February 2007

Time for a break from blogging, while other things take priority.

Have a nice day/night.

Meme: n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.*

Paul at fishers, surfers and casters tagged me with the task “name five reasons why you do (not) respond to memes”. So, here goes.

1. Sometimes I respond because a friend tagged me, and I enjoyed their response to the task.
2. Sometimes I don’t respond because I think the topic is boring.
3. Sometimes I want to see how my ideas and thoughts match up against others down stream.
4. Sometimes I respond because I like the idea of information being free “in the wild”.
5. Sometimes I respond because I can’t think of anything else to blog about.

And sometimes I don’t want to tag anyone else. Nuff said.

Apparently, we had three earthquakes (tremors) last night. Didn’t notice them myself, though I may have thought it was a heavy truck going past the house.

More information at Earthquakes shake Auckland region - 22 Feb 2007 - National News - New Zealand Herald and GNS: Recent Earthquakes.

Or, in the words of Shirley Bassey and the Propellerheads, ‘it’s all just a little bit of history repeating’. And specifically, we’re talking about the black costume in Spider-Man 3 coming out in the next few months.

So, if you’re interested in the history of the black outfit (which is making a comeback real soon now in the comics), check out this THE OLD BLACK: LOOKING BACK AT SPIDER-MAN’S BLACK COSTUME - NEWSARAMA.

Of course, it remains to be seen how they might incorporate the Venom storyline without completely botching the original origin.

Australia looks to phase out incandescent light bulbs within three years, replacing them with alternatives that last longer and use significantly less power. The NZ situation looks like it’s going down the same path, though not as fast. See Standard light bulbs to be switched off - 21 Feb 2007 - National New Zealand News - NZ Herald

Following on from Friday (NZ defeat Australia by 10 wickets) and Sunday (NZ 337/5 beat Aus 336/4), tonight New Zealand chase down Australia’s 347 (getting 350 in the 49th over).

Three - nil.

(That’s one day international cricket for all you non-Commonwealth people.)

And yes, Australia were short of a few players, but in that last game NZ were without three of their best (Oram, Vettori and Bond).

Three nil!

Woohoo! Bring on the World Cup.

Oh yes, and the Hurricanes beat the Blues at the weekend to cap it all off.

The antipodean Lent starts tomorrow with Ash Wednesday, where the nights, and not the days, continue to lengthen, and we move into autumn and towards winter. Not that you can tell at the moment, with all the heat and humidity.

In the past I’ve tended to give things up for Lent (coffee, I think) to serve as a reminder to myself to be more reflective as I approach Easter. In the past couple of years I’ve tried a different tack, to add something into Lent rather than taking something away. Recently, this has been to commit to a daily series of reflections specific to Lent. One year it was a book by Tom Wright, last year it was Faith Odyssey (see Greenflame: Star Lent). Sometimes not filling the gap left by giving something up, leads to it being unconsciously being filled by something else - like the year I found I had upped my cola intake without noticing, while giving up coffee for Lent.

So, yesterday I walked down to my local Christian bookshop to see what things they had that might be good to use this season. However, they had nothing (it was all arriving sometime soon, they said), and so today I tripped across town to another bookshop who had a selection of Lenten and Easter books on display and picked up a couple. I have no idea what they’ll be like, so it’ll be an interesting journey, I hope. the first is Voices from the Desert - A spirituality for our times by Leslie Griffiths (SCM Canterbury Press), while the second is Mirror of the Soul , a series of 40 reflections from the Psalms.

And speaking of filling things up, with today being Shrove Tuesday, we had pancakes tonight, cooked in the new frying pan I bought today. A bit of an experiment while I got the hand of the pan’s thermodynamics, and definitely no tossing of pancakes until I’m used to the pan’s weight. Pancakes turned out okay, and were eaten simply with lemon and sugar.

By next year, maybe I’ll have had some more thoughts on writing a Lenten series oriented around comic books - Lent by Lantern Light?

Related links:

• Maggi Dawn’s posts over the past couple of days - maggi dawn: Giving things up for Lent and maggi dawn: Fat Tuesday.
• Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand // Resources for Ministers: Special Services
• e~mergent kiwi: Lenten resource: together or separate

Picked up a copy of Marc Prensky’s “Digital Game-Based Learning” today from the public library to have a skim though. I’m interested in the historical development of the digital games.

Recent related links:

• Wired News: Today’s Homework: Make Good Games
• MSU Serious Games Design Masters Program
• Greenflame: Computer games as vehicles for political discourse

This looks promising. Touch is much harder to simulate in VR than sound and vision. This development seems to bring it a bit close. See Haptic glove to touch on virtual fabrics - tech - 13 February 2007 - New Scientist.

Paul’s posted a copy of his Refresh article BLOGGING – A CREATIVE WAY OF EXPLORING SPIRITUALITY & SPIRITUAL FORMATION? over on Prodigal Kiwi(s). Well worth having a look at.

Connects also with the following article published a couple of years back in Stimulus (NZ journal/magazine):

Bednar, Tim. “Blogging: Report from a Grassroots Revival.” Stimulus 12, no. 3 (2004): 24-30.

Similar to Rob Moll’s article in Christianity Today if you have access to their web portal - see Blogger Predicts Revival via Web - Leadership journal - ChristianityTodayLibrary.com

The “Uses of the Bible in Environmental Ethics” research project in the Department of Theology at the University of Exeter looks really interesting. My own research into historical and contemporary interpretation of the image of God motif interacted with human beings relationship with the natural world, so I’ll be looking to see what papers emerge from this project.

