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You have a problem if you justify intervening on the basis of compassion for the suffering of animals. Even clearing and ploughing a space for vegetarian crops is likely to have horrific painful and lethal effects on some animals. Watching a pack of hyenas bring down and start eating a gazelle while it is still alive is horrific to me but I accept it as a fact of life. I don't for one minute think I can persuade hyenas to stop being cruel to gazelles. Hyenas do not have a rational faculty that can comprehend concepts such as cruelty and liberty.

Upholding human rights is about not being cruel to your fellow human beings. Assault, murder and stealing or destroying the hard earned fruits of another persons efforts is cruelty. Human beings can be persuaded and they can come to mutual agreements such as reciprocal rights respecting behavior (laws). This is only possible with creatures that have an adequately developed rational faculty that can comprehend cocepts such as life, liberty, right, wrong, cruelty. This is the only context in which in which the CONCEPT of rights have any real meaning. If you uphold animal rights you negate human rights - we couldnt even grow a crop of beans if we were cocerned about invading the teritory of moles  The concept of rights only pertains to HUMAN social interaction.

I sympathize with the impulse to stop cruelty to animals. However I have a greater desire to uphold human rights and stop cruelty by human to human beings.

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Tom Ryaboi 

Daily Mail recent ly called it the "new heart-stopping pho tog ra phy craze" that's sweep ing the globe. Rooftop ping is when a very brave pho tog ra ph er takes a very dar ing photo at the edge of a sky scraper or very tall build ing. With their feet, often times, dan gling over the edge, they snap away - show ing us a view most of us could never imag ine wit ness ing our selves. 

Today, we bring you a com pi la tion of vertigo-inducing pho tos that include rooftop ping pic tures, aer i al shots and more. If you're one of those peo ple who suf fers from acro pho­bia or gets a lit tle dizzy at extreme heights, may we sug gest that you turn away. For the rest of you, enjoy some of the best adren a line pump ing pho tos taken from high above! May they bring out the dare dev il in you. (Just, please be careful.) 

Roman Wer shinin 

Jen Tse 

Neil Ta 

Tom Ryaboi 

David Giral 

Daniel Cheong 

Chris Ish er wood 

Navid Baraty 

Joseph O. Holmes 

Andrew Mace 

Evan Joseph 

hilite 

Evan Joseph 

Evan Joseph 

Roman Wer shinin 

Robert Miller 

Piero Sier ra

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Congrats @TSOPhotography on half a million views in three days! 'The Mountain' shot with @DynPerception Stage Zero

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Why don't we torture accused criminals in order to find who is guilty? Because the end does not justify the means.

It has become clear that many politicians and lawyers, and a few real people, don't understand what is meant by The End Does Not Justify the Means.

They act like people are saying the desire to have pancakes cannot justify making batter. But this is more specific. It's about good versus evil. In their unfortunate perspective, caring about what is right must seem insane.

 But the truth is that this phrase sums up one of the most important principles of ethics and morality:

It means that there are certain fundamental principles that are "right", "good", et cetera, that are essential to those conditions...and you cannot justify violating them because you have some "right" or "good" goal in mind.

 For example, you cannot have justice, unless you adhere to the principles of justice; It's not OK to do unjust things to people simply because you have a just goal in mind.

 This is a basic philosophical rule that is ignored or denied by almost all evil people you will find out there, and supported by almost all good ones. Marxists coined the modern use of the phrase "the end justifies the means", and naturally they and their socialist spinoffs were responsible for the vast majority of all great evils, for the past century.

Evil Men

 Joseph Stalin, for example, justified the deaths of tens of millions of his own people, by saying that the population was too large for (relatively inefficient) Communism to support. The mass death left Soviet society more sustainable. Did the betterment of millions of peoples' lives justify the murder of millions of other people? According to Consequentialist socialists; yes.

Previously, the Dominican order of Catholicism was an advocate of the idea that the end justifies the means (in spirit), and it just so happens that they went on to conduct, among other great evils, the Inquisition. It was literally claimed that you may be saving the soul of the man you tortured or murdered in the name of God, so it was OK. All the ways the current Pope is less popular than his predecessor appear to center around his being of that Dominican mindset. In fact, the position he held before becoming pontiff was the Head of the Office of Inquisition, I kid you not...it had simply changed its name for PR reasons.

Likewise, when Machiavelli used that phrase in his satirical indictment of the evils and abuses of Feudal government, The Prince, he succeeded in hitting the nail on the head as to what is most wrong and unjust.

