The more observant among you will have noticed that Matt has not written a blog entry for a while. It is not for lack of want but more for being completely inundated of late:

• His teaching course load this semester is heavier.
• His non-academic job continues to suck up his time and its hours limit the time he can stay up til.
• He still is attending all my law lectures and tutorials as my pain levels are not up to attending in person this semester as hoped.
• My pain levels and surgury news and the impact they have made have sucked up his energy and time.
• Last week he had a guest lecture to prepare and give.
• Soon he has a seminar in Tauranga to prepare and give.
• He is working on a new and exciting project which hopefully will see him dump his non-academic job.
• Then several of the usual distractions of life have managed to crop up too on top of a rather busy social calendar.

So life is good and full and interesting for Matt, the future is looking bright, but blogging has taken a back seat!

He hopes to have a little more time for it soon.

Taken from Thinking Matters - Events & Announcements:

Cultural Confusion and Ethical Relativism

Dr Matthew Flannagan Ph.D, MSocSci, BSocSci

When: Tuesday 2nd September
Time: 7 - 9pm
Where: Bethlehem Community Church Center - 183 Moffat Rd, Bethlehem
Cost: Free
Event Format: Live Presentation followed by Q&A and discussions

Christian moral obligations are often seen as bigoted and intolerant. It is widely held that it’s wrong to impose “private moral perspectives” on to others. In this talk Matthew will critically examine the arguments for relativism and look at some of its implications. He will argue that popular moral relativism is confused and incoherent, and that Christians should not be intimidated by it.

Dr Flannagan currently teaches part time at Laidlaw College. He holds a Masters degree in Philosophy from the University of Waikato and a PhD in Theology from the University of Otago. His research interests are Ethics, Apologetics, and Philosophical Theology.

Thinking Matters
Thinking Matters is an inter-denominational group where you can come to analyse and discuss some of the deeper issues of the Christian faith in the areas of Philosophy, Science and Apologetics (see definitions here).

The purpose is to make Christian truth claims more relevant to an increasingly sceptical and secular culture, showing the reasons why we believe what we believe and providing answers that simply make sense.

Who is Welcome?
It’s open to Christian and Non-Christian alike – anyone who is seeking the truth in philosophy, science and scripture. You don't need a philosophy or a theology degree to be able to understand the speakers.

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When I was at work last week one of my colleagues said he thought he had heard me on the radio one Friday afternoon but he wasn't sure if it was me. I had phoned into Newstalk ZB during the last week of the school holidays but it wasn't a Friday, so we sort of laughed that someone else sounded like me and then he said that the person he had heard had won caller of the week - so then I knew it couldn't have been me!

Over the weekend my family was over and my brother in law was hassling me about my call to the radio. He and my sister are somewhat left of centre (as in, Labour are too right wing) so we often good naturedly disagree on things and sure enough he was not happy with aspects of my call. He went on to offer a critique and I offered a defence, we went back and forward and then he finished with "well anyway I was most peeved to have to listen to your call twice, the first time when you rang in was bad enough but when you won caller of the week and the announcer thought you were so onto it I got really mad because you were wrong!" He then asked where the wine from Landmark Estate was anyway and hassled me for serving substandard wine. It then dawned on me that perhaps I had been caller of the week after all.

Despite having a blog and being rather into political debates I do not frequent talk back shows. We were driving home from Mt Albert pools and I heard the announcer say that the government were considering adding a question on sexual preference to the census form and listeners were invited to call in with their thoughts. On a whim I phoned the station, Matt was driving so what the hey!

I commented on the methodological flaws of the government gathering this data, citing Kinsey's report which utilised analogous methodology. The gist went basically that you are unlikely to obtain reliable results as the sort of people who volunteer to answer questions on their sexual preferences tend to be the sort of people whose sexual preferences are more 'out there,' those who are very private about their sexual preferences tend to be more conservative and are less likely to volunteer that sort of info. Kinsey's study invited people to participate and as such he found there to be a much higher number of more 'out there' sexual practices than other studies using better methodology which led to random samples. I concluded by asking why the government felt they had a place in our bedrooms anyway? I speculated that the purpose behind the proposed move was so they could rubber stamp their social agenda and stated that they should stick to law, order and defence.

