Teenagers react against 'anything goes' society

This is not new [dated MArch this year] but somehow I missed it. Teenegers are a lot more conservative than we might have thought. Question is whether this is something that will stick with them? Given that figures seem to indicate that higher education tends to have a liberalizing effect [and if we get 50% into HE ... ] will this conservatism turn out to be a mere teenagerly phantasm [like my own flirtation with conservative politics]?

There is, of course the possibility that it is the bad effects of certain social trends coming home to roost. Eg. marriage is a Good Thing because it hurts a lot when you're parents don't stay together -a perspective all too easily overturned when experience borne of not having role models of how to make relationships last makes a seperation look like a good idea doubly so when you live in a society vitally formed by the ephemeral and holding options and choices open [See Liquid Modernity].

I seem to recall trend-based predictions in the 80's and 90's of returns to more traditional sexual morality [following AIDS etc], but I see little evidence of that. So will all this conservative idealism be kicked out of them or will some of it stick? Hey And I'm pretty unconservative except that I'm more pro-life than many and think that there is a huge value in working at covenanted relationships. I also happen to think pro-life extends to people once they are born and means taking the bonds of human love seriously ...

bo logh -Klingon blog

I decided that it would be more valuable to learn Latin or Chinese than Klingon and I still haven't got round to it but I'm interested to note that there is a blog in Klingon. I wonder if there's something in Esperanto?

StopEsso

Low down on why Esso [ExxonMobil] are being singled out for particular opprobrium in the climate change front. Click on the "here's why" link.

climate change

New Economics Foundation website. Worth checking out. They've produced a lot of good reports etc.

Sound focused on individuals -advertising nightmare?

Article about first of all the invention of a focused sound-beam [using hypersonic carrier waves, as far as I can tell] which is about to see its first practical application in Japan for drinks-machine advertising delivered directly to the head of passers-by.

A slightly nicer commercial application is the possibility of creating bubbles of sound so that noise pollution can be restricted [it could revolutionise muzak]. The possibilities -if it became cheap enough- for alternative worship are good: imagine having installations each with their own soundtrack which could only be heard in a bubble just in front of the visuals or the activities. Apparently, there is interest from museums for just this kind of application.

Another interesting question is, though, how will we feel about it once the novelty has worn off and we are assaulted by focussed advertizing as we walk down streets and through shops? Will it feel like an invasion of privacy -a violation, given that the effect is so intimate? What about the possibilities of it being used for harrament? And there are military/security uses too; to deliver sound that incapacitates temporarily ....

Lords attack Blair over Kyoto

Headline says it all really. Read the rest in the article. Nice to see someone in government putting the pressure on a bit on climate change.

Buy Nothing Day

Heads up. Having noted in my diary to do something interesting for 23 Oct which -as I'm sure you will recall- is the 6000th anniversary of the creation of the world [Ussher's dating], I'm adding the day after American thanksgiving, Friday, Nov. 26, 2004 because it's Buy Nothing Day [Journee sans Achat, dia sin comprar nada... ]. I've led a few services on the Sundays closest to BND but perhaps it would be interesting to do it on the day? Perhaps in a shopping mall? The thing would be not to be nasty to people who are shopping; after all most of 'em probably wouldn't know it was Buy Nothing Day until you harangued them. But -well what would be a realistic plan for such a service? Would it be really an act of witness? OR could we offer something "without money or price"? Something that was still an act of connection with God in its own right?

Is an 'act of witness' worship? or is it proclamation? Part of me wants to say it ought to be a false distinction, but I've been to too many gospel services that have been attempts to convert hypothetical non-Christian [non-]attenders where clearly the sense of Christian corporate connection to God was not a good advert. And alternatively I've been to too many worship services where a non-Christian would feel they had gatecrashed a very wierd party indeed...

Any ways out of this impasse with reagrd to Buy Nothing Day? Well we've got about four months to work it out, and Creation day in-between too.

Solvent thirtysomethings turn backs on rat race

I found this originally in the Times and had to pursue it as being potentially relevant to my MA dissertation which is, in part, on life coaching and spiritual direction. Life coaching deals with just the kinds of issues that seem to be live and important to the people in these studies [and so, often, does spiritual direction]. I'm wondering whether this is also part of a cultural shift towards a more sophisticated take on career, acquisitiveness and that whole 'what's my life for?' thing. Now the thing is to try to track down the original studies.

Muslim WakeUp! Defenders of the Faith, Destroyers of Life

Another article for those interested in seeing more moderate Muslim reaction to AL Qaida etc. Very articulate, conversant with western academic rhetoric and quite hopeful. One or two good links too.

Guantanamo suspects can use US courts

To me the issue has always been a 'do as you would be done by' matter of simple justice. If I were wrongly detained as a suspect I would like to be able to be alble to challenge it. I were correctly detained, I would like to be able to at least be tried fairly like any other criminal... and until tried, of course, I should be presumed innocent ... you can't operate a legal system on any other basis and still safeguyard the rights of suspects, indeed of ordinary citizens. Glad to see some sanity prevailing.

Grafitti by removing dirt ...

I expect that Jonny Baker'll pick this up!? A Leeds based grafittist can't win. He uses solvant to create a clean space on dirtly walls for his art... interesting to see the council's reaction. But is it art? -Or advertizing?

New Bible translation promotes fornication?

There's a bit of hoohah about this; not sure what I think yet. Thanks to Chris at Paradoxology for drawing it to our attention. I'm not sure what I think about yet another translation of the Bible in English when there are some others that have no translation as yet. ... what's the idea? I'm afraid it really does start to play into the hands of those who seem to think that translation alters the message .... [cue debate on linguistic determinism.]
As Good as New: A Radical Retelling of of the Scriptures.

The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit

Sheesh! Just when you think that at last pricing is going to start people getting serious about alternatives to pumping fossil CO2 into the air, someone comes up with something that may keep the old oil addiction going ...

Muslim WakeUp! MWU! Info

This is worth checkin out if you're interested in the possibility of an open and tolerant Islam. It says of itself:
"Muslim WakeUp! champions an interpretation of Islam that celebrates the Oneness of God and the Unity of God’s creation through the encouragement of the human creative spirit and the free exchange of ideas, in an atmosphere that is filled with compassion and free of intimidation, authoritarianism, and dogmatism. In all its activities, Muslim WakeUp! attempts to reflect a deep belief in justice and against all forms of oppression, bigotry, sexism, and racism."

I hope that this is the start of such Muslims really standing up and offering an alternative to jihadist/islamist Wahhabism. They have a blog too.

Article originally found at ReligionNews Blog and the article is definitley worth reading for background.

Eyes opened at Wal-Mart job

. This kind of reminded me of a novel I have read recently Jennifer Government where corporations effectively rule the world and ... well I'll let you read it if you will, the title is based on the novellistic fact that people take a surname from the company or NGO they work for. JEnnifer is police so she works for the government. Anyway, this artilce is a bit worrying; seeming to put Wlamart in the frame for cult-like approach to HR management...

Apparently this book tells more....
Corporate Cults: The Insidious Lure of the All Consuming Organization.

naturally decaffeinated coffee

I'm afraid that the link goes to a Spanish article becasue I've not yet found it in English-speaking press. For the first timein ages I bought a copy of El Pais and this article was on the back. Basically, a new variety of coffee bean has been discovered which has practically no caffeine in it [apparently attempts to engineer this have not managed significant reductions in caffeine]. It has a good falvour too, we're told. So good news for those who like coffee but not caffeine and are also worried about some of the processes of decaffeination. Good news too for coffee-loving post-menopausal women worried about the effect of caffeine on making bones more brittle still.

PS just discovered an English language article: Enjoy!

