matthew henry john bartlett

watch woman age [QT, via consumptive.org]
The sound of one hand clapping, solved!
Dan McC drops evolution
Peter Leithart on The Passion

The answer to the Problem of Pain is – Where does it hurt? Can I help?

Star Wars III spoiler gallery [via /.]
Some ideas for Christian uni students

I was browsing in a second hand bookstore last night (hooray for bookshops that stay open late) and came across CSL’s A Grief Observed. I read half of it before bed. It is almost a journal of Lewis’ thoughts in the weeks after his wife died of cancer (which his mother and father had also died from). So far it is actually the saddest and most honest book I have ever read. I fear I won’t be able to see death as a natural part of life by the time I’ve finished it.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Deep sea fish gallery [via mefi]
Doug Wilson gets honest about preaching stories
Improving worship music & poetry
Heavy Seas
J Begbie on Gospel & music [17MB RA, via Kevin Bush]

I passed my summer Chemistry paper with a B. I’m rather stoked with that, as I did a terrible rush job on the experimental section of the course.

Complete works of George Orwell, online
Flyguy [via kathy]

I am really enjoying OSC’s pseudo-biography of Moses’ life at the moment. A quote:

“Look for his hand in the road behind,” said Jochabed. “And when you’ve learned to see it, then look for his hand in the road ahead. Take his hand, follow his hand. Only in his hand will you be free.”

My boss sent me a new phone yesterday. It’s quite pretty:

My new number is 027 211 3455.

I like the feeling of slowly falling asleep while reading. Or being just awake enough to memorise my page number and put my book somewhere safe (from dribble), knowing that within seconds I will no longer be. There is also having the words slide past at exactly reading speed, but being too preoccupied with my own dramas to notice theirs, waking from the sleepless dream and having to backtrack a page or two. Falling asleep is trust and civilisation; I am the Noble Civilian. Hot and cold running water comfort me in a bath where sleep ruins library books. Bath sleep is death sleep, immoblised dreamless in porcelain. Waking is birth breaking the waters, disorientated, brand new wrinkled baby skin and a clean slate.

[thanks Dan]

The course of antibiotics prescribed by my dentist has worked well. The hourly toothaches of last week have disappeared, leaving a small amount of residual ache. The tooth is still coming out on Friday. I am brushing thricely or more, and flossing twicely or more every day. A friend told me to eat acidophilus yoghurt while I’m on the medication. A side effect of the antibiotics is that they upset my stomach, by killing organisms that keep something called Candida under control. The yoghurt is meant to restore the balance of Candida and the other stuff. My stomach feels disconnected at the moment, I can hardly tell when I’m hungry or full. I eat about the amount that I remember needing to eat in the past to feel full. Presumably that’ll go back to normal shortly.

One Mary E Ashcroft on the pitfalls of being a firstborn academic [17MB RA]

Woe betide us if in our commitment to winning yesterday’s battles we ignore today’s and tomorrow’s.

Vote for best redesign of Project Gutenberg
My favourite Mormon Christian on The Passion
Command line best for newbies?
Lois Weisberg [via kathy]
Sphere Sovereignty 101
there are no evils in nature, only in man

The taste of blood in my mouth. The first irrevocable physical down-hill step. The yawning gap a foretaste of the yawning grave.

But also: A decay exorcised. A resolution to tend these remaining teeth. A couple of weeks learning empathy for people in physical pain.

If you would like to see some pictures of my tooth, do email!

We went to the Law School Jazz Shindig yesternight. My friends wore fake moustaches. I shaved off my beard to reveal the awexome spectacle you see before you. Actually it looks a lot cooler (though still pretty whackdaddy) in real life than it does on the scanner, as I have balancing sideburns and a winning smile.

