Amish Paradise

I love Gangsta Paradise and really loved this too
No disrespect meant: I have a lot of reverence for the Amish, and I think that this vid actually turns the tables somewhat on 'superior' attitudes from 'English'.
HTT Doug at Metacatholic

Voldemort's hypercorrection: who dunnit?

If your response is "You what?" then either you didn't read it, or didn't spot it or (more likely) you're bamboozled by the terminology. In any case here's the issue: on p. 655 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort says: "My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. " And yes there is something wrong with that sentence whichever school of grammar you favour: prescriptive or descriptive. It's called hypercorrection because it is apparently an attempt to 'correct' something that would not have been wrong in such a way as to produce an ill-formed sentence. Here's what's at issue.

"that inoffensive little of -- even though it has no connection to the relative pronoun, and is just sitting peacefully next to its proper object 'it' -- frightened J.K. Rowling, who decided to sweep it up and stick it next to which in the complementizer position. Or perhaps it was some anonymous copy editor who performed this little grammatical incorrection. Then again, Rowling may have consciously placed a hyperconnection in Voldemort's mouth, in order to tell us something about his character. That would be a more charitable interpretation."

And if that is still obscure, see if this helps:

Simplifying it a bit, Voldemort's sentence, rendered in Heavy English with square brackets marking the relative clause, is something like:

my wand did everything [ such that I asked that thing of it ]

The normal way to render this in Standard English would be one of these:

my wand did everything [ which I asked * of it ]
my wand did everything [ that I asked * of it ]
my wand did everything [ __ I asked * of it ]

where '*' marks the canonical location of the (variable corresponding to the) relativized noun phrase.

Still not clear? Well, just note that 'asked of it' is a phrase that should not be intruded into (!)
See also here.
Language Log: Prepositional anxiety and Voldemort's wand:

Writing With Pictures: Consumer Response To Images

I have argued (briefly) elsewhere that some contemporary Christian approaches to visuals in worship are all too often failing to read visual language fairly and consistently with their own standards. So it is important that a set of experiments seem to indicate visuals are in fact read by consumers in consistent ways. "In the experiments, different renditions of the same three image types (a cat, a sunset, and an abstract painting) were consistently read by consumers as texts that communicated a complex set of attributes for a facial tissue. Just by varying the style and context of the objects pictured, the authors were able to selectively communicate particular properties that went beyond resemblance to an object or the sensory effects of formal features. 'We are questioning the tacit assumption made by Mitchell and Olson -- and many others that followed -- that images affect consumers via emotion or sensation rather than through a coded, conventional system,' the authors write."
Hmmm. One in the eye for the naysayers.
ScienceDaily: Writing With Pictures: Toward A Unifying Theory Of Consumer Response To Images:

NeoLiberalism, wealth and poverty

David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top one percent, but to the top tenth of the top one per cent(4). In the United States, for example, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s(5). The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions – just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim.

Given that a Biblical take on the world requires that we consider how things look from the perspective of those who get the rough end of the stick in this life (Eg. "Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself, and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss." Proverbs 22:16-16,) this observation should not pass without notice. Especially as it could be that this is an ideology in the Marxist sense of the term:

Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme – the restoration of the power of the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.

We should, as ever, note that neoliberalism has its blind-spots. It expects certain things to be in place that do not have a market, it relies on non-market mechanisms in order for it to 'work'. It is the selectivity that is galling not to mention that it simply is not true that it betters everyone.
Monbiot.com � How Did We Get Into This Mess?: "

Whatever is ... true ... lovely ... noble ... think about such things

How intriguing is this?

Prof. Ara Norenzayan found that priming people with 'god concepts' -- by activating subconscious thoughts through word games -- promoted altruism. In addition, the researchers found that this effect was consistent in behaviour whether people declared themselves believers or not. The researchers also found that secular notions of civic responsibility promote cooperation and generosity.

I need to ponder this more, as it's related to some reading I have just finished (A Mind of its Own) dealing with the experimental psychology results on schemas and stereotypes.
ScienceDaily: Thinking About God Leads To Generosity, Study Suggests:

Learning is best over time

Useful to note that the learning we might do by cramming doesn't last long.

"'massing' all the study on a single topic into a single session reduces long-term retention. It's better to leave it alone for a while and then return to it. Rohrer and Pashler also wanted to see if the duration of study breaks might make a difference in learning. It did. When two study sessions were separated by breaks ranging from five minutes to six months, with a final test given six months later, students did much better if their break lasted at least a month. So, rather than distribute their study of some material across just a few days, as millions of school children do when given a different list of vocabulary or spelling words each week, students would be better off seeing the same words throughout the school year."

So, in terms of our students, it's better to get them to revisit things at intervals. In fact, this looks remarkably consonant with Tony Buzan's stuff in Use Your Head. Where a revision programme is recommended of revisiting learning after 10 mins, at the end of the day (the human brain learns more effectively in the evening.), a week or so later, a month later and so on.
ScienceDaily: Back To School: Cramming Doesn't Work In The Long Term:

The Ramadan -Jewish connection...