Weekend in Durham

Just got back from spending the weekend in Durham which, given that it's about 12 days before we move there, seemed like a good idea. Tracy is doing a course on media and so it was a good opportunity for us to check out the house. I love the location, it's about 2km north of Durham city centre and we can walk from the housing estate we will be living on through woodland and fields right into the heart of the city -I had forgotten how much sometimes my city soul needs to let my childhood brought-up-in-Shropshire-countryside soul out from time to time. So I've decided that potentially I could really enjoy a regular walk into and out of the city via the countryside trail.

News: Toshiba Develops Word's Smallest Fuel Cells

Could be good news for eliminating batteries. Wonder what the other environmentl impacts of it are, though?

Book Crossing; releasing books into the wild

Don't you just love this idea?

Open Letter to Roman Catholic Bishops in the USA

I've been concerned recentlyat what I've read of what the RC bishops in USA have been saying, not because I think that we shouldn't take the rights of the unborn seriously but because there seems something unbalanced about isolating that particular pro-life issue from those to do with militarism, Iraq etc. Dave Batstone's open letter expresses the concerns well...

FREEWAYBLOGGER.com - Free Speech: Use It or Lose It

There's a whole lot of these pictures being captured on this blog. check out the website to be reminded that USA has people who care ...

Phoenix Environmental Motors

Sparrow electric car is to be produced. It's essentially a one-person thing but ...

Cutting Bishops

.

Will they really do this? Cold this be linked to something I blogged about a few months back? And I would like to reference a few comments I made yesterday too.

That and the quote from Jonny Baker's blog [quoting Graham Cray]:
'for the first time in 34 years of ministry i am running to keep up with what god is doing in the church of england' - something's happening!
Which has to be kept beside a comment from Sue Wallace of Visions in York, reflecting on my experience lately:
"What has happened to all this stuff they are saying about supporting new ways of being church? And resulting moral support and hard cash." And Maggi's comments are definitley worth a look too.

Anyway, wondering wheher this means that Bradford, Ripon and Leeds, and perhaps Wakefield are more likely to end up some kind of Archdiocese?

Isn't this sad? Yet somehow amusing? Oh what does it say about us? 

Punctuate your emails - Press Release Bradford University

I was schlepping about on the University of Bradford intranet earlier [trying to find out some details about interantional students for some colleagues] and came across this . It's awarning to us all, though clearly no barrier to becoming a writer [see last paragraph]!

So Eats, Shoots & Leaves... clearly has a point. I must admit I am not surprised. I sometimes read stories out loud to my wife and occasionally it is really hard to achieve fluency because the punctuation doesn't exist or doesn't help as much as it could. Then I notice that I do sometimes end up reading to myself certain passages a number of times because it is hard to work out the syntactic relationships without punctuation. Part of the secret of good writing is to realise that, without intonation, ambiguity increases. Therefore we have to compensate by more careful attention to word order and punctuation to increase the clues for the reader.

The interesting thing is about capital letters to start sentences -Jonny Baker, you have been warned!

Fossil fuel subsidies 'must end'

Excerpts from the report by the New Economics Foundation:

... a single year's worth of World Bank spending on fossil fuel projects could be spent instead on small-scale solar installations in sub-Saharan Africa, providing electricity for 10 million people.



And a year's worth of global fossil fuel subsidies could "comfortably" pay off sub-Saharan Africa's entire international debt burden, leaving billions of dollars to spare.



Reshaping our energy supply holds the secret to ending poverty and preventing global warming. Small-scale renewables remain the best answer for communities and the environment

Andrew Simms, Nef

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Citizenship test

"with an estimated $1,000bn (£546bn) in bribes disappearing into the pockets of government officials every year (much of it from companies), the offer by business to help stamp out corruption could be read as a straightforward move to reduce transaction costs."



Interesting article on development issues and the UN

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | FoE says Shell fails own green pledge

"FoE said there was an urgent need to reform company law so that directors have a 'duty of care' to consider the significant environmental and social impacts of their companies' policies and operations. "It is time the British government legislated and gave communities the right to protection from such corporate abuse. And they must be compensated when abuse occurs,"



Lnks up with the kind of things they've been saying over at AdBusters. I reckon we might have a chance with British Government of getting somewhere with this idea.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | FoE says Shell fails own green pledge

"FoE said there was an urgent need to reform company law so that directors have a 'duty of care' to consider the significant environmental and social impacts of their companies' policies and operations. "It is time the British government legislated and gave communities the right to protection from such corporate abuse. And they must be compensated when abuse occurs,"



Lnks up with the kind of things they've been saying over at AdBusters. I reckon we might have a chance with British Government of getting somewhere with this idea.

Open Source Initiative OSI - Doc11:Halloween Documents

Many of you may not be aware that there is a real battle going on right now for the future of software. The main protagonists are Micro$oft and the Open Source community [linux is a big player, but I use Open Office for w-p presentations etc, and Firefox to browse as well as Thunderbird for email ... ]. M$ seems to currently be funding all manner of dirty tricks to stem the flow of open source and therefore essentially free or super cheap software, which is winning hearts and minds in the developing world and may soon be making significant impacts in the developed world [I have a dual boot machine and would probably give Windows the boot once I've managed to get linux networked -at the moment it's the one downside to the OS].

So if you want to get a feel for this warfare, start here.

Environment campaigners attack house building plans

This is a good article for showing up the links between planning, social demand, environment and political process. A very knotty issue.

A thought for the day

This is reflecting on the Einstein quote shown in the picture and here "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that produced it". It seems to have a ring of truth; it is in line with the best insights about paradigm shifts, and while overstated, nevertheless values the fact that important progress comes from a change of consciousness. Now that may sound a bit NewAgey, but all Truth is God's truth and there is, I think, Truth in this. Perhaps the real Christian issue in this is the construal of the relationship between consciousness and human ontology but that's a big matter and best left for now to a book like The Joy of being wrong

Anyway, it seems to me that what I have started to describe in 'The ironic outcomes of the bureaucratic mind'> is probably an illustration: I was hoping for a change of consciousness to bring about a solution but had not reckoned with the force of the old paradigm heavily endowed with bureaucratic proceedure and fear of innovation. SO all my gentle and not-so gentle hinting and drawing attention to the contradictions was perhaps doomed.

And now, as an ordained Anglican standing on the brink of unemployment, I am finding that the Church of England 'solutions' to current retrenchment seem to fall under Einstein's dictum. I would be qualified to be a team leader in the new ideas for developing ministry, but do I want to be? I suspect not: mananging churches is not my thing; training people, releasing potential, creativity in ministry and worship and outreach, yes. But these things sit uneasily with the mindset necessary to run what parish ministry seems to be becoming. And in any case I now recognize that the insecurity of being in a samll church or a non-parochial ministry is hard to bear if you aren't prepared for it. At least if I were to 'go portfolio' [thanks to Charles Handy for the phrase -in 'The Elephant and the Flea'] means that you know that there is insecurity and are able to choose somewhat.

But I wonder whether we shouldn't be looking at things like portfolio careers for priests. Notionally we are office holders and so free agents, in a way. In practice, though, we are becoming more and more 'employed'. This is a reverse dynamic to what is happening in much of the rest of western professional work and culture where outsourcing, downsizing and the drive to self-employment means many more people are 'on their own'.

What if dioceses bought in the services of small social responsibility teams? -Possibly sharing them with neighbouring dioceses? What if we did away with the diocesan office entirely and bought in the services on a deanery or parochial basis as and when they were needed? And could Bishops be casualized? -They would get paid for confirmations etc on a pro rata basis and paid fees for other epsicopal functions? I'm not saying this is right, just thinking that asking some outof the box questions is a healthy exercise.

Institute of Ecolonomics

Again a site worth bookmarking. Lovely design too.

