Make WHAT Count 2010?

Make It Count 2010 was on tonight - the two competitors for Australia's top job addressed a Christian audience and responded to questions from our foremost Christian leaders.  What did I learn?  I express my concerns to the man who organised the event...

Dear Brigadier Wallace,

My wife and I were surprised, nay shocked, nay horrified, that there was no mention at "Make It Count 2010" of the greatest social injustice of our time : the summary execution of hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens without due process of law.

In a world where would-be adoptive parents are plentiful, and often resort to international adoptions or give up due to high costs, why is it that we can find no other option for Australia's unwanted children?

Worse yet, how can a hall full of representatives of the Christian faith, clamour about climate and education and supposed "social injustices" evidenced towards some thousands here and some tens of thousands there, without thought of the greater corpus of innocents who have suffered the severest injustice of all?

If the church cares for social justice - as your nominated representatives seem to claim - then why is it silent on the greatest issue of social justice today?

Is it too divisive for Christians to agree on?

Then what exactly is "Christian" about the Christians we heard tonight if they can't make a call on such an obvious violation of human rights?

Is it a settled issue - a battle we've already lost?

But then slavery was a settled issue.

And silent acceptance of this supposedly settled issue makes mockery of our claims to care about the myriad lesser social evils.

Is it too controversial to ask Rudd's and Abbott's views on this in public?

Well hey, the deaths are happening, and if you really don't want to embarass them or cause a ruckuss, you can always ensure the question is worded as amiably as possible, so they can feel perfectly guiltless giving their "we all hate abortion but it's better than the alternatives" pat answer.  At least then their cards will be very visibly on the table, and Christians will be reminded that this is an issue - the worst issue of social injustice today.

Who cares whether they open parliament with the Lord's Prayer, before proceeding to legalise more massacres?

Who cares if they sponsor Christian and Moslem and Atheist chaplains and counsellors in schools, if half the children who would have been in those schools were deprived of life and liberty and forced into a choiceless termination of existence with the blessing of the same government that sponsors the chaplains.

Who cares if they let boat people in, or keep them out, if hundreds of thousands of Australian citizens have died on our very land by preventable causes : abortive surgery and abortifacients.

Who cares what we do to help the Aboriginals help themselves, if we won't even give the unborn a chance to help themselves.

The needless slaughter of the innocents dwarfs all other social concerns by sheer number of victims.

Yet your "Christians" didn't seem to care.

"Make It Count 2010" was informative, but the most surprising learning was not about Abbott or Rudd : it was about the state of the Church.  If these are our leaders, then help us God.

False hypevertising - Apple does it again

"iPhone 4. This changes everything. Again."

Thus saith the latest Apple advert email.

It arrived in my usual email program.

That hasn't changed.

It used the standard HTML email format.

That hasn't changed.

It appeared on my 22" LCD monitor.

That hasn't changed, either.

They want me to buy it in Aussie dollars.

I don't think we've changed currency recently, so I don't think that changed either.

In fact, the iPhone 3.1 SDK still works. That ain't changed.

And whilst there are a bunch of new APIs in the iPhone 4 SDK, it's backwards compatible. So not everything's changed - a bunch of things by definition have stayed the same (or else they wouldn't be backwards-compatible now, would they, eh?).

The phone still supports old 2G and GPRS standards. Have those changed?

The brand name is identical to previous versions - Apple.

I could go on all day - for months or years in fact.

In reality, "a lot" has changed, but nothing compared to everything.

So why do they say "This changes everything"?

If it hasn't changed everything, but they claim it has, then what value is their claim?

Hype.

I guess Apple is good at that.

And hey, I personally think it's a pretty good product.

But if I had to choose between a world of hype and imprecision - where you never know exactly what someone means - or a world of joy and clarity - where precision yields certainty and safety - I'd choose the latter.

"Game changing" is a high-hype phrase, but definitely accurate for the iPhone 4.

"Revolutionise your life" - for many people, the iPhone 4 will revolutionise their life. That's another high-hype phrase they could have used that would also fit in the realm of accurate communications.

But they choose to use words so grossly inaccurate that they are practically meaningless : "This changes everything".

Wow.

I'm still on earth, earth still exists, and if I'm not much mistaken, this is still my blog.

A lot ain't changed.

If you want to communicate with me, Apple, I enjoy hype, but only accurate hype.

Of course, the ad wasn't targetting people like me.

But it raises questions.

What kind of society have we become if we can't say what we mean anymore?