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One Ingrid on Hauerwas & pacifism & such
Hauerwas on Rowan W on being where you are [100KB PDF, via Andy Goodliff]
A 2002 interview with Hauerwas in Duke magazine
With four others I’m travelling tomorrow to somewhere called Onaero, in Taranaki, for a holiday. I’ll be back Sunday evening. There might be a beach. I might learn to play cards, write in my journal, codify some NYRs, get some clarity.
O, what a good start to the year: Four nights at Onaero with Cam, Bel and Simon. Sun, early morning cold and late afternoon warm swims, driftwood bonfires (one featuring an exploding can of baked beans), envied food, good and bad poetry, Ex Machina graphic novels and lots of other bookish adventures, and no music, ’cept what was sung on the way back home. Air-punchingly good, like literally.
Helen Clark, to NZ Labour Party conference in Rotorua, 28 October 2006:
Why shouldn’t New Zealand aim to be the first country which is truly sustainable – not by sacrificing our living standards, but by being smart and determined? We can now move to develop more renewable energy, biofuels, public transport alternatives, and minimise, if not eliminate, waste to landfills. We could aim to be carbon neutral. I believe sustainability will be a core value in 21st century social democracy. I want New Zealand to be in the vanguard of making it happen – for our own sakes, and for the sake of our planet. I want sustainability to be central to New Zealand’s unique national identity.
When the lightning flashes, how admirable he who does not think ‘life is fleeting’
Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die
Heard, not seen, the camellia poured rainwater when it leaned
Wrapping dumplings in bamboo leaves, with one finger she tidies her hair
Along my journey through this transitory world, new year’s housecleaning
This dark autumn old age settles down on me like heavy clouds or birds
Sick on my journey, only my dreams will wander these desolate moors
[from, via Alan Watts]
Welcome to the first instantation of my NYR to summarise all the worthy nonfiction I read, in the hope that more of it will stick, not wash over me like knowledge off a duck’s back. Can you feel it? The personal development vibes are palpable! It’s the chapter “‘Sleeping giants’: surprises in the climate and Earth system” by Will Steffen, from Confronting Climate Change: Critical Issues for New Zealand, edited by Ralph Chapman, Jonathan Boston and Margot Schwass. So:
Science done since the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report in 2001 shows that global warming is likely to be in the upper range of IPCC estimates. Three areas contribute to this likelihood:
As a sort of light relief to debate on Climate Change and interpretations of scriptures I thought I would introduce ya’ll to Kathy’s DVD Review Time. Catchy, no?
I’m currently addicted to watching dvds. It’s fairly a indefensible pasttime, especially when used to help ones young child fall asleep but it does give me something to blog about and heaven knows it’s been too long. You will learn not to expect a measured, well thought out review. And the punctuation may be a little patchy. Apart from my main aim (to rant) I am hoping that if I commit to publicly reviewing every dvd I watch perhaps it will lift the tone of them somewhat. I am well known in our household as having the worst of all possible taste in dvds but you know, I aim to improve and perhaps this will help (I largely blame the pickings at our local United Video). (more…)
rummaging through Google’s data warehouse
God saw
the most fascinating patterns
New retrospective song of 2006: “While you sleep”, from The Muttonbirds’ Live in Manchester CD.
Also, drugs are the opiate of the masses.
As you may recall, I recently posted a comment inviting you all to come to is the first of our monthly letter writing events. Take the number 23 bus and get off after you see Mikey Ds and you’re nearly at our doorstep.
“…if anyone wants to complain/congratulate Helen or any other of our governing class feel free to come along to our last of Sunday of the month letter writing afternoon. There’ll be pens and paper and envelopes and pots of tea and snacks. Maybe you could direct your ideas about governing our country to the people doing it. Some folks (Sir Ron Oxburgh amongst others) say it’s the best way to effect change in legislation. Even National supporters welcome. 16 Russell Tce Newtown Wellington from one til the tea runs out.”
