I was somewhat dismayed today by a BBC News article on Sunday's televised Miss USA competition. During the contest Carrie Prejean - Miss California - was asked for her views on same-sex marriage by one of the judges, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. She replied, "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offence to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."
Those aren't words I have a problem with. As the transcript clearly shows, Miss Prejean wasn't attacking anyone; she simply stated her personal opinion in a polite and respectful way in response to a direct question.
No, what bothers me is the reaction she got.
Hilton said he was "floored" by Ms Prejean's answer, which, he said, "alienated millions of gay and lesbian Americans, their families and their supporters". What!? I'm sorry Mr Hilton, but just because an individual differs from you doesn't give you grounds to say their identity alienates a whole section of society. I'm white, but I don't feel alienated because America chose a 'black' president. I'm heterosexual, but I don't feel alienated because someone else chooses to be gay. I'm a Christian, but I don't feel alienated when other people disagree with my views.
Mr Hilton, and those who hurried to agree with him, clearly have a problem here. Their rhetoric is far more reminiscent of a petulant, pouting child in a primary school playground than visionaries seeking to lead the ignorant from darkness into light. Campaigners for gay rights have spoken out passionately for many years against bigotry and intolerance, yet here we see them committing the very same sins they have condemned in others for so long. I'm afraid that rather undermines the credibility of your comment, Mr Hilton.
Needless to say, Miss California didn't become Miss USA, but in my view she still left the contest a winner. "It did cost me my crown," she said after the competition, "but I wouldn't have had it any other way. I said what I feel. I stated an opinion that was true to myself and that's all I can do."
What should she have said, Mr Hilton? Would you have given her more points if she'd prostituted herself for the crown and told you what you wanted to hear? What kind of a judge would that have made you? Integrity used to be prized, a precious diadem of virue crowning any young woman's character. But when people trample it underfoot to further their own agenda in the midst of a beauty pageant that's the ugliest thing you could ever hope to see.
Tuesday 21 April 2009
Sunday 19 April 2009
Is Global Warming Just Hot Air?
As someone with a scientific and engineering background one of the things that really gets my goat is when so-called experts publish just one side of a story as if it were the whole truth. Politicians and social activists love black-and-white statements because they can use them to motivate people. But ask any engineer who understands the topic and he'll usually shake his head and say, "I'm afraid it's not that simple..."
Global warming is a case in point. We the public are fed a regular diet of sea-level rise, irreversible climate change and man-made meterological catastrophe. "Global warming is a reality and it's all man-made," our leaders scream. "We must all fly less, pay more for our petrol, reduce our carbon footprint and use less plastic bags." Plastic bags? That's just one example of how a side issue gets tacked onto the main argument and whipped up into a campaign bandwagon for political ends. Yes, plastic bags pollute the environment and endanger wildlife. But they don't cause global warming any more than any other manufactured product does.
The truth is, the whole issue is not as simple as the green machine would have us believe. Yes, there is some evidence that things are changing, but there is also a host of evidence that this could well be just part of the natural cycle of things and far less man-made than we have been led to believe. For example, you might remember recent reports by 'experts' that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting on an unprecedented scale and that as a result we are likely to suffer catastrophic sea level rises of up to six metres by the year 2100. Only last week the Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett echoed this, insisting that global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.
Unfortunately, he's a politican; and what you won't have heard about is the other information recently released by the Head of the Australian Antarctic Division's Glaciology Program, Ian Allinson. He reports that sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years have been more than offset by ice increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica. "Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison says. He also says there is no evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings [icebergs breaking away] in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he says that even those might not be unusual. "Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years."
Interesting eh?
Ice core drilling off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis from the 1950s until now is 1.67m.
Want more? A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded. And let's not forget the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research's report, prepared for last week's Antarctic Treaty meeting in Washington, which noted the South Pole has experienced "significant cooling in recent decades". How come they never mentioned that bit on the news?
The reality is, the whole global warming question is not as simple as it's made out to be and there is a wealth of information that doesn't fit in with today's political and social agenda so it's simply not reported. We need to be careful not to blindly swallow everything the 'experts' tell us, because the facts show that sometimes what they're telling us isn't science - it's propaganda.
