matthew henry john bartlett

From Le Nouvel Observateur January 14-21, 1998, quoted in Adbusters #53:

Le Nouvel Observateur: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Zbigniew Brzeezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soveit regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was oging to induce a Soviet military intervention.

LNO: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

ZB: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

LNO: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

ZB: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralisation and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

LNO: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

ZB: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Interview with NZ dancer Michael Parmenter

Who coined the phrase, ‘to coin a phrase’?

Album review: Bjork/Medulla
Geography quiz

It was death! It was death!
Now it’s life! Now it’s life!
It was death! It was death!
Now it’s life! Now it’s life.
Behold the man,
the hairy man
who has made
the sun shine!
Up this step,
up that step,
Up this step, then up that step,
Up this step, then up that step,
Into the blazing…
…sun!

[from here]

A year ago I really couldn’t see how the Gospel of St John fit. Since then things are gradually falling into place, helped along quite a bit last night by watching a video of a Richard Hays lecture at Port & Theology at Vic. If I were on the Committee to Recognise the Canon back in the day, I’d vote for John’s book, no troubles. I have an idea the Transfiguration might be the central thing that ties it together. I aim to put some effort into mapping the book’s metaphors over the next little while. I’ll try and record my progress here.

I made word frequency table for the Gospel of John, based on the ESV. I think this may alert me to themes in the book that I might otherwise be blind to. I’ve trimmed out the unhelpful words – i.e. the, Jesus, will, around, etc., and collapsed similar words into one – i.e. talk, speak, spoke, tell, say all become spoke. See the results here as a GIF.

Church & business

Wikipedia is apparently growing by about 185 words a minute [source]. There is a bit of a debate happening at the moment about how authoritative it is.

US/Iraq war by the numbers [via Junior]

The bible the big story the question the big question arching over the question set up is how can we how can Adam humans get back to the garden back to God’s presence back to walking with God back home from exile. There is a gap in me and then israel in egypt in the exodus the tabernacle with the flowers and trees carved and the cherubim guarding and the temple in israel one man once a year back inside on very limited parole kings told not to enter no kings back in the garden and the exile again and again, far away even from the sketchy symbolic garden home babylon and even the symbol smashed and a corrupt replacement put in there instead. But then Jesus comes and says ‘come home’ and he is the garden and home and walking with God and the seed is planted dies rises and grows a tree with healing leaves to fill the earth.

O and death is exile Proper and there is Home to come to from there too, Jesus first.

Ben Hoyt recently wrote a short piece [60k PDF] for the Wairarapa Times Age in response to a vitriolic column by one Hugh Barlow. Of course, Abigail did write her letter without parental assistance.

I went to the Ernst Plischke: Architect exhibition at the City Gallery yesterday afternoon and saw lots of photos and architectural drawings of very ugly, very square houses and buildings.

Mike King art
Deborah on studying Australian history

Upon the recommendation of Deborah and Madras I am reading William Dalrymple’s book From the Holy Mountain. Christianity Today has a very good review of it.

A couple of years ago a friend Tim McKenzie wrote a letter describing a model for Christian ministry in a New Zealand university environment. You can download it here [45k PDF]. If I could articulate an analogous vision for our own church, I’d be tres happy.

Who thinks they’re not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss from the suburbs thinks she’s open-minded. Hasn’t she been taught to be? Ask anyone, and they’ll say the same thing: they’re pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong. (Some tribes may avoid “wrong” as judgemental, and may instead use a more neutral sounding euphemism like “negative” or “destructive”.)

When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don’t know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite. Remember, it’s the nature of fashion to be invisible. It wouldn’t work otherwise. Fashion doesn’t seem like fashion to someone in the grip of it. It just seems like the right thing to do. It’s only by looking from a distance that we see oscillations in people’s idea of the right thing to do, and can identify them as fashions.

[from Paul Graham's essay What You Can't Say]

You might also enjoy his list of idea-supressing labels.

Paul Graham: The Age of the Essay [via /.]
Poem by Jonathan Marinus: My Sweetness
Mark Twain: Corn-pone Opinions
Home-made Segway
Paul Graham: Great Programmers

Scrubs! Scrubs! Scrubs!

O and then I’m like today I gave blood at St Johns and it was nice and the nurses were very efficient and I had vomited recently but seeing as it was alcohol-induced it was OK but they still made a note on the chart, but it was good to lie back and see the steeple through the narrow window and everyone genially benevolent you’re all right you’re all right too and some crackers and cheese and a gem a crystalised gem of the treasures of the West.

Poor American voters having to choose between Bush & Kerry.

Dick Hubbard for mayor of Auckland.

Tim O’Brien for mayor of Wellington.

I really like Wellington City Council, but I’m told that the Absolutely Creatively Wellington thing is only empty marketing. I.e. new council money is not going to artists writers photographers galleries etc but instead is going to pushing the *image* of Wellington as a really creative place.

Stuart of B&S: One tone lullaby
Story, narrative, business [via Psybertron]

Just like last year, it took me most of the day to realise it was September 11.

