Wisdom 'is the brain slowing down in old age'

This seems to be telling us that getting older does have some perks. First off; you can teach an old dog new tricks: its just that it takes a little bit longer, but not learning them is more to do with attitude than ability:

Scans of elderly people's brains also found that their ability to learn new skills was undiminished despite their advancing age.

But here's the kicker:

"The elderly brain is less dopamine-dependent, making people less impulsive and controlled by emotion. Older people also less likely to respond thoughtlessly to negative emotional stimuli because their brains have slowed down compared to younger people. This, in fact is what we call wisdom.
'MRI scans have also identified the four regions of the brain that contribute to wisdom, with older people demonstrating a higher level of activity between these regions than younger people.'"

Now I'm not fully sure that I'd call this 'wisdom', but I am willing to concede that it probably has something to do with it. I'm also reflecting that in the Scriptures, leaders are often called elders. It may be that the age factor was recognised in judging suitability to leadership and perhaps some of it was down to the effects of what this research has laid bare... ?

Wisdom 'is the brain slowing down in old age' - Telegraph:

10:10 campaign: keep BST all the year round

There's a green reason to go for this:
"'We need better alignment with the way people spend their time,' Dr Garnsey said. 'At 4.30am on 21 June most people will still be asleep – that's an average of three hours' wasted daylight.'

Garnsey said that, compared with other measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency and renewable technology, changing the clocks would be extremely cheap.

She said: 'Advancing the clocks would be a one-off administrative change and would save energy in all succeeding years. Many ways of reducing carbon emissions inevitably need investment in new infrastructure, none of which are required to advance the clocks.'"

Via 10:10 campaigners push to keep summer time all year round | Environment | The Guardian

The bug fix

This blog is worth subscribing to; every so often there is a rather lovely, or insightful or just downright witty 'definition'. So check this out: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows — the bug fix. I reckon this fits in the category of 'interesting and possibly insightful':

"the bug fix
n. the satisfaction of updating software, which gains effortless new features inside the cocoon of the progress bar, whereas your personality—a beta version with compatibility issues, unstable memory and a quirky interface—is open source, trusting peers to collaboratively debug your emotional source code until it’s stable enough for official release into adulthood."

I like the recognition that personality has a component that is socially-formed. It would be worth exploring the metaphor further: are we prepared to 'open source' ourselves? That's the big challenge of Christian community. And is there a way that the mention of adulthood should be interrogated? I'm mindful of Steve Taylor's poem (can't recall which just now) where there is the line: "When I grow up I want to be a child".

The Four Noble Truths demythologised

This is quite interesting, especially if (like me) you are find some of the Buddhist analysis of the human condition helpful to some degree. It arises from a recently publish book Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist and you can find a bit of a reflection on it here:

the church and postmodern culture: conversation: Speculative Grace: The Four Noble Truths. It is the following that caught my attention: "Batchelor’s thesis is that the four noble truths – originally anti-mythological, pragmatic, and phenomenological – were almost immediately re-embedded by the Buddha’s followers into the more familiar and comfortable mythological framework of Hinduism in a way that conceals the straightforward but radical logic of the original formulation."

Now, I want to do with this something a bit different to what Adam Miller does in his post: I would want to link this up with a Christian reading which might argue that the cessation of craving is a fool's errand.

What we need to do is to recognise that 'craving' or 'desire' is what, for good and ill, drives humans. That desire can be well-oriented or otherwise, it can be well-carried out (right mindfulness etc) or not. What we might then do is to recognise that unright /misdirected desire/craving is righted not by elimination of all desire (which is to become inhuman) but rather to redirect desire. Principally this redirection of the affections is the fixing of primary desire on God (see Mt.6:33) and is held in place and grown by the ongoing work of 'sanctification' - aided chiefly by the classic disciplines of the Christian life and the re-orientation of our perspectives by Scripture, meditation and prayer (including recognition of wrongness and misdirection and repentance).

