Category Archives: Technology and Society

Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Fake Animal Cruelty

23 Comments

Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on vegan diets and their attempts at meat simulation:

…if one is to take the arguments of the ethical vegans at face value, isn’t it a bit disgusting or immoral to make products that look like the foods they consider most evil? Fake hamburgers are really a marvel, but while they still come up short on the taste front, they certainly look like hamburgers. If meat is murder, why hawk products that look like the mutilated corpse? Consider our views on cannibalism, then imagine selling faux human flesh in, say, the form of human thumbs — “It tastes just like a missionary!” Wouldn’t that still be in poor taste?

Technology advances are going to make this even more complicated in the future. I suspect that at some point cloning technology will enable us to grow meat in a vat, and probably pretty good-tasting meat at that. What does this do to the vegan argument against animal cruelty? Or to extend Jonah’s example, if we could grow long pork without harming any sentient humans in the process, would it be wrong to eat it? Should it be illegal? For that matter, would it really be human flesh? If so, what would make it that — just the DNA content of the cells?

This seems similar to child pr0n, in that one has to separate the act of consumption from the act of production. It’s pretty clearly wrong to produce child pr0n using actual children, but if it’s computer animated, who does it hurt? Yes, I understand the argument that we should discourage the consumption as well, lest it lead to a demand for supply, though I don’t think that the Supreme Court agrees. But how many vegans would eat animal flesh if it weren’t produced from whole animals with brains and nervous systems? Judging by the repeated attempts to replicate the carnivorous experience from vegetation, quite a number, I’d imagine.

Administrative, Technology and Society

Firefox Crash

5 Comments

I’m running Fedora 14. Firefox just crashed after running a pingtest, so badly that it crashed the entire X session, and I had to log in again. After I did, Firefox wouldn’t run. This is the relevant dump from dmesg:

[1062274.346357] npviewer.bin[1011]: segfault at 0 ip 011bd8d1 sp bf92af30 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1062375.997150] npviewer.bin[28464]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bfbacf78 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1062498.325768] npviewer.bin[28520]: segfault at 418 ip 0110dd36 sp bfbce888 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[ea0000+b5f000]
[1371957.400980] npviewer.bin[28552]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bf817ed8 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1403459.772959] npviewer.bin[25390]: segfault at 0 ip 011bd8d1 sp bfe2c3a0 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1403521.953639] npviewer.bin[19679]: segfault at b74e10b4 ip 011bd8c3 sp bffd8c50 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1403534.814715] npviewer.bin[19700]: segfault at b74ce0b4 ip 012f58c3 sp bfbb4a60 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[f2d000+b5f000]
[1403650.824521] npviewer.bin[19728]: segfault at b73750b4 ip 011bd8c3 sp bfcea8d0 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1406090.206902] npviewer.bin[19767]: segfault at 0 ip (null) sp bf98d91c error 4 in libcanberra-gtk.so.0.1.6[101000+4000]
[1406298.346733] npviewer.bin[20332]: segfault at b34910ac ip 012ec8e7 sp bfe89810 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[f24000+b5f000]
[1406390.968454] npviewer.bin[20409]: segfault at b73790ac ip 013418e7 sp bfe87630 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[f79000+b5f000]
[1406394.694160] npviewer.bin[20453]: segfault at 0 ip (null) sp bff6e50c error 4 in libcanberra-gtk.so.0.1.6[101000+4000]
[1406482.581431] npviewer.bin[20491]: segfault at b738a0ac ip 011bd8e7 sp bf897d40 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1407389.328409] npviewer.bin[20548]: segfault at b1e9c0b4 ip 011c58c3 sp bff96360 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[dfd000+b5f000]
[1413310.714710] npviewer.bin[20658]: segfault at 0 ip 011bd8d1 sp bfb7c980 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1413487.146169] npviewer.bin[21737]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bfa3b328 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1413659.608758] npviewer.bin[21767]: segfault at 30 ip 00e4fdad sp bf913df0 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1413665.509196] npviewer.bin[21825]: segfault at b747a0ac ip 011bd8e7 sp bfd35e50 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1414498.463725] npviewer.bin[21851]: segfault at 0 ip 012f58d1 sp bfb76430 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[f2d000+b5f000]
[1416022.503463] npviewer.bin[22016]: segfault at 418 ip 0119ad36 sp bfaf4a68 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[f2d000+b5f000]
[1416030.061756] npviewer.bin[22354]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bfbe9aa8 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1418029.336434] npviewer.bin[22371]: segfault at 0 ip 011bd8d1 sp bfcac160 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1418600.114036] npviewer.bin[22753]: segfault at 418 ip 0119ad36 sp bfc08258 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[f2d000+b5f000]
[1419010.022176] npviewer.bin[22947]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bfe620a8 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1419276.583851] npviewer.bin[23002]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bfc1a618 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1420339.662730] npviewer.bin[23097]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bfd25ff8 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1420721.302191] npviewer.bin[23365]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bfc00268 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1420762.291919] npviewer.bin[23423]: segfault at b6ab9888 ip 0125fd0f sp bfee5e70 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1420805.073735] npviewer.bin[23459]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bfd4cd98 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1420811.931679] npviewer.bin[23483]: segfault at b6a8d928 ip 0125fd0f sp bfe061e0 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1423898.166306] npviewer.bin[23505]: segfault at 418 ip 01062d36 sp bf8484c8 error 6 in libflashplayer.so[df5000+b5f000]
[1424713.197214] npviewer.bin[24368]: segfault at 0 ip 012f58d1 sp bfda9c10 error 4 in libflashplayer.so[f2d000+b5f000]
[1424726.845856] npviewer.bin[24590]: segfault at 80000000 ip 80000000 sp bf97e5dc error 4

I tried removing firefox and reinstalling, and npviewer isn’t a package. But still no joy. Does anyone have any idea what to do? Maybe reinstall flash?

[Update a while later]

I deleted the .mozilla folder, and it seems to be OK now. It even preserved my tabs.