If no one shows it’ll just be matt and I trying to be optimistic that everyone might just be running a bit late but really feeling very forlorn indeed as we sip our tea and scribble fearsomely intelligent/grumpy things to our MPs. And we don’t want that happening now do we, children?
Wellington events, feat. RSS feed [via Wellurban]
Allah be praised: Higher Taste, the Hare Krishna restaurant and home away from home that used to be above Unity Bookshop in Wellington, is reopening 12 February in the lower level of the Old Bank Arcade.
OK, I might have found a candidate to stand for mayor to beat Kerry Prendegast. What we need now are some policies. What would you like to see the mayor focus on?
UPDATE: My candidate suggests there may already a suitable candidate: Ray Ahipene-Mercer
& while we’re getting polictical, try theyworkforyou.co.nz, developed by Rob McKinnon, who was talking at Russell Brown’s Great Blend thing tonight.
Unconfererences [via Russell B]
Tom Beard (kindler, gentler local Kunstler) arguing well about sprawl
… and holding forth on the pods
Just before I head up to Te Awamutu to attend Jackson & Freida’s wedding, here are some paragraphs which struck me, from Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere:
On the other side of Monroe Muffler, heading deeper into town on South Broadway, is a small realtor’s office ensconced in what appears to be a minature New England church, complete with steeple. The whole structure is about the size of a detached garage. It is a holdover from the period between the two World Wars when it was the fashion to put roadside businesses in cartoon-like buildings: gas stations that looked like mosques and log cabins, motels like windmills, lunchrooms shaped like hot dogs, hats, bulldogs, igloos.
(more…)
Recent Kim Stanley Robinson interview
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) summary rundown: human-caused climate change is very likely to be already detectable; the world is very likely warmer than any time in the last 1300 years; the world will warm by 1.8–6.4 degrees C this century, and sea will rise between half a foot and two feet, not counting any of the sorts of effects mentioned here last month
… and more at wikipedia
Rainbow Gathering #7 begins 4 March in Northland
Paul Graham on art
Is intellectual property a kind of colonialism?
Government to favour sustainably produced goods and services
Environmental Choice-ticked products (very short list)
Hunter Lovins talks to ABC about natural capitalism [23MB mp3]
Natural capitalism means businesses a. using resources heaps more productively and eliminating waste, b. altering production methods to imitate nature (e.g. spider make stronger-than-kevlar webs at room temperature sans vats of sulphuric acid), c. become restorative rather than extractive of natural capital. Yeah!
Paul Graham on wisdom v. intelligence
The Living Machine
Who’s the wisest person you know?
In Educating for a Sustainable Future [55MB mp3], David Orr says: “we ought to begin pricing non-renewable fuels at the same rate as the cheapest renewable substitute.”
Summary of Sir Harry Kroto’s talk Science, Society and Sustainability, given this past Thursday at the St James: “religion is very bad, philosophy is useless, politicians are evil, science is good, scientists are very good, scientists with a faith (except Buddhism) are schizophrenic, reason is good, doubt is good, we’re running out of oil, climate change might be anthropogenic, more and better science will solve our problems.”
Isaiah 2:2–5 is part of the Saturday morning service in the NZPB. It’s the swords & plowshears bit. Reading it I thought the church is the people who are walking in the light of the peacemaking god who let us kill him so that we wouldn’t have to kill each other any more.
I’m supposed to be writing another dvd review now (since I’ve watched about 20 since the last one) but instead I thought I’d ask for some help. I’m about to embark on organising a community clothes swap. That’s where everyone who wants to brings their unwanted clothes (and possibly household bits and pieces/cds etc) and pays a small donation to get in and then fossicks round and takes whatever they like from the other people. Sort of like a garage sale, but less money changing hands. It sounds more complicated than it is, just like at a normal garage sale once you get past the initial weirdness of rifeling through peoples goods it’s just lovely. What I want help with is a good cause to donate the proceeds to. So far am thinking a) mary potter hospice b) kathy needs to buy a bed fund or c) samaratains wellington. What say you?
