Ruminations

In today's Dominion Post several things caught my attention.

1. Apparently there lived in Indonesia, only about 12,000 years ago ET (evolutionary time), a species of hobbit-like people - about 1 metre tall and with a brain capacity approximately one-third of modern humans. There are local legends about 'little people' suggesting these creatures were known to exist - which may, tantalisingly, provide the background for our tales of such things as elves.

2. The European Union's executive body, known as the European Commission, is appointed by member states. For the first time in 50 years, just as the signing of the European constitution draws near, the body has been vetoed by the European Parliament. The reason is that one of the Commissioners is a conservative Italian Catholic, who has told the Parliament that he considers homosexuality a sin.

There will be no competition to the reign of the new gods.

3. In a similar vein, Chris Trotter in his From the Left column suggests that defending free speech can go too far. Some opinions, he argues, are not worth the cost of their being expressed. He gives two examples: a National Front rally in London 25 years ago, which ended in riots and the life of a young NZ man, and Hitler. But for the intervention of Erhard Auer on free-speech grounds, Hitler would have been exiled to Austria in 1922. Auer was a principled man; his defence of Hitler's rights came shortly after he survived an assination attempt by Hitler's brownshirts.

See the post below for more commentary on this.

4. Two Muslim women wish to wear their burqua in court, on the grounds of faith and culture. I thought I agreed that they should not be allowed, but now I am not sure. My reason was that our common way-of-being doesn't include the resources to cater to such wishes. Our court system requires the reading of body language, for instance. The women chose to live here; it is encumbant upon them to make the accomodations necessary to do so.