My brother in law's issue was that on the radio I stated that Kinsey invited people to call in and in actual fact Kinsey's study was not a phone survey, the interviews were done face to face. My brother in law was quite right to pull me up on this factual error but he was wrong to suggest that my criticisms failed because of it. Kinsey interviewed a disproportionately high number of criminals, particularly sex offenders, Laumann writes in The Social Organisation of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago University Press, 1994):

Kinsey roamed far and wide in selecting his subjects ... Kinsey also purposefully recruited subjects for his research from homosexual friendship and acquaintance networks in big cities.

Anyway, this led me to email Newstalk ZB and ask if indeed I was the caller of the week. I will update with their reply.

UPDATE: Newstalk ZB have confirmed I was caller of the week. Still waiting to hear if I get the Landmark Estate wine prize given I did not call in when it was announced.

UPDATE: A knock at the door yesterday saw the arrival of my prize along with this letter:

Dear Madeleine,
Congratulations
Newstalk ZB - Caller of the Week
2 Bottles of wine - just for you.

One bottle of Chardonnay one bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Landmark Estate Wines. Matt and I polished off the Chardonnay last night, very nice - not remotely vinegary like some chardonnays. The Sauv is on hold til Sunday night - I must see if the promised repairs to my cupboard doors eventuates - otherwise my brother in law just gets a toast!

I got my MRI results on Tuesday. They show damage to two discs, both are compressed. One is more compressed than the other, the other is protruding and pushing on a nerve, hence all the pain.

I have two choices. Do nothing and see if it fixes itself (its been almost 5 months). Have surgery to remove the damaged discs and replace them with artificial ones.

There is no choice really. I cannot stay on the drugs I am on for much longer. My quality of life is awful, everything I do is limited by "I can'ts" because of the injury. If it was going to fix itself surely it would have at least improved by now. On the other hand, surgery means I will be out of pain and will be able to do anything pretty much (including equestrian eventing eventually - though apparently I can't consider being a front-row forward).

Surgery on my neck is frightening. It will leave a scar on the front of my neck and as good as the results will be I will never quite be as good as I was before.

I have three weeks to 'decide.' I have already decided but I am going to seek a second opinion just to be sure.

Well the kiwis jumped well but they were so far behind on points that medals were not an option. I think we can still be proud of them though. Showjumping is very controlled and precise and takes intense concentration to navigate the horse, check position and approach to each jump and take off at the right moment. The Beijing course was tough and they did well to not accumulate many faults.

Seeing Mark Todd and Gandalf jump made me see what the hype was about with Gandalf. I missed seeing them on the cross country but I now not remotely surprised they went clear in each. Gandalf clearly has the stamina despite the demands of the dressage and cross country in the days before. He is a very solid, honest horse who seemed to me very easy to just guide and point at the jumps, always knowing where his feet were. I didn't for a minute doubt Mark's ability to pick a good horse but Gandalf's dressage as I said before lacked some flair but Mark is confident he has room to improve so I look forward to seeing more of Gandalf.

Sugoi looked gorgeous as he went round but his head strong, feisty-ness let him down once again. If he had just listened to Heelen he could have easily gone clear. Heelen did very well with him as it was clear he was trying to do his own thing throughout most of the round. It will be interesting to see how he develops too.

Lenamore surprised me. A couple of times I saw Caroline almost battling to pull in before a jump, which she managed well but unfortunately it was Lenamore not realising what was being asked too late that took the poles down. I had picked Lenamore as a much quieter horse after the dressage performance so it was a but of a surprise.

Snip's performance was also a real surprise. His impulsion wasn't quite right, he was quite messy with his feet and he failed to jump high enough several times. The difference between his jumping style and the cross country signalled that he seemed tired, maybe he had been a bit unsettled since the cross country or maybe the two previous phases took it out of him too much.

