Normal Transmission Will Resume Shortly

I always loved the story of the British journalist William Connor, who enlisted during World War II. As a consequence of that catastrophic tumult which killed millions, wracked the world and changed its shape, his regular column in The Mirror was absent for some years. In 1946, resuming his column under his byline of Cassandra, he dryly began "As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted".

Indeed. I'm sorry I've been away.

The anecdote is ironic and tragic, too, since I am presently fated to have a Cassandra in my life as well. But that is a story for another time.

In the last six months I've quit my job of ten years, changed houses (and as a corollary, acquired a new station in life as a Landlord), changed my son's school, endured personal tragedy, and confronted malevolent forces at play contending for the happiness of my family. On the upside, I have decided to return to study (after an absence of 16 years) and that's an exciting opportunity I'm lucky to be able to take.

I've decided to take a degree in History, Philosophy and Politics, with the option of a Masters in Teaching in the last year, should I choose it. Needless to say, gentle reader, I insist you come along for the ride.

Life throws us googlies occasionally (I almost said "curveball" but find the Anglo term more satisfying), and the rational man looks for answers. If answers are not readily at hand, a quest is in order. Several friends have pointed out that not all men choose to take a degree in Philosophy in order to answer a personal question, but that's just me.

Although we're diametrically opposed on matters of faith, I'm reminded of Betrand Russell's view:

"The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason...while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, [philosophy] greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar light."

Lastly, I've been noting things that strike a chord with my current state of mind. I thought this was a gem (having studied and worked in a technical discipline for 15 years, I was starting to feel like this):

Attribution (highly recommended webcomic)

Hang on, folks. We're in this together.

Time to Think

Image credit

I've neglected my writing, sad to say. Personal issues, yada yada.
But look! A friend writes with a question and my muse grew to such a length I thought I'd share it with you.

My friend Emma writes:

"hi guys, this is an odd query but I am writing a children's story in which time will stand still for a number of minutes/hours. I have tried looking up stuff relating to the physics of timelessness/time stopping/the illusion of time and am not ashamed to admit I was completely confused! I thought you might have some ideas...if time was to stand still, what would the effect of that be on the world?

any ideas would be much appreciated!
em"

Ah, Time. As The Doctor once said "I do wish I had the time to explain dimensional transcendentalism to you". Then again, he also said "Don't move! Or I'll kill this man with this deadly jelly baby", so maybe he was just balmy.

The notion of "stopping" time makes certain assumptions which may have a dramatic consequence for your story. First, stopping time relative to what? If you say "Lucy froze. Time ceased to flow for five minutes; her dropped porcelain cup suspended in the air, surrounded by a nimbus of oblately spherical droplets of tea, except for one somewhat larger blob which, at the point of motionless, had assumed a shape not unlike a cow's amygdala as it attempted to leave the cup, the metaphysical significance of which would never be detected, let alone debated by philosophers.", then her timeless state enduring for "five minutes" can only have any sense if there existed an "outside reference point" by which to have measured the interval. We commonly ascribe God as inhabiting this realm "outside time", also accounting for his ability to "see all of time at once" and unerringly picking next week's Powerball numbers.

As for poor Lucy, if time stopped for her for any stretch of (outside reckoned) time, by rights she should be entirely unaware of the phenomenon. For all you know, God popped the Universe on pause half way through you reading that last sentence to go to the loo, paused it for a million years in fact, and only just came back then and pressed play again. Did you notice? How could you? It's like another gedankensexperiment: "Imagine you wake up tomorrow and every atom in the universe is twice the size". How do you tell without a reference point?

Descending from the heavenly sphere for a moment, there is a scientific analogue: Relativity. Einstein's theory suggests that time does not flow equally fast for all observers in the universe. The flow of time for an observer can differ from his observing twin if he is subjected to an intense gravitational field, or subjected to acceleration at close to the speed of light. Doubtlessly this conjecture will be tested by the Mythbusters team in due course, but the physics are reasonably well established. Read this synopsis for Heinlein's "Time for the Stars" for a typical fictional treatment of this phenomenon. At the extreme end (for instance, close to the event horizon of a black hole) a clock dropped towards a black hole will appear to an outside observer to tick ever more slowly, and even freeze. However, it must be stated that to the other participant, time seems to flow normally, and will even observe the reverse effect (the other twin's clock ticking more and more quickly). Einstein, despite never wearing socks, seems to have had the physics down-pat.

One favourite plot device used by "time freezing" stories involves only a "partial freeze". Our protagonist freezes time and yet retains the ability to move about - rearranging people or objects for comedic effect, for example. A classic example of this scenario is from an episode of the Twilight Zone I vividly remember from when I was 13.


Dramatically, this is entertaining. From the standpoint of physics, it's a muddle. What atoms are "frozen" in such a partial freeze and which aren't? In theory, our non-time-frozen subject could not move or breath, as the atoms of air through which she moves would be fixed and immobile. I recall a CS Lewis story where a character could not walk across a lawn of time-frozen grass because each tender blade, being locked in place, was now like a knife.

Lastly, there's the sneaky-cheat way of stopping time. If you want a character or scene frozen for a "span" that has some meaning to some outside observer, maybe stopping time isn't what you need. All you need to do is render motionless each atom in your tableau, preventing chemical or physical interactions from occurring; effectively stopping entropy (the tendency for things to fall into disorder) in a localised space, for a time, even though time itself is still flowing. If such a situation could be engineered, I would imagine the people therein would say time froze for them, although the persistence of conscious thought during such an interruption would make a fascinating debate between those who place the conscious essence in the metaphysical realm and those who tie it to the atoms bumping about in your head.

I hope this meandering muse helps you formulate your story. I wonder what others will have to say?

Regards,
Nathan

Nova Scotia by Limosine

"What? The $230 Limosine tour of Halifax is only half booked? How would you and your sister like to tag along for free?"

It's OK to hate me now. I understand. And every day is like this at the moment.

All I have to say, so far

I am in America. I have seen many things. I have witty observations accumulating on my iPhone like topsy. Strangely, all I have to show you so far is this:

Says it all, really.

Well, if you must see more then try the Photo gallery on my Facebook page or my Flickr account. Internet access proving slightly harder to get than expected, so stay tuned.

The Three Ways Peter Costello is Wrong

'Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.' - Ronald Reagan

Australia's interest in Peter Costello will peak this week, after two decades in the national spotlight. Interest in the man and his views may have been higher in the past when the Liberal/National coalition was in office, but it's a certainty it will never be higher again than they will be this week with the release of his political memoirs.

As the co-architect of some of the Howard Government's most important economic reforms, Peter Costello deserves respect. Perhaps the hysteria about his "will he/won't he" attitude towards the Liberal leadership springs, in part, from a legitimate nostalgia borne of the realisation Australia was a more competently run place under the Coalition; also, from the fact that the Government of which he was a member from 1996 to 2007 really did better represent the mores and natural conservatism of the Australian populace than the clowns who are wrecking the place now.

Since he has now redeclared his intentions more emphatically, that he is not interested in the Liberal leadership, this essay is not concerned with that matter. But since, along with this declaration, there are the reports that Costello has picked out the three biggest failings of the Howard years as themes for his political bildungsroman, I think there are a few things worth saying.

Costello "lists the Republic, Reconciliation and the rise of Hansonism as the major challenges John Howard failed to meet." I was indifferent on the question of whether Costello would choose to become leader until I read those words. Now, a flood of half recalled memory snippets are re-assembling themselves in my brain, and they are causing me to see the man in a different light. Why? Well, I would single out those very three issues as the triumphs of the Howard years.

Under Howard, the Republican charge was stopped cold. Howard, an avowed Monarchist like myself, delivered a masterstroke by bringing the Republican question to a head under his watch, rather than try to bury the question. We had the whole three ring circus, a Constitutional Convention (only the fourth to be held in Australia in over a century of Federalism), a spirited public debate and a referendum, which the republicans lost comprehensively. Did Howard fail the Australian public by denying them their say? No. Did he hobble the process by endorsing a half baked process to resolve the matter? No. Was the will of the Australian people reflected in the result? Overwhelmingly. Australians, regardless of their position on monarchism per se, gained a re-awakened sense of pride in the stability and effectiveness of their constitution, even when tested to its limits by the necessity of dissolving corrupt and failed Governments. Wisely, they fell back to the Aussie maxim "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

On the question of Reconciliation, Howard's instincts were also right. As I have written before, I am an unashamed believer in the hegemonic view: Neither a belief in the doctrine of Terra nullius, benevolent paternalism, or a support for the 2007 intervention are things any Liberal should be ashamed of. They were the default and accepted view for both sides of politics for the majority of the twentieth century. I saw a T-Shirt recently and would love to get one for myself. It says, in type of decreasing size "Not Sorry. Not even a little bit. Would do it again in a minute". Remember that in 1996, the incoming Aboriginal Affairs minister raised the issue of endemic domestic and sexual violence against women and children with the ATSIC board and met with "total denial'. He recounted: "They said: 'What are you talking about?' There was only one female board member and I said to her ... later: 'Why didn't you stand up to them?' and she said: 'I'm too afraid'."

And since my views on reconciliation are fairly clear, you can ditto me on Howards approach to Hansonism. Well, Howard was muted about Pauline Hanson herself; I suspect his sympathies were more with One Nation than against them. Tony Abbott's disgraceful anti-Hanson subterfuge with his "Australians for Honest Politics" gambit aside, Howard embraced Hanson's politics and always to his advantage, especially on the matter of abolishing ATSIC and in enforcing better minimum English language and cultural literacy standards for immigrants.

So, if Costello's recollection of a decade in power is going to focus on these areas as "failings" then, sorry, you never deserved the top job and it's probably best you'll never get it.

Now, all we need to do is stop Malcolm Turnbull from jumping into the vacuum and raising the Jolly Roger and start slitting throats...

Vodafone sucks

I rarely give flight to a fully fledged rant on this blog, but today I'm going to make an exception. Vodafone? You suck. I'm flying to New York and Canada next month (and yes, I'll blog the trip) and I wanted to use my new iPhone to access the Internet in the Big Apple. The cost?

That's right. 1c per kilobyte. $10 per megabyte. I subscribe to a data bundle here in Oz. $30 for 500Mb over a month. If I downloaded the same amount in the U.S on Vodafone's roaming plan it would cost me $5000.

$5000 instead of $30. And in the U.S, where I would be roaming with AT&T, they offer data bundles for smartphones and PDAs at the rate of $35 for unlimited data.

Which I would buy, if Vodafone had not locked my iPhone to their network.

Idiots. Unmitigated wanking idiots.

A man and his boy. I'm testing a new iPhone application that lets me take and upload photos and blog from anywhere.

Google Streetview exposes outrageous secrets

A lot of people are in a lather about the new Google Streetview service going live in Australia. I checked it out and am amazed at how many poky country roads they managed to get to. If only I'd known when they were coming I could have dressed up as the Statue of Libery or something, like Corporal Klinger in that episode of M.A.S.H.

But I digress. And what scandal might Google Streetview expose about my life?
You'll be shocked.
Brace yourselves.


At our place, bin night is Thursday. Phew.

Cognitive Dissonance in Women's Magazines

I saw this today at the checkout of the local supermarket.

I am reminded of two things. One is that neither the words "cognitive" or "dissonance" are likely to appear in either of these publications. The other is Orwell's description of "Doublethink" from 1984:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

What I find curious is the authority that both magazines make about their claim. Both make the claim that their source is a quote from Britney Spears herself. Thus, regardless of Britney's pregnant status, they are both lying. Personally, I think it's cruel to subject the poor girl to this Schrödinger-like uncertainty. Somebody collapse that girl's wave function!

Who weekly claims a regular circulation of 150,000 and is owned by the Seven Media Group through Pacific Magazines. NW Weekly (circulation ~200,000) is owned by Consolidated Media Holdings, a Packer entity associated with Channel 9. Thus, this boils down to a typical 7 vs 9 stoush. They should both be ashamed to so willingly lower the collective IQ of our society.

Why we can't put the people responsible for this tripe into pillories in Martin Place so we can chuck smelly things at them is one of the chief things wrong with the world.

ANZAC Day: A Commemoration, not a Circus

Click here for the full Flickr set of photos associated with this story- my Gallipoli photos.

Seeing our TV Screens full of Australasian backpackers flooding onto the Gallipoli peninsula is an ineluctable and annual staple. “Good on them”, we think. The commemoration of that singular event in our history which gave birth to our national identity is carried to a new generation by young people picking up the mantle saying “Lest we forget”. If we look a little closer, we note that those making the pilgrimage to the sacred site don’t always pick up their rubbish, some look a little worse for wear, and sometimes the gravity of the occasion has been lost a little. Most have made an overnight coach trip from Istanbul, which is nearly 300km away, stay to see a compressed guided tour of the ANZAC precinct, and head back the same day. Those seeking the historical flavour might sit through The Gallipoli movie with their package tour group the night before the trip. Few, if any, actually make it to the town called Gallipoli (Gelibolu, to the locals), which is some distance from ANZAC Cove.

Every year I see those pilgrims, I’m filled with pride that so many people continue to be motivated to travel to what’s still quite a remote spot to stand with other Aussies and Kiwis and blow on the coals of remembrance.
I’m also filled with a lot of sadness, because they’re robbing themselves of the best ANZAC experience. Let me share my Gallipoli story…

I was fortunate enough to travel to Turkey in 2000. Making my way from Ankara, 750km away, and with no fine command of Turkish, all I decided to do was keep saying “Gelibolu” at bus depots and sea ports and then go in the direction people were pointing. For simplicity, my plan was a 10 out of 10. For accuracy, as my five-year-old says: “minus zero”. Not that it mattered. I was mesmerised. Every waypoint was a palimpsest of history. Getting lost was a pleasure. Beneath the modern city of Istanbul lay the Ottoman’s den. Beneath that, the Roman city of Constantine. Beneath that, the Greek’s Byzantium, and beneath that, a Phoenician’s Seaport. As I was crossing the Dardanelles by boat, I was dreaming of those young, brave souls from country NSW or outback Queensland, about to set foot into hell. But I could have as easily dreamed I was Paris of Troy, or Alexander the Great, or Xerxes, or the Apostle Paul, all of whom made the same journey over the same stretch of water.

Unfortunately, my geography wasn’t quite as good as my history. Shortly after my triumphant arrival in the actual town of Gallipoli was the news that, sorry, Gallipoli isn’t actually anywhere near, well, Gallipoli. Only a minority of ANZAC pilgrims end up there, although there must have been enough; the local lodgings were called “ANZAC House”. Ah, ANZAC House… where the toilet next to my bed whose interior surface was black ran all night, and the showers wouldn’t. Long story…

Now those that know me well will expect me at this juncture to tell my How I Got Arrested By the Turkish Army Story and Held at Gunpoint story, and perhaps I will… another time. I want to make a different point.

You see, all those well meaning pilgrims attending the ANZAC Day dawn service are missing out on an enormous part of the Gallipoli experience. It’s like going to the Louvre and staying half an hour… it’s just not on. Certainly, there is a unique feel to being there with so many other people, but my own experience was far more moving because of how I found myself there. Here’s what happened.

Firstly, I wasn’t travelling in the area at ANZAC time. I happened to be in the area in early April, weeks out from ANZAC Day.
Second, since my poor navigation landed me in a fishing village bearing the name of my destination but unfortunately not the co-ordinates, I got to see somewhere that a lot of people don’t, even those who come back saying “I’ve been to Gallipoli”.
Third, as a result of losing myself, I was approached by a charming local man, Gurkay, who negotiated a price to drive me down the peninsula in an ancient Combi and show me personally all the sites I wanted to see, such as the Gallipoli museum, Lone Pine, ANZAC Cove, and all the various monuments one would expect; a trip which would last a long day. I had my own personal guide! He thought he was rorting me blind for AU$100, and I thought I was getting a bargain. He had no English and I had no Turkish (unless you count “I love you, my darling”, “get well soon”, or “thank you”… long story). We were firm friends by the end of the day.
Fourth, I had a mission- something to personalise my trip. A dear family friend in his nineties had heard I was going to Gallipoli. He explained that his older brother, Stan, had died at Lone Pine and that in all the years since, he had never seen as much as a photo of his grave. Wow. What a mission!
Fifth, when I made it to ANZAC Cove, and Lone Pine; when I walked the partially reconstructed trenches, and when I went bush-bashing a bit just to see what it felt like to climb a hillside in Gallipoli with no railing or path, I was able to think in silence, by myself. I think I thought for a long time. A really long time. It was a sunny, breezy day, and birds were chirping, but I think that only by standing there quietly for half an hour allowed me to hear the faint echoes of the fallen, and what they were trying to say to me.

Sixth, when I found the grave I was looking for, the depersonalising nature of the huge number of dead was all washed away. Courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Website, I had located one of nearly a hundred thousand graves, and yet, this one was special. I arranged it with an Australian flag I had brought for the purpose, took photos and video of the area, and yes, I cried. I cried for a man who had not had a single soul to cry by his grave in 84 years.

If you’re contemplating a trip to Gallipoli, don’t settle for the prepackaged “back to the bus in 15 minutes”, shrink-wrapped, cattle-class version. See it properly. See it with time to sit quietly somewhere, by yourself. If it’s just an item on your itinerary and someone is holding your hand the whole way, then it isn’t a pilgrimage- it’s just a trip.

A Major Australian Museum’s Disgraceful Concession to Creationism

Jan 2009: A warm welcome to those who have been directed here by John Stear's NAiG site. If you want a one-line summary of the direction I am coming from, it's as a Christian (who works at a Christian School), who loves Science and regards the non-Scientific, ideological rantings of Young Earth Creationists as deeply corrupt and damaging to our faith.

If you enjoy this article (ironically, what I regard as my thinnest on the topic of Creationism), then please feel free to explore my other posts on the same subject which carry the tag of "Creationism"


Young Earth Creationists suffer from a humiliating lack of credibility, and rightly so, among the mainstream scientific community. Hence, if any “secular” institution appears to slip and confirm any tenet of the Creationist worldview, you can count on them to crow about it. Of course, the context or intent of the reference is rarely of interest to them.

Our major museum of natural history in Sydney, the Australian Museum, has very recently opened its long awaited and overdue Dinosaur exhibit. It’s impressive, and I attended today with my five year old son (pictured above) to check it out.
Being the School holidays, I was surprised (and delighted, and then surprised that I was delighted) to be standing in a long queue that stretched out the door and around the corner. The queue was full of families and kids, all in high spirits. A large banner outside the grand old Victorian sandstone museum portrayed an archetype carnivore, rampant, and the words “Can’t wait to meet you”. The “m” in meet was slashed out with claw marks. Cute. The museum had languished for many years and this exhibit is the first proper Dinosaur exhibit it has probably ever had, and a major shot in the arm. I harbour fond and dim memories of the “Dinosaurs from China” exhibit at the same museum when I was a kid, and here I was, my rambunctious, blond, paleontologically encyclopaedic offspring in tow, passing the dino-mania on to a very willing next generation.

