The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

A bit more info on wind turbines and the possible climatological effect. Iportant to know beofre the antis get a hold of it. Keep it in proportion folks:

"The “but” is the fact that wind farms would alter the climate, the “yes” is the paper's preliminary estimation that if wind power produced one-10th of today's energy, its climate-altering effects would be only one-fifth that of the carbon dioxide it would replace."

Fair trade outsourcing?

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Ethical Outsourcing There's an argument to be had here that gets beyond the "ousourcing bad -takes away our jobs and I can't understand them anyway" and "outsourcing=good -our customers get services cheaper" ....

LAnguage learning made as easy as it can be

coljac.net - How to Learn a LanguageBrits are bad; they expect everyone to learn English. If you feel guilty about this and feel that you should make the effort or if you have the sneaky [and true!] feeling that learning a language and being able to at least start to communicate with people in their own mother tongue is good, fun, and a way to make friends and influence people ... then this site is a good place to start. Sensible and without offering non-existant magic bullets.

Mandatory solar panels in Spain

Spain have taken the plunge to really drive forward solar power -if it should work anywehere you'd think Spain would be it eh? One interesting point of criticism:

"critics of the Government’s plans say that the installation of solar panels would increase construction costs by between €1,100 and €1,400 per dwelling."



Which is no doubt true but what is the truer equation -ie; how much does it save in power costs and how quickly do those savings pay for themselves? It's a bit like criticisning building regulations for stipulating that certain safety features should be mandatory in buildings; yes it costs more at the point of purchase, but that's not the point

An Open Letter to George Bush

ICTHUS: An Open Letter to George BushDefinitely worth reading. Just how I feel, and, oh, if only he would take it to heart!

The end of the world as we know it

As befits heading into a season characterised by reflection on death [Hallowe'en and Rememberance day gone and Advent to come],
I've been doing some very sobering reading lately which pretty much makes a lot of talk about emerging church, postmodernity, human interaction with technoogy etc etc look like arranging deckchairs on the Titanic or whistling in the dark at best. I knew that we were running out of oil. What I hadn't yet grasped was the implications of that. I had forgotten or failed to factor into my thinking just how much of what we routinely do is powered by oil: our agriculture relies on fertilisers and pesticides mmade from ... oil; our food is transproted huge distances by ... oil; much of what we by is made from plastics in whole or in part and plastics are mostly made from ...oil. Our constructions and even manufacture of energy alternatives is dependent on oil. Oil is woven into our lives in countless ways some signiificant, some trivial, alll eating away at a non-renewable resource whose production has just peaked or is about to. To catch a sense of where my sobering has come from read this:
"Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the 'crash' that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the 'soft landing' that many people hope for - a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology. Joseph A. Tainter"

I am contemplating how our preaching and worship can give a greater sense of urgency about the voluntary change alluded to above and to the removal of consumerism from our day to day thinking. One of the things that impressed me about the Nine O'Clock Service was the utter seriousness about this issue. And in all the developments in Alternative Worship and emerging church since then, we have not really recovered that strand -and it's about time we did.

Then there is the urgency of developing ways to commend and make possible the peace transitions that will be required. How can we create the preconditions and conditions for justice and peace for aocieoties where scarcity and the consequent heavy temptations to bullying violence are in the ascendant? Is peacemaking practical politics in a world of scarce energy?

Wired News: Patron Saint of the Nerds

Wired News: Patron Saint of the Nerds: I'm not into asking felow Christians who happen to have shuffled off this mortal coil for their prayers [I don't see any reason why they should be listening to me -especially if someone else were talking to them at the same time and in any case if they're outside of time the issues of co-ordinating their reality and my present place and time seem to go off the map of unknowing].. Anyway, I may not be into 'praying to saints' but I am interested in popular religious culture, so I was surprised that I'd never heard of this.
"A different version of the same story is told in New Orleans. Supposedly, the church of Our Lady of Guadeloupe received a big shipment of assorted saint statues. Only one didn't have a proper label on the case identifying the saint whose statue was contained within. But the crate did have an 'Expedite' label on it, so the locals decided that must be the saint's name.

A century and a half later, according to the story, they found out there was no saint called Expedite. However, a little research turned up the obscure St. Expeditus, whose status as a possible Armenian martyr gave the Expedite myth legitimacy."