Earthship Biotecture - Putting Housing Back into the Hands of the People

Earthship Biotecture - Putting Housing Back into the Hands of the People>

Looks like a useful site to visit from time to time.

Stars Power Move to Green Energy

It's good to see some high profile people using their profile to promote green tech. SOme of them are doing some quite radical things such as making sure their homes 'walk the walk' -if that's not too dissonant a metaphor!

"As a Muslim, I say no to the cover-up"

Last week I drew attention to the case in Luton, where the young woman had not been allowed to wear the jilbab to school and so had not been to school for two years. The linked article here I saw in the Sunday Times last SUnday.

There are a number of things to note here. One is the title says a lot. An Arab woman author who is pleased to be able not to wear the jilbab and contrasts it favourably with Saudi Arabia on that score. It's a shame you don't get to see the picture of her that the ST printed with the article; it's quite clear that she wears 'ordinary' clothes [At the end of the article she says: "I love fashion and wearing designer clothes — a very short skirt, maybe, or a strapless bustier or décoletté cocktail dress — and I don’t feel disrespectful in any way to my religion. I want it to stay that way.". Here's how she looks so you get t least some idea.

I'm a little suspicious of the people hosting this version of the article since it is "A conservative news forum" -so I do express both my concern at what their agenda is for including it and that the link is not to imply I share the views of 'FreeRepublic'. I suspect that my take on life is far more lefty than they would find comfortable. But hey, the Times make you subscribe to see their articles, so any port in a storm.

One detail I picked up about this case which I have not been able to find an online link to is that her case has been supported and funded by Hizb-ut-Tahrir. And if you don't know the significance of that name let me say 'Hamza Yusuf deportation' and that when they were thought to be active on the campus here at Bradford University, we had the Special Branch in.

Now why would they be interested? Well the obcious thing is to make a point and strike a blow for Islam as they see it. But there may be a further agenda here which is to do with creating a pressure for other women to conform. It is already known that conservative Muslims tend to dominate Islamic public discourse because their implicit claims to be better Muslims tends to cow dissenters [who see themselves as somehow inferior in their practice] and even scare some into outward conformity with norms far more conservative than their actual views and to stifle dissent itself. Similar dynamics can be seen in other faith communities and political communities, btw.

This concern appears in the article: " by backing Shabina’s desire to cover up completely pressure would be put on her peers to do so too". Just so.

The other interesting thing though is the pastoral which seems not to be picked up. " Shabina, who was orphaned earlier this year following the death of her mother" and it seems that at this point she began to weat the Jilbab, and one wonders whether there is a dimension to this that is about mourning, respect for her mother, looking to find an anchor by clinging harder to her faith ... which if so I feel then she may be being exploited by HuT at a vulnerable time.

It's also interesting to scroll down to see the comments on this article.

Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore. By Christopher Hitchens

It's only fair that I should draw your attention dear reader to this article criticizing the Fahrenheit 9/11 film. There are some telling points though I don't think that it entirely rebuts the points I gather the film makes, but a few telling hits or modifiers.

Current Church Models Lead to Large Churches And Large numbers of Unchurched @ e-Church.com

I suspect that what Tim Bednar says here commenting on the Barna report on unchurchedness in the USA is accurate. Particularly when he says at the end:
"I tend to believe that the unchurched are sophisticated, smart and self-sufficient. They do not think they have "felt needs" nor do they want their spiritual formation programed. Why? Because formation is a mystery like the creative process.

They are the ones who buy organic food, shop thrift stores and buy hybrid cars.

They are independent voters and are not single issue or litmus test voters.

They make up the creative class (est. 60 million) and are often times the engine of growth for the communities where they live. They are often the ones offended by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertsons rhetoric--and they are uneasy with Bush's religious rhetoric. They consider themselves spiritual but not religious.

They build extended communities outside there family.

They underwent some Christian education, but have spent most of their adult lives "unlearning" it."

It seems to me that a lot of that would apply to significant numbers of people in the UK. These are 'my' people, and I would like to help them to connect with Christ .... There's a challenge.

Alternative Fuels Cropping Up

It's not a new idea and it could only ever be a stop gap in fuel terms because if, for example, we covered England in fuel crops, we wouldn't produce enough of the stuff to fuel current road use, so I'm told. But note that part of the proposal is to use grown hydrocarbons to produce plastics etc, which sounds more do-able. However, I worry that this is still a bit too much like propping up the old paradigm rather than exploring new ways of doing things....?

the Jesus Diet

Emergent Kiwi has proposed a mission diet; to free up resources for mission [understood in its broadest terms]. Quite a bit of debate over At Maggi Dawn's Blog on it. Upshot is to get clear of consuming so much. However, this needs to be balanced with how best to help the two-thirds world: fairer trade would be beter than handout aid.

I'm going to propose the Jesus diet. Given that most people in Jesus's time and place ate meat once a week and maybe more if there were leftovers to hve a go at, then I would challenge Christians to adopt it. If you need more persuading consider this: a meat eating westerner needs c. 45,000 sq.ft of land to feed them p.a. A Vegetarian needs only 9,000 sq.ft p.a.

Another idea to reduce consumption; I've started to shop more often but make sure that I can carry and walk home with whatever I get. That way I tend to buy more directly what we need than to be seduced by offers and things that we just fancy. It also means less of the wastage caused by having bought something quite a bit before it might be needed and finding that it has gone off in between times.

The other thing is to look at buying organic, locally produced, in-season and fair trade food not just as a sacrifice of cheapness [though it is not always now] but as a form of giving. If it helps us to feel better, let's see it as a part of our giving rather than just as part of our shopping.

What Would Buffy Do?

This could be interesting; I know that Buffy Studies is getting to be a bit of a hit in some cultural studies academic circles and this appears to be in the same arena except exploring the spiritual themes [and there a good few begging for comment]. Another 'must read' for emerging churchers?

FAIRCOPY Explained

This is an interesting model on IPR and profitablility -seems somehow more appropriate to a wired world than the music distribution industry's current model.

Clerical collars

There is a lot of debate over the role of clerical collars. I recognize times when it is important to wear one; -if I'm on 'official business' where it is important that people can recognize that I am acting in the capacity of ordained Christian; a clear and obvious example being hospital visiting. It is also the case that it can be disconcerting or embarrassing for some people to be so clearly marked out as 'consorting' with a clergybeing. And there are also times where it seems to me that it is not really appropriate because I am just one of the crowd and being marked out seems to give signals that somehow by wearing it, I'm claiming something like moral high ground [like when I was harangued by a lesbian in a pub for nothing more than wearing a clerical collar]or some kind of priviledged treatment. So I'm both for and against and depends-on-the-circumstances... There's articles on the 'net, a history lesson from the Banner of Truth [far too prot an organisation for my liking]and radical conguency on church world-inteface, for example

As I'm on sabbatical, yesterday at church [as co-preacher and presider] was the first time I'd worn one for ages. I wore an ordinary button down shirt and put a press-stud wrap-around strip of plastic under the shirt collar, bow-tie style, if you like. And this put me in mind of why thoughts on how to develop the clerical collar further. In putting these thoughts down under creative commons I'm also making it hard for someone [including yours truly] to patent the ideas and make money out of them, since a patent would rely on the idea not having been publically disclosed. So here goes.

One of the difficulties I have with the things is that the shirts are expensive compared with what I normally pay [I sometimes feel unjustifiably so] and so I have been working on all sorts of alternatives. The least radical of which is trying to make the things fit under ordinary-shirt collars. If you've ever tried this you will realize that there can be problems. Many shirts sit lower on the neck than clerical shirts and so trying to insert the long piece of press-studded plastic described earlier can proove hard because it tends to force the shirt collar higer up on the neck than it is designed to be with inelegant results. Also the collar has to be thick enough [not so much of an issue in the 2000's but in the 80's.... and probably thin collars will return to fashion soon. The most notable difficulty in this arrangement comes with polo shirts which have collars that basically sit where your shoulders meet your neck and so the press-studded plastic strip is a write off, really: it pulls the collar up and exposes itself shamelessly, thus frightening the horses.