Though it took a little while to get going, and faded into aimless wandering after leaving the shindig proper, it was a standout evening. I met lots of nice girls who gave me their numbers and caught up with some people I haven’t seen for a while. The band (Shaken Not Stirred (or something)) was grand and made good dancingtimes. I wasn’t drinking but got all hyper after looking in the mirror and seeing that beautiful mo.

I have a new friend. Her name is Jennifer. She lives on my top lip, and sometimes answers my cellphone and talks to shopkeepers when I’m busy.

The Ten Commandments, Birdman-style
Nice design: South Gin [flashtastic]

The best thing that’s ever been in our church bulletin:

HOSPITALITY
HOMEC is conscious that sometimes our wish to be hospitable is limited by what is currently in the pantry at home. Help is at hand. If you have the urge to invite someone over after church on a Sunday and need a little extra supply of food or drink please feel free to take from the box in the kitchen marked “Pantry Supplies.” You are welcome to replace food at a later date if you have just used it as a convenience but if you are on a budget don’t worry. Your gift of hospitality is appreciated by the church.

The best-selling artist of all time [via Scott C]

Exile is for learning, to prepare for return. Adam & Eve sent out of the garden, Jacob flees Esau, David chased out by Saul to prepare for kingship, Moses from Egypt to the desert to learn to lead Israel out of Egypt to the desert, Israel to captivity until she remembers God, Jesus to the desert, Prodigal son, excommunicated brother.

The earth is a gift to be cherished and looked after, not an x to be y’d.

Meridian Energy plan to divert part of Waitaki River in Southland into a canal to generate power to meet NZ’s growing demand. Learn more at waitakifirst.co.nz.

You know what to do.

What does it mean to be saved? [360k PDF, via Kevin Bush]
Alistair Cooke sends last Letter from America
Wendell Berry on War & Peace
TM Auction: C++ Data Structures textbook
Destiny’s child vs. Elbow vs. rathergood.com [via Sam E]

Quoting one Rabbi Bunam, one Phil Baker said

A man should carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed, “I am but dust and ashes.” On the other, “For my sake was the world created.”

VUW‘s student mag Salient is usually rubbish, but this current issue (#02) is a minter. It’s got some really good columns (especially Craig Cliff’s), isn’t all crass, and alerted me to that Project Aqua thang.

Lyrics: Air/Biological
Wendell Berry on Life after September 11
Cellphones rotting brain
Pornographer makes anti-porn ad [via xxxchurch.com]

walking with walkman
I try not to dance
best. musicvideo. ever.

Romantic advice from a friend of mine:

Just don’t do anything simply because you are bored

Michael Moore answers detractors [via DMcC]
Mad Farmer Manifesto [via Gideon S]
Local blogging software
Webcam at the South Pole [via Phil Baker]
Calendar of US casualties in Iraq [via consumptive]

My flatmate’s guitar student wrote a song, and we’ve been recording it over the last few days. It’s the best fun. I’m petrified of singing into a microphone, even just to do la-la-las and oo-oo-oohs. This (1GHz overclocked) PC is pretty much at the edge of it’s capabilities playing seven or eight WAVs at once with about fifteen effects (vocal, strummed guitar and bass EQs, trippy phaser and delay for the ‘colour’ guitar, reverbs here there and everywhere, compressor for the drums), causing frustrating glitches. I’m happy that my endless hours of midnight FruityLoopsing are being redeemed. It is great to be learning how to record and mix.

I’m currently reading Small is Beautiful by Schumacher, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, The Victory According to Mark by Mark Horne, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism by Philip Benedict, Something So Strong: Crowded House by Chris Bourke, The Saga of the Volsungs [cheers Deb], The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula le Guin, A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway.

