Friday, August 19, 2005
New Zealand could be faced with tough new anti-terror laws as officials eye crackdowns in Britain and Australia. The country's top counter-terror policeman, Assistant Commissioner Jon White, said new security laws planned overseas were being monitored, with the tolerance for people who incite terror winding back since last month's London bombings. He said New Zealanders may need to debate at some stage the balance between lost personal freedoms and a more secure nation.
The Police Commissioner's Office has confirmed that smacking your child will be assault if S59 is repealed. A member of the Commissioner's staff has told Craig Smith, National Director of Family Integrity, that if section 59 is repealed in its entirety parents would not be authorised to use reasonable force by way of correction. Having said this, I am advised that parents would still be authorised to use force to prevent harm to their children. For example, if a parent stopped their child from running out onto a busy road or stopped their child from climbing over a balcony on a building. However, smacking of a child by way of corrective action would be an assault. I am advised that the Police in investigating such cases, as is the case with all assault investigations, would consider the amount of force used in the circumstances before making a decision about whether a prosecution is required in the public interest. An aggravating factor in any such decision may be the fact that a child is generally more vulnerable than an adult.
New Zealand's current skills shortage could be eased by retaining people in the labour market past retirement, says Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Judy McGregor. She said many employees aged 65 and older would stay on at work with the right encouragement, but some employers would have to change their thinking and overcome negative stereotypes about the value of mature workers.
IBM New Zealand seems to be setting a good example. It is developing an "intergenerational diversity strategy" to help retain older workers as they come up to, and pass, retirement age. The strategy is part of how the company intends to deal with the labour shortages widely predicted to be inevitable as the growth in the working-age population slows and, by 2022, begins to decline. The company believes the best way to meet the looming skills shortage is to stay connected with older workers.
Schools have been facing challenges over what should be in the library as long as there have been libraries, but recent changes in the world of children's literature and our society have focused the debates on matters of teen sexuality. A recent MSNBC story regarding adolescent reading material describes growing parental concern over the explicit nature of books aimed at young teens. Correspondent Janet Shamlian reports on some recent hot-selling teen titles: "In 'Claiming Georgia Tate,' a father has sex with his daughter. In 'Rainbow Party,' teens make plans for an oral sex party. And in 'Teach Me,' out next week and seemingly ripped from the day's headlines, there's a student-teacher affair." Perhaps the mother of all disputes over school reading material is in Fayetteville, Ark. Laurie Taylor, mother of two school-age children, recently found numerous volumes of fiction that vividly described sexual acts of all sorts. "Doing It" features teacher-pupil sex, "Rainbow Boys" describes adult-teen unprotected sex, and "Choke," uncovering the world of sexaholics, was graphic enough to have portions excerpted in Playboy. Perhaps the worst find was "Push" by author Sapphire. Filled with graphic sex, perhaps the low point is the lead character's description of sex with an infant.
Values will be taught as part of the NZ school curriculum to fill a void left by those parents not instilling them in their children at home. As part of an Education Ministry review, a comprehensive list of values to be taught in schools has been put together, the Dominion Post newspaper reported.
UK Couples could choose the sex of their children to balance their families under a radical overhaul of fertility laws being considered by the Government. Families with a number of sons or daughters may get the right to select an embryo of the opposite sex in the first review of assisted reproduction for 15 years, ministers said yesterday. The dramatic reversal by the Government has reignited controversy over sex selection. Critics fear that sons may be favoured over daughters and predict that the move will make it harder to prevent the selection of traits such as looks or intelligence, should the technology become available.
Organised religion is in near-terminal decline in Britain because parents have only a 50-50 chance of passing on belief to their offspring, a study claimed yesterday. By contrast, parents without faith are successful in producing a new generation of non-believers, it said. The generational decline is too advanced to reverse, the report suggested, as the proportion of people who believe in God is declining faster than church attendance.
After a daylong passionate debate, the national assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America narrowly rejected a proposal to allow homosexual men and lesbians in committed relationships to be ordained as members of the clergy. In an indication of the deep split over homosexuality in the church, which with five million members is the nation's largest Lutheran denomination, the vote on homosexual clergy members at the church's assembly in Orlando, Fla., divided almost evenly, with 49 percent in favor to 51 percent opposed. To pass, the measure required a two-thirds majority.
