Their mission statement is that they will “Support fairness and freedom in broadcasting through impartial complaints determination, effective research and informing stakeholders.” I don’t know why they call it supporting freedom – perhaps it sounds nice – but basically what they do is hear complaints about things that have been broadcast on television and radio and decide whether or not to uphold the complaint. Their functions are:
(a) To receive and determine complaints…
…
(c) To publicise its procedures in relation to complaints; and
(d) To issue to any or all broadcasters, advisory opinions relating to broadcasting standards and ethical conduct in broadcasting; and
(e) To encourage the development and observance by broadcasters of codes of broadcasting practice appropriate to the type of broadcasting undertaken by such broadcasters in relation to -
(i) The protection of children:
(ii) The portrayal of violence:
(iii) Fair and accurate programmes and procedures for correcting factual errors and redressing unfairness:
(iv) Safeguards against the portrayal of persons in programmes in a manner that encourages the denigration of, or the discrimination against, sections of the community on account of sex, race, age, disability or occupational status or as a consequence of legitimate expression of religious, cultural or political beliefs:
(v) Restrictions on the promotion of liquor:
(vi) Presentation of appropriate warnings in respect of programmes that have been classified as suitable only for particular audiences:
(vii) The privacy of the individual
…
(h) To conduct research and publish findings on matters relating to standards in broadcasting.
Recently the BSA upheld a complaint about a TV show called 7 days, a show with a reputation for being a bit on the crass side. In short, there’s a show segment called “my kid could draw that,” where children (in a pre-recorded clip) present a drawing they have made of a recent news item, and show guests have to figure out what the news item is. I think that’s how it works, but the detail of that don’t matter now. A girl showed a picture of some men in a bunk, and it was then explained (after the guests failed to guess the news item) that the picture referred to a proposal – one that had gained some publicity – to double bunk inmates in prisons to save money. The girl explained that the picture read, “No money, plus a lot of prisoners, equals a lot of grossness up ahead.” You can guess the kind of humour that this might prompt, and sure enough a few wise cracks were then made by those taking part in the game about sexual antics between men in prisons.
The TV show was broadcast at 10pm and was preceded by a verbal warning that some content may offend. However, the Authority upheld part of the complaint on the grounds that this was sexually lewd material that was shown to be connected in some way to a drawing made by a specific child. Accordingly the show segment was deemed to have violated standards of decency and good taste. Read the decision here. Interested? Read the rest.
James S. Spiegel, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Chicago: Moody, 2010), 141 pages including notes.
One of the most endearing features of James Spiegel’s new book, The Making of an Atheist, is that it is quite short. You might think I’m kidding, or that this is a slight on the quality of the book (which is excellent, actually). It’s not. Dr Spiegel has some points to make, he makes them, and then he’s done. This is how I think all good Christian scholarship should be done (actually this is how all scholarship should be done, whatever the cause in which name it is done). It doesn’t take long to see what he’s getting at, it’s not hard to grasp, and once you’ve appreciated the point, you are allowed to leave, better off for having invested a relatively short amount of precious time.
But brevity is (fortunately) not the only feature of this intellectually compelling and eminently enjoyable read. Spiegel is a Christian writing on atheism, so it’s natural to assume that his goal is to show that atheism is false. However, that atheism is false is not the thesis of this book. Yes, the author reveals that he does think that atheism is false, and yes he also gives some reasons for thinking that it is false (just as those engaged in the science of religion might also offer their own reasons for thinking that this or that religious belief is false), but to fixate on that at the expense of the book’s overall theme would be to miss the point. The subject of the book is the fact that once we get past the idea of people being intellectually compelled to believe atheism on the grounds of rational argumentation (which is actually a rare phenomenon) there are, from a Christian perspective, identifiable causes of atheism that are both biblical and very often readily identifiable in practice. One of those major causes is the sinful desire for moral autonomy from God, and in particular the desire to engage in a sinful lifestyle (that is, a lifestyle marked by a rejection of the ethical mores of commitment to obeying God). Interested? Read the rest.
This is Trevor Mallard, a rather vocal member of Parliament, a Labour MP sitting in opposition. Here he is on a normal day’s work.
This is how he spends a lot of time. Just check Youtube and you’ll see that this is him on a good day. He is more civil in this clip than he is much of the time, he is more coherent, shouting less, and behaving in a more adult manner. In 2008 his salary was $131,000 plus some pretty sweet allowances. It’s higher now, but I’m not sure what it is.