Finding out the Northern lights [via Phil Baker]
People-centred web design [via DigitalWeb]
Geocache @ Castlepoint [via my boss]

The extent to which modern technology has taken over the work of human hands may be illustrated as follows. We may ask how much of “total social time” — that is to say, the time all of us have together, twenty-four hours a day each — is actually engaged in real production. Rather less than one-half of the total population of this country is, as they say, gainfully occupied, and about one-third of these are actual producers in agriculture, mining, construction, and industry. I do mean actual producers, not people who tell other people what to do, or account for the past, or plan for the future, or distribute what other people have produced. In other words, rather less than one-sixth of the total population is engaged in actual production; on average, each of them supports five others beside himself; of which two are gainfully employed on things other than real production and three are not gainfully employed. Now, a fully employed person, allowing for holidays, sickness, and other absence, spends about one-fifth of his total time on his job. It follows that the proportion of total social time spent on actual production — in the narrow sense in which I am using the term — is, roughly, one-fifth of one-third of one-half; i.e. 3-1/2 per cent. The other 96-1/2 per cent of “total social time” is spent in other ways, including sleeping, eating, watching television, doing jobs that are not directly productive, or just killing time more or less humanely.

The whole chapter

I’m thinking of letting the beard return to keep Jennifer company. I’ve had the feeling for the last few weeks that shop keepers and people on the street are less friendly slash chatty when they behold the awexomeness of my upper lip. If apathy still reigns after a week or so of beard, it’s coming right off again.

RM Schuchardt on Hugh Hefner

The various Bible books were written to particular audiences. I read them, get a feeling for what was going on then, talk to friends at our Wednesday night Bible study, hear occasionally useful sermons, participate in a skeleton liturgy, read this list, read and write on various websites, read books, watch movies, listen to music and from all that get in some mysterious way get hints and guesses as to what my part in the story is. I lose the plot from time to time, but a feeling conviction of vocation (not unlike NTW’s answer to – Did Jesus know he was God?) grows in me and I walk through my days doing what my heart tells me, more or less. Is more or less required?

A grid or specified set of layers of meaning divides up the experience of reading a book in ways that feel artificial, and obscure obliterate the gray.

If the Bible has power in itself, I don’t need to read it differently (except perhaps more attentively closely) than I read Anna Karenina, yeah?

[posted on Wrightsaid first]

An introduction to Speech Act theory
Ambivalent review of ZatAoMM
DMcC touches a wall

Korg Electribe ES-1 on TradeMe

Harmony Central review.

Please someone buy this for me so I can start Fat Freddy’s Drop version 2 with my flatmate.

I have read a lot of science fiction. Although many are dickheads, science fiction writers come up with a lot of cool ideas for new technologies. One of my favourite has always been sub-vocal speech control, where you issue commands to a computer (usually in the heat of some kind of really intense lasgun battle) by forming key words with your tongue and vocal chords without moving your lips or making any noise. This morning I read that NASA have been working on the same idea.

Deb mentioned some talks from one Keith Birchley a little while ago. I’ve listened to them, and they’re pretty nifty. They’re all in MP3 format:

The Egyptian Hallel (Psalms 113 – 118)
The Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120 – 133)

Happy news – Meridian Energy’s plan to divert the Waitaki has been cancelled. Read more at the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB. [Thanks Dan]

I think it would be worthwhile to try and live in a way that didn’t require any more power generating stations.

TradeMe auction: Some near-new tyres of mine

I am distraught. Jessie is off NZ Idol. Evidentally the one vote she got from me didn’t cut the mustard. I just wanted to give her one more chance, I’m sure she would have been fantastic next week.

I am too excited to sleep; I’m bright eye’d and bushytail’d even though it’s 5.30 and I went to bed at 1.00. A friend offered to pay for most of the previously featured Korg, so that should be turning up in the next few days. Thankyou, Lord of my lush life.

I remembered a thought I had the other day: The harder you think about some pain your experiencing, the worse it gets. The harder you think about some pleasure you’re experiencing the more likely it is that it will disintergrate. I remember Berwyn used to say something like that about eating chocolate and thinking ‘why is this nice?’ and then it’s not so nice anymore.

The Rosalie Gascoigne exhibition on at the City Gallery in Wellington is good and free.