Friday 14 April 2017

Sad Loss

A bit obscure - more so than the recent death of Derek Parfit , a towering figure in philosophy - but we've just lost excellent young philospher Joshua Parsons at the age of 43.

Curiously enough, lots of people know one of his works: this brilliant assessment of the merits and demerits of the national flags of the world!  If you've never looked at it, I recommend you do so over the holiday weekend.   Some extracts:

Rule 1c: If you must write a stupid slogan on your flag, do not do so in a living language! ...

Rule 2a: Do not put a picture of anything on your flag. That's right: no pictures. Especially not of sheep (are you listening, Falkland Islands?) or parrots (this means you, Dominica!). Stylised logos based on representations are OK (Albania is pushing it) but representational art is out.

If you are going to put a picture on your flag (in violation of rule 2a) why would you put pictures of the weapons that you are using to conduct a bloody repression of your citizens on it? This just doesn't make sense to me. Obviously countries like Afghanistan Mozambique just aren't interested in the tourist dollars that you can get from not advertising the fact that you like to hack off the limbs of foreigners before shooting them and turning them into soap. Still, it's their loss. 


You gotta read the rest.

No details on his death yet but he was known to suffer from deep depression.  All very sad.

ND

11 comments:

Blue Eyes said...

"Looks good on a T-shirt, not on a flag." - lol

I feel for the poor Kiwis and their flag situation. They dislike the British colonial aspect and - worse - they hate how similar it is to the Aussie flag. But can they decide what to replace it with? They had TWO referendums recently on the topic. Having said that, when your only remaining national problem is whether to change the flag then you must be doing pretty well.

dearieme said...

I once opined to an American that the Maple Leaf was the best flag in the world. I then had to endure a stony silence.

dearieme said...

Your man Parsons seems to object to historical allusions on flags. So he doesn't like the little Union Jack on the Ozzie flag, because. Which made me realise that the stars-and-stripes is entirely a historical allusion, referring to the USA's origins as a federal republic. Now that it's a monolithic state with imperial ambitions maybe it should change its flag accordingly.

andrew said...

He didn't write any rules for changing flags.
I suggest only changing it if the borders change
... Which might resolve his comment on the UK flag in a few years time.

E-K said...

Sad losses indeed.

In the meantime E-K Snr goes on and on and on... St Barnabus nurses have declined to attend anymore, one carer has refused to come back, he has broken one anti bed-sore bed, gone through the usual end-of-life supply of pads and has worn my Mum and brother to the ground. The NHS must surely be regretting their decision to continue his care at home... they imagined he only had weeks to live.

All his major bones are broken now but for the right arm - the cancer refuses to go to his organs where it might actually kill him, the cure for this disease, it appears, is E-K Snr's bile and boiled piss of which there is aplenty. The last thing left of the man is his gob. A gobby skull on a pillow, slagging off those helping him.

Invictus my arse. He is determined to fight on and on because he wants to kill my mum off before he goes.

I have passion fatigue in case you hadn't noticed. Too many 'last' goodbyes. Now he's taking the piss.

Anyway...

I like the flag of Japan as it happens, and the philosophy of sepuku (which I think is the point of all those bottles of Orimorph the NHS have supplied - it should be us taking it.) No EU flag there. And Iceland's flag is utterly ghastly.

Blue Eyes said...

Sorry to hear that EK :-(

Electro-Kevin said...

Thanks Blue.

I wrote that in a black comedy mood btw. Not for sympathy but in a pithy rant to exorcise my ire at a typically awkward man.

Nick Drew said...

Whatever it takes, Kev. Hang on in there.

James Higham said...

And a fascinating addition to this - two rooky players have just been called up for the AFL team downunder - names Parfit and Parsons. Mysterious ways.

Electro-Kevin said...

Thanks Nick.

Nick Drew said...

Blimey, James - that's obscure!