Of course, one of the cardinal assumptions in palaeontology is that Homo Sapiens and the Dinosauria occupied far removed and mutually exclusive epochs in the Earth’s history. Any admission that men and dinosaurs co-existed would be a major gaffe, right? Something so crazy and stupid, you would only expect that from, say a pretend museum that corrupts and prostitutes the very concept of a museum, yes?

Well. Oooboy, are the Creationists going to be cock-a-hoop over this one. This was part of the exhibit.
OK. OK. I can’t keep this up. I’ve been stringing you along. Of course the Australian Museum aren’t being serious. When I read this, if I’d been drinking milk, it would have come out my nose, if you know what I mean. It tickled my fancy, being a huge fan of The Far Side. The Thagomizer. I love that. And while they aren't serious about cavemen and dinosaurs co-existing, scientists do actually use this term. Here's my photo of one.

And now I feel guilty. If you’ve read this far, suckered by my claim of a Creationist gaffe at a respectable public institution and angry, let me make amends: This is how a museum should be- full of questioning and the joy of engaging young minds, rather than full of tawdry appeals to ideology and Flintstones-level fantasy. Differing views are presented in the exhibit, such as the debate between catastrophists and gradualists concerning the end of the Mesozoic era; Care was taken to represent Archaeopteryx as an offshoot of bird development rather than as linear antecedents of Aves, and each of the many transitional features marking the difference between reptiles and birds were mentioned (and supported by examples). The evolution of snakes was explained with an Australian example of sand swimming skinks, which are living illustrations of the varying stages of limb loss. I was impressed at the degree to which propositions made about Dinosaurs, their lives, behavior and evolution were backed up by so much evidence from the fossil record. Some might say that the degree of explanation might put people off, but I thought it was all very accessible. Obviously the authors of the exhibit had an eye to the criticism that many statements about Dinosaurs are made without qualification, and then accepted because of an "appeal to authority". I felt sure that if the exhibit said something factually incorrect about Dinosaurs, one of those bright eyed 5 year olds like mine might be the one to correct it in the years to come, and that no one at the Museum would be unhappy about that.

I only had one gripe. One Velociraptor was portrayed with hairy feathers.
I don’t care what the science says. It looked silly, like some cast off carnival haunted house prop. Many of the displays were hands-on, and there were palaeontologists exhuming fossils from real rocks as part of the exhibit.

As I was walking through the exhibition, one of the things I couldn’t keep out of my mind was how any Creationist viewing the exhibit would find the visit ruined for them. Of course, I use the term "Creationist" here as shorthand for Young Earth Creationist- I regard myself as a "Creationist" by definition as a Christian, but I'm poles apart from being a Young Earther. Never mind the hordes of young people being sparked to an interest in science and learning, or the quality of the multimedia and static displays. I can just imagine these people, indoctrinated into hating science in a kind of sick, pavlovian response, as they would fume and rail at the references to deep time and evolutionary processes scattered throughout the exhibit. It reminded me of just how embarassing Young Earth Creationist organisations like CMI and AiG should be regarded as by Christians of all creeds.

People who know me know that I get a bit knotty when people eject their brains in matters of Faith. If people go to museums like this one and lose their faith in God because the sign says “millions of years ago”, then I’d have to doubt their faith was very grounded to begin with. However, when people start teaching that you can’t believe in Jesus without regarding the presentation of such a wonderful Dinosaur exhibit as a monstrous atheistic conspiracy then, well, perhaps the kindest thing I could say about such people (alas, even as a Christian) is that they should be publicly ridiculed. And then flogged. And then fed to Velociraptors. With lasers on their heads.

When Computers are Smarter than we are

For years now, I've subscribed to an email list from the Australian Prime Minister's department. This mailing list sends me a copy of all Prime Ministerial speeches and press releases.

When John Howard was the Prime Minister, these emails arrived regularly and always came straight through to my inbox.

Since Kevin Rudd has been Prime Minister, using exactly the same mail client and settings, this now happens on a very regular basis...


Artificial Intelligence is nigh upon us. My automated Junk Mail filter instinctively knows that what Kevin Rudd says is utter rubbish. My mail filter applies a dispassionate algorithm to look for shonky language, spin, fake deals and nonsensical claims. My filter correctly categorises Kevin Rudd's speeches as being in the same category as cheap Rolex watches, penis extension pills and Nigerian banking scams. How apt.

There are no noble savages, only savages

The high moral ground is coveted territory in politics, and elusive.
We can distinguish two ways of attaining it. One is to make pragmatic, and often unpopular decisions about difficult issues, such as concerns the welfare of those who can not or will not take such responsibility for themselves. The other method involves declaring by fiat that you inhabit the pointy summit of the high moral ground and that this can be best demonstrated by manufacturing as much collective guilt as possible and then liberally spreading it around (or in this case, spreading it around the Liberals. More of that shortly.)

Today our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will apologise in Parliament to Australian Aboriginals for decades of supposed mistreatment at the hands of successive Governments, missionaries and social welfare agencies.

Well, I’m writing to say, “Kevin, count me out.”

I’m not sorry. Not in the slightest, and you’ve debased the dignity of our nation by dishonestly saying something on behalf of millions of other Australians that isn’t true and isn’t felt by us.
If you’re sorry, that’s your right. If the Union thugs now running every government in Australia get teary and feel the need to send flowers, good on them, but don’t presume to speak for me.

I take the view that the so called “Stolen Generations” weren’t stolen, they were rescued. Often in a flawed, under-resourced way, but always with high minded and beneficent intent on the part of dedicated social and mission workers who felt they were giving impoverished Aboriginal children a chance of a better and more civilised life away from the abusive, primitive shanties they were coming from. Keith Windschuttle, armed merely with facts, does his usual good job of demolishing the myth of the Stolen Generations in this piece in The Australian. This view is not racist. There's a white drug dealing single mother in our own street whose poor children run feral through the neighbourhood. Someone should give them a better chance too, and that would probably involve forced separation as well.

The only person in Australia yet to be declared as having legal standing as a “stolen” child came from a situation where, as the case notes of the time say, he was a "neglected child without parents" at 13 months old, "suffering from malnutrition and infective diarrhoea". They add: "The other two children are neglected. Mother has cleared out and father is boozing." This man was given half a million dollars by a South Australian court for being taken from that environment as an infant, with scant acknowledgement that the intentions of those orchestrating the move were far from sinister.

I would regard such a situation as common to the many supposed incidences of government sanctioned separation. There are no noble savages, only savages.

Our new Labor Federal Government, swept away in a trendy stupor of social conscience is naïve to the point of recklessness if they think that an apology will not be followed by a flood of punitive legal claims, as the usual drones in the corrupt Aboriginal industry want to claim (repeatedly trying, as in this example to insert the words “attempted genocide” into the apology- a disgraceful slur on the Christian dedication of those who ran the missions and schools of outback Australia in the last century)

I don’t accept that the “oldest and enduring cultures in human history”, as Rudd’s wording will say, is anything to be particularly proud of when that history involves forty thousand years of living in abject superstition, and totally failing to create anything approaching systemised agriculture, a written language, architecture, philosophy or the wheel. Nor have I never subscribed to the politically correct doctrine that there is never any place to evaluate the merits of differing societies for fear of causing offence.

The broad march of history is inexorably one of increasing civilisation and technology, all the way back to the pre-history of Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Aboriginal culture, living in far-away Australia were a stagnant gyre in this upward struggle, but no one should make the mistake of thinking that it wasn't going to arrive sooner or later, and would represent a massive "outside context problem" for them when the West arrived. Western society may have caused and suffered a great deal of misery over the centuries, but they certainly don’t have a monopoly on it. The misery endured by thousands of generations of Aborigines as a result of starvation, tribal warfare and superstitious fear genuinely deserves comparison with the benefits of Western medicine, representative democracy and impartial justice. We may have brought alcohol, smallpox and the gun, but Aboriginals should count their blessings that Australia was settled by the British instead of the Spanish, French or Portuguese. It would have been worse.

It's rich for people to criticise white Europeans for decimating their culture while they do so wearing fabrics invented by western chemistry, standing in front of temples of legislation and litigation invented and refined by the West over a period of two thousand years, speaking into cameras the technology of which would have been regarded as black magic by those people an uncomfortably short time ago, historically speaking, and availing themselves of Western antibiotics when they are sick.

An apology (and I predict that our KRudd will turn on the water works today- Labor tradition demands it) will do nothing to reconcile Aboriginal Australians to the rest of civilisation in either the short or the long terms. As my good friend Michael Sutcliffe points out in his own blog, what is curiously missing is any reciprocal intention to make a universal declaration of “forgiveness” as a counterpart to this national apology. Such absence reveals the ruse, because what this is really all about is continuing the debilitating culture of victimhood Aboriginals have genuinely suffered under for as long as there have been trendy lefties to champion their cause and promise them a bucket of money to palliate their greivances.

This logic, ably articulated by former government minister Tony Abbott, stands in stark contrast to the soft indecisiveness that has overtaken the Liberal/National opposition. Those parliamentarians, to a man, should absent themselves or turn their backs on tomorrow’s gesture. I am disappointed that they have too-quickly abandoned the closely reasoned and eminently justifiable policy of the former government which was upheld for over a decade. Aboriginal Australians, like all Australians deserve nothing from life except equality of opportunity, which they've had since Phillip landed.

Usually the “greatest good for the greatest number” in national governance comes not from symbolic gestures but from pragmatic decisions made with a full and frank acknowledgement that some people can’t govern themselves. In such cases, paternalism isn’t a dirty word, it’s a high virtue.

My name is Nathan Zamprogno and this is my view. And by the way, your right to disagree with me without being lynched was invented by white men, too.

Irony

I was at my local ex-servicemen's club for a meal at the bistro with the family when something occurred to me. There is a children's play area next to the restaurant where the little'uns can tear around and distract themselves while the adults get on with the job of gambling, drinking and becoming obese.

In that play area are a row of consumer gaming consoles locked into wooden boxes. I think I saw some PS2's and even a couple of XBox 360's. Cool. All free for the kids to play with. That must have cost some money.

Next to the new consoles are some of the older style arcade consoles. And if you want to play Galaxian (1979), Gyruss (1983) Point Blank (1994) or Virtua Racing (1992), that will be at least $2, thank you.

Is that insane or what? Why would I pay $2 to play a twenty nine year old arcade game when there's an XBox 360 sitting next to it for free? Never mind that arcade consoles used to be twenty freaking cents.

I feel old. So old. Because... I was tempted. The 8-bit glory, she did call to me. But that's just me. My son will have no such nostalgia.

When people aren't who you thought they were

Life is a process of discovering that people often turn out to be not at all who you thought they were. Sometimes, this is a good thing. As a child, I regarded my parents as the gods of my small universe. Now, as an adult and parent myself, I appreciate them more, despite their faults and foibles, and honour them for their honest efforts in raising a family and building a home.

But sometimes, the process of discovery leaves us wounded and grieving. This is especially true when people held a place of authority in our lives, or were special to us in our hearts. Of course, people make mistakes. Often, catastrophic ones. Sometimes they are in thrall to circumstances beyond their control. We extend grace to such people and embrace them as they use their pain to become more like Jesus. But sometimes, such people have no one to blame except themselves, especially if they pinned their ministry and their prestige and their authority and the worth of their good name on their mastery of moral values.

All I can say is, God give me strength to be a good father and husband, and give thanks for rescuing my family from hypocrites.
Cryptic, I know.

Let me leave you with a little Bonhoeffer

“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him. And the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession, the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin is brought into the light. The unexpressed is openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron”

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Life Together

Amen.

In which Nathan succombs to facial trichosis

Below is a photo of some of my work colleagues (and good friends). We are all growing moustaches for "Movember", a movement to raise money for cancer research and men's health issues (including depression).

That's me at the far right, which, for those who know me, is entirely appropriate. Consider this something of a "before" photo. At the risk of opening myself to public ridicule, I promise to post an "after" as well.

Thank you to all my hirsutely challenged friends who are sponsoring me to grow a mo. Go on, you can spare a tenner for Cancer research, can't you? Click the blue button below and it will take you to the Movember website and register your sponsorship for our team (which is named "Los Guapos" (the good-looking ones).

My God, It's Full of Stars

Those folks at Google are at it again, and they obviously know something we don't. I'm not sure what it was that started to make me suspicious. Was it the innovative lateral thinking that has made them the premier Web 2.0 company? The green blood and penchant for eating whole, live rats? Finally though, the smoking gun.


Google Headquarters. A couple of arcseconds from the California Nebula in the Constellation of Perseus. It's about a thousand light years from Earth.

This, courtesy of the latest coolness from the Google Earth application. The latest version (4.2) allows you to swing 180˚ from any location on Earth and explore the heavens.
It's insanely great. My favourites: The Sombrero Galaxy (NGC4594) and the Antennae Galaxies. Ah, how they make me pine for the triple sunsets and purple grass of home... but I digress.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords from the planet Googalia. If I keep them fed, they may spare me.

Addendum: It's worse than we feared. There it is, just near the twist in the tail of Scorpius. A Borg Cube, face on and heading for sector zero-zero-one.

Family First- An Analysis (part 1)

In 2004 and 2005 I wrote about the new and Federally untested political party, Family First. Family First, as a party with niche appeal but larger ambitions, instinctively knew that the only path to parliamentary success was to cultivate preference deals with the major parties. The perception among the Conservative parties at the time was that they had natural "fellow travellers" in the shape Family First. Mutually beneficial deals were struck with them in a majority of seats for an exchange of preferences. Family First were cocky enough of the support they assumed the Coalition would provide to ask their suitors to sign up to a raft of policy positions in exchange for their preferences. Labor, more wary, still felt that a deal with FF had strategic merit in the Victorian Senate contest, assuming that FF would drop out well before other players and that the flow of preferences would deliver Labor an extra seat ahead of the Greens. In a stunning miscalculation, Labor preferences ensured that Family First's Steven Fielding secured the party its first Federal win, despite a primary vote of only 1.77%. Until recently, I would have said that Labor's post-election embarrassment at helping to elect Fielding would have ensured that such a preference deal would never be struck again. However, with Kevin Rudd at now at the helm of the party, perfectly happy to play the religion card if it greases his path to the Lodge, anything is possible. Mark Latham's bile must be rising still.

However Family First protest their political independence, it remains true that they overwhelmingly gave preference to, and received preference from, the Liberal and National parties. Family First did not preference a single Labor candidate anywhere in Australia in 2004 (correction: FF preferenced Labor ahead of the Liberals in the seats of Brisbane and Leichhardt because the candidate Ingrid Tall is a Lesbian and Warren Entsch is in favour of gay marriage). Similarly, their efforts to claim independence from their churchish origins, their founders and sponsors in the Assemblies of God Church movement, were singularly unsuccessful, a subject I have written much on (and at much personal cost). Their progress since 2004 (if any) in establishing a party structure worthy of a mainstream political force will be the subject of part two of this article.

The Coalition, having struck this deal in 2004, should be asking themselves how the deal has panned out. Now Family First have had nearly three years to show their disposition towards the Government, what has their grace and favour have gained them?

An Analysis of Family First's Performance:

This article seeks to present an analysis which will bring some facts to bear on this question. I have analysed all Senate divisions since 2001 to assess the overall behaviour of independent Senators in general, to see if Senator Fielding has been as good a performer as others in similar circumstances. Additionally, I have analysed all the Senate divisions since Family First took their seat to see how they have disposed themselves to the major parties. The source data I have used is freely available at the Parliamentary web site.

It should be admitted that any Senator sitting as an independent or for a micro-party takes on a disproportionate workload, seeing as they must act in some capacity as a spokesperson in every portfolio imaginable, as well as participating in votes and debate in the Senate chamber, and receive delegations from lobby groups, constituents and colleagues.

Senator Steve Fielding took office in July 2005 having been elected in October 2004. From that time until the end of June 2007 there have been 588 divisions in the Senate, divided between the Senate sitting as the full chamber and the Senate in Committee.

In comparison, there were 443 Senate divisions in the preceding four and a half years, between February 2001 and June 2005. This suggests an interesting observation in and of itself: The tempo of senate divisions in the two years of the current parliament is very nearly triple (x 2.98) than that of the preceding four and a half years. This is no doubt a direct reflection of the Coalition's wish to maximise its rare majority in both houses.

Attendance:

The next relevant statistic regards attendance. Since taking office, Senator Steve Fielding has been absent for 148 divisions, yielding an attendance rate of 75%. How does this stack up? Should one could be forgiving of such absences, considering a party with only one sitting member would find it difficult to be in the Senate chamber for every division? Let's look for a reasonable parallel.

There have been four independent senators in recent history to whom we can look for a comparison.

Senator Brian Harradine served as an independant Senator for Tasmania between 1975 and his retirement in 2005.
Analysis of the Parliamentary records between February 2001 and June 2005 showed Senator Harradine was present and voted in 216 of these divisions, or 48% of the time.

One Nation had Senator Len Harris representing them as the party's sole Senator over the same period. He was present for 180 divisions, a relatively disappointing 40% attendance rate. I am among those who supported One Nation for their ideals but became profoundly disenchanted by their lazy, undisciplined approach. This is one reason why.

Senator Shayne Murphy sat as an independent from February 2002 after resigning from the Labor party. While he sat as an independent, there were a total of 377 divisions. Murphy voted in 163, or 43% of the time.

Senator Meg Lees sat as an independent after Feb 2003 after resigning from the Australian Democrats. She formed the unsuccessful Australian Progressive Alliance party and lost her seat in 2005. Over this time there were 339 divisions, and she voted in 233 of them, an average of 69%, making her a diligent legislator in comparison. Lees broke away from the Democrats after concluding they had drifted too far to the left. Her concern seems amply justified, considering the Democrats sided with the ALP in 91% of divisions between 2001-2005 and an astonishing 99.3% of the time (4 votes from 588) since 2005. So much for the "party of balance" the Democrats claimed to be.

Voting Patterns:

It must be remembered that there are many Senate divisions that are of a purely procedural nature and both the major parties vote the same way. This was true a surprising 59% of the time from 2001-2005, but dropped sharply to 32% of the time after 2005.

However, if one excludes these times and only counts the times that Family First voted with one major party and against the other (that is, on votes of substance where the major parties disagreed) then Family First favoured the Opposition 175 times (30% of all votes) as opposed to the Coalition 119 times (20% of all votes).

