The Intelligence² Debate – Stephen Fry

The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited)

In this video from late last year, Stephen Fry takes on the Roman Catholic Church. Critics have dismissed him, saying that he says nothing new. Maybe not, but he says it so much better than most of us are remotely capable of. His eloquent passion makes the religious debates in the United States (and elsewhere) look like nothing more than children’s schoolyard arguments. Whatever one’s position on what he says, we could all learn a lot by the way he says it.

Possible proof positive

The other day, I found a rusty washer lying by Jake’s dog door in the living room. Weird, but then today I found a small nut a metre or so from where I found the washer. They’re in the photo above.

We’ve never assembled anything in the living room that had little nuts and bolts, so I have no idea where they came from. But taken together, they suggest that maybe I have a screw loose. That wouldn’t be a surprise to my conservative friends.

Taxing believability

Today Prime Minister John Key delivered his annual speech to Parliament outlining what his government plans to do in the coming year. Critics on the right are saying he’s still a “do nothing” Prime Minister, apparently because he isn’t embracing the two recent reports from the neo-conservative “working groups” on taxation and competitiveness.

The left, predictably, is suspicious of the National Party’s tax plans, especially raising GST to fifteen percent. This will, as I’ve written repeatedly, hit ordinary working New Zealanders hard. Also, as yet we have no reason to believe the Prime Minister when he claimed that income tax cuts will be “across the board”. National’s past history is that it always rewards the upper income brackets and ignores the lower brackets. We’ll see.

However, this is what I find weird: National campaigned against Labour and its “Working for Families” programme in particular. They said it made no sense to take people’s money in taxes, only to give it back in benefits—yet this is exactly what National is proposing to do: National is planning to raise superannuation, the benefit and the Working for Families benefit to offset the increase in GST. Put another way, they’ll take money from people in taxes to give it back as benefits—what they said was a bad thing when Labour did it.

Also, the supposed benefits from income tax cuts are largely illusory. TV One estimated that those on $100,000 will get more that $5,000 a year, but someone on $70,000 would get less than a thousand. That could be—and likely would be—wiped out by the increase in GST. Folks on the average wage or less will almost certainly be worse off, even with the hikes in benefits.

Of course, all this could change between now and the release of the budget the end of May. National didn’t campaign on this, especially raising GST by 20%. Maybe if enough people object to it they’ll pull back. Maybe.

It should be an interesting—and taxing—few months in New Zealand politics.

Goose and gander

ABC (US) World News asked today if self-help “gurus” should be regulated. It came in response to the highly-publicised case of James Arthur Ray, who presided over a “sweat lodge” ritual at his retreat in which three participants died.

Said ABC, these “gurus” use their position of authority to convince or cajole their followers into unproven, sometimes harmful treatment, despite being having no professional qualifications. Maybe it would be a good idea to regulate such people—but if they do, shouldn’t they also regulate churches? There are plenty of preachers who do the same things ABC described, so why should they get a free pass just because the majority endorses their spiritual beliefs? Seems to me harm is harm.

There’s no way churches will be regulated, of course, so the next best thing would be to toughen penalties for anyone offering “treatment” that ends up harming someone. After all, shouldn’t the goal be to prevent victims, regardless of whether the majority approves of the perpetrator or not?

Is TVNZ homophobic?

There are some controversies you just can’t sort out easily. You don’t know who to believe or what the facts are. So sometimes it’s best to just stay out of it.

That’s what I was thinking when last month GayNZ.com reported on a Women’s Day magazine article (not available online) in which Steve Grey suggested he’d been sacked as a presenter on TVNZ’s “Good Morning” programme because he was “too gay”.

"About five or six months ago I was pulled aside by my producer and told, 'I've had a call from upstairs and they just want you to look at your gayness and not play to it so much'”. Grey was understandably irate at that: "Tone down your gayness? How do you do that? It's like saying to Brendon [another Good Morning presenter], 'Tone down your Maori!'"

TVNZ originally claimed Grey was fired as part of cost-cutting, but they later admitted it was "it was a network decision – not related to costs". So: ARE they homophobic? Today, I had to wonder.

I saw the opening of today’s show, back after a two month “Christmas Break”. They introduced the new co-host, TVNZ reporter Hadyn Jones.

