Year: 2006 Page 2 of 4

When Animals Attack? Kid’s Stuff! When Stunts go wrong? Kindergarten! These shows have nothing on When University Admin Systems Attack!

As I announced here back on the 13th of September, I have handed in my PhD Thesis in Philosophy at the University of Otago. Here’s what was supposed to happen next: I applied (via my supervisor – who I have to say at the start, has been great, none of this is his fault or directed at him) for what’s known as a bridging stipend. It’s three month’s worth of income while I prepare work for publication, including a presentation at a conference in Washington DC in mid November. This application would have been completed, and I would go about my work for three months. Now, of course I won’t have a job in three months. Well, not a job in philosophy anyway. Those things don’t start until the academic year of a University starts. But anyway, this is the deal with the University.

Here’s what actually happened: After I handed over my PhD, it sat in a box in an office for a month. Since the University people who deal with bridging stipends didn’t know it was submitted (it was, after all, in a box in an office), they hadn’t approved the application for the stipend. So we’ve been sitting here on a grand income of zilch, wondering when I’ll get paid. I phoned them up the other day: “Any idea when this is going to happen?” The answer: “We can’t approve it until you submit your thesis.” Uh oh.

Now that the thesis has been passed on to the right people, the application process is about to get underway. Problem #1: I have about 60 copies of my dossier to print out for job applications, and I have to then send them away with application letters for jobs. Printing costs money (especially 32 pages per copy, x 50 copies, as does international postage (these are not little envelopes, they are thick and A4 size). None of this can be done until we get paid, which will probably not be until late November. Further problem: Most of the academic jobs I am applying for have application deadlines of mid November. Why is this a problem? It wouldn’t have been if we had an income. Was this my fault? Not at all. Is there anything I can do about it? Apparently not. How many employment opportunities am I missing out on? Oh, about 60. But how many more vacancies are still open after that deadline? Very few.

Problem #2. I’m flying to Washington DC in mid November. The Airfare is taken care of, fortunately. Accomodation is booked, but not yet paid for. I’ll be paying for the room, and then splitting the cost with my roommate from England when I get there. But not to worry, now that I’m on this bridging stipend because the University did what it was supposed to, I’ll have the money by the time I get there, as well as transport costs and meals- Oh wait, no I won’t. I’ve prepared this paper, made all the travel arrangements, made sure that my thesis was submitted in time, made sure that all the right applications were filled out, gone through numerous hotels until I could find one with vacancies, and now – Oh woops, while you were waiting after you did everything you were supposed to do, we left your thesis sitting in a box in an office for a month, so you won’t be paid until after the conference is over. But don’t worry, your current income of $0 will get you through!

Oh, and it’s even more beautiful. Since my thesis wasn’t noticed for a month, there is another month’s worth of University fees to pay. The joy of admin “systems.” A system doesn’t feel bad, and doesn’t have to compensate you for its mistakes. When University Admin Systems Attack! Too scary for TV.

Before the last parliamentary election, a number of parties engaged in election spending that was later deemed by the auditor general to be unlawful – see my last entry on politics. By far the worst offender was the Labour Party, the party that won a very close election.

Now Labour and it’s allied parties have had a brilliant idea, an idea that has caused Parliament to go into “urgency” tonight so that a new piece of law can rushed through. A law that retroactively changes the rules on election spending, so that their actions were not against the law at all! Check it out here. Or here. Or better yet, here. The following parties are supporting the move: Labour (duh), United Future, New Zealand First and the Progressives.

This is surely as low as it gets in politics. They broke the law. They were told in no uncertain terms that they had broken the law. Here’s what retroactive legislation does: It propagates the falsehood that because of a law made now, they didn’t break the law back then. There is no worse form of corruption that a government may engage in anywhere. What’s worse is that Labour actually has the support from other parties to do this.