Tang Chunfeng, the former commercial counselor for the Chinese Embassy in Japan, has warned that a war could break out between China and Japan this year. The remark followed on the heels of Chinese General Zhu Chenghu’s speech on the use of nuclear weapons against the United States. Former Beijing University professor Yuan Hongbing said that Tang’s speech proves again that the CCP’s turn toward fascism presents the most urgent danger for humankind. The danger is no less than before World War II. Earlier this year, there were large-scale anti-Japanese parades in many places throughout China.
There have to be some benefits to living in Iraq. The International Monetary Fund says Iraqi drivers currently pay an average of 5 cents a gallon for gasoline. The low cost is due in large part to generous pre-war government subsidies on petrolium products that remain in place today.
Two studies into whether playing video games breeds violence have come out with totally different conclusions. The first study, released last week by a speech-communication professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said "robust exposure to a highly violent video game" did not prompt players to project violent tendencies into real life. The other, published Wednesday by the American Psychological Association, comes to the opposite conclusion. "Research indicates exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth, the association said in a statement issued Wednesday. In addition, the APA statement said, this exposure reduces helpful behavior and increases physiological arousal in children and adolescents. ... 'Showing violent acts without consequences teaches youth that violence is an effective means of resolving conflict. Whereas, seeing pain and suffering as a consequence can inhibit aggressive behavior,' psychologist Elizabeth Carll, co-chair of the APA Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media, said in a statement."
A nasty new Internet worm is taking advantage of a five-day-old flaw in most recent versions of Windows. This is the same flaw Security Fix warned readers to hurry up and patch using an update Microsoft released on Tuesday. The worm, dubbed Zotob, is based on the well-documented Mytob family of worms, most of which were designed to turn infected computers into "zombies" that attackers can use to send spam, install spyware, attack others online and harvest the victim's personal information.
The Police Commissioner's Office has confirmed that smacking your child will be assault if S59 is repealed. A member of the Commissioner's staff has told Craig Smith, National Director of Family Integrity, that if section 59 is repealed in its entirety parents would not be authorised to use reasonable force by way of correction. Having said this, I am advised that parents would still be authorised to use force to prevent harm to their children. For example, if a parent stopped their child from running out onto a busy road or stopped their child from climbing over a balcony on a building. However, smacking of a child by way of corrective action would be an assault. I am advised that the Police in investigating such cases, as is the case with all assault investigations, would consider the amount of force used in the circumstances before making a decision about whether a prosecution is required in the public interest. An aggravating factor in any such decision may be the fact that a child is generally more vulnerable than an adult.
New Zealand's current skills shortage could be eased by retaining people in the labour market past retirement, says Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Judy McGregor. She said many employees aged 65 and older would stay on at work with the right encouragement, but some employers would have to change their thinking and overcome negative stereotypes about the value of mature workers.
IBM New Zealand seems to be setting a good example. It is developing an "intergenerational diversity strategy" to help retain older workers as they come up to, and pass, retirement age. The strategy is part of how the company intends to deal with the labour shortages widely predicted to be inevitable as the growth in the working-age population slows and, by 2022, begins to decline. The company believes the best way to meet the looming skills shortage is to stay connected with older workers.
Schools have been facing challenges over what should be in the library as long as there have been libraries, but recent changes in the world of children's literature and our society have focused the debates on matters of teen sexuality. A recent MSNBC story regarding adolescent reading material describes growing parental concern over the explicit nature of books aimed at young teens. Correspondent Janet Shamlian reports on some recent hot-selling teen titles: "In 'Claiming Georgia Tate,' a father has sex with his daughter. In 'Rainbow Party,' teens make plans for an oral sex party. And in 'Teach Me,' out next week and seemingly ripped from the day's headlines, there's a student-teacher affair." Perhaps the mother of all disputes over school reading material is in Fayetteville, Ark. Laurie Taylor, mother of two school-age children, recently found numerous volumes of fiction that vividly described sexual acts of all sorts. "Doing It" features teacher-pupil sex, "Rainbow Boys" describes adult-teen unprotected sex, and "Choke," uncovering the world of sexaholics, was graphic enough to have portions excerpted in Playboy. Perhaps the worst find was "Push" by author Sapphire. Filled with graphic sex, perhaps the low point is the lead character's description of sex with an infant.
Values will be taught as part of the NZ school curriculum to fill a void left by those parents not instilling them in their children at home. As part of an Education Ministry review, a comprehensive list of values to be taught in schools has been put together, the Dominion Post newspaper reported.
UK Couples could choose the sex of their children to balance their families under a radical overhaul of fertility laws being considered by the Government. Families with a number of sons or daughters may get the right to select an embryo of the opposite sex in the first review of assisted reproduction for 15 years, ministers said yesterday. The dramatic reversal by the Government has reignited controversy over sex selection. Critics fear that sons may be favoured over daughters and predict that the move will make it harder to prevent the selection of traits such as looks or intelligence, should the technology become available.
Organised religion is in near-terminal decline in Britain because parents have only a 50-50 chance of passing on belief to their offspring, a study claimed yesterday. By contrast, parents without faith are successful in producing a new generation of non-believers, it said. The generational decline is too advanced to reverse, the report suggested, as the proportion of people who believe in God is declining faster than church attendance.
After a daylong passionate debate, the national assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America narrowly rejected a proposal to allow homosexual men and lesbians in committed relationships to be ordained as members of the clergy. In an indication of the deep split over homosexuality in the church, which with five million members is the nation's largest Lutheran denomination, the vote on homosexual clergy members at the church's assembly in Orlando, Fla., divided almost evenly, with 49 percent in favor to 51 percent opposed. To pass, the measure required a two-thirds majority.
Tang Chunfeng, the former commercial counselor for the Chinese Embassy in Japan, has warned that a war could break out between China and Japan this year. The remark followed on the heels of Chinese General Zhu Chenghu’s speech on the use of nuclear weapons against the United States. Former Beijing University professor Yuan Hongbing said that Tang’s speech proves again that the CCP’s turn toward fascism presents the most urgent danger for humankind. The danger is no less than before World War II. Earlier this year, there were large-scale anti-Japanese parades in many places throughout China.
There have to be some benefits to living in Iraq. The International Monetary Fund says Iraqi drivers currently pay an average of 5 cents a gallon for gasoline. The low cost is due in large part to generous pre-war government subsidies on petrolium products that remain in place today.
Two studies into whether playing video games breeds violence have come out with totally different conclusions. The first study, released last week by a speech-communication professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said "robust exposure to a highly violent video game" did not prompt players to project violent tendencies into real life. The other, published Wednesday by the American Psychological Association, comes to the opposite conclusion. "Research indicates exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth, the association said in a statement issued Wednesday. In addition, the APA statement said, this exposure reduces helpful behavior and increases physiological arousal in children and adolescents. ... 'Showing violent acts without consequences teaches youth that violence is an effective means of resolving conflict. Whereas, seeing pain and suffering as a consequence can inhibit aggressive behavior,' psychologist Elizabeth Carll, co-chair of the APA Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media, said in a statement."
A nasty new Internet worm is taking advantage of a five-day-old flaw in most recent versions of Windows. This is the same flaw Security Fix warned readers to hurry up and patch using an update Microsoft released on Tuesday. The worm, dubbed Zotob, is based on the well-documented Mytob family of worms, most of which were designed to turn infected computers into "zombies" that attackers can use to send spam, install spyware, attack others online and harvest the victim's personal information.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
I am trying hard to pick my jaw up off the floor. For months Michael Cullen has been telling us that there is no money for tax cuts, and National will have to cut spending on health, education and the like to fund them. Suddenly, Helen Clark blithely announces that Labour will provide tax relief to 60,000 more working families from April next year. The sheer audacity of this takes the breath away!
Ms Clark also says it shows how targeted assistance can put more in the pockets of people than a tax cut does. Well of course it does. You take from a lot of people and you give back to a few. The "lot" who are not targeted don't get any increase, and certainly have no say in how their money is spent.
But the government knows better than you how to spend your money.
Ms Clark also says it shows how targeted assistance can put more in the pockets of people than a tax cut does. Well of course it does. You take from a lot of people and you give back to a few. The "lot" who are not targeted don't get any increase, and certainly have no say in how their money is spent.
But the government knows better than you how to spend your money.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
In this topsy-turvy world, many voters are looking for a clear moral standard, says the NZ Herald. They want a law which defines what is right and wrong and sets out a process by which wrongdoers can accept responsibility for their actions, apologise and make restitution to those they harmed.
