May 2005

Interesting article on fair vs. free trade in this week’s NZ Listener - A Fair Go by David W Young,

Fair trade campaigners remain bothered by the effects of free trade. But their focus has changed. They are now concerned with the lack of free trade caused by rich countries’ protectionism. The old opponents have a common adversary.

There’s also a really alarming article about how commercial whaling might be back in force if the things go in favour of the whaling nations at Ulsan - which looks probable. (That article isn’t online but if it does become available I’ll link back to it later.)

Acer PC “repaired”, software and data reloaded, and yet still not there. PC turns itself off after several hours. Not suspend, not hibernation, not graceful shutdown, just off. New CPU fan and heat sink to arrive today or on Monday. Hopefully the problem, which I originally thought was a fan but it seems we also had disk problems, will then be alleviated. When it’s running it goes like the wind now - disk access is much faster - but turning itself off at random isn’t part of the plan. No problems getting everything back on it - nice to see the backups + software reinstall was fairly trivial.

This was coupled with intermittent iBook problems (it’s not all the heaven portrayed here). After backing everything up on the iBook twice - research and email is critical - ran into problems with the disk. I’ll probably just reinstall a clean Jaguar to stabilize things.

On the off chance I dropped by Noel Leeming as I know they have Mac software in my local store. They can sell me the in-stock Mac OS X 10.3 for $329 or order me Tiger (10.4) for $269. Go figure that out - I’d have bought discounted and now obsolete Panther in a flash to move on from Jaguar (10.2) but doesn’t look like the price is flexible. I’d jump straight to Tiger but I’m concerned some of my other software critical to finishing the thesis would need upgrading turning a “simple” OS upgrade to access features of my existing software into a major upgrade of significant financial cost.

How much simpler it was in the days of my Powerbook 150 (Apple code name “Jedi”) - “the little laptop that could”. Just kept keeping on, keeping on.

Journal article requires citation format that isn’t one of the myriad available for EndNote. So rather than do it all by hand - and possibly botch something up - I’m going to attempt to create my first EndNote output style. Figure the time invested will be repaid if I ever have to write another article for this style.

From Jesus Creed: Why is sin urbanized?

Because, when we define “justice” in general terms and “social justice” in sociological terms, we bifurcate the two and see the biggest problems in the urban context. This is a mistake.

Here’s why: the word “justice” is no different than “social justice” in biblical categories — just run your eyes quickly through Exodus or Deuteronomy or the prophets (and don’t just go to Micah’s famous text). There you learn that “justice” refers to “what is right” (say, tsedeqah or mishpat) and what is right is determined by “what God says” (Torah) and behind what God says is “who God is” (the perichoretic splendor of love and holiness and beauty). So, in biblical categories “justice” is indistinguishable from “social” justice because it is the Nature of God that determines — we are talking ontology here — what is right because God is What is Right.

Acer tech arrived this afternoon to replace the hard disk in the family PC. Metallic grinding noises from the computer followed by it turning itself off prompted the call to the service tech hotline. By some miracle we’d just backed everything up a few days before so I’m now in the process of restoring everything over the next few days. Still can’t believe MS took the backup program out of Windows XP Home leaving me to do it manually.

When the PC’s up and going I’ll backup the iBook to it before its OS upgrade. It’s doing strange things too and a clean install onto its disk will help it make it to the end of the thesis (hopefully).

If you haven’t backed up your PC for a while might be time do it again.

Metanexus Institute - Visual Explorations : Earth’s City Lights.

This image of Earth’s city lights was created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). Originally designed to view clouds by moonlight, the OLS is also used to map the locations of permanent lights on the Earth’s surface.

Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles is a blog entry about sources of low cost images for reuse in your own projects.

Via Jonny Baker.

Science & Theology News : NASA developing human-like robots.

The goal of the Ames Research Center is to create a robot that acts, responds and interacts naturally with humans. In order for this to occur, robots must possess traits such as self-awareness and human-awareness.