One of the important insights of Christian thinking is that this is not something we can achieve solo... there is a gracious intervention from outside of our condition possible to kick-start the process and to offer ongoing support ....

Baby scan Jesus

I'm not sure what to think. Mainly because I've been working on an art-piece with a baby-scan Christ at the heart of it .... Now I'm worried that people will think I've ripped it off. Ho Hum.

ChurchAds.Net | Christmas starts with Christ: "Baby-Scan Jesus, which has been enthusiastically received by church leaders."
To Reach a Nation (Hodder Christian paperbacks)

Sixty-Six Clouds: Word Cloud Bible

This looks like a really interesting tool for reflection for those interested in Biblical theology. The usual disclaimers for the downsides of word frequencies as a guide to theology but ... well, check it out. It's a definite book mark thing. Here's the word cloud for John's gospel:

And then contrast that with, say, Mark, to get a sense of the value of the thing:

Sixty-Six Clouds: Word Cloud Bible 

Konnie Huq 'engaged' to Charlie Brooker - News, People - The Independent

I seem to recall (and the name tends to confirm it) that Konnie is Muslim by background and has even 'owned' that identity pulblicly. So this is interesting: "Konnie Huq has become engaged to Screenwipe host and writer Charlie Brooker."

Watch out for follow up stories with one of two probable lines: one would be that Charlie Brooker is converting to Islam; the other would be that Konnie Huq is being denounced for haram conduct (Sunnah doesn't allow a Muslimah to marry a non Muslim man).

Though there may be something more to be explored by why "engaged" is 'engaged' in the headline and without scare quotes in the text...

Konnie Huq 'engaged' to Charlie Brooker - News, People - The Independent

The folly of preserving English in aspic

I hadn't heard that someone had been proposing an English equivalent of the Academie Francaise (excuse lack of French characters). This is folly and we've been here before: "Samuel Johnson,... Ruminating on the nine years he had spent writing the first proper English dictionary, ... recalled how he had set out 'to fix our language'. But he had found that this was folly: language was in a constant state of lively mutability and could not be 'embalmed'."

Indeed, and just like we insular Brits failed to look at the many successful governments around the world that do PR, we also fail to look at how such things fail; the French Academy tends to look like a boy with a finger in the dyke. It has signally failed to push back the tide of Anglicism and various other 'changes' and it will ever be so. The point about a living language is that it adapts and changes. Dead things don't change. Language 'belongs' to the whole linguistic community that uses it. Acceptable usage is an ongoing negotiation combining judgements about euphony, image, usefulness, as well as exhibiting the tensions along lines of power and solidarity, culture and subculture, differentiation and assimilation. That is an unstable mix even before you factor in technological, social and political changes that are the inevitable reflexes of living in a dynamic world.

Most judgements we tend to hear decrying 'bad English' reveal very little more than our own social situation, prejudices and grabs for power ...

The folly of preserving English in aspic | Science | The Guardian

ID repeal may have some flaws

Just when we thought that it might just be safe on the NIR front, we have to continue vigilence: it would seem that the home office isn't going to give up the project without a fight. NO2ID Press Releases: "The Identity Documents Bill [1] receives its Second Reading in the House of Commons this afternoon. NO2ID [2] welcomes the intent of the Bill, which is to repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006 and dismantle the National Identity Scheme, but has identified some serious problems:" Check the press release out for details.

Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance
Identity, Privacy, And Personal Freedom: Big Brother vs The New Resistance

Between the lines

I'm coming to think that this issue is earnestly important for Christians to get a handle on. I think that it challenges some over-easy hermeneutics and ethical positions relating to gender and sexualitye. Third Way Magazine - Between the lines: "f God is as obsessed as the church about gender, why is one in every 2,500 people born with physical characteristics of both sexes?"
Unfortunately for the casual reader, it's not yet open to view unless you subscribe to the print mag -but then, they do need to make the money to keep commissioning such articles! I think that it is quite a nice theological reflection in the sense that it starts with an experience, explores the background and analytical issues and it relates these to properly identified theological matters which then begin to sketch out action trajectories. I'm hoping to be able to make it available to students in due course to help think about theological and ethical reflection.

