From the NZ Greenpeace web site: Greenpeace : McDonalds go for non-GE feed

21 April 2004, Auckland, New Zealand: Ronald McDonald being forcibly removed by management at the Queen Street McDonald’s after resigning as the company mascot, over GE feed used in McDonalds meat products. (C) FOTOPRESS/Geoff Dale.

Click on image for larger (in-focus) picture.

Free Images of Ronald’s arrest: greenpeace.org.nz/photos/11may04
Free Images of Ronald’s resignation: greenpeace.org.nz/photos/21April04/

Several things came together in my mind this weekend as I read and thought about various things.

Firstly I’d been reading Steve’s posting (e~mergent kiwi: Reading Whale Rider: Reweaving in Godzone) about reweaving or reintegrating the various strands of Aotearoa New Zealand theology into an integrated whole.

Secondly, it was Pentecost Sunday so I’m thinking thoughts about the Spirit and the new community formed at that time.

And thirdly, I read the article “Beer & Fear by Ear” by Olivia Kember in this week’s Listener on the vowel merger of “ea” and “ee” blends in the New Zealand accent (or should that be the “Nu Zulund ucksant”).
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The current issue of Science & Spirit available online is dedicated to the theme of forgiveness

I was moved particularly by the article An Unforgivable Act?.

Eleven-year-old Merita Shabiu believed the American forces in Kosovo were there to protect and save her. But after she was found buried in the snow with a bullet in her head, the devastated Shabiu family was told she died at the hands of one of those “saviors.”

Cleared myself of lectures for a while and marking is still a week or two away so it’s time to have a look at some of the books waiting on my bookshelf.

Participating in God: Creation and Trinity by Samuel M. Powell is part of Fortess Press’ series “Theology and the Sciences”. Looks like it has some useful comments on technology in it.

Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition by physicist Alexei V. Nesteruk has some extended discussions on the nature of the human person which also looks helpful to the thesis. It’s another in the Fortress Press series.

Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix edited by Glenn Yeffeth is a collection of essays on topics intersecting with my research interests in virtual reality and AI. Some of the essays have been published elsewhere (e.g. Peter B. Lloyd’s, GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM) but hopefully it’ll be worthwhile dipping into.

Tip of the ice berg really. If there’s an earthquake (a real possibility here in NZ) I’ll in danger of being pummelled to death by falling books I should have read by now. Also, trying to find time to read Douglas Coupland’s “Hey, Nostrodamus”, the collection of short stories in “Disco 2000″ edited by Sarah Champion, Cynthia West’s “Techno-Human Mesh”, Edward Tenner’s “Our Own Devices” and David Noble’s “The Religion of Technology”.

Amnesty International have released their annual report on global human rights covering 2003. (SeeAmnesty International Report 2004).
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Couple of potentially useful MacOS X software apps came across my scanner over the last few days.

Firstly ImageWell is an excellent little (free!) app that you drop and image onto and it posts it to the web location (iDisk, FTP, WebDAV) you choose (or the default). And it allows you to perform cropping, scaling, basic editting etc. in the image before it goes up the line. Great for dropping a set of pictures onto, having then automatically scaled etc., and then posted to your images directory. Saves having to fire up Fireworks/Dreamweaver or Graphic Converter to do the job and then manually upload the images.
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W I L D L A N D S : Komodo. Rather them than me getting the camera in place.

Lynne beats me by an hour or so to posting about Wildlands at Lynne Taylor: On good news….

I’ve just been listening to the interview by Linda Clark on National Radio with James Frankham about his virtual documentary visiting the wild places of the world and documenting them real-time so people can experience (virtually) those worlds. Check out the awesome web site WILDLANDS. Yes! Yes! Yes!
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Steve’s posting, e~mergent kiwi: world:views, about the Hoiho (Yellow-eyed Penguin) has been rattling around inside my head this week as I think about “the new heaven and the new earth” found in the Christian hope.

Made me stop and think about the penguins, who appear on cheese wrappers sometime – buy this brand of cheese and help save the penguins. Realized I didn’t know anymore than that about them so went and did some looking for more information on them.

Some good web links can be found at:
Hoiho resources. They have links to most of the other NZ penguin related sites and images of them.

Also the children’s section of the local library had the book Helping the Hoiho. by Dean Schneider. (Published by Shortland Publications, 1995.) on display today – looked like it had some good practical information too.

You can hear the penguins by clicking: here (.au file)

Interesting article about computer games in education at Water Cooler Games – Education Arcade, day 1 where Ian Bogost (an academic game researcher, game designer, and educational publisher) looks at education and computer games at E3. Some interesting ideas in the comments of those he summarizes about using games to interpret life and make sense of the world around us.
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