Global warming is a case in point. We the public are fed a regular diet of sea-level rise, irreversible climate change and man-made meterological catastrophe. "Global warming is a reality and it's all man-made," our leaders scream. "We must all fly less, pay more for our petrol, reduce our carbon footprint and use less plastic bags." Plastic bags? That's just one example of how a side issue gets tacked onto the main argument and whipped up into a campaign bandwagon for political ends. Yes, plastic bags pollute the environment and endanger wildlife. But they don't cause global warming any more than any other manufactured product does.
The truth is, the whole issue is not as simple as the green machine would have us believe. Yes, there is some evidence that things are changing, but there is also a host of evidence that this could well be just part of the natural cycle of things and far less man-made than we have been led to believe. For example, you might remember recent reports by 'experts' that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting on an unprecedented scale and that as a result we are likely to suffer catastrophic sea level rises of up to six metres by the year 2100. Only last week the Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett echoed this, insisting that global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.
Unfortunately, he's a politican; and what you won't have heard about is the other information recently released by the Head of the Australian Antarctic Division's Glaciology Program, Ian Allinson. He reports that sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years have been more than offset by ice increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica. "Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison says. He also says there is no evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings [icebergs breaking away] in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he says that even those might not be unusual. "Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years."
Interesting eh?
Ice core drilling off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis from the 1950s until now is 1.67m.
Want more? A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded. And let's not forget the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research's report, prepared for last week's Antarctic Treaty meeting in Washington, which noted the South Pole has experienced "significant cooling in recent decades". How come they never mentioned that bit on the news?
The reality is, the whole global warming question is not as simple as it's made out to be and there is a wealth of information that doesn't fit in with today's political and social agenda so it's simply not reported. We need to be careful not to blindly swallow everything the 'experts' tell us, because the facts show that sometimes what they're telling us isn't science - it's propaganda.
Tuesday 7 April 2009
Little Things
I've had a rotten cold for the last few days. It came out of nowhere; I went to bed feeling fine then woke in the night thinking, "My throat is on fire!" The rest, as they say, is history.
Everyone knows these things are caused by viruses, and a biochemist friend of mine told me a few things about them. Apparently a virus is a fragment of DNA that can infiltrate the resident DNA in a cell, effectively hijacking it to perform its own evil will. I often ask my friend if he's found a cure yet for the common cold but he replies that it's not that easy. Even though a virus is just a shred of DNA the part of that shred that causes us problems is smaller still and mutates constantly, making any classical drug obsolete the moment it is designed. The challenge is to find a way to target the stable 'carrier' part of the virus DNA - without killing everything else in the process.
It's sobering to think that a six-foot-one 13 stone alpha-male in superb physical condition (okay, that last part might be a slight exaggeration) can be brought low by a foe so small you'd need an electron microscope to see it, but I can assure you it's true. So often it's the smallest things that cause our biggest problems. Thoughtless words and actions can be the wedge that splinters a marriage. Just a little compromise with sin can explode to destroy your credibility and wreck your destiny. And how many times has spiritual laziness and indifference left me wondering what happened to the presence of God?
There is an old proverb in Yorkshire which says, "Take care of the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves". Success as a Christian does not come by mission statements, strategic plans or great visionary intentions. It is achieved daily, amid the cut-and-thrust of life by a series of seemingly insignificant decisions to do the right thing.
Everyone knows these things are caused by viruses, and a biochemist friend of mine told me a few things about them. Apparently a virus is a fragment of DNA that can infiltrate the resident DNA in a cell, effectively hijacking it to perform its own evil will. I often ask my friend if he's found a cure yet for the common cold but he replies that it's not that easy. Even though a virus is just a shred of DNA the part of that shred that causes us problems is smaller still and mutates constantly, making any classical drug obsolete the moment it is designed. The challenge is to find a way to target the stable 'carrier' part of the virus DNA - without killing everything else in the process.
It's sobering to think that a six-foot-one 13 stone alpha-male in superb physical condition (okay, that last part might be a slight exaggeration) can be brought low by a foe so small you'd need an electron microscope to see it, but I can assure you it's true. So often it's the smallest things that cause our biggest problems. Thoughtless words and actions can be the wedge that splinters a marriage. Just a little compromise with sin can explode to destroy your credibility and wreck your destiny. And how many times has spiritual laziness and indifference left me wondering what happened to the presence of God?
There is an old proverb in Yorkshire which says, "Take care of the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves". Success as a Christian does not come by mission statements, strategic plans or great visionary intentions. It is achieved daily, amid the cut-and-thrust of life by a series of seemingly insignificant decisions to do the right thing.
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