Veteran BBC newsreader Michael Buerk has complained that "almost all the big jobs in broadcasting [are] held by women," and that men have been reduced to "sperm donors". Buerk says the "shift in the balance of power between the sexes" has gone too far, and "life is now lived in accordance with women's rules". The development has "changed the nature of almost every aspect of the marketplace". "There is no manufacturing industry any more; there are no mines; few vital jobs require physical strength. What we have now are lots of jobs that require people skills and multi-tasking - which women are a lot better at. The traits that have traditionally been associated with men - reticence, stoicism, single-mindedness - have been marginalised," he said. "The result is that men are becoming more like women. "Look at the men who are being held up as sporting icons - David Beckham and, God forbid, Tim Henman," he said. "What are the men left with?" He said that, while men measure themselves in terms of their jobs, many traditionally male careers no longer exist. "Men gauge themselves in terms of their career, but many of those have disappeared," he said. "All they are is sperm donors, and most women aren't going to want an unemployable sperm donor loafing around and making the house look untidy. They are choosing not to have a male in the household."
Workers repairing a sewage pipe in the Old City of Jerusalem have discovered the biblical Pool of Siloam, a freshwater reservoir that was a major gathering place for ancient Jews making religious pilgrimages to the city and the reputed site where Jesus cured a man blind from birth, according to the Gospel of John. The pool was fed by the now famous Hezekiah's Tunnel and is "a much grander affair" than archeologists previously believed, with three tiers of stone stairs allowing easy access to the water, said Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, which reported the find. "Scholars have said that there wasn't a Pool of Siloam and that John was using a religious conceit" to illustrate a point, said New Testament scholar James H. Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary. "Now we have found the Pool of Siloam … exactly where John said it was."
"While some are heaving a sigh of despair that Europe simply forgot its Christian roots somewhere along the way, George Weigel demonstrates that apathy alone is not the cause of empty churches, plummeting birthrates, and defunct welfare programs on the European continent. Nor is it a matter of Europe deciding that God isn't so important, after all, for public life. Rather, it is the overt and occasionally militant attitude that Christianity is actually harmful to political stability and social progress. Europe is not suffering so much from amnesia as from a severe case of what Joseph Weiler calls "Christophobia." Those who campaigned against the inclusion of any reference to Christianity in the EU constitution stood on the following platform: "not only can there be politics without God, there must be politics without God." Weigel points out that the sinking morale across Europe suggests "that the winners of the European constitutional debate are seriously mistaken."
Paramount Pictures is headed to Sunday school with the purchase of the A.J. Jacobs novel The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Obey the Bible as Literally as Possible. The studio has taken the book to Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment, which will serve as the producer of the adaptation. Living Biblically will be published by Simon & Schuster in fall 2006. In the book, Jacobs, an editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, spent a year of his life trying to live, literally, by the rules set forth in both the Old and New Testaments.
Getting restless Muslim youths to watch more English Premier League soccer is the latest Thai Government initiative to quell an Islamic insurgency in the country's south, a key government minister said yesterday. Under the plan, Thailand's Interior Ministry will bear the cost of installing 500 television sets at community tea and coffee shops, where cable operators will televise every English Premier League match. The commentary and narration will be in Yawi, the dialect of Muslims living in the restive area. The ministry "will tame these young people, getting them to think of sports and watch the league on television rather than going out and killing people", Interior Minister Kongsak Wanthana told reporters.
Archivists worldwide are struggling with a giant dilemma: they are looking for just one stable format for digital storage that will last more than just a few decades. In an era exploding with digital formats it seems that microfilm has become the last back-up, a simple strip of celluloid film that only needs a torch and a magnifying glass to access it. Long after the original paper documents have crumbled to dust and photographs have faded, long after hard drives, digital tapes and CDs have become obsolete, many experts believe these film strips will continue to reveal our history - perhaps for as long as 500 years.