In offering these ideas I'm basically playing with the idea that the semiotic value of the thing is in the white 'flash' showing up at the throat. I was alerted to this by the way that I have on a number of occasions double checked a passer-by wearing something that gave a flash of white at their neck or just above their sternum. So the idea of 'clergybeing uniform', I contend, is adequately conveyed by this white flash [and who knows, in years to come the developments I mention here may allow some variation to the plain white 'badge'?]provided that on closer inspection it looks deliberate and not simply like a white vest under a shirt or whatever.

First idea then is to have a simple small piece of plastic or cloth or ceramic [go ahead ... experiment with materials] just wide enough to fit between the wings of whichever shirt-collar you're using and also give anchor points for attachment. It needs to be kept in place by cord or chain which is preferably adjustable so that it can be re-lengthened or ~shortened to sit in the right position and so to obtain the desired effect. Experience tells me that it works best if your 'white flash' is slightly curved in the fashion of a shallow "(" -but turned on it's side, smiley fashion. The inside of the curve is to fit against the neck; so facing up. The fastening cord/chain needs to be secured to the 'flash' towards the top on both ends; i.e nearer the top than the bottom, so that the thing can hang somewhat -falling onto the sternum, usually. This can work well with polo shirts.

The second idea is to use those lapel-badges with the backing to secure the pin -you know: the ones that look a bit like they could do duty as ear-lobe piercings. These can anchor the flash to the collar and if you choose suitable motifs can add to the decorative effect [I have used doves and ichthus symbols] by having them on the outside of the collar. The advantage of this arrangement is that the collar can be kept open on warm days.

The third idea is more a cool weather one and arises from the fact that I like polo-neck sweaters, and that should tip you off to what I am going to suggest: the flash should be about 5-7cms [that 3 inches] long, according to taste and secured to the neck of the roll-neck by the lapel badges. simple as that. Various other methods of securing the flash are possible but I suggest you play with threads, loops, velcro etc etc to your heart's content.

The fourth idea is also for a roll-neck using a more conventional plastic insert. simply cut two slashes into the roll-neck at the appropriate point [I suggest that you use some darning wool to tidy up the edges] so that you can insert the flash into the roll. The thing to be careful of here is to remember that the roll-neck often expands when you wear it, so cut the slashes about 2-3 cm apart [1-1.5 inches]. I;ve been thinking of adapting a ski style roll-neck and placing the clerical flash over the logo which is often off-centre .. could look stylish, maybe ....

The ironic outcomes of the bureaucratic mind

Part the third: sundry gripes
The icing on the cake is that as a result of all the diocesan shenanigans mentioned in the previous two parts of this mini-series, Tracy developed a whole rash [sometimes literally] of stress-related illnesses, exacerbated by the death of a friend of ours. This and the position of our kids in terms of education timing, has now meant that she has had to restart her training, beginning next October, rearranged ordination year is now 2006 .... It's been a mess. Most annoyingly it has been an avoidable mess. First of all we could have planned differently if it had been made unequivocally clear that there was no possibility that my post would be retained. Secondly the diocese could have acted differently and offered various forms of help which were well within capability [egg keeping us in the house pro them].

The house issue is doubly galling since there is one priest who has resigned his orders and is setting up an independent church, who has been allowed to stay in the vicarage while he gets himself sorted out. No I don't begrudge a charitable act, and I think that it is a lovely generous gesture, but here we are, wanting to stay connected with the CofE and finding that similar and arguably more necessary steps were not taken. Not good is it?

The official diocesan position seems to be that it was a done deal when certain votes were taken in 2001 [I think it was that year] at diocesan synod. The implication is that we should have realized what the score was. Okay, I can see that -except for the complicating factor: none of the people now touting that line actually said it before September 2003; quite the reverse: they spoke wrote and acted as if the decision were still to be made. I actually have emails on my hd drive to prove it. Furthermore, various diocesan bodies that should have been made aware of it clearly were not and were allowed to remain in ignorance; the diocesan appointed group that reviewed the chaplaincy post last summer were asking whether they were engaged in an exit review and seemed to have been told not and their report reflects that, nor were the synodical liaison committee overseeing my post since they recommended its retention.

From a personal point of view one of the worst things has been to feel like a pariah; eg. to see a group discussing the future of chaplaincy, asking questions about what's what which I could have answered easily but never being consulted, as if I no longer existed and as if my experience no longer counted.

That said I would like to pay tribute to my local deanery chapter who have been a great support to me personally, as have my chaplaincy colleagues and a handful of people within the diocesan structures whose hands have been tied, I recognize.

REad the previous ironic outcomes... first part. Second part

Pagans find spirituality they missed in church

I keep banging this drum; we need to pay attention, as Christians, to Paganism etc. as in indicator/barometer of post-modern spirituality including critique of Christian faith. In that vein this article is fascinating.

School says girls must wear trousers

Interesting don't you think? Be interested in other comments .....

"The Debate Show" Fraud

As someone who has had their share of invitations from local and national media to say something about something else, this is a chiling little tale and worth noting because you and I dear reader are just the kind of people that would make for good stooges for this kind of programming. Needless to say I lament the erosion of trust that is the likely outcome of this kind of stuff

The other thing is that it is a story that bears testimony to the value of good skills with search engines; I must admit I'm beginning to find that you have to be inventive and cunning sometimes to find the info. It's often out there but not always easy to find.

Why broadband over power lines is a bad idea

Not so much a Brit issue but I thought that some of you might be interested to have an example of how un-discrete things often are; ostensibly a USAmerican telecoms issue actually has ramifications for quite lot of people worldwide ... we live in a deeply connected world, folks.

stamen: google news

I really like the look and feel of this. It seems to have launched off from Newsmap -a Google news agggregator. but a bit more abstract with an attempt to show more time and keeping the sense of how much space is devoted to what stories. I suspect I might keep it running in a seperate tab on my browser.
Check it out. If nothing else it gives you an insight into what lights up my brains pleasure centres.

The ironic outcomes of the bureaucratic mind

Part the second: paying a 'stipend' not to work.
What's wrong with paying a stipend not to work? After all a stipend is a payment made as a kind of retainer to make sure that a person needs not take other work to support themselves or their family; in particular so that a priest may dedicate themselves to the work of their office. Well, let me tell you how not doing joined up thinking costs money.

Remember first that my post is being made redundant as a result of financial constraints, ostensibly. In short, the diocese of Bradford can't afford to do everything it once did and so savings have to be made and so the post of Anglican Chaplain to the University of Bradford and Bradford College will no longer be funded by the Diocese of Bradford. This saves a stipend of c.£18k p.a [plus on costs]. They would have you believe that it saves c.£30k pa with on-costs but since that figure is probably made up of a c. £7k estimate of the value to the clergybeing of a tied house when the actual costs are probably £2k-£3k pa, well, let's say I'm a little skeptical [not least because we are in effect in the position of having to rent our house from our employer, if one is going to add the value to our 'package' -like being paid in factory tokens in the industrial revolution]. I may be wrong on this, but if so then I'd like to see how the £30k figure is arrived at.

Let's remember too that part of the plan is probably to sell the chaplaincy centre which, at todays' rates is likely to realize a per annum income of about £10k [perhaps a bit more].