Glenn Peoples

I’ve posted a new article in the philosophy section, “A New Euthyphro.” It’s not a particularly technical read, but then, neither was the original Euthyphro by Plato. Here’s the blurb:

“Plato’s Euthyphro is widely thought to contain a knock down argument against theologically grounded ethics – widely thought, that is, outside of the field of philosophy of religion. The so-called Euthyphro dilemma is said to show that moral rightness cannot possibly consist in what God wills, but much of its success lies in the way the author was able to paint Euthyphro as the loser. Had Euthyphro been better informed and quicker on his feet, he would have won hands down – as he does in this version.”

Enjoy!

Today the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand (PCANZ) voted to ban people in sexual unions outside of marriage from entering the ministry.What a shock. What other conclusion could they have come to? This means that a man who is in a sexual relationship with a woman that he is not married to – or to any person that he is not married to for that matter – cannot become a minister in the church. This is not surprising for a Christian Church. The wording of the vote was explicit: People in a sexual relationship outside of marriage cannot be ministers.

Now let’s look at how the media reported it.

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This is scary stuff. Parents who homeschool their children are being thrown into jail in the facist nation of Germany. Here are the details of one case:

Last Thursday the German police arrested Katharina Plett, a homeschooling mother of twelve. Yesterday her husband fled to Austria with the children. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany since Hitler banned it in 1938. The Plett family belongs to a homeschooling group of seven Baptist families in Paderborn. We wrote about their case last year.

Stefan Sedlaczek of the Catholic website kreuz.net heard about her arrest on Saturday. He reports today that a female plain-clothes police officer rang at Katharina Plett’s house on Thursday around 11:00 am. When she opened the door other police officers, who had hidden themselves, forced their way in. Mrs Plett was allowed to change, but a police officer followed her into her bedroom in case “she would arm herself and shoot us all.” The woman was able to inform her husband by mobile phone before the police brought her to Bielefeld.

The authorities later informed her husband that she has been imprisoned in Gelsenkirchen. Apparently she has been given a ten day prison sentence. When Sedlaczek rang the Gelsenkirchen prison authorities to get confirmation of Katharina Plett’s whereabouts, he was told that no information would be given. A written request for information has so far not been answered either. Unless we are mistaken, the German mainstream media have not written anything about this case yet.

Yesterday, Katharina’s husband fled with their children to a Christian family center in Wolfgangsee in Austria. A homeschooling couple from Hamburg has also fled to Wolfgangsee. Their case was covered in the media. In Austria parents are entitled to homeschool during a one year trial period, after which the authorities decide whether the parents are allowed to continue homeschooling or not.

An underclass being forced to flee to Austria, thrown into prison, and being called on by the police because of their education choices. Google will quickly reveal that this is not the only case like this. Hitler is famous – well, for many things actually – but of relevance here, he is famous for saying to those who woulf not join his side: “We don’t need you; we already have your children.” This is why he banned homeschooling. Hitler’s legacy lives on in the Fatherland.

This is why the classical liberal right of families to make their own eucation choices is so important. When the state literally controls the education of your children and can force you to give up your right to teach them, they become you, and you become all but redundant. Notice that – I didn’t say that if you kids go to school you are redundant, I said that if you have no choice but to hand your kids over to the state on demand so that they can be taught, you are redundant.

This is just one terrifying insight to the glaring, huge, and unmissable difference between the liberal left that dominates Europe, and Christian Classical Liberalism. Christian Classical Liberalism recognises that separation of Church and State is great, but we need a whole lot more. Not only should the state not run our religion, but they shouldn’t run our ideological and educational choices, or our lives.

I have just gained an extra bit of respect for Michael Laws. In case you don’t know, he’s a well known talkback radio personality in New Zealand, and he’s the mayor of the New Zealand town of Wanganui.

The Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark gave “advice” that the New Zealand flag on every public building be flown at half mast to honor the passing of the king of Tonga. Michael Laws and the Wanganui council did not comply. Why not? Because he thought that it would be wrong to lower the flag to honour the passing of a man who perpetuated a corrupt monarchy that bled the nation dry of all its resources and let the people live in desperate poverty.Laws went as far as to say on live national radio that King Tupuo was a “brown slug.” naturally, he upset a lot of people. But now he is hitting out at his critics. And you know what? He’s right. Here are a few Gems from the man:

Mr Laws today said Tonga, where a privileged few own all the land, controlled all the commerce and ran the government with little or no democratic input, was different to other South Pacific nations.

