Wednesday, July 27, 2005
This election campaign is going to be no different from those that went before. If you want to read about the dirty tricks that go on behind the scenes in even NZ politics, this article is an eye-opener.
"In my judgment, few New Zealanders are looking for radical policy change this election," says Helen Clark. Someone should tell her that we weren't looking for it last election, either.
The media continue to show that they don't stop even a moment to ask the hard questions about the material presented to them. According to the Herald, a survey has found that most parents and caregivers of under-5-year-olds consider smacking to be the least effective way to discipline children. UMR Research polled 1367 readers of Tots to Teens magazine on behalf of the Littlies Lobby, a joint initiative between Plunket and the Children's Commissioner. More than 90 percent of respondents rated praise for good behaviour and leading by example as the most effective means of fostering discipline. Only 9 per cent thought smacking was effective, with an "overwhelming" 71 per cent rating a smack as ineffective. But any social scientist will tell you that a self-selected audience such as this has absolutely no validity as a scientific survey. It's like asking the readers of Playboy whether they agree that pornography should be censored.
Opinion polls have been rampant since the UK bomb attacks. Some very disturbing figures have emerged. For instance, less than three-quarters of Muslims in Britain indicate they would tell the police about an impending terrorist attack, which raises grave doubts about the Blair government's tactic of getting Muslims to police their own community. And one-third of Muslims do not accept British society and want to end it.
Momentum is growing in Australia for new measures to counter terrorism, including even tougher laws, closed circuit television networks, and random bag searches at train and bus stations.
Is the great Kiwi OE stealing NZ's men? In a new study of transtasman populations, Bernard Salt, a partner in KPMG's risk advisory services practice and one of Australia's best-known demographers, warns of a growing "man drought". In 1991 there were 8000 more 30-something women than men in New Zealand. By last year this had soared to a surplus of 24,000 women. "If you are a 34-year-old heterosexual woman in New Zealand you have as much chance of finding a male partner your own age as does an 85-year-old woman," Salt said. "This aligns precisely with what's happening in Australia." Mr Salt believes that the main cause of the man drought is that while both men and women head abroad on the great OE, women are far more likely to return, or return unattached. "New Zealand and Australia need to think about defensive migration policies to protect what we've got.
Couples are delaying having children and using IVF as a safety net, according to Australian government-sponsored research into fertility decision making. The results of a study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that 42% of 1,600 people surveyed thought that they would use IVF if they found it difficult to conceive a child. "This is our worry," says researcher Ruth Weston. "The research reveals that couples assume that there is a 'plan B'... We need greater education of women to get the message across that IVF is not necessarily an option."
Some children could legally have three or more parents if the Law Reform Commission in the Australian state of Victoria has its way. It has recommended that the state's adoption law be amended "to permit more than two people to be recognised as the legal parents of a child". Most of the commission's proposals are intended to take same-sex parenting into account. Although the notion of three parents is unconventional, to say the least, the commission feels that it should be possible for donors of sperm or eggs to be recognised as parents in addition to the birth mother and a lesbian partner. It even appears to be open to the idea of four legal parents.
The founder of the modern hospice movement, Dame Cecily Saunders, died early this month in London. She discovered her vocation to care for the dying in 1948 when she fell in love with a dying Polish Jew while working as a "lady almoner", or social worker. She realised that she could only be effective if she obtained a medical degree, and began her studies at the age of 33. In 1967 she opened St Christopher's Hospice, still one of the leaders in the field. In her youth she was an atheist, but became a Christian while training to be a social worker. It was, she said, "as if a switch had flipped". Although the philosophy of her hospice was Christian, people of all persuasions, or none, were welcomed there.
If you think rock music is more popular than classical, think again. Beethoven (1.4m) beat Bono (20,000) in internet downloads from the BBC.
Meet Mark C. Taylor, the virtuoso of Nietzschean boosterism: Say you're a theologian in the religion business who's concluded that your company's oldest and most trusted product doesn't really exist. What do you do after the death of God? You could lie to the customers and stockholders, continue writing copy, and ruefully await retirement. But if you're more imaginative, you could turn your crisis into an opportunity, as consultants like to say, and spin God's death as a new form of life, an "entrance of divinity fully into the human." You could "re-tool" and jump to another firm—English, philosophy, or perhaps a start-up in something-or-other studies. Or, like Mark C. Taylor, you could become an entreprofessor, a broker in the emerging intellectual markets, trading in some of the hottest stocks in cultural capital. Pooling your dwindling fortunes in theology and philosophy with venture capital from postmodernism, you nimbly navigate the volatile and bubbling markets in profundity, hang out with the rich and famous, and after a while you're a pioneer in internet education, adulated in the Sunday New York Times. As long as the bubbles don't burst, and as long as the old business doesn't revive, you're as safe as a tenured academic—which, of course, you are already.