Veteran BBC newsreader Michael Buerk has complained that "almost all the big jobs in broadcasting [are] held by women," and that men have been reduced to "sperm donors". Buerk says the "shift in the balance of power between the sexes" has gone too far, and "life is now lived in accordance with women's rules". The development has "changed the nature of almost every aspect of the marketplace". "There is no manufacturing industry any more; there are no mines; few vital jobs require physical strength. What we have now are lots of jobs that require people skills and multi-tasking - which women are a lot better at. The traits that have traditionally been associated with men - reticence, stoicism, single-mindedness - have been marginalised," he said. "The result is that men are becoming more like women. "Look at the men who are being held up as sporting icons - David Beckham and, God forbid, Tim Henman," he said. "What are the men left with?" He said that, while men measure themselves in terms of their jobs, many traditionally male careers no longer exist. "Men gauge themselves in terms of their career, but many of those have disappeared," he said. "All they are is sperm donors, and most women aren't going to want an unemployable sperm donor loafing around and making the house look untidy. They are choosing not to have a male in the household."
Workers repairing a sewage pipe in the Old City of Jerusalem have discovered the biblical Pool of Siloam, a freshwater reservoir that was a major gathering place for ancient Jews making religious pilgrimages to the city and the reputed site where Jesus cured a man blind from birth, according to the Gospel of John. The pool was fed by the now famous Hezekiah's Tunnel and is "a much grander affair" than archeologists previously believed, with three tiers of stone stairs allowing easy access to the water, said Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, which reported the find. "Scholars have said that there wasn't a Pool of Siloam and that John was using a religious conceit" to illustrate a point, said New Testament scholar James H. Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary. "Now we have found the Pool of Siloam … exactly where John said it was."
"While some are heaving a sigh of despair that Europe simply forgot its Christian roots somewhere along the way, George Weigel demonstrates that apathy alone is not the cause of empty churches, plummeting birthrates, and defunct welfare programs on the European continent. Nor is it a matter of Europe deciding that God isn't so important, after all, for public life. Rather, it is the overt and occasionally militant attitude that Christianity is actually harmful to political stability and social progress. Europe is not suffering so much from amnesia as from a severe case of what Joseph Weiler calls "Christophobia." Those who campaigned against the inclusion of any reference to Christianity in the EU constitution stood on the following platform: "not only can there be politics without God, there must be politics without God." Weigel points out that the sinking morale across Europe suggests "that the winners of the European constitutional debate are seriously mistaken."
Paramount Pictures is headed to Sunday school with the purchase of the A.J. Jacobs novel The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Obey the Bible as Literally as Possible. The studio has taken the book to Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment, which will serve as the producer of the adaptation. Living Biblically will be published by Simon & Schuster in fall 2006. In the book, Jacobs, an editor-at-large at Esquire magazine, spent a year of his life trying to live, literally, by the rules set forth in both the Old and New Testaments.
Getting restless Muslim youths to watch more English Premier League soccer is the latest Thai Government initiative to quell an Islamic insurgency in the country's south, a key government minister said yesterday. Under the plan, Thailand's Interior Ministry will bear the cost of installing 500 television sets at community tea and coffee shops, where cable operators will televise every English Premier League match. The commentary and narration will be in Yawi, the dialect of Muslims living in the restive area. The ministry "will tame these young people, getting them to think of sports and watch the league on television rather than going out and killing people", Interior Minister Kongsak Wanthana told reporters.
Archivists worldwide are struggling with a giant dilemma: they are looking for just one stable format for digital storage that will last more than just a few decades. In an era exploding with digital formats it seems that microfilm has become the last back-up, a simple strip of celluloid film that only needs a torch and a magnifying glass to access it. Long after the original paper documents have crumbled to dust and photographs have faded, long after hard drives, digital tapes and CDs have become obsolete, many experts believe these film strips will continue to reveal our history - perhaps for as long as 500 years.
Monday, August 15, 2005
You can almost guarantee this will happen in New Zealand, too, before long. A lesbian couple are launching a High Court battle to get same-sex marriages legally recognised in Britain. Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson were married while living in Canada in 2003 and now want a legal declaration of the validity of their union in the UK.
Kiwi couples are avoiding making "till death do us part" wedding vows in favour of more cautious promises such as staying together for "as long as love shall last". Marriage celebrants report that traditions such as something old, new, borrowed and blue endure, but vows are getting a shake-up, and some are shying away from promising forever. Catholic Church communications director Lindsay Freer said conditions and disclaimers such as "as long as love lasts" were undermining the commitment of marriage. "It's symptomatic of this disposable mentality society where nothing's for keeps and everything can be changed."
Today's voters judge political parties more by their managerial style than their policies, reckons Colin James. He has an interesting analysis in this article of the differences between the two major parties.