"Who would have guessed that the man responsible for the latest craze among Muslim youngsters would be an Orthodox Jewish grandfather from Manchester?"
Who indeed? And yet there it is: what's more is the inspiration is from the Christian Advent calendar. Practical interfaith dialogue if you ask me. I suspect that this kind of interfaith borrowing may become more prevalent. As will the backlashing remarks from purists condemning the 'non-kosher'/ haram/ unChristian origins of such things.

But a good idea is a good idea whatever the origin. And yet we will see the genetic fallacy rolled out a good many times, mark my words.
The Ramadan countdown starts here …:

prayerfeeder

Happening to meet a former summer school student at Greenbelt a few days back, he handed me a beermat with the details of a new site he is building; a kind of prayer facebook. It's still in beta but this is what it's about. "You can create your personalised on-line prayer network in minutes: * Firstly, set up a list of things that you'd like people to pray for on your behalf. * Then, invite family, friends and colleagues to join your network... and their prayers will be automatically added to your prayerfeed. Choose when you'd like to pray for them, and the content of your prayerfeed will update every day, keeping you bang up-to-date with the needs and concerns of the people you care about"
Which sounds simple and helpful, I could actually see it being used at college quite well ... I'll report back if/when I've more to say about it.
prayerfeeder:

jonnybaker: off to greenbelt

Jonny Baker wrote: "so off to greenbelt festival. the 5 day forecast on the bbc for cheltenham made me happy this morning!"
And, after wondering in July what it would be like, I would 'amen' Jonny's sentiments.

Facebook -Time for Open Social Networks?

Gotta say that this article put into words some of the unease I feel about Facebook. And I'm on Facebook: I was invited when it was a student network by fellow students on the PGCE course. And I must admit that I find it a bit claustrophobic: I'm not keen on being in a proprietary system which seems to be making a kind of 'gated e-community'. So when I read this I was helped in my thinking.

"When entering data into Facebook, you're sending it on a one-way trip. Want to show somebody a video or a picture you posted to your profile? Unless they also have an account, they can't see it. Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a walled garden, cut off from the rest of the web. Like locked cell phones and copy-protected music, Facebook is on the wrong side of the open-network debate. Facebook is a sealed bubble. Facebook users are locked into Facebook, just as iTunes locks music fans to Apple's iPod."

And so, I tend to agree with this sentiment:

Facebook would be better if you could link to friends' pages on MySpace and Bebo. Social networking should be based on open standards, just like e-mail.

And even better to learn that there is the beginnings of an open social networking tool:

Pulse will offer the same all-your-data-in-one-place approach as Facebook, but with one crucial difference: It's not walled off. Anything put into Plaxo can be retrieved and used elsewhere, and any data made public will be accessible across the wider internet: Viewers will not need a Plaxo account. The service will be rather limited initially, but it's a step in the right direction.

But there is a downside, as the article points out:

At this point, "friend" relationships remain unique to the social networks. The web still lacks a generalized way to convey relationships between people's identities on the internet. The absence of this secret sauce -- an underlying framework that connects "friends" and establishes trust relationships between peers -- is what gave rise to social networks in the first place. While we've largely outgrown the limitations of closed platforms (take e-mail or the web itself), no one has stepped forward with an open solution to managing your friends on the internet at large.

As many of the commentators point out, however, the privacy dimension is part of the attraction of Facebook: the fact that your stuff (and you control how much) is only available to those whom you have approved.

Wired have issued a call to open-standards-sympathetic programmers to work on the issue.
In the meantime, they offer some ideas for going as far as you can,

With a little savvy, anyone can create a page that includes all of the fun stuff found in a Facebook profile.

Meanwhile, I'm going to have a look at Pulse, if I can find it ...
Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up:

Time Banks

I keep hearing of time banks, and having become re-aware through recent events, of the fragility of a credit-based economy in the face of diminishing resources. So the idea of an economy derived from human labour seems like a good one to pursue. I hope to look into the way that monetary systems privilege an distort human transactions andf social systems in different ways, and time banks seem to be part of the alternative.

"time banks have traditionally focused on involving participants from marginalized communities to help themselves. Today, with an online community eager to get involved, and with the emergence of tools that facilitate collaboration, time banks shouldn’t limit their sourcing to local resources, but instead take advantage of the 'global brain' (in projects that would benefit from this type of input) to solve community problems and improve social cohesiveness. Time banks complemented by effective communication tools offer a great model to bridge local community participation with external resources, creating strong local communities that branch outward."

WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Time Banks: Collaborative Capacity Building, Web 2.0-Style:

more efficient biofuel production

"Scientists at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology have found a much better way to make biodiesel. Their new method could lower the cost and increase the energy efficiency of fuel production. Instead of mixing the ingredients and heating them for hours, the chemical engineers pass sunflower oil and methanol through a bed of pellets made from fungal spores. An enzyme produced by the fungus does the work -- making biodiesel with impressive efficiency."
Wired Science - Wired Blogs:

Breakthrough in solar power in Wales

This looks like a potentially very significant breakthrough in the search for mass distributed solar power: "those behind the Welsh operation think they may have made a crucial breakthrough. Their solar cell works in a different way from most, and is not based on silicon - the expensive raw material for conventional solar cells. G24 Innovations (G24i), the company making the new cells, says it can produce and sell them for about a fifth of the price of silicon-based versions. At present, it makes only small-scale chargers for equipment such as mobile phones and MP3 players. But it says larger panels could follow - large enough to replace polluting fossil fuels by generating electricity for large buildings.... The new so-called Graetzel cells offered a simpler and potentially cheaper way to generate solar power."
David Adam on solar power in Wales | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited:

Time to give up distressed blue denim?

