We have been a bit quiet the last few days as like most people we are kinda busy with Christmas preparation. We are going away at some point but not til after New Year so do keep checking in as I am sure we will find something to rant about – its a pretty safe [...]
Entries from December 25th, 2006
Fireworks Remain Un-Banned
December 24th, 2006 No Comments
The guy fawkes just past started out rather uneventful for us, we did out fireworks thing then came inside and watched some movie on TV – I forget what now. A bit before 11pm our 11 year old son began shrieking something unintelligible and ran downstairs – we finally worked out he was yelling “Fire!” [...]
Tags: Fires · Fireworks · Personal Responsibility
Dear Hell Pizza
December 21st, 2006 5 Comments
My kids get taught about sex when I decide to teach them about it. As their parents I get to decide what and how I tell them about it. No one else gets to infringe my right to educate my kids, not the state, not family planning and not the local pizza company. I used [...]
Tags: Advertising · Family · Hell Pizza · Parental Rights
Dr Flannagan
December 17th, 2006 No Comments
A notice to all those who commonly write on internet blogs: “Matthew Flannagan is an ignorant, stupid, illogical, irrational, backwards fundamentalist, moronic bigot, blah, blah, blah.” As of 3pm today please amend your insults to the following: “Dr Matthew Flannagan is an ignorant, stupid, illogical, irrational, backwards fundamentalist, moronic bigot, blah, blah, blah.” Matt will [...]
Tags: Graduation
Reductio ad Bushium
December 16th, 2006 1 Comment
I read am amusing letter to the editor in the Otago Daily Times yesterday. The writer was discussing the coup in Fiji. Halfway through the letter he expressed outrage at the suggestion that democracy should be preserved. This, he noted, is what George W Bush believes *shock* *horror*. Here we have a reductio ad Bushium: [...]
Tags: Bad Reasoning · George Bush
Sanctions and Siege Warfare
December 14th, 2006 6 Comments
I believe that a state has the right to wage war only to defend those living with in its boarders from attack. A state’s authority to use coercion to uphold justice is limited to its borders. Just as a state has no right to prosecute a person for committing a crime committed outside NZ or to make laws regulating peoples behaviour beyond its shores, it has no duty to defend people in other countries.
Tags: Fiji · Helen Clark · Role of the State · War Ethics
Democracy and Legitimacy
December 5th, 2006 No Comments
The founding statement of liberal political theory, John Locke’s Two Treaties of Civil Government, opens with the following statement: Reader, thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it [...]
Tags: Declaration of Independence · Fiji · John Locke · Liberty · Role of the State · War Ethics
Airport Security – What a Joke!
December 3rd, 2006 1 Comment
Tomorrow I will be flying out of town and I was just now pondering the whole check in procedure and I remembered the last time I flew about a month ago…. I was standing inline at the airport security thingy waiting to get on the plane. Everyone steps up, puts their handluggage through the scanner [...]
Tags: Airport Security
What is Fundamentalism?
December 17th, 2006 No Comments
we must first look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist’. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ‘son of a bitch’, more exactly ‘sonovabitch’
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Fundamentalism · Humour