ABC radio programme The Spirit of Things – 26August2007 – Space, Genes, Evolution and Religion interviews four thinkers in the area of science and religion: Ted Peters, Martinez Hewlett, Antje Jackelen and Jacques Arnould. It’s a fairly low key engagement with the topic, but worth a listen (and the web page has links to both the audio and other resources).

Related references:

Jackelén, Antje. “The Image of God as Techno Sapiens.” Zygon 37, no. 2 (2002): 289-302.
Jackelén, Antje. “What Is ”Secular“? Techno-Secularism and Spirituality.” Zygon 40, no. 4 (2005): 863-873.

Peters, Ted. Playing God?: Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Peters, Ted. Science, Theology, and Ethics Ashgate Science and Religion Series. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

Peters, Ted, and Martinez Hewlett. Evolution from Creation to New Creation: Conflict, Conversation, and Convergence. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003.

The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences
Zygon Center for Religion and Science

A friend (Hi Rob!) emailed me this links about a (free) Microsoft product – SteadyState – that allows you to manage shared Windows PCs, such as kiosk PCs or ones used by children.

See Parents take control with SteadyState – Security – Technology – theage.com.au

I guess it’s the (great?) grandchild of something like Apple’s old At Ease interface.

Short but helpful article by Darren at ProBlogger on How I Produce Video Blog Posts.

The NZ Privacy Commissioner has a press release out on what she calls “privacy pollution” caused by individuals and wider society being permeated by digital media and transactions.

“Privacy pollution is about the small privacy incursions that are annoying rather than harmful in themselves, but can accumulate and have widespread impact that can ultimately amount to a significant level of intrusion”

See: Private Word Issue 63, August 2007 – The Office of the Privacy Commissioner, New Zealand

Related links:

• Commissioner hits out at “privacy pollution” – Yahoo!Xtra News:
• Scoop: ‘Privacy Pollution’ erodes choices:
• Call for restrictions on ‘privacy pollution’ – New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz:

Last week sometime my name-brand Windows anti-virus software beeped at me and said it wanted to upgrade itself to the new, bright and shiny version. ‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘it knows that the subscription is about to run out and it might be replaced with something else so it’s trying to coerce me into loathing it less.’

Anyway, I duly let it do its thing and, given the painful process of upgrading Windows software, got it running smoothly or so I thought. It turns out though that it seems to become more draconian about CDROMs being inserted into the computer. Before a CDROM would be inserted, be scanned briefly and then autorun. Now a CDROM is inserted and we can all go off and have dinner before the computer recognize it’s there and autoruns it. This *really* *really* annoys the kids running games off CDROM.

Options available

• Uninstall new version, reinstall previous version. May increase risk through not being able to update in future
• Stay with the current setup – grit teeth and bear it. At risk from irate offspring.
• Turn off the ‘scan CDROM’ setting – increase risk
• Change anti-virus software to a new program – which may do a worse job at scanning etc.
• And so on…

The experience made me think about the church and how sometimes we run our own ‘anti-virus software’ at the door, in the service, in our small groups, in what we read, watch and listen to, and in who we befriend. It seeks to prevent ideas and people who might disrupt the community of faith from even breaching the doorway. In doing so though we may set our ‘scanning’ options to be so aggressive that things that are normal and useful become hard to do for people in the community, and others from outside the community will not ever encounter Christ because of being ‘scanned’ (and heaven forbid, ‘quarantined’ or ‘deleted’). Perhaps, we need to check what our settings are and take a risk at setting them to something less aggressive.

If you’re interested in the history of New Zealand comics then tune into TV One Sunday night (2 Sep) at 10:40pm for the broadcast of The Comics Show – documentary by Point of View Productions.

Hat tip to New Zealand comics on TV – Dylan’s blog

Related link: Artsville | TV ONE PROGRAMMES | TV ONE | tvnz.co.nz

Today is St Augustine’s Day. Augustine is the patron saint of brewers and theologians, so put a few bottles away in the fridge to drink later while pondering the things of God.

(For those of you in the “Chardonnay set” who were wondering about wine – the patron saint of vintners is St Amand (among others)).

A while back I wrote an increasingly long list of (predominantly Mac-based) writing tools – Greenflame · Thinking about writing tools.

Fernando has recently written some more on than theme and on one of those tools (Scrivener), including some comments on how it helps manage his writing processes. See Fernando’s Desk » Getting It Down On Screen.

While I’ve seen various individual churches experimenting with various forms of online and offline social networking, e.g. speed dating, and various online companies have religiously-oriented services for meeting people, this is the first one I’ve seen that has the sanction of a Catholic bishop. See Singles site has bishop’s blessing – 23 Aug 2007 – Religion and beliefs news – NZ Herald

A few years back I heard a sermon from a guest preacher that used the example of Jupiter’s presence in the solar system decreasing the number of comets etc. that might hit the Earth catastrophically as a ‘proof’ of the intelligent design (by God) of the solar system (and by implication the whole universe). (For an example of this see: Reasons To Believe: Spokane Chapter Newsletter – June 2006 – Jupiter and Saturn: Miraculous Planets)

As someone who has a passing interest in astronomy (I did a couple of undergraduate papers at university) that example always seemed too neat – surely things were more complicated than that in the celestial mechanics of the solar system? And now, things do appear more complicated over at Is Jupiter a Bodyguard or Troublemaker? — Schilling 2007 (824): 3 — ScienceNOW. I guess it’s time for a sermon retcon for a few preachers.