What do you do? Do you work harder than this? If so, how does you income compare to the honourable Mr Mallard’s?
Every once in a while I either read or hear an atheist tell people, as though to make atheism sound like a more intellectually plausible position, that there is a measurable connection between education and atheism. In short, the message is that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to be an atheist, or at least the less likely you are to be a religious person of any sort. You may have heard Richard Dawkins say at one of his public speaking events that this is a fact that studies have shown.
Here’s a sample of such publicity that I’ve grabbed at random:
Dawkins also mentions that of 42 studies carried out since 1927, all but four found an inverse connection between religion and intelligence — that is, the higher the intelligence and education, the less likely people are to be religious. Of scientists, a very low percent are religious.
Very often, what a person is confident that “studies show” will depend very much on what a person is looking for in a study, perhaps even on what they want the studies to show. Here’s a good example: In 2007 a study was conducted wherein 728 students from Oxford University were interviewed about their religious beliefs (or lack thereof). 49.6 percent of these students said that they had no religious affiliation, while 57.3 percent of them were prepared to say that they were either “atheist” or “agnostic.” Most polls put only around 5 percent of all Britons in this category.
OK, let’s stop reading the data there. How do you suspect someone like Dawkins will interpret this fact? Why, it naturally reinforces the claim that educated people are more likely to be atheists, and by extension, that atheism gains some credibility from this fact. Right? Interested? Read the rest.
A few things are happening over the next couple of days. First, I’m at work writing the next podcast episode which (sans some sort of hectic last minute change) is on the subject of original sin. It’s a bit like a “nuts and bolts” blog, only it’s longer and it’s a podcast.
Secondly, in a couple of days I’ll be making good on the promise I made a while back to post a review of Jim Spiegel’s book, The Making of an Atheist: How immorality leads to unbelief. The book is doubtless going to inspire a number of blog posts in the future as well, such are the fascinating issues it wades through.
And as I mentioned just recently (and will mention plenty of times until the event arrives), I’m off to a conference at Oxford in late August. I’ll be spending time off and on between now and then putting my paper together and getting it into shape, as well as trying to drum up some support to help get me there.
I’ve just completed an application for a lecturing role at a University in the UK (no need to mention which one). The section on employing people from overseas was not encouraging. Specifically, here’s what it said about applicants from outside the EEA:
If you are applying from outside the European Economic Area, the University will be required to prove that no other EEA national was capable of undertaking the work and obtain a work permit / certificate of sponsorship for you.
Now of course, this doesn’t prevent us from applying. But look at what it does say. It says that it’s not enough to be the best applicant – even the best by a country mile. The university cannot hire me unless it can prove that no applicant from within the EEA was even capable of doing the job. At all. If there was anyone capable of doing the job – even to a mediocre standard, then the literal wording of this policy means that I could be the greatest scholar in the entire world, but that person would get the job ahead of me.
How can a policy like this actually be good for a University?
PS If you haven’t seen my post on it yet, feel free to help me get to Oxford. (This reminder will appear every now and then until after August.)
Today there was a small protest outside Parliament. No big deal in my books, people protest about stuff all the time. On this occasion, a New Zealand flag was burned. The protestors were pro-republican, and they believe that we should not have a monarch as head of state (hence the burning of the flag, which contains a Union Jack because of our ties to the British Empire, now the British Commonwealth). The protestors also had photos of New Zealand politicians including the current and former Prime Minister, and cut their heads off. Tasteless but harmless.
This is what the news story says: “Parliamentary Service said the protest was unauthorised and police were investigating.”
Police? Unauthorised? Am I to understand that this protest would need to be authorised by the people at whom it was directed?
I got some good news today. A few months ago I told you that there was a conference coming up this year that I’d like to take part in. Well, I’ve been chosen to present a paper at Merton College at the University of Oxford, as part of the 18th Conference of the European Society of the Philosophy of Religion.
The only reason I know this is that I bugged them about it. The official notifictions are about to be sent out, so I’m told.
The theme of the conference is Religion in the Public Square, one of my special interests, and the keynote speaker will be Nicholas Wolterstorff. My paper will present an argument that I’ve addressed in other formats, namely the question of whether or not religious convictions and by extension the policies that they might be used to support could meet any standard of “public justification.”
