I’ve read some pretty positive (Christian) anthropology recently, but then you come across something like this and you just have to wonder: Woman mails five-foot python | Oddly Enough | Reuters.com

Another interesting article on the use of computer and video games as agents for sociopolitical change.
Morph: Serious Games, Digital Storytelling and Public Perceptions

Serious games, Thompson writes, “immerse people in the real world, full of real-time political crises. And the games’ designers aren’t just selling a voyeuristic thrill. Games, they argue, can be more than just mindless fun, they can be a medium for change.”

The serious games movement comprises advocates and nonprofit groups searching for new ways to reach young people, as well as tech-savvy academics keen to explore video games’ educational potential.

Related links:

• Greenflame: Middle Eastern video games and comic books

• Greenflame: UN uses video game as educational tool
• Greenflame: Serious Games for Religion and Religious Institutions
• Greenflame: Mobile Game ‘Airport Insecurity’
• Greenflame: Resistance isn’t futile
• Greenflame: Education Arcade, day 1
• Greenflame: Gaming the news

The announcement of JMS producing new Babylon 5 material on DVD. Series of new short movies/stories set in the B5 universe, using new and existing characters. Can’t wait. See Ain’t It Cool News: New B5

Via Closet Sci-Fi Geek :: New Babylon 5 on the Way…

Interesting interview I stumbled across today. Albert Borgmann and N. Katherine Hayles interview/dialogue

The claim that cyberspace liberates people from the accidents of gender, race, class, and bodily appearance is often made by advocates of electronically distributed education. But to conceal a problem is not to solve it. We have to learn to respect and encourage people as they actually exist. The “liberated” students or citizens of cyberspace, moreover, have to bleach out their presence to that of a person who is without gender, social background, and racial heritage. Otherwise they betray what is supposed to remain hidden. And it turns out that there are loudmouths and bullies in cyberspace as often as in reality. The fuzzed identities of cyberspace, moreover, lend themselves to their own kind of mischief. (Borgmann)

Related links:

• N. Katherine Hayles
• “How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics” (N. Katherine Hayles)
• Albert Borgmann
• “Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium” (Albert Borgmann)

After managing to find this week’s NZ Listener (it gets delivered 7 days before the week it’s for, and often gets misplaced) I see the lead article is on the accelerating pace of technological change. A quick skim though highlights that it picks up on genetics, robotics and nanotechnology in the typical popular fashion. I’ll go back and read it in depth later today. Still, maybe an accessible article on those technologies. See New Zealand Listener | Issue 3454 | July 22-28 2006.

I was struck by the cover this week too. Very like Herzfeld’s book cover below, and you can find similar images at most online stock photo sites by searching for things like “robot” and “cyborg”.

Follow up from Greenflame: Friends in need at Manawatu Standard: Mum, sons safe in Cyprus, but yet to contact family. Good news for them, though the overall situation continues to be dire.

My supervisor (esteemed author of Peace, Toleration and Decay: The Ecclesiology of Later Stuart Dissent) commented that having read (what was then) Ch.4 of my thesis, there didn’t appear to be any Blaise Pascal in it. This was, apparently, an oversight on my part.

So, this afternoon, while everyone else was out, Blaise and I hung out together and wrote 500 words to fit into the section on the Enlightenment and the imago Dei. He was good company, and I think the words add something to that section. At the very least they connect to the central theme of the thesis – narratives of apprehension.

Sheesh, my supervisor was right, as the other one was the other month. One suggested I needed more Pascal, the other suggested I needed more Schleiermacher. Both sections look good. Must buy them coffee this week.

Anyway, here’s a bit from Blaise’s Pensées on human beings that made it into the section,

It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, not to be unaware of either, but he must know both.

A short, but interesting, interview (text and video) with Francis Collins (Director, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health and Author, THE LANGUAGE OF GOD) at Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . PROFILE . DR. FRANCIS COLLINS . July 21, 2006 | PBS.

Recent Science and Theology News article looking at Jewish interaction with reproductive technologies. See Science & Theology News – Be fruitful and multiply.

NakedReligion contemplates the impact that special (professional) events, primarily for youth, have upon the local churches that the attendees return to, as well as the attendees. Interesting stuff, and I’d suggest that some of the ideas there might apply to a variety of situations. See nakedreligion » Blog Archive » CHIC, Spiritual Renewal, and the Consequences for the Local Church.