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!
GIVEAWAY: To celebrate this day of apparently infinite potential, mhjb.co.nz/blog offers the first interested commentor one 14-watt (75-watt incandescent equivalent) Philips longlife energy saver bulb, made in China, valued at around $5.65. The catch: it’s a screw-in rather than the bayonet fitting which this house needs.
An idea: A general-purpose Wellington events calendar, why not? If it gets unwieldy we can break it down into smaller geographic or interest-based segments. Email me if you’d like to be able to add events.
Getting your inbox down to zero
Church the high point of the weekend; what’s become of me?
Bruce Sterling says cybergreens will win because
They’re not about spiritual potential, human decency, small is beautiful, peace, justice or anything else unattainable. [They're] about stuff people want, such as health, sex, glamour, hot products, awesome bandwidth, tech innovation and tons of money.
In a recent interview with SCI FI Weekly, Kim Stanley Robinson said:
I wanted to suggest that there is a spiritual aspect to science, that it is a kind of religion in some senses, that the world it investigates is constantly revealed as miraculous through and through, and that the practice of science could be seen as a kind of worship or devotion, and that this is a good thing. I was also interested in the ways Buddhism could be said to be scientific, or science said to be similar to Buddhism, in basic philosophical ways. I wanted the two to collide and illuminate each other, maybe to become one larger thing.
According to Paul Hawken, sustainable businesses:
[from Spyglass Green Marketing]
Mr Scruff. Dancing to Mr Scruff, in the rain, with siblings, friends and ladies. Running into people. Clean toilets. Warm rain. Huun Huur Tu throat singers’ Siberian forest animal noises. Gotan Project’s old and new tango. Staying dry in the station wagon. Don McGlashan’s Miracle Sun.
From Kathy: It doesn’t seem that long ago it was Summer Solstice but here we go again… we are having a party to celebrate the Autumn Equinox next Wednesday 21st March. It’s a pot luck sort of affair, with some kind of outdoor fire and maybe some mulled wine and magic. It’ll start late afternoon and finish late evening, bring yourselves and some food/drink to share x x
16 Russell Tce Newtown (that’s the #23 bus)
RSVP if you feel like it, otherwise just hope for good weather and show up.
Sometimes I get trapped in a flickr slideshow, and tonight I was, looking at billboards, trying to find out what we want, and this is what I found: happiness, independence, speed/freedom, fitness, style, control in a mess, cleanliness in a dump, respect, sex with hot people, self-expression, escape, a peaceful mind, transcendence, simplicity, cool friends, sophistication, understanding of things most don’t get, passive or unconsciously alluring women, confidence, seduction (ours or theirs), amusement, and lots and lots of holy Objects. And then of a sudden I thought about the stars, the saints who most perfectly realise our desires, and I suppose that is why icons of Brangelina are everywhere.
Aotearoa Students Environmental Conference 7–8 April
Events today:
Peter Howland talk on reflexive wine consumption and the metro-rural
The Roger Award Ceremony
Blah blah blah (open mic poetry/music)
…which all feature on the brand new domain wellingtoncalendar.co.nz. Email me if you’d like to be able to add events.
Paul Hawken’s list: Adrian Rich, Alice Walker, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, David James Duncan, Emerson, Thoreau, Pankaj Mishra, Kenny Ausubel, Nina Simons, WS Merwin, Janine Benyus, Gandhi, Van Jones.
a sermon from me, for the fifth Sunday in Lent [30K PDF]
Sealord don’t give a shit about sea stewardship [via Joel C]
Judge Cherie Booth (Tony Blair’s wife) on restorative justice [via John S on CD]
Paul Hawken’s diary of the WTO’s big day in Seattle. It’s quite a read:
One by one, our heads were jerked back from the rear, and pepper was sprayed directly into each eye. It was very professional. Like hair spray from a stylist. Sssst. Sssst.
