Friday, April 29, 2005
The report, which contains no recommendations, has been published on a dedicated select committee website, a first for a New Zealand Parliament. Only 48 submissions were received in the committee's initial inquiry (maybe, because we were only given a couple of weeks to submit, which was ludicrous on such a complex topic).
The growing secularisation of Scottish society has forced one of the country's leading universities, Stirling University, to scrap its undergraduate honours degree in religious education. As a result of a steady decline in student numbers over the past decade, the religious studies department - which covers a range of faiths including Christianity, Islam and Buddhism - will now be merged with modern languages and culture.
A major new NZ website promoting life-related issues has just been launched. So far there are 1000+ pages of resources and growing at www.life.org.nz
More on how the digital age is reshaping culture. First we had Blogging, a combination of personal diary and backdoor news dissemination. Podcasting (highlighted in the Briefing earlier this week) is the audio equivalent. Now emerging from under the radar is internet TV, but not TV as you've known it. (It's so new that no-one has a name for it yet). Several major ventures have just been launched. This is all happening at such break-neck speed that it's impossible to tell what the end impact will be.
"Kids today are growing up without any understanding of the incremental steps of getting to know each other,” says the author of a new study into young people's sexual behaviour and attitudes. Throughout popular culture, bodies simply collide like runaway railway cars. Armstrong Williams explores some of the consequences.
Another study confirms that abstinence education works: A comprehensive look at the Best Friends program found participants are six times less likely to have sex than their peers. The curriculum is designed for elementary, middle and high school girls.
What exactly did Andrea Dworkin (the radical feminist who died earlier this month) actually stand for? She is often credited for campaigning against pornography and violence, but Cathy Young says this masks her complete hatred of men and vitriol against all heterosexual sex.
There are very few excuses for missed assignments that Mike Adams hasn't heard over the years. Here are some of his responses, plus an open letter to his university colleagues. "Dear Colleagues: Have you ever thought that having so many liberal professors causes students to develop a skewed view of the world? Do you ever think about the consequences of teaching students that there are no absolutes and that there is no free will? Do you see any link between these teachings and their refusal to accept your answers as right and theirs as wrong? Do you see any link between these teachings and their refusal to take any responsibility for their actions?"
The postmodern mind does not seem to appreciate how many the ideas and values it holds are contradictory. For example, the Walt Disney company is building a new theme park in Hong Kong, and to placate local religious sensitivities it has engaged feng shui masters to consult on design, and is burning incense ritually as each building is finished. At the same time, Disney finds no difficulty in insulting Christians back home with practices at Disneyland and in the films it makes.
Tail-out: Actually, three for the price of one today, as I didn't include one yesterday! 1) Two women who gave their life savings to an apocalyptic religious group sued the church because it failed to make good on promises that in return for their money the women get land and see Christ face-to-face.
2) Derrinallum, a tiny farming town in Victoria, Aust, has been given permission to create what is believed to be Australia's first vertical cemetery, burying its dead on their feet, without headstones, in environmentally sound body bags.
3) An Indian who became a man to marry a female relative was dumped after the surgery.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
The government has launched a draft all-ages suicide prevention strategy and is asking members of the public to have their input with submissions and public meetings.
Figures from the US Bureau of Justice show the number of people behind bars in the US has grown by over 2 percent in just the last year. In three decades, the prison population has gone from 300,000 in 1970 to more than 2 million today.
Legislation aimed at giving US families more control over keeping questionable material off of their television screen has been signed by President Bush. The bill, called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, allows companies to develop filtering software to skip or mute sections of DVDs with violence, sex and foul language without getting sued by filmmakers.
The latest European statistics show that 3.9% of all births in Denmark came as a result of IVF -- probably the highest proportion in the world. The next highest was Slovenia, with 3.2%, but in all the Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, more than 2% of births are IVF births. Since the most recent figures date from 2001, the current levels are sure to be higher.
"All around I see mounting social anarchy, gross corruption in the democratic process, the destruction of liberty, mass ignorance and brutality, paralysis in the police, the breakdown of the family and the loss of any faith in the justice system....Yet I am informed that I must celebrate diversity, celebrate the new richness of multi-ethnic Britain."
Recently, Canary pointed to a story showing how the iPod is reshaping culture on the street. It's also starting to have its impact on the radio scene. (Sadly, I can't see the equivalent happening in New Zealand, where radio stations are stuck in a narrow, narcissistic groove. I worked for years for some of them, so I know whereof I speak.) This little gadget is having a cultural impact way beyond its size.
