Decisions..

Many people have heard such scenarios: Imagine your part of a 7 person team going caving when the guide gets stuck in the cave entrance/exit. The tide is coming in, and when it reaches high tide the 6 of you will die but the guide won't - he will eventually lose a bit of weight and wriggle out. Conveniently someone brought some dynamite with them - which could be handy for removing the obstacle; namely the guide stuck in the exit. There are no other exits, and you are too deep to blow another exit. The guide won't budge either. Do you kill the guide, or not?

As part of a paper we discussed this question as part of a tutorial. It was interesting to note that many of the females wouldn't kill the guide and hypothesized over possible alternatives. Guys took more to the principles and opted to kill the guide. In the tutorial I opted to blow the guide out of the hole. Guess I looked at it like this:

Someone is going to die; either the guide (1 person) or us (6 people).
The 6 who will die will do so uncomfortably by drowning whilst the guide will be killed instantaneously.
Thus, the guide will go. I think when faced with the decision between ones own life or anothers that it is hard to be impartial about it (in saying this there are many exceptions e.g. defending loved ones). In this case the best good from this scenario would be to save six.

Wimbledon + Kiwi

I've been into some tennis recently. Does anyone know if any Kiwi players actually make it to the Wimbledon tournament? Watched a bit of the Heineken Open today and only saw one Kiwi and the rest were all from overseas (the kiwi guy got beaten by an American). So I'm interested to know, do Kiwi tennis players make it to Wimbledon?

Another YouTube Vid

I forgot this one. This is the original Darth voice. Click Here.

Lastest YouTube Vids

The lastest I have watched in interesting YouTube vids.

A home made slide. Click Here.
A new Heineken commercial. Click Here.
A Guiness (yuck) beer commercial. Click Here.
Some hard hits in 2008 AFL. Click Here.

The Yes Man

**This may spoil the movie...a little...**

So we watched the 'Yes Man' tonight with Jim Carrey in it. Apart from one scene with the grandma it is a funny movie. I had a few good laughs. Got thinking though on the way home about how that movie could relate to christianity [cause every movie relates some how...]. I guess I would describe the Yes meeting as the church, the head speaker, Terrence, as the pastor, and the covenant made as entering the Christian faith. From there the abuse of the 'Yes' word could be equivilant to high standing morals (such the most christians are supposed to have). While it leads to a better quality of life, there is a tension between choosing to live the moralistic life and living true to feelings and desires. Perhaps best articulated as this: we don't need to say WWJD at every decision made in life and force ourselves to live that way. Fortunately Jim Carrey comes to understand this.

Welcome

Hey...well...we [I] haven't posted anything for a while, but here is the post to represent our alive and kicking existence on this planet earth. We've been out and about over the last few weeks visiting family. Ended it all with a visit to Masterton for Christmas and the Kapiti Coast for the gap in between boxing day and new years.

Hope everyone else had a great christmas and happy new years!

Cheers

Philip

Bits and Pieces of Interest #2

1/ I've recently been watching comedian 'Jon Reep' on YouTube. He's funny and pretty clean about his jokes. Another guy has been 'Jeremy Hotz' who has an interesting way of being funny. If anyone hasn't seen 'Pablo Francisco' then check him out too, he does a wicked 'movie preview guy' impersonation.

2/ So I eat alot of kiwifruit - happily without the side affects that more 'older' people get. It has recently been announced a 'super fruit.'

"ZESPRI™ Kiwifruit is full of nutrients, with high levels of vitamins C and E, anti-oxidants and fibre. It is considered to be one of the new 'superfruits' because of its added benefits to the body over and above basic nutrition."

Read the rest of the article here.

3/ I'm thinking about changing to KiwiBank, and apparently this guy needs a funny bone transplant.

4/ Here is a bunch of info on driving over the next week. Includes stats and other stuff like on average 14 people die in car crashes over the next week.

5/ For all those spiritually experiential driven people there is a peace Labrynth setup in Latimer Square in Christchurch for the next wee while.

6/ Some top spots for road trips.

/7 and finally, Turitea wants a new windfarm. She is a pretty on-to-it lady and so far I respect her.

A funny blog I read.

Titles I would purchase.

Funny Picture #1

This is a funny as photo I think I found on GetFrank.co.nz. It pretty much speaks for itself but the funny part is the white guy crashing the serious gangsta type photo.

The Recession...

