Back home after Christmas break away down in Kawerau with Kim’s family. Here’s a shot of the Tarawera River that flows though the town (though this shot was taken walking up to the Tarawera Falls – see Greenflame: Water, rock and forest).

It looks like it’ll be hot for Christmas Day, the kids are off for summer holidays, and things are closing down for an extended summer break. Must be Christmas in the Antipodes. Time to sing a few songs about Christmas in the summer, where there is no snow in sight and the Pohutukawas are blooming.

Of course, the classic running around my head for the past few days is John Clark’s One On a Tractor.

Others that capture the spirit of the season are Peter Cape’s New Zealand Christmas or Backblocks Nativity (originally titled Epiphany), and Shirley Murray’s An Upside Down Christmas. (More in the archives that those link to.)

And, if you can get your hands on a copy of Spirit in a Strange Land: A Selection of New Zealand Spiritual Verse, there are some good Advent poems in there too.

Have a good Christmas and New Year.

And now, off for some Christmas backyard cricket and barbecues…

A while back I was skimming a couple of religion and media books (See Greenflame: Religion and computer-mediated communications), but I never got further than that with them. One of those books was Heidi Campbell’s “Exploring Religious Community Online: We are One in the Network” and now Paul has written a brief review of the book from his more informed position. See fishers, surfers and casters » Heidi Campbell’s Exploring Religious Community Online.

Now, let’s hope he will write one for Religion and Cyberspace, a collection of essays edited by Morten Hojsgaard and Margit Warburg.

The photo above is of the floor of the office at home. You can see the carpet!

This has not been the case for the past few months when the carpet has been obscured by layer upon layer of papers, print outs, books, bags, folders and anything else that got sucked into the maelstrom. Indeed, it looked like it was gaining enough mass to implode and form its own mini black hole. Now however, the floor is clear, books returned to supervisors (who may have forgotten I even had them), paper filed or recycled, and I can walk directly to my desk. I might even vacuum at some point.

Listened to James Hughes’ recent Changersurfer Radio podcast yesterday where he interviews Lee Silver (author of “Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning will Transform the American Family“, and more lately “Challenging Nature: The clash of science and spirituality at the new frontiers of life“.) It’s an interesting interview because both Hughes and Silver sketch out what each thinks of religious (and quasi-religious) objections to transhumanism. Overall, their articulation of religious positions is limited, and doesn’t take into account the breadth of religious engagement with convergent technologies, but it serves as a useful insight into how some techno-optimists perceive the religious world.

I have a nagging doubt about their optimism about the human spirit too. The argue that many problems in the world could be solved if technological development was allowed to be unhindered – elimination of hunger, suffering and illness etc. However, we currently have technologies that could make a dent in those issues and it is more a matter of human will and of the human “heart” as to whether they will be. Certainly, the human propensities for self-interest, greed and control of resources never seem to feature in these discussions. Anyway, the full interview is available at: ChangeSurfer Radio: Challenging Nature.

Also, seen on the local library bookshelf (and now on loan here) is Simon Young’s recent book “Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto“. Too late to put Young’s book in the bibliography but I’ll have skim through it sometime.

Steve tagged me, so here are five things you may not know about me:

1. I can’t stand brussel sprouts, and am intolerant towards cauliflower and broccoli. Perhaps I have a green-hating gene?
2. As a computer science postgraduate I was given a “Mostly likely to become Elite” award by the faculty.
3. I originally went to university to study chemisty and astronomy, and before getting sidetracked into computer science passed undergraduate astrophysics and astronomy papers.
4. The first comic book I ever remember reading was the Legion of Super-Heroes story in Superboy #201 where ERG-1 recovers his corporeal form and defeats the robot that has immobilized the legion. Alas, all retconned out of existence now.
5. I like to diagram things to understand them better, and often reduce pages and pages of terse text (particularly theological writing) to visual representations.

I don’t forward chain letters (that’s a sixth thing), but if you feel inspired consider yourself tagged.

Kim and I spent a pleasant evening at the book launch of Cathy Ross’ book Women with a Mission – Rediscovering Missionary Wives in Early New Zealand published by Penguin. Some nice speeches and an opportunity to see Cathy and Steve again briefly. Nice also to see a PhD thesis transition into an accessible book. If you’re interested in NZ or missions history it may well be up your alley.

One of the local PC magazines came with the full version (both Vol. 1 & 2) of Atari Arcade Anniversary Edition for free, which I duly installed on the PC today. My children, upon discovering it, are rapt with the likes of Centipede, Asteroids and Missile Command. However, the game of the collection for them is Pong. Go figure. I guess, game play will always trump eye candy.

A good example of some of the current research that is leading towards “augmented intelligence”. Ultimately, the robotic system will pick up the human user’s intentions and then use its own artificial intelligence to achieve that goal. I like the non-invasive approach which differs from other approaches such as BrainGate. More at ScienceDaily: Researchers Demonstrate Direct Brain Control Of Humanoid Robot.

Substitution of cybernetic “immorality” for cybernetic “immortality” in a couple of places. Guess my conservative evangelical heritage is showing through