…
What makes life worthy and allows civilizations to endure are all the things that have “bad” payback under commercial rules: infrastructure, universities, temples, poetry, choirs, literature, language, museums, terraced fields, long marriages, line dancing, and art. Most everything we hold valuable is slow to develop, slow to learn, and slow to change. Commerce requires the governance of politics, art, culture, and nature, to slow it down, to make it heedful, to make it pay attention to people and place. It has never done this on its own. The extirpation of languages, cultures, forests, and fisheries is occurring worldwide in the name of speeding up business.
My notes from tonight’s NZCTU forum with Nicky Hager, Therese Arseneau and Andrew Geddis [small PDF]
fun in the House around s.59 yesterday
A meta-project I have started today is to see if I can get my book projects printed on FSC-certified paper.
homage to Clive James, critic [via fundypost]
(What would I tell you about if I made the time? Maybe about that perhaps-window on what-is-god, maybe the weather washing over the house like we were at the bottom of the sea last night, or the books I’ve read recently and the way they make me feel about being here, or that Inuit word that KSR says means “unusually intense pleasure in being alive”, or having the friends back in town, or a list of reasons to care about a species (maybe a very small bird) we’ve never heard about going extinct (little (genetic, instinctive) library on a locale, red light (we best slow down), precious to god), or good work done now, though apparently defeated, being the seed of the future.)
John Howard Yoder’s The Priestly Kingdom is blowing my mind like it blew Cam’s before. Here is a quote:
Worship is the communal cultivation of an alternative construction of society and of history. That alternative construction of history is celebrated by telling the stories of Abraham (and Sarah and Isaac and Ishmael), of Mary and Joseph and Jesus and Mary, of Cross and Resurrection and Peter and Paul, of Peter of Cheltchitz and his Brothers, of George Fox and his Friends. How pointedly, and at what points, this celebrated construction will set us at odds with our neighbors, will of course depend on the neighbors.
Russell Brown on climate change scepticism here and abroad
Listen to Midlake (“did you ever want to run around with bandits, to see many places and hide in ditches?”), they channel Bread and the Eagles and my theory is mum played David Gates when I was fetal and I’m now powerless to resist. Thanks John & Simon. Also Sarah Blasko.
Wendell Berry (swoon) interviews Bill McKibbon [WMV video]
(or I can put it on CD for you)
Today I found a plugin for InDesign, Teacup TableStyles & CellStyles Pro, that will let you link Excel spreadsheets to InDesign documents so that when you make a change to the spreadsheet it updates the associated table in InDesign, and preserves its formatting. Which is good because I have a big project on where I have to put together a document for printing which will at the last minute have loads of figures revised. Not bad for a Friday.
Mr Vonnegut is gone. “… his goal in writing novels was to ‘catch people before they become generals and Senators and Presidents’ and ‘poison their minds with humanity. Encourage them to make a better world.’ ” KV on The Daily Show [via Russell Brown]
I’m gunna go play trombone in a hard rock band. Hey I just thought of a name for it: “the music of the spheres”.
Curitiba, Brazil, with average per capita yearly income of less than $4,000, is one of the world’s great cities, saith Bill McKibbon
New bus lanes planned for Wellington
Burnt-out vicars, disfunctional fish, not caring, and systems thinking [via Debbie/CD]
A Friedman Fable: The Bridge [60KB PDF]
Summary of the Friedman model
Greenwich village, revolution, gospel
More Yoder, from “Civil Religion in America”, from The Priestly Kingdom:
… If the God-reference of civil religion is inward or upward, it provides no effective leverage for critique or transformation. The God-language of the Bible does not point inward to the renewed heart alone, nor upward to the “higher power”, nor forward to the “hereafter”, but backward to the salvation story, outward to the claims of the rest of the world, the enemies to love and the slaves to free, and forward to a city not of our own making. (more…)
Janine Benyus’ nine basic principles of biomimicry:
(you might like to insert a less icky word for ‘nature’)
Faking it, like the Monkees or Neil Young [via Daniel S]
[via WorldChanging]
“The Failure of Syntax”, from Friedman’s Fables, Edwin H. Friedman:
The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax or eloquence or rhetoric or articulation, but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.
