Should we implement the Easter Act 1928?

I'd thought that the Easter Act 1928 was contingent on the agreement of the the Christian Churches in this country -like that would ever happen! But maybe not -see this article from a couple of weeks or so ago. Unthinkable? Implement the Easter Act 1928 | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian:
The occasion of writing, is, of course, the very late Easter this year. And I have to admit that I had mused in odd moments about whether it'd be a good thing to implement it, but I thought that there was very little chance of the churches agreeing to it.
So what would it do? Why might it commend itself?

"the Easter Act 1928, a prescient piece of legislation which is already on the statute book, ready and waiting for a government brave enough to issue the implementation order. The act sets down that Easter Sunday must fall on a fixed day – the Sunday following the second Saturday in April. The effect would be that Easter Sunday, instead of falling on any date between 22 March and 25 April as now, would fall in the narrower window of 9 to 15 April."

Well, perhaps not quite 'fixed' as Christmas (which, incidently, I think perhaps should be tethered, probably, to a Sunday) but certainly de-coupled from the lunar-Gregorian calendar mash-up currently employed and held into a much tighter window.

And it doesn't need for the churches to agree: "the act merely requires that "regard shall be had" to their opinion"
Which is not quite the same as giving us/them the veto. There's no way that the RC would go with it, and I can just imagine the "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells" reactions from the likes of the professionally-outraged at the Daily Mail and its ilk. But consider, a de-coupling of a Christian high day from public holiday has already taken place (and there are still rumblings) in the case of Pentecost -rather 'Whitsun'.
"Churches would rightly still be free to celebrate Easter on the day of their choice rather than over the public holiday – as the Orthodox church already does. The secular majority, however, would at last have an annual spring break that makes a bit more sense."
I'd want to say that we should consider this seriously. Let there be an early April bank Holiday weekend, but let the churches celebrate Easter our own way and at times that our traditions and collective bargaining determine. The advantages would be that we may be less likely to 'lose' attenders to extended weekends away and more likely to find others to invite to the feast alongside us -you know: who might like to consider responding positively to what we're celebrating... not to mention perhaps it might erode the post Easter 'flop' when instead of continuing to celebrate we all retreat and don't celebrate together further for a fortnight (I exaggerate, but not by much). Shame to lose the Easter Octave of celebration linked to Church life.

Though of course, it'll happen that quite often Pascha will fall at the same time as the public holiday too so the advantages I see would be some years but not others. But I'm not sure that linking Christian festivals with public holidays actually serves us well in post-Christendom.

empathy, evil and justice

No doubt I'll have to read the book of the article: Simon Baron-Cohen talks empathy, evil and justice at the Royal Institution | Carole Jahme | Science | guardian.co.uk: "Empathy is a primal ability that evolved long before our ancestors developed spoken language. By focusing on empathy as the foundation of virtuous behaviour and acknowledging its absence or erosion as a fuel for human vices, Baron-Cohen has unified the whole of human psychological behaviour"
As the article presents it there is a lot to commend the principle of taking note of empathy and I intuit a good set of connections to my puttering thinking about forgiveness and the Cross (bascially trying to take a practical theology approach before the systematics kicks in too early). There are big claims: healing of global society, definitive insight into the nature of evil ... but I'm concerned that it may be missing a thing or two. I'm wondering, for example, what about the evils that are brought about not by too little empathy but too much? Isn't this heading towards a reductionistic approach: lack of empathy is evil; what about the moral status, then of those who are on the autistic spectrum? I hope that the book has some nuance in the face of those kinds of issues... particularly as Baron-Cohen has published on Autism and Asperger's.

infostripe

This looks like a pontentially useful little service. the basis for a e-business card. It even automatically generates a QR code. It can also be pressed into service for events. So, as you can see, I've been playing with it in terms of the job I move to on June 1st.
Andii Bowsher (andii) on infostripe

Better typing on touch-screen phones

I've only been using it about 5 days but already I'm moved to recommend this. and this is why:
"MessagEase has fewer, larger keys. With it you enter most frequent characters with a tap on relatively large key. Less frequent characters are entered with a drag or slide. The position and relative location of each letter and character is calculated based on letter frequency and letter-pair frequency, so that your finger\s movement is minimize, and therefore your text entry speed is maximized."
It really doesn't take long to learn, and there is a handy wee app that helps 'train' you in a bit of a gamey way. I reckon I've probably spent no more than an hour playing the learning game and already my input rate is up compared to the keyboard that came with the Android OS. It's basically because it's ergonomically designed. All you need to do really is get the most frequent characters into your motor memory.