"Mariano Barag�n looked down at the blue-grey crust peeling off the field he irrigates from a canal. Nearby factories were the problem - dozens of them, which are dedicated to doing to jeans in hours what used to take years of wear. 'As well as being blue, it burns the seedlings and sterilises the earth,' the 67-year-old subsistence farmer said. And the cause? A wry smile hovered on his lips. 'It's the fashion.'"
Distressed denim trend costs Mexican farmers the earth | Environment | The Guardian:

Treating addiction ...

This is a really helpful article/comment piece which says things we probably ought to reflect on more, especially the way that ideological concerns are working in the national debate. There's an implicit plea for evidence-based policy and some shrewd comments on addiction carrying weight because they're made by a former addict.

"many addicts aren't interested in treatment because they don't believe there's anything wrong with them. As with other kinds of mental illness, it's very difficult to make much progress without the cooperation of the patient. So while it is vital to provide treatment facilities for addicts who want them, it is equally vital to find ways of reducing the harm that addiction does to those who don't. Some of these facilities, such as needle exchanges, are quite common, and have proved effective in limiting the spread of HIV amongst users. More controversial are trials of prescribing heroin to dependant users for use under medical supervision. In Switzerland a similar experiment proved so successful in cutting health risks and crime that it is now part of the healthcare system there. So what I'm hoping for in 2008 is a strategy based on research, education and harm reduction. Some evidence suggests that the proportion of people who may be at serious risk of becoming dependant could be as high as one in six. If so, taking drugs is really like playing Russian roulette. Most people will get away with it, but for some it will mean their death. And just like Russian roulette, you won't know which group you're in until it's too late."

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | All the billions spent to curb drug use have been in vain:

Avaaz.org - The World in Action

I just emailed my trade minister about the fishing crisis. I hope you will, too. In a few weeks, the World Trade Organization will come forward with new rules to govern global fishing --and if enough of us raise our voice, we can help end the unfair and unsustainable fishing system, in which rich countries subsidize corporate fleets to overfish the oceans. It's unfair to fishers in poor countries. And if it keeps going, global fish populations will collapse. (Already, 90% of big fish like tuna and marlin have disappeared.)

Click on the link below to sending a message to the trade minister--and help defend our oceans and our future.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/make_fishing_fair/tf.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

Thanks!

A few years ago, I was a pisco-vegetarian, on the basis that while meat is an resource expensive way to feed people, fish at that time didn't seem to be such a problem. It's different now. And aside from not being right keen on fish, it seems to me that eating fish is just not a particularly good thing to be doing at the moment: we should be leaving it for those who really need to make a livelihood from the sea. ...
Avaaz.org - The World in Action

Theology: but is it art?

An erstwhile colleague of mine asks an important question: "Is there actually such a thing as 'Christian Art' anyway? Does art produced by Christian need to consist of overtly Christian imagery? Surely not. Derek posits the idea of 'artist-theologian' - rather than Christian artist. The artist-theologian seeks to interpret God's world and His purposes in that world through the chosen medium - perhaps clay, film, paint or wood, as opposed to the words and metaphors of the more traditional theologian. In this regard, the 'artist-theologian' can help to lift the endeavour of theology out of the realm of 'mere words' and into something that touches the soul."
I pretty much agree and note that the challenge for theological educators is to learn how to get beyond 'mere words' in both teaching and assessing and do so with academic integrity. Some have given up and concluded that it is impossible. But I fear that betrays ignorance or lack of imagination. After all, there are degrees offered in the arts ... !
Out of the Cocoon - Main - Wikiklesia #7 : Theology as Art:

Terror threat to academic freedom

This is a potentially worrying development: "the federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, was urged to release Mr Holm from his single-cell in Berlin's Moabit prison. 'We strongly object to the notion of intellectual complicity adopted by the federal prosecutor's office in its investigation ... such arguments allow any piece of academic writing to be potentially incriminating,' the academics said."
Protests over terror arrest of German academic | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

ASLEF - Re-nationalising rail could save

From Aslef's briefing on why the railways should be renationalised:

Ministers have suggested that we cannot afford to take the railways back into public ownership. The reality is that we cannot afford not to. Continuing with the status quo means continuing with low growth, poor performance, compromised safety – and spiralling cost escalation. The Exchequer will not bear this increasing burden indefinitely – sooner or later there will be pressure to shift the costs of privatisation to passengers, through fare rises and cuts in services. Either way, the public loses.

And there is a little more to it than TU nostalgia:

Drawing on research by Professor Jean Shaoul of Manchester University, it shows that this could produce immediate savings of at least £500m a year on the government’s annual rail bill of £4.5 billion, as well as leading to further savings and service improvements over the medium term as the industry was reintegrated.

It kind of echoes concerns I myself have expressed publicly before now.