Tom Beard’s top ten Wellington buildings (#10 to #1): Jellicoe Towers (swee), School of Architecture and Design (ug), Freyberg Pool (swee), Te Puni Kokiri house (swee), The Hannah Playhouse (ug), Umbrella Park apartments (swee), Rutherford House (swee), First Church of Christ Scientist (swee), Racing Conference building (swee), Wellington City Library (so swee)
It’s TV Turnoff Week.
Alasdair MacIntyre proposes a curriculum to heal the fragmented university
Perhaps I have two axes: sad–happy and quiet–excited. So I could plot myself in a box with corners sad/quiet, happy/quiet, happy/excited and sad/excited. I’ve been ranking how I feel out of ten quite a lot lately, and trying to get other people too as well, but that’s probably inadequate. Better would be “rate yourself out of 33 in base-4, why not?” Then 00 is sad/quiet, 21 is pretty gently chuffed, 33 is shouting happy.
Sermon from me about resurrection work
Some like Midlake videos. Midlake!
Against environmentalism, for good work
CHURCH CREATE PLURALITY BY TRYING TO BE A UNITY THAT CRACKS OPEN THE UNITY THAT SAYS IT’S PLURAL
The Party is tomorrow; the heart palpitations are palpable.
Hey, I made WellingtonCalendar.co.nz a whisker prettier.
It was a really fun party. I will take a picture of the painting which is not called Matthew en el día de los muertos.
We use about 800 million plastic supermarket bags every year in New Zealand. That’s lame, they’re all made of oil, 90% are imported, and they’re hard to recycle. Bad stewardship! Happily, a solution is at hand. Ireland had the same problem and put a €0.15 (NZ$0.30) levy on each bag in 2002 and now use about 10% of the bags they used to. The levy goes towards other waste management efforts. (This is an example of Paul Hawken’s ‘tax the bads, not the goods’ idea.) If you’re into it, you can find out more at the BagsNOT site, or read the short Zero Waste report, and then do what I did and write a letter to your MP. BagsNot have a convenient list of MPs’ electorates and email addresses.
William T. Cavanaugh, “The Unfreedom of the Free Market” [PDF, via SubversNZ]
What do you do when your laptop has run out of zone changes, and you’re stuck on a mostly useless zone?
Anglican bishops support repeal of s59
Bunnings charges $0.10 for plastic bags now
Day 1 of the month of no caffeine: grumpy & useless.
Day 2: headache but productive.
Thanks for your suggestions re. the DVD issue, but this one seems un-unlockable. It’s a Matshita UJ-805s, which according to the forums has no new firmware, doesn’t work with any of the software hacks, and puts the ‘shit’ into ‘Matshita’. Which is a pity. Zones, man; them media companies are going to pay.
Sydney Anglicans on 300 and Jesus the violent
Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’”
Day 3: Slight cravings, favourable disposition towards coffee advertisements and packaging.
While we’re on the subject of DVD brokenness:
09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0
Kiwi music wiki [via Russell B]
A really good interview with Jon Stewart [vid, via Russell B]
Great Frank Herbert interview from when I was as old as Isis
The 79th richest nation doesn’t exist
#2 in the Christianity & Psychology in Dialogue X-Nous (Christian mind) series is on tonight at 5.30 at Ramsey House, 8 Kelburn Parade. Last week’s was pretty good and this one is likely to be even better. It’ll be ‘simulcast’ on 88.1 Human FM. Flash eh?
