Monday, July 11, 2005
"Midnight. Shelly is getting herself drunk so that she can bring herself to go home with the strange man seated next to her at the bar. One o’clock. Steven is busy downloading pornographic images of children from Internet bulletin boards. Two o’clock. Marjorie, who used to spend every Friday night in bed with a different man, has been binging and purging since eleven. Three o’clock. Pablo stares through the darkness at the ceiling, wondering how to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion. Four o’clock. After partying all night, Jesse takes another man home, not mentioning that he tests positive for an incurable STD. Five o’clock. Lisa is in the bathroom, cutting herself delicately with a razor. This isn’t what my generation expected when it invented the sexual revolution. The game isn’t fun anymore. Even some of the diehard proponents of that enslaving liberation have begun to show signs of fatigue and confusion... From a natural-law perspective, the problem with 21st century Western sexuality is that it flouts the basic principles of the human sexual design." [This article by Jay Budziszewski is a must-read.]
What's the connection between religion and a declining sewer system? "In East Germany, whose rural communities are dying, village sewer systems are having a tough time adjusting to the lack of use. Populations have fallen so dramatically that there are too few people flushing to keep the flow of waste moving. There's simply no precedent for managed decline in societies as advanced as Europe's, but the early indications are that it's going to be expensive: environmentally speaking, it's a question of sustainable lack of growth... There aren't many examples of successful post-religious societies. And, if one casts around the world today, one notices the two powers with the worst prospects are the ones most advanced in their post-religiosity." [Mark Steyn makes the connection.]
Shocked United Nations officials have warned that North Korea is on the brink of a "humanitarian catastrophe that could dwarf previous disasters", The Universe reports. Vatican Radio has noted that the country’s GNP fell from £564 million to £260 million between 1993 and 1998 and mortality rates among under fives have almost doubled from 27 per cent to 48 per cent. Now the UN has become alarmed as it has learnt that food rations to North Korea’s people are to reduce from 250 to 200 grams, representing only one third of the calories necessary for survival. CAFOD said its partner Caritas-Korea has immediately allocated £284,000 in emergency relief. However, it says that the extensive government restrictions in North Korea is severely hindering its work.
In response to the sudden arrival of same-sex ‘marriage’ in several developed nations, the Ugandan Parliament has overwhelmingly adopted a constitutional amendment that criminalizes same-sex ‘marriage’. The amendment specifies that “marriage is lawful only if entered into between a man and a woman.” Elsewhere it also states that “it is unlawful for same-sex couples to marry.”
Motor neurone disease sufferer Willie Terpstra, who went to China this year seeking a miracle cure, is now unable to talk. Neither can she eat properly, with food having to be forced into her stomach through a tube, and sleep is becoming increasingly difficult for her. She is dying after radical and controversial surgery which involved two million cells taken from the noses of aborted fetuses injected into her brain on March 23 under local anaesthetic. Using her electronic keyboard Mrs Terpstra said she was disappointed with the surgery. "I would not do it again," she said. "It cost too much money and the result is not good." She has kept in touch with patients she met at Beijing West Hill Hospital since coming home. No one who underwent similar surgery had improved, and two had died.
Germany has banned music harmful to young people. Rap music celebrating drugs, sex and violence is being censored by the German Government's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (BPjM) because it "endangers [young people's] process of developing a socially responsible and self-reliant personality". "The lyrics by certain German rappers … are becoming increasingly pornographic, racist and glorify violence," said Monika Griefahn, who chairs the parliamentary committee on culture and the media. "Breaking taboos and portraying extremes are important stylistic devices of art, which rightly belong to the freedom of expression," said Griefahn. But the protection of youth and the right of personal honour - not to mention Germany's image abroad -- required clear restrictions.
Tail-out: 'Brainstorming', the buzz term used by executives to generate ideas among their staff, has been deemed politically incorrect by Irish civil servants because it is thought to be offensive to people with brain disorders. Instead staff at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) in Belfast will use the term 'thought-showers' when they get together to think creatively.