Morality has emerged as the sleeper issue in the election campaign, and the National Party looks set to benefit from a deep dissatisfaction with the country's moral direction, according to the Sunday Star-Times. More than 10,000 people responded to the SST's Great Morality Debate, making it one of the largest polls of its kind in the world.
Top principals predict first-year exams for the secondary school NCEA will be wiped within three years. Their forecasts follow a critical report on the Qualifications Authority's delivery of secondary school qualifications, released 10 days ago, and could mean that millions were spent on a qualification which may last only a few years. The report also found that the amount of assessment in New Zealand was "not sustainable". Auckland Grammar principal John Morris said education sources had told him external exams for level one students - fifth formers - would not survive.
A Chief Constable in the UK is asking his 4,000 officers to wear green ribbons, the traditional colour of Islam, to show solidarity with Muslims after the London bomb attacks. [So what colour ribbon should other citizens ask police to wear to show solidarity with them when a family member is murdered?]
What's the difference between religious tolerance and religious liberty? "For those who advocate tolerance, religion is a purely private matter and therefore it should never intrude upon public affairs. The tolerance crowd also tends to assume that all religions are in reality the same thing. They are merely different paths to the same god. If this be true, adherents of one religion should never attempt to convert others. Anything other than religious indifference is in bad form and considered intolerant by the tolerance police."
When Lutherans in the USA sing from now on, there'll be no "Father", "Son" or "Holy Spirit". Instead, they'll sing of the "Holy Eternal Majesty", "Holy Incarnate Word", "Holy Abiding Spirit". And now for the thorny issue - they'll decide this week whether to allow homosexual priests.
For millennia our technologies — fire, clothes, agriculture, cities, space travel — have been aimed at modifying our environment. Now, for the first time, our technologies are increasingly aimed inward — at altering our minds, memories, metabolisms, personalities and progeny. We must decide how radically we want technology to change the way we live.
Kiwi couples are avoiding making "till death do us part" wedding vows in favour of more cautious promises such as staying together for "as long as love shall last". Marriage celebrants report that traditions such as something old, new, borrowed and blue endure, but vows are getting a shake-up, and some are shying away from promising forever. Catholic Church communications director Lindsay Freer said conditions and disclaimers such as "as long as love lasts" were undermining the commitment of marriage. "It's symptomatic of this disposable mentality society where nothing's for keeps and everything can be changed."
Today's voters judge political parties more by their managerial style than their policies, reckons Colin James. He has an interesting analysis in this article of the differences between the two major parties.
Morality has emerged as the sleeper issue in the election campaign, and the National Party looks set to benefit from a deep dissatisfaction with the country's moral direction, according to the Sunday Star-Times. More than 10,000 people responded to the SST's Great Morality Debate, making it one of the largest polls of its kind in the world.
Top principals predict first-year exams for the secondary school NCEA will be wiped within three years. Their forecasts follow a critical report on the Qualifications Authority's delivery of secondary school qualifications, released 10 days ago, and could mean that millions were spent on a qualification which may last only a few years. The report also found that the amount of assessment in New Zealand was "not sustainable". Auckland Grammar principal John Morris said education sources had told him external exams for level one students - fifth formers - would not survive.
A Chief Constable in the UK is asking his 4,000 officers to wear green ribbons, the traditional colour of Islam, to show solidarity with Muslims after the London bomb attacks. [So what colour ribbon should other citizens ask police to wear to show solidarity with them when a family member is murdered?]
What's the difference between religious tolerance and religious liberty? "For those who advocate tolerance, religion is a purely private matter and therefore it should never intrude upon public affairs. The tolerance crowd also tends to assume that all religions are in reality the same thing. They are merely different paths to the same god. If this be true, adherents of one religion should never attempt to convert others. Anything other than religious indifference is in bad form and considered intolerant by the tolerance police."
When Lutherans in the USA sing from now on, there'll be no "Father", "Son" or "Holy Spirit". Instead, they'll sing of the "Holy Eternal Majesty", "Holy Incarnate Word", "Holy Abiding Spirit". And now for the thorny issue - they'll decide this week whether to allow homosexual priests.
For millennia our technologies — fire, clothes, agriculture, cities, space travel — have been aimed at modifying our environment. Now, for the first time, our technologies are increasingly aimed inward — at altering our minds, memories, metabolisms, personalities and progeny. We must decide how radically we want technology to change the way we live.