Even more extraordinarily, Family First voted with the Greens on no fewer than 198 occasions, when both were voting in concert to oppose the Government, a significant 34% of the time. The natural antipathy between Family First and the Greens makes this revelation of more than passing interest.

Family First saw fit to oppose both major parties on 87 occasions, or 15% of the time.

Conclusion:

One could look at the above results in a number of ways.
Firstly, Steve Fielding's attendance in the Senate chamber reflects well on his diligence as a parliamentarian, equalling that of ex-Democrat Meg Lees, and greatly exceeding that of other independent Senators of recent time.

Secondly, Family First have distinguished themselves by not slavishly following the voting pattern of either major party. However, this should cause the Coalition to totally re-assess whether Family First deserve their preferences in the unqualified way they have been dispensed previously. Family First voted with Labour 50% more often than the Coalition when real differences of opinion (not just procedural matters) were at stake. The Coalition should be very cautious about giving Family First any endorsement when they now have a track record like this.

I approached this article with a measure of scepticism concerning Family First's motives and predispositions as a new political party, and I am on the record as being highly critical of them in the past. In assessing their Federal parliamentary performance, I was surprised with what I found. Much was done in 2004 that was badly planned, ineptly executed and caused many Christians a deal of grief because of the way in which the entanglements between Church and State were mishandled, especially in NSW. My concerns in this area remain, but at least Senator Fielding has given a balanced and applied face to the party in the Senate, even if it is at variance with what the Coalition had been led to expect from it.

In the next instalment of my analysis, I will focus on the party structure Family First promised would be constructed at the time of the 2004 Federal Election, and what (if any) progress has been made since. I will ask what evidence there is concerning whose views have been represented by Family First in their voting patterns detailed here, and whether they show signs of growing into a genuinely broad-based political movement.

-Nathan Zamprogno

Random questions: Spiders and what they eat

Just occasionally, I think I'll just throw out to you some of the random questions that have cluttered up my brain for years.

Here's todays:

"If a spider bit another spider it would probably die. But if a spider bites a fly and then eats it, why doesn't it poison itself?"

When you can't convince unreason

(Update: July 6th with additional quotations)

Flamewars are unbecoming. Mostly. Sometimes I just can't help myself.

I feel torn. In my twenties I used to think that "boots and all" was the best debating tactic when closely held principles were at stake. Now, in my thirties, I wonder if my debating reserve is now more a function of my mortgage, my more-than-full-time job, or a little more life-experience. Could it be a loss of idealism and a lack of care? That last prospect gives me the shudders. God save me from a lack of care.

But sometimes you just have to throw the towel in. Sometimes, the degree of ignorance you encounter in a debate makes progress impossible. Perhaps this is the lesson I am now slowly learning in my thirties: When to leave people to their own delusions. As Edith Sitwell once said "I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it." Perhaps I should be more mindful of the question of whether giving vacuous ideas oxygen by arguing against them does more harm than good.

I refer, in this instance, to my enduring, horrified fascination with Young Earth Creationism. This vein of Creationism is, in fact, more than just the logically broken, medievally minded, simplistic, bibliolatrous notion that the Earth is 6000 years old. No, what is worse is its deeply offensive claim that those who do not support Young Earth Creationism (and their advocates) are apostates; less enlightened and less effective as Christians than the "true" Church that remains faithful to a literal reading of Scripture; even that opponents are "tools of Satan". Oh, and those in the tent of Deceived Christianity include Anglicans, Catholics, and those in the Salvation Army. No wonder that many questing and intelligent seekers are permanently put off believing in Jesus! In this age, Young Earth Creationism is the primary engine causing Christianity to be rejected among those who are seeking spiritual truth, and yet who can plainly see through Science that Creationist claims about the natural world are patently false.

I maintain a strong position in opposing those who tarnish Christianity with such casuistry, and without apology. Perhaps worst in this field is Kent Hovind, who pushed all kinds of Creationist quackery until he was finally sentenced to ten years prison for tax fraud earlier this year. His wife will now also be sent to prison for the same offences.

Well, Kent maintains a blog, even from prison. And what a magnet it has become to people who share his views! When I read it, my palms itch. It's a tragic circus of the absurd, the credulous and the angry.

Thus, I belatedly arrive at my purpose for this essay. I have trawled the gibbering insanity so you don't have to. What do Creationists really believe? What do they believe when they apply the same degree of skepticism to other propositions as they do to their basis in their belief in the age of the Earth?

What I present below is a quick and non-exhaustive snapshot of who believers in Young Earth Creationism find themselves as fellow travellers with. It's scary, and it's sad.

All the quotes I present below (including spelling mistakes) are quoted verbatim from the comments to the various postings on Kent Hovind's blog. Where links are included I am using Google's index to present the URLs where that phrase is used. So...

What do a lot of people who believe in Young Earth Creationism also believe?

1. That The United States Government does not exist.
• "It is an established fact that the United States Federal Government has been dissolved by the Emergency Banking Act, March 9, 1933. The receivers of the United States Bankruptcy are the International Bankers, via the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The receivers of the Bankruptcy have adopted a new form of government for the United States. This new form of government is known as a Democracy, being an established Socialist/Communist order under a new governor for America"
• "Since the dropping or the gold and silver standards and the complete floating of the dollar 'lawful money' has ceased to exist".

2. The IRS is an illegal entity and no one has to pay tax! Yay!
• "So has Dr. Hovind commited any wrong? YES! He is serving Jesus and that royally disses the devil (the god of this world) off ...He has done no evil becuase the IRS is 100% illegal anyways!"
(Oh, and the IRS are demonically inspired.)
• "Don’t we have enough against us with satan and his demons which include certain irs agents?"

3. The U.S Government was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, as part of a sinister plot to create a despotic state, just like Pearl Harbour (which was, of course, also a conspiracy).
• "The gov’t’s story of 9/11 is impossible according to the laws of physics, and therefore was likely an inside job a la Hitler and the Reichstag fire."
• "I’m guessing you are one of those scoffers that the Bible told us about that would pop up in the last days, the type that doesn’t allow himself to be so confused like the rest of us Christians, with the facts. As for 9/11 there are only 400 physicists and engineers that all say that it was impossible for a building to pulverize itself by the damage done by the planes and the puny fires. How do you explain building 7 being reported as collapsed 1/2 hour before it fell and the testimonies of all the eyewitnesses who heard explosions prior to the collapse? How about the picture of a melted core column that looks like it wa cut at a perfect 60 degree angle with luke skywalkers laser sword? Yeah the planes did it.Forget the eyewitnesses cause they were there and you weren’t so you know more than those who were there. OK so good is evil to you?"

4. The U.S Government are involved in a conspiracy to keep Hovind in jail, or worse, simply because he is a Christian. His theft of $600,000 in taxes had nothing to do with his conviction.
• "You know why he’s REALLY in prison. It has nothing to do with taxes! This is not a political free feral. As Christians we are at war with all those who want us silenced. My family finally found out the status of Dr. Hovind. He’s in solitary confinement and the government is trying to put him in prison overseas. There is only one reason for this, THEY WANT HIM DEAD!"
• "I heard of your arrest. And as I had suspected, it was for the unconstitutional non-law of the Federal Income Tax. And as I had also suspected, many disinformers would use that to discredit you and your works. On wikipedia, youtube, or just any where that you are mentioned, they keep using the lie that you had broke a law."
• "(Hovind) has taken a stand for the work of God to not be a tax collector"

5. Don't vaccinate your kids. The Government is trying to kill them.
• "They will try to kill your kids through vaccinations and if that doesn’t work, they have other ways."

6. The Government is poisoning your food. With soy. Don't eat the soy!
• "They poison our food with chemicals, give us soy to drink and eat. They put it in most of our packaged foods."

7. The Government has a cure for Cancer but hush it up because of "big money".
• "Cancer is being cured all over the world. There is a cure today yet in America there are those who are doing their “research” to find a “cure” and it has already been found. But it is a big money making project for them NOT to find a cure for cancer in America."

8. The Government is poisoning your drinking water. Don't drink the water!
• "They contaminate our drinking water with flouride and clorine. Even our toothpaste has flouride and it has been outlawed in many parts of the world."
• "there is a poison warning on all flouride toothpaste tubes that has only shown harm rather than benefits."
• "other countries refuse to use flouride or treat with that well known poison"

9. Canola oil is toxic. Don't eat Canola oil!
• "Many places are using Canola Oil to cook the foods that we eat. Canola oil is toxic."

10. Actually, everything, everywhere is a conspiracy. Do you need proof? Look out! behind you!
• "Kent Hovind knew about this information" (and is in prison because of this)
"This nation is being run by a CRIME SYNDICATE, of which the Bushes and Clintons are part and parcel"
• "G.W. Bush drunk blood out of a skull, sat in a coffin naked, and swore occultic oaths to an extremely powerful secret society which he has continued to rely upon for favors up until this day"
• "The Bush clan got their family fortune from the Opium Trade back in the 1800s"
• "The Bush clan is one of the world’s ranking Illuminati bloodlines."
Apparently, the Clintons are just as bad:
• "The Clinton clan is partners in crime with the Bushes. When Clinton was Arkansas’s governor, and Daddy Bush was president, TONS of cocaine was being smuggled in nightly into the Mena, Arkansas Airport by CIA black operatives."
• "I admit to being slow, dull, and dumbed down by western institutions to which I have been exposed: but it only just really occurred to me that the reason a lot of people come here is because they have sold their very own moral souls to a beast of biblical proportions and they want submissive Y.E.C. to come to them cowering, begging to lick the blood from their very own Gestapo issue knee high black boots and swell their faltering confidence in their shameful decision to sell all that they have and ever will have to a foreign faceless and alien power."

11. Hovind was right to ignore all letters demanding payment of taxes because (silly IRS), they wrote his name in UPPER CASE. Everyone knows that if your name is written in UPPER CASE it's not actually referring to you, but a legal fiction involving the same sequence of letters. (BTW: Cheques sent to Hovind spelling his name in UPPER CASE were always summarily banked.)
• "...alternatively, he might have simply tendered a affidavit declaring that he is not the PERSON named on the documents before the court but that he was there to represent that entity."
(to which one response was, seriously: "I want to faint. How can Kent Hovind stand alone against our entire country’s misunderstanding? Somebody needs to write a book. This is HUGE!")

12. And yes, so we have the complete set: The moon landings were fake.
• "I found this video on whether we really even went to the moon at all. What a deception it could be."
• "I have finally sat down and watched a serious documentary about the photos and film/ video evidence of the moon landings - and you can now put me down as one who believes there are questions to answer - many photos / video was filmed on earth [maybe all of it] - there is no doubt some filming was a mock up made on earth - the question is why? it is the same question dave von kleist asks about 911"

13. People opposing Kent Hovind without question are children of Satan, apostate deceivers, Jesus denying mockers and God-haters. Your sincerity as a Christian is irrelevent and void if you take a Christian brother to task over faulty doctrine, regardless of how damaging it is to the Body of Christ.
• "You’ve taken Satan’s number"
• "You are spiritually blinded and a child of Satan."
• "It IS the time of the Apostate church folks. The End is getting near."
• "Most of the persecution meeted out on Gods People in the bible was done by the so called religious rulers. Many reasons for this,but afew I can think of-/ Hatered of God word/ Shows up their evil deeds" (spelling mistakes in original)
• "Remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit."
• "Just remember when it is time to receive your mark on your right hand or forehead, we tried to warn you. Jesus Christ is the truth and we have tried to show you the truth to wake you up from your demonic stupor, but I’m thinking the real reason behind your scoffing is your love of sin. Forsake it before it is too late for you, it is a delusion, and does not last forever but life in Christ does. Hell awaits all you scoffers... God is angry at the wicked every day Ps. 7:11b and you are but a breath and a heartbeat away from his eternal wrath."
• "You are again calling Jesus a liar, yet you claim to follow him. Further, you again publicly ridicule your “fellow brethren,” whether some are strong or weak in the faith."

14. Spelling. Creationists Don't believe in spelling. Or Logic. Or Reality.
Take, as one small example, one random but representative example of Creationist Logic:
• (speaking of the plain meaning of a phrase)
"Is the question “Do you understand the charges?” the same as “Do you comprehend these accusations?” I suggest that there is a profound difference between these two simple questions"
(tortured logic excised, but this poster eventually "interprets" this phrase as actually meaning)
"Do you presume to take a maritime commercial material liability onto your trading vessel in the form of the persona you are presuming to take possession of?".
This, then being a partial justification for Hovind to regard the Court's authority as null and void. I think "yes" would have been perfectly sufficient an answer to the original question.

And the spelling mistakes? Far, far too many to list.
• “Jesus made this sacrafice so that we, as sinners, could have eternal life… Jesus didn’t sound all that humble when he turned the tables over in the sancuary. The biggest problem in America today is our 'sancuaries'”
• “The catechism of the catholict church they give it to children.”
• “I am apalled at this convinction…”
• “flouride” (a lot of people are concerned about this dangerous chemical. Must remember not to bake with it)
“…There is no constition right not to be”
• "A couple manage to mis-spell Hovind. (Hoving, Howind)"
Lastly, I especially regard it as telling when people describe themselves as “Christions”. Hallelluyah!

15. Guns. Yep. Lots of guns.
• "PS. I’m big on the second amendment too. I carried to church this morning, and I’ve got a loaded gun in my back pocket as I’m typing this!"

This list is a sample, and I believe a fair one, of the tenor of support for Young Earth Creationists. Well, these quotes are drawn from a longer narrative involving impenetrable quantities of doublespeak and an assumption of greater knowledge of constitutional and taxation law than two centuries of polity.

From my reading, there is a substantial overlap between these views and those of Hovind himself. Hovind believes, for example:

• The pyramids were not built by the Egyptians.
• The notion that UFO's were "Satan's transport" should not be dismissed out of hand.
• The 666-barcode argument is valid and a concern.
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is worth endorsing and selling at Hovind's seminars. (quote: "Be sure to read PROTOCOLS OF ZION [sic] call [sic] my office if you cannot find a copy."

• Sonar is part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
• A fighter pilot "escorted" the second plane into the twin towers on 9/11. (reference: Hovind DVD Seminar, #5 I think)
  

(Update: July 7. As I've been Pharyngulated, I thought I'd enhance this article with a few Hovind quotes. This article started as an analysis of Hovind's supporters. Let's hear from the man himself!)

• "Four people have called me from Arkansas and Missouri, to report seeing customers at the grocery store pay for purchases by scanning their hand."

• "There is much empirical data that conclusively proves vaccinations can be harmful, and in many cases fatal, and should therefore be avoided. [.....] There is also a book available through CSE which provides in-depth information concerning the dangers of vaccinations and how they destroy our God-given immune system. "
  

• "Democracy is evil and contrary to God's law."
• "CALLER: You think the 9/11 conspiracy has bigger implications as to it relates to a One World Government? HOVIND: Absolutely. That's the whole purpose."
• "I think when somebody does study this and realises that a ball falling from the top of the Twin Towers would fall in nine and a half seconds and the Towers came down in ten and a half seconds. Something's wrong."
  
• "There is about four or five [feathered dinosaurs] that have been found. They're all fake. They're coming from China. These Chinese guys who make 40 cents a year. [...] They're faking them. They spend years forging these things."
• "We just had a report from a missionary. I talked to him today for 45 minutes. He's going over and I'm going over with him for sure this time. They have located a pterodactyl, several pterodactyls, a apatosaurous and a plesiosaur. All on the north-east side of the island of Indonesia."
• (advice to the mother of a cancer patient): "If you do nothing with cancer your life expectancy is somewhere between 6 and 10 years. If you take chemo your life expectancy is between 1 and 2 years... I think the last thing I would do would be to take the medical profession's approach."
• "The Bird Flu is mostly hoax."
• "Satan is going to work towards reduction of the population and lowering cholesterol is good way of doing that."
• "AIDS was purposefully developed in a Maryland laboratory to wipe out population."

With thanks to this site for the above info.

Oh, how I could go on. I want to pose this question: If these are the kinds of beliefs, and the kinds of supporters, that stubbornly refuse to be separated from Young Earth Creationism, then what does that say about the rigour of Young Earth Creationism itself? Is it, on this analysis, likely to be based on a genuine search for truth, or merely on the reinforcement of benighted prejudice?

It is these people- the scared, hayseed conspiratorialists that provide the backbone, the funding, and the moral support for Young Earth Creationism, and the Creationists are happy to take their money and their devotion without ever challenging them on the more fringe beliefs they hold. Apparently it is more important to convince infidels to believe in your model of radioactive decay than it is to convince your Christian brother to get his kids inoculated against the measles. This willful blindness has made corrupt organisations like Answers in Genesis rich. Christians should do more to expel these teachings from their midst. As a Christian, who has seen this kind of rubbish preached in my own Church (although not to the extent seen here), I just can't apologise to those who think we should be "softly, softly" with nitwits like these. Anyone who supports a Young Earth Creationist ministry such as AiG or CMI, or ICR is damaging the cause of Christ by encouraging people to base their faith in Jesus on demonstrable lies.

So, do we continue to argue with such people? A quote I read years ago sticks with me:
"Reason's weakness is its belief that it can convince unreason". Is there any point in wading into such debates and enduring the ignorant flack that follows? Is there any benefit to be gained?

I'd like to think so, but I'm no longer sure. Your views are invited (as indeed are additions if I have missed any of the stranger beliefs that Creationists share).

-Nathan Zamprogno

What does Church/ State Separation really mean?

The Sydney Daily Telegraph June 26th carried an opinion piece from Jim Wallace, the leader of the Australian Christian Lobby. I have personally heard Mr Wallace speak on several occasions and generally support his views. However, on this occasion he invoked what I regard as an incorrect definition of what the separation between the Church and the State really means. The text of the piece is below, followed by my response.

Silent church answers no prayer
By Jim Wallace

"IN my SAS days we used the term "flat, dumb and happy" for people who were not prepared to take a chance. It's derived from military parachuting and refers to those who are effectively freefalling and not making a difference.

Some people would like the church to be "flat, dumb and happy" – it's all right for the church to be there, provided it doesn't influence our lives or the way we are governed.

In the controversy over Cardinal George Pell's comments on the embryonic cloning Bill, this message rang out loud and clear. The over-the-top reaction to Cardinal Pell putting forward the Catholic Church's view was concerning to say the least.

Surely, in a democratic society, Cardinal Pell had the right to reinforce the Catholic Church's teaching with those parliamentarians who have identified themselves with his faith? So too did the Anglicans, the Baptists and other church groups.

One phrase which is bandied about on these occasions is "the separation of church and state". Those seeking to advance the cause of secularism tend to trumpet it as a reason why the church should have nothing to do with politics.