Daniel came (welcome to Wellingtown) and we had rolled roast beef with garlic, sage, thyme and salt, and roast kumara, potatoes and carrots with pesto and chilli jam, and beans, and later there was chocolate fudge pudding fluffy and delicious with whipped cream and also cabernet from Chile, thanks Chile. It was a good time and there was tantrix (offline) to finish.
we at 16 Russell Terrace seek a housemate or two
Maybe we are The Fragrance. I don’t know. But especially in the first hour there were some sustained beautiful times, Iggy going both hands and feet at the faux-hammond/pan flute and the happiest spaciest new-steel-guitar-sounds coming out of RDB’s corner, and that’s when you get possessed by the unholy angels and couldn’t stop beating those drums to within an inch of their lives, even if you tried. I hope we can rein it in, pin it down.
When he heard my croaky voice on Sunday, a hardworking fifty-year-old man of Indian extraction gave me this advice, which he said was the best health advice I’d ever get: when you get to forty you should eat less, and then when you get to fifty eat still less. If you have four bits of toast for breakfast now, he said, have three when you’re forty. And when you’re fifty have two? I said. O no, probably about two and a half, he said.
To reduce the spam-induced load on the server mhjb.co.nz lives on I’ve changed the blog’s settings so that you have to register to post a comment. Email me if you have trouble. Goodluck & godspeed.
Much green purchasing is shopping therapy for the ecologically guilty
Matt Holleman music video: “Great Foundation” [via David H]
climate change myths in New Scientist [via Russell B]
a mac app that rips off my base-4 mood idea [via Richie F] (I’m 22 atm, btw)
Poetry at 128 last night, very good times, red wine doing the trick for once, and that girl whose face makes me fall over, and all my friends pairing off, I better pair off quick or I’ll be stuck for things to fill the weekend. Not really, but you know Todd. Next time I better have something to read out dammit. We were told Olmecha Supreme were playing at Valve so we hightailed it out of there (o to have a tail) just before the end, but they weren’t; it’s tonight (come along, they’re a blast man, Imon Star is the best and worst rapper in the world and Saturday before last was just the best dance for a long time, since Womad at least, though my paired off friends dropped away leaving me alone and faithful, because OS took so long to go on, and I was shy for a start sitting on a school seat and getting really jumpy before getting into it properly, sweet wiggly girls yeah). I hope we can make it, it’s going to be a busy evening, what with Hawthorne and Heavenly Burlesque (circus? vaudeville? strip show?) and all.
reality and the knowledge economy in Britain [via Deb]
Stanley Fish: “Why we built the ivory tower”
Heavenly Burlesque review: 6.5 out of 10. Very funny. Some sweet skills in evidence, particularly with the hula hoops, acrobatics and the shopping trolley of desire. But it was way too short, only about an hour long ($0.45/minute) and the ‘afterparty’ deserves those scare quotes and featured Batucada Sound Machine. BSM are a ‘band’ with too much percussion and two few skills and are about as burlesque as Radiohead. Kathy and I left to avoid having to kill ourselves, but not before having our photos taken by a woman with nice eyes for Capital Times. Keep your eyes peeled, if we make it, we’ll be the wiggly and colour-coordinated ones.
UPDATE: I’m informed I wrongly identified the post-HB band: It wasn’t Batucada Sound Machine. So I hope they can forgive me for that. Apparently it was The Beat Squad. Anyway, I didn’t like them, though others at the function did. BSM, I apologise for tarnishing your good name. Please send me a CD so that I can confirm that you do not, in fact, suck.
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.
I watched V for vendetta last night. It’s probably been said before & my head is in the sand, but it was interesting to me that the movie makes you sympathise with someone who blows up a big symbolic building (presumably killing quite a few people, though it could have been evacuated) and feel that some good has been achieved in that, that a hegemonic power has been decisively cracked. Which is all reminiscent of the world trade centre building business.
bike for majority world [via worldchanging]
yo, check this week’s Capital Times, chum(p)s
Speaking of Buddhism, that cheap Chinese kicked me in the guts one-two, and after a day and a half of striving for emptiness on the humble white throne would you believe the thing that finally did the trick was some ginger-heavy delight at Ban Mai Thai, Vivian Street. By the beard of Zeus!