Looking back at the three phases I have to say I am very impressed with all the horses for different reasons. The riders did a superb job and I really feel for Andrew Nicholson and all the replays that have been going on of all the other times he nearly made it. He is a real credit to NZ equestrian and we all know what it is like to have nearly had it in hand only for something unfortunate to have happened.

I caught only some of the cross country rides yesterday from the NZ team. I was leaving the dentist and saw Heelen Thompkins and Sugoi begin their run. Sugoi showed the same temperament as he did in the dressage, eager to do his own thing periodically meaning Heelen had to bring him back to focus on her instructions. Given this, I was not surprised to see his refusals as the Olympic course is technically difficult meaning that horse and rider have to balance speed with focused precision. Sugoi just wasn't listening or focused from what I could see at crucial moments which led to the refusals. I still think he is a great horse though, he just needs to get over himself.

The only other ride I saw was Andrew Nicholson and Lord Killinghurst. It was a spectacular ride, the stuff of real professionals, both horse and rider knew what they were doing, were focused and ripped through the course. The commentator seemed surprised that Andrew was cutting corners and taking risks to cut down his time faults but I wasn't as you could see the harmony between horse and rider. Lord Killinghurst was focused, his experience shone through. Andrew clearly knew him enough to know how much warning he needed and the horse was solid and true and rose to the occasion.

Their fall right at the end of the course was not the fault of either horse or rider, it was just an accident brought on, from what I could see, by Lord Killinghurst simply tiring and maybe Andrew relying just a bit too much on him knowing what he was doing and not telling him clearly enough they had a tricky double approaching.

When you are physically spent but still have the last bit of the race to go you just start blindly hurling yourself to the finish line, the precision and technique you had at the start of the race starts to go, you can see the end, you are nearly there. It seemed like that for Lord Killinghurst, he looked really tired but he just kept going, his ears were still pricked forward he was giving it everything but his feet were getting just a little sloppy and that combination right at the end was a tricky one as the lines of the jumps whilst parallel had to be approached from an angle, making the timing of take off just that harder to calculate, the jump was narrow and solid at one end which invites a horse to veer to the side and skip the jump (as I saw a few horse do on that jump) and there was only one or two strides between the two which proved to be their downfall as the they cleared the first one messily but had no time to recover before the next. The fall looked awful but thankfully both horse and rider appeared unharmed. It was a real shame as Andrew was on target to have one of the fastest clear rounds and they had all but nailed it too.




I did not see any of the other NZ riders but I hear that Gandalf and Mark Todd jumped clear but were slow which maybe says more about Todd's break from competitive eventing than anything negative about Gandalf who clearly jumped well. I found after a 15 year break from eventing that when I got back into it my nerve was the slowest thing to come back. My knowledge was still there, I knew exactly what to tell my muscles and body to do, my fitness and muscles strength was slower but before the accident it was getting there but my nerve is shocking and has been the hardest thing to counter. Prior to the accident I still had momentary freaks as I approached high and technically difficult jumps and I especially had trouble taking them at the speed that is needed to beat the clock. I heard Mark Todd say in an interview that in the past 8 years he hadn't really jumped anything much less the height and complexity of the jumps at his level of competition.

I was not surprised to hear that Joe Meyer and Snip had the best cross country round. I said previously that Snip looked like he could jump. Snip retains his position as my favourite NZ Olympic horse.

I am extremely angry and frustrated. I want to kick inanimate objects and scream.

As you know I returned to work this week for the first time following the months I have been off work due to a car accident. I only worked 6 hours but I was feeling so good, especially yesterday when my manager asked me to create a new confidentiality agreement for the company as that's the kind of thing they need me for, that only I can do for the company (out of the other employees I mean). I guess I am trying to convey that I felt needed or missed and that that felt good because this accident has made me feel useless and limited and frustrating to others and like I have let work down by being injured even though the accident was not my fault.