I do have a bit of history with keyboards to confess. I few years ago, when I had a bit of time on my hands I taught myself to touch-type using a computer programme (well, actually, an internet site). However, because I also had moments of concern about typing-related RSI, I learnt to use the Dvorak layout because that is ergonomically designed (unlike the qwerty set-up which was, reputedly, designed to slow typists down to avoid key-arm snarl ups). Most OSs now have Dvorak key maps in the settings and if you've learnt to touch type, it doesn't matter that the letters on the keys don't match with the letter that goes on the screen. Oh, and my RSI is a lot better :)
MessagEase - A killer app keyboard for iPhones, gPhones, PDAs, Tablet PCs, and other touch screen devices:

Apocalypse FAIL -or: imposing our agenda on scripture

Matt Stone, istm, has got it right and does us a favour by finding this visual 'statement' that so badly misses the point of the apocalyptic imagery and actually subverts the Bible's message.
Apocalypse FAIL - Glocal Christianity: "Where we expect to see a sword coming from the mouth of the Messiah, symbolizing the power of the word of God, we now find a sword in his hand, symbolizing power of a more earthly kind. Where we expect to see a white robe dipped in blood, symbolizing his sacrificial love and servant kingship, we now see a smart and sanitized red robe. Where we expect to see many crowns, relativising the Imperial claims of Caesar, we now see a more conventional, single crown. Where we expect to see writing on his robe and thigh, encapsulating the symbolic significance of these visions, there is none. Where we expect to see eyes blazing with fire, we see something far less amazing. Where we expect to see heaven cracking open, emphasizing the visionary flavour of such images, we instead see clouds and clouds alone, minimizing the mystery.
What we have here is a domesticated Jesus, who mimics the entrapments of empire rather than radically subverting them"

Email - Are greetings and salutations redundant?

In human culture there is always an ongoing 'conversation' between technologies and the way that we incorporate them into our lives socially. Thus things that are important to us in the social arena will be marked in various ways in the way that we view and employ our technologis: power, status, solidarity, etc will inevitably be inscribed into our appropriation of tech. I'm interested to see how this evolves in regard to email, for example and have been thinking in odd moments about it for a couple of years or more now. So it is interesting to me to see that there is an online conversation about it.

My musing was piqued by noting the way that late-comers to the email game tended to stand out like sore thumbs to those of us who had been using email since it's earlier days: they treat(ed) email like letters: formal beginnings and endings, for example. The difficulty that presents, of course, is the second-guessing game: do we reply in kind and re-instate the hierarchical paraphernalia that a lot of the early internet was getting away from or do we risk being misunderstood by sticking with the informality-conventions of the Peoples' Republic of the Internet. I'd have to say that I've come to the view that those who are sticklers for formality have a right to be heard and to some respect, so I usually try to offer some kind of respectful opening and closing to people I don't know whom I judge may possibly be 'old school' (but as far as possible I try to avoid the 'Dear N' thing because I'm keen to signal that email isn't the same as letter writing). So I'd more or less go along with this advice:
email - Are greetings and salutations redundant in an e-mail? - English Language and Usage - Stack Exchange: "When writing to older persons, persons in authority, superiors, et al, I recommend a salutation and a complimentary close. These are not 'wastes of time' by any means - they serve very specific functions if you are skilled in their use. Both the opening and the close allow you to frame your relationship with the recipient"

The other interesting thing though is the way, I notice, that exchanges quickly seem to cease to use a greeting phrase at all; I think that threaded conversations are probably seen as just that: conversations, so restating the addressee's name or re-greeting them would seem to be somewhat gauche. However, I suspect that this may 'feel' quite brusque to 'old school' writers.

Remember; this is an ongoing conversation, the way that we do it influences the direction that the emerging consensus goes. It's like speaking: the register we use communicates our attitudes of respect or not, a sense of solidarity or not, a framing of where we think each other are in respect of power relationships, a sense of our estimate of fashionableness, gender, nationality and other shared (or not) characteristics. The difficult cases come where we don't really know the other person: that's where the politeness formulae come into their own: they buy us time to suss out the various dimensions of the relationship that could have a bearing on how we continue to address one another and relate.

And is there a specifically Christian take on this? Well, I think in general there is but it's not earth-shattering: give respect to all, do as you would be done by, inasfar as it lies with you live at peace with all. However, I would say further though, that I think that the internet in terms of its history probably has a bit more 'sympathy' with the Quaker simplicity ethic which led them to avoid over-formal speech and address-forms because people are equal before God. I think that this might indicate that it would be fair to try to pull the use of greetings and sigs in the direction of friendly informality as far as possible.

Reading, empathy and virtual community

I've given that title because it seems to me that it describes what the research seems to show. I'm pleased to find some confirmation of something I'd suspected for a long-time. In my case that although I'm a MBTI 'E', in fact my love of reading has been a form of meeting the need to engage my thinking 'out there' -at least in the sense it gives me even if not always in reality.
Becoming a vampire without being bitten: Reading expands our self-concepts, study shows: "When we read, we psychologically become part of the community described in the narrative -- be they wizards or vampires. That mechanism satisfies the deeply human, evolutionarily crucial, need for belonging."
Of course this report brings together the stuff we are discovering about the importance of narrative and also the inbuilt empathy/mimetic thing we have. My suspicion is that a similar, or perhaps the same, psychological mechanisms are at work with online and more fully virtual relationships.

The report of the same research in Psychology Today seems to equate the love of reading with introversion, but I'm not convinced by that: I think there is an extrovert way of reading which is about enjoyment of the engagement with other minds and, in the case of fiction, an ersatz engagement with others imaginitevily. Let's remember that no encounter with a live other is free of 'fantasy' and imagination, so there is is a link.

What it makes me revisit though, is the question of the use of fiction in some academic pursuits where the development and reflection on the human condition are at a premium. Things like pastoral care or spirituality to take two that I tend to deal with. I suspect those who deal with literature studies will probably be thinking "told you so", but so be it. The challenge would be how to properly use fiction in such case -both for stimulating thought, reflection and insight and also in assessment.