Friday, April 01, 2005
I watched an Extreme Makeover programme last night. A man was having his face made over by another chap with a boxing glove...
Talking of coming punchups...a blurb for a roadshow that Peter Dunne is fronting at law firm Bell Gully’s office next week asks: "Are we watching the first act in a process that will replace the Queen with a president, produce a written constitution over which judges will rule and embed "rights" already given added weight in law by the courts in a new constitution?" There is an extremely tight deadline (only a fortnight) for the first round of submissions to the Parliamentary committee reviewing the constitution. For details on how to make a submission, visit this link.
CYF now has as many children registered on its books as a town the size of Timaru,” says Judy Collins. Figures show the number of children registered with CYF has increased from 24,624 in June 2001 to 27,724 in March this year, with three months still left to go in the June-to-June cycle. “Labour has spent $30 million on the Families Commission, and its much talked about ‘Agenda For Children’ appears to be in a constant holding pattern. Meanwhile many thousands more of our most vulnerable children are falling into the hands of the state.
Australia's mini baby-boom has continued for the second consecutive quarter, raising hopes the Government has succeeded in its bid to end a decade-long fertility slump. Population figures released over Easter reveal more than 133,000 babies were born in the six months to September last year, the biggest six-month total in the past 14 years. The surge has resulted in about 255,000 births over the past year - the largest 12-month total in nine years.
Vibrant cities find one thing missing: children. Officials say that the very things that attract people who revitalize a city - dense vertical housing, fashionable restaurants and shops and mass transit that makes a car unnecessary - are driving out children by making the neighborhoods too expensive for young families.
A One News Colmar Brunton poll found that 28 percent of New Zealanders went to Church this Easter. The poll also found that 54 per cent of New Zealanders never go to Church except for weddings and funerals. A new UK survey of 14,000 churchgoers indicates that the reason for the decline in Church attendance there has more to do with a lack of sincerity in preaching, and an inability to defend Christianity at the pulpit than a lack of faith. Overwhelmingly, attendants want churches to "robustly defend moral values with conviction and courage and cease being 'silent' and 'lukewarm' in the face of moral and social collapse.'
Meanwhile there are suggestions of a renaissance of church attendance in Canada.
The annual survey of US church attendance conducted by The Barna Group shows that one-third of all adults (34%) remain “unchurched.” That proportion has changed little during the past five years. The research also confirms that millions of unchurched people are spiritually active. For instance, one out of every five reads the Bible in a typical week; six out of ten pray to God each week; and during the past year 5% have shared their faith in Jesus Christ with people who are not professing Christians. In fact, nearly one million unchurched adults tithe their income, usually to parachurch ministries. (According to a 2004 Gallup poll, 44 percent of Americans said they attended church at least once a week or almost every week.)
And new research in the US among teens shows greater church attendance and more recognition of the importance of religion.
Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald provides a breath of fresh air on the meaning of Easter to counterbalance the terrible vacuity of opinion pieces in some New Zealand papers.
Modern law likes to pretend it has nothing to do with religion, but it does, says Richard Ackland. It is deeply wrapped in religious symbolism, if not faith. Ackland explores the connection in the context of some current issues.
Naming the horror. David Neff says we need to resurrect the language of evil.
Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st Century, a major new report says. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported on the findings of 1,300 scientists from 95 countries. The academics found that two thirds of the delicately balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.
What are the Christian ethical guidelines for deciding whether to remove the feeding/hydration tube from Terri Schiavo? An interview with John Kilner, president of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. Some very helpful thoughts on the ethical questions surrounding right-to-life issues.
New research has revealed that the Nazi extermination camp experiments of Dr Josef Mengele were supported by a network of elite German scientists. Dr Susanne Heim has told the Guardian that "it was formerly believed that scientists in Germany were oppressed by the Nazi regime, that there were only a few guilty people. But in truth, these doctors were in paradise. The distinction between politics and science was hazy and doctors had the freedom to do as they liked, so long as they could prove that their goal was to breed a super-race of strong soldiers for the advancement of warfare."
"Frankenstein Report" Splits Uk Parliamentary Committee. A UK parliamentary committee has published libertarian proposals for a radical change of direction for government policy on reproduction and fertility treatment. It endorses sex selection, the creation of mixed-species embryos and anonymity for egg and sperm donors. It also calls for the scrapping of the current requirement that IVF clinics make the welfare of the child their first concern. Most controversial of all, it says that a total ban on reproductive cloning cannot be justified without further debate on fundamental issues, even if it is unsafe at the moment. Although the report by the House of Commons' select committee on science and technology was widely publicised, it was disavowed by half of its members, with one of them dubbing it "the Frankenstein
report".
