Tom Morris

A few years ago, when I started blogging, I would often explain to people that a lot of my blog posts don't have titles. This is something I inherited from Dave Winer, whose software the current incarnation of this blog is roughly based upon. On my blog, there are two types of posts - short and long posts. Short posts fit inside one paragraph element, and are styled with a blue background. They all appear at the top of each daily archive page. Long posts have a title and one or more paragraphs underneath them - these appear at the bottom of the daily archive page, and have a white background. Both have permalinks. Both are types of blog entry.

My reasons for this are simple. Sometimes blog posts are too short and fleeting to require a title. Mostly these are links, short off-the-cuff remarks or single paragraphs. Many bloggers used to call these "asides", although I don't like that word. But still, people would tell me that this is very strange, and that really everything should have a title, and that I was just being picky or a nuisance, and to please shut the fuck up and let the normal people carry on the conversation.

The idea that everything in the world has a title is silly. A huge swathe of artists call their great works things like "Untitled No. 7" for a reason - because they can't think of a title, but have to in order to exhibit the damn thing. Instant messages don't have titles attached. There are a lot of UNTITLED.DOC files out there. Blog comments don't have titles. Not giving something a title is a normal part of human experience.

I still post things without titles. And so do most of the people telling me what a weirdo I was a few years ago. Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook's status updates, FriendFeed and so on all prove that.

Can Dave Winer and I now get an apology from all the trendy people telling us that we were stupid and insane? If you don't want to lose face in public, you can always send a Twitter direct message. They don't have subject lines, after all...

It looks like the religious nutcases are trying to prevent the passage of the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Sorry, but if you think that this is a bad idea, I think you are not only wrong, but you deserve nothing but contempt and scorn.

If you think that we are going to anger some almighty unseen actor if we conduct scientific research that could lead to medical advances that might be able to treat painful, life-threatening diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's, please go and get fucked.

Here is why medical advance is important. About nine years ago, I watched as my paternal grandfather slowly died in the hospital. He suffered from Motor Neurone Disease, a neurological disease which is currently incurable. He was diagnosed at quite a late stage, and very little could be done except try and make him comfortable for the few remaining months that he had to live. John was a very practical sort of person - he was an architect by training, who spent his life working for the government designing public buildings - mostly prisons. When he retired, he spent his time painting - and got to the point where he could sell pictures.

When the disease took it's toll, it was horrific to watch. Imagine a person you love being unable to do any of the things which make them happy in life, and eventually unable to communicate - not being able to speak, write, draw or move. The quality of life for John was decimated in only a month or so. A week or two after this happened, he died in his sleep in the hospital.

Preventing others from having to go through this kind of thing is what the religious are opposing. Of course, they do so for other reasons. But their illogical and stupid reasons do not change the fact that they are pro-disease, pro-cancer, pro-motor-neurone-disease, pro-Alzheimer's, pro-AIDS, pro-heart-disease and pro-suffering. Their argument rests on a biological exceptionalism that sees human beings as uniquely different. Sure, we are - we are the only species to build skyscrapers, write novels and build global communications networks. But that does not make our genes special.

There's a reason that the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Society, the Parkinson's Disease Society, the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research support this bill. It is the reason I support it also. This type of research has the potential to find causes of diseases that kill and harm thousands of people every year. There is no good argument against this. It is the religious who object to the prevention of the sort of pain and suffering that my grandfather went through in the heartbreaking final months of his life. Anyone who attempts to halt efforts to prevent others going through similar pain deserves nothing but derision and scorn.