"In my judgment, few New Zealanders are looking for radical policy change this election," says Helen Clark. Someone should tell her that we weren't looking for it last election, either.
The media continue to show that they don't stop even a moment to ask the hard questions about the material presented to them. According to the Herald, a survey has found that most parents and caregivers of under-5-year-olds consider smacking to be the least effective way to discipline children. UMR Research polled 1367 readers of Tots to Teens magazine on behalf of the Littlies Lobby, a joint initiative between Plunket and the Children's Commissioner. More than 90 percent of respondents rated praise for good behaviour and leading by example as the most effective means of fostering discipline. Only 9 per cent thought smacking was effective, with an "overwhelming" 71 per cent rating a smack as ineffective. But any social scientist will tell you that a self-selected audience such as this has absolutely no validity as a scientific survey. It's like asking the readers of Playboy whether they agree that pornography should be censored.
Opinion polls have been rampant since the UK bomb attacks. Some very disturbing figures have emerged. For instance, less than three-quarters of Muslims in Britain indicate they would tell the police about an impending terrorist attack, which raises grave doubts about the Blair government's tactic of getting Muslims to police their own community. And one-third of Muslims do not accept British society and want to end it.
Momentum is growing in Australia for new measures to counter terrorism, including even tougher laws, closed circuit television networks, and random bag searches at train and bus stations.
Is the great Kiwi OE stealing NZ's men? In a new study of transtasman populations, Bernard Salt, a partner in KPMG's risk advisory services practice and one of Australia's best-known demographers, warns of a growing "man drought". In 1991 there were 8000 more 30-something women than men in New Zealand. By last year this had soared to a surplus of 24,000 women. "If you are a 34-year-old heterosexual woman in New Zealand you have as much chance of finding a male partner your own age as does an 85-year-old woman," Salt said. "This aligns precisely with what's happening in Australia." Mr Salt believes that the main cause of the man drought is that while both men and women head abroad on the great OE, women are far more likely to return, or return unattached. "New Zealand and Australia need to think about defensive migration policies to protect what we've got.
Couples are delaying having children and using IVF as a safety net, according to Australian government-sponsored research into fertility decision making. The results of a study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that 42% of 1,600 people surveyed thought that they would use IVF if they found it difficult to conceive a child. "This is our worry," says researcher Ruth Weston. "The research reveals that couples assume that there is a 'plan B'... We need greater education of women to get the message across that IVF is not necessarily an option."
Some children could legally have three or more parents if the Law Reform Commission in the Australian state of Victoria has its way. It has recommended that the state's adoption law be amended "to permit more than two people to be recognised as the legal parents of a child". Most of the commission's proposals are intended to take same-sex parenting into account. Although the notion of three parents is unconventional, to say the least, the commission feels that it should be possible for donors of sperm or eggs to be recognised as parents in addition to the birth mother and a lesbian partner. It even appears to be open to the idea of four legal parents.
The founder of the modern hospice movement, Dame Cecily Saunders, died early this month in London. She discovered her vocation to care for the dying in 1948 when she fell in love with a dying Polish Jew while working as a "lady almoner", or social worker. She realised that she could only be effective if she obtained a medical degree, and began her studies at the age of 33. In 1967 she opened St Christopher's Hospice, still one of the leaders in the field. In her youth she was an atheist, but became a Christian while training to be a social worker. It was, she said, "as if a switch had flipped". Although the philosophy of her hospice was Christian, people of all persuasions, or none, were welcomed there.
If you think rock music is more popular than classical, think again. Beethoven (1.4m) beat Bono (20,000) in internet downloads from the BBC.
Meet Mark C. Taylor, the virtuoso of Nietzschean boosterism: Say you're a theologian in the religion business who's concluded that your company's oldest and most trusted product doesn't really exist. What do you do after the death of God? You could lie to the customers and stockholders, continue writing copy, and ruefully await retirement. But if you're more imaginative, you could turn your crisis into an opportunity, as consultants like to say, and spin God's death as a new form of life, an "entrance of divinity fully into the human." You could "re-tool" and jump to another firm—English, philosophy, or perhaps a start-up in something-or-other studies. Or, like Mark C. Taylor, you could become an entreprofessor, a broker in the emerging intellectual markets, trading in some of the hottest stocks in cultural capital. Pooling your dwindling fortunes in theology and philosophy with venture capital from postmodernism, you nimbly navigate the volatile and bubbling markets in profundity, hang out with the rich and famous, and after a while you're a pioneer in internet education, adulated in the Sunday New York Times. As long as the bubbles don't burst, and as long as the old business doesn't revive, you're as safe as a tenured academic—which, of course, you are already.
