January 2006

Time to update the desktop wallpaper in anticipation of the season. And I know it was just a pre-season game but beating the Brumbies by 40-6 on Saturday felt good. Wallpaper availble here Hurricanes - Hurricanes Wallpaper.

David Zimmerman on why sports reporting is like witnessing. See Strangely Dim: Good News, Sports Fans.

This morning I am awakened by children. Lots of children. Loud children. For a moment I think that the Pied Piper of Hamlym may have arrived. Then I remember the it’s my four plus three others who are staying. My brain struggles to come up with a collective noun to describe them. Possibilities include a squabble of children, a cacophany of children, and a riot of children. My brain final settles on the obvious - an apocalypse of children - before returning to the familiar world of strange dreams about my thesis.

Every now and then I need some graph or grid paper. But I’m never organized enough to go an buy a pad of it. So this looks like just the trick. Cool Tool: Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs.

Having returned from holiday with more books (see Greenflame: Back from holiday (with books)) we all went out a few days back to one of the local secondhand bookshops with a box of books to exchange. A successful trip with all 6 of us finding something amongst the volumes. To my delight I picked up a copy of Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days by a favourite author of mine, Alastair Reynolds.

Reynold’s ‘Revelation Space’ explores, among other things, how human society might shape itself with different responses to technology interfacing with the human body. As such it is a good example of transhumanism in fiction. Wikipedia has an article on transhumanist fiction as a genre, including links through to some works that are available for download.

Last night I was listening to the podcast Changesurfer Radio: The Future of Virtual Reality and there was this really clever clip at the end of a transhumanist parody from the production The Filkado.

Anyway, it’s a Gilbert and Sullivan knockoff available for download at I am the very model of a Singularitarian - Charlie Kam’s H+ filk. Just writing up some notes on the “Singularity” so it made me smile. The link to the web page has the lyrics too, which is good because the jargon and buzzwords come thick and fast.

“What is the singularity?” I hear you ask. See Transhumanist FAQ : 2.7 What is the singularity? and Technological singularity - Wikipedia.

The podcast wasn’t bad either with some interesting ideas about virtual reality.

A few years back (2001?) I played around with LifeFX (Windows/IE only) which at that point had a funky email program (FaceMail?) you could download and then its avatar software would recite your emails to you with speech synthesis, a “life-like” avatar and recognition of emoticons. So I was interested when I saw this today: Wired News: Avatars Among Us.

I remember discussing with some friends that the way that sociable computers might come about would not be through embodied robotics but through an AI system hooked up to an avatar (maybe trained through embodied robotics though). If you spend you day interacting with a life-like avatar then over time you may come to consider it more than a program on your computer (or PDA or media player).

LifeFX was developed in part using technology researched in part here at the University of Auckland for medical simulations. There’s an article here about it: Wired 8.12: Must Read - Interface2face.

Oh, and there are some video clips of it here: LifeFX Demos.

Just finished re-reading this paper as I tidy some things up.

Rosenfeld, Azriel. “Religion and the Robot: Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Religious Anthropologies.” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought 8 (1966): 15-26.

It’s forty years old, written when AI hype was greater than today, but it still raises some good questions. For example, “What is a ‘human being’ for the purposes of religion?”

• How does the replacement of human body parts with prostheses (or the loss of body parts) affect religion’s perception of a person? Is all you need an intact brain?
• Would human clones be recognised?
• How would xenotransplantation and transgenic manipulation pose problems?
• If intelligence might be seen as defining ‘human beings’ then if other creatures can demonstrate intelligence then might not they also be considered persons?

Rosenfeld approaches the topic looking for halakhic precedents, including reflection on material written about golems, which makes interesting reading.

Article here from The Korea Times about government efforts to implement various robotic solutions for policing, security and military purposes in the near future. See The Korea Times : Police, Army Robots to Debut in 10 Years.

Brings back memories of Knight Rider, Short Circuit (No. 5 is alive!), K-9 and Robocop (of course).