So the recession continues for NZ. BNZ has just announced that they are closing their branch in Dunedin, leaving some more people unemployed. While some can shift to another branch, not all will find jobs. This is their third closure of a branch this year in the south island. I hope this isn't indicative of other banks as well.
Along with this tertiary providers are gearing up with packages to assist the recently unemployed, encouraging them to retrain. Within the same article I read this:

"According to BERL research commissioned by ITP New Zealand, there will be 46,500 to 76,400 more people unemployed or out of the labour force by March 2011. Unemployment will peak in March 2010 and people with lower skills are likely to make up 75% of the increase."

Which sorta came as a surprise to me, I was under the impression we were leveling out. Seeing this makes me hope the government is making plans to lower these stats. Sorta sad really, cause what choice do we have but to ride out this recession brought on by a few too many greedy people.

A Phenomenon of God

Different objects, and even the same object, can draw different meanings. Take for instance the flower of a plant. Many people (commonly our female counter-parts) take pleasure in the flower of a rose. Why? I guess usually because of the smell, colour, shape, and the cultural significance of the rose. A red rose from a boyfriend to a girlfriend can signify love and romance. However, a red rose is also often used at the funeral of a person in loving memory of them. The variation also streches across cultures. One persons flower of beauty is another persons weed. Some look at a flower with delight, another with disgust. Meaning seems to come from humanity - not the rose. So how do we interpret God? Or, how does God manifest himself to people (I have in mind un-believers here)? Is one persons observation of the manifestation of God beauty, while to another it is disgust? One would assume (and I think NZ people do believe this) that God manifests himself in a favourable way that would bring a person into a full [believing] relationship with him. So is every manifestation of God a good one? Or, how do we know that what we observe is actually God and not a human interpretation placing God in the event? It doesn't take a long look into contemporary protestantism to notice the many denominations and doctrines. How can one manifestation of God be contrary to another? For example, those who believe that the Gifts of the Spirit ended in the first century vs. those who believe it's in full swing today. I think there are two sides to this. I think there is the, what I will temporarily dub, 'the external' manifestation of God - where God is actually active in an event. And then there is (also temporarily dubbed) 'the internal' operation of God. That he is working in the interpretations of a person as they observe the external manifestation of God, or as they place God in an event. The external requires the internal observation, whether the observer believes the external manifestation is God or not, God is still working in the interpretation. Whereas the internal does not need the external, as observers can place God in an event, regardless of God's actual manifestation.

In regards to the seemingly contrary nature of God and the Church (i.e. Spiritual Gifts, Calvinism vs. Armenianism vs. Open Theism vs. Process Theism), I think it is to be remembered that there is a mystery to God. As humans we are unable to speak adequately of God, and therefore must not assign our beliefs to one logical way of thinking about God. It would seem that God isn't overly concerned with fitting into the logic of humans - hence Jesus as flying in the face of this - and would rather leave us in mystery as we observe and try to take part in the unfolding plans of God.

As a side note I think that external manifestations are more what people look for. They are defintely a more conscious awareness of God. This is opposed to the internal which is a more unconcious operation of God, though, I guess, we can be aware of the conviction/discernment of the Spirit in some circumstances without any external manifestation.

Telecom

It's not often I think of Telecom with good thoughts. The money hungry giant's internet is over priced, cellphones are nothing great, service unreliable and their help desk has operators that are hard to understand. Not a gleaming example of a company putting the customers first. But I was happy to read this article where they have donated just over 3 tonnes of food to the Salvation Army's food bank! This is great as it comes at a time where the Sallies were struggling to find food for the 'underpriveleged' people. Kudos for that one Telecom!

NZ Education Report

I was interested to see that the amount of people studying at level 4 and above has increased over the last year. I had heard that this was a trend in recessions, people get laid off so why not do a bit of study for either fun or re-training. 51% of NZers apparently have a tertiary qualification, but I was surprised that only 18% hold Bachelors or higher qualification!

Since NZ doesn't have alot of natural resources to trade with, nor alot of land to build lots of cities and sweat-shops to keep up with larger economies, perhaps NZ could become one big agricultural think tank. Where if you want to get educated in the world, you come to NZ! But that's about a million years away, and am sure there are much better plans out there.

Read the Article Here.

The Good Cardinal

Just read that Avery Dulles died yesterday morning. I read some of his stuff for church theology and really enjoyed it. Hope he lives well in the next life and I'm sure heaps of people will miss him.

Full Article.