Then last night Sherry, my 16 year old daughter, sent me a text to be picked up from youth group with the reminder "tell Dad I need to pay for the ski trip, he needs to bring $85 each for Christian and me when he picks me up." I couldn't find the cheque book so Matt said he would stop off at the ATM and get cash on the way. As he was finding his keys and wallet I rang phone banking to check the account balance and discovered instead of having ample money our account was overdrawn by nearly $200. I listened to the last 10 transactions - nothing out of the ordinary so I checked the past deposits - there was only Matt's pay, nothing from ACC, I hadn't been paid for over a week - but they had all my med certificates, everything was up to date from my end.

Crap! I must have eftpossed about half a dozen times yesterday as I had gone into town to meet DF1 for coffee and I'd grabbed gas, I'd parked... I knew Matt had been eftpossing too as had to had to buy a birthday present for a party the kids went to yesterday after school and he had texted asking where the wrapping paper was and had gone out and bought more and he'd gotten gas too and he had grabbed takeout when we'd gotten home... argh! all I could think about was the bank's policy of charging for each and every separate transaction over the overdraft limit. I felt sick.

I phoned ACC first thing this morning. My case manager had the day off, could I please phone him back on Monday? I was not about to start racking up visa charges or losing interest by funneling money from our on call account over the weekend to fit around his leave and their screw up - I mean if I hadn't had to live the past 4 months on 80% of my income forking out for ACC surcharges that they don't reimburse at the doctors fortnightly I might have a tad more loose change in my everyday account. I politely refused to call back on Monday and firmly asked to be put onto someone else.

A different case manager explained that the first week you go back to work there is always a delay in your payments as you have to work the week and then your employer has to advise ACC your hours the following week and then they pay you, so don't worry, you'll get paid next week on Tuesday or Wednesday. Further, as you not getting paid is not due to an error on ACC's part we will not be advancing you any money any sooner. I had the following things to say:

Nice of you to tell me this always happens AFTER I discovered all my regular transactions and automatic payments put my bank account into overdraft. Thanks for the warning.

Who is going to pay my bank fees?

Who is going to explain to my bank that I am not the slack incompetent I now look like thanks to this lack of information?

How can you fix the embarassment my teenagers feel being the only kids who did not pay for their ski camp in their group of friends and ended up feeling like the poor kids when the youth group leaders were all sympathetic?

Who is going to explain how this looks on my mortgage application that we intend to apply for the minute I have resumed full time work and we know I am over my injury?

Who is going to reimburse me for my lost interest on the money I have now had to swipe out of my savings account?

I am sure you can guess the answers to these questions.


Questions I did not ask that I wanted to:

Why can't I sue the person responsible for putting me in this mess in the first place?

Why do I have to put up with this ridiculous, insufficient, incompetent, bumbling excuse for compensation that the government has no business having anything to do with in the first place?

Why am I being penalised for returning to work?

I will resist the urge the comment on the content of the recent taped conversations, well I might say *yawn* what political party does not contain MP's that have ideas about where they would like their party to head in the future, in fact to swipe my 16 year old's comments, there would be something wrong with an MP who didn't have such opinions. I want to briefly comment on the legality of taping politicians at political conventions - well taping conversations in general.

As you know I am currently completing a bachelor of law so I have some knowledge of how to find out what is legal and what is not and as it happens I have looked into this particular subject in some detail as, umm, lets just say, it has come up in conversation over the years.

Reports that National are seeking legal advice and may seek to pursue charges are unlikely to fly because the basic rule of taping conversations is to make sure you yourself are privy to the conversation, as long as you are you can tape away to your heart's content with no one else's knowledge or consent. It is 100% legal. Section 216 B of the Crimes Act 1961 is your 'how to' guide to tape conversations legally (of course ethically and morally it can be highly questionable). So whoever the secret taper(s) are in this instance they can sleep soundly knowing there will not be any knocks on the door from the constabulary or any legal bills coming their way over this matter at least.

