Same lines, different Generation

This 'global warming' classic sales pitch "if there isn't a problem - make one up and offer the solution" has gone from the mind to the wallet.  The New Zealand Gov't has sold out, against the majority of Kiwis. The signing of an Emissions Trading Scheme will cost every Kiwi, and your kids will be fed another line just like your parents. Don't forget the Global Cooling scare of a few decades ago. According to Michael Crichton, "in the first Earth Day in 1970, UC Davis's Kenneth Watt said, 'If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.'" International Wildlife warned 'a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war' as a threat to mankind. Science Digest said 'we must prepare for the next ice age.' The Christian Science Monitor noted that armadillos had moved out of Nebraska because it was too cold, glaciers had begun to advance, and growing seasons had shortened around the world. Newsweek reported 'ominous signs' of a 'fundamental change in the world's weather.'" Same lines, different generation.

Alcohol > Drug Overdose

Statistics are really just the observation of what most of us know already, but they do help to put a face to the world we live in. 

We see the damage in our communities, the anger problems, road rage, breakdown of families, abused kids, sexual assaults, rapes in and out of family circles, vandalism, late night fights and damage, drunken pregnancies, random sex, lots of tears and broken people and the highest suicide rate in the world in Aotearoa.  

Is that it? Not by a long shot...

STATS

• Alcohol-related crime accounts for a third of all police apprehensions
•  70% of all emergency hospital admissions are due to alcohol
• $425 million was paid out by ACC for alcohol-related injuries in 2007
•  half of all serious violent crimes are related to alcohol
• the cost to the public health sector is $655 million a year (which is up to 10% of the health budget), and perhaps the most telling statistic is that
•  90% of the total of 8000 prison inmates have an alcohol or drug problem. 
• According to a Massey University study of 16,500 people published in the New Zealand Medical Journal nearly 7 per cent of men and 3 per cent of women had been physically assaulted in the previous year. One in 100 women had been sexually assaulted, and one in 200 men. More than half the physical and sexual assaults were by people who had been drinking. 
• Alcohol consumption also increased people's chances of being a victim. The research suggested there were more than 62,000 assaults every year by people who had been drinking alcohol. 

It is essential that we address these issues through a new approach to the law. The Kiwi Party is making a submission on that now to the Law Commission, as are many others. I don't hate alcohol, but I'm not stupid either. It is destroying the people we love in this nation. I lost many years myself as a 'last one standing social drinker' (that's perhaps French for 'chronic alcoholic') and damaged many people along the way, I knew better all along but 'under the influence' means just that. That influence needs to be stopped. 

RESEARCH

Research just released by a team from Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute says its study, which has tracked 1520 young people's drinking habits over more than 10 years from mid-teens to mid-20s, shows there is no safe or sensible level of drinking for adolescents in light of later likely events. 

National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines define a low-risk level of drinking for adults as fewer than three standard drinks a day. The research found teenagers, drinking at even this level, increased their chances of alcohol abuse, social or legal problems or alcohol-related high-risk sexual behaviour 10 years down the track. 

Those who abstained from any alcohol in adolescence experienced fewer (bad) alcohol-related outcomes than those who drank at the recommended level. 

The research, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, found that by young adulthood, 27 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women met at least one of the criteria for alcohol abuse and risky sexual behaviour. 

The age at which children begin drinking appears to be linked to their later propensity for harmful drinking, with the chances of becoming alcohol-dependent decreasing by 14% for each year of delay in the onset of alcohol use. (Spear, L.P., The adolescent brain and age-related behavioral manifestations, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 24 (2000) 417-463). 

Global Warming to the T

the more ya dig, the more money you stumble across on the way down. I
have to say, this global warming has got to be one of the better scams
to hit the earth. The perfect smoke screen to a money making
wonderland. With the world low on resources and most of those
resources found in 3rd world countries it only makes sense that we the
western socialists would find it a way to make ourselves feel happy
about robbing those countries to feed the greed. All the while
declaring it in the name of care.

What are you smokin in Iran?

So the internationals have struck a deal to enrich Iran's uranium. Russia ups the quality, then gives it back. France may or may not be given the go ahead to makes plates for medical production in US machines... SO basically Iran hasn't had to do anything, not even to STOP enriching Uranium, and what they get in return is enriched Uranium, albeit not to weapons grade at 20% enriched, but up to 5% enriched which is closer than their technology would have gotten them.

There must be an agenda in there somewhere because this deal could have been done by retarded monkeys... So who is going to get what from this one?

more here: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=510026

the story of stuff

click and go

Obama offers church without the tax break

I still receive Obama for America emails and in the last one they are recounting the old battle stories of how they got where they are on the backs of people's donations ( which was a great achievement). The email then moved on to ask for money to mobilize their new healthcare plan...that got me thinking...

We are in an economic recession/depression that looks to last at least a few more years, where can a bankrupt government get it's hands on some money?