Nokia today launched three new mobile handsets, hoping users will be seduced by the smart phones' built-in multimedia gadgets, which take print-quality pictures, read e-mail, play music, browse Web sites, and display mobile TV. [But can it make telephone calls?]
"The decisive culture war of the 21st century is likely to be between the Darwinian fundamentalists and those who believe in God and the significance of human life," writes Paul Johnson. "It will be prolonged and bitter. Culture wars do not usually end in bloodshed but they break hearts and minds and bring terrible sufferings to the losers (and to many of the winners too)." (This article is available only to Spectator subscribers, but it is easy to find other writing by Johnson on the same topic by Googling some of the key words.)
In his 1993 book, "No Place for Truth," author David Wells wrote: "I have watched with growing disbelief as the evangelical church has cheerfully plunged into astounding theological illiteracy." Some years ago Bill Tammeus became so exasperated by this phenomenon in his own denomination that he began teaching a course called "Theology Even the Clergy Can Understand." He says theological illiteracy is now rampant.
Controversial religious imagery took over from sex last year as the main way UK advertisers chose to get their message across, according to an industry watchdog.
Family doctors in Belgium who want to euthanase their patients can now purchase a 60-Euro kit with the necessary materials at 250 pharmacies throughout the country. Belgian doctors have complained that it has been difficult to practice home euthanasia because of their lack of knowledge about products, doses or products.
Aborted Ukrainian foetuses are being smuggled into Russia to be used as beauty therapies in Russia, the Observer newspaper (UK) claims. Young women are being paid about US$200 for a foetus which can fetch $9,500 across the border.
Scientists can create animals with the cells of other species, but are these chimeras medical marvels or high-tech monsters? The blending of species have raised a host of ethical and philosophical questions over the last year. This article raises some good questions - unfortunately, it does little to answer them.
An analysis by a Democratic think tank argues that Democrats are suffering from a severe "parent gap" among married people with children, who say the entertainment industry is lowering the moral standards of the country. The study, published last week by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the policy arm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, admonishes Democrats to pay more attention to parental concerns about "morally corrosive forces in the culture," and warns that the party will not fare better with this pivotal voting bloc until they do.
Parents are up to six times more important to a child's academic success than their schooling, according to research from Exeter University. Charles Desforges reviewed studies from around the world, comparing children's attainment with the level of support they received from parents, and found that parental involvement had more bearing on a child's attainment than any other factor including social class. Prof Desforges noted the importance of "at-home good parenting", where mothers and fathers offered a stable environment and intellectual stimulation - including regular talks and discussions with their children. If all schools could be made equally good, said Desforges, that would reduce differences in attainment amongst 7-year-olds by only five per cent. "But if you make all parents equally good at parenting … it would reduce differences … by 30 per cent."
Could this be the excuse that Bush would use to invade Iran? WorldNetDaily reports: Iran is not only covertly developing nuclear weapons, it is testing ballistic missiles specifically designed to destroy America's technical infrastructure, effectively neutralizing the world's lone superpower, say U.S. intelligence sources, top scientists and western missile industry experts. Even one electromagnetic pulse weapon could effectively send the continental US back to the 19th century with a recovery time of months or years.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Meanwhile, New Zealand Refining chief executive Thomas Zengerly says we'll just have to get used to permanently high prices for petrol. World supply of oil is around 80 million barrels a day short of supply.
Against this, Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, has just outlined a $50 billion plan to boost production in what US officials called a "very ambitious" step toward tamping down surging oil and gasoline prices.
Wal-Mart, the giant American retailing chain, has become the target of major protests across the US lately. Critics claim that Wal-Mart's business practices are immoral and unfair. Are they correct? This article examines what constitutes ethical business - the questions could easily apply to The Warehouse in this country, of course.
Meanwhile, in a 108-page report released today, Nike has admitted sweatshop conditions prevail in 569 of 830 factories worldwide where its footwear, apparel and sports equipment are made. Nike's "corporate responsibility" report doesn't make for a pretty picture. From excessively long work weeks and wrong wage calculations to verbal abuse and curbs on toilet visits, the findings confirm a pervasive culture of exploitation. At risk are as many as 650,000 workers in factories located from Australia and China to the US and Vietnam. Most of them are women aged between 19 and 25.
There's still money in them-thar dot-coms. Google has reported that its earnings for the first quarter of this year have jumped 477%.
British pop star Elton John intends to marry his long term partner David Furnish some time this year or in 2006.