I’m off to pester the interloan people at the uni library. The uni has a subscription to the journal but only electronically and there’s a 12 month embargo on electronic copy. (So much for the digital technology making it easier for people). Anyway here’s the link to the contents page: Blackwell Synergy: Dialog, Vol 44, Issue 4: Table of Contents and here’s the abstract from one of the articles. Can’t wait to get hold of it.

Imaging God: Cyborgs, Brain-Machine Interfaces, and a More Human Future
By Gregory R. PetersonAbstract: Recent developments in the neurosciences have made possible the advent of brain-machine interfaces, potentially altering our understanding of our relationship with technology and even the very meaning of what it is to be human. This article briefly examines some of the recent developments in neuroengineering and considers the ethical implications. Working from Jesus’ miracles as well as from a dynamic understanding of the image of God, I argue that the categories of healing and transformation should be employed in thinking through the implications of brain-machine interfaces specifically and neuroengineering generally. Although the vocabulary of the cyborg may represent the newfound freedom that this technology can bring, the category of the face may serve as a reminder of the boundedness of human nature.

Link to abstract page here.

I see that EndNote now has a basic style for SBL which would have saved me grief a while back. Only problem I’d need to upgrade EndNote to a new version that requires a G4 as minimum. The poor old G3 iBook doesn’t make the cut even though it word processes just fine with EndNote 7. I’d really like an EndNote style for McIntosh too - anyone (Australians?) know of one?

One thing that really annoys me about EndNote 7 (I don’t know about later versions) is it’s handling of (book) reviews as a entry type is non-existent (or I just can’t see it).

In the bad patch after lunch where it’s hard to concentrate on anything. Plus the rain is horizontal outside and the roof over the BBQ area outside my (home) office window is making disconcerting sounds as the wind rips though. Sheesh, it’s like being back in Wellington.

Looks good - when I have time I’ll download these lectures on web technologies and education. See Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes: Grande Yellowhead Seminar. (Hat tip to Tensegrities: Stephen Downes seminar)

Interesting article over at Suspension of Disbelief on the portrayal of religion in comics. See Suspension of Disbelief: Guess Who’s Coming To Shabbos Dinner? (Spoiler: it’s Superman.)

Back home after a very nice week down in the Bay of Plenty and the Waikato catching up with friends and family. Came back with a heap of secondhand books from various places including some from the open air secondhand book sale over in Ohope. Apparently the people there spend the year collecting books from garage sales and such and then over the summer sort them by genre, author and topic and put them out in cartons on their front lawn. Organised enough to handle credit cards, to have shade cloth up over the lawn and they claim to have about 20,000 volumes. I didn’t count them but I do know there were a lot of books there and more were being carried in all the time.

It’s taken a while over the last day or so but they’re all in Booxter now and on the shelves. Just bought a new bookcase and now we’re running out of space again. Must be time to get rid of some books. Yeah, right.

A long time ago (late 80s), in a galaxy far, far away (Christchurch) I read Guy Kawasaki’s “The Macintosh Way” - his book on being an Macintosh evangelist. (Mary Hess has some comments on some of the ideas from that book in a religious context over at Tensegrities: What goes around, comes around?)

Anyway, Guy Kawasaki has a blog I’ve just started following and he’s got an interesting post on being on a panel discussion. See Let the Good Times Roll: How to Kick Butt On a Panel.

I also like his blog’s tag line - “Blogger. n. Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do.” Made me smile.

I’ve been reading bits from Gregory Peterson’s Minding God: Theology and the Cognitive Sciences today. It’s very readable and covers a range of interesting things - from human dignity, ethical considerations towards other creatures, intelligent design and artificial intelligence. You can find a review of it here: Science & Theology News - Peterson’s scope and deep research make “Minding” solid by William M. Struthers.

It’s part of the Fortress Press “Theology and the Sciences” series that I hope to own in its entirety at some point.

PBS run an article on evangelicals reexamining their relationship with the environment over at Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . COVER STORY . Evangelicals and the Environment . January 13, 2006 | PBS.