A while back Lindsay over at Random Murmurings pointed me towards the podcast of the ABC’s “All in the Mind” radio programme, and in particular this episode, All in the Mind - The Brain Computer Interface (2 December 2006). The episode looks at how technological developments, particularly in digital implants, might aid those with motor neurone disease and similar conditions.

The episode is especially interesting because includes excerpts from the paper co-authored by Nicholas Chisholm about his experience of locked-in syndrome and his observations on medical decision making and ethics from a position of complete lack of voice and power. It makes for very scary reading. The full text of the paper, co-authored with Grant Gillett of the Otago Bioethics Centre in Dunedin, is available at: The patient’s journey: Living with locked-in syndrome — Chisholm and Gillett 331 (7508): 94 — BMJ.

The issues presented connect closely those also raised by Gerard Goggin and Christopher Newell in several of their publications where they argue that those who are being “helped” by technology are left out of the consultative loop, and become merely tools used by those promoting the technology. They also note that ethical guidelines are also often determined by those with little or no personal experience of the issues being faced, and again those with that experience are not consulted. See:

• Goggin, G. and C. Newell (2002). Digital disability: the social construction of disability in new media. Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield. (Link)
• Goggin, G. and C. Newell (2004). “Uniting the nation? Disability, stem cells, and the Australian media.” Disability & Society 19(1): 47-60. (Link)
• Newell, C. (2006). “Disability, Bioethics, and Rejected Knowledge.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 31(3): 269-283. (Link)
• News in Science - More support for sex selection - 16/10/2001
• Thanks, but I’d rather be disabled by Marilyn Head | New Zealand Listener (January 21-27 2006 Vol 202 No 3428).

Michael Spezio (neuroscientist and Presbyterian minister) is another voice who is concerned that the optimism articulated by transhumanists and techno-progressives about solving issues of disease technologically with brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) fails to take into account those who are being “helped”. (Spezio, M. L. (2005). “Brain and Machine: Minding the Transhuman Future.” Dialog 44(4): 375-380. (Link))

In the BMI world, conversations proceed, press releases go out, stock losses are assessed, all without noticing the very real presence of humans in our midst who have taken our species’ first steps into BMI. Both advocates and opponents appear to already know the outcome of BMI, and in these imagined knowledge scapes, the research participants who are the true BMI explorers remain blurry figures, faceless and voiceless and powerless to make any contribution. (379)

He notes that,

While the questions are necessary, the form of speculative minding used to sketch possible answers serves largely to obscure rather than clarify the true benefits and harms likely to result from any recommended policy. Remaining wholly or mainly in imagined relation to imagined individuals with BMI means treating such individuals always as distant third persons, really as manipulable objects of one’s own story. No matter how strongly one professes concern for a person or group of people, if that concern emerges from and is elicited by wholly one-sided constructions of those people, the chauvinism of such one-sidedness will always overshadow the concern. (378)

Reducing things to “issues” or “problems” to be solved distances us from recognizing the flesh and blood human beings involved - “others” who have let become things rather than persons.

When you’ve done the special effects for Lord of the Rings and King Kong, what’s left to do? Apparently the answer to that question is Black Sheep.

Hat tip to Pacific Highlander: Black Sheep Horror Film.

Popped down to Hamilton for a few hours yesterday. Not to watch the ‘Canes beat the Chiefs, but instead to attend our friend Ross’ graduation with his BCNZ graduate diploma. Good to see him finish, and to catch up with him and Jo and other familiar faces from down there. The graduation ceremony was nice, but a little sad as the Waikato branch has closed recently.

Ross suggested many years ago that our house group do a church history paper though the BCNZ regional learning centre as something different to do, which was another step on both his and my journeys in theological education.

Nice too, to drive though the countryside around Hamilton.

Hurricanes 39 - 32 Chiefs

I’m happy. Though, I imagine those in outposts such as Leamington are less so.

Of course, no matter what the result this isn’t good.

Link off Monitor Duty: Lileks on Batman to an old (2005!) podcast about the evolution of Batman theme music. I still find it amusing that the 1960s Batman theme music is still chanted in the school playground by my children, even though none of them have seen the original TV show. (All that might change though now Prime is showing it after their Sunday morning Star Trek sessions.)

Anyway, I’m partial to Danny Elfman’s themes from Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns (the Schumacher sequels have been surgically erased from my memory because they were so bad - see here) , the animated Batman series, and the The Flash - Must be all that brass in it. Though I also loved the theme from Batman Begins. (And did you know that Wikipedia has a Batman Music category? Cool.)

At one end of the house was National Radio’s programme “Deep in the South Pacific of Bass” which looked at the development of NZ reggae. At the other end of the house, facing Corban Estate (several hundred meters away), the sound of Herbs and others singing at the

Waitakere Sounds - Waitangi Day Concert. Synchronicity in summer.

Now, later on, its moved on to John Rowles singing a selection of favourites and you can hear the crowd singing along.

Just saw the Call for Papers (closed) for “World Building: Seriality and History” conference on comics held by the University of Florida. Nice to see Kiwi, Dylan Horrocks (Hicksville) as a keynote speaker. Now I know the conference exists then I’ll be on the lookout for other CFPs from them. Hopefully by then I’ll also be financial enough to get there.

Related links: Greenflame: Dylan Horrocks on comics, games and world-building.

Time Magazine’s Top 10 graphic novels of 2006 - TIME 25 Top Ten 2006

Locus’ lists for 2006 - Locus Online: Locus Magazine’s Recommended Reading: 2006:

Saw this today, which points to a download from Apple that comes with a variety of free typefaces.

Macworld: Mac OS X Hints: Get some free fonts from Apple: