Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.
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Flying visit to Wellington yesterday for an Interchurch Bioethics Council meeting.
Nice to be back in the Heavenly City, if only for 10 hours or so. Stimulating meeting too.
More resources at: Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand // Media: Ecumenical & Interchurch - Interchurch Bioethics Council Resources.
Hat tip to James at Exploring Our Matrix for a link through to an extensive interview How Our Brains are Wired for Belief with Andrew Newberg (hosted by the Pew Forum) on religion and neuroscience (neurotheology). He also notes this link to various related articles by Newberg and others.
See also Greenflame · Search results - Newberg which has some more links in it.
Received the DVD and pamphlet for The Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church - The Hikoi of Hope: Walking On in the mail the other day. I’ve only had a quick look at it but it looks like a well put together resource looking back at the Hikoi of Hope 10 years on, and providing resources for churches and other groups to explore issues of social justice within the present.
Recent UK legislation relating to embryology included provision of the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos (which combine human and animal genetic material) for therapeutic research purposes. (See UK parliament backs human-animal embryo research | HEALTH | NEWS | tvnz.co.nz)
What do you think?
Related links:
Two different points of view on the UK embryology bill:
Who’s afraid of a synthetic human? | John Harris - Times Online
A recent issue of ESPN The Magazine has an article on athletes with prosthetics and some commentary asking what really is the difference between various sorts of technological enhancement in sport. See ESPN - ESPN The Magazine - Let ‘Em Play and the photo gallery at ESPN - ESPN The Magazine - Photo Gallery.
Hat tip to Gregor Wolbring at ESPN Magazine focus on Athletes and Prosthetics « Nano, Bio, Info, Cogno, Synthetic bio, NBICS.
A while back I came across the Canongate series of Pocket Canons (see Greenflame · Nick Cave on the Gospel of Mark). I like the series, and now I’ve found that all the introductory pieces written for the different biblical books in that series have been collected into a single volume - “Revelations: Personal Responses To The Books Of The Bible†introduced by Richard Holloway.
I’ve borrowed the book from the university library in order to look at Bono’s piece on the Psalams for a course I’m preparing, but I’ve found that I’m dipping into it every now and then to read another person’s reflection on a biblical book. Some really interesting responses to, not only the content of the biblical material, but also the context it has been encountered in.
As a child growing up there were certain TV shows that could only be watched from “behind the couchâ€. You wanted to know what happened, but at the same time the tension (and scariness) of the episode required that some form of retreat or protection was needed. These shows included the (Tom Baker) Dr Who ‘Pyramids of Mars‘ episodes, the UK series ‘Children of the Stones‘, and the New Zealand kid’s science fiction drama ‘Under the Mountain’, based on the Maurice Gee novel of the same name.
Today, we picked up the Under the Mountain DVD of TV series (filmed back in the early 80s). I’m looking forward to moving the couch forward a bit from the wall, and sitting down to watch it with the kids. Should be fun, especially as a couple of the kids have already read the novel.
Also, on a related note - the creator of ‘Black Sheep‘ is going to produce a movie version of the book aimed at teenagers. That should be worth seeing when it happens. More details here.
Various learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle allow you to create online activities like quizzes and polls as part of the course content and engagement. But what do you do if you need something like that but you don’t have access to an LMS that does it or you need to put that content in an environment outside of the LMS.
I’ve been playing around with Hot Potatoes which gives you some of this functionality. It feels a bit clunky in places, but it will certainly get the job done if you want basic multi-choice quizzes, crosswords and matching exercises.
If course if you want to create a quiz that logs the results against the student (say for assessment purposes) then you’ll need to step up to something more like an LMS.
When I can get a moment on the PC at home I’ll download and have a play with WorldWide Telescope. Looks interesting, but I need the PC to run it - no Mac version.
And I’ll get around to looking at Google Sky too.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away Darren wrote in an email “i’ll do serenity asap…â€. That was June 2006.
Now, however, he’s started the great Firefly Study Series and you can find the first parts at:
He’s also noted the link (via Tensegrities) to a series of Firefly clips over at Cowgirl Jazz.
Last September it was my turn to graduate with the PhD at the University’s spring graduation. Last Wednesday I was on the other side of the fence, participating not as a graduand, but instead as faculty. Quite a different experience, from carrying the Theology banner through the streets at the head of the Theology students, through to being an academic marshall at the ceremony, and watching the students get capped from ‘on stage’ rather than in the audience.
All in all, a good (though different) kind of day.
A while back I saw the graphic novel “The Homeless Channel†being mentioned around the net. Part satire, part social commentary, part something else, the story is based around a cable reality TV show that provides 24 hour coverage of the homeless people in the city and the lives of people that intersect with that TV show. It sounds intriguing, and quite different from any other graphic novel I’ve seen recently. I’m going to try and see if I can get hold of a copy.
Comics Bulletin has a couple of pieces related to it: The first is an interview with the creator, Matt Silady, while the second is a review of the novel.
The creator, Matt Silady, also has a preview of the novel and a movie trailer of the story.
Useful Problogger article on different ways of getting a design for your blog - from the free through to the expensive. See Problogger: How Do I Get a Professionally Designed Blog?
Turning MS Word files into web pages can be a really painful experience - particularly if you have to go through them by hand looking to change or modify them. I’ve had some days when I’ve given up trying to get Word content into a nice web format and just gone and recoded the content from scratch. However, I might give some of these tools a trying in future - Convert Word Docs to Web Pages - Wired How-To Wiki.
You would think that there should be a really good introductory survey article, essay or book chapter out there that describes various distinctives within Christian spirituality - either by theme or by historical period. Something that looks briefly at each of things like monastic tradition (desert and cloister), mysticism, mendicant spirituality (Franciscan & Dominican), Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, Holiness/Wesleyan etc.
Now, I know there are some good books out there like the one’s below - but what about a magazine or introductory academic article? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Books that do this include:
As does something like Foster’s Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith does this.
I shall continue my trawling of journals, books and magazines…
