Canary in the Mine

New Zealand children are not as street-smart as they once were – thanks to over-protective parents, a new study shows. Over-protective parents were to blame for the "massive" decline in children's freedom over the past 20 years, University of New South Wales geographer Dr Paul Tranter told The Press yesterday. Their restricted environment had created a generation of obese, tense, unhealthy adults.

The Disney movie "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe," based on the classic by C.S. Lewis, will be out December 9, but some are arguing that schoolchildren should not be encouraged to read the book. One example: Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is sponsoring a contest urging students to read books in "The Chronicles of Narnia" series. Robert Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU), said students should not be encouraged to read a Christian book. "Our attorneys sent a letter to the governor and basically asked that the state not sponsor a contest that revolves around reading religious material," he told Family News in Focus.

More than 60 Christian converts in northern India will be burned to death if they refuse to return to Hinduism by Sunday, a group of extremists has warned. The radical Hindus severely beat the converts' pastor, Feroz Masih, in a Nov. 4 attack in the state of Himachal Pradesh, accusing him of "forcibly converting" Hindus, reported Compass Direct, a news service that monitors persecution of Christians. The pastor's son, Ramesh, told Compass Direct the estimated 10 attackers were members of the World Hindu Council and its youth wing Bajrang Dal, which has been blamed for waves of attacks against Christians and other religious minorities since the rise of the Hindu nationalist party BJP in the late 1990s. The attackers forced Masih, 62, to sign a document stating his willingness to participate in a ceremony Sunday in which all of the Christians would convert back to Hinduism, Ramesh said. If the pastor or church members refuse to participate, they will be burned to death, the radicals warned.

It's good to know the Defender of the Faith is defending the faith: "The Queen opened the Church of England's General Synod yesterday with a ringing endorsement of the "uniqueness" of the Christian faith. In a speech that reflected her personal beliefs as well as her role as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, she contrasted the enduring nature of Christianity with the rapid changes in society. "For Christians, this pace of change represents an opportunity," she told a packed hall in Church House, Westminster. "When so much is in flux, when limitless amounts of information, much of it ephemeral, are instantly accessible on demand, there is a renewed hunger for that which endures and gives meaning. The Christian Church can speak uniquely to that need, for at the heart of our faith stands the conviction that all people, irrespective of race, background or circumstances, can find lasting significance and purpose in the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

"Believing they can find Zen in an overcrowded mall, some Canadians are turning their holiday shopping into unlikely spiritual missions. Inspired by stores that reconcile social responsibility with superfluous luxury, these deep-pocketed consumers believe the more they spend, the greater their contribution to the Earth -- and to their sense of inner peace. The ideology -- which takes the notion of shopping as religion all too seriously -- even comes with its own catchy name: metrospirituality. "A metrospiritual is a kinder, gentler yuppie," explains journalist Ariana Speyer, who identified the trend for BeliefNet.com. In a recent article for the popular multi-faith Web site, she describes the consumer practice as a mainstreaming of Eastern religious values into "an easily digestible, buyable form," rather like shopping your way to salvation.

"Christian feminists" have become "biblical egalitarians," though the former term is still used by some. Likewise, "patriarchalists," "hierarchalists," and "traditionalists" have become "complementarians." [you've got to keep up with the language, folks!]

Here is one of the unintended consequences of China's one-child policy: "Of all the impending Third World aging tsunamis, the most massive is set to strike China. Between 2005 and 2025, about two- thirds of China's total population growth will occur in the 65-plus ages--a cohort likely to double in size to roughly 200 million people. By then, China's median age may be higher than America's. Notwithstanding the recent decades of rapid growth, China is still a poor society, with per-capita income not much more than a tenth of the present U.S. level. How will China support its burgeoning elderly population? Not through the country's existing state pension system: That patchwork, covering less than a fifth of the total Chinese workforce, already has unfunded liabilities exceeding China's current GDP. Since the government pension system is clearly unsustainable, China's social security system in the future will mainly be the family unit. But the government's continuing antinatal population drive makes the family an ever-frailer construct for old-age support. Where in the early 1990s the average 60-year-old Chinese woman had five children, her counterpart in 2025 will have had fewer than two. No less important, China's retirees face a growing "son deficit." In Chinese tradition it is sons, rather than daughters, upon whom the first duty to care for aged parents falls. By 2025, a third or more of Chinese women approaching retirement age will likely have no living sons.