Tonight, inspired by Paul Graham, I started to learn LISP. I found an open source implementation that works on Windows at sourceforge, and a nice tutorial. I hope to be able to write some software to help me analyse the text of John’s Gospel.

Paul Graham: Design and Research

TIME AND HISTORY ARE MORE
LIKE A FLOWER BLOOMING
THAN A TRAIN ON ITS TRACK
OR A WHEEL ON ITS AXLE

Metafilter thread from 11/09/01

Further to this, the kingdom of heaven is like…

…plants in cracks in an abandoned lot
…open source software
…the NZ Blood Service

(do add your own)

Jonathan Vandenberg (Angela’s brother, my second cousin) has recently written a rather worthwhile paper on youth ministry which you can download here [130k PDF]. It will be published in the Reformed Ecumenical Council’s journal Focus shortly.

NYT on the dualism battle [via Dan M]

Kunstler:

Both candidates seem to be telling the public that if only we take care of this terror thing, then everybody from sea to shining sea can just kick back and enjoy the scenery on cruise control.

Said Henri J.M. Nouwen:

Our lives as we live them seem like lives that anticipate questions that never will be asked. It seems as if we are getting ourselves ready for the question “How much did you earn during your lifetime?” or “How many friends did you make?” or “How much progress did you make in your career?” or “How much influence did you have on people?” or “How many conversions did you make?”

Were any of these to be the question Christ will ask when he comes again in glory, many of us could approach the judgment day with great confidence. But nobody is going to hear any of these questions. The question we all are going to face is the question we are least prepared for. It is: “What have you done for the least of mine?” As long as there are strangers; hungry, naked, and sick people; prisoners, refugees, and slaves; people who are handicapped physically, mentally, or emotionally; people without work, a home, or a piece of land, there will be that haunting question from the throne of judgment: “What have you done for the least of mine?”

[via dd]

Stanley Grenz: Homosexuals and the Church

Beatboxing from Bjork’s new album [streaming QT, via RDB]

A combined Reformed Church rugby team will be tackling (excuse the pun/cliche) a team from The Street this Saturday (25 September) at 12:30pm at Evans Bay Park. Come one, come all! Scream, shout, or nervously chew your nails as these two denominations battle it out for the title of Top Denomination in Wellington (well, not really…in fact I think The Street is non-denominational). Inter Reformed Church quarrels will be laid aside. Rugby will act as the glue of love that binds our churches together. Players from Wellington will reach between the legs of Silverstream members in a scrum of unity. South African shorts will be lovingly grasped by Dutch hands. Canadians will also take part in some sort of powerful metaphor. Various other forms of symbolism will be bandied about. Bring a handkerchief folks, this one’s gonna be a tear jerker.

Warmest regards,
Captain T J Sterne

Dr Paul Ford wrote:

I believe in the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea who has put within time the Deep Magic, and, before all time, the Deeper Magic.

I believe in his Son Aslan who sang into being all the worlds and all that they contain: Talking Beasts and humans, dumb animals and shining spirits. And I believe that Aslan was a true beast, the king of beasts, a Lion; that for Edmund, a traitor because of his desire for Turkish Delight, he gave himself” into the power of the White Witch, who satisfied the requirements of the Deep Magic by killing him most horribly. At the dawn following that darkest, coldest night, he was restored to full life by the Deeper Magic, cracking the Stone Table and, from that moment, setting death to work backwards. He exulted in his new life and went off to rescue all those who had been turned into stone by the Witch’s want and to deliver the whole land from everlasting winter. He will be behind all the stories of our lives; and, when it is time, he will appear again in our world to wind it up, calling all of his creatures whose hearts’ desire it is to live “farther in and farther up” in his country which contains all real countries.

I believe that upon us all falls the breath of Aslan and that ours are the sweet waters of the Last Sea which enable us to look steadily at the sun. I believe that all who have thrilled or will thrill at the sound of Aslan’s name are now our fellow voyagers and our fellow kings and queens; that all of us can be for ever free of our dragonish thoughts and actions; and that one day we will pass through the door of death into “Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on for ever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

[quoted in his lecture on the theology of Narnia (RA video)]

Stop Motion Studies [via Deb]
Chris Gousmett: Faith in the unseen [40k PDF]
Chapter One of Steve Chalke’s The Lost Message of Jesus [90k PDF]

Saturday 16 October the Wellington Institute of Theology is holding a symposium ‘Approaching the Bible’. Tim McKenzie (who wrote that letter I posted a little while back) is one of the speakers. The topics look really interesting: “The idea of revelation in a post-modern culture: The revelatory role of story & the history of God as one who reveals”, “Scripture in Christianity and Islam: a comparative study of the role of sacred scripture, tradition, and the principles of interpretation” and “Fundamentalism: the word and the phenomenon”. Download the full programme [50k PDF] if you like.

No song in all the world is so suited to interpretive dance as Parabola by Tool.

Fractal gallery [via Ian G]

Pacifier are Shihad again
Piano poem by Stuart

Said Vincent van Gogh:

Because I see so many weak souls trampled underfoot, I am reluctant to believe in the truth of much that is called progress and education. I do believe in education, but only in the kind that is based on a genuine love of humankind.

[via dd]