For those of you who don't want to click the link to the Crimes Act the nuts and bolts are that you get into muddy water when you tape conversation you are not privy to or that you are just close enough to overhear but those having the conversation think you cannot hear them. If you have the desire to tape those kinds of conversations, join the police force and get a warrant, otherwise steer clear.

We have finally sat down and revised our list of blogs we link to. Its something we have been meaning to do forever but haven't so tonight we made a start. I am sure that we have missed heaps of blogs we intend to link to so if you think we should link to you, drop us an email with your url.

m_flannagan at clear dot net dot nz

As the early bird rate expires on Friday, I registered Matt's and my attendance at this years Forum on the Family. Being election year, the line up is mostly politicians all keen to vote catch but of the array of political parties being billed, one is most conspicuously absent.

Can you spot which one? Its a fairly major ommission and I bet the ommission is not on the part of the organisers.

To save you having to squint, here is the line up from left to right (on the advertisement, obviously):

Pita Sharples - Maori Party

John Key - National

Rodney Hide - Act

Winston Peters - NZ First

Peter Dunne - United Future

Jeanette Fitzsimons - Green Party

Larry Baldock - Kiwi Party

Taito Phillip Field - NZ Pacific

Richard Lewis - Family Party

(The absentee I am speaking of is not Jim Anderton of Progressive who isn't listed but really who cares that he's not?)

Regardless it will still be a great event, last year was very worthwhile though it is a wee bit disappointing to hear that David Farrar of Kiwiblog (a fellow Student Choicer from back in the day) will not be speaking this year as has been rumoured about the blogosphere but I am looking forward to it and have September 8 circled on my calendar.

As you know I was involved in a car accident some months back and have had ongoing issues with my neck and back as a result rendering me unable to work and in pain daily. I have had a lot of support through this site and I wanted to take the time to thank those of you who have left messages and sent emails. It has been very difficult to accept that I am injured as I am someone who does not do sitting still well and I have real issues with not being able to do things because of situations beyond my control.

Four months on I still do not have a full diagnosis as to why I live in pain and why sometimes out of the blue the pain flares up so badly I cannot function. My x-rays are clear so we know there is no bone injury but the first attempt at an MRI to look at soft tissue injuries was a bit of a disaster due to my suffering severe claustrophobia around tunnels (I am ok in lifts and cupboards, etc just nothing shaped like a tunnel) and the fact that I struggle to convince medical professionals that my body metabolises sedatives and anaesthetics freakishly fast meaning I am difficult to sedate. The drug they used for MRI attempt 1 was a drug I knew would not work on me as I have a history of it not working on me but they decided that it works on everyone and that I was just being hysterical so they gave it to me. It did not work, the claustrophobia made me move too much and they did not get a clear scan.

It has been quite depressing at times accepting what has happened and incredibly maddening that we have this ridiculous no fault ACC system which means I cannot sue the woman who caused the accident. I am left forking out a $22 surcharge per doctors visit every second week and I have to live on 80% of my income and my law studies and my career are in jeopardy and my family has to put up with my mood swings when I am in pain not to mention was living on all these drugs is doing to my kidneys. To add insult to injury my new car is not as fuel efficient as the one that got destroyed in the accident, its stereo has stopped working for no apparent reason and it has started leaking in the rain!

Complaining aside, things are starting to feel like they are looking up though. Today we did MRI attempt 2. This time they asked me which drug I thought they should use and we used one that had worked in the past. They told me it was heavy duty and would take me out for the day (yet here I am writing a blog entry). Again it did not work anywhere near as well as they thought it would but it did take the edge off the panic so I was able to control the claustrophobia and lie still and they are confident that this time they got the images they needed. So this time next week I should have a diagnosis - yay!

On Saturday Madeleine and I attended the launch of Laidlaw College (formerly Bible College of New Zealand or BCNZ). It was an impressive event which was well attended; the Minister of Education Chris Carter, local MP Lynne Pillay, United Future's Judy Turner, various Waitakere City Councillors and former BCNZ Principals were in attendance. The MC was John Hawkesby, the key note speaker was Principle Youth Court Judge Andrew Beecroft.