They conveniently forget that this phrase means nothing of the kind. What it means is that the state shouldn't run the church and the church shouldn't run the state. It is meant to guarantee freedom of religion, something which Christians are in hearty agreement with!

The notion that the church should stay out of politics is not only misinformed but would be highly detrimental for society. Who plead the cause of the poor and the needy? Where would the moral voice be to rally against pornography, violence and the undermining of family values?

According to the 2001 ABS Census, nearly 13 million people – or 68 per cent of Australians – declared themselves as Christians. If the clear majority identify with Christian values, isn't it only right that the Christian voice should influence our government and society?

Some people mistake the desire to influence governments with theocracy, where religion rules the nation. Such a concept is not on the Christian agenda.

There are no countries in the world which are Christian theocratic states. There are, however, theocratic Islamic states in which Christians are often persecuted. This is not an example we would want to follow in Australia.

Australia's government and society has benefited much from its Christian heritage. From social services to education, the church has played a vital role.

There are many competing agendas that would love to see the church silenced in an election year – history and commonsense say that wouldn't be for the best."

My response:

The Constitutional Divide that Protects our Democracy.

Jim Wallace is correct in his observation that our political processes are enriched by the religious faith of politicians when it informs their decision making. He implies the doctrine of “the separation of Church and State” is a cudgel only wielded by those seeking to “advance the cause of secularism”. This claim reveals how wrong-headed a lot of religiously motivated forays into politics are, however well motivated they may be.

The doctrine Mr Wallace espouses is most famously enshrined in the constitution of the U.S.A. The drafters of our constitution saw fit to borrow the wording of this section whole when our Federators made their deliberations. The ambiguity Australia inherited about the position of the dividing line between the two sides has become a mixed blessing, if you’ll excuse the pun.

For example, much is made on the fact that the Coalition has doubled funding to private (largely Christian) schools during its tenure. In reality, the Government and the taxpayer get an enormous bargain from this arrangement, since the parents of privately educated students massively subsidise the cost of their education; expenses our public treasuries do not then have to meet. Far from being state sponsored dogma, it’s an arrangement where Parents gain choice and everyone wins.

But for every such fillip, a darker side exists. The political party Family First made every effort to smooth over their Church connections at the last Federal election. However, many instances came to light of Pastors in the Family First fold exhorting their parishioners to support the party as an act of piety. One recorded instance of a Pastor closely linked to a Family First Senate candidate told his congregation prior to the 2004 election that their votes “belonged to God” and that failing to remember that fact would make them “an anger magnet for God”. At other Churches, Family First openly recruited funds and workers. When does such activism cross the line into coercion?

It is in such cases that Mr Wallace completely misses the real concerns people have over the meaning of Church and State separation. The concern is that such disingenuous attempts to inject the Christian message into public discourse do more harm than good. Cardinal Pell, or anyone with an axe to grind on stem-cell research, abortion or euthanasia feel compelled by their convictions to speak up, and good on them. People like Cardinal Pell are indeed entitled to their own opinions; but they’re just not entitled to their own facts. Good politicians make decisions based on facts.

Flipwise, Wallis’s putative “secularists” are not, as he would claim, devoid of moral sensibility, unable to reason out an opposition to violence or pornography.

Mr Wallis fears that for the Church to be “silenced” in important debates would be unwise. Rather, he should exhort Christians to be aware that their method of expressing convictions can backfire, and even damage the integrity of the Church and the political process. Overt or covert religious parties represent too great a temptation to violate the right of Christians to feel their political allegiance is a private matter unrelated to their fellowship. A French word, sadly untranslatable, laïcité, expresses the concept perfectly.

Politically interested Christians should join either of the mainstream parties, where more good can be done than on the fringes of politics. Not so they can then become pawns of a faction, but to be the Salt and Light Jesus exhorted His followers to be.

The distinction between a Christian nation and a secular nation with a majority of Christians may seem fine, but it is an important one; one we are in danger of blurring. The former would indeed be a Theocracy. Although Mr Wallis claim none now exist, History is replete with them. The latter, however, is a proven prescription for prosperity, tolerance and peace.

This Made My Year And It's Only April

At the suggestion of me-ol-matey John, the ADHD Librarian (I was about to use the term "spoon-friend" but there are those out there who just wouldn't get that), I went to the MyHeritage site to waste a few minutes on the entertaining distraction of uploading a photo of myself and seeing which celebrity the computer thought I looked like.
Well, am I well-pleased...

I am my childhood hero Carl Sagan, and my son is, as those who know him well can attest, a walking wardrobe malfunction.
Now that's artificial intelligence research at work.

Google spake it, but it was not so

A story in today's Sydney Morning Herald shows how Google's latest maps offering leaves a little to be desired. In the example quoted, Google's suggestion on how to literally cross Sussex street in Sydney's CBD involves crossing the Harbour bridge twice and travelling over 10km (plus toll).

I can top that. I bought up the mapping information for my home suburb (Richmond in NW Sydney) and immediately noted something interesting...

That long road linking William Cox Drive with Chapel Street does not exist! (Click here for the Google Maps URL) There is a private driveway for a small portion of that length, but the rest is pure imagination. These road overlays are not yet incorporated into Google Earth yet, as they are in other locations, so for now you've got to go to the browser-based site to see this.

I think what has happened is that they must be creating their mapping data from aerial photography and where a line of trees may or may not obscure a road, they've just put the line in. It also shows that Google aren't just copying copyrighted information from the Gregory's or UBD guide, because it's well known that such cartographers put deliberate mistakes into their maps to catch copiers.


If an error like this became apparent on the first thing I looked at, then I can only assume that such errors are endemic. What's missing of course is a mechanism for correction. How do people with greater local knowledge get such bugs fixed?

The gene for L33tness is isolated

We often look at the younger generation and nervously ascribe their innate proficiency with technology to something genetic. (I for one welcome our new preschooler overlords). Just occasionally, they let their guard down and we see the proof that this ability is truly, frighteningly, fundamental to their very being.



...Without any tuition, or indeed knowledge of the Internet subculture, my son Liam speaks fluent l33t with his fridge magnets.

Stupidity is not soluble

This article has been deleted.

The Australian Census

Tonight is Australian Census night, and I felt moved to post this comment as I fill out the Census form for my family.

Recently I got a letter from my Church denomination, requesting that under "religion" I remember to put the particular designation for our denomination.

I got to thinking: My religion is not my denomination. Indeed I may be a member of a particular denomination, and I may even subscribe to its doctrine, but that is not what the Census form is asking me and my family.

Now cautious, I re-read the Census question closely: "What is the person's religion".

I answered "Christian", and believe that to be not only the simplest but also the only conscionable answer. I belong to Him before I belong to anything else.

Is Nathan a Heretic?

Thankfully not, according to this online quiz, which asks you some finely shaded questions about what you believe (about sin and the divinity of Jesus) and then compares it to the creed of the Council of Chalcedon, held in 451. I passed!

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451. Pelagianism 100% Chalcedon compliant 100% Monophysitism 75% Modalism 58% Nestorianism 58% Socinianism 50% Adoptionist 50% Apollanarian 25% Monarchianism 25% Gnosticism 17% Donatism 17% Albigensianism 8% Arianism 0% Docetism 0%

Young Earth Creationism - Kaput

I’d like to welcome all the visitors who are here because of my essay “The Evolution of Creationism” which has aired on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National segment, Perspectives, and subsequently worldwide on Radio Australia and the Internet. Thanks are due to Sue Clark at the ABC for help in its production.

Below is a transcript and audio of the piece. This is, of course, also available at the ABC website, but this content tends to disappear after a fortnight and the audio is “streaming only”, whereas I can offer you an MP3 (Click HERE for the MP3 of the essay [4.3Mb] or HERE for the streaming version from the ABC website via RealPlayer).

Your feedback is welcome. Please do so by clicking on the “comments” link below. If you feel you want to communicate directly then email me, but generally, unless this is to offer me money, then I’d rather you comment publicly.

Just a couple of quick things:

Perspectives is a challenging show to write for, because complex issues have to be cut down to the pith to fit into the 5 minute format. Much that is relevant to a full understanding of an issue is of necessity left out. I will be developing some of these themes on this site over the next few weeks and my invitation to you is to bookmark this site and come back periodically for new posts, or email me and I'll happily inform you when updates on this subject are published. There’s always something interesting here!

Second, my piece was written and broadcast with the full knowledge of my employer, although on the understanding that it represents my own view and not that of the School. I quote briefly from my School’s policy on “The Teaching of Origins” because of my belief is that there is significant congruence between the School’s stated view on Young Earth Creationism and my own (except for tone, in which I take sole responsibility for being blunt). If however you object to my view, my radio piece or what I write here, please direct criticism to me on the basis of my piece and feedback to the School on the basis of its stated policy, and not the other way around. Conflating the two will be seen as deliberately vexatious.

Transcript of the Radio Essay [annotation not appearing in the radio piece in square brackets]:

The Evolution of Creationism

“The debate about humanity’s Origins is resurgent. Our Federal Education minister has given qualified endorsement [since withdrawn] to the teaching of Intelligent Design. In the United States, (where else?), Intelligent Design is back in the Courts, and the Vatican has come out strongly to attack Intelligent Design as being both bad science and bad theology. What’s going on?

Some say Intelligent Design merely peddles old arguments with a new vocabulary, or that they abuse a sense of “fair play” by insisting on “teaching the controversy”. So is “Intelligent Design”, Intelligently Designed?

I work in an environment that is a crucible for such questions, at a large Christian, non-denominational school west of Sydney. We do not teach literal 6-day, 6-thousand year ago Creationism, although our acceptance of an “intelligent designer” in the Universe is axiomatic. Our school policy says, in part
“The balance of physical evidence does not appear to support a young earth. We do not believe that scripture helps us to decide how old the earth is”. Unquote.

At first glance, Intelligent Design, without the stigmas and inconsistencies of Young Earth Creationism, seems like a good fit for what we and many other Christian Schools teach. So what’s the problem?

Intelligent Design advocates claim they have proof that certain mechanisms could never evolve into the form we see today if only undirected, natural processes were at work, even if given millions of years. Common examples quoted include the bacterial flagellum, the immune system, or the vertebrate eye. In pure “ID”, Natural Selection and billion-year timescales are readily accepted, although the identity of the putative “Intelligent Designer” is left for the listener to speculate. There are a lot of people who start winking and nudging at you with their Bibles when that point comes up.

Young Earth Creationism holds that not only was the Judeo-Christian God Yahweh responsible for the Universe, but that it all happened in six days, 6000 years ago. It also asserts there were vegetarian Tyrannosaurs and funnelweb spiders in the Garden of Eden, and that once, two Koalas swam to Australia from Turkey, without eating along the way, to establish Australia’s breeding population.

Such Young Earth Creationists have done a lot of harm to the Christian cause when they torture both the Bible and Science to evangelise. Smart, spiritually questing people who might respond to the message of the Gospel tend to get the giggles when they’re told that most of modern biology, geology and astronomy is a monstrous humanist conspiracy that leads to homosexuality, communism, terrorism and dancing.

And it’s not a new problem. St Augustine had the gist 1600 years ago when he said “Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth … But it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.”

Young Earthers are the big losers in the emergence of Intelligent Design because sensible debate has moved beyond their specious arguments forever. Intelligent Design has eaten their demographic whole. But although Intelligent Design is comparatively benign, to see its danger, consider history, replete with pitfalls when we misuse Science as a pillar for Faith.

The geocentricity of the universe was once held as proof of our special place in creation. Then came Galileo. The notion of biological "vitalism" has yielded to Biochemistry. Calvinists who found solace in Newton's description of a clockwork, deterministic universe, blanched at the revelations of Quantum theory.

These theories were regarded as self-evident, even Scriptural in their day. The temptation, then as now, is to invoke the “God of the Gaps” as a proof for faith. But when Scientific knowledge advances, those counselled into such a foundation, founder.

Perhaps the last word belongs to old Charlie Darwin himself, who confided to a supporter: "I cannot be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance."”

Commentary:

Intelligent Design will swallow Young Earth Creationism

In the rise of the Intelligent Design movement, an important development that has been overlooked is the degree to which it has eaten its “parent”, Young Earth Creationism, and confirmed its place as an embarrassing anachronism. This is ironic, considering Intelligent Design advocates like the Discovery Institute hold as their chief goal to drive a “wedge” between creationists and those whom they see as pushing a secular worldview. Instead, what has happened is they have split Christians with Creationist sympathies into two camps: those happy to accept the findings of Science as neutral, and even enriching to their faith, and those who mistrust much of what non-Christian academics say as driven by an anti-Christian agenda. The fact that the majority of Christians are coming down increasingly on the side of the former rather than the latter must cause Young Earth advocates night sweats. Their support, their finance, their relevance and their credibility are all being seriously assailed from within, as their demographic migrates to the comparatively less paranoid and less specious options ID presents them. Young Earthers have for some time proclaimed themselves as the guardians of the authority of the Scriptures, and as the only group able to harmonise what we see in the world around us with what is “plainly written” in the Bible through their “research” (remember that Answers in Genesis went by the name “The Creation Science Foundation” until only a decade ago for precisely this purpose). However, much of the debate about the interface between Science and Christian Faith is now conducted in terms of “Intelligent Design”, and Young Earthers are left presenting their overhead projection slides of Native American Indian rock-art depicting dinosaurs (rebuttal), the plausibility of vegetarian sharks or lions before the Fall or the amount of Salt in the Ocean (rebuttal) to increasingly informed, and therefore embarrassed, audiences.

If the attention Intelligent Design has received in the media and on Education Boards across the United States is any indication, Young Earth Creationism has been dealt a fatal blow. It may not seem that way at the moment, but look closer. How has the debate surrounding Creationism evolved? What we see constantly are headlines like “Intelligent Design – Science or Religion?” and mealy-mouthed appeals to fairness from ID'ers like “Intelligent Design – Teach the Controversy”. Most science-based commentators then crank up the "Intelligent Design is Creationism” line, which is a valid argument to have when so much of what ID proposes is untestable metaphysics. But look what has happened! We now have an environment where the debate proper over origins (as opposed to the political and ideological manoeuvring involved in that debate) now focuses on things like “irreducible complexity” and “specified complexity”. None of the current debate dwells at all on “flood geology”, or "C-Decay", or the packing order of animals aboard Noah’s Ark. Intelligent Design, for all its faults, accepts the weight of evidence from cosmology, geology and biology supporting the great age of the Universe and the reality of macroscopic evolution as a mechanism (although “directed”) to explain the common ancestry among living forms.

Some people, both Young Earthers and ID advocates alike, fearfully believe Science is seeking to destroy faith. Rather, Science exposes incorrect thinking, and for me it has been a doorway to a deeper sense of the numinous in His creation. I believe God is the Creator, and the study of His Creation is Science. They are linked, whether scientists and theologians like it or not. But much of what we term Creationism is specious nonsense, and its latest incarnation, Intelligent Design is still a deeply unsatisfying answer to the issue of reconciling the what we know with our senses and what we believe by Faith from God's Word. Young Earthers answer this dilemma with simplistic Bibliolatry; Intelligent Design advocates with hand waving pseudoscience in the direction of a the “God of the Gaps”. As arrogant as Dawkins is, he sums it up beautifully:

“Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away.”

This contrasts nicely with what passes for Science in the Young Earth Creation camp. This is John Hinton writing at the website of Creationist Kent Hovind (who, by the way is also an AiG un-Person) incisively deducing the sedimentary structure of the Grand Canyon:

“Standing at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and concluding that the multiple bands that line the canyon walls are products of millions of years of sedimentation is just plain stupid… Years later, after coming to Christ and asking the Holy Spirit to guide me in all that I do, I understood why they insisted on following such a nonsensical theory. I then understood that they were not just morons, but they were morons with an agenda that guided all of their science falsely so called.”

Young Earth Creationists are equally hostile to fellow Christians.

The stock trade of groups like Answers In Genesis is to preach itinerantly to Churches around Australia, the US and the UK, with a surprisingly invariant refrain of “dinosaurs on the ark”, “no fossil evidence for evolution”, “radiometric dating is a sham” and copious obfuscation about the information content of genetic material via what can only be described as “argument by technobabble”. Having attended a number of such presentations, the operating principle I can only descibe as “get a fool to ask more questions in an hour than a wise man can answer in a lifetime”. At the end of such a presentation, rarely are Christians properly edified in their spirits in the same way as effective preaching of the Word has the capacity to do, but rather their heads are filled with muddy conglomerates of solar comet distribution [rebuttal], the half life of polonium [rebuttal], the effect of the second law of thermodynamics on the information content of their genes [rebuttal], the fact that "some lions eat grass and not meat", the fact that no, Noah's Ark can't be found yet because the people claiming as much have been declared as Creationist un-Persons (although AiG are free to spruik their own theories), and the fact that if your children attend a School that does not teach Young Earth Creationism then it's because they have been compromised by secular pressures and, if they turn out to be Satanists then, well, you know why. How long would it take for a diligent, gifted teacher to unpack all those issues and give his listeners a full understanding of all the misinformation they have just heard? Weeks, months, years! And so, the Creationist's job is done. He walks, smiling, out of the Church, past his own merchandise table full of discredited books and pamphlets, for his next speaking engagement with a mire of confusion and destruction behind him. Maybe the minister will buy him lunch?

Meanwhile, the real work of making the message of the Gospel relevant in the world of the quantum, the gene and the byte we now inhabit has marched on, and is being done by both Scientists of Faith, and Christians with a respect for the faculty of reason alike. Young Earthers have been slow to realise they are now by themselves, spurned by the major Christian denominations, rejected in Christian seminaries and colleges, scorned in most Christian Schools (including mine), and are left to now preach largely (but not exclusively, to judge from their ministry calendar) to Charismatics and Seventh Day Adventists (and here's some analysis of the problems that poses).

One assumes AiG's ability to preach in any given congregation is more a function of the dispensation or harried inattentiveness of a particular minister rather than due to the endorsement of the denomination, and in some cases, occurs despite the reasonable expectation that they should not be permitted to speak because of the condemnation their denominational leaders have made about Young Earth Creationism.

As an example from my own denomination (Assemblies of God), take Pastor Phil Baker, Australian President of the Australian Christian Churches, which is an umbrella group folding in all Assemblies of God Churches, half a dozen other denominations and groups, and a number of independent Churches. In a discussion on Intelligent Design versus Young Earth Creationism, he has said

“Intelligent Design (advocates) are all Old Earthers as are most of the leading evangelical scholars. ‘Young Earthers’ are a dying breed whose main ecosystem is Queensland. They may go extinct in the next few decades. Certainly I agree with you re the harm they can cause to seeking people. Intelligent Design, Hugh Ross etc have had the exact opposite effect. I hosted a meeting of top physicists with Hugh a few years ago and they were impressed with his manner, his honesty and his science.”