So, where's this going? Tracy is an ordinand sponsored by the diocese and so under current arrangements, since she is full-time in training, when we move as a family to [in this case] Durham, the diocese have to rent a house for us [at rates higher than Bradford rents] and, if I am not employed, they are committed to paying a family allowance of not much short of a stipend, in effect. Of course the money comes from a different budget and doesn't involve as many on-costs. But meantime there is no shortage of potential work I could have been doing at the university for that money which is all coming from the diocesan funds ultimately. Some of that work would have paved the way for the possibility [strong in my opinion] of the university making a contribution to the chaplaincies.
Can you see where the gaps that might easily have been joined up are? I'm sure you can.

In the meantime, of course, I'm well-nigh unemployable as a priest since a real issue will be for many whether they really want to have someone for just a couple of years, quite possibly. I know that in the USA two years is apparently normal, but in Britain it's not, and to go in to interview with it implicit by the fact of having a wife who is in training [because, of course, wives are part of the package] ... Good job the retirement age is 70, I may need it to catch up on my lost years of service contributory to pension.

Previous Ironic outcomes, and following ...

We can dream too

Whitefella Jump Up

Interesting article about healing the aboriginal/white divide in Australia, promoting Germaine Greer's latest book on the subject.

It's interesting how the plight of whites in Oz seems to be the plight of the West writ large, somehow.

I loved this: "From first contact, the leaders of many Aboriginal peoples saw that sharing of the land would be possible only if the whitefellas could be drawn into the Aboriginal system. They pursued a deliberate policy of co-option, hoping to civilise the invaders into abandoning their inappropriate concepts of ownership and exclusivity."

Not sure her thoughts about development of Engliah language in Oz would stand scrutiny but it's an interesting line of thought.

THe suggestions for land-reform sound good, but I nowhere near an expert, they have the feel of justice being done though. All stemming from recognizing Australia as an Aboriginal nation; ie one which settlers and the Crown had no right to claim in the first place.

Intersting, and in view of the number of Aussies I now seem to know, parhaps something to read fully

The march of the mobiles

Interesting thing to note buried in this is that Nokia is testing tiny hydrogen fuel cells for mobile phones' power.

Are we ready for when the oil runs out?

I don't know how I missed the chair of SHell publically announcing that global warming is happening and that burning fossil hydrocarbons is a big cause ... but apparently he did.



The interesting thing is that his solution was sequestration not renewable power. Makes you wonder whether Shell are sitting on something...

The ironic outcomes of the bureaucratic mind

Part the first: the strange case of the empty House.
I am wondering what will happen to the delightful if sometimes awkward and certainly expensive-to- run house that we occupy until July 2004. And hereby hangs a Tale. You see, when I was informed that my post was being made redundant, Tracy -my spouse- had just started training for ordination and was going away early in the week and coming back for the weekend. Since I had been given to hope that my post would continue we had planned that we would continue to live at Faith Sawrey's House [as it is often known] until Tracy was ordained in 2005 at which point we might move and if necessary I might be looking for some other suitable employment. Perhaps it should be noted that people in the diocesan structures were aware of this and no-one told us that it was inadvisable to plan like this.

When I was told of my redundancy, one of our first thoughts was that we would ask the diocese if we could continue to live at Faith Sawrey's house for the extra year until Tracy had finished her training. This ought to be possible we reasoned, because the house is a vicarage in a parish that is amalgamating and would be surplus once the appropriate legal machinations had ground through, normally taking a couple of years, we understood. So the diocese are forced to keep the house for at least a couple of years, and if we are not in it then there are surely disadvantages to it being empty for longish periods of time, not least in this area disadvantages with price tags. Not an unreasonable request, we felt, for an ordinand whose husband was being made redundant by the diocese at a juncture in the children's lives when some continuity would be useful.

Well I'm sure that you have realized where this is going, else I wouldn't be writing about it. And likely you're right. Yes, indeed; we were told that perhaps we could use a vacant curate's house somewhere further away [places mentioned which would mean no real possibility of maintaining school continuity], perhaps. But it seems that staying here was out of the question. To this day we cannot understand why. Unless they have in mind to place an awaited archdeacon here, perhaps? If it remains empty there will be maintenance and security costs to the diocese, not least the garden and the risks of vandalism.

Next of the ironic outcomes articles and the third of the articlesironic outcomes

Fahrenheit 9/11 set UK date

A date for your diaries. Now I've got to work out where in Durham we can get to see it -I have a suspicion that it may mean a trip to Newcastle, once we've cleared the debris from moving.

BBC to Open Content Floodgates

Either great minds think alike or fools seldom differ; I had this article cued up for comment when I find that Jonny Baker has already drawn our attention to it. Still it's worth shouting loud about, the reason I wanted to flag it up is that it may proove to be an invaluable worship resource for the moving-image minded [like me]. So who's going to start the countdown?

Joan of Arcadia - TV Series -

Well I've now managed to see two full episodes and I'm impressed. I love the family characterisations and the wrestling with issues of right and wrong. I like the way that God talks to Joan in the personae of various people usually doing fairly humble things and in the personae of all races, both genders, differnent ages etc etc. I like the way that God is somehow elusive but that in the end there seems to be some kind of sense comes out of the inscrutablility but that the doing the right thing isn't necessarily straight forward because of lack of imagination or deflection by unforeseen consequence and miscuing responses.

It seems to me that it deserves its awards, on the showings so far. It's not saccharinny like 'Touched by and Angel', there's a robustness about its 'theologizing' which has room for exploration, indeed invites questioning, and seems to give room for others to make their own responses and is open to hearing good insights from a variety of sources; all truth is God's truth ... check it out my friends. Though I'm afraid UK folk will need cable or somesuch at the moment as it's on Living TV. -Which probably measn that I have only about two weeks viwing left since we move to Durham at the beginning of July.

On that latter point I will be blogging more, no doubt as I become a freelance priest/missioner/researcher living off my wife's grant ... I'll bore you with detials another time!

The Australian: Gavin Gilchrist: It's too little, too late, PM [June 16, 2004]

Australians are growing anxious and it's worth noting that. The really interesting bit comes at the end:

"You only have to look around our cities at night to see how much energy we waste. And that's just the waste you can see. There are all sorts of reasons we don't build our factories, office buildings, shopping centres and houses so they are highly efficient in the way they consume energy. That must change. No advanced nation should be planning its energy and environmental future without an aggressive energy efficiency strategy."



It's all those reasons why not that need tackling. most of them are about pricing and tax etc. SOmetimes it's training architects to see that avoiding waste makes for better buildings and often cheaper buildings to run where extra costs in building can be offset by lower costs for things like air conditioning or heating or lighting because the design makes the most of what is alread on offer ...

The Wahhabis keep tearing down Muslim holy places in Saudi Arabia. -- Beliefnet.com

This is a useful little article for providing an insight on the 'fault line' [a phrase of Dr Philip Lewis] in international Sunni Islam between Wahhabi and similar movements and more Sufi-leaning traditions.

Elaine Pagels and Ben Witherington III on Jesus and Paul--Scholarly Smackdown -- Beliefnet.com

This is a very interesting discussion of Gnostic gospels and I was interested to learn that it may well be that the Gospel of Thomas may not deserve to be lumped in with the gnostic writings, it could be earlier and it does not betray normal Gnostic emphases, though in fact it seem that it may not add anything much to the canonical gospels.

Useful still when following up the Da Vinci Code and certain 'NewAge' claims.

stress disremembers one

Study showing that stress and memory are not good friends. Hmmm, implications for examinations? Witnesses of crimes? Religious occasions?

Social status affects your lifespan

This article really does deserve a read with the question in mind about how we respond as Christians to discover that the health of our neighbours may depend on the kind of society we help to create ...

Who's next?

Planet Ark : Iran Warns G8 It Will Not Halt Nuclear Program
It just looks a bit like Iran could be about to find itslef in the cross-hairs. Only perhaps they are banking on the fact that the USA appears to have bitten of more than it can chew in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the presidential election will focus minds somewhat.... ?