ASLEF - Re-nationalising rail could save:

Eco-Millionaires See Boom Times Ahead

"Is 'the business of green' a bubble? A: 'No. We have the biggest opportunity to replace fossil fuel, which has a market capitalisation of hundreds of billions of pounds, but it's vital we listen to the scientific consensus and create a financial solution. 'I believe we have a chance to meet the stated mitigation targets much quicker than people think ... but it depends on whether people believe money can be made.' "
Planet Ark : FEATURE - Eco-Millionaires See Boom Times Ahead:

The End Of Our Work As We Know It

You might be excited or worried by what this article says, but it probably should be read by anyone wanting to keep abreast of trends that project in all likelihood into the future. It explores the effects of increasingly ubiquitous and easy virtualisation technologies. Here's a snippet.

"Researchers at Stanford University noticed that people in online role-playing games such as Star Wars Galaxies spend countless hours carefully doing what looks like a job—not only battling Empire troops but also building pharmaceutical manufacturing operations and serving as medics. Researchers tested the possibility of having players view real medical scans inside the game to find signs of cancer. They think groups of gamers could do as well as an actual pathologist.... Amazon.com (AMZN ) is experimenting with a marketplace it created called Mechanical Turk. Companies parcel out small pieces of jobs online, such as transcribing podcasts and labeling photos, to people around the world. The workers, who often do it in lieu of watching TV or fooling around on MySpace, process the tasks for a few pennies per minute or photo. The work of all these 'Turkers' is reassembled into finished products, often within hours. In short, Amazon is creating an on-demand workforce for companies that can't afford to hire staff for such quick or ephemeral jobs."

I suspect that one of the key things is found in this quote: "this is a more virtual, self-managed ecosystem." In other words, I think that we are seeing the rise of the mass day-labourer. But it's global and so we have westerners potentially competing with those from the two-thirds world who have somehow gained access to this kind of technology. Now I know there are a host of issues playing out even in that scenario, but I just wanted to alert us to the fact that they will be (and in some cases now are) here. The article is right to flag up some of the implications;

the traditional role of an employer is dissolving. "A job is a bundle of privileges and obligations," notes longtime technology futurist Paul Saffo. "Digital technology has allowed us to break up that bundle" and reassemble it into "mass-customized jobs," he adds, as they fit our skills, the work to be done, and the goals of the companies we're working for.
All that raises a fundamental question about technology's ultimate impact on workers. Will this be a new world of empowered individuals encased in a bubble of time-saving technologies? Or will it be a brave new world of virtual sweatshops, where all but a tech-savvy few are relegated to an always-on world in which keystrokes, contacts, and purchases are tracked and fed into the faceless corporate maw?

Are we back to the day labourers of Jesus' day? What is the gospel and Christian ministry for these sorts of times?
The End Of Work As You Know It:

Princess Bride is the Top Romantic Fairy Tale Movie Ever

The JollyBlogger is absolutely right on this. And I just loved the quotefest that the posting produced in the comments column. All my favourite quotes. I think that to call it a 'romantic fairy tale' is missing the point though: it's a rom-com, sure, but with the emphasis on grown-up but non-smutty humour and brilliantly wierd and wonderful one-liners and bits of dialogue. Brilliant.
JOLLYBLOGGER: Princess Bride is the Top Romantic Fairy Tale Movie Ever

Biofuels switch a mistake

A further warning that biofuels are not the answer. This time with a bit more research to boot. "Dr Righelato's study, with Dominick Spracklen from the University of Leeds, is the first to calculate the impact of biofuel carbon emissions across the whole cycle of planting, extraction and conversion into fuel. They report in the journal Science that between two and nine times more carbon emissions are avoided by trapping carbon in trees and forest soil than by replacing fossil fuels with biofuels. Around 40% of Europe's agricultural land would be needed to grow biofuel crops to meet the 10% fossil fuel substitution target. That demand on arable land cannot be met in the EU or the US, say the scientists, so is likely to shift the burden on land in developing countries. The National Farmers Union said 20% of Britain's agricultural land could be used to grow biofuels by 2010. However, the researchers say reforesting the land would be a better way to reduce emissions."
It should be said, also, that in the UK, more trees in the right places might well help with rainwater run-off ...!
Biofuels switch a mistake, say researchers | Environment | The Guardian:

Women In Art

This is a fascinating little video morphing paintings (mainly) through abouth 500 years of western portrayals of women subjects. Very interesting to see them in this way. Lot's of potential reflections here.

YouTube - Women In Art
Htt This site where there is a collection of the paintings with a bit more detail on each.

Now that the Heathrow climate protest is over ...

...we ought to assess the media hype about ill-defined bad behaviour, which largely didn't happen.

"Protests like this have two peculiar vulnerabilities. One is that anyone can claim to speak on their behalf, either in person or online, whether or not they are involved. The other is that anyone can say anything about them without fear of being corrected, let alone sued: accusations can be levelled at the collective that could not be directed at any of its members. As long as the claims remain in the plural, they can be stretched as far as public credulity will allow."

Monbiot's helpful little article raises important questions.
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Attack of the baby eaters:

Let’s call God Allah ... ?

Given the amount of times I have to question some Christians about making out that Allah is a fundamentally different deity to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I felt, if only for my own future reference, that it would be useful to flag this up:

Christian and Muslim Arabs use the words God and Allah interchangeably. ... the word Allah was already in use by Christians in the pre-Islamic period.