If this is his view, why isn't more pressure applied to exclude organisations like AiG from speaking in any ACC member churches? The ACC, like the AOG is not an authoritarian umbrella, but surely some common sense can be made to prevail?

As an interesting contrast, Hugh Ross, held up by Baker as a mediating figure of some honesty and intelligence, comes in for a particular serve from Answers in Genesis ("The dubious apologetics of Hugh Ross" by Danny Faulkner and "Hugh Ross lays down the gauntlet!" by Jonathan Sarfati) where they accuse Ross of “outrageous biblical assertions”, “poor scholarship”, an “inability to correctly handle factual information”, “total disregard for the truth”, “no accountability”, “questions about his scientific competence”, “riddled with errors”, and finally posing the question “Dishonesty or incompetence? It is difficult to say.”

The above quotes were taken from a single paragraph of AiG's writings describing Ross, while simultaneously they make the claim (and it beggars belief, really, I couldn’t make this up if I tried), “We make these public comments with a heavy heart, and with the overriding emphasis that our intention is not personal attack.”
Yeah, right. Poor Hugh, you, like me have become a Creationist un-Person. In the Young Earth Creationist worldview, it is not only un-Good and impossible to believe that differing views can be welcomed into the brotherhood of faith, but fundamentally, if we oppose fundamentalist Creationism, we are apostate, dangerous puppets of a diabolical plot, and quite possibly unsaved to boot.

Writing in the AiG organ “Creation”, John Rendle-Short (whose scientific training is as a Paediatrician) writes
“Evolution provides the scientific orthodoxy for the philosophies of Marxism, fascism, racism, apartheid and unbridled capitalism.”

But why stop there? I can add I have a seen, in Creation magazine alone, a belief in Evolution attributed as the cause of Nazism, homosexuality, abortion, feminism, eugenics, environmentalism, teen pregnancy, AIDS, terrorism, and delinquency.

It’s a mighty powerful theory that can be blamed for Communism and Capitalism simultaneously, with Hitler, Mao and Stalin thrown in for good measure.

Answers in Genesis bring in “misguided” Churches for criticism as well for this state of affairs, declaring “We don’t usually stop to think of how the church itself has aided and abetted this tragedy as it has so often compromised on the authority of God’s Word”. Maybe by this they had the Salvation Army in mind, whom they have also reserved "heretic" status for. Ken Ham writes ("Compromise Kills!" 2001)

"The same compromise that has all but destroyed the church in England is now sweeping through churches, colleges and seminaries in America. Now, many of these institutions might claim they believe God created–but what does that mean? Do they really believe God’s Word as written? Or are they on the way to becoming like Stannard, preaching heretical statements as those above?"

For research into AiG’s writings on the Salvation of non Young Earth Creationists
I am grateful for Brian Baxter for the following.

Russell Grigg of AiG penned 'Do I have to believe in a literal creation to be a Christian?' for Creation magazine in June 2001. ‘It is true,’ Grigg tells us, 'that one can go through the steps of becoming a Christian without accepting or even knowing the Genesis account of Creation and the Fall.' However, this 'minimal belief system' leads to 'a shallow faith that has little root in the Word of God'. So, must one accept the literal Creation to be a Christian? 'The short answer is "No"', says Grigg. 'The long answer is "No, but …''

John Whitcomb of Genesis Flood fame is almost as subtle in an interview with Ken Ham. No, Whitcomb doesn't believe that a true, born-again Christian could lose his salvation by failing to believe the whole Word of God, including the literal Genesis Creation story. But when such a Christian appears before the judgment seat of Christ, he or she could 'suffer great loss - not our soul, but our reward'.

Brian’s other writing on AiG can be found at these links.

Of particular interest is Brian’s reflection on the arguments Young Earth Creationists no longer use. It’s one thing for Creationists to reject previously favoured “proofs” of creation like moon dust, man tracks, or missing days, but what of the harm they have done to the people who credulously accepted these theories as encouragements to believe hold to the truth of the Gospel? I’ve never seen an apology. If their reliance is totally on a "straight" reading of scripture, which by their definition does not change regardless of the culture or prevailing natural wisdom, how do they explain these embarrassing backflips?

Such invective as I have described above is far from uncommon among AiG acolytes. I myself have experienced it personally, but that’s an engaging story for another time.

Young Earthers may not oppose Intelligent Design, but Intelligent Design advocates can’t disown Young Earthers quick enough.

Young Earthers have good cause to be worried. On the one hand they make proclamations like this concerning ID

“AiG CEO Ken Ham says “If those people (Intelligent Design advocates) get themselves on school boards, fine. We don't oppose them. Simply because, for me, and for us in the biblical creation movement, we say, well let them fight the evolutionists, the atheists, and keep fighting issues of naturalism and so on, that's fine."

But then, for their “stockholders” they take a different tack:
“(Intelligent Design,) merely rejecting evolution … in favor of a generic notion of intelligent design, …does not go far enough." (Mark Looy, AiG 2000)

And also: because ID advocates repeatedly distance themselves from previously used Biblical arguments for Creationism they charge that as a result “any of its leaders who might later identify themselves with Genesis belief would lay themselves open to charges of having been publicly deceptive.” (Carl Wieland, AiG 2002)

Answers in Genesis has a stake in co-opting the support of those who support ID, and their associated media coverage, but the sad truth is that Intelligent Design has disowned Young Earth Creationism and takes every opportunity to distance itself from it. Thus, the above quoted Ken Ham news article goes on to say “Intelligent design advocates probably won't thank Australian-born Mr Ham for articulating what many of them try to avoid saying. That is: for some, the intelligent design movement is essentially a stalking horse for religion”. AiG themselves admits “(ID leading light) Dr Michael Denton, was part of a broadcast forum in Australia which recently told a largely Christian audience that belief in literal Genesis was foolish and unscientific.”

Conclusion

The purpose of my radio piece was to illustrate the "evolution" of the Creationist debate and show that Intelligent Design, for all it's own serious flaws, will eventually at least have the beneficial effect of making Young Earth Creationism wither and disappear. It may take the better part of a generation to happen, and I acknowledge that there are many who will not share my optimism. Of course, I know many Young Earthers personally, and delight in both their company and the sincerity of their faith. But I fear for the foundation of their faith greatly, if they have bolstered their faith by reading "Creation" magazine, as the half century of pseudoscientific literature that has accumulated around “Flood Geology”, “Dinosaur/human cohabitation” and “Starlight and Time” is still being goaded in the direction of credulous Christians as as additional reasons to believe- and that Emperor has long since been without clothes. To such people, all I can do is remind you with humility that "goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil."

Young Earthers like Answers in Genesis have indeed done a great deal of harm to the Christian Cause with their manner of genuflection, which consists of a planting of the hands firmly over each ear, closing their eyes and loudly going “La! La! La! La! La!” until inconvenient facts disappear or can be mocked into submission. Their retreat into the history books to be catalogued alongside flat-earthers is assured, but we (and by we I largely mean Christians) must be vigilant against their nonsense in our Churches and Schools until the last one falls into shamed silence.

I and those who follow the commentary that will follow this and my further writings on this topic should prepare themselves for vacuous vitriol of the first order. Prepare for comments that sedulously avoid the topic but instead focus on ad-hominem attacks, accusations of divisiveness, out-of-context quotation, exhumation of tired old arguments and events, outright dishonesty, and self serving auto-hagiography.

Evolution of Creationism - my upcoming radio piece

This coming Friday (2nd December 2005) I have been invited onto the ABC Radio National program "Perspectives" to deliver an essay on "The Evolution of Creationism".

Perspectives is a short segment appearing each weekday evening at 5:54pm, just before the news (or later, depending on where you are, check the website for air times). Various people, usually eminent in their field expound on every subject imaginable. I feel overwhelmed and privileged to be in their company.

The Perspectives program goes out Nationally and then Internationally via Radio Australia, plus whoever comes in over the Internet or reads the transcript on the ABC site. Listener figures in Australia approach six figures, and overseas even the ABC don't know.

Radio National is AM 576 in Sydney (here for other areas), or alternatively listen to the permanent streaming broadcast.

I will follow this post with a full transcript, additional commentary and audio shortly after the piece airs on the radio on Friday. Please feel free to check back here then.

A Bouquet for Jacarandas

Has anyone noticed it's been a glorious year for Jacaranda flowers? Jacarandas are native to South America and I'm not sure how widespread the species is elsewhere, so I'll describe them for my overseas readers. Jacaranda trees grow to a prodigious height of over 20m. The bark is flat & silvery on the boughs but rough at the bole. Leaflets are only 1cm long but are arranged into compound fronds up to 40cm, giving the tree one of its alternative names, the fern tree.

For maybe eight weeks a year, in late Spring, the Jacaranda blooms so heavily it's branches are bowed. Clusters of amethyst flowers shaped like long, curved bells change the complexion of the whole tree. Deciduous, the tree looks spare and skeletal over winter, but come Spring, I have always taken Jacarandas as the very harbinger of happy, outdoor times, warm afternoons and new growth. Then, in December, she sheds her mauve dress and it lays on the ground like a discarded shawl.

In my town, whole streets are lined with Jacarandas and for whatever reason they are a sight of special magnificence this year. It warms my heart to see them, for I feel a special connection with the Jacaranda.

When I was small, I grew up as much at my Grandparent's home as in my own. The family property at Glenhaven used to be a farm and orchard and my great-grandparents were the local postmasters.
Glenhaven Post Office, painted 1973.

Over time, urban development encroached and the property was whittled down from scores of acres to a single acre by the time I was born. But at the centre of that acre, imperial and defiant, was a giant Jacaranda.

This tree was so big people used to park outside the fence and paint it. She was a local landmark, a queen, and she marked the seasons of my life with her blooms from ages nought to fifteen, when my grandparent's ill health forced us to sell up the remaining plot after over 120 years. My sister and I had climbed her trunk and lain along her lower branches since we could walk. The dog's kennel was at her buttressed feet.

By the time we had to sell my Grandparent's property in the late 80's, even our acre was an aberrant luxury, an anachronism of lawns and groves, surrounded by grotesque McMansions on a quarter-acre or less. When we sold, it was on the condition that the property kept its boundaries, and that special features like our Jacaranda would be saved. This softened the blow. In fact, it was the real-estate agent himself that bought the property. Assurances were made. They were lies. All lies.

Naturally, within a short time the Jacaranda was chopped down and three more houses were built on the acre, with the real-estate agent laughing all the way to damnation.

We had taken some seedlings of the original tree and planted them at my parent's property, and a row of them line our front fence and are dotted elsewhere on the property, along with a real prize, a rare white Jacaranda.
A rare white Jacaranda

These trees are now about my age, 30+, and are doing well. I've noticed with some satisfaction that their blooms are deeper, more numerous and superior to those of some other Jacarandas that were already on the property, and in time will also make excellent climbing trees.

Jacaranda flowers give way to disc-shaped seed pods. When they are dry they open like bivalve molluscs to release their seeds. I've seen millions of such seed pods, but once, and only once, something different...

A regular two sided Jacaranda seedpod

Bizarro mutant three sided Jacaranda seedpod.

Years ago, the big Jacaranda threw a seedpod with an extra side, a "trivalve symmetry", if you will. We've kept it all this time, like a four leaf clover. I've never seen a mutation anything like it before or since.

- Nathan Zamprogno

Toddlers, Wood glue, Leprosy and Weltschmerz

I've always been brought up to believe that if something is worthwhile then you need to participate in it and not just attend it. Thus, my wife and I involve ourselves in the life of our local Church. Last Sunday I was on the video desk and my wife was running the toddler's program. Problem was, my wife was sick and no one could fill in for her. As I got up that morning, my wife gave me plaintive looks between bouts of volcanic upchucking, and she just knows I can't resist her when she does that. Metaphorically I felt tiny hands dragging me inexorably into the land of drool. I found someone to fill in on the computer for part of the service.

"These kids are between 2 and 4. I can do this", I thought. The children's program does run with a program from week to week, a glossy workbook with a dozen lessons drawn from the Bible, illustrated with "Miffy" style cartoons, and accompanying line templates for use in colouring in, games and so on.

It is entirely saccharine, and unbearably American, but it was the program and blast it, I was going to do my best to present it. Now where were we up to? Ah. Lesson Eight. I read the first line of the lesson plan, and no, I'm not making this up.

"Imagine Naaman's terror as he realised that the patch on his skin was Leprosy. It was a sentence to slow death (2Kings 5:1-16)"

Oh...Kay... It took me a minute to realise that this line is actually part of the teacher's preamble to the lesson, but really and truly this was the foundation of the study itself.

I ended up winging it and getting the kids to make crowns out of paper plates with the centres cut out and paddle-pop sticks glued around the edge like the Statue of Liberty. My scripture was "Receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised those who love Him" (James 1:12). I was pleased.

Observation which is undoubtably true for all time and across the Cosmos: Small children and PVA wood glue do not mix. Which is to say, they do mix, and all to well. Toddlers should come with warning labels for things like that.

I've got to say that the intellectual stimulation I got from wrangling that scripture with a bunch of three year olds had more meat to it than I've gained from a lot of paid pastors.

Take my three year old, for example. He's got absurdism down cold. When most of us argue with our kids then it's over something. My boy has grasped the nettle of the Nihilist Weltschmerz, even at his tender age, and has completely surpassed the need for an object to debate.

His new game goes like this:
(toddler walks into lounge room with revalatory sparkle in eye)
"Daddy?"
"Yes, my boy?"
"OK. OK. OK..." (pauses to draw breath for most important utterance ever made)
"You say 'No', and I say 'Yes'."
Me: (digests abstract significance of this suggestion) "...and, that's the game?"
"Yes. Go!"
Me: (sighs) "Ahem.... 'No.'"
Him: (delightedly and loudly) "YES!"
Me: "No."...

And so we go until The Wife is holding her ears and telling us we can stick our Weltschmerz where the sun don't shine. I don't know. Why can't I get my boy to take an interest in something useful, like superstring theory? I suppose there's always next week.

Is this the lamest joke in the Universe?

My old friend Scott Lawlor and I used to want to be comedians. We used to write skits and Scott, being more motivated than I, actually got gigs at theatre restaurants and on radio. I, by way of contrast, have pursued politics for arguably the same end.

If we wanted to do some writing, mostly we'd get together and fall about laughing at jokes we made up that were absolutely hysterical to us, but... not to anyone else. First rule of comedy: Other people must get the joke.

For reasons unknown one we did years ago has sprung back to mind. I've googled for it and it seems that no one, ever, anywhere has come up with anything as nearly as lame as it, which is astonishing and must be redressed. Therefore I must add it to the blogosphere at once.

"There was political intrigue inside the fridge. The 'conservative' foodstuffs faced off against their bitter Labour rivals, who were lead by a cooked chook. The left-leaning foods were determined to undo their foes, and so the drinks, from their exclusive vantage point in the door crisper, decided to infiltrate the conservative camp and report back with any information they could obtain. The other Labourite foods were skeptical at this plot, until the chook reassured them they had successfully placed a mole, a cunningly disguised bottle of Chardonnay in the conservative camp. Privately, the other Labour foods had misgivings about both the mole, and their leader. What did they say?

'Can a chicken catch a Tory with a white wine source?'"

Everyone I've ever told this too moans, some possibly to the point of hospitalisation. You have been warned. I blame Scott.

Blogger, heal thyself!

This blog has intentionally never sought to become a sinkhole for personal musings about my bodily functions. But sometimes biology intervenes, forcefully, and discussions of politics and metaphysics become trite and seem like just so much wordplay.

Recently, I had the flu. Not a take-to-your-bed-and-make-the-wife-pat-your forehead flu, just a bad case of the sniffles and aching joints. By, say Wednesday I was over the worst of it. On Friday, the family was over for dinner and I noticed a dull ache in my upper-left chest. I put it down to the last pangs of the flu, took some paracetamol, and tried to ignore it.

On Saturday it was still there, stronger, so I took some more painkillers and went into the City to see The Producers on stage (which was actually rather good).

By Sunday things had not improved, but I was on the roster at my Church. By now the pain had travelled up my neck and down my left arm. I looked awful, or so people told me. My wife asked me how many painkillers I had had by the time we were at a wedding reception after Church. When I realised I was popping Paracetamol and Ibuprofen like a junkie and the pain was as bad as it had ever been, she (how shall I say this?), tactfully and demurely suggested I seek medical attention.

Well, those who know my wife will see my last statement as a heroic euphemism. I married into a medical family, full of nurses, paramedics, midwives and such. When I, as a typical male, suggested that all I needed was a cup of tea and a lay down, she responded with a gesture that only our fairer sex are issued a hazardous materials license to dispense. Those of you who have received "the look" will sympathise, the look being a stare and posture of such withering scorn and do-not-argue-with-me-ness that I dared offer no resistance. So in short order I was laying in the Coronary Care Unit of Hawkesbury Hospital for two nights, poked with holes, dangling with leads, and rigged to machines that made rude noises if I rolled over too quickly because it made the traces go "burp" on my monitor.

By Tuesday I had convinced everyone I was not dying and was released. A visit to the Cardiologist since then has convinced me that sadists can gain a respectable face in such a profession. They invite you in with the promise of interesting machines and flashing lights but then put you on a treadmill, again wired like a substation, with the firm intent of making you go "pop". "We need you to keep going until you reach your target heart rate, Mr Zamprogno" she said. "Easy", I thought, as they started me off at a gentle stroll. "I did the Six Foot Track last year, and that's 42km from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves in two days with a 20kg pack, AND with people 10 years younger than myself". The treadmill kicked a notch in its program forcing me to a gait where it was hard to decide between a power walk and a jog. "But," my mental narrative continued, "you crashed and burned about 5km from the end and had to get a lift, remember?" Grrr. Click. I was running like I was trying to outrun a giant spider. "Can... I... stop... now?" I gasped. "No" was the curt reply. In the end, I made my target heart rate (which is 220 minus your age, if you ever wanted to know), but only just.

Then came the lecture. It turns out the pain is nothing permanent, but the unfortunate conjunction of work-stress, high blood pressure and the leftover effects of my Flu. I need to be more active, have less stress in my life, and eat right. With grudging acknowledgement, all these points are true. I've arrived at the point in my life where being young is no longer enough to preserve my vitality and health.

I need to start consciously getting out there and doing things for the benefit of my health in and of themselves, and I'd like to start by going swimming or to the gym regularly. I need some accountability partners. Any takers?

Can I be a Christian and believe in Aliens?

Nobody can stop the music

If proof were ever needed that the Recording Industry Just Don't Get It, Have Never Had It, and indeed shall Never, Ever Seem To Have The Sense To Get It, then one need look no further than the long delayed, keenly anticipated introduction of the Australian iTunes Music Store.