Two "wrongful life" cases are being studied by the High Court of Australia. One involves Alexia Harriton, a 24-year-old woman who is blind, deaf, spastic and mentally retarded after her mother contracted rubella during pregnancy. Olga Harriton, her mother, says that she would have aborted Alexia if she had been properly advised. The other case involves a 5-year-old girl, Keeden Walker, who has permanent brain damage, cerebral palsy and seizures because of a genetic disorder passed on by her father. Her parents say that they would have used IVF with donor sperm or would have aborted her if they had known. The two cases raise difficult issues of law. Recognising the notion of "wrongful life" might lead to a situation in which there is a duty to have an abortion, commented Chief Justice Murray Gleeson. As well, how can there be damages if there is no life before the negligence? Is there a potential conflict between the interests of the parents and the child? It will be some time before the High Court hands down its decision.

Only days after the world's leading embryonic stem cell researcher began receiving thousands of applications from sick patients who want him to make therapeutic clones with their genes, his project has sunk into a morass of scandal. Hwang Woo-suk became a world celebrity after creating the first human embryonic stem cell lines. Now he has been accused of lying and unethical practices by his American colleague.
~ Washington Post, Nov 12; Korea Times, Nov 14; blog.bioethics.net, Nov 13

The attempt by the United Nations to take over control of the Internet from the USA appears to have resulted in a stand-off, for the present. For the moment, the US will keep control of the domain name registration and allocation.

Once upon a time, conmen used to sell the London Bridge to unthinking Americans. These days, a Chinese company is attempting to sell one-acre plots on the moon to whoever will buy. How you can sell something you don't own is a moot point, of course.

Helen Clark seems to be intent on making sure that the United States stays cool towards New Zealand. Her new foreign minister, Winston Peters, raised hopes a week or two back that there might be the chance for new dialogue between our two countries. But the Prime Minister has dashed that hope.

"They came in buses to the small village of Sangla Hill in the Nankana district of Punjab in Pakistan. Some 2,000 organized Muslims first vandalized three churches, a nuns' convent, two Catholic schools, the houses of a Protestant pastor and a Catholic priest, a girls' hostel and some Christian homes, according to Asia News. Then they burned them to the ground, while about 450 Christian families fled yesterday. They have not returned. The Justice and Peace Commission accuses the police of "criminal negligence" because they did not intervene.

Michael Newdow, perhaps America's best known atheist, has a new target in his personal war against God in the public domain: "In God We Trust" on US money. "I am about to file [in the courts] to get 'In God We Trust' off the front of our currency," he told the Oklahoman. "I plan to do that this week." "The key principle is that we're supposed to treat everybody equally especially in terms of religious belief," Newdow told KWTV in Oklahoma City. "Clearly it's not treating atheists equal with people who believe in God when you say 'In God We Trust' or we are a 'nation under God.'"

"The new methods of communicating are creating intriguing services that beat old ways of sending information. But law enforcement makes a sombre claim: these new networks will become a boon to criminals and terrorists unless the government can easily listen in. Authorities are justified in trying to reduce the ways that technology helps dangerous people operate in the shadows, said Daniel Solove, author of The Digital Person. But a parallel concern is that technology can end up increasing the government's surveillance power rather than just maintaining it."

A battle has begun over your ability in years to come to read archives of computer documents. Currently, the bulk of word processing documents are created in Microsoft Word. So, effectively, archiving for future generations is controlled by a commercial company that jealously guards its software and the computer code that creates it. But many governments, to say nothing of individuals, are not happy about this state of affairs. So they are trying to have an OpenDocument format accepted worldwide, which does not rely on Microsoft and which can be read by public domain software.