In other words: if one goes around saying Allah is fundamentally different, then you have Christians brothers and sisters in Arabic-influenced lands that are being traduced.
Oh, and the bishop that said this is no pushover when it comes to Islam either:

In the past, Bishop Muskens has offended many Muslims. In 2005 he said Islam was a religion without a future because it had too many violent aspects.

Ref. Dutch Bishop: Let’s call God Allah

The truth will out ... We WAS robbed!

Diego Maradona taunted England over his "hand of God" goal yesterday, on a television show hosted by Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez. The Argentine footballer told a cheering audience in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, that he cheated in the 1986 World Cup quarter final and had urged his team-mates to cheer the strike into the English net to fool the referee into awarding the goal. ... he said. "The goalkeeper had the advantage of grabbing with his hands. It was too high for me and I stuck out my fist."

Freeganomics

If you are up for a challenging indictment of our throwaway society read this article.

'You could feed a village with this,' said Dave, who's spent time in southern Africa working as a volunteer in primary schools. It is wicked, we all agreed, a vision of consumerism gone wrong. But we couldn't think of a way round it. Clearly the supermarkets cannot sell everything they stock, but throwing out £3,000 worth of good food (when I totted it up, our haul came to £340) every night seems outrageous. Could they do more and throw away less? M&S doesn't have a reduced bin for food that's about to go out-of-date, said Cuthbert: 'They probably don't like the idea of tatty grannies rooting around in their stores.'

And a bit later, this comment helps frame it nicely:

Don't you know that 40 per cent of the food we buy is thrown away? That's the real story

Faster trains for UK

I'm cautiously optimistic about thisas faster trains will help disable the 'case' for short haul flights. However, there are trade-offs.

there are concerns about the increase in energy required to power super-high speeds.
Critics also say Britain is too small to warrant spending large extra sums on speeding up journeys and say money would be better spent on increasing capacity on Britain's trains, not speed. 'If you speed up movement people will take advantage of that to travel further,' said David Metz, visiting professor at University College London and a former chief scientist at the Department for Transport.

Scrap exams

You'll get broad agreement from me about this, having spent a few months in the last year teaching in a couple of ordinary secondary schools; I recognise all of the symptoms mentioned here.

teachers under pressure to improve grades were drilling pupils for tests that were too fact-based and failed to push pupils to think critically.
'The exams we have test the first type of knowledge, but what is needed is the second,' argued Wiliam. 'We have to prepare them to think intelligently. GCSE exams are teaching 19th-century skills because of the way they are assessed.'
League tables of school performance, he added, meant that teachers at all stages of school felt pushed to 'teach to the test' and not offer a broader education.

What's more, I found it disheartening, actually, to have to teach to an exam rather than encouraging debate, engagement and being able to follow up the really interesting questions. Admittedly some of the frustration in not being able to do some of that was probably also that I was relatively inexperienced in the curricula and still learning the teaching skills, but even so it is patently true to my observation that not onloy do we end up teaching to the test but that,on the whole, doing that means we can't teach to the natural curiosity and strengths of the many.Tests and exams still tend to test only the lowest grade and least interesting kinds of learning to the detriment of students for whom they don't suit. Of course it all stays self-perpetuating then because we tend to end up with the exam succeeders running things and they tend not to understand how it can be that others don't 'get it' and blame the victims of a poorly-designededucation system. But then the 'value' of exams has been so deeply embedded in our culture that we, as a society, can hardly contemplate restructuring our systems of assessing the 'value' and aptitudes of our people.

Part of the issue is, arguably, that we are running a modded Victorian system which was really only aiming to 'deliver'enough literacy and numeracy to run the factories and to discover who were the the likely educators in the next batch to be trained to do more of the same. The Workers' Educational Movement, among others, had higher aspirations, but that was outwith the system.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: 'It seems that the curriculum is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.
'Each year critics call for a return to 19th-century teaching styles or for a move away from them. The GCSE is a qualification fit for the 21st century. Crucially, GCSE subjects of whatever discipline have to be set and assessed to the same high standard and the independent QCA takes this fully into account.'

That quote highlights the real dilemma, but I do have to say that I think we are reaching the limits of the usefulness of the kind of exam-focussed learning we are currently engaged in.

Islam's version of Jesus on Tele

I thought initially that it might be a good way to learn about the Qur'anic picture of Jesus so I am with my ertwhile congregant "Philip Lewis, the Bishop of Bradford's aide on inter-faith matters", who is reported as urging

believers on both sides to take advantage of a 'worthwhile contribution to understanding a complex issue'.

But I wonder how many readers might be wholly or partly sympathetic to Patrick Sookhdeo's stance (Patrick is an Anglican canon and spokesman for the Barnabas Fund, which works with persecuted Christians and is a convert from Islam), he

accused broadcasters of double standards. ... 'How would the Muslim community respond if ITV made a programme challenging Muhammad as the last prophet?' The Koran's denial of Jesus's divinity was 'unacceptable'. 'On the last day the Koran says Jesus will destroy all the crosses. How can we praise that?'