“In my view, you don’t honour a leader who maintained and even strengthened such inequity.”

Mr Laws said that he had “a benign, tourist brochure view” of the country until he went there at the start of last year.

“I was stunned at both the poverty and the corruption. It is not Fiji or Samoa – its institutions are medieval by comparison.”

Mr Laws said that a US State Department survey of Tonga, published this year, itemised “systemic human rights abuses including appalling and institutionalised royal privilege and gross sexual discrimination”.

“The facts about Tonga are self-evident. They don’t lie. As mayor, I cannot be a party to honouring those concepts and practices which are anathema to the New Zealand way of life.”

He added that he had received many phone calls and emails in support of his stance.

“It has been overwhelming.”

He will be hearing from me too. Well said Michael. And just look at the awful wrath he faces:

The Wanganui Chronicle newspaper reported today that Tongans from as far away as the United States have called for a boycott of New Zealand goods following Mr Laws’ comments.

Oh no. What will we do? Our economy is doomed.

Here is more from NZPA:

“They are a beneficiary country. We provide them with a good source of their income every year, which the royal family decide to misappropriate for themselves and they deny democracy for their subjects.”

Laws said Wanganui flew the flag at half mast for people who had made a contribution to the community, or events such as September 11 or the Boxing Day tsunami disaster.

“The death of the South Pacific king whose royal family is the equivalent of Robert Mugabe and his henchmen is not the sort of thing that one commemorates.

“Indeed I think it devalues the process of flying the flag at half mast.”

Kudos, Michael.

Just in case anyone cares, which I am inclined to doubt, I have finished my PhD.

My PhD Thesis in philosophy, titled: Religion in the Public Square: Liberal Political Philosophy and the Place of Religious Convictions, was handed in today at the philosophy department of the University of Otago.

It is finished.

The first suggestion I ever read that John Rawls was a relativist was in the book Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, by Francis Beckwith and Greg Koukl. It was a fairly brief comment, and at the time I had never read anything by John Rawls, so I never thought about it for a while.

Now I’ve read quite a lot of what John Rawls has written. Is he a relativist? Well, here’s what I observed.

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The New Zealand Ministry of Education senior manager Martin Connolley is all upset that prayer takes place in some public New Zealand schools. Among other things, Christian Karakia (Maori prayers) are innappropriate, but karakia of “a more general nature” (i.e. indigenous Maori religion) are acceptable. [sarcasm]Of course, I mean, that’s neutral[/sarcasm].

But here’s what caught my eye:

Mr Connelly said under the Bill of Rights Act the practice of requiring students to “opt out” of religious activities could be seen as discriminatory.

Instead the ministry was proposing schools required students who wanted to participate to “opt in” — similar to other voluntary activities such as school bands or sports teams.

The reason for this is simple: The Bill of Rights guarantees basic human rights, like freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of association. If students are, by default, expected to take part in religious activities unless they opt out, their right to freedom of religion is undermined.

This is where anti-religious hypocrisy enters the picture. The Ministry of Education, for many years, has tolerated students having no ability to opt out of situations that violate rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of association. But guess what. In New Zealand Universities, Student association/union membership is compulsory. In order for a tertiary student to not be a member, she must apply to be exempt on the grounds of consciencious objection. Even then, the association doesn’t have to let her abstain from membership. And even if they do, she is still forced to give her money to the association.

The Ministry of Education has known this for a long time, but now when it comes to Christian prayer, all of a sudden Mr Connolley is oh so concerned about the Bill of Rights not being upheld in educational institutions. They have utterly ignored every complaint about students being compelled to belong to a political organization, contary to the Bill of Rights and contrary to the United Nations declaration on human rights, but when it comes to a view they don’t share, heaven help anyone who tries to force it on people! Double standards are useful like that.

My last post was about visual forgery, deception by caption, and outright lies.

The following photos are not doctored. They are not from hard to access war zones, they were taken in downtown London. Nobody doubts their authenticity because thousands of people were witnesses.