Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
Nice summary of how to get a RSS newsfeeds displayed on a Movable Type site at Learning Movable Type: Displaying an RSS Newsfeed on Your Site.
I use the zFeeder option which I made the Blog Portal page with a few months back. It stands in a static MT index page but you could get it added into the side bar of the page with little effort.
Interesting interview here with Elaine Graham: Finding humanity’s place on the Starship Enterprise. Again more stuff directly related to my research – definitely agree with her comment that “theologians must remember that technologies have to be considered within a wider political economy, as well as the broader ontological and philosophical issues.”
Dropped by the Science and Theology News web site today and saw the article on Robot helpers: How close to human should they look? which fits right in with my own research.
“Most people doing social robots believe that human faces will turn people off and will disturb them. I think that’s ridiculous,” Hanson said. “The human face is perhaps the most natural paradigm for us to interact with.”
What do you think? Should they look more like human beings or not?
A more detailed version of the article can be found at: CNN – Tech – Giving robots a human face.
Nice little Flash interactive game thing at Albino Blacksheep – Flash / Grow . Put things together in different ways to get a new thing – eclectic emergent metaphors anyone?
A new report out by the NZ Department of Statistics on The Digital Divide (2004) notes that:
Not earth-shatteringly surprising.
They also have a companion report on The Digital Divide with lots of graphs etc. in it.
Dave has some thoughts on church’s moving towards WiFi and such stuff here .
I’ve written before in the Digital Divide (The term ‘digital divide’ is used to describe the gap between those who have access to information technologies such as the Internet, and those who do not) and those who are “information poor” and those who are not. See: Techno-spirituality.
But I’m still thinking about it.
Blessed are the information poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
A while back (Battlestar memories) I said I’d blog about Babylon 5 and theology. Today as I sat in church we had some Gospel readings from the Passion week and I remembered the B5 episode Passing Through Gethsemane. To me it has much in it that fits with the Lenten season.
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Interesting article on addiction to television at Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor.
For growing numbers of people, the life they lead online may often seem more important, more immediate and more intense than the life they lead face-to-face. Maintaining control over one’s media habits is more of a challenge today than it has ever been. TV sets and computers are everywhere. But the small screen and the Internet need not interfere with the quality of the rest of one’s life. In its easy provision of relaxation and escape, television can be beneficial in limited doses. Yet when the habit interferes with the ability to grow, to learn new things, to lead an active life, then it does constitute a kind of dependence and should be taken seriously.
Now blogging wouldn’t be addictive, would it?
Tim blogs some comments about religious freedom in the West (esp. NZ) over at SansBlogue in light of the recent provision of dedicated Muslim prayer facilities at a “secular” NZ high school. (For those who don’t know NZ schools are meant to be totally secular – RE/Bible in Schools etc. tends to happen (thought not always) when a school is technically closed.)
While it’s live you can hear the interview that the Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, gave to Linda Clark on National Radio on Friday.
Windows Media Player link (Go to 17:30 minutes into the stream.)
More also at:
Government rattled over race-based funding, says Hide
Mallard backdown on Muslim prayer room
Mallard questions schools using karakia and not Lord’s Prayer
Here’s a report on NZ religious freedom at about.com NZ Religious Freedom Report (2003).
I received a flyer in the mail the other day about a new play here in Auckland called “Mary’s Gospel”. With all the buzz about “The Passion of the Christ” this play may have slipped under your radar. “Mary’s Gospel” looks like it has some engaging and challenging issues set in a Kiwi context.
Mary is a mental health consumer. Her cousin, Lizzie is her daily caregiver. Both women are part of the O’Malleys – a large, Irish Catholic family, who control most of the construction business in the Hutt Valley. At 15, Mary had a baby boy… Christie. In the beginning there were no words Only the dark And the cold. Naenae dark, Little Fish, busted – light dark. Breath like marshmallows from Woollies; Powdery, fat. So Mary begins her gospels. The story of her life, for her half-caste son, Christie. Little Fish. As she speaks, Christie responds in the language of dance. This communion is their Gospel truth. This moving, poetic and funny play, presents a view of life from the inside of mental illness, and is the newest work from the pen of Geraldine Brophy.
and
Mary’s Gospel is about the Labour of daily love – the humour and hardship that abound when someone you love has a mental illness, the family you’re part of has a moral illness and there is no place between Heaven and Hell.
Booking details at The Edge®: Whats On.
The secret life of a rubber duck. A Duck’s Tale is a cute CGI animation of a rubber duck weighing in at a hefty 10Mb (MPEG-4 format). I’m trying to think of how I can use it in class because it’s just so cute – maybe something about the human need for love and relationships?