This advert is asking for donations so it can run a publically funded campaign on it's own policies - why not use taxes? Well, they will be. Everyone still gets taxed, and this 'donation' being asked for is NOT tax deductible so they won't be giving any breaks either.

Effectively they are taxing the people, then convincing them to give it again. This is a very well thought out approach - people feel on board, they feel good about contributing, and they eat up any policy Barack puts in front of them because they are committed, and have been over the last few years by giving regularliy.

Obama is running a mega church. Convince the people they love the beating and beat them some more in the pocket. That would make Obama...the messiah? hmmm..

the weary

The Goodness of God

Recently I had a good friend decide that he no longer believed in the Bible as authoritative, but
as perhaps a guide to life with some good pointers. This  friend whom I deeply respect seems to have combined Judaism, Christianity and Islam into something entirely new. It has prompted me to deeply seek the reason for my faith in Christ, as the Son of God, and Messiah who died on the cross and rose again. I don't have all the answers but I'm prepared to think out loud.  It guts me that should the Truth be alive and well within Christianity, Christians are not able or prepared to defend it or proclaim it - not even with their words alone. This is the beginning of my attempts to articulate what I have come to believe .

The Goodness of God

God is good by his very nature[1], He is morally perfect[2].  The way He relates and also what He relates is always good; God’s goodness is therefore expressed in relation to His Creation[3]. His goodness is manifested in His love towards His creatures but the goodness of God is however not an emotion, it is a way of being; for He chastises, destroys and punishes out of his goodness also[4]. It restricts how He relates to his creation in that He is so compelled in exuding goodness that He limits Himself by excluding contradictory options - regarless of their relevancy.[5]

The practical application can be seen in our relationships with each other, creation and God. As image bearers we too should exude goodness in the way we care for humanity.[6] Our being ‘in the world but not of the world’[7] is a living expression as image bearers to God’s goodness in obedience, rather than emotion[8]. Christians should therefore be at the forefront of mercy and justice[9] and the redemption of a fallen world, a broken and abused creation, by engagement, stewardship and the liberating freedom of self denial[10].

---

[1] Should nothing else exist, God would not cease to be good for it is His very essence.

[2] 3202 tob (Edward W. Goodrick and John R. Kohlenberger III 1990)

[3] (Gen 1:4, Psalm 25:8)

[4] (Ex.34:6-7)

[5] An example is Exodus 32:11 where Moses pleads with God to remember his commitment to Israel when He wants to destroy them, God repents in regards to His relationship with Israel and the option to destroy them is no longer available because of his established promise to them.

[6] (Col 2:8, Matthew 25:31-46)

[7] (John 15:18-19)

[8] (James 4:4)

[9] (Micah 6:8)

[10] As God limits His options by His goodness, so should we refrain from aspects of a fallen world that are not good.

theology and the real world

I've been thinking lately, now that I am doing a bit of digging into Theology, that there is a realistic gap between the language of Theologians, and perhaps the concepts they work towards, and the real world in laymen terms. 

Theology talks about concepts that are often guesswork ( like the concept of Q) but do add a perspective...that can't be confirmed or denied. In the everyday of shopping and pumping gas nobody cares about Q or really where the information for the gospels came from. In reality most people who read the book of Mark, believe that a guy named Mark wrote it from his own life and perspective. They believe he lived around the time of Jesus and that's good enough for most people. 

I don't really care where or what Q is about or came from. Why can't it just simply be the 'talk of the town' that everybody knew about back then. 

It seems an easy trap to get stuck in an intellectual world that convinces itself that 'pondering and critiquing and clarifying concepts' is the contribution they need to make. I'm not sure that is entirely true but I'm still thinking about it. The trap is they do nothing with their lives in the real world, but exist in their circles of influence entertaining each other and not feeding the poor. hmmm

something I want to think more about. Somebody has to think deeply...

letter to the editor

Innocent Hamas?

In response to ‘How can we just stand by’Jan 5^th.

I say GO FOR IT ISRAEL, and no I’m not Jewish. What a story of courage! A tiny nation of people, not far off the size of NZ, who have stood their ground for many years and defended themselves while being completely surrounded by nations who deny their right to even exist or admit that they in fact exist at all! The 1967 six day war is worth googling. The current media reports always paint Israel in a bad light, ‘a terrorist nation’(..who are then stopping other terrorists..huh?). Palestine, among others, have been launching rockets continually. They hide behind their civilians in schools, hospitals, high density housing etc. They were asked if they’d mind stopping the killing of Israelis please. Hamas refused. Israel has now decided to stop them – if someone was throwing rocks at my family, after asking nicely of course, I’d be putting a stop to it promptly and so I should! Over 250,000 Israelis are in the target zone for these rockets and Hamas has no control. I’m not ‘standing by’ as the title suggests – I’ve done my homework and am in full support, there is history prior to 1948 – Israel wasn’t formed by the UN, they were returned to the place they had occupied previously. How about some unbiased media coverage for a change.