A week of lots of little things.
Monday - normal day of looking after the four kids while Kim’s at work.
Tuesday - lecturing to BCNZ students on the implications of their understanding of being human upon the wider world. (note to self: get real penguin for next time I do this)
Wednesday a PhD supervision meeting (note to self: put page numbers on drafts)
Thursday - looking after sick 2 year old son. Said 2 year old son pours bottle of baby oil over relatively new sofa. Went to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to recover (note to self: do not complete dialogue out loud in cinema).
Friday - coffee with Mark, personal submission on xenotransplantation to Bioethics Council, watching Hurricanes play Crusaders in Super 12 semi-final.

Wired News: The Beeb Shall Inherit the Earth - On, among other things, the BBC’s new backend for accessing their content - BBC Backstage.

Wired News: Eggheads Invent Tele-Petting - Wow, haptic interfaces that solve the HCI problem (that’s Human-Chicken Interface).

After reading “Faith Online” (Hoover, Stewart M, Lynn Schofield Clark, and Lee Rainie. “Faith Online.” Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2004.) Paul ponders the place of the internet in religious life.

See: Slashing through the Information Jungle: Religious internet usage in the USA.

The “Faith Online” (2004) report is available here: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/126/report_display.asp.
A earlier report (2001) “Cyber Faith” is available here: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/53/report_display.asp.

A couple of law lecturers in Australia have published a paper arguing that official torture may be justifiable in some circumstances. Understandably this has generated heated discussion. See the links below to follow these discussions.

The Age : Torture advocate faces outcry.
The Age : Torture : end does not justify the means.
The Age : Here? Victim stumped by academics views.
The Age : Torture is inhuman, illegal and futile.

From the NZ Herald a locally designed computer keyboard for use by “stroke victims, people with arthritis or just about anyone whose ability to physically cope with an ordinary keyboard was impaired.” See: The New Zealand Herald: Keyboard opens brave new world.

For your Mac or PC available from Afterglow: Home of Icon Designer & Illustrator Cian Walsh.

Greenstone and Tomato Sauce icons are great.

Preview here.

Pentecost will find me on the sideline of a soccer field yelling encouragement as one of my sons takes part in his first soccer tournament outside of regular weekly games. Like any sporting event it’ll be marked by passion, atmosphere, noise, sweat, confusion, pain and emotion. And that’s just for the spectators. Maybe not to the same level as an All Black test or the F.A. Cup final but you get the picture. Go Ranui!

(Eden Park, May 2005. Yes, I know it’s not a soccer game)

So too Pentecost. Bob’s suggestions for the grid blog included using different languages, capturing the invitation of the Spirit to all as the church began to emerge and be formed. Sport too is a language. You may not be able to speak the language of a far off place, but produce a ball (particularly a soccer ball) and words become irrelevant. A Danish friend of ours was talking recently of his time in Peru. His Spanish wasn’t too hot but that didn’t matter when he kicked a ball around with the kids in his neighbourhood. By playing the game he became one of them - part of the community.

So I have this image of Pentecost being like a cup final. The teams are playing, the crowd’s immersed in the experience and suddenly a woman runs out onto the pitch. Not only that but she intercepts the ball and starts playing - drawing some of the players and the crowd into her game. And then the game spills out into the street (like in the “Keep the Ball Alive” ad) and before you know it there are all sorts of people kicking and passing balls (even some picking it up and running with it!). The same basic game but with local variations. Anyone can play - no need to learn the language - just “have a go.”

Now of course over time people try to write rule books, dictate styles of play, develop intense rivalries and generally stifle the spirit of the game. But in all sorts of places you’ll find the Spirit and a ball, playing “the beautiful game”, and everyone’s invited to play.

From Jesus Creed: Emergent Reaction the second point leapt out at me.