While he has a point, I think that my rejoinder would be to say that if we would like Muslims to be open to considering religious perspectives not our own, then we should lead by example, perhaps pointing out that the ability to consider others opposing views is a strngth not a weakness. I wonder if Patrick is somethimes still in a Muslim mindset when it comes to such things?
TV airing for Islam's story of Christ | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

'Basque land not for sale'

It looks like ETA-stylebombing is now a French problem. Similarly to what happened briefly in Wales about 20 years ago. Note the underlying issue might be asmuch the issue of urbanisation as nationalsim. By 'urbanisation' I'm referring to the way that true rurality is dying in western Europeas the effects of urban wealth and systems reachesoutinto the countryside evermorefully via transport, telecommunications and the economics of home-ownership. :"the current campaign - attacking the villas of French 'outsiders' and firebombing cars with Paris-region number plates - has sparked fears among politicians of a return to the violent campaign of 20 years ago. Then the French Basque movement, Iparretarrak, carried out hundreds of attacks against villas and property firms under the slogans 'No to tourism' and 'Let the Basque country live'."
Of course the effectsare short term and more immediately mosre likely simply to push would-be buyers towardsareaswherethe nationalist factor is not itn the mix. These areaswill then eventually getto enjoy the prosperity and the fact that they don't haveso manyruinedand abandonedbuildings in their landscape. The other interesting thing is to note and learn from the Cymraeg experience: in Wales, somehow, learning Welsh has become importnat even to Saeson incomers...
'Basque land not for sale' - bombers hit holiday homes | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Code on proselytism

It looks like a WEA spokesbeing hasindicated the WEAwould be ready to sign up to a code on mission, evangelismand proselytism.

such a code should, "establish the borderline between acceptable forms of mission protected by religious freedom, and undue forms of trying to convert people". The WEA leader recognised, however, the difficulty in nailing down "unethical means" to a concrete code of conduct, given different historical, religious, cultural and political contexts.

Though I suspect that the evangelicals and Pentecostals are not going to accept it if it ends up endorsing this opinion

"Religious preachers need to be told that no religion has monopoly to the truth, that there are many ways to find salvation," said Shastri.

From experience in local Christian groups working on the interfaith interface, I still find it strange that a lot of more liberal Christians don't seem to get how deep seated are the exclusivist trendswithin the evangelical constituencyand that you cannot speak for the Christian community without being considerably more careful about the voicing of pluralist-seeming perspectives.
What can be 'sold' to this constiturency, without trying to impose a suspected-of-heresy bunch of theologies is this

the code of conduct must be built around the concept of "dialogical evangelism" instead of "aggressive evangelism". Such an evangelism, Richie believes, can still be energetic and enthusiastic but not coercive or manipulative. He also explains that an appropriate evangelism needs to be ecumenical in attitude and concerned with operating ethically.

and that's pretty much at the extreme leading edge as I read things at the moment. But it's at least a step forward to read this:

The envisioned code of conduct, "will only make sense if it is not directed against Evangelicals and Pentecostals but written together with them". The WEA's "involvement and blessing is crucial in order to win the 'black sheep' amongst Evangelicals and Pentecostals over for a respectful kind of evangelism," Schirrmacher said.

I cation the reader new to my writing not to be too quick, either, to draw conclusions about my position from the above.

Amateur discovers 1934, not 1998, is hottest year

Before anyone gets too debunkingly excited about this discovery that in fact the USA's hottest summer on Record is in the 1930's not the 2000's, let's note the less glamorous aspects.

"The sum total of this change? A couple of hundredths of degrees in the US rankings and no change in anything that could be considered climatically important, specifically long-term trends."
He also noted that the error related only to figures from the US, covering just 2% of the Earth's surface, so could not be applied globally

Sometimes simple is best ...

just look at the effects of simply distributing free mosquito nets in East Africa.

Kenya's heath ministry has distributed 13.5m insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) across the country since 2003. As a result, the number of children sleeping under a net increased from 5% to 52% in less than five years.... the nets have had a major impact. In four high-risk areas of country that were closely monitored, the number of childhood deaths from malaria has fallen by 44%. Three hospitals in the malarial-prone coastal areas reported a drop in admissions of 57% in 2006, compared with 1999.

The big issue was making the nets free. There are some tings that simply must be done on the basis of need not ability to pay.

Irony ilustree

Je reçois de plus en plus des couriels spams en mauvais français, pleins d'erreurs grammaticales et de mots mal choisis. Je me demande si maintenant l'Académie Française ou le gouvernement de la France s'adonnera à la supprimation du spam?

Mind you, if they did it'd probably do us all a favour.

more environmentally aware UK

Since I remember the 80's and how low down in people's consciousness was the environment, this actually looks like good-ish news:

While 29% of people said they were already making an effort to use their cars and fly less, up to a third said they "don't really want to" make such changes.
Over half said they would like to reduce their car use but found there were no practical alternatives.

On the latter point, we will have to acknowledge that a big part of the problem is that over two generations we've been making individual/collective decisions predicated on car ownership. Those decisions have change the shape of our towns and cities many of them reinforcing car use by making it harder not to have a car. To reverse all those policy and infrastructure matters is not going to be the work of one day. Practical alternatives will have to be offered, encouraged and cajoled out of us. Money has been talking very loudly in the way that things have been developing; it will have to be made to change its message.

Atheists and religious: can't we just cut the name-calling?