The NZ Herald says couples here appear to be in no rush to tie the civil union knot (CU's become available from this week). One of the first ceremonies is likely to be conducted by Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast.
And Don Brash has explained his "flip flop" over voting on Civil Unions.
Meanwhile, pop star Moby, known for his political statements as well as his music, says he'd do everything he could to make his future child homosexual should the singer ever have a family.
The cost of family violence goes up. A $12 million "investment" in services for children who witness family violence is a key part of the government's commitment to eliminating violence within families, says Child Youth and Family Minister Ruth Dyson. The service will see up to 45 child advocates placed in community NGOs around the country. Their role will include: Education and awareness of the effects of family violence on children; ensuring all agencies respond to the needs of the child; advice and consultation with those working one-on-one with a child; specialist assessment and referral for individual children where necessary.
Simon Upton does his best to untangle the amazingly contradictory web that surrounds French attitudes towards the proposed European Constitution. A French "no" vote against the constitution is very much on the cards, which could throw the EU into a constitutional crisis. Upton also asks, is there a moral in this for New Zealanders? "At least one. That is, if we’re going to play around with our constitutional arrangements, we’d be best to do so in the face of a real, grass roots based desire for change, preferably driven by real dysfunctionality rather than the whims of an elite. The process, furthermore, has to be insulated from concurrent dissatisfaction with other problems."
Researchers have just added to the woes of pessimists by finding that they are at greater risk for dementia in later life. Dr Yonas Geda and colleagues looked at the records of 3500 men and women who took a personality test at the Mayo Clinic in 1962 and 1965. By 2004, those who had scored high for pessimism were on average 30 per cent more likely to have developed dementia. Those scoring high on both pessimism and anxiety had a 40 per cent higher risk.
The idea that the happiness of one spouse in a marriage contributes to the happiness of the other has been confirmed by British researchers, but it doesn't work the same among cohabiting couples. Nick Powdthavee of the University of Warwick looked at data for 4,852 married couples from the British Household Panel Survey (1996-2000 and 2002) and found that husbands and wives were more satisfied with their lives when their spouse was happy, even if they did not directly share in the spouse's good fortune. The effect was not nearly so strong for cohabiting couples, who tended to care more about their personal autonomy and less about the happiness of their partner, said Powdthavee.
(The following is from a US article, but the figures are very similar to NZ.) The endlessly quoted statistic that one in two marriages ends in divorce is false. The figure is based on a simple - and flawed - calculation: the annual marriage rate per 1,000 people compared with the annual divorce rate. But researchers say that this is misleading because the people who are divorcing in any given year are not the same as those who are marrying, and that the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates. In fact, studies find that the divorce rate in the United States has never reached one in every two marriages, and new research suggests that, with rates now declining, it probably never will. The method preferred by social scientists in determining the divorce rate is to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced. Counted that way, the rate has never exceeded about 41 percent. Although sharply rising rates in the 1970s led some to project that the number would keep increasing, the rate has instead begun to inch downward.
Concern is growing amongst American teachers at the spread of foul language in schools. "Cussing" is not only coarsening the school climate but leads to a decline in language skills, says James V O'Connor, director of the Cuss Control Academy [yes, that's right] in Lake Forest, Illinois.
A 'culture clash' could be looming over human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine. American drug company Merck wants to convince authorities to require vaccination of girls by the age of 12, and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline plans to push for vaccination as young as 10. It's supposedly in aid of preventing a leading cause of cervical cancer, as sexually transmitted diseases are at epidemic levels. A lot of parents, however, are opposed, some on the grounds it could lead children to engage in sexual activity earlier. [Note: what is the ethical difference between forced vaccination against an STI, and forcing all children to carry condoms?]
Spain is set to pass a law forcing men to "share domestic responsibilities and the care and attention" of children and elderly family members. The amendment has the backing of every Spanish party and will be incorporated into the marriage contract at civil wedding ceremonies. It will be applied in divorce proceedings: men who don't do their share could be given less time with their children.
Pope Benedict XVI began his pontificate yesterday with a centuries-old investiture ceremony in which he urged Christians, Jews and nonbelievers to rediscover spirituality and escape the "deserts" of poverty, hunger and loneliness.
Tail-out: Some 80 per cent of people in Britain don't know who the Archbishop of Canterbury is, according to a poll commissioned by The Times. Almost one in twenty thought that Pope John Paul ll was in fact the senior Anglican leader.