Required by Good

 In reality, the end does not justify the means, in part because the long-term outcome of ignoring principles in order to buy short-term results is a failure of your own goals.

The idea that the wise principles override the short-sighted goal (a form of Deontology, if you like them thar fancified words) is why courts will overturn convictions on technicalities, one of the few good and just things remaining in the US legal. Any honest -- or as close as they get) --prosecutor will tell you that the reason they hate that condition is how it keeps them from breaking rules and just gambling punishment, in order to convict people they think are guilty.

When you have a principle, like "do not violate someone else's property", it cannot be overridden because you have some end in mind like "but the wealth I steal from his safe will benefit several other people who deserve it more".

Like or setting aside money for bills and emergencies instead of partying all of your paycheck away, sticking to the principles of what is good, right, and just produces the best outcome in the long run. You are investing in your ultimate goal by sticking to it when the going gets tough. When you panic and abandon your principles for a short-term benefit, you end up making things worse in the end.

THAT is why the end does not justify the means.

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From:
Rupert Wyndham
Sent: Saturday, 14 May 2011
To: letters@listerner.co.nz

Subject: Attn: Editor

Dear Ms. Stirling

I am a visitor to New Zealand, and only yesterday had
sight of your 14 May edition of the New Zealand Listerner with its
entertainingly fanciful lead story, accompanied by appropriately lurid
graphics.

Since this is a topic which raises much controversy,
let me try and see if I can encapsulate in a few lines what it is that you
would wish you readers to believe. You propose, it would seem, that marginal
increases in the concentrations of what is no more than a trace gas, amounting
in total not to 10% of the earth's atmosphere, not even to 5% - nay, not even
to 1%. can bring about cataclysmic changes in global climate. So, what exactly
is the percentage concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? Why, to be sure, it
is a gasping, asphyxiating 1/27th part of a single percentage point.
But even that's not the complete
picture, is it? After all, as someone (such as you) who has addressed the data
for herself will know, even human induced climate change proselytisers
acknowledge that, by itself, the radiative potential of CO2 (vanishingly small
anyway) fails to account for the "scenarios" promoted by them and by
unquestioning and compliant organs of the media - such, indeed, as The New
Zealand Listener. So, to get over this this little inconvenience, what should
be done? Why, to be sure, invoke another critical life affirming compound
(dihydrogen oxide) to provide a "positive forcing", thereby adding to
the so-called greenhouse effect. Regrettably, the very scientists (well,
anyway, let's call them that for the sake of convenience) can't actually tell
you whether the forcing resulting from atmospheric water vapour is positive (so
allegedly bringing warming) or negative (so allegedly bringing the opposite).
Clouds, for example, have a cooling effect. Have these 'climate scientists'
with their rinky dinky computers ever managed to incorporate them in their
so-named General Circulation Models? Answer - the heck they have!

And neither still is that the whole story, is it? For,
while CO2 might have some modest radiative potential, that potential is
governed by a relationship to concentration that is logarithmic not linear. In
simple layman's terms, the more you shove in, increasingly less do you get out.
In other words, the system is self limiting - well, well, fancy that!

So, to you, let me pose a multi-part question. Even at
first sight, does this seem plausible? Possible? Or, is it, perhaps, just stark
barking?

Finally, let's pause briefly on your Gotham City
phantasmagoric cover photo. This, from its appearance, could quite easily be a
fictional montage designed, of course, to promote a propagandist scaremongering
agenda to an ill informed public. In any event, and as far as New Zealand is
concerned, as a journalistic professional dealing with a matter of major public
importance, you personally should be fully aware that the Flinders University,
Adelaide, trans-Pacific tidal buoy project, after ten years of careful
monitoring, was wound up a year or two ago after failing to find evidence of
any increase whatsoever in rates of sea level rise. These data have since been
confirmed by satellite readings - much disliked by AGW propagandists, since
they usually undermine the party line. Neither are such contra-indicative
findings confined to the S. Pacific. If, in the face of such scientific
findings, you have published your story, then you are guilty of lying. If you
were unaware of such data, you are guilty of professional negligence, and I
speak as a one time journalist myself in publications somewhat more
elevated (or,
at any rate, more globally celebrated) than the New Zealand Listener.

Actually, let's be candid. Your piece is not
journalism at all, is it? It is mere agit-prop. In essence, as between what you
have published (and, I suspect, publish routinely) and what your counterparts
disseminated in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, Maoist China any difference is
negligible.

Rupert Wyndham

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<p>Timelapse - The City Limits from Dominic on Vimeo.</p>

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The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Libya and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is canceled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

-- John Cleese - British writer, actor and tall person

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