God Beyond Gender
Reflections on Theology & Gender
Sex and Gender: A Theological and Scientific Inquiry

People; good and bad, forgiving or not

There will be many words spent on this. My heart goes out to those who have unexpectedly found themselves bereaved; the grief, the adjustment, the questioning and the sheer shock are not lightly to be passed over.

Those of us less personally touched (though for many of us the empathic response opens up our own sorrows to some degree), the big question is what really happened; how do we make sense of this? Perhaps there are helpful perspectives to guide our reflection in this article: In the midst of horror, be amazed at the goodness of the survivors | Henry Porter | Comment is free | The Observer

I found this phrase interesting because it seemed to chime with one train of thought that I had: "in Bird's case, it does seem as though he was aware of what he was doing and made deliberated choices to follow the course he did. It is significant that he did not once seek help for his troubles; that he seemed to hoard his grudges and when the time came to let rip was fully prepared with a list of targets, a route, ammunition and guns. This was surely no moment of madness, but a long-held plan to settle scores, the final one being with himself, which was inevitable once he had murdered his twin brother."

If this is right, then it is an object lesson about forgiveness both in terms of its importance (ie the letting go of grudges) and what it discloses about the nature of forgiveness by contrast. Instead of the determined holding onto a 'right' to revenge and a settled disposition to harm, forgiveness is a forgoing of entitlement to retribution and moving away from a disposition to harm and towards a disposition to bless (probably via a more neutral attitude)...

You Don’t Explode in Space so relax and enjoy your life

A perennial topic of conversation when watching certain sci-fi films or series with my lads (recent example was in Dr Who when River Song): would our blood pressure cause us to explode? Would we instantly freeze? Or what? Well, apparently, NASA have answered the question:
You Don’t Explode in Space - Acts of Volition: "According to NASA, a human (or animal) exposed to the vacuum of space without any protection would not explode, or implode, or boil, or turn into a super-hero. Rather, you'd eventually die from the lack of oxygen. If you get back inside quick enough, you could survive unharmed."

The presenting question and answer is at ask a physicist. A site, perhaps, to bookmark for future use for sci-fi watching.

Search Amazon.com for Dr Who

A Prayer Book Service

I've just started a 'track' on my teaching blog, which I hope may develop into a kind of exemplar of an online 'liturgical portfolio'. If you are interested in musings liturgical and Anglican then keeping an eye on this blog and the posts with the label 'liturgicalia'.

A Prayer Book Service | 4orty2wo: "was leading the early communion service. I found myself noticing and reflecting at various points on the service. One of the main reflections, of necessity, was how the customary usage varies from place to place. And in fact how many of the changes are not signalled in the rubric"
What Did Cranmer Think He Was Doing? (Special Papers in Palaeontology,)

Slide presentation software: wrestling it to purpose

This is a pdf and worth looking at if you ever use presentation software particularly in a classroom-type situation. I was pleased to discover that I'd already pretty much worked out good practice that corresponded to much of the advice here.

Something I'd not come across explicitly was this: "there are a number of rules
of thumb one can follow when creating PowerPoint presentations (e.g., the 10/20/30
rule—states that you should use only 10 slides, talk for no more than 20 minutes, and
never use a font smaller than 30 points" The article explores some of the limitations of that rule of thumb.