Second, and because what we experience in England or Australia or Canada or the USA differs we need to be careful in generalizing, but still here it is: second, what they see in current Evangelical churches is too much Bible study without changed lives and churches, too much money spent on church buildings and not enough in missional work, too much apologetical articulation and not enough apologetical embodiment, too much old music and not enough edgy music, too much superficiality and not enough honest-to-goodness radical confession and admission of where we really are, too much “get me to heaven” gospel and not enough “Shalom is for the world too” gospel, and too much hierarchy and not enough spreading the gifts to the people. I could go on. For me, the irony of it is that many see too much “modern worldliness” in the current Evangelical Church and not enough “postmodern worldliness.” I wish I understood that statement better.

Teaching on Tuesday and trying to get more of a sense of praxis, mission, confession and “Shalom” into my notes on the image of God, penguins, ecology, anthropology, embodiment, technology, creation and xenotransplantation.

Tonight a time to ponder Pentecost in anticipation of Sunday.

• Reading Acts 2
• Watching some of Peter and Paul and the Christian Revolution
• Praying this
• Contemplating the Spirit and our walk with Christ

Well possibly. Telegraph | News | Reality TV in monastery changes five lives forever

Five men, ranging from an atheist in the pornography trade to a former Protestant paramilitary, have found their lives unexpectedly transformed in the latest incarnation of reality television - the monastery.

Via Andii.

Hurricanes 22 - Blues 10

As you can see from the picture we had great seats to see 2 of the Hurricanes 3 tries and a nice sweeping view of the third. Plus with the Blues hot on attack for the first 20 minutes we had the ball down our end then too.

Fitting result for Tana’s 100th game for the Hurricanes. Bring on the Crusaders next week.

Off to Eden Park tomorrow night with my two older boys to watch the Hurricanes take on the Blues. You would have to think that with the Blues injury problems and the Hurricanes form last week [image here] that it should be an good night to be a Hurricanes supporter. But we’ve never beaten the Blues in Super 12 (last year’s 26-26 draw was the closest we got).

Still last year’s Wellington NPC team beat Auckland so we may be in for a treat. A win would get us to the semi-finals, I think, with a week to go. Then we have to play the Crusaders - not as much problem as Auckland though.

Must have faith.

(One of my boys is a Blues supporter so I guess rugby will be the winner on the day - yeah, right!)

Slogging through understanding, appropriating and then adapting Philip Hefner’s metaphor as human beings as created co-creators into something of my own to apply to my research field (Christian anthropology, the imago Dei and emergent digital and transhuman technology). Figured I’d whack a summary out here so then when people ask me what I’m referring to I’ll just refer them over to here. May not make much sense to them but its a starting point.

Of course, this doesn’t sketch out here any of the criticisms of the metaphor (I came up with a few (yay!) but then found them listed elsewhere already along with a whole lot of others (which was somewhat affirming and dampening at the same time)).

Anyway, Hefner proposes the following as the “hard core” (in Lakatosian terms) of his research proposal.

Human beings are God’s created co-creators whose purpose is to be the agency, acting in freedom, to birth the future that is most wholesome for the nature that has birthed us—the nature that is not only our own genetic heritage, but also the entire human community and the evolutionary and ecological reality in which and to which we belong. Exercising this agency is said to be God’s will for humans. (Philip Hefner, The Human Factor : Evolution, Culture and Religion, 27)

The purpose of the “hard core” is that while it may or may not be verifiable or falsifiable it provides the stimulus for generating hypotheses and suchlike that can be evaluated.

Hefner unpacks this “hard core” as a theory as follows:

1. The human being is created by God to be a co-creator in the creation that God has brought into being and for which God has purposes.
2. The conditioning matrix that has produced the human being—the evolutionary process—is God’s process of bringing into being a creature who represents the creation’s zone of a new stage of freedom and who therefore is crucial for the emergence of a free creation.
3. The freedom that marks the created co-creator and its culture is an instrumentality of God for enabling the creation (consisting of the evolutionary past of genetic and cultural inheritance as well as the contemporary ecosystem) to participate in the intentional fulfillment of God’s purposes.

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