If you think Google is big now, you've not seen anything yet. The company's future plans encompass just about every aspect of information technology you could imagine - plus a lot you probably can't.

In one of the best (if not THE best) science fiction series written -- "Enders Game" by Orson Scott Card -- Ender Wiggins has an assistant by the name of Jane, a super-intelligence who inhabits all the computers of the universe. (She doesn't pop up until Book 2 of the 4-book series. Please read them all - they are brilliant.) Anyway, it appears that the fictional "Jane" is about to be overtaken by reality. Within 10 years, what we now know as the Internet will have become a World Wide Brain. This article examines the implications.

Archaeologists digging at Gath, the biblical home of Goliath, have unearthed a shard of pottery bearing the Philistine's name, lending credence to the Biblical tale of David's battle.

Perhaps mindful of the French example, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has refused to back a multicultural Australia, saying he preferred a cohesive, integrated society. Asked if he liked the word "multiculturalism", Mr Howard said: "No, not particularly. Different people have different versions of what it means. I'm in favour of drawing people from everywhere and when they come to this country I'm in favour of them becoming Australian."

Statistics New Zealand has produced a report that contrasts New Zealand to other OECD nations in 19 areas in which there is comparable social and economic data. New Zealand in the OECD shows New Zealand with comparatively low unemployment, low population density and below average per capita purchasing power parity. It has relatively high proportion of foreign-born residents, high employment and high imprisonment rate. New Zealand has the second to lowest proportion of general government spending compared to GDP.

The 2005 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom has just been published. The report, now in its seventh edition, is prepared by the Office of International Religious Freedom of the U.S. State Department. This year's edition examines 197 countries and territories. An accompanying introduction to the report noted "significant advances" regarding respect for religious freedom. For example, legal barriers to the free practice of religious faith have been removed in many countries. And governments in countries such as Russia, France and India have intervened to counter discrimination against minority religious groups. Nevertheless, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at a press conference on the report, noted that far too many governments still fail to safeguard religious freedom. "Across the globe," she said, "people are still persecuted or killed for practicing their religion or even for just being believers." The report saw the re-designation of eight "Countries of Particular Concern" -- Burma, China, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Vietnam. The secretary of state explained that these countries' governments have engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom over the past year. John Hanford III, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom in the State Department, added that some of the countries of particular concern "have not been willing to engage in any meaningful way on religious matters." Burma, Iran, Eritrea and North Korea are in this group.

A growing demand for "perfect children" is leading to the elimination of unborn babies with health problems. The Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper reported Oct. 28 that the number of children born with cystic fibrosis has fallen sharply in recent years. According to research published in the Journal of Pediatrics, currently 1 in 3,608 babies born in Canada suffer from cystic fibrosis, compared with 1 in 2,714 before a genetic test for this disease existed. "Our hypothesis," Mary Corey, a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, told the Globe and Mail, "is that pregnancies are being terminated." The article also noted that testing is set to increase notably. Officials in Ontario are planning to test for 21 metabolic conditions, compared with the two screening tests it now conducts. Genetic screening is also on the rise in Britain. The London-based Telegraph newspaper reported July 11 that a method of screening embryos for hemophilia has been developed. And on Aug. 19 the Times reported that a clinic in London had been given permission by the government to screen embryos for a gene that can give rise to retinoblastoma, a form of tumors in the eye. The article noted that the permission broke new ground, because retinoblastoma is rarely fatal. In fact, 95% of cases can normally be successfully treated. In Australia, meanwhile, controversy over the use of genetic screening to eliminate babies broke out when a bioethicist argued that parents have a moral obligation to use this technology to bear "the best child possible." The Age newspaper reported June 5 on the comments made by Melbourne-born Julian Savulescu. He is now the head of Oxford University's Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics and is also an ethicist at Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute. He also argued in favor of using screening to test for desirable character traits. "I think we've got a reason for using (tests) not just to screen out diseases, but in looking at the kind of characteristics our children are likely to have," he told the Age. He said that traits such as empathy, sympathy and fair-mindedness could create more moral people.