WTO rules in favour of David; Goliath will be *%$$ed

At last: WTO is doing what it's supposed to do. In this case ruling illegal the USA's subsidizing of cotton production and it looks like the UK sugar beet production could be next. And then perhaps the EU's common agricultural policy ... ? It's about time the made of just how richer countries play the system [illegally, often] to skew markets. It should also be noted that these subsidies have negative climate impacts because they are often propping up regimes of agriculture and manufacture that entrench oil [in fertilizers and food miles, for example]

Seeing how plants split water could provide key to our future energy needs

THis could be the signifiacnt breakthrough of the century: water splitting made easy and hydrogen economy here we come!?

Record low turnout mars EU voting

Irony is that what we are seeing in the UK in terms of voting for Euro-Skeptic parties is replicated across the EU. Even when we're being least European we're being European. Goes for a lot of things.

Vote does show that the British electorate is probably more sophisticated than given credit for. It seems to me they/we have worked out that you can do diferent things with your vote according to whether you're voting local, national or Euro.

Another interesting thing is that the only 'party' to attempt EU-wide strategy was the Greens -and they are somewhat Euro-skeptic [favouring devolution, against common currency ...]

PS apologies re the map: it seems to exlude Finland and Eire but includes Norway -so not the EU really...

23 October: 6000 anniversary of creation selon Ussher

Earth Puzzle.John Martin.www.images.com
I've put this is my diary; it's too delicious to miss as a possible church/service topic ... I'm seeing stuff on the use and misuse of scripture, some lovely stuff on creation according to current scentific knowledge, appreciation exercises for God as creator .... could be good.

I think too that we should note that Ussher was no obscurantist in his time. He was actually considered a fine brain and sympathetic to science. It's what people did with his work afterwards ....

Finally credit goes to TallSkinnyKiwi for digging this one up.

PS from Feb 2006: being as I keep noticing that this posting still gets visited, I can't work out why, I think I should point to the correction I posted a little later. The BC date is in effect a negative number so in fact 2004 would be the 6,008th year anniversary. We should have 'celebrated' in 1996.

A joke from the dales

shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a
brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young
man in a Savile Row suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses, and YSL tie,
leans out the window and asks the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many
sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looks at the man, then looks at his peacefully grazing flock
and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it
to his Nokia phone. He surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls
up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location
which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an
ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in
Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg,
Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the
image has been processed and the data stored.

He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel
spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads all of this data
via an email on his Bluetooth and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech,
miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the shepherd and says,
"You have exactly 1586 sheep."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep," says the
shepherd.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as
the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car.

Then the shepherd says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly
what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?" The young man thinks
about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a consultant," says the shepherd. "Wow! That's correct, but how did
you guess that?" "No guessing required," answered the shepherd. "You showed
up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I
already knew. You answer a question I never asked; and you don't know
anything about my business."

"Now give me back my dog."

BNP win local seats

This is worrying -the BNP won four seats in Bradford Metropoliton area. Hateful. All the seats are in 'marginal' areas where there is a fairly mixed population; white areas where Asians have been moving in, as far as I can tell. Good news is that Shiply has 3 Green again and they have now been joined by a further Green councillor from Heaton ward. Lib Dems made some gain too. It's still a 'no overall control' council though.

Signing signatures significantly

Recently I have been trying to trace a clergybeing on the basis of a signature in a baptism register. It has prooved difficult because the signature was not readable/ Fortunately the diocesan email group enabled me to nudge someone's memory and it is clear now how to read the signature and so copy it for a certificate.
Artist: ©Michael Linley/Images.com
Of course, part of the problem nowadays is that most of us have signitures that function a bit like personal logos; they are not necessarily meant to be readable. However I am told that in the old days you simply wrote your own name in your own hand and it was assumed it would be as legible as your normal hand, whereas in these days of signing cheques, hundreds of letters at once in offices, autographs etc etc we develop signitures that are, well, interesting conjunctions of squiggles, usually. Some of us even play around for aesthetic effect -mine has a smiley face in the middle formed out of three of the letters of my name, for example.

Ps the picture cam from a great site I just discovered yesterday http://www.images.com/ many of the images are okay to use for non-profit purposes. I think that linking them like this is okay.

German Spam Floods Inboxes

Spam seems about to take another turn as political extremeists get in on spamming to peddle their messages. In a way it's no worse than the commercial stuff we now get; most filters should start to pick it out etc; it's just that it is yet another source and there will always be some that gets through ...

Paradoxology: images

Desrt Pastor over on Paradoxology keeps finding fabulous images for his bloggs. Chris, if you're reading, do tell where you find them.

Nuke power costs -not rosy for supporters

A week or two back a prominent scientist touted nuke power as the answer to all our global warming nightmares -ignoring the externalised costs to future generations of cleaning up the waste [still no sign of a solution folks] and the increasing security risks and so costs of safety and the potential damage to whole swathes of land should a terrorist manage to plant a bomb or crash a plane into one -remember Chernobyl? SO now we also need to note that it's probably cheaper and safer to subsidize the development of renewable energy. There's a good letter in the Church Times today on that subject too.

Samsung to phase out use of hazardous chemicals in manufaturing

This too is really good news. Just as I got used to the idea that using a computer was saving wood, I discover that the PC itself was likely to have used up quite a few resources and polluted widely in order to be made and delivered. This promises a way forward to make sure that increasingly electronic goods are better on that score.

PCB clean -up costs = billions

And the question is who pays? The polluter? I reckon there's a fair bet that they won't; it'll be us. They've profitted in part because they were given a licence to poison the biosphere and their clean-up costs were not included in their costs -rather those costs have been externalised to the rest of us. Yet another pointer to why it is important to find mechanisms to internalise such costs. It's partly what the EU directives about taking back fridges etc are aimed to do, I think. So a step in the right direction.

Women only writing

This fascinates me becasue I am a linguist and particularly enjoy sociolinguistics and orthographic matters. Here's women-only Chinese script, recently discovered, age unknown. And the questions are fascinating, particularly that of how come it's only used by women. I suppose the smart money has to be on smething to do with their lack of access to education, a means of empowerment and solidarity in a feudal society.

It's a pointer to a phenomenon observed elsewhere of the human ability ot take cultural artefacts and re-work them to serve one's own purposes. Once the idea of writing is out there it can be taken up by others if their access to it is restricted and they see in it a means ot their own ends. That's why we need to be careful of assigning single-use meanings to technology and art forms. The consumption and use of such things may be fairly polyvalent depending on time, place and users. It's also why we should ask ourselves regularly what, for example, our Churchy stuff might actually convey to someone who isn't in the know: we all try to make sense of stuff but sometimes we make the wrong connections and our meaning may be other than that intended.

For example what is the meaning conveyed by having the kids leave the main body of the Church part of the way through the service? We know that it's so that they can engage in Christian education appropriate to their age. But is that how it looks and is read? Perhaps it could be interpreted as a comment on the boringness of adult church activity [later leading to 'Please don't make me stay, it must be awful'], or perhaps it could be read as an exercise of power: we do different things now but the adults stay in the priviledged nicely carpetted well decorated places [I know that this doesn't work in all churches] while 'we kids' go off to the draughty hall to do some silly things with paints ...

Anyway I guess you get the picture.

Warm spell to last ... about 15,000 years

One of those stories where the headline may be misleading. It appears that the ice age scenario is being thrown out. But note that this is only about regular sequences of glaciation over the last half milion years or so, that we now have, terms of those years, an unprecedented amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases floating around. So the concern that the gulf stream may be put into reverse is not addressed, in actual fact. It just seems less likely that this is waht caused ice ages previously -though I may be wrong in the way I've interpreted this.