A Canadian bioethicist and an American scientist have used the leading journal Science to float a proposal for a ethical code for researchers in the life sciences to reduce the risk of bioterrorism. Margaret Somerville, of McGill University, and Ronald Atlas, of the University of Louisville, argue that scientists must be aware of their ethical obligations, including the obligation to abide by government regulations and to blow the whistle on unethical research. ~ Science 2005 307: 1881-1882 (only available online by subscription)
Talking of coming punchups...a blurb for a roadshow that Peter Dunne is fronting at law firm Bell Gully’s office next week asks: "Are we watching the first act in a process that will replace the Queen with a president, produce a written constitution over which judges will rule and embed "rights" already given added weight in law by the courts in a new constitution?" There is an extremely tight deadline (only a fortnight) for the first round of submissions to the Parliamentary committee reviewing the constitution. For details on how to make a submission, visit this link.
CYF now has as many children registered on its books as a town the size of Timaru,” says Judy Collins. Figures show the number of children registered with CYF has increased from 24,624 in June 2001 to 27,724 in March this year, with three months still left to go in the June-to-June cycle. “Labour has spent $30 million on the Families Commission, and its much talked about ‘Agenda For Children’ appears to be in a constant holding pattern. Meanwhile many thousands more of our most vulnerable children are falling into the hands of the state.
Australia's mini baby-boom has continued for the second consecutive quarter, raising hopes the Government has succeeded in its bid to end a decade-long fertility slump. Population figures released over Easter reveal more than 133,000 babies were born in the six months to September last year, the biggest six-month total in the past 14 years. The surge has resulted in about 255,000 births over the past year - the largest 12-month total in nine years.
Vibrant cities find one thing missing: children. Officials say that the very things that attract people who revitalize a city - dense vertical housing, fashionable restaurants and shops and mass transit that makes a car unnecessary - are driving out children by making the neighborhoods too expensive for young families.
A One News Colmar Brunton poll found that 28 percent of New Zealanders went to Church this Easter. The poll also found that 54 per cent of New Zealanders never go to Church except for weddings and funerals. A new UK survey of 14,000 churchgoers indicates that the reason for the decline in Church attendance there has more to do with a lack of sincerity in preaching, and an inability to defend Christianity at the pulpit than a lack of faith. Overwhelmingly, attendants want churches to "robustly defend moral values with conviction and courage and cease being 'silent' and 'lukewarm' in the face of moral and social collapse.'
Meanwhile there are suggestions of a renaissance of church attendance in Canada.
The annual survey of US church attendance conducted by The Barna Group shows that one-third of all adults (34%) remain “unchurched.” That proportion has changed little during the past five years. The research also confirms that millions of unchurched people are spiritually active. For instance, one out of every five reads the Bible in a typical week; six out of ten pray to God each week; and during the past year 5% have shared their faith in Jesus Christ with people who are not professing Christians. In fact, nearly one million unchurched adults tithe their income, usually to parachurch ministries. (According to a 2004 Gallup poll, 44 percent of Americans said they attended church at least once a week or almost every week.)
And new research in the US among teens shows greater church attendance and more recognition of the importance of religion.
Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald provides a breath of fresh air on the meaning of Easter to counterbalance the terrible vacuity of opinion pieces in some New Zealand papers.
Modern law likes to pretend it has nothing to do with religion, but it does, says Richard Ackland. It is deeply wrapped in religious symbolism, if not faith. Ackland explores the connection in the context of some current issues.
Naming the horror. David Neff says we need to resurrect the language of evil.
Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st Century, a major new report says. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported on the findings of 1,300 scientists from 95 countries. The academics found that two thirds of the delicately balanced ecosystems they studied have suffered badly at the hands of man over the past 50 years.
What are the Christian ethical guidelines for deciding whether to remove the feeding/hydration tube from Terri Schiavo? An interview with John Kilner, president of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. Some very helpful thoughts on the ethical questions surrounding right-to-life issues.
New research has revealed that the Nazi extermination camp experiments of Dr Josef Mengele were supported by a network of elite German scientists. Dr Susanne Heim has told the Guardian that "it was formerly believed that scientists in Germany were oppressed by the Nazi regime, that there were only a few guilty people. But in truth, these doctors were in paradise. The distinction between politics and science was hazy and doctors had the freedom to do as they liked, so long as they could prove that their goal was to breed a super-race of strong soldiers for the advancement of warfare."
"Frankenstein Report" Splits Uk Parliamentary Committee. A UK parliamentary committee has published libertarian proposals for a radical change of direction for government policy on reproduction and fertility treatment. It endorses sex selection, the creation of mixed-species embryos and anonymity for egg and sperm donors. It also calls for the scrapping of the current requirement that IVF clinics make the welfare of the child their first concern. Most controversial of all, it says that a total ban on reproductive cloning cannot be justified without further debate on fundamental issues, even if it is unsafe at the moment. Although the report by the House of Commons' select committee on science and technology was widely publicised, it was disavowed by half of its members, with one of them dubbing it "the Frankenstein
report".
A Canadian bioethicist and an American scientist have used the leading journal Science to float a proposal for a ethical code for researchers in the life sciences to reduce the risk of bioterrorism. Margaret Somerville, of McGill University, and Ronald Atlas, of the University of Louisville, argue that scientists must be aware of their ethical obligations, including the obligation to abide by government regulations and to blow the whistle on unethical research. ~ Science 2005 307: 1881-1882 (only available online by subscription)