Related links:

• Jim Ball, “The Use of Ecology in the Evangelical Protestant Response to the Ecological Crisis”, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 50 (March 1998), 32-40.
• Brian McLaren, “Consider the Turtles of the Field”, Sojourners Magazine (March 2004).
• What Would Jesus Drive?

Just skimming through these while list current applications of virtual reality in practice. These look amazing though I’m not sure I’d volunteer to test “Spider-World” (which means of course I’m a good candidate for it.)

Hoffman, Hunter G. “Virtual-Reality Therapy.” Scientific American 291, no. 2 (2004): 58-65. [HTML version]North, Max M., Sarah M. North, and Joseph R. Coble. “Virtual Reality Therapy: An Effective Treatment for Psychological Disorders.” In Handbook of Virtual Environments : Design, Implementation, and Applications, ed. Kay M. Stanney, 1065-1078. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.

Rizzo, Albert A., J. Galen Buckwalter, and Cheryl van der Zaag. “Virtual Environment Applications in Clinical Neuropsychology.” In Handbook of Virtual Environments : Design, Implementation, and Applications, ed. Kay M. Stanney, 1027-1064. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.

Transcript available here BBC NEWS | Programmes | Analysis | Is God on Their Side? of a programme on politico-religious movements and trends within the US.

Via Andii at Nouslife.

Article on the Economist web site observing the love for robots in Japan. Has a few religious points of contact too. See Japan’s humanoid robots | Better than people | Economist.com.

Related to this is the Robotic Life group at MIT. Head over and have a look at their site. On their publications page they have some papers you can download that would fit with the article above, especially the ones about robots as collaborative partners.

Another interesting article is Wired News: Monsters of Photorealism which comments on the ideas of Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. Mori asserts that the more real you try to make a simulacrum of the human being - a robot or in VR/video games/films - the less convincing they become, to the point of becoming disconcerting or even repulsive. (See also Uncanny Valley - Wikipedia.)

Anyway, that’s enough random thesis connections falling out of my head for today.

Area51 (A NZ site/blog focused on “up to date medical technology news with a New Zealand focus where possible.”) has a link to and a brief summary of an article in Nature about scientists using blogs and Wiki’s to share information and collaborate with others. See Wikis and Blogs by Scientists - a new way to communicate science | Area51.

A nice short introduction to virtual reality technologies at the Virtual Reality Laboratory at the University of Michigan. See: UM-VRL: Virtual Reality: A Short Introduction. All you ever wanted to know (in summary) about CAVEs, BOOMs, HMDs and data gloves.

Fitting right into today’s writing efforts is this older (Jan 2005!) article about Markus Giesler who works in the area of high-tech consumer research. The article picks up on some of the themes from my own research, albeit from a business perspective.

“IPod and user form a cybernetic unit,” said Giesler. “We’re always talking about cyborgs in the context of cultural theory and sci-fi literature, but this is an excellent example that they’re out there in the marketplace…. I have seen the future, and it is called the cyborg consumer.”

From Wired News: My IPod, My Self by Leander Kahney (Wired News, 2005-01-28).

Over at Jesus Creed » Wheaton and Roman Catholic Professors Scott McKnight has some good points about the departure of philosophy lecturer Joshua Hochschild from Wheaton after his “conversion” to Roman Catholicism. (Wall Street Journal article here.)

McKnight wrote an interesting paper “From Wheaton to Rome: Why Evangelicals Become Roman Catholic” for JETS a while back tracking what he sees as four main reasons for evangelicals moving into the Roman Catholic community of faith. You can find it here: Scott McKnight, “From Wheaton to Rome: Why Evangelicals Become Roman Catholic”, JETS 45/4 (September 2002), 451-472. (http://www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/45/45-3/45-3-PP451-472_JETS.pdf)

In a way some of this relates to what Jo was writing about here (JoBloggs: being historical). The lack of connection for many evangelicals to a sense of being part of a historical movement of God means that movements with a sense of history (Roman Catholic, Orthodox and to some extend Anglican traditions) become appealing when you feel the need to be part of something older and larger. In spite of theological differences.

It may be the evangelical pragmatism that keeps the eyes firmly on the present or next month, or eschatological focii of the “End Times” for others but there’s a historical disjunction. So a list of important historical events/figures for evangelicals might be:

• Jesus on earth
• Acts 2 church + Paul
• Augustine (maybe)
• Reformation (Calvin especially. Luther’s too earthy for some and too Catholic for others)
• Wesley (maybe)
• “End Times”

(Yes, I know I left a lot out in the last 150 years or so - Pentecostal, Holiness and Charismatic movements, for example).

Individuals may pick up on particular “evangelical” figures (e.g. a preacher or missionary) and some might see their history tied to a parachurch movement or local church. But there’s an awful lot of gaps there - Patristics, Old Testament possibly, monastic and mendicant orders, an understanding of Christendom and its effects, revivals in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, and social reform movements to name a few.

The renewed interest in spiritual formation for some evangelicals then poses something of a problem/shock for some then. Because spiritual disciplines are rooted in a historical context and bring some of that missing history to light. Which then means than pre-existing boundaries between traditions get challenged. For some I know this means that they get upset that this history was “hidden” from them by their churches (though the leadership there might be in the dark too). It also has an effect on a general ignorance about how the canon of the Bible was decided (and why the Protestant tradition excludes some content included by other traditions).

In my opinion an understanding of history is critical. Not only does it allow us to see people of God faithfully serving Christ and “getting it right”, but it also alerts us to the messes we created in the past and the mistakes we made intentionally and unintentionally in the name of Jesus. And we can also see the grace of God in spite of our own ambition, intolerance, cluelessness and compromise with the culture of the day.

Which brings us back to Jo’s questions. How do we connect the history of the Church with the lives of those in the Church today in relevant and engaging ways?

Was skimming through Playlist.com: The best iPod-related products of 2005 and saw a link to Senuti. This is a really excellent little (free) Mac OS X application that allows you to look at and retrieve the content from your iPod through an iTunes-like interface. So if you iTunes hard disk goes belly-up you should be able to recreate it from your iPod.

See Senuti (where there are some other nice little apps too). In the Playlist article there’s a link to a Windows app that does the same thing and is also free.

Interesting article on the work of geoarchaeologists in bringing to light new information on ancient Phoenician harbours. See: Ancient Harbors Rise Again — ScienceNOW.

Saw the book “Virtual Archaeology” (Maurizio Forte) in the library yesterday but was already carrying an armful of books so had to leave it behind. Next time maybe.

Check out SoftwareFor.org: Free Software for You. From their web site,

The Software for Starving Students CD enhances the Windows and Mac desktop computing experiences by providing an easy way to install free, high-quality software titles via a user-friendly interface. It includes popular open source programs like Firefox and OpenOffice, intended to help students learn about and benefit from open source and free software programs. The SSS team put all the most commonly used free programs onto one CD to make it easier for students to install useful software (including fully-featured office suites, 3D graphic editors and much more) for free.

Seems like the DC Comics character of the Spectre is on the minds of several people at the moment. Personally I never really knew about him until his path intersected that of Hal Jordan (the Silver Age Green Lantern). In the issues from around that time that I’ve read the character shifts from one who seeks to punish/exact vengeance to one who seeks redemption for others. At some point I’d like to get hold of a huge set of back issues and have a look at how he functions (theologically) in the DC universe (where the Spectre exists as the embodiment of the Wrath of God).

See Suspension of Disbelief: And the new Spectre is… and DigitalPriest.com: According To Me: Hal and Jesus.

More information on the character at Spectre (comics) - Wikipedia

Much of the Spectre’s modern character was defined by the theologically trained John Ostrander and he developed the distinction between the pursuit of vengeance and that of of revenge using the character. A distinction that resonates with how we encounter the concept of vengeance (naqam) (esp. God’s) in the Psalms.

Possibly a new Apple iLife app for blogging and stuff? See Monkey Bites: iWeb: A New Apple App?

I read this interview with DJ and music producer Peter Tong because I was following an iPod/Apple thread (see Wired News: Pete Tong: Apple’s Gone Wrong?) and the following quote about DJ-ing stood out

The thing about technology — the same as I learned with the advent of CD — if you stop using old technology and move immediately to the new, your DJing dips. Maybe that’s a good thing, but my thing is to try and blend the two. Everyone I’ve seen who has just begun doing it ends up doing things they would never normally do, just because they can.

Seems to me to be true of many things - business, church and faith, even cooking. Being able to create something new within of the transition area. So rather than abrupt paradigm shifts where you throw away everything you previously did and embrace only the new ideas, you take all the experience, knowledge and technique from the old ways and remix them with the new to make something novel and unforeseen. And if you’re doing that you can connect people from different paradigms and together create a new community.

AJAX seems to be flavour of the month while everyone makes up their lists of what was significant in 2005 or will be in 2006. Rachel mentions it here and here and TallSkinnyKiwi here and here.

So for all of you out there looking for how to distinguish an ordinary household cleaner from Asynchronous JavaScript and XML here are some helpful links:

• State of Ajax: Progress, Challenges, and Implications for SOAs (web2.wsj2.com).
• The Incredible Ongoing Story of Ajax (web2.wsj2.com).
• Ajax (programming) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Web 2.0 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Review of the Year’s Best Web 2.0 Explanations (web2.wsj2.com)

Updated - See also Cre8d-design blog: What is AJAX?

In redoing the blog last year some (all?) of the various static pages that I’d created as resource pages disappeared from view. So over the next while I’ll be replacing them with new pages that should contain some updated material on them. The first of these is the new Greenflame : Science, Technology and Faith page that has PDFs from lectures I’ve given recently. Normally just a lecture outline and an indicative bibliography but it might be useful starting place for some. I’ll add web links to that page as I have time.

I’ll also add links/references to things I’ve written at some point too.

From some reading I was doing today.

Technology never escapes politics. The fiction of cyberspace is useful precisely to the extent that it allows it allows its proponents to imagine an androcentric reality in which a threatening, messy, or recalcitrant (and invariably feminized) nature never intrudes. In this respect, cyberspace is consensual primarily in its insistence that technologically mediated experience can transcend the ecological and economic constraints that have shaped and continue to shape human culture. It offers the fantasy that the more technologically sophisticated our society becomes the less it has to worry about the distribution of wealth and resources.

From: Robert Moss Markley “Introduction: History, Theory, and Virtual Reality.” In Virtual Realities and Their Discontents, ed. Robert Moss Markley, 1-10. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. (p.4)

This book is a collection of essays from writers who are more critical (even cynical) about the benefits offered by virtual reality and cyberspace, and the myths spun by the proponents of the technology.

See SansBlogue : Amos: Hypertext Bible Commentary all go! for Tim’s news on the Amos hypertext commentary.

Go to www.bible.gen.nz to have a play online.

The following blogs that I read have moved to new locations (mostly to WordPress or WordPress 2.0). Update your links for Musings of a Postmodern Negro and Rachel’s cre8d design blog.

Rachel’s back blogging more regularly and has some good material and links up for blogging, web design and general internet thoughts.

iPodNN | Podcasting raises church attendance. I guess that it depends on the quality of the content delivered. If some of the services and sermons I’ve heard were podcast I’m sure it’d have the opposite effect.

A couple of interesting articles on religion and spirituality in NZ in NZ Herald. Steve mentioned they were coming up here and Paul has a link too here.

Free-range soul searching replacing organised religion in NZ - 31 Dec 2005 - Religion and beliefs.

Liberal scope for celebrations - 31 Dec 2005 - Religion and beliefs.

Wired News: Beyond Porno: Free IPod Content has a list of various podcasts (audio and video) as well as other material for your video iPod/iTunes.