The author of this blog has some good stuff to say:

The war that's coming between the fundamentalist Christians and the hard-core Atheists probably won't be the most violent of the holy wars. But it has the potential to be the most annoying.
We'll, I'm going to try to stop it.

Now I would say this because a lot of what is said is the kind of stuff I agree with. For example:

All I need from you is agreement that it's entirely possible for either an atheist or theist world to devolve into a screaming murder festival. The religious leader sends his people into battle because he thinks God commanded it, the Stalins and Maos of the world do the same because they see their people as nothing more than meaty fuel to be ground up to feed the machinery of The State. In both cases, the people are equally dead.

Or

the other guy, no matter how irritating he or she is, is likely making an honest mistake.

Or

at the very worst, the atheists are just applying the same common sense, real-world troubleshooting to the God question. At the creation of the universe and in the heart of mankind, they expect to find the same physical, tangible answers they'd find inside a burnt transmission. If they're wrong about God, they're only wrong in that they've taken the tried-and-true troubleshooting we all practice one step too far.
On the other hand...
Atheists, even if you reject the idea of God completely and claim to live according only to the cold logic of the physical sciences, you all still live as if the absolute morality of some magical lawgiver were true.

Or

all we're doing here is understanding why they're offended by what you say. That's it. Putting yourself in their shoes. Basic human empathy. That's all.

Or this very nicely put observation;

Both Sides Have Brought Good to the Table... If atheism is wrong, it's only wrong in that it takes rationalism too far, beyond the edges of the universe. But you don't have a problem with the rationalism itself. There are people you love who would not be alive without it. You can pray that grandpa's heart holds out for another year, but rational thinking invented the pacemaker.

It's just full of good, basic, sensible stuff that actually really applies to general handling of disagreements, when you think about it. And the carefully chosen (?) offensive pictures are a good laugh too -or a sad reflection on intolerant mindsets, ironically exhibited (you decide).

And the last point is

The sarcasm, the disdain, the laughter. It makes you feel better, and rallies your friends, but it does exactly nothing to change minds on the other side. ...
No, in reality, if changing minds is your thing, there's only one way to do it:
Lead by Example.

Amen or hear! hear! to that.
I'd think about adding this: can't we agree to actually tell the other side what it is that we think is the strong point in their position; so they know we've heard it. You see, in most conversatins, if you don't do that the person(s) on the other side tend to keep repeating what they regard as their important points until they are acknowledged and genuinely so: valued even. It's what they teach you to do in counselling and mediation for the reason that if you don't acknowledge it, you can't move past it. Of course, for centuries people have been doing this on both sides, but it has to be done anew by each new person to the debates. And that leads on to another thing that might be useful to add: to be prepared to acknowledge that most of this debate is not new and that it is unlikely that 'I' or 'we' or even 'they' will come up with a genuinely new argument or angle. So acknowledging this and doing your homework, a bit, would be good too. Check out the territory a bit before you enter it. A bit like the whole thing about reading the FAQ sheets before posting on a forum so as not to unnecessarily irritate the normal denizens who then have to labouriously and patiently go over past debates (or more often, unfortunately, flame you for a basic discourtesy. Come to think of it; isn't that just like what we're talking about only played out irl?).
Ten things Christians and Atheists can and must agree on
Htt: Matt Stone

In the future tense

THis could look like a tip for stock dablers:

"By simply counting the number of future oriented sentences in annual reports we can predict future innovation by the firm."

. Of course, reflexivity means that now that such a reslut is in the public domain it will increasingly become part of the thinking behind the preparation of company reports and CEO speeches who will attend to making sure that there is a proper showing of future tenses thus undermining the value of the research over time. Such is life.

Words Of A CEO Can Foretell A Company's Future Innovation
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Love Labours Won

I didn't manage to get to a machine with enough time to blog this earlier, so it's had to await our return home. However, this is another of the recommendations I'd give for the Edinburgh Fringe. It's a kind of Shakespeare reconstruction both in language and in the style of plot and presentation. It's an
able script and I loved the way that it was done by and all-female cast (I assume in a kind of gender mirror image to the original Shakespeare). On the downside -and this is but minor criticism- sometimes the metre of the verse became a bit too predicable and somehow oppressive, pantomimey: it needed a few more clever breaks and sharing of clauses across lines.

I was also quite surprised by how Buddhist the 'moral' at the end of the play was. Though the thing about desire was capable of being read Christianly, I don't think that it was intended so: it seemed to be echoing a contemporary concern with spirituality referencing Buddhist ideas. I may be wrong, but ...

Play's website

Miracle in Rwanda

Regular visitors will have realised that I've not been blogging much lately. This is because I've been in Edinburgh enjoying several plays a day at the Festival. One of the plays really deserves a heads-up for the rest of you if you get a chnace to see it, the eponymous play is brilliant. Here's the mise-en-scene:

Immaculée's family was brutally murdered during the three-month slaughter that began in April 1994. Miraculously, Immaculée managed to survive. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently and cramped together in an undiscovered extra bathroom in a local pastor's home.