We are also treated to helpful comment on "the term CARP, which stands for
contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity. Adhering to the principles of CARP can
help create legible and professionally looking instructional visuals." Interestingly, I found this resonated with my own approach which transfers principles from the design and presentation of liturgy. in fact, as I told one colleague recently, I tend to design learning events as a kind of liturgy. So it is interesting to note the point about repetition: "Using consistent and repetitive headings, titles, font, as well as backgrounds, helps improve the readability of your slides." That is true (and good liturgy has this repetition thing built in). In presentations it is worth considering using, eg, images to badge different phases or activities of the time together, repeating headings or instructions etc. I actually don't put huge amounts of info on slides; most of the learning is listening and discussion and exercise-based in my classrooms; the slides are to help navigate, offer instructions in a further medium, giving info that might be easy to miss otherwise; they are more framework /scaffolding oriented than content. The danger of ppt is that it it can be used to reinforce a content/instructional (ie filling empty vessels) centred model where the aim seems to be simply to throw information at the learners. If we consider slide shows to be a scaffolding for learners to interact with teacher, materials and ideas in live classroom environment then we will tend to design slides better -but it depends on having a mathetogogical approach at the constructivist end of the scale rather than a 'vessel-filling' modeal.

The point about contrast is important though we should also bear in mind that for some readers, high contrast makes reading for some difficult (think of the effect, for most of us, of trying to read fluorescent type on fluorescent paper). So my default design has pale yellow text on a black background (not blue, note: directly contrasting colours). Now I may be wrong about that and I'd be interested if anyone has further info on that. (There seems to be conflicting advice out there and so evidence-based ruminations are especially welcome). I'd also underline the importance of

When I read this, I realise that having done a theory of typography course, once upon a time, probably really did help ...

BUT there comes a point when, surely, we've got to ask whether, actually, we need something different. I've just started experimenting with Prezi which is attractive because it 'grows' out of a mind-mapping style approach which is the way that most of my work begins anyhow. I have sometimes found slide-shows have forced a linear approach which doesn't always well serve moving into non-sequential mode when the class interest and energy actually gets into something that isn't 'next' in sequence. With something like Prezi, it looks like it should be possible to zoom out, identify a more relevant area of the map and zoom back in on that.

Chapter_12.pdf (application/pdf Object)

'Work-life' balance, telecommuters vs officeers

This is interesting, well, I think so. Telecommuters with flextime stay balanced up to 19 hours longer: "identifying the point at which 25 percent of employees reported that work interfered with personal and family life.
For office workers on a regular schedule, the breaking point was 38 hours per week. Given a flexible schedule and the option to telecommute, employees were able to clock 57 hours per week before experiencing such conflict."
I'd love to see the research done with clergy in the picture too. Partly because I think that it would bear this out to some extent but, given that often clergy are often not apparently good at work-life balance (judging by the talk at chapter meetings) and probably are working the kind of hours reported here; ie 57 (plus). I know that in parish I stopped counting at 38 hours worked and still did a day or two more. Many clergy feel that they should work a 37 hours week pluss several hours to make their time-worked equivalent to lay officers.

Mentor-protege relationships: Age matters

This research needs extending into causes, but the reality of the phenomenon seems clear. Here's a synopsis: Mentor-protegerelationships: Age gap really does matter. And the cash value seems to be: "Older and overstretched mentors may be too far removed from their young proteges' experience to train them effectively. There is a disconnect."

This is clearly important in the design of educational experiences, though we should hold off too-agist a take on it: some of potential causes could affect the matter greatly: if it is to do with seniority, responsibility rather than empathy and identification then it may not be age as such but the correlates of age in institutional cultures.

The other intriguing possibility is the missional one: that clergy rarely seem to develop vocations or even 'conversions' in people more than 10 years either side of their own age ....

Reforming votes

Why am I supporting this given that I do not think that the AV system is such a good idea? Well, I see it as a possible staging post. If we also get a largely elected Lords with STV, then I think that this may lay the groundwork for a fuller reform a bit further down the line. It'll get English voters used to the system and I suspect that it will start to feel more legitimate than the AV system for the Commons over time. The only thing AV has going for it is it should normally result in the election of the least dispreffered candidate. However, as the Electoral Reform Society's guide to voting systems points out, the AV system is likely to result in an aggregated national vote which is even more disproportional. Any FPTP system is likely to do this as they only really deliver proportionality in a two party system.

So I-m hoping for a more proportional reformed Lord's too. Vote for a Change | Tell David Cameron: We Need a Timetable for Reform