Blogging is supposed to be a new cultural revolution. Well, maybe that is hyperbole, but nevertheless, blogging is part of the digital revolution and that larger concept has had a potent impact on our culture. It allows the arm-chair pundit (or five-star general, newspaper commentator, quarterback, etc.) to have their say and have that message disseminated to anyone with access to a computer. It gives a theater to myriad points of view, whether or not anyone else want to sit and enjoy the show.

Blogging is about telling your story. It allows the 14 year old girl with a love for Hello Kitty to tell the world about it. It allows the 41 year old man with a fetish for Hello Kitty to tell of his particular fascination.

A quick prediction

Let me make a quick prediction. I will write in this for about five or six days. Maybe even a week. After that, I'll never touch it again.

First post

Well, this is the first post of my new blog. Hence the reason why it stands alone. I'm not sure about all of the blog stuff. I haven't read too many of them, but the ones that I frequent have been written by smart people who are good writers and come up with good topics. I can claim to be mediocre on the first two counts and time will only tell if I have the imagination to come up with good topics. I can't say that I am as well informed as some people are, but what I can say is this: I am well informed on the things about which I am well informed. How is that for a tautological statement?

For the most part, that is what you can expect from me. Mindless tautologies such as "I am what I am and that is all that I am." (Popeye, 1939)

I'm not quite sure why I am even setting this up now. After all, I am sitting in my office in London when I should be sitting in the library studying for my upcoming exams. The least I could be doing is thumbing through my chapters of Rawls and Dworkin while daydreaming about setting up my blog. Alas, I have too much will power. It is too bad that my will power is always directed at the more trivial aspects of life. Will power is a weird term if you ask me, and most people don't. But, if they did, I'd say this about it. "Will power" is the ability to ignore ones preference for immediate gratification (frozen pizza) in favor of what one considers to be more substantial gratification (cooked frozen pizza).

I have a topic! It is something I have been thinking about recently, although I don't have any more time right now than to state the issue and promise that I will come back to it later.

My friend Hans and I were talking about punishment a couple of days ago. He supports the death penalty. I do not. My point has always been one stemming from an argument for the sovereignty of self-determination. Essentially, if we live in a democracy to regards certain rights as paramount and sovereign, then one of those rights must certainly be the right to an existance. I don't believe the government can infringe on ones right to exist, regardless of their crimes. Existance is prior to all other aspects of life, so the right to existance is prior to all other rights. I know there is logic to be worked out in that statement, but you should catch my drift. Then this morning, I was listening to John Gaunt on BBC radio and he was going on about the punishment of sex offenders. He was casing punishment in terms of rehabilitation. His argument is that if a sex offender is not rehabilitated during him time in jail, he should not be released into society. Since some sex offenders can not me (using his term) medically rehabilitated, then they should never be released back into society. Does that make sense?

I'll answer this later, but now I need to meet a friend for drinks.