Green Church

Literally a green church. All images copyright Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey 2003- the link goes straight to/from their site.

No Sweat

We've recently started to buy stuff from here. The items come with a document that tells you about the wages and conditions of the workers.

The experience of torture and the new twist

SojoMail brings us this account of what being tortured means. ALso a hopeful story because of the humanity of the victim and their perspective.

Business News - Aids 'bigger problem than global warming'

Hmm, note who the leading protagonist of this conference is: well-known - and dismissed by fellow climate scientists - global warming denialist, Bjorn Lomborg. I note that he's invited economists to this rather than it being a climatological conference and I suspect therefoer that the cost/benefit analysis is not based on fair costings for climate change [being as how he denies there will be much detriment]. So what value the conclusions? GIGO.

NOABYS

IE "Not in Anybody's Back Yard". Environmental activists evolve from nimbys to a more solidary approach. I found the following comment about the wealth index especially revealing.
"The makeup of complainants also confounds the old image of the middle-class environmental protester and suggests that poor people fight more for their environments - or are the most affected by developments. Of 500 cases examined in detail by ELF, nearly half came from people over 50, but the wealthy were found to be the least likely to complain about the deterioration of their local environment."

Why is that? My guess is that it has something to do with the sense on the part of the wealthy that they can always buy their way out of trouble and in any case they often already have [big gardens, trees etc etc], whereas the poorer know that this isn't an option and only exercising political muscle will get them help.
Maybe.

Shame that windfarms seem to be one of the things campaigned against.

coming energy crunch

Good article from the USA about energy policy and the real issues that are not being discussed in the presidential election campaigns.

Blogs Can Be Infectious

I've noticed that sometimes bits of my content end up in a better known-blogger's site without attribution. It's easily done, I know. I try to make sure I linkback, but sometimes you're in a hurry and sometimes you forget ... but come-on folks, let's give credit where it is due.

Anyway, this article explores the nature of information flow in blogs. The interest to sociologists is,
"There is a lot of speculation that really important people are highly connected, but really, we wonder if the highly connected people just listen to the important people," said Lada Adamic.

I'm thinking now ....

networks cleverer than individuals

A fascinating wee article that discusses what the title says with some examples. I suspect that the driving force for the forthcoming 'holistic' periood of history [grandiose that claim, eh?] will come from precisely such insights being turned into action by businesses seeking an edge. And with it comes the recognisiton of our interconectedness and the extreme individualism of late modernity/pomo starts to fade. Have we begun to think how to procalim the gsopel and reshape our thinking as Christians to holism? Well, I'm working on it but I'm not at all convinced I see much around.

No time just now to extrpolate, but there are various threads that emerge form this. Hopefully I can mention some of them in coming blog-posts.

Is God Green? by Mark Laurent

This really deserves reading. Picked up via Greenflame blog. A little further comment on TheGreening.

Is God Green?

Picked up via Greenflame blog. Really helpful -and condensed- article on why Christians shold be 'green'. One picky bit though is that the bit aboutJohn 3.16 and the word cosmos. Although we nowadays tend to use it to mean all of creation, it is probably, given the way that John uses it in the gospel, that it actually refers primarily to human society. That said: there are plenty of other reasons in the article why we should take seriously God's love for all that God has made.

ETA Green Transport Week 2001

Liftshare day is part of Green Transport week....
Something that Churches should take seriously -how can we make sure that our going to and coming from Church is as sustainable as possible? National walk to church Sunday is one attempt to address this, but I have the impression that it is seen as a bit too gimmicky.

The importance of addressing it all is brought home to me, strangely enough, by the fact that we have a Mosque about 500meters from us. In the evenings [prayer time] each day the road opposite is choked with cars of men going for their prayer times. Many of them, I suspect, actually live within walking distance but western habits .... I don't know what the CO2 cost of those prayer times is but it must be huge. But then carry that over to people going to church on Sundays and at other times ....

It is certainly threatening to eclectic churches who would be devestated by not having people drive to church; mega churches and even more modest big city churches are a product of oil. Hmmm what would that mean if petrol prices continue to rise [as they must -see yesterdays blogs]? Alt worship and emerging church perhaps need to address their ecological footprints and perhaps realise that the future might be small and local.

National Liftshare day

Monday 14th -share a lift, share a car. This is a national website which enable people to share journeys and costs of journeys.. Give it a go.

YouGov Poll: 60% would have preferred money spen on Iraq war to go on aid

And of course, the problem is, no -one seriously believes that Conservatives would have done so either ...

Break out the bicycles

What a great article! I think I've discovered that I'm a Monbiot-ite: there's stuff in this article that I have been saying. And then there's stuff that puts recent oil price rises in perspective, like this para:
the age of cheap oil is over. If you doubt this, take a look at the BBC's online report yesterday of a conference run by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. The reporter spoke to the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol. "In public, Mr Birol denied that supply would not be able to meet rising demand ... But after his speech he seemed to change his tune: 'For the time being there is no spare capacity. But we expect demand to increase by the fourth quarter by 3m barrels a day. If Saudi does not increase supply by 3m barrels a day by the end of the year we will face, how can I say this, it will be very difficult. We will have difficult times.'" The reporter asked him whether such a growth in supply was possible, or simply wishful thinking. "'You are from the press?' Birol replied. 'This is not for the press.'" So the BBC asked the other delegates what they thought of the prospects of a 30% increase in Saudi production. "The answers were unambiguous: 'absolutely out of the question'; 'completely impossible'; and '3m barrels - never, not even 300,000'. One delegate laughed so hard he had to support himself on a table." And this was before they heard that two BBC journalists had been gunned down in Riyadh.

Me; I'm wondering how to buy land in the Sahara because when north west Europe becomes iced up then the Sahara will revert to savannah. Start saving for your plot of land in Mali or Chad and for the necessary solar panels to run your home ...

Rowan says to watch soaps

Okay that's a cartoony version of what he said -but you get the idea. I always felt a bit sheepish in parish ministry to admit that I watched some soaps; but beleive me, it di help to know what was in people's heads over certain issues and at certain times. It also meant that occasionally connection could be made pastorally, apologetically or in teaching. But it always felt like admitting to something that clergy shouldn't be doing -like I had nothing better to do. I actually did think it was important [and I did enjoy it] as a way to stay current in an inner city situation ... still do but with the amount of hours you have to clock up to watch Corrie, 'Stenders, Emmerdale, Neighours .... selctive and occasional is the new watchword.

In anycase, is it me getting old or is the melodrama quotient of soaps rising?

Birmingham trials nappy loan scheme

I must admit to having a bad conscience about the nappy issue. It has to be said that disposables really are so easy to use but they are so bad environmenatlly. I want to encourage people not to use them but something in the back of my mind screams 'hypocrite' -after all we used 'em.



However when you look at the costs too ... and nowadays there are some good non-disposable designs and then along come Brum council and pilot this -because it'll help them with their landfill. I hope it works out well and gets rolled out all over the place.

The Western Mind of Radical Islam

A fascinating article about Islamist debt to western thought. It rang bells for me when I read one Arab commentator [a minister of Religion]:
'they "ignore the fundamental facts of Islam." Like Mawdudi, these autodidacts mix a bit of this and that,'
Note the autodidact bit: these are often people who are uprooted from their own culture by learning and who feel a need to reconstruct Islam but without having really got hold of it in their home context and who teach themselves [I believe they often end up Salafi as a result]. Then there is the pick'n'mix approach -where have we seen that before: new agery and postmodernism generally. In fact the NewAge comparison works at both levels: NewAgers [for want of a better term; Western Esotericists, perhaps] are often autodidacts when it comes to science and religion and they engage in a pick and mix approach held together by certain fundamental assumptions which are normally the reflexes of post-modernism ... hmmmm

gallery owner becomes target after showcasing painting of Iraqi prisoner abuse

I find this really disturbing; in the land of free speech, the actions of -I hope- a minority should reproduce, in a sense, the very thing that they are protesting about.