In introducing Jones, co-host Sarah Bradley gushed, “He is married and he has a beautiful baby girl… and she is six months old.” If that wasn’t enough to establish Jones’ heterosexual bonafides, co-host Brendon Pongia introduced a clip of an interview Jones had conducted with a female New Zealand model saying: “And also, there’s an interview he did with a particular person, and a question all men wanted to ask.”

In the clip, Jones said to the model, “Now your breasts…” he paused, she said, “yes?” and Jones went on, “Are they real?”

After the clip, Bradley said, “well, I guess he only asked what everyone else in New Zealand wanted to ask.” “Every male,” Pongia corrected.

It struck me as a particularly aggressively heterosexual way to introduce Jones, as if to declare, “our new guy’s NOT one of them.”

TVNZ has long shown little interest in GLBT programming or viewers. When Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” was on the charts, TVNZ censored the video of the song removing the scene in which two young men kiss—taking away from young gay people the very affirmation the video was supposed to deliver. TVNZ said at the time that they were acting in the place of parents, something I thought was an incredibly lame excuse.

TVNZ has aired the occasional NZ GLBT programme, funded by NZ on Air, but they always aired it very late at night and gave it no real support. They currently don’t air any NZ GLBT programming and most foreign programmes with strong gay-themes air on other networks (“Glee” and “Modern Family” are on TV3, for example).

Some might argue that Tamati Coffey on TV One’s “Breakfast” programme indicates TVNZ isn’t anti-gay. But Coffey is the programme’s “roving reporter” and weather presenter, not a co-host. He’s also has a different demeanour than Grey.

Add it all up, and it suggests that there could be a problem with homophobia at TVNZ. I wish a professional journalist would investigate because if the state-owned broadcaster really is deliberately keeping GLBT people off the air, then GLBT taxpayers have the right to know that.

All that aside, I thought the new line-up was boring and turned the TV off within the first five minutes.

What the…

The other day we were in the grocery store and saw this plastic can: The body is plastic, like a bottle and the top is aluminium with a drink tab, like a normal drink can. I’ve never seen anything like it. To me, it frankly looks bizarre, like something designed by a committee to use up spare parts.

I’ve never heard of the drink—it’s made somewhere overseas, but I have no idea where since the country of origin isn't listed on the label. I should add for the benefit of my American friends and family, in this part of the word “lemonade” is like the commercial brands “Sprite” and “7-up”.

At any rate, I don’t expect plastic cans to catch on, and I hope they don’t: They’d be a nightmare for recyclers. I was told they used to be around in the past. As far as I’m concerned, they should stay there.

Spokesbird for Conservation

2010 is the United Nations’ International Year of Biodiversity, and Sirocco, the world-famous Internet sensation kakapo, is New Zealand’s official spokesbird for conservation. As one of the last 124 kakapo in the world, he has a particular interest in the subject.

As for this video, my favourite line: “Sirroco has put his sex-video behind him.”

I love New Zealand.

More bigotry on parade

Only two days ago I wrote about far right christianist bigots calling for gay people to be imprisoned. Now another rightwing christianist group is calling for homosexuality to be criminalised (near the end of the video above):

Chris Matthews: Should we outlaw gay behaviour?
Peter Sprigg: …I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behaviour.
Chris Matthews: So we should outlaw gay behaviour?
Peter Sprigg: Yes!!

It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

Make no mistake: These people mean business. They’re powerful and have access to big piles of money. They’re also not as far outside the Christian mainstream as we might like to believe: Sodomy laws in the United States didn’t end because states finally realised it was the right thing to do, but because the Supreme Court reversed itself and struck them down—a decision Sprigg says was “wrongly decided”. There was no pressure from mainstream Christians for states to finally act, just as there isn’t now on marriage equality or any other issue, and just as the silence now among the mainstream Christians is deafening.

These extremists must be stopped: They’re the enemy not only of GLBT people, but of freedom and democracy. If people of good conscience don’t join in the condemnation of this sort of rhetoric, it will inevitably become part of the political mainstream for the ordinary right and from there, policy and law. It has happened before, it is happening now in Uganda.

After they’ve rounded up the gay people, and they’ve then switched their sights to mainstream Christians, it’ll be too late to stop them. Condemn and oppose them—while you still can.

Tip o' the Hat to Joe.My.God.

Wars in the stars

Who doesn’t love a viral video? If nothing else, they fill a post when I’m too busy to write anything. Actually, I would’ve posted the video even if I wasn’t busy. Which I am. So, there.