Right Reason

So where have I been? The blog has been very quiet lately and the podcast has fallen silent. Where to begin!

First, as suggested by my cave man post, things are a little frustrating on the future employment front. New Zealand is just the wrong place to be a scholar in the humanities. Because there are so few major academic options in the form of universities and similar institutions here (countable on one’s fingers), you simply must either have an illustrious career history already, or you must be friends with the right people. Neither of those things currently apply in my case, so I’ve got a lot of work (no, not professional work) ahead of me before that becomes a live possibility. Getting anyone’s attention is going to involve a considerably above average research/publication output (that is, above the average of somebody already in an academic career), without the benefit of actually having time allocated to my schedule to do that like someone who is already working in the fields I’m aiming for. I could manage it well were it not for that time factor. That means trying (very often unsuccessfully) to squeeze out all the available time from the gaps in my evenings, beween eating, sleeping, and having a relationship with my wife and children. As I mentioned a while ago, I’m taking a couple of classes by distance as well (towards a diploma in business – everybody needs a backup plan). Those classes will be over on the 17th of November when I sit the second of my two final exams, so I will gain a little more time then. Until then, it’s probably best to give up on my empty promises of getting the current podcast episode finished.

As a family we’re also looking at some changes to make even just a small amount more time available, possibly involving changes in schooling and employment, but that’s all still just in the realm of possibilities at the moment and we haven’t decided anything. It’s a terrible thing, but I’ve frequently envied the unemployed for their wealth of time (not that I could afford to be unemployed!).

I’m looking at some research/teaching fellowships outside of New Zealand at the moment. It’s hard to know what Universities expect in a fellow. Their advertisements make encouraging comments about looking for someone who has just obtained their PhD within the last five years, and yet it’s common to see people who are fellows who have a long career with scores of books and other publications behind them already. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve put together a modest research proposal and bibliography for any such applications. It’s a proposal for a project that I’ve been wanting for some time to use as the basis for a book for publication, on a history and defence of the moral argument for theism. It’s a subject that has received surprisingly little academic treatment, and I know of literally no published book at the moment that represents what I intend to produce, a fact that I find incredible when considering the sheer number of works published on the other classic and modern arguments for theism (e.g. cosmological, ontological, fine tuning). After I’ve read through the proposal a few (dozen) more times to make sure it’s as I want it to be I’ll post it here at the blog for your scrutiny.

My friend Geoff Gummer has started a wiki site at theology.net.nz . It’s an encyclopedia of Christian thought, covering theology, philosophy, biblical studies, Christian biography, missions, and anything else that fits. There was one out there that I thought was pretty good when I first learned of its existence, but alas, like so many potentially good resources it is under the thumb of a fairly partisan agenda.

This encyclopedia aims above all for fairness and reliability. There’s nothing worse (well, there are some things worse, but I’m waxing rhetorical) than knowing that trusting people are using reference tools to actually get a fair understanding of an idea, only to get (without realising it) a slanted and unfair representation of the idea, written that way because the author has a theological agenda against the idea in question. For that reason, all contributions to this encyclopedia may be subject to review, and we (I’m sort of involved with the project) require that the contributors are able to speak with some authority on the subjects they write on (but you don’t have to be a professor!). Maybe there’s a subject that you’ve done some work on and on which you’d like to share your knowledge with the world. Don’t just assume – as do some users of other online resources – that because you have a strong belief about something you’re qualified to expound upon the idea for the purposes of educating people.

The site is very new, and there’s virtually nothing there at the moment. If you’d like to become a contributor to the encyclopedia, head on over to the site and drop Geoff a line. I’ve recently made a contribution on Divine Command Ethics. Let’s build this up into a top notch resource! Maybe you can even come up with a name for it?

