Mi Choza De Nipa

By Dr James Dobson There are times in every family when rules and restrictions must be imposed, even during the teen years . But let me make this point emphatically: Rules without relationship lead to rebellion. Family psychologist and author Dr Kevin Leman tells of the time he had to leave on a trip just a day or two before Valentine’s Day. His wife Sandy remarked over the phone that their teenage daughter had received a letter of acceptance from the university she wanted to attend. Dr Leman decided that this event was worth some extra attention. He called a florist and ordered a dozen pink sweetheart roses for his daughter. The next evening when he called home, his daughter got on the phone to thank him from the bottom of her heart. She said: “When I saw the delivery man at the door, I knew the flowers had to be for Mum, on Valentine’s Day. But then I saw my own name on them and thought, my goodness, they must be from my boyfriend. But, Daddy, they were from you. And that’...

From Voices, TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 Letter from DUDLEY AU THE REPLY from Resort World Sentosa (RWS) to the letter “Of sharks’ fins and high rollers” (June 5) from Liang Dingzi appears to have missed the point. RWS referred to a synergy of business and environment protection in “The 90-10 business decision” (June 7). While we understand that in any business, profitability is preferred to insolvency, the moral balance sought relative to the consumption of sharks’ fins is based on cruelty. Protection, it is admitted, has a link to the species whose fins are consumed to satisfy epicurean fastidiousness, as well as traditional epicurism. The species can be brought to the brink of extinction or extinction itself. In this sense, RWS is correct about fauna protection because the breeding of sharks is relatively slow, having only one or two offspring between fairly long intervals. The crucial factor, however, is the cruelty inflicted on the sharks. The dorsal fins are sliced off and the ...

From Voices, TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 A balance has to be struck between individual rights and overall good of society Letter from PROFESSOR WALTER WOON Attorney-General I REFER to the letter “Keep our door open to ideas” by Siew Kum Hong (June 6). Mr Siew has misunderstood me. I surmise from his letter that he was not present at my talk. In my address at the launch of the Law Society’s Public and International Law Committee, I said that for some people human rights has become a religion. This religion, like so many others, has its fanatics who display all the hypocrisy and zealotry of religious bigots. They believe that there is only one permissible view of human rights — theirs. They assume that when they decide what human rights are, that decision is for the rest of humanity. I gave the example of those who think that the right to free expression means that one can insult the Prophet of a great religion with impunity. I asked rhetorically, can we accept this in our society? I p...