Editorial

WELCOME to issue four of volume four of CoN. Our delay this week can be easily blamed to last week's: too much to do. While school is entertaining as I have mastered the skills of sleeping with my eyes open, of selective hearing and regurgitating what a professor wants to hear, I am beginning to suffer from the side effects of sleep- deprivation and too much coke and caffeine. Needlessly to say, I am looking forward to March break in order to recuperate in one week what I've lost in nine.

Before I leave you with an e-mail from Jakob Straub, I'd like to announce that The Annihilation Fountain (TAF) is now being hosted by Scriba Org. TAF contains articles from the dark, higher minds of our hidden virtual society. A recommended read for those that read too much science fiction and think that the X-Files are still cool.

The link: http://www.capnasty.org/taf

Our next issue will deal with depression.

From: Jakob Straub Organization: Towel Technologies To: CoN Editorial <con@capnasty.org>

Re: Jason's Republic: Nearly Ten Minutes of Philosophical Training

Hello,

I wanted to respond to the philosophical article by Jason MacIsaac in the issue of Capital of Nasty, which I enjoyed very much (just like the whole thing).

At school, when we were dealing with utilitarianism and were discussing the issue of abortion in ethics, our teacher used the same example as Jason did to explain the "Slippery Slope" thing, i.e. that if you legalize abortion within the first three months of pregnancy, it becomes easier to legalize it for later months. And he, too, joked about that finally abortion of teenagers would become legal...

There's just one difference: The whole thing is not called "Slippery Slope" in German, although he explained that expression to us. The common picture we use is that of a protective dike, getting more and more cracks with further legalization of abortion, until finally the whole flood of immoral things is breaking through.

Now I know what question you have in mind, and yes, I did the whole Robbie Williams "protective dyke" episode from Good Morning Vietnam ("What is a protective dyke ? Is that a large woman standing by the river going 'Don't go there, don't go near the river, stay away from the river!' - I know you can't use the word dyke, you can't even say lesbian, it's women in comfortable shoes! Thank you very much!"). Of course, no one got it (since nobody knew GMV in English), except an exchange student from the US who was laughing until she nearly fell out of her comfortable shoes.

Thank you very much! Yours, Jakob