Probably the most dominent theme is forgiveness, beginning with Immaculée having to do a deal with God about praying to forgive trespasses in the Lord's prayer as she tries to say her rosary. The rest of the play returns to her praying various of the mysteries of the Rosary which act as a theological comment on the events and usher in a couple of visions one of Christ and another of Mary. The writing is good and the performance is good -really conveying to me, at least, the terror of the situation and something of the psych-spirituality of forgiving.

I'm thinking of getting the book as there must surely be more to reflect on around the theme of forgiveness in it.
Sneak peek at Miracle in Rwanda
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Natioanl Express doubt biofuels

It's been my concern for a while that biofuels are best seen as a transitional measure since they would eat up food crops and make matters worse in terms of the other environmental impacts globally. It seems one company have been courageous enough to question the greenwash:

National Express said there is "considerable concern" that biofuel production - from crops including sugar cane and rapeseed - will destroy natural habitats and increase the cost of food farming in developing countries.

Climate justice now

Like the Rector of our parish, I was very moved by the testimony of a girl from Tajikistan demonstrating that climate change is not a future prospect but was even now making the lives of vulnerable people more precarious. Cloimate chnge is an issue of justice. However, also like Tom Jamieson, I was concerned at the poor turn out for the rally in Newcastle on Saturday. Tom's comment:

where was everybody? St Thomas Church Haymarket was perhaps three quarters full. Six of us from Ryton that I know about which is ok, but this was for the region. Was it poor publicity by Christian Aid? I think they did there bit. Was it failure to pass on publicity by those on the Christian Aid mailing lists? perhaps. Was it a lack of confidence on the part of the public that a Christian agency is up to the task for such as this? I worry that this may be it.

I actually wonder whether the impression that it was an outdoor rally and the fact of it raining at the time was a factor too -perhaps mainly. Nevertheless, Tom's concern has to be a concern if it may be true.
Cut the Carbon March
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A sense of perspective ...

Worth bookmarking just to bring a smile to your face everyso often, and actually Eric Idle's very clever words and a rather cute animation make it potentially suitable for a light-hearted intro to matters cosmological. I'm considering if I can use it in teaching.
Animation here

More tech concerns for ID cards?

Now, I'm aware that this might not transfer, since we don't know the specifications of the system the UK government is setting up (and UK gov doesn't either!), but since one of the arguments has been to do with compatibility with (USA) passport systems, then there is concern latent in this report, I suspect for the UK gov's system.

If a reader could be compromised using Grunwald's technique, it might be reprogrammed to misreport an expired passport as a valid one, or even -- theoretically -- to attempt a compromise of the Windows-based border-screening computer to which it is connected.

Also check out previous posts on ID cards

Vocabulary Explosion At 18 Months

If I'm not mistaken this partially undermines one of the drivers towards a Chomskyan belief in an innate language learning faclity: based as it is on the observation of the rapid acquisition of language.

Children are going to get that word spurt guaranteed, mathematically, as long as a couple of conditions hold," McMurray said. "They have to be learning more than one word at a time, and they must be learning a greater number of difficult or moderate words than easy words. Using computer simulations and mathematical analysis, I found that if those two conditions are true, you always get a vocabulary explosion

Vocabulary Explosion At 18 Months

If I'm not mistaken this partially undermines one of the drivers towards a Chomskyan belief in an innate language learning faclity

Children are going to get that word spurt guaranteed, mathematically, as long as a couple of conditions hold," McMurray said. "They have to be learning more than one word at a time, and they must be learning a greater number of difficult or moderate words than easy words. Using computer simulations and mathematical analysis, I found that if those two conditions are true, you always get a vocabulary explosion

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JK Rowling believes ...

I missed this but somehow it doesn't surprise me.

JK Rowling was "Christian by conviction, is Christian in her mode of living, even in her way of writing."
Rowling said as much herself in an interview with Vancouver Sun in 2000. It "seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God," she commented, and added that it suited her not discuss her faith too freely because, otherwise, "I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books."

Planning map of Britain

The Potential Major Infrastructure Map is intended to show the breadth and types of major infrastructure projects that are likely to arise and pass through the government's decision making structure for Major Infrastructure Projects under the anticipated Planning Reform Bill.

The way they learn today

The way young people use technology outside school is changing and so are the ways they learn. This project, funded by the NCSL, aims to explore children's informal learning with digital media such as games consoles, the internet and mobile phones. There are three main areas of focus:

* How young people are engaging with digital media - especially when it has not been designed to be explicitly educational. What are they learning in terms of skills, networking and collaboration?
* The potential for a new digital divide to open up which is based on parental support for media use rather than access to hardware.
* How Schools can respond to these issues.

This project is now completed.

One of the claims of the report(Link to the power point presentation giving the main results)is that "we are all digital natives now" (slide 9). Not sure I agree with that in terms of the first language/second language analogy, although I do feel the idea of digiborigenes does need to be problematised somewhat. I'm certainly giving a lot of thought to this in terms of implications for my classroom+ praxis from September.
I'm certainly asking myself the question as to why all the marking I'm doing is on paper and whether there is any reason it shouldn't be electronic. But then there's the non-gimmicky use of other stuff 'live'.

What is personalised learning?

Nice little intro, although the authors (implied by their own admission) are still learning the ropes in this kind of approach. However, it will quickly tell you what PE is about and you may see whay I'm interested in it.
A brief animated intro to personalised learning