nor a concept. Death is a real, documented phenomenon: breathing and heartbeat stop, as do brain activity and other important biological processes (e.g. respiration). Then all the rest sets in: pallor mortis , livor mortis , algor mortis , rigor mortis , decomposition ...in short, it exists and is therefore probably the antithesis  of a meaningless concept. It is real, not imaginary, and it is all around us. Most people, young or old, rich or poor, male ...

I'm The Fettered , and I willingly admit it. I've got no religious reasons for doing this - only philosophical ones, and ones to do with my personal tastes. I shouldn't really be abiding to a code at all, only a few tenets. I've touched on this. I'm a questioner, too. I can't go a day without questioning someone or something. I question the political movements I hate and the causes I love. I question the ideas which are like air and water to me, which amounts to me shooting myself in the foot. I've touched on this as well. OK, now that the shameless self-promotion's over, I just want to say that it really, really, really, honestly does suck being either of these things, let alone both. Being fettered, otherwise known as having a conscience, means not being able to do things that you'd really enjoy doing, having to justify that to everyone else, and having to go it alone with little or no moral support. I know I sound whiny, but most people ar...

Well, everyone seems to have differing definitions of freedom . The Tea Party think it's found in gun ownership and low taxes; the liberals think it's found in freedom of speech and communication; the cynics think it's found nowhere on earth, and the power-mad think it's found in the domination of others. Freedom isn't gun ownership. Freedom isn't being able to buy and sell things. Freedom isn't the right to enter into a contract where you slave yourself half to death. Freedom isn't low taxes. Freedom isn't having the biggest collection of nukes in the known universe. No, freedom is when you can say what you want, when you want, where you want. Freedom is where people will listen to you and actually pay some damn attention for once . Freedom is where you don't have to be scared of the authorities tracking you down for a loose tongue here or a hashtag there. Freedom is where no-one regulates your life but you. It's not an ...