Back home after having my gall bladder removed by laproscopic surgery yesterday. No problems with the operation and feel quite good apart from some tenderness. Still a bit of CO2 fizzing around inside though. Asked to keep the gall stones but they turned out to be more of a sludge than nice stones – so that’s another children’s talk idea out the window.

When I was researching the thesis I read about this system – Workmates – da Vinci Surgical System. Was planning to see what they used yesterday but forgot once they started pumping anaesthetic into me. Oh well, next time?

Melbourne newspaper “The Age” has this brief article on neuroscientists analyzing what the brain does when an person is altruistic – see Warm as charity: why giving feels good.

Related links:

Books and articles by Antonio Damasio including:

• “Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain” (Antonio Damasio)
• “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain” (Antonio Damasio)
• “The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Theology and the Sciences)” (Eugene G. D’Aquili, Andrew B. Newberg)
• Damasio, Antonio. “Fundamental Feelings.” Nature 413 (2001): 781.

Books and articles by Andrew Newberg

• Metanexus articles by Andrew Newberg
• D’Aquili, Eugene G., and Andrew B. Newberg. “Consciousness and the Machine.” Zygon 31, no. 2 (1996): 235-252.
• D’Aquili, Eugene G., and Andrew B. Newberg. The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.

Counterbalance: Psychology and Neuroscience

A couple of interesting articles from Science about new stem cell research to file away under the bioethics category.

• Researchers Derive Stem Cells From Monkeys — Finkel 2007 (619): 1 — ScienceNOW
• Spare the Embryo, Save the Stem Cell — Finkel 2007 (619): 3 — ScienceNOW

I like the genre of Steampunk – which fuses the historical setting of 19th century Europe with advanced technological visions. Think steam-powered spaceships or Sherlock Holmes stories with mechanical computers thrown in. Elements of it crop up in comic books – the 2000AD series Nemesis was set for a while in a alien society that modelled itself on Victorian Britain and in Star Wars: Dark Empire II there’s a cool steam-powered spaceship – and also in movies like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (based on the comic series), Wild Wild West and Steamboy. Primarily it’s located in books though – Philip Reeve’s Hungry City Chronicles is an example of it for young adult/adult readers, while Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age mixes nanotechnology, AI and neo-Victorianism.

Basically, think airships, goggles, steam-powered computers, clockwork robots and difference engines.

Wired has a nice selection of pictures of contemporary steampunk inspired projects with current technologies – I love the steampunk laptop.

See Steam-Driven Dreams: The Wondrously Whimsical World of Steampunk.

Of course, Wikipedia has an extensive section on Steampunk. I tried Britannica Online, but alas, no information there.

Well, not quite. There aren’t enough positions around to apply for a new one every day

Still, at the start of every week I go through all the emails that get sent to me from various job sites and tertiary educational institutions HR systems, check university, church and college web sites, plus RSS feeds relating to jobs in humanities etc. Also send out emails to prospective employers and check in with other folk. I’ve met some nice folk doing that, just no-one with a job.

By Tuesday each week I feel a bit like Cecilia in the cartoon below.

PHD Comics: Untimely accident

Must be somewhere that needs/wants a theologian with expertise in doctrines of creation, eschatology, anthropology and research interests in their intersection with science, technology, ecology, media, pop culture and spirituality. (Plus a love of the OT and expertise in providing IT/internet support for and the teaching of distance theological education). It’s not as if they’re irrelevant topics for the church today.

Interestingly, the most recent positions I’ve seen advertised in Australasia have all been for OT specialists. See:

http://www.ttc.wa.edu.au/employment.shtml#Academic
http://jobs.search4.co.nz/job/view/sxnyr/

Would appreciate a flaming angelic messenger (or even a talking donkey) about now.

New Perspectives In Science and Theology Conference will be held 27-28 July 2007 at the Bible College of New Zealand in Auckland. It’s being organized by TANSAA (Theology and the Natural Sciences in Aotearoa Auckland) and Tyndale-Carey Graduate School, and is a Metanexus initiative.

The conference speakers cover a range of specialties: Physics & Origins of life; Biology; Theology & Biblical Studies; Psychology; Media and Digital Technologies.

I’m presenting a paper entitled “Image-bearing cyborgs?”, picking up some of the strands of hacking, hybridity and hope.

Click on the poster for more details.

Jelly beans rock for children’s talks at church. They’re colourful, taste great, universally recognizable by the kids, and relatively cheap as a prop. You can use them individually, by the handful, or in massive numbers.

Today I was doing the children’s talk slot in church but I’d been busy all week things – thinking about other things, doing other things – so when I had to prepare in a hurry I returned to the jelly beans.

I wanted to talk about God’s ‘hesed‘ – that strong relational aspect of loyalty, faithfulness and steadfast love towards another. Used the example of how my tastes changed over time – from black jellybeans when younger, to green ones, and currently to yellow ones. My favourite jelly bean changes, but God’s promise of and faithfulness in love doesn’t change over time (like my tastes in jelly beans), and is universal (embraces all ‘jelly beans’/people). Ended up handing out the jelly beans to the children – which was good as they were salivating all the way through.

I’ve also used the jelly beans to do an Easter children’s talk:

• Black – Good Friday, Jesus’ death
• Blue – The sadness of Easter Saturday
• Red – Jesus’ blood
• White – The angels at the tomb
• Orange – Easter is in autumn here – orange leaves
• Green – Resurrection, hope, new life
• Purple – The Kingdom of God

That worked well too. Just be careful how many you hand out though – don’t want the Sunday school/children’s church teachers coming to see you later about children on a ‘sugar rush’ in their programmes

Paul Roberts posts like a “true believer”. (It’s all about computer preferences, you see).

See staring into the distance::as far as our eyes can see » Computer-geek heaven (i) – Getting under the surface of the Mac.

Related links:

• Lam, Pui-Yan. “May the Force of the Operating System Be with You: Macintosh Devotion as Implicit Religion.” Sociology of Religion 62, no. 2 (2001): 243-262. (online here)
• Cult of Mac
• And here and here.

The Dominion Post has some pretty summaries of the 2006 census up on its web site available for download. How the data is presented is as interesting as the figures themselves. See NZ by the numbers – Features – Dominion Post

Related links:

2006 Census Data – Statistics New Zealand
Selected tables – Statistics New Zealand

A lot gets written about the ultra-hi-tech prosthetics (Greenflame · The World’s First Powered Ankle) and ‘cyborg’-implants (Greenflame · Mind Over Matter) but this (relatively) low-tech approach to finger replacements looks interesting. See: Gadget Lab – Mechanical Fingers Grant Grip: No Batteries Needed.