Sometimes I really wonder if we all live on the same planet – See Lynn Schofield Clark – Church Cancels Teen Gun Giveaway.

After listening to Steve’s presentation on River as a Christ-figure in the movie Serenity, I felt inspired to walk up to Heroes for Sale and grab the last two parts of the latest Serenity mini-series “Better Days” from Dark Horse comics.

Suffice to say I was disappointed. The story seemed to drag, some of the characterisation and language seemed “off”, and it didn’t really grab me like the first mini-series “Those Left Behind” did. Plus, there’s the sense of “dead men walking” if you’ve seen the film. Still, it is Serenity (and walking up the hill to the shop did clear my head of conference ‘fug’ and stretch my legs after a day sitting listing to stuff).

I also picked up the next issue in Image Comics “Transhuman” series – which deals with venture capital funding in this issue. It’s okay, but again the previous issue was much better.

See also:

Greenflame · Serenity: Better Days
Greenflame · Transhuman – The comic mini-series

After a flurry of technology posts it seems appropriate to point to this interesting one by Kevin Kelly about people who are or have been heavily involved with technology and are now attempting to reduce it’s invasiveness in their lives. See Kevin Kelly — The Technium — Neo-Amish Drop Outs.

While I won’t be owning an iPhone in the near future I was interested to stumble across this Flickr app for it created by my ‘cousin-in-law’ : Mobile Flickr, coming to an iPhone near you — Sneak.

Videos of it working over at Mobile Flickr | Apple iPhone School

Being an old UNIX programmer I love the idea of assembling your own set of small, powerful applications doing one task well rather than monolithic applications that try to do too much and fail at doing everything well. I don’t use Flickr but I like the look of this small app.

Via Hacking Christianity – The Social Principles Word-Cloud I’ve found Wordle – Beautiful Word Clouds.

Here’s a word cloud for the presentation/paper I did this week.

(Click on it to get slightly bigger picture)

Scot McKnight has a nice post about the relevance of Helmut Thielicke’s little book “A Little Exercise for Young Theologians” to blogging over at Jesus Creed » A Little Exercise for Young Theologians.

I’ve used Thielicke’s book in theology classes in the past – particularly the section on the first year theological student returning to their home church and failing to talk the language of the people there, and instead parading all the terms and language they have learnt but without significant reflection upon them, or having integrated of them into a robust theological view, and without the humility essential to a theologian serving the people of God.

Very busy this week juggling SBL + work stuff in the gaps – always a problem when a conference is happening on your own campus.

Good to catch up with lots of different people over the week.

Various random highlights included:

Going to a presentation in an ecological stream and in the question time finding out about Transition Towns (see also Transition Towns New Zealand Aotearoa)

Having Steve (the emergentkiwi) to stay for a couple of nights and enjoying his paper/presentation on female Christic figures in cinema (especially in “Whale Rider”, “The Fifth Element” and “Serenity”).

Seeing a new crop of postgrads (and a few undergrads) from around the country front up and present their research. Some really good presentations today which bodes well for new people coming through in biblical studies in this part of the world.

Doing my paper on “Broadening the application of the co-creator metaphor”, getting some good feedback, and surviving getting into my talk before realizing I was using the version of the paper without the last minute changes I’d made to it the night before. (Luckily I had the new version on me and could grab it without breaking stride too much).

Listening to an intriguing paper after mine on Melanesian perceptions of the world (especially time) and how that shapes the enculturation of the the gospel and teaching theology. Some good material there that would intersect with developing an Oceanian theology of technology.

It’s been a long week so I’m now looking forward to a lazy weekend.

Microclesia alerted me to the death this week of John Templeton, who has been hugely influential in the funding and support of science and religion discussion and dialogue.

Scientific American carries an article on him over at John Templeton, Philanthropist of Science and Religion, Dead at 95: Scientific American.

Related links:

Scot McKnight has a nice post about the relevance of Helmut Thielicke’s little book “A Little Exercise for Young Theologians” to blogging over at Jesus Creed » A Little Exercise for Young Theologians.

I’ve used Thielicke’s book in theology classes in the past – particularly the section on the first year theological student returning to their home church and failing to talk the language of the people there, and instead parading all the terms and language they have learnt but without significant reflection upon them, or having integrated of them into a robust theological view, and without the humility essential to a theologian serving the people of God.

Well, the first day of presentations at SBL International Meeting here in Auckland, as yesterday there was the powhiri and reception to welcome attendees.

So far the highlights for me have been the opportunities to meet new people, to catch up with old friends and acquaintances, and to get a feel for the different ways in which people present their material. My presentation is later in the week so getting a sense of what works and what doesn’t with the audience here is nice to have. Plus, picked up some cheap books which is always a bonus.

Still tired from an excellent birthday party for Kim over the weekend out at Whatipu with friends and family staying at the Whatipu Lodge for the weekend, so nice just to sit in some presentations and catch up with people.