Understatement of the day

". . . we don't decide what sorts of stories to do based on journalistic credibility. That's more an ABC judgement."

Peter Meakin, Seven news and current affairs director

In the same report the ABC, no doubt smirking from ear to ear, points out the obvious parallels between the Today Tonight crew's ill-fated West Papua venture and the Frontline episode "Playing the Ego Card." (That's the one where Mike goes to PNG to boost his journalistic credibility.)

Sarah suggests that the venture, however ill-considered, indicates that Today Tonight might be turning over a new leaf in appearing to pursue a more "serious" story. (You know, as opposed to soup diets and infomercials and the like.) And I have to admit that was my first reaction, too . . . until I discovered which story the TT crew were actually chasing in the old East Indies . . .

CANNIBALS.

JUST MILES FROM OUR NATION'S DOORSTEP.

IS YOUR FAMILY SAFE?

Naomi Robson reports from West Papua on the threat from our North . . .

UPDATE: Via Sarah:

Robson and a Today Tonight crew say they were trying to save a Papuan orphan from being eaten by his cannibal tribe when they were detained by Indonesian authorities this week.

[...]

Today Tonight was following up on a Nine Network report about an orphaned boy, Wah-Wah, who was going to be killed and eaten at some stage in the next 10 years.

When Nine refused to go in and rescue the boy, Today Tonight stepped in, leading to the crew being detained, the program claimed

This is the high-water-mark of aspirational television, peeps!

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The Pope Versus Science

Pope Benedict XVI attracted some 250,000 people to an outdoor Mass on Sunday, urging his largely secular home country not to let science and reason make it “deaf” to God.

“Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God ­ there are too many frequencies filling our ears,” he told the crowd, at a former airport on the outskirts of this city where he once served as archbishop. “What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited for our age.”

[. . .]

“I know that in our pluralistic world it is no easy thing in schools to bring up the subject of faith,” he said. “But it is hardly enough for our children and young people to learn technical knowledge and skills alone, and not the criteria that give knowledge and skill their direction and meaning.

“Encourage your children and students not only to raise questions about particular things, but also to ask about the why and the wherefore of life as a whole,” he added. “Help them to realize that answers that do not finally lead to God are insufficient.”

Dogma first. Supporting evidence/reasoning/justification second. Got it. Via the New York Times.

UPDATE: Is there a theme here? Ahmadinejad wants secular academics booted out of the Iranian academies. Ratzinger claims that “People in Africa and Asia [. . .] do not see the real threat to their identity in the Christian faith, but in the contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom and that holds up utility as the supreme moral criterion for the future of scientific research.”

And now, according to US conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, the secularleft--"people like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Bill Moyers, and Michael Moore--are responsible for fostering a culture that angers and repulses not just Muslim countries but also traditional and religious societies around the world...[D'Souza] argues that it is not our exercise of freedom that enrages our enemies, but our abuse of that freedom--from the sexual liberty of women to the support of gay marriage, birth control, and no-fault divorce, to the aggressive exportation of our vulgar, licentious popular culture." For D'Souza, "It is only by curtailing the left's attacks on religion, family, and traditional values that we can persuade moderate Muslims and others around the world to cooperate with us and begin to shun the extremists in their own countries."

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars, where D'Souza's thesis receives the smackdown it so desperately deserves.

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Tagged: Book meme

My first ever tagging comes via Sketchgirl . . .

A book that changed my life: The Lord of the Rings. I've read it cover to cover at least 11 times since I was 16, and worn through three copies. I even wrote my honours thesis on it.

A book I've read more than once: see above. Also: Feist's Riftwar Saga, Empire Trilogy and Serpentwar series (I kid you not, Sketchgirl), Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed.

A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island: A Nietzsche Reader. Or The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

A book that made me laugh: Stupid White Men.

A book that made me cry: I can't imagine a situation in which a book would make me cry.

A book I wish I could have written: Anything by Nietzsche.

A book I wish had never been written: This question is a little too close to "Which book would you burn?" for comfort.

A book I've been meaning to read: Where do I start? War and Peace, The Decameron, Swann's Way and Gargantua and Pantagruel have been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to either read or finish reading them for about ten years.

I'm currently reading: Thackeray's Barry Lyndon. Also working my way through Thinking in Education by Matthew Lippman.

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The debate is hereby resolved.

Hard evidence that prayer works!!!!! Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

P.S. While we're on the topic of religion (hehe), biologist uber-blogger and Steve Irwin fan P.Z. Myers reflects upon an "obituary" penned by creationist and former Queenslander Ken Ham.

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Rate My Professor (Tehran chapter)

What do these men have in common?

Well, both hate secular and liberal academics and believe their professional activities should be legally constrained. But whereas the one simply whines and lies about his bêtes noire in the academies, the other is all about getting things done:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's outspoken president, fired an ominous warning at the country's educated elites yesterday by calling for a purge of "liberal and secular" academics in the universities. [. . .]

"Today students should protest and shout at the president asking why some liberal and secular professors are still present in the universities," he told a gathering of young scientists. "Our educational system has been under the influence of the secular system for 150 years. Colonialism is seeking the spread of its own secular system."

Wingnuttery. The international language.

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I guess he found Utopia.

Story?

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Sunday reading material

(To SB, and any other fathers who pay visit to this neck of the blogosphere from time to time, Happy Father's Day . . .)

Is Heaven Hotter than Hell?
The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right (Alternet)
The Sinners Guide to Walmart (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
More logical fallacies (atheism.about.com)

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