It’s a great opportunity for me. It is a way of getting exactly the right kind of exposure in the international academic arena, and for professional academic roles it’s a great addition to my C.V. It would, in theory, push me one step closer to that elusive big time. There’s one problem. The keynote speaker, as well as the other speakers on the schedule, along with virtually everyone presenting a paper, will be from university departments that provide funding for travel to conferences. I on the other hand am not, and will need to meet the expenses myself. I’ve been crunching the numbers and it’s pretty painful. Flights, conference registration and accommodation will cost around $4,400 New Zealand dollars (using today’s exchange rate, that’s about $3,136.02 US).
I’m putting the word out there: If you are able to and you would like to assist me in meeting these costs, I would warmly welcome and appreciate it. The “donate” button on the right, or the “buy me a beer” button at the bottom of each post is an easy way to do this via Paypal. If you’re in New Zealand and you think you might be able to assist, feel free to get in touch with me (Paypal is convenient for overseas payments, but there is a small fee involved). If you’re a blogger, I’d appreciate you putting the word out there and asking people if they’d be interested in supporting me with this.
Although I’m familiar with the view that the Apostle Paul is relating an “out of body experience” at the outset of 2 Corinthians 12, I’m pretty sure that he is not. That’s partly because I’m a physicalist and I don’t think that such things are even possible, but it’s also because the evidence for this claim about the meaning of this passage is pretty weak. I’ll explain why I say this. Interested? Read the rest.
I live in the wrong part of the country. Dunedin is lovely, don’t get me wrong. However there are opportunities of a whole range of sorts that I am missing because of where I live. I won’t go into all the details of that, just trust me. We’ve decided that we should move to Auckland. Plus it’s much warmer, and we have family in that part of the country who we haven’t seen much of.
I’m a family man and we’re not particularly well off, so I can’t responsibily move unless there’s there’s a job to move to. I’m applying for jobs already, and while I’m explaining each time I apply that we do intend to move to Auckland, there’s going to be a natural reluctance to hire people from out of town when there are local applicants. I thought I’d give a shout out here in case there are readers in that part of the country who might know of something, or who might even be in a place of influence who might be able to offer something. There’s a whole range of areas that I could work in. I currently work for the Inland Revenue Department in Student loans, doing technical work on accounts and also liasing with other agencies (like Studylink, the Ministry of Education, the Immigration Department and tax agents). I also get in touch with customers by phone and also address their queries by email. It involves applying legislation, and I’ve also played a role over the last year and a bit in clarifying the legislative requirements of the roles that my team has been involved in, and also coaching fellow staff members. Prior to this role I worked as a customer service rep in the call centre for Inland Revenue. Prior to that I managed a bookstore.
You already know (probably) about my academic background, but in general my approach is that unless a role requires years of experience in a highly specialised field, I can do it: anything involving communication, coaching, training, tutoring, or anything that involves explaining technical information. I also work well with numbers, and I even have a couple of papers in accounting. I could do web based work and even some graphic design work (it’s not like I have professional expreience there, but I made this site and the graphics here – bearing in bind that the blog is a wordpress blog, although the graphics are mine). I also have a background in music, recording and audio engineering (have you seen my site www.podcastermusic.org ?).
So if you’re in a position to suggest anything in the Auckland area – anything at all really – please do drop me a line and let me know.
James S. Spiegel, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Chicago: Moody, 2010), 141 pages including notes.
Every once in a while I either read or hear an atheist tell people, as though to make atheism sound like a more intellectually plausible position, that there is a measurable connection between education and atheism. In short, the message is that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to be an atheist, or at least the less likely you are to be a religious person of any sort. You may have heard Richard Dawkins say at one of his public speaking events that this is a fact that studies have shown.
I’ve just completed an application for a lecturing role at a University in the UK (no need to mention which one). The section on employing people from overseas was not encouraging. Specifically, here’s what it said about applicants from outside the EEA:
Today there was a small protest outside Parliament.
I got some good news today. 
Although I’m familiar with the view that the Apostle Paul is relating an “out of body experience” at the outset of 2 Corinthians 12, I’m pretty sure that he is not. That’s partly because I’m a physicalist and I don’t think that such things are even possible, but it’s also because the evidence for this claim about the meaning of this passage is pretty weak. I’ll explain why I say this. 
I live in the wrong part of the country. Dunedin is lovely, don’t get me wrong. However there are opportunities of a whole range of sorts that I am missing because of where I live. I won’t go into all the details of that, just trust me. We’ve decided that we should move to Auckland. Plus it’s much warmer, and we have family in that part of the country who we haven’t seen much of.