Poor Apple! Their experience with the music store overseas has by now definitely taught them that "if you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas", and the probable reason Apple have an woo-woo phobia about their executives not being photographed is because the labels (those who would play ball, anyway) have given them a great big wedgie. I mean, a Dilbert-sized wedgie where your underthings are now flapping around your ears.

Why would I be so unkind? I've been looking forward to a legitimate means of buying music for my iPod since, well, my first one (I've had three, upgrading each time Apple upgraded their design). Welcome to the 21st Century, where advanced technologies allow us to dispense with archaic methods of distribution like physical shiny, circular disks sold from large, industrially decored music stores housed in shopping malls with exorbitant rents the cost of which is no doubt passed on to me as a part of the price. Why, with the costs of digital distribution amounting to a mere sliver of the physical costs of a CD plus the retail costs involved in wages, freight, hoarding, rent and so on, we could all look forward to recording companies seizing the initiative and offering really competitive prices, yes?

O, ho! ho! Actually, if you believe that then I should tell you that there are also tiny pixies inside your radio with a great range of impressions, but you knew that, didn't you?

Let's look at a couple of simple comparisons. I love Audiobooks, and I was pleased to note when I checked out the Australian iTunes Music Store that there was an audiobook section. From the word go, everything seemed so dear. "Hang on," I thought, "you're so used to browsing the U.S music store, remember these are Australian prices, that you can actually pay for instead of merely browsing", pressing your nose to the glass, so to speak. I picked something randomly. "Very Good Jeeves", by PG Wodehouse (under "Classics") Australian Music Store price, AU$60.99. Yep, you read that right. Over sixty dollars for an Audiobook! Gad! How much would I pay if I walked into Dymocks (a large Australian book retailer) and bought the same Audiobook? $19.95

Buying from a biggish bookstore is less than a third as much. Are they serious? Ok, I'm a geek. What about music that actual humans listen to?

Missy Higgins "The Sound of White" is listed as $19.99 at HMV's website. If I wanted to buy that album through iTunes I would have to do so song by song and would pay $21.97. Crowded House's "Recurring Dream" isn't available as a "set price" either, so I'd pay $57.46 to buy the collection through iTunes versus $22.99 at HMV. Even if I bought one CD from that set it's still 50% dearer at $32.11 from iTunes.

Most of the tracks at the Australian Store are $1.69. Tracks at the U.S iTunes Store are 99 cents. At today's exchange rate (75.1 AU cents to the US$) if pricing were equal then Australians should be paying only AU$1.32. That's a 28% premium on exactly the same music, which costs exactly the same to produce and distribute digitally. If this isn't an infraction of the AU/US Free Trade Agreement then I don't know what is.

Technology has moved ahead in so many ways in the last decades that its efficiencies have given us a quality of life scarcely imagined a century ago. I can pick up a device little bigger than a matchbox and talk to a friend in the UK. I can dispatch pictures and text to a colleague in Queensland to secure an international trade in Peru (via Denmark). We can sequence DNA with a device that, in one hour, replaces the manual work of a year. I can store, on my desktop Firewire drive, 400 Gigabytes of data, which, when I started in the computer industry a decade ago, would have cost as much as my entire house does now. But what happens when we bring the newest technology to the selection and delivery of TV, film and music? It costs more, and we get less. Against this backdrop of advancement and value, what do these anomalies signify? That the media distribution paradigms of record companies, TV studios and film houses are irretrievably broken, and that, in some cases the only solution would be for certain bodies like the RIAA to literally vote themselves out of existence, which I can't see happening anytime soon.

In an effective market where quality and demand freely allows commodities like media to find their own price point, technologies can serve to ensure that the chain of distribution does not impose a disproportionate tax on their success. When entire industries are based *solely* on archaic, unfair and greedy distribution models, then it is time for them to go.

My Interview on National Television

Author's note: Those interested by this essay will also appreciate the original essay I wrote about Family First that appeared about nine months before this interview was taped. Full details are elsewhere on this same website at THIS LINK.

Video (48Mb)
Audio (MP3, 20Mb)
Download Transcript (PDF format)

This is a verbatim transcript of my interview with Jana Wendt, for the Sunday Program. Recorded May 18^th 2005. Sections of this interview were subsequently used in the program broadcast on the 3^rd of July which largely dealt with the HillSong church but also touched on the Family First connections.

JW= Jana Wendt

NZ= Nathan Zamprogno.

JW: Nathan, how long have you been a member of the Church?

NZ: I joined in May 1988, so that would be seventeen years.

JW: What does the Church mean to you?

NZ: The Church gives me an avenue to express my faith as a Christian. We believe that, as Christians, your fellowship with other believers is an important part of how you express your Christianity; with other believers. I grew up in that church. I found my wife in that church, now I'm raising my family in that church.

JW: And why particularly Assemblies of God? What does it have to offer?

NZ: I've never gone "church shopping". I've always grown up in the one church. For me, I like its relevance to people. It isn't "old and dusty", it's contemporary, it meets people where they're at, it does excellent work in the community, and it has a vision that I support.

JW: And can you conceive of your life outside of that church?

NZ: Only in the sense that I can't conceive of life outside of being a Christian. I mean, there are other churches, but I strongly believe that God has placed me in my church, and I'm not going anywhere unless I feel called elsewhere.

JW: In the lead up to the last Federal election, it was said that Family First, despite claims to the contrary, was directly linked to the Assemblies of God. Was that true?

NZ: Family First have admittedly had their genesis in the Assemblies of God church, and are trying hard, I hope, to disentangle themselves from that genesis. There were associations, and things that occurred in the church, that gave me cause for concern, yes.

JW: What kinds of things?

NZ: Well for example, the fact that on the one hand Family First were so keen to deny that there were any links whatsoever, and yet it was patently obvious that they were drawing the majority of their candidature, their support, their financing from Assemblies of God, or church-related networks; not formally, but informally.

JW: Do you know if there was any "from the pulpit" support in AOG churches for Family First candidates?

NZ: The thing that gave me the most concern I suppose was that there was always this patina of "we can't tell you how to vote", but that was always followed by actions that were contrary to that statement. So that, ministers of religion, indeed, Pastors of Churches were standing as the candidate, drawing in parishioners with no interest in politics, even church staff to stand as dummy candidates in other seats to bolster the campaign of another person.

JW: Why do you say "dummy candidates"?

NZ: Because Family First said in their own press releases that "the majority of their candidates were local"[1], and yet there were ten people from my own church, including five paid staff who were standing in seats as far away as Cessnock and Bathurst and how had absolutely nothing to do with the areas they were purportedly seeking to represent.[2]

JW: So what was the purpose of standing dummy candidates?

NZ: The Party was up front about it. They said "we want to stand as many lower house candidates as we can to support the campaign of our Senate candidates, which is where we have our only real chance."[3]

JW: So you're saying they stood those candidates in order to successfully play the "preference trading game"?

NZ: Yes, and in as much as they were up front about it, that was above board. I just didn't think it was ethical to do so.

JW: So you're saying that there was support from within Assemblies of God Churches for Family First candidates?

NZ: I think that the church was profoundly double minded about this, and I think there were misgivings at a number of levels. On the one hand, there was a genuine desire to keep themselves at arms length, and to convey that message to people that "we can't tell you how to vote". But if it was followed by "preferential airtime" for a particular party, or allowing parties like Family First to "take the service" for 15 minutes for the purpose of getting supporters, booth workers, membership, fundraising... You couldn't sustain the claim that the Church was keeping itself at arms length[4] when those kinds of things were happening.

JW: And you know that this happened in assemblies of God churches, that Family First candidates were given preferential treatment?

NZ: I can't[5] say that it happened in my church, I've heard of instances of it happening in other churches

JW: And why do you believe that Family First was so intent on claiming that there was no connection whatsoever?

NZ: Because they wanted to find a broader base for their appeal. If they were seen as a solely church-based party then they would only have the same demographic as the Christian Democrats. I think it's an attempt to try and establish themselves as a mainstream party. So far, they haven't done a very good job of it.

JW: But one of the Senate candidates went so far as to say that suggesting there was a connection was very close to slander, I think were his words?

NZ: I know, and this is an example of the double-mindedness that I found troubling; that they would be so keen to deny the church connection that they actually stepped over a line and brought scorn upon themselves.[6]

JW: What in essence is your problem with this? Family First has family values which presumably reflect the beliefs of The AOG. Why shouldn't there be a connection?

NZ: Because there is a question of "Church and State" that people have largely forgotten about. The Australian Constitution has an "Establishment Clause" (concerning an "official Church") just like the American Constitution does[7], but beyond that Australia has inherited a lot of historical ambiguities in terms of the relationship between Church and State; whether it was State Aid for religious schools in the 1960's, or the growing role of "faith-based" organizations in the provision of welfare and employment services[8]. It's an open ended question and debate will go on into perpetuity. It's a question of spiritual headship. In the Church we make a personal investment in our ministers, and they deserve a degree of qualified deference in terms of the fact that God has put them there. But as soon as they wander in to the political sphere, they need to understand that it's "fair game", and they can't take this mantle of spiritual headship in to the political sphere. Unfortunately, they haven't made that distinction.

JW: But what in essence is wrong with it, if the political party supports the position of the Church itself. Why shouldn't it go out there?

NZ: Because people that go to those churches and hold a different political flavour end up feeling uncomfortable. If they vote left of centre for example there's a danger that people will think less of their Christianity.

JW: Did that happen to your knowledge? Within the Church?

NZ: I believe it has.

JW: So people who were not inclined to vote for Family First were made to think less of a Christian?

NZ: There was probably no intent for people to feel that way. I'm not saying that anybody looked down their nose at those people, but they would have to ask questions about whether it was still "their church", when the church was taking such an overtly political stand, and at one end of the political spectrum. I can't agree with that.[9]

JW: Do you think that members of the church in the lead up to the election felt pressured in some way to vote for Family First?

NZ: I think that the preferential airtime...

JW: When you say "preferential airtime" that is speaking to...

NZ: Speaking to congregations and soforth. I mean, church newsletters that were circulated to every pastor in New South Wales[10] and Queensland[11], that I'm aware of, specifically pushed Family First and the fact that Assemblies of God people were standing as candidates in aid of their candidature. I think that creates a sense of obligation that people shouldn't have upon them.

JW: So if you were a member of an AOG church before the last election, you would have had the strong impression that your church was supporting Family First.

NZ: That would have varied depending on the individual church and how they handled that particular issue. I'm sure it varied from church to church. I'm sure that in some churches you would have felt rather uncomfortable that you were being goaded in a certain direction.

JW: You are taking this step of speaking out on this issue. You are clearly a loyal, devoted member of your church, but you feel strongly about it. Do you think there may be repercussions for you in this?

NZ: Definitely. I mean, I hope not. It won't make life any easier for me!

JW: How do you think it's going to make it difficult?

NZ: I'm not going to answer that one.[12]

JW: Has your feeling about this altered the way you think about your own church?

NZ: It does put your faith in a crucible, and it forces you to think about why you support your church, or why you support your leaders. But my faith as a Christian is rock solid. It's crystallised some things for me, but I'm not going anywhere as a result of it.

JW: And have you spoken to your fellow members of the church about your concerns, about your churches entry into politics?

NZ: I've spoken publicly about my point of view on a website that I maintain. But beyond that it's not my intention to stir dissent because that would be disloyal.

JW: Do you have a feeling that other members of your congregation, other members of the AOG, have similar concerns?

NZ: Yes. Definitely.

JW: Because you've spoken to people with similar concerns?

NZ: Because people have approached me saying "I agree with what you've said. I'm glad it's your neck on the block and not mine."[13] We'll see if any change results.

JW: And is there any potential damage to the church in this involvement?

NZ: Yes! I believe the integrity of the political process and the integrity of the church are both damaged when the entanglements between church and politics become too enmeshed. There needs to be a greater attempt at keeping them at arm's reach. If Family First can leave the orbit of the church where they found their genesis, they can achieve that. They've either got a bright future or they're heading for oblivion over precisely that issue.

JW: How sophisticated a party do you think Family First is today?

NZ: Well resourced, well funded, well organised, still just starting out. That's why I say they've either got a bright future of are heading for oblivion: The churches, the charismatic churches are very well organised. They're very... corporate.

JW: Do you think that the AOG realise that there is a downside to this kind of political involvement?

NZ: I think that in the fallout from the last election there's had to have been some soul-searching, but how that manifests itself we will only see in future elections[14], State and Federal.

JW: And why shouldn't AOG churches be patting themselves on the back, after all, they have a new Senator?

NZ: They do, and rather unexpectedly. They won that success and they're entitled to any degree of self-congratulation they want.

JW: If you look at the coming political term, how do you think Family First will conduct itself in the parliament?

NZ: They will vote overwhelmingly with the Government, being a conservatively aligned party. They'll stick their head up and they'll get some airtime by articulating certain issues through their prism, which is "we put families first". That's to be expected.

JW: Do you think they are being taken seriously by the Government?

NZ: In the sense that they are fellow travellers on the conservative end of politics, I think they're being seen more as an ally than a threat.

JW: And what do you think is the possible value of the "family impact statements"?

NZ: It's just another lens, another prism through which you can see all government policy. If we can look at all policies for the impact that they could potentially have on families then that's a good thing.

JW: Do you think that for the Prime Minister to have agreed to family impact statements that he was making a significant concession or not?

NZ: No, I think he was merely being very pragmatic and a very canny politician.

(interview break)

JW: What is it that worried you about this attempted public separation between the AOG and the political scene?

NZ: The claim that the church is keeping itself at arms length from the political process cannot be plausibly sustained when you have somebody who is a Pastor, preaching from their pulpit on one Sunday, and then putting on another hat and saying that they are a Family First candidate for the Senate the next day, and then going out and saying that suggestions of connections between the party and the Church amounts to slander... That's so transparently ridiculous it brings both the Church and the political process into disrepute.

JW: And that is in fact what happened in some cases?

NZ: Oh yes, definitely. In Queensland.[15]

JW: You want more Christians in politics?

NZ: I would love all Christians of conviction to join a political party because the Gospel is a call to social action as well as a message of salvation. I'd rather see them though outwork their faith in a mainstream political party of their choosing, rather than be drawn off into the fringes of politics and into a party that has no constitution, no branch structure and big impediments to popular appeal.

JW: That's a very pragmatic call that you're making, isn't it?

NZ: Yes, I suppose so.

JW: And that's what needs to be done. Can you encapsulate what it is the AOG Churches believe in?

NZ: The AOG is a mainstream, Protestant church. We believe Jesus is our Lord and Saviour, and we believe those other mainstream trappings of the old and new testament. I suppose what we add to that it a contemporary relevance. We have to meet people in the culture that they're at. We also believe that if you live your life according to the model of Jesus then you will live a satisfied, fulfilled, maximised life as well.

JW: And where do the AOG churches stand on issues like Creationism?[16]

NZ: The AOG is full of closet Creationists, but Family First would be very unwise to let that cat out of the bag.

JW: But in terms of the AOG's beliefs, many of them would believe in Creationism.

NZ: Certainly, and unfortunately.

JW: So that's not something that you believe in?

NZ: No.

JW: But when you say that the AOG is part of the mainstream, that is what we would call a fundamentalist belief, is it not?

NZ: The word "fundamentalist" has had a number of unfortunate labels attached to it. I mean, in it's purest sense it means you believe in "the fundamentals" of the Bible. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're a "crazy", or that it's a cult or anything like that.

JW: But one of the "fundamentals" of the Bible was that the Earth was created in seven days.

NZ: People would argue that point (laughter)... Look, I would argue that point!

JW: I suppose what I'm trying to establish is that there's a substantial body of belief inside the AOG that would hold to the theory of Creationism.

NZ: Yes.

JW: Is there such a thing as the "Religious Right" in this country?

NZ: No, and I don't know that it would be a good thing if there were. People say that if you want to know where Australia is going to be in ten years then look at where America is now. The religious right certainly has a vice-like grip on the conservative end of politics in the United States. What's ironic is that despite the fact the religious right has such a grip in the American psyche and American politics, the kind of proselytising Family First have attempted to do in many churches would actually be illegal in America.

JW: Why is that the case?

NZ: Because there's a clause in their tax code that says that Churches have to abstain from any political involvement to maintain their tax exempt status.[17]

JW: And you'd like to see that kind of law established here?

NZ: I didn't say that! But it's a debate that I think Australia needs to have.

JW: So do you think that Australia is headed the American way as far as religious influence on politics is concerned?

NZ: The influence will only increase, yes.

JW: And that's a bad thing?

NZ: No, I would like moral people and Christian people to be involved in the political process. I just don't want that to be manipulated by the Church.

The interview proper ended here.

These are Jana's remarks made after the interview proper and during incidental footage:

You've stood for local government and obviously you have a strong involvement in the social fabric of the place and very pronounced views. You're not afraid to put your money where your mouth is, because as you say, the repercussions may not be all that comfortable. Although, I can't imagine an organisation, that is, a Christian organisation that has the values that you admire could be so narrow as to not be able to deal with such measured criticism. I mean, you've staked out your ground very carefully. I think it would be very disappointing if there were consequences for you that were other than... mild.

---

[1] http://www.familyfirst.org.au/mr/greens-ffp060904.pdf and http://www.familyfirst.org.au/mr/4thmajparty140904.pdf

[2] As recounted in my original blog article, http://baliset.blogspot.com/2004/10/family-first-one-christians-view.html and widely commented on, including http://dogfightatbankstown.typepad.com/blog/2004/10/between_a_rock_.html (which was greatly encouraging)

[3] http://www.familyfirst.org.au/mr/pollvffp150904.pdf

[4] In other words, despite some people having the genuine intention of not have the church be seen to be in a position of seeking to influence votes among their congregation, such behaviour made it impossible, in practice, for such a promise to be kept.

[5] I should have said "I won't say it happened in my Church" instead of "I can't".

[6] I am aware that John Lewis, the Queensland Senate candidate this refers to, has since resigned his pastoral position to pursue his political ambition. This is a principled move that other intimately church-connected candidates should heed. However, the move is too late to undo the perception of hypocrisy that was created and perhaps even acts as confirmation that those concerns were real and damaging- a fact few Family First identities would admit publicly, but which I am informed are been frankly aired since the election by AOG leaders in Queensland and elsewhere.

[7] Chapter five, section 116. The wording of the Australian "establishment clause" mirrors closely the equivalent one in the U.S Constitution, and deliberately so. A small example of our founding fathers seeing an idea and a form of words that worked and borrowing it.

[8] And of course the infamous schism in the 1950's that caused the DLP to split from the mainstream ALP along religious rather than ideological lines. An excellent anniversary analysis of this episode in history appeared on ABC radio national's Perspectives program, and three 5 minute vignettes can be found at

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/perspective/stories/s1369600.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/perspective/stories/s1373389.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/perspective/stories/s1380350.htm

[9] So again, why isn't this a case of "the lady doth protest too much"? (Hamlet, act 3) It's because of the fact that, as much as I might agree or even benefit from the co-opting of Christianity as an essentially right leaning belief system, and that it might seem superficially good for right-politics, it is in fact an unwholesome influence on the integrity of the Church. Actually, it's not much good for politics either. The most vigorous democracies in recent Western history are those instituted along areligious lines but populated by men and women with a firm moral, and indeed, Christian, compass. This is a long way from the kind of influence certain religious activists would like to wield on our political processes. I've got more to write on this subject, but it deserves it's own piece.

[10] http://www.pnc.com.au/~jwcs/Michael_Murphy.pdf

[11] http://www.aogq.com.au/data/images/newsletters/stateconnections_july2004.pdf

[12] As Jana says after the interview: I find it difficult to believe that criticism that is so measured will be misconstrued. I replied ‘You find it difficult to believe. I don't.’

[13] See http://www.signposts.org.au/index.php/archives/2004/09/21/putting-the-family-first#comment-3403 for a small example

[14] There's little evidence of such soul searching in my own neck of the Woods. Questions I have posed on this matter since the election have brought spittle embellished denials of any downside. That's a story for another time...

[15] http://www.familyfirst.org.au/mr/undemocraticlabelling300904.pdf

[16] http://www.ag.org/top/beliefs/christian_doctrines/gendoct_15_creationism.cfm

[17] http://www.au.org/pdf/religiousleaderletter.pdf or http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=issues_churchelectioneering

- Nathan Zamprogno

Feedback... arg!

I love feedback. Giving feedback makes me feel good. Some would say what I call feedback is actually me being an opinionated so-and-so, but I think that feedback to businesses lets people who genuinely want to improve their products get some honest advice and do something. How can anyone improve their service delivery if everyone that's disgruntled (or delighted) simply grits their teeth and moves on? That sounds like a very British holdover in our culture. People need thicker skin, in my opinion, so they can take frank comment without taking personal offence. Me, I'm a Rhino. My life has simplified greatly since I ceased to care what certain people think.

That's why when Apple Nextbyte announced they were closing their Penrith store, I wrote and complained (dangling a $40,000 order in front of them also helps). Apple have had a store in Penrith for nearly 20 years. We'll see how that one pans out.

And Apple themselves? After the fanfare of the announcement of the release of system 10.4 (and the wholesale redesign of their website to accommodate it), you'd think that the Apple "Feedback" page would have at least included an update to let people give feedback about system 10.4. Nup. According to their bug report/suggestion page, system 10.4 does not exist.



This is a shame, since I've found a bug, and it's really annoying. I use the Wikipedia widget. When I hide the dashboard, pop-up mouseover image labels from the wikipedia entry I had brought up continue to appear when the cursor moves over those areas of the screen. There must be some leakage from the Dashboard layer into the "main" screen, even when the dashboard is not in the foreground.

Small thing, but I'm in a ranty mood today. If people never say anything then they have no right to complain when something goes pear shaped.

A lazy Compass fails to circumscribe Family First

Regular visitors to this blog will be aware of my views on the interface between Church and State. Personal friends will sympathise with my plight because of my abilty to complicate my life by choosing to air those views publicly.

Since my interest is in the debate about Church/State separation, I should take pains to point out that the Family First party is by no means my special or implicit target.

I just thought I'd throw up this temporary post about the "documentary" (or "advertorial" as I'd choose to express it) that screened tonight on the ABC's Compass program about Family First (transcript not yet available at that link but probably soon) by way of foreshadowing a more detailed treatment over the coming days.

Any stakeholders out there with an interest in what I might choose to say should call me now (and yes, I know you're reading this). The mistake I made previously was in putting opinions in the public domain without giving the protagonists I was critical of the chance of discussing it with me first.

There will be more to say on this, that much is sure.

(I say (I say (I say)))...

Dad and I get into some weird arguments. Dad's an eccentric, in an endearing sort of way. This time, Dad started: "Say I know something, and you find out and then you know, and then I find out that you know. So I know that you know that I know that you know, right?"

Mum looked up from her crossword at this point, looked over her glasses and gave the kind of resigned sigh people only give when their spouse lives in a different dimension. Dad pressed on: "If you take that far enough, does it lose its meaning? Does the 'you know that I know that you know that....' process become nonsensical or just go on and on?" Dad contended that it becomes meaningless, and fairly soon. I disagreed, suggesting that such an exchange could potentially go on forever, and people only stop when the scenario they are discussing becomes too cumbersome to keep in their head.

But how to prove it? Maybe such an exchange genuinely can become meaningless and no contrived scenario can support a narrative where layering of "You know that I know" etc makes any sense. Thus, I resolved to construct a fictitious story to explore the question and see if any patterns emerged. I used as my template a pastiche of World War 2 "POW" movies, like "The Great Escape" or "Escape from Colditz".

Scenario: British troops are captive in a German POW camp. The British are digging a tunnel in order to escape.

Level 1:
British troops: “Lads; were digging a tunnel and we’re getting out of here! The Germans don’t suspect a thing, so get to it.”
Outcome: The British escape.

Level 2:
Meanwhile, in Colonel Klink’s office…
Klink: “Those rascally British are digging a tunnel! Fortunately, they don’t know we’re on to them, so we can keep them occupied until they are about to launch their escape bid. Then, we will catch them!”
Outcome: The Germans win.

Level 3:
British: “Blast! We have discovered that the Germans are on to our tunnel plans. Fortunately, they do not know that we know that they know! Thus, they believe that by monitoring the tunnel they will know where we are consuming our resources. Because they do not know that we know they are on to us, they will not expend further effort in looking for alternate plans. They think we only have one plan! Thus, let us maintain the tunnel as a “dummy” project to distract the Germans from the glider we are building out of bedsheets and porridge behind a false wall!”
Outcome: The British escape (or at least one does)

Level 4:
Klink: “One of our soldiers overheard the British saying that they know that we are aware of their escape plans! Luckily, the British did not know the soldier overheard them. If they are aware of our knowledge, then they are bound to try something different, and the tunnel is merely a diversion. If they know we know about the tunnel then the escape bid cannot come from there. We must assume they will change tactics. Be on the lookout!”
Outcome: The Germans win.

Level 5:
British: “The increased searches in the camp can only mean that the Germans know that we knew that they had discovered our original escape plans and deduced we would try something different. What an opportunity! Previously, being suspicious they would have expected any kind of escape bid, including a tunnel. Now, because they know we know they know, they will specifically exclude a tunnel as a possibility. Thus, we can continue work on the tunnel right under their noses and have them believe that the tunnel is merely being constructed as a diversion, whereas in actual fact we will be building the tunnel for real. The Germans will be off discovering our “real” escape plan, and our secret knowledge that they know about the tunnel will allow us to continue to distract them in this way. Because we do not have to be as cautious, we can work double shifts, post less guards, and make more noise as we go, knowing that the Germans will not dare shut us down because they think they have us in check and “occupied”. This means we can start work on a second tunnel going in a different direction. Set to it!”
Outcome: The British escape.

Level 6:
Klink: Our spy among the prisoners has reported that the British know that we knew that the British knew that we knew of the plan. It is therefore likely that they are assuming that, knowing we knew of the tunnel, that we have discounted it as the source of a serious escape bid. How foolish! Now we know they know, it stands to reason that they think the tunnel may again become a potential escape route. They think they can dig even though we know about it because they think that we think that it is only a diversion. We must be careful!
Outcome: The Germans win.

Level 7:
British: “Interesting news, lads. We’ve discovered that they Germans know that we know that the Germans no longer believe that the tunnel is not necessarily a diversion but may still be a legitimate escape option. This means that, if they see work on a tunnel still proceeding, they will conclude that we are still serious about a tunnel breakout. Fantastic! This diversion will allow us to put another plan into effect where we continue the tunnel as a distraction, take the stolen and faked German uniforms we’ve been hoarding and when the laundry truck…” (blah blah blah)
Outcome: the British escape

Level 8:
Klink: “The British know we know! Thus, the tunnel is a ruse!”

Level 9:
British: “The Germans know we know! Thus, they again believe the tunnel is a ruse and we can again continue the tunnel under their noses!”

Summary:
1. British dig tunnel (Germans unaware)
2. Germans know of tunnel (catch British)
3. British know Germans knew (glider, tunnel is distraction)
4. German’s knew British knew the Germans knew (look for alternate escape bids)
5. British know the Germans knew the British knew the Germans knew (realise Germans are discounting tunnel and thus resume under German noses)
6. Germans know the British knew the Germans knew the British knew the Germans knew (Germans know the tunnel is not a ruse and remain vigilant)
7. British know the Germans knew the British knew the Germans knew the British knew the Germans knew (British realise above and concoct alternate plan with tunnel reverting to a diversion)
8. Germans know the British knew the Germans knew the British knew the Germans knew the British knew the Germans knew (Germans realise the tunnel is again a diversion and remain vigilant)


…and so it goes. Despite the artificiality of the narrative I have constructed, as far as I can see, an equilibrium can be set up whereby the you know that I know cycle can result in an endlessly repeating loop and does not of necessity reach a natural conclusion. Keeping the various levels “in mind” does indeed become tedious, but it can go on forever.

I feel like I’ve proven my point, but I’ll leave the reader with a final exercise. Is there a similar narrative, ignoring the cosmetic matters of setting or character, that must result in a natural conclusion after a finite number of steps as the “you know that I know” cycle unfolds? What changes to the logic or initial conditions of the scenario are necessary?

Beyond... something...

A member of the Maths faculty was opining to me about an error message that was appearing on his laptop. I explained that he could ignore the error message because it was, in fact, an erroneous error message.

That got me thinking. Is there a word for such a thing? All we could come up with was that it was a "meta-error". It reminded me of a metalworking factory in my home town I always saw from the train. It was called "metaland" with the typography overlapping in such a way that it was "metal-land". But no, not for me. For me it was and always shall be the magical place inhabited by supersets and self-referential entities. I could never shop there because the shop guy would always say "nah, we don't sell that stuff, only stuff that's about stuff." Like going to a bookstore that only has books about bookstores, or a bookstore that only has books about books that are about bookstores.

My brain hurts.

I spoke about this once with a friend. All we could conclude from the exchange was that we were both incurable nerds.

It's nice to be affirmed

From the Wycliffe Christian School Yearbook

This is nice. Each year our School (my workplace) publishes a "year in review" book. This year, I rated a profile. I felt encouraged and uplifted. And no, Justin, this post isn't meant to rub anything in, but lighten up, man! Life is beautiful, even if parts of it suck. I, too could lose sleep over rogue subatomic particles swallowing the entire universe or the fact my office is like a broom closet only with less ventilation, but hey, if I don't like my life, no one else will either.

- Nathan Zamprogno

Family First- One Christian's View

Author's note:
Those interested by this essay will also appreciate my TV interview with Jana Wendt on the same subject where I expand on these issues (given about nine months after the events depicted here). Full details are elsewhere on this same website at THIS LINK.

This essay was written by me prior to the Australian Federal election in October 2004. I subsequently removed it, not because the facts were wrong or because I had changed my opinion, but as a courtesy to people whom I respected, and who had claimed that I had prematurely expressed opinions without fairly giving them a chance to put their side of the story to me. I assumed my gesture would be a precursor to a proper debate on the matter. I was wrong. I have re-posted my original article as of July 4 2005 directly as a consequence of their deliberate refusal to even as much as broach the subject. If my heartfelt invitation had been accepted, this and further comment on this website would not be here.

Part One: Why Does This Matter

Part Two: How Family First Handles the Media

Part Three: Legal and Ethical Concerns

Part One: Why does this matter?

Voltaire said "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

For the benefit of the wider audience: I am a member of 16 years standing in the Assemblies of God Church. The people in question are all men and women whom I love, look up to, or grew up with. I ascribe to them the teachings that are responsible for the strength of my marriage, the depth of my personal faith in Jesus, and my conviction that we are called to make a difference in the world around us.

So why would I write what (an unfortunate few) will characterise as an attack on my Church?

Well, the answer is that it isn't an attack on my Church at all. Family First is a self-confessed secular political party who claim no spiritual authority over anyone. The principles that would rightly restrain me from launching an unconscionable attack on my leaders as Pastors do not apply when they are seeking advantage in the marketplace of political ideas. I happen to support a different political party. The miracle of Australian democracy is that I can do so and, hopefully, remain friends with those with whom I differ in opinion. If Family First are indeed the secular political party that they claim, then their policies (which I support), and their methods (which I don't) are fair game.

So, allow me to make this distinction, and ask you to do the same. I love my Pastors and I love my Church. I just think that they don't make very good politicians, and nor should they try, if it results (as it has) in a denial of Jesus Christ and draws the mockery of non-Christians.

Differences of opinion in the Church (and not just our Church) are far more likely to be seen as "undermining the vision" or "not fully committed to partnering" or being "unteachable". Such people then get short shrift and sometimes the welcome mat is withdrawn. The problem, of course is that this may be true! I'm absolutely committed to my Church. Hawkesbury Church is my home and, believe me, I've had to defend it in my home more than you have in yours, mate. People can and frequently have said unkind things about the Church with the sole intent of bellyaching. So how do we bring a legitimate grievance to our leadership without being branded persona non grata?

Well, the first and most important thing is for us to each watch our own attitudes. Trust me, I've been royally p**** at a dozen different things over the years but, each and every time, I center myself and apply the desideratum "A bad attitude means that the possibility I'm feeling what I am because God wants me to change it is probably zero." There are plenty of times where I've stopped myself from doing things (like writing letters to bonehead Creationists. There, I've exposed my secret vice), because a moment of reflection causes me to realise that my motives were wrong. They were personal, and not based on a conviction that my actions were a) helpful and b) directed by the Spirit.

The Second thing is to get your facts straight. I was happy enough to see Family First as "Mostly Harmless" in the Douglas Adams sense, until Pastor Ian Woods mentioned the flurry of media attention the party had received over the last week in the papers. I read the article(s) he pointed out in last Saturday's Herald, and did some digging of my own. My view has changed.

My Dander is now Officially Up. Those who know me well will testify my Dander is not to be trifled with. (I might add that this would sound more dignified if I hadn't looked up the dictionary and found that "dander" is basically bird dandruff. This shows that the people that coin these phrases ought to be more careful)

I am writing as a concerned citizen and as a concerned Christian, in equal measure. Don't take an argument I'm making about a self-confessed secular political party with views on strange subjects that simply won't work and turn it into an attack on my commitment to Jesus or to our Church. Nor should you accuse me of secretly supporting the Greens. I'm not that stupid.

Part Two: How Family First Handles the Media:

a) In Queensland:
Ronald Reagan wasn't a President well known for his command of detail. "The Great Communicator" was, however a master of winning a crowd over. In 1980, running for the Presidency for the first time, he attended a huge charismatic Christian gathering. Here was a constituency that would be valuable if he could win it over. National Church leaders were careful to explain their dilemma to the aspirant before he took the stage. "You understand," they explained, "we aren't political. We can't be seen to endorse one political party over another. It just isn't proper." These leaders had previously given tacit endorsement to Jimmy Carter in 1976, only to be disappointed by his Presidency. Reagan mused. "Fine." he said and approached the podium. "I know you can't endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you." The quote launched the Christian Conservative movement as a political force in the U.S.

It's a shame that the operators behind the Family First party haven't shown as much wisdom in handling the obvious connections between their party and the Church. This matter would have merely been picky if it weren't for the fact that both the party and the Church are coming in for escalating, withering criticism (like The Chaser Decides on the ABC last night with their mock news headline "Family First party denies Jesus Christ three time before cock crows"). It made me feel embarrassed.

The Family First website has issued several press releases in the last week or two to clarify the issues. The first one made this claim:

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION: The (Family First) party is not a church party or an Assembly of God party, nor is it funded by AOG churches."

The second one that was released yesterday was even more emphatic:

"Recent media reports have labelled Family First Party a "Christian party" and, in some cases, an offshoot of mainstream Christian church, Assemblies of God. Lead Queensland Senate candidate, John Lewis, said that the labelling of the party bordered on slander."

Read that twice. The Family First party are so angry about being associated with the Assemblies of God that, in the view of Queensland Senate candidate John Lewis, it amounts to slander.

Now read this July release from the desk of Wayne Alcorn, president of the Queensland Assemblies of God:

"FAMILY FIRST

By now you would be aware that Pastor John Lewis will be standing for the Senate at the next Federal election... As ministers of the Gospel, we must have a genuine sense of responsibility as we watch our social fabric deteriorate. We all need to handle political issues wisely, and though we have no right to tell our people how to vote, I urge you to:

1. Call your people to pray leading up to this next election.
2. Be aware of what each candidate stands for. Where necessary, meet with them prior to the election.
3. Encourage your people to vote for men and women who will stand for righteous values &endash; not just play some party line."

Proof that the Queensland Churches "got the message" about who they should support is indicated by a story that appeared in an article in the Sunshine Coast Daily on 26 Sept:

"Parishioner upset at mix of politics and religion: 'Get politics out of my church'.
That was the call by a disgruntled Nambour parishioner yesterday after a campaigner for a political party interrupted a Pentecostal church service to appeal for financial donations and volunteers.

The parishioner, who declined to be named, said he was angered when a volunteer for the fledgling Family First party was allowed to make a 15 minute political advertisement mid way through a recent Nambour Assembly of God service."

In conclusion:

Family First denies that it is not funded by AOG members, and yet complaints of soliciting campaign funding and support through Churches are reported in the papers.

A Family First candidate responds angrily to the mere suggestion that they are associated with the Assemblies of God, accusing those who do so of slander. Meanwhile, the State President offers fulsome praise of exactly the same man (and obviously with his approval), thinly disguised by the non-disclaimer that "of course, we don't tell anyone how to vote." Hypocrisy!

b) In New South Wales:

In New South Wales, the Family First party has come in for a deal of media scrutiny about the same connections between itself and the Church. A SMH report on the 25th of Sept (website link, or PDF) contains this quote:

'Joan Woods, from the Family First party and wife of the president of the Assemblies of God church in NSW, is adamant: there's "absolutely no connection" between the two organisations. Church and state are absolutely separate, says the party's lead NSW Senate candidate. There is no funding link between the two, indeed no formal link at all. "Not in any file, in any legally written document, in [the party] constitution," she says, a little indignantly.'

If this isthe case, then this email from Michael Murphy, deputy President of the NSW Executive may be a little hard to explain. Fully in the public domain, this letter was circulated to every Pastor of an AOG Church in NSW. Extract:

"Dear Pastor, As you are probably aware, God is doing a unique thing right now …I need to inform you of our latest such opportunity that Joan Woods, our own President's wife, has just accepted. Joan has been asked to represent the Family First Party as their Federal Senate Candidate for NSW. Whenever one of our own takes such a stand, I think we have a responsibility on a number of fronts.

1. Pray 2. Support - wherever possible."

You will recall that Ian Woods made an emphatic statement from the pulpit that the "Assemblies of God is not a political movement. We are a movement, but not a political one. We do not support any particular party." If such an email had come directly from the State President of the AOG, such an email would have been wholly improper. Is it any less improper if it is sent by his deputy?

c) Nationally:

The Sydney Morning Herald front page story on September 21 (website link, PDF), "So God said: go to NSW and create poll mayhem" contains the following quote:

"Pastor Brian Houston, the national president of the Assemblies of God church, said several people from the church supported Family First. 'But as far as I am aware there is no instruction on how Assemblies of God is to vote,' Pastor Houston said."

Please! I can picture Pastor Brian with furrowed brow, scuffing the ground with the toe of his shoe. "Family First, Family First... hmmm. I don't know. I feel I should know that from somewhere, but... nup, nuthin to do with us! "

Meanwhile, will Joan Woods or other Family First candidates attend services at one or more of the Hillsong campuses this Sunday to be "presented" to the congregation, only one week from polling day? Watch this space, based on one rumour passed on. One wonders how many other political parties will receive such a boost from Brian Houston?

Part Three: Legal and Ethical Concerns

All Federal Elections in Australia are governed by the Commonwealth Electoral act of 1912. Several sections deal with situations where improper influence or a lack of full independence on the part of a candidate can result in a conflict of interest. The Australian Electoral Commission has a primer on such matters at its website. Section 326 of the Act, says (in part):

A person shall not, with the intention of influencing or affecting… any candidature of another person; or any support of… a candidate… or a political party by another person… give or confer…, any property or benefit of any kind to that other person or to a third person.
Penalty: $5,000 or imprisonment for 2 years, or both.

It is also true that It is also true that of the 23 candidates that are standing in lower house seats in NSW, fully 10 are from the Hawkesbury Church. Five are paid staff at Hawkesbury Church. These are:

• Jon Dorhauer standing in Greenway (Riverstone),
• Carolyn Dorhauer standing in Robertson (Gosford),
• Cat Cannone standing in Watson (Hurstville),
• Michael Woods, standing in Hunter (Cessnok),
• Melanie Woods standing in Calare (Bathurst)
  

A small but noteworthy point is that several fail to disclose their association with Hawkesbury Church in their candidate information forms lodged with the AEC. The others are members of the Church who have never expressed political aspirations before.

Unfortunately, perusing this list of candidates also reveals another embarrassing fact. Here we have over ten political aspirants engaging in the political process. Absolutely none of them come from the electorates they are seeking to represent. I would wager that none of them could give a list of the six most pressing issues that dwell on the minds of people living in those electorates, nor would any be willing to move themselves and their families to those electorates in the event they won the seat.

The reason this is embarrassing is because Family First had previously made a virtue of the fact that the "overwhelming majority of its candidates are local". For example, look at two press releases from the Family First website:

"Monday, 6th September 2004 - Senate Battle is really between Greens and Family First "
"...Standing over 100 House of Rep. candidates - The vast majority of candidates are local "

and again in a second press release a week later:

"Tuesday, 14th September 2004 - Family First Now Fourth Major Party "
"The Family First Party on debut in the Federal Election will have 126 candidates across the nation, with the majority living in the electorate they are standing for. "

Hawkesbury Church and the NSW Senate Lead Candidate are offering up 10 candidates (plus a handful who are affiliated with Hawkesbury Church). What's their track record on local representation? Zero.

I could forgive those good people in Bathurst, or Hurstville, or Cessnok from being a little bit cynical about the representation they are being offered, let alone in Greenway where the Liberal candidate (Louise Marcus) is an AOG employee (via an external welfare agency), and yet the Family First candidate, AOG Pastor John Dorhauer is being gagged from pushing anything except the party line "No, we don't have anything to do with the AOG." Louise Marcus is tipped to win the seat from Labor by a wafer thin margin, largely through Family First preferences.

Although I support the efforts of Christians to aspire to elected office (and have myself done so on several occasions), the paramount concern is that candidates do so within the boundaries of the law. Beyond the legal requirements, I would also say that candidates who profess a Christian faith ought to also stand in an ethical manner, and not rely on subterfuge and denial in an attempt to gain a wider constituency. All candidates who stand for elected office in any sphere are charged with a solemn responsibility to be legitimate and sincere in seeking to represent the citizens of that electorate. Standing candidates for other purposes is misleading and, in the words of Aquinas, "Leads the truth of our faith to become a matter of ridicule among the infidels." Well put.

In reality, standing these lower house candidates is really to aid the Family First campaign in the Senate. Joan Woods has been candid about this, stating to SMH journalist Mike Seccombe (Website link, PDF):

'Mrs Woods concedes that almost all the Family First candidates are AOG adherents. She concedes many of them have only been in politics for a few weeks and many don't even live in the seats they are standing for. "We're just a young party," she says. "I have to use what I've got in my hand in terms of my network, and those that relate to me. See, what I needed to do was field as many candidates as I could in the lower house..."

The reason is, while the lower house candidates have little chance of election, the party needed their 'bulk' to become a player in the preference-swapping game, and increase Mrs Woods' chances of winning the Senate seat.'

Of Course. Nor should we blame Joan Woods for the strategy, because it was the way Family First conducted their campaign in South Australia and got Andrew Evans elected. The Family First press release "15th September - The Polls vs Family First" explains the party's success in the South Australian parliament, despite not

"fielding a full complement of lower house candidates to support the upper house candidates." but then going on to state "At this election we will have a full complement of candidates in Tas, Qld, SA and Vic, as well as a large number of seats in NSW and WA."

This is further proof that the lower house candidates are there to support a Senate campaign. I'm not denying that this practice isn't common. Many minor parties do it, and at all levels of government. I'm merely suggesting that the practice is fairly cynical one and insults the citizens of those electorates where they stand- especially if the candidates have no affinity or connection with those communities.

Family First went with their cap in hand to the other parties recently to say "Hey, we got over 4% of the vote in our only electoral showing to date (in S.A) and you should sign here (website link, PDF) to a) support our policies and b) give us a good preference deal." Indeed, Family First claim "some candidates have been asked to sign a three-year voting agreement on certain Family First policy platforms before preferences are included in any deal." Here's the irony: With so many candidates having little or no connection to their electorates, that figure of "over 100 lower house candidates" is actually a whole lot less impressive that it first looks. Most of those candidates will be likely to get maybe a few dozen votes. Not exactly an earth-shaking influence. The other parties may well have been duped by the overstatement of Family First's influence. Should Christians seek political advantage in this way?

This leads me back to the Electoral Act. Legal precedent regarding section 326 interestingly includes feelings of "created feelings of gratitude or obligation" in their definition of "benefit". So, in that context, let's ask these questions:

1) Have any candidacies been influenced in contravention to the spirit of section 326?

Consider: Strong and proven encouragement of the State AOG executives for others to assist in the promotion of Family First candidates. The fact that ten members (and five employees) of one Church who have never expressed political aspirations before are now standing in various seats for which they have neither residency nor affinity.

2) Would any of these candidates have otherwise stood for election in their chosen seats, except for the fact that they were doing so at the behest of their employer, and because of the substantial links and expectation that all AOG employees/members will "do their duty"?

3) Did all candidates pay for their candidacy fees from their own pockets?

I would suggest that the answer to these questions do not rely on whether they "chose" to stand in line with their democratic right to participate in the parliamentary process. I am sure that all will claim that their candidacies were voluntary and lawful. As indeed they were! My question is: Are such actions ethical?

- Nathan Zamprogno

Battlestar Galactica 2003, And Why It Represents The End Of Western Civilisation

OK. That’s a big call, but I’ll try to back it up.

Those of us of a certain age remember our childhood TV fare with fondness. When I was at School, it was a saturated diet of afternoon Dr Who, The Tripods, Buck Rogers, Star Blazers, Space 1999, and Battlestar Galactica. The lens of time has lent some of these old favourites a lustre they scarcely deserved. Who remembers the papier-mâché monsters and cardboard sets of the Jon Pertwee Doctor era, or the 70’s sideburns and bell-bottom spacesuits of Space 1999? Now in my 30’s, I occasionally revisit them and marvel at how simple they were. Yes, they were cheap and their morals were uncomplicated, but their appeal was, and still is, genuine. As my mother says “In my day it was easy. The bad guys wore black hats, rode dark horses and looked like Jack Palance. The heroes wore white hats and looked like Lee Majors.” Is the world poorer for the loss of this simplicity?

Rather than merely generating nostalgia, comparing the television of our youth to todays fare gives us an interesting insight into how our entire culture has changed, since TV is emblematic of our culture as a whole.

In this context, the pressing question then becomes “Is the remake of Battlestar Galactica merely the worst kind of crap, or does is actually represent the end of Western Civilisation?” Let's talk about that.

Americanisation

Re-working beloved franchises has become a huge industry. The power of nostalgia has been correctly identified as a huge lever for studios to push their wares. Why develop an original idea when you can get a huge draw by branding a series as a remake or “re-imagining” of an old favourite? Unfortunately, in this case one is tempted to rework an aphorism of Cervantes and state that “Good producers venerate old favourites, bad ones vomit them”. This Battlestar Galactica brings new meaning to the word “vomit”.

The most irritating change the producers have made is to the overall feel of the production. The original 1979 production of Battlestar was a story of humans, but the design took pains to show them as unlike any modern nation-state. They did this by using design cues from Egypt and ancient Greece, which was a clever way to create a sense of familiarity without letting us forget that they are an alien culture, removed save but by ancient ancestry from their mythical “Earth”. Sad to say, but Battlestar 2003 is…well, America. Not just America, but early 21st century America. The distinctive Colonial Vipers (our hero’s one man fighters) are no longer ships, but “planes”. They no longer shoot lasers, but bullets, complete with tracers. Their pilots, when off duty, wear green khaki singlets and dog-tags (note, sept 2006: This blog post gets an inordinate amount of hits from people Googling "dog tags" in relation to Battlestar Galactica. Can anyone tell me why?) The cues are obvious to the point of idiocy. The Galactica herself is now basically an aircraft carrier, no longer one of 12 proud Battlestars in the old series, but merely a creaky museum piece overdue for retirement, among a fleet of over 130. A Colonial transport ship, conveying a group of VIP’s and journalists to the Galactica for a decommissioning ceremony is a carbon copy of a modern passenger airliner, with the windows, the seats, the bathroom, heck, even the cheesy in-flight announcements made by the pilot right at home on a Qantas or United Airlines flight. If the parallels weren’t obvious enough, when disaster strikes and a lowly government functionary finds out that she is now the President because everyone ahead of her in the chain of command is dead, she is administered the oath of office in a scene with echoes of Lyndon Johnson’s hasty inauguration after the assassination of Kennedy. By way of punctuation, the pilot announces to surrounding traffic that the ship is now “Colonial One”. Puh-leez!

Why writers and producers think that there is something about any story that isn’t set in the United States (or a transparent substitute) that audiences won’t “get” is one of the great mysteries of our time. It is, of course, a long-standing trend, and one that can be easily traced even if we confine ourselves to a study of the Science Fiction genre. In the 60s and 70s, where was the heart of science fiction? Well, we had Star Trek, in which the Federation was not dominated by any particular 20th century Nation State. Sure, the Captain was from Iowa, but on the bridge we had a Russian, a Japanese, an African and a Scot. In the original series, Warp Drive was invented by a man from Alpha Centauri. Fast-forward 30 years to the movie Star Trek: First Contact and Warp drive is now invented by a drunk man from Colorado. Fast forward to Star Trek: Enterprise. If you aren’t an American (or at least a Vulcan with pert breasts), get the hell off my bridge!
In 1891, Herbert George Wells wrote The Time Machine. Naturally, it was set in England. I suppose it could have been set elsewhere, but the story neither benefited nor suffered for that choice. In 1960 George Pal, an American director filmed it in a magnificent adaptation I still love to watch today, starring Robert Taylor. Wisely, he stuck with Wells’ choice of setting. Fast forward to 2002 and the execrable remake of The Time Machine starring Guy Pearce. For reasons known only to themselves, the screenwriters decided the story had to be transplanted to… New York. They also took various other unnecessary liberties, but don’t get me started. Another article, perhaps. In 1898, Wells wrote War of the Worlds, again set in England. Again, and for no good reason, this wouldn’t do. The movie version in 1953 was set in rural America.

The Crisis of Confidence in our Values

In the original Battlestar, the Cylons were evil, period. In fact it’s not just that they were bad, it wasn’t the fault of our heroes that they were bad. There wasn’t any angst, no moral conflict about the fact that they were trying to wipe out humanity, and no guilt was required of our colonists in fighting against the evil.

In the introduction to this remake, we are informed that the Cylons were in fact created as mechanical slaves by Humans. “We are the flawed creation” our new Commander Adama agonises. Our representative Cylon, who is less chrome plated cyclopean and more Penthouse pet named “six” appears and, in the first 60 seconds, seduces a hapless Colonial officer to distract him as his space station is attacked around him. Later, in what can only be seen as a blunt and unnecessary plot point to establish just how “evil” these fembot humaniform Cylons are, Six goes up to a baby in a perambulator in a scene set in an outdoor market and kills it while it’s mother is distracted for a few seconds. It was at this point that I felt physically angry- not at the character, but at the writers and producers of this “re-imagined” Galactica.

Taken as a whole, it’s fair to say that Galactica 2003 has been thoroughly hijacked. It’s not enough any more to be just escapist fun, with the moralism appropriately confined to affirming that evil will never entirely triumph over good. No, the producers have decided that Galactica is now their vehicle for social and political commentary about issues confronting our society in the 21st century. In many senses it’s a predictable symptom of the crisis of Western confidence brought on by decades of post-modernism. In 1979 we wouldn’t have seen Lorne Greene’s Adama wringing his hands and bemoaning that, in some way, “we deserved what happened”. Nor would he have permitted half the human “rag-tag fleet” (including the stereotypical little girl, oblivious to her fate, waiting in vain for her bedtime story from her Daddy) to be sacrificed to the Cylons because they were not equipped with faster-than-light drives. It had all the subtlety of a scripted drive-by shooting on Sesame Street, and all for the sake of making the plot point “war demands sacrifices”. Our protagonists are disunited. Apollo is estranged from his father, Adama. Boomer is no longer a black man but an Asian chick (and possibly a Cylon in disguise). Tigh is a white drunkard rather than a capable adjutant.

The producers have made a number of excuses for these changes. Chiefly, they say that a “mature” audience will only accept a story where the boundaries between good and evil are a little grey- where relationships are not perfect and human failings are more acknowledged. Maybe, but such claims are advanced without proof. Beyond this, so many of the changes are so arbitrary that they represent a deliberate and insulting slap in the face to fans. The original Cylon warrior design appears for 3 seconds, in a glass case in a museum! The original music score, so inseparable from Galactica (DA da-da DA da-da DAH DAH DA-DA-DAH…) appears for 5 seconds, off key and tinny during the Galactica decommissioning ceremony. The subtext is clear- lip service. The other differences have been well discussed in many forums, such as changing the character of Starbuck to a girl, or the design of the Galactica herself. A series designed without these cues might only cause a little notice in its similarities to the original premise. With them, we soon realise we've been suckered. It's just enough Galactica to make fans of the original series take notice, but not enough to keep them on-side.

It just seems to me that a very acceptable Galactica could have been constructed around the original concept, without arbitrary changes to the race, gender or character of the protagonists, let alone a wholesale gutting of the premise. Whoever said “sexy Cylons!” at the initial brainstorming sessions should have been turfed out the nearest airlock without a suit, and whoever suggested that the good guys not being able to stand one another was a good idea to create dramatic tension should have been sent back to writing for The Young and the Restless. Whoever suggested ditching Stu Phillips’ definitive score should have been met with angry townsfolk with torches and pitchforks on the way home. What has been left may well be Science Fiction, but just don’t call it Battlestar Galactica. I could clone cells from the cadaver of Lorne Green and have them act in a petri dish and get more out of that that this bastard incarnation of an old favourite.

Post September 11, two great ideas are fighting for dominance in the western mind. One is that no society deserves the terrors such as have been visited upon us. Terrorists are “evil” in the sense that the original Cylons were evil. They just are, and even if there was a backstory, or some supposed self-justification for what happened, the acts committed negate such arguments and their validity. Thus, we may destroy evildoers/evilbeings with a clear conscience- with as little pity as we would extend a tumour we excise from a body. The alternate idea goes like this: We made the terrorists. Western society and its pride has caused the destruction we see around us. Although we decry the loss of individual innocent life, corporately we share in the fate of Victor Frankenstein for what has happened- destined to realise in our moment of despair that we are at least partially the authors of our own destruction. Thus no one is truly evil. Cylons and terrorists have a worldview that is as valid as our own. We must examine them, and ourselves to see if we are worthy of survival. And maybe we aren’t.

Such extremes of viewpoints manifest themselves as gung-ho U.S imperialism or as hand-wringing puerility like Battlestar Galactica. There has to be a balance somewhere in the middle. I for one think that the ideals of Western Society and the Enlightenment are eminently defensible. Then again, I’m an unreconstructed believer in the “White Man’s Burden” as well. Again, don’t get me started.

So there we are. Battlestar Galactica. Great concept, loathsome “re-imagining”, bad execution (with the exception of the new whiz-bang special effects, but that’s merely a matter of money), and even bad politics and bad apologia for Western Civilisation. Will the creators of this ordure curl up and die? No, they’ve been given the green light to launch off from the mini-series and produce a fully-fledged season, screening in early 2005. Expect more fembot Cylons with pert breasts and internecine conflict among the good guys.


- Nathan Zamprogno

In the beginning

In the beginning, the world was formless and void. And the spirit of the Creationists hovered over the waters, proscribing just how God was permitted to create the Universe, lest the creationists' faith be bruised by the knowledge that the world was in fact older than 6000 years. And lo, God spake and said "has it occurred to you that I'm quite capable of doing this without your input?" Verily, the creationists were astonished by this hubris and said "well, when your Son comes down in some future age and he gives his life for the sins of the world, we'll make sure that when we spread that message, we'll encumber our audience with unlikely claims of lions eating vegetarian and Koala bears walking across two continents and swimming an ocean to get to their habitats. And we'll also insist that if they don't beleive our claims, then they can't really be saved, can they?"


And God said "Do I know you?"