1. Need to get a job

2. Want job at university

3. Need PhD to get job at University

4. Got PhD

5. Need some experience in order to get job

6. Need to have a job in order to get some experience

hmmmmm…. *lightbulb goes on*

7. Get fellowship to get experience to get a job

8. Yes, got PhD, but need to invest full time activity in publication outputs, raising profile and research proposals to get fellowship, or no get fellowship (Croneyism not work for us foreign devils)

9. Need to live full time (without breaks)

10. Need some sort of job to earn money to live

11. Can live full time and do one other thing full time. Cannot do two other things full time, because time can only be used once

12. Get low paid full time job that not require any degree, to earn money to live on

13. Now it is time to do step 8.

14. Wait, this not work… now time for step 8 is gone. Cannot have two full times lives

15. Need to do step 8 or steps 7 and 1 never happen. Erase step 12

16. Start step 8

17. Starve to death

Life cycle over

Glenn Peoples

Sue Bradford has been one of the worst politicians that this nation has ever had the misfortune of enduring in Parliament. She was the architect – if you can call her that – of the now infamous and incredibly unpopular “anti-smacking” legislation. The reality is that her grasp of law, its meaning, implications and its structure is such that she almost certainly didn’t write it. On the other hand, the lack of clarity and apparent conflict within the law also suggests that she had input, so who knows?

I still vividly recall when she came down to Dunedin to discuss the anti-smacking Bill at public meetings. As people explained the legal ramifications of the Bill, her blank stares and bizarre replies made quite a few people freeze in a moment of terror with one common thought in their minds: This law maker has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about.

Today she anounced her departure from the House. Thank God. It’s a time when people feel obliged to flatter her, lie, and tell the media that she made great contributions and that she acted in the best interests of families and those she cared about. There is no such obligation. Mrs Bradford made no such positive contributions, she did not act in the best interests of families, and the fact that she believed otherwise does not make things better. It is not a redeeming fact that “at least she was doing what she thought was best for people.” No. The fact that she believed in mammoth power transfers from the family to the nanny state, the fact that she entertained the view that it is best for everyone to slaughter the economy in the interests of meeting environmental protocols  that larger economies themselves do not meet is evidence of just how confused, morally unwell, and unfit she really was to serve in the first place.

I am very pleased that she is leaving. The only regret in her departure is that it isn’t retroactive, which leaves us with the mess she created while in Parliament.

1936-2009

I grew up with Howard Morrison on TV. My parents were (and are, I assume) big fans. He was easily one of the biggest icons in New Zealand entertainment – one of our original Rock n Rollers (part of the Howard Morrison Quartet), a person very hard not to like, a person passionate for the good of others, and always the perfect gentleman.

What is it with good people dying this year? Don’t you ever wish that there could be exceptions?

Each month my blog goes through a cranky period. Yes, you read that right (almost as bad as Moody Monthly, the once publication of Moody Bible Institute). Yes, I have performance issues.

That’s because every month I exceed my bandwidth allowance on my hosting plan and when that happens things slow down. I already have what, for me, is an expensive plan, at $24.95 per month, which includes my domain name (that’s $299.40 per annum). That only gets me 8 Gigabytes of data transfer (bandwidth) per month, and I always exceed that – which is nice, of course. Details of my hosting plan are here.

I’m looking to upgrade to something that gives me a little more room, because the site slowing down really isn’t a good thing. Here’s what I would be looking for at a minimum:

• New Zealand Based
• Linux based
• 10 Gigabytes of storage (I must be able to store all my podcast eps on the server (not at a free storage site), and I am about to exceed my 2Gig limit here)
• Ideally at least 30 Gigabytes of bandwidth before performance is impacted (I always exceed my 8GB limit, currently using around 13GB in a light month, close to 19-20GB in a busy month)
• Domain based email
• MySQL
• The usual php capabilities
• A straight-forward control panel, preferably similar to the widely used Plesk control panel (Plesk itself would be great)

Are you in a position to help? Perhaps you know of a better deal than I’m currently getting. Perhaps you can offer a better deal than I’m currently getting. If either of these is the case, please let me know.

OK, just one more comic, this time from XKCD: