Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Rodney Hide offers some interesting observations on the reliability of opinion polls: "In no other election have the polls varied so much, National ahead 7%, then Labour 8%, and then neck and neck and now National by 4% depending on whose poll you read. NZ used to be a pollsters paradise. Ask 10 voters in Queen Street and they would give you the same answers as 10 voters in Southland. We are now more diverse. Nearly half of all new Telecom connections refuse to go in the phone book, many young people just have cell phones and telephone ID has led people not to answer the phone to numbers they do not recognise. Pollsters claim to be able to rebalance by instructing callers to get 50/50 male/female, young/old, etc. But they cannot. What if the people who use only cell phones have different politics? Around 100,000 Chinese will vote this election. Mainland Chinese are never going to tell a caller how they will vote. Polls also do not tell us how strongly people hold views."
Attempts by Muslims to allow Sharia law to be applied in certain areas of the law in Ontario, Canada, have come to nothing. In January, the Washington Post reported that a Sharia court was on the verge of being established. However, the Premier of Ontario said yesterday, that all forms of religious arbitration -- including Islam's sharia law -- will be outlawed in Ontario. ''I've come to the conclusion that the debate has gone on long enough,'' Dalton McGuinty told The Canadian Press yesterday. ''There will be no sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians.''
"We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings," writes Roy Hattersley. "The Salvation Army has been given a special status as provider-in-chief of American disaster relief. But its work is being augmented by all sorts of other groups. Almost all of them have a religious origin and character. Notable by their absence are teams from rationalist societies, free thinkers' clubs and atheists' associations - the sort of people who not only scoff at religion's intellectual absurdity but also regard it as a positive force for evil... Civilised people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags and - probably most difficult of all - argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment. Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists. The correlation is so clear that it is impossible to doubt that faith and charity go hand in hand.
As Americans set new records for charitable giving in response to Hurricane Katrina, some fundraisers are seeing a principle confirmed: when the suffers are perceived as innocent victims, donors respond generously. On the other hand, giving patterns suggest donors are losing patience with chronic problems such as poverty, in which suffering is arguably exacerbated by questionable choices. Private donations are shrinking for homeless shelters, AIDS-related services and programs for troubled youth, to cite just a few examples. In religious circles and beyond, some see a troubling trend: Compassion is increasingly being reserved for those who appear to have done no wrong. Charities must now frame issues so that donors believe they are giving to innocent victims.
There is less war than there used to be. Around the world, about 25 places - depending how you count them - are now at war, down from a peak of more than 50 in the early 1990s. In terms of the number of people killed in battle, the world is at a hundred-year low. New conflicts sometimes start up, like Nepal's, but for every new conflict, two old ones are going out of business.
There appears to be an effort by some liberals to tie abortion and the gay agenda to the US Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom. At a recent news conference, several feminist, homosexual and religious-left groups combined their rhetoric to claim that abortion and homosexuality are religious freedoms and part of their right to worship the way they want to. Phyllis Snyder, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, maintained that legalized abortion actually protects religious freedom. "This freedom, guaranteed by the Constitution, is strengthened by the separation of religion and the state," she said. However, Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, says "you can't justify taking human life because it's a religious belief." Schenck called it a new strategy by the left to co-opt abortion... as tenets of religious freedom."
This is the golden age of the internet, a time of glorious anarchy where information is free and anyone, rich or poor, can blog their views to the world. But government and big business are moving in - the clampdown has started.
Attempts by Muslims to allow Sharia law to be applied in certain areas of the law in Ontario, Canada, have come to nothing. In January, the Washington Post reported that a Sharia court was on the verge of being established. However, the Premier of Ontario said yesterday, that all forms of religious arbitration -- including Islam's sharia law -- will be outlawed in Ontario. ''I've come to the conclusion that the debate has gone on long enough,'' Dalton McGuinty told The Canadian Press yesterday. ''There will be no sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians.''
"We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings," writes Roy Hattersley. "The Salvation Army has been given a special status as provider-in-chief of American disaster relief. But its work is being augmented by all sorts of other groups. Almost all of them have a religious origin and character. Notable by their absence are teams from rationalist societies, free thinkers' clubs and atheists' associations - the sort of people who not only scoff at religion's intellectual absurdity but also regard it as a positive force for evil... Civilised people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags and - probably most difficult of all - argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment. Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists. The correlation is so clear that it is impossible to doubt that faith and charity go hand in hand.
As Americans set new records for charitable giving in response to Hurricane Katrina, some fundraisers are seeing a principle confirmed: when the suffers are perceived as innocent victims, donors respond generously. On the other hand, giving patterns suggest donors are losing patience with chronic problems such as poverty, in which suffering is arguably exacerbated by questionable choices. Private donations are shrinking for homeless shelters, AIDS-related services and programs for troubled youth, to cite just a few examples. In religious circles and beyond, some see a troubling trend: Compassion is increasingly being reserved for those who appear to have done no wrong. Charities must now frame issues so that donors believe they are giving to innocent victims.
There is less war than there used to be. Around the world, about 25 places - depending how you count them - are now at war, down from a peak of more than 50 in the early 1990s. In terms of the number of people killed in battle, the world is at a hundred-year low. New conflicts sometimes start up, like Nepal's, but for every new conflict, two old ones are going out of business.
There appears to be an effort by some liberals to tie abortion and the gay agenda to the US Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom. At a recent news conference, several feminist, homosexual and religious-left groups combined their rhetoric to claim that abortion and homosexuality are religious freedoms and part of their right to worship the way they want to. Phyllis Snyder, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, maintained that legalized abortion actually protects religious freedom. "This freedom, guaranteed by the Constitution, is strengthened by the separation of religion and the state," she said. However, Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, says "you can't justify taking human life because it's a religious belief." Schenck called it a new strategy by the left to co-opt abortion... as tenets of religious freedom."
This is the golden age of the internet, a time of glorious anarchy where information is free and anyone, rich or poor, can blog their views to the world. But government and big business are moving in - the clampdown has started.
