April 2007

This report on the announcement of an extra-solar planet (ie. one orbiting another star) that lies within the zone where water would be a fluid and is relatively small looks interesting. See SPACE.com — Major Discovery: New Planet Could Harbor Water and Life.

Having just posted the previous post I came across the following which also relate to religious narratives and media. Both are connected to MIT’s Science, Technology, and Society program which held a recent communications colloquium “Evangelicals and the media”.

• Henry Jenkins: Why Media Studies Should Pay More Attention to Christian Media…
• Evangelicals and the Media (MIT Webcast)

A while back on Tensegrities » Transmedia storytelling there was a link though to Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: Transmedia Storytelling 101. In effect, creating an evolving story with multiple entry points though the interplay of more than one type of medium (and authors and creators).

A few years back I picked up on Jenkin’s idea of transmedia storytelling (Greenflame » Why the Matrix Matters) but the link I cited there seems to have disappeared. So here’s one of the original articles he wrote about it: Technology Review: Transmedia Storytelling:

In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best-so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play. Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That is, you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa.

Back then I thought it would make a good model for developing theological and faith narratives (indeed, emulating religious traditions’ abilities to tell stories orally, as writings, in ritual, in music and song etc.), and I still do. Multiple entry points to the Christian narrative through various forms of media that were produced across a range of authors. Similar in a way to Greenflame » Subversive, life-giving fan fiction.

I receive an email. It’s a friend asking for my assistance with something as a handyman. I read the email again to make sure I read it correctly. It still seeks my advice. I sit down for a bit to recover.

I decline to show said email to my wife fearing derisive laughter, and instead post about it on the net, where my two readers can bask in the glow of my ‘do-it-yourself’ aptitude. I have become an ‘expert’ sought out for my practicality. I feel at one with the universe.

Tomorrow I shall find my toolkit from where it’s buried in the shed. In the meantime I surf over to hardware shop web sites to mentally, emotionally and spiritually prepare myself. With great power comes great responsibility.

A couple of recent posts connecting to theme of children in church.

• The Christian Century: Memory verses - Teaching children the Bible by Nancy Ammerman (April 03, 2007)
• AKMA’s Random Thoughts: I Second The Notion (April 09, 2007)

A page has appeared on Amazon for the first installment of the new direct-to-DVD Babylon 5 series: Amazon.com: Babylon 5 - The Lost Tales. So, it should be here sooner rather than later (at least for Region 1 release). Will it stand up to watching in the post-Firefly universe though?

More information over at:

• J. Michael Straczynski - B5:TLT Pre-Production - Babylon5scripts.com
• Lurker’s Guide to B5: “Voices in the Dark”

Update

• Babylon 5 DVD news: Date, Price, Extras and Artwork for ‘Babylon 5: The Lost Tales’ | TVShowsOnDVD.com

One of my friends (who shall remain nameless) gave me one of these. With friends like these…

Took my two youngest children to the beach today as something different to do during the school holidays. Over to Long Bay on the North Shore, the weather was glorious, the kids splashed in the sea, played on the playground and rode on the little train. Then down to Takapuna for lunch with Kim - and we got to see a graduation procession through town for Massey University complete with pipe band.

A nice day and here’s a snap of the beach this morning.

In the blog reshuffle I noticed that the Children’s Talks category hadn’t had anything new posted in it for a while. So here’s one I did the other week.

When teaching hermeneutics I’ve always been struck by how much the method that’s often described in text books is like the children’s TV programme Blue’s Clues. (For those of you who don’t know the programme, the blue dog, Blue, leaves three paw prints on different things around the house, which the host of the show (Steve, Joe, Kevin, Duarte or chengewa) uses to figure out what’s important to Blue (e.g. Blue’s suggestion for a present).

Anyway, before the children’s talk I’d collected three different “clues” and “hidden” them (in plain view) in church with big blue paw prints on them. I asked the children if they knew about Blue’s Clues and explained the premise to the children who didn’t (along with those members of the congregation who were unfamiliar with recent children’s TV). Then I told the children I’d “hidden” three clues in the church and together they would tell them something about me when they were collected together. A different group of children were sent off to find the clues and bring them back to the front of the church. The clues were:

• Some red and blue clothes
• A collection of toys that are related to flying - frisbee, airplane, toy birds
• A bag filled with bricks (really heavy)

As each clue was returned I drew them on my “handy-dandy” whiteboard (a notebook was too small to see) and then we used a “thinking chair” to think about what they meant - red and blue clothes, flying, and strong. Eventually we got to “Superman”, and the fact that I like comics books.

Then I asked why reading the Bible might be like playing Blue’s Clues, and we talked about how in the Bible, God leaves clues about what God is like. And how we can collect these clues, and the more clues we find, the better the picture we get. Also, discussed what the best clue is (Jesus), and how, when we need to think about the “clues”, we sometimes need to do it with crayons, paper, glue, scissors, songs and with the help of other people who may have collected different clues.

All in all, it went well - though I restrained myself from singing the goodbye song and there are probably a few children who think I think I’m Superman.

As an aside, on the subject of children’s talks, I’m more a fan of all-age inclusive worship across the duration that the children not in their Sunday school classes. Children’s talks can smack of tokenism at times - so if you have to do one, treat the children as valued members of the congregation, respect their ability to participate and contribute, and resist pressure to cut the talk down to fit into adult-centric time slots or nice pithy moralistic message. If you only have one space in the service specifically for children make sure you do it well. I made mistakes doing the talk above and asked for feedback from my family and others. Next time I’d do it differently in a couple of places but on the whole it worked.

Life seems to have been busy of sorts lately.

• Lots of visitors at Easter and then through until today (including Steve the Emergent Kiwi who stayed for a couple of nights last week).
• School and kindy holidays.
• My oldest son’s birthday + party.
• Kid’s soccer practices in full swing for the season start next Saturday.
• Some part-time work (including being paid to drive around a set route in the Auckland traffic over a 12 hour period with a GPS to time how long it took at different times of the day).
• Preaching last Sunday out in the country at a congregation associate with our parish (I’m on the lay preaching roster). Nice service out there, and I preached on the theme of hope out of John’s Gospel. Preaching again this week at our regular church.

Lots of little things - but they all add up.

Xenotransplantation - in general terms, transplanting non-human organic tissue into human beings - looks likely to become more common in New Zealand in light of the decision to re-open the door to its use in potential diabetes treatment.

• Pig cell transplants bring new hope for sick Kiwis - 17 Apr 2007 - NZ Herald: New Zealand National news:
• Green light given for pig cell transplants to humans - New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz:

A couple of years back I did a few lectures about xenotransplantation and similar technologies that I argued would become more common in the near future, and that there were significant pastoral issues that would need to be faced in light of this. I still think this, and I worry that many people when faced with hard decisions about this type of procedure, and especially questions that it raises about human identity, will find little or no space in the faith communities to reflect upon and discuss it.

Even outside of the issues raised about its safety, the potential for a knee-jerk marginalization of individuals who do elect for these treatments (for whatever reasons) within the church and the wider community seems a very real possibility. Especially in communities that see the division between human and non-human in clear-cut, black and white, divinely-ordered categories.

For links to related articles and web sites see the category: Greenflame: Bioethics.

Comic buying is temporarily on hold at the moment, but that isn’t stopping me from paying attention to the developing story of the Sinestro Corps within the DC Universe. Finally, the villain Sinestro seems to have moved from an almost comic (pardon the pun) character to one who is deadly serious. It was hinted at in the Green Lantern: Rebirth series and now it seems like more depth will be added to the character. Way back in Emerald Dawn II (early 90s) Sinestro was portrayed as a control-freak who imposed (his) order upon the world in clear cut, black and white categories - a fundamentalist almost in some ways. Now, we get to see where being thwarted in that goal takes him.

Newsarama has an interview here about the upcoming mini-series: TAPPING IN TO EVIL: ETHAN VAN SCIVER ON SINESTRO CORPS - NEWSARAMA.

My only quibble with the interview is that it does seem to ignore the fact that something similar was done way back in March 1982 with the creation of the Anti-Green Lantern Corps (see picture). On the other hand, the new attempt at a dark mirror to the GL Corps looks far less cheesy than that.

Damaris have released some study resources for Firefly to go with the Serenity resource,

See Culture Watch - Firefly and Culture Watch - Serenity.

I’m a big fan of software applications that concentrate on doing one task in an exemplary fashion. Probably a throwback to my UNIX script programming day when I’d connect lots of small single purpose applications together to work on my data. Which is why this interview caught my eye (Mozilla: Why Desktop E-Mail Crucifies the Browser). I loathe web email - I use it, but it’s never a pleasant experience no matter what system the provider is using. Maybe if I was getting mail only on one address, and maybe if I was getting only a few emails a day, but with lots of mail accounts for different purposes it really doesn’t work well.

I tried an early version of Thunderbird years ago and it didn’t quite satisfy me. Maybe it’s time to try it again - especially with better web email support.

He drew a deep breath. ‘Well I’m back,’ he said.