Today at church we had our normal children’s slot down the front which started off talking about trees, roots and fertilizer. And the person doing the talk made the standard sorts of links about feeding the plant and having good roots. He was doing this with a Rewarewa seedling he had and the kids were all paying really close attention.

Then he said that he had a seedling like this planted in his garden and it was his “prayer tree”. Every time he saw it it reminded him to pray and remember God. And then he said he had a seedling there today for any child who wanted one to plant in their garden. So we have one, and it’s planted in a pot until it gets a bit bigger. We’ll water it, feed it and it’ll be there, by the car port, reminding us of God as we leave each day. Excellent.

Dave Zimmerman reflects upon the nature of “cool” over at Strangely Dim: Cooler Than Thou.

From this morning’s email a Damaris article on cyborgs. See Culture Watch – Downloads and upgrades: The Cyborg Future by Philippa Taylor (The Centre for Bioethics and Public Policy). This is a reprint of an article from the CBPP Newsletter (Issue 7, Winter 2005/6).

Received a copy of the Families Commission summary report for What Makes Your Family Tick? today in the mail. Opened up the little booklet and saw this,

If that isn’t a vision of what the kingdom of God is, with the wholeness of shalom, then I don’t know what is. That all our communities, families and others, would be like that.

PDF files of the summary and the full report can be downloaded from the link above.

Also the Families Commission have set up The Couch

The Couch offers a new way for your voice to be heard on issues relating to families. Knowing more about your views will help us in our role to advocate for improved services and support for families. It will also help us to develop well-informed advice on proposed government policies. Couch polls and questionnaires will cover topical subjects such as work-life balance, parenting skills and education, family living standards and more.

So if you have something you’d like to say about families in NZ (and everyone seems to have an opinion) why not give it a go. No use whinging about the state of the family and not being prepared to contribute in some way. You could get ideas and questions from the site, thrash them around with friends, and then submit you thoughts back in.

An article from a few months back by Umberto Eco on the “need” for God in the secular world (with spill over effects like the “Da Vinci Code”). See Telegraph | Opinion | God isn’t big enough for some people.

Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious – to such an extent that it sometimes seems to me that to be a rigorous unbeliever today, you have to be a philosopher. Or perhaps a priest.

Via : Ernesto Burden | Umberto Eco on The Da Vinci Code’s and the Culture That Idolizes (literally) It.

The title says it all. Go have a look at TechToolBlog » 195 Free Online Programming Books.

Karl, Kim’s cousin and web developer, makes it onto one of Wired.com’s tech blogs at Monkey Bites : Charles the Debugger with his incredibly useful web proxy debugger and testing tool : Charles : Web Debugging Proxy | HTTP Monitor | HTTP Proxy | HTTPS/SSL Proxy | Reverse Proxy.

One of its features is to allow you to set the web proxy to simulate different network speeds, e.g. 56K modem or 256K DSL, so see how your web site works at those speeds. That’s pretty neat and I would have thought essential for testing the usability of web sites (along with things like testing cross-browser and operating system performance).

I’d imagine it would be extremely useful for testing e-learning system where distance students don’t always have the latest and greatest internet connections.

Karl blogs here at XK72 Spacelab – blog of Karl von Randow and you can find out more about the other stuff they do at Cactuslab > Standards-Compliant Web Site Design > Content Management > Auckland NZ.

Continuing their gathering together of related material into mini-portals Science and Theology News have a new section on the concept of emergence and emergent systems. See Science & Theology News – Emergence.

Emergence theorists are not all of one mind, but they do agree that nature’s complex structures — from proteins to cells to brains — are more than simple combinations of their parts. Rather, they “emerged” from lower to higher levels of reality. This means that each level of reality is in some way “richer” than what came before.

This fits in nicely with the previous posting (Greenflame: Emergent systems & the church (revisited)) and might provide some background to the paper linked to there.

Back in 2004 I posted about a paper I’d read called “Complexity Theory as Model and Metaphor for the Church” (See Greenflame: Emergent systems & the church). Finally it’s available online at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2004/PSCF3-04Wollert.pdf (PDF).

Full reference is:

Wollert, David A. “Complexity Theory as Model and Metaphor for the Church,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 56:1 55-59, M 2004.

The 2006 Human Rights Film Festival is on during May in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. Picked up a promotional booklet from a local newsagent yesterday and had a skim though. All of it looks interesting. Of particular interest to me is the following,

FROZEN ANGELS
Germany/USA 2005, 91 mins, Directors: Eric Black & Frauke Sandig

No holds are barred in California’s reproduction dream world. The perfect child comes with the promise of a college degree, manners, healthy genes, athletic body, correct gender and skin colour, all chosen from a catalogue. It’s a designer’s creation. Man plays God.

(More details here at Sandig’s website)

Also playing in the festival is,

NGATAHI: KNOW THE LINKS (FESTIVAL CUT ONE)
Aotearoa/New Zealand 2004, 55 mins, Director: Dean Hapeta, Subtitles

Dean Hapeta (Upper Hutt Posse) traces the links between minority cultures, exploring the rich diversity of music, politics and society in his self-billed ‘rapumentary.’ A truly international documentary, with a strong New Zealand flavour, Hapeta creates a mosaic of compelling sounds, visuals and ideas.

Back in early 2004 I posted about it at Greenflame: It’s raining again and the links there are still active.