The pomp was a little overdone with the Mayor of Waitakere City, Bob Harvey, implying via video, that the lower crime rate in the Waitakere area was attributable in part to the presence of BCNZ in the community. Likewise, it was a bit hard to swallow that Chris Carter really truly was there to support Laidlaw College's plans to develop a more educated and politically active generation of evangelical Christians - more than one person present in the audience had been previously written off as a right wing fundamentalist by the Minister.

The best speech of the evening was by Dr Mark Strom, Laidlaw's Principal. Strom opened by noting that the view of history popularly peddled today that Christianity brought about the oppressive period of time known as the Dark Ages was historically false. He pointed out that the Middle Ages had seen a rise in innovation and education and laid the groundwork for the scientific revolution. Quoting from Julian the Apostate, an early Roman critic of Christianity, he pointed out that Christianity had established charities and schools for the poor, had preached a form of egalitarianism whereby the rank and stature of different levels of Roman society were viewed as unimportant. He went on to challenge the excessive pietism in evangelical circles which draws a dichotomy between secular vocation and ministry, no doubt appropriating the puritan ethos of the university at which Strom studied. He spoke of the need for Christians to be culturally informed and engaged, to demand high standards in education and to adopt an intellectually robust yet orthodox, faith that engages the questions of the day. Strom went on to lay out the plan for Laidlaw to become a Christian Liberal Arts College where ultimately the Humanities would be taught from a Christian perspective to a very high standard. The message woven throughout was that of a vision for Laidlaw to pick up its game and find its place as an institution of higher learning.

It was refreshing to hear somebody say this. In 2000 I came to BCNZ to study theology. I found it a frustrating and depressing experience having come from the University of Waikato's Philosophy department. I was expecting to find a similar academic standard to which I had left and was looking forward to being able to have this within a Christian community and with the support of like minded individuals. My hope was naive.

It wasn't that BCNZ was a horrible experience, the people were very nice and friendly but they were culturally so out of touch and I despaired as I saw time and again the staff and students falling for the most ludicrous arguments against Christianity, frequently post-modern garbage, and then struggle to re-contextualise their faith so as to be sympathetic to these 'genuine, sincere' concerns. The fact that the argument might have been invalid and the complaint unjustified seemed to never enter their minds, in fact they did not seem to even want to raise the question. Then there were the students whose faith was essentially emotional and their approach to theological education was effectively of the calibre of Sunday School. Two years later I gladly left for Dunedin to pursue my PhD at Otago University and breathed a deep sigh of relief to be back in academia.

Last year, 5 years after leaving for Dunedin, I came back to BCNZ initially because we needed somewhere to stay as my mother had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and we were not sure whether we would move back up or not. BCNZ was incredibly supportive and not only gave us accommodation and fellowship but also gave me some part-time work teaching theology online.

To my pleasure, things had changed at BCNZ somewhat. It is now acceptable and common for students to have theological conversations outside of class. There seems to be genuine interest in thinking and taking ownership of personal intellectual development and trying to come to an informed and reasoned evangelical faith. Strom's leadership has undoubtedly had a lot to do with this change. That said, many of my old frustrations do remain in some form.

Strom's vision for Laidlaw is encouraging. I absolutely support the direction he is trying to take it in. My only concern is whether he can pull it off. My experience with evangelical organisations is that they generally do not take things far enough. They stop at a quasi-popular level that seems sophisticated to a layman but still is appallingly superficial when viewed against the kind of things that would be found within the average University. I am frustrated with the sorts of things that Madeleine was alluding to when she called herself a little p philosopher, people appointed because of their connections and the fact they have worked within some popular para-church organisation and can deliver a 1000 word overview of the thought of some trendy enlightenment thinker (generally holding a bachelors degree in an unrelated subject) whilst qualified individuals who lack the connections are passed over.

I guess time will tell whether Laidlaw College succeeds or not. I will be hoping and praying that it does because New Zealand Evangelicalism desperately needs it to.

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