Intersting comment from the article:
The irony of the attacks hasn't been lost on Haigh. Among the expressions of support she's received since shuttering the gallery, her favorite is an e-mail whose writer said, "I'm sure that a few and dangerous minds don't understand that they have only mimicked the same perversity this painting had expressed."

FT call for carbon tax

Look at the last para; yes the FTreally is recommending a carbon tax. Surely the deed cannot be far behind? Let's hope not. Of course those planning fuel protests won't like it but I'm afraid they will really have to get used to rising fuel prices. What we need is a way to switch costs to road usage rather than vehicle ownership. At present, the costs of owning a car mean that to get value out if it it needs to be used. We need to alter things so that more usage more expense. A carbon tax would do that and hopefully release money to be used to defray the costs of environment and health care as well as to ease transitions to more people and envirnomentally friendly ways of moving people around.

Eternal sunshine, memory snd identity

Recently I saw 'The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'. I was surprised to discover that, while it had moments of lightness, it was more serious than Jum Carrey in the star role led me to expect. And I'm not criticizing that; I enjoyed the film.

What I found interesting about it all on reflection is noting that memory and identity seem to be in the public domain in film around now: we also had Memento recently, for example, as well as being a theme in some TV shows. Not to mention Arnie's Martian film a few years back....

It seems to me the message is, in part at least; who we are is partly about who we remeber ourselves to be, or who we beleive ourselves to be on the basis of what we think we remeber. Is there a certain anxiety about this as we begin to process culturally the knowledge flowing from studies on false memory etc, that memory is somewhat fragile; are we who we think? IF we do not learn from the past are we condemned to repeat it? -Even if we can't remember it?

Eternal Sunshine picks up this last thought in that it seems that the main characters and two of the supporting characters seem to have something other than memory that reconnects them to people they have loved and 'had made forgotten'. The thesis, if we could call it that, is that something of who we are is not just about particular memories.

Of course the other thing that comes over is how hard it is to unpick a piece of our life from the rest of our life; the multitudinous interconnections and cross-references. It is interesting that Lacuna is the name of the memory-altering company. Yet creating a lacuna is seen to be a very exacting thing requring co-operation from friends and family so that nothing is mentioned that could set one back on the road of memory recovery.

Part of the plot revolves around the morality of doing such things, and in case you haven't seen it, I will leave it at that.

As a Christian I welcome things that help us think about identity and memory and encourage a wholistic thinking about life. It seems to me that identity before God offers a way beyond, to some extent, the anxiety of identity which is founded on little more than what passes away [the mortal clothed in immortatlity]. There is also an implicit question mark here against popular notions of re-incarnation. I think that reflecting on this film could help us to engage certain themes in new age and certain trends in western appropriation of Buddhism.

South Africa: Tenders Invited for Rural Solar Power Systems

I have read that mobile phone usage in Africa is huge and growing because the infrastructure is not there for landlines and it would be expensive mobile telephony is emerging as the solution. Similarly, because of infrastructrual costs, it looks like solar power could also be set to make it big in Africa ...

allAfrica.com: Uganda: Organic Agriculture Takes Off in Luweero

I didn't know that once Uganda had been an organic farming powerhouse and then fallen from grace, so to speak. Anyway, organisc farming is returning to Uganda.

Why? -"We are trying to meet a need as people crave to adopt organic agriculture, which is cheaper to practise, cost- effective and yields wonderful returns. This is a pure miracle, as compared to the yield when using artificial fertilisers," said Edward Kimbugwe, the president general of the organisation.

New blog on the kit: Jesus Outside the Box

New to the world of blogging a longing expressed here for how church could be. Only clues to identity are a US context and a husband ... Oh and a fallen-out-with-church-ness which is not bitter but wistful. I warm to the manifesto for church in the second posting. I think I'll be keeping company with this blog for a while.

Holman Christian Standard Bible

I gather this has just been published. One of my tests for new translations is inclusivity, so I go through various passeges to see how they do. This one was doing well; lot's of 'Anyone who ...', pluralizations etc but look what happens in Jn6.44 "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day." or at v.54 "Anyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day".

All of a sudden, non-gender specific becomes masculine. What word should they have used? 'them' would work; it's quite common and even goes back to Shakespeare in use as an indeterminate pronoun . Or you could go down the NRSV route of pluralising. ["Those who ... raise them up..."].

And just in case you think it's a glitch look at 2Cor 5.10 "... so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body..." So all you women readers, fear not the judgment, ye shall see your menfolk repaid but ye yourselves shall be saved, for judgement applieth only unto them of male gender.

Ah well, at least I can still use the NRSV with integrity.

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Sizing up the digital home

Tha last para says:
"From the consumer's perspective the major reason for investing in the digital home is that offers even more software choice. But maybe we already have enough to choose from already. Although Sky has shipped millions of digital boxes, a huge percentage of the UK population seems perfectly satisfied with the more limited Freeview digital terrestrial offering. They simply won't be interested in more choice."

I think that this is astute and may be correct: choice is being touted as the be-all-and-end-all, but is it? Yes it is good to have choices, but as a cable TV subscriber [the aerial signal by us is not brilliant] I can say that many a time I fancy watching something, I cannot find anything on 40+ channels because choice is still about what suits the market. So I have a choice of a load of stuff I don't want. When we move we're just having Freeview ....

Anyway, I digress; We are not wired for so much choice, it makes us anxious. What we crave is limited choice but which limits are our own and which limits suits us. Yes, we need and enjoy sometimes exceeding those limits but usually that comes about organically -look at the internet, and is it possible that blogging is acting as a kind of recommendation service for many of us, not even knowing what we might be able to choose? What might interest us? If we are going to have choices we need to feel we can control them and that we can move beyoind them. But choice for choices sake? I don't think so -And I'm a Myers-Briggs 'P' who likes to keep options open ....

Have the phishers had their chips?

Apparently people who have been contacted by 'phishers' [recieved one of those emails purportedly from a bank asking you to double check your account by going to the link site and entering your details? -That was a phishing expedition] and succombed, are too embarrased to admit it ... anyway the important thing here is the news that we may soon be issued with little devices by our banks which would generate code from our card chip which would demonstrate we really were the cardholder. Security on line and cutting phishing off at the knees.
Now where did I put that device ..... ?

The darkness between dreams

Brief reflection on the courage it takes "to wait in the darkness between dreams" ...

Fahrenheit 9/11 finds coalition of willing distributors

Looks like Fahrenheit 9/11 will be seen in USA after all. ...

Bohemian culture 'is now the norm' or is it?

Fascinating article claiming that we are pretty much all the cultural inheritors of the bohemians: it was their 'wierdness' and protest and willingness to not conform that have ehlped create the informal, first-name, dress-down society we now know and [usually] love. If it were true it would be a salutary lesson in the power of small actions when promoting an idea whose time has come. But it's an 'if' there: what of the American west and the cultural process of 'bohemian' change from that that has affected the English-speaking [no, more] world? If indeed it is the American west we attribute it too. Any American want to comment?

Saudi Arabia: Rethinking its Soul

If you tend to think of Islam as monolithically 'fundamentalist' then I prescribe this article ... it could be that things are going on in Saudi Arabia which could have a major effect over the ourse of a generation or so ...

US about to reintro the draft

This made me sit and wake up; perhpas not entirely a surprise, but note the silence about it. I wonder how many of my USAmerican readers knew this?

Torture is acceptable to majority of Republicans

This is most worrying: and I wonder what the figure would be for UK? Any guesses?

Reflection on this Ikon just posted at Anamchairde.