Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Questionnaire, by Wendell Berry

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Wendell Berry said, “We’re members of each other, everything, all of us. And the difference is not in who is and who ain’t, but who knows it and who don’t.”

John Patterson:

Hone Tuwhare’s poem for James K Baxter

Cairo is hot and loud, and the traffic is mental (of course), and I’m happy to feel useful for the first time in a fortnight.

Stanley Fish on retiring and his second and last poem

I’ve just finished Lesslie Newbigin’s Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture. Great book. A quote from the last chapter, in which he gives seven conditions upon which the recovery of the western church depends:

The sixth requirement I would suggest for a missionary encounter with our culture is simply the courage to hold and to proclaim a belief that cannot be proved to be true in terms of the axioms of our society. … The gospel is not a set of beliefs that arise, or could arise, from empirical observation of the whole human experience. It is the announcement of a name and a fact that offer the starting point for a new and life-long enterprise of understanding and coping with experience. It is a new starting point. To accept it means a new beginning, a radical conversion.

Poetry events coming up: Newtown Spoken Word this Friday at the N-town Community Centre, co-hosted by Wellington’s own Bel; and Howltearoa next Monday at Southern Cross Bar.

Also, what a date today! All 0s 2s and 7s!

through the open window
of that Chinese restaurant
one white feather

rummaging through Google’s data warehouse
God saw
the most fascinating patterns

‘Dragonfiles mating’, a poem by Robert Hass [via Bel]
Ricky Gervais interviews Chris Martin [via RDB]
Web design inspiration flickr set [via digg]

Clay Shirky on category decay in classification systems, or why knowledge is nothing without a community, or why the church and the bible are necessary to each other [17MB mp3, more formats available down the page]
An intro to an intro to RS Thomas

Poem: ‘Hard Rain’, by Tony Hoagland
Jakob Nielson on web participation inequality

Following Nielson: On this blog over the last three years, the top 10% of named commentors post about 84% of the comments. The top three commentors post about quarter of the comments. The top 10% of commentors (in order) were me, Tim, Aaron, David, Richard B, Dan W, Matthew Baird, Deb, Daniel McClelland, Hans, Jono, John, Sam, Rich F, Dennis, Sambo, Rudy, Bryan, Kathy, D, Ben, Ange, RU and Lynton. There is some confusion about which Matthew/Matt is which. Lots of boys in there, eh? It would be somewhat interesting to do the same analysis for the last few months, but this took me 45 minutes to produce and you know Todd.

UP-to-the-minute-DATE:
And you’ll be pleased to learn that the numbers on the last twelve months are: the top 10% of named commentors post about 48% of the comments. The top 10% of commentors were: me, Tim, Dennis, Sambo, Richard B, Aaron. Next few: Daniel McClelland, Matthew Baird, Hans, Rudy, D, Jono, Richface, a, Ben, Deb, Anabelle, Bel and James K. The curve is getting flatter, i.e. there’s less participation inequality than there used to be. Another blow for FREEDOM!!

Sean Devine: How do we know?/Footsteps of a Creator [80K PDF]
from the recent faith/science series at Ramsey House.
two Sue Wootton poems
a book I made

Free movie, The Conversation, 8 Kelburn Pde, Wednesday 8pm

I was at the tuwhare show last night (thank you Mr Steele) and I saw & heard Don McGlashan peform ‘Rain’. He was accompanied by a pianist and played a little euphonium. It was about the most beautiful thing I’ve seen & heard for eversolong.

I suppose a good poem could be a night-time ride on a souped-up camel halfway into the desert, stalled and stranded and short of breath.

Brian McLaren interview (feat. violence in the OT & hell!)
Two body poems from the New Pantagruel issue 2.3
Setting up Atlas School
Sketching a coherant political theory
Priests in lab coats

Gavin ended his sermon tonight with this quote from a Hasidic rabbi:

Wisdom lives in the future, and from there it speaks to us. There is no such thing as wisdom of the past. Wisdom preceded the world and wisdom is its destiny. With each passing moment, wisdom becomes younger as we come closer to the time when it is born and breathes the air of day. Our ancient mothers and fathers, the sages, all those from whom we learn wisdom – they are not guardians of the past. They are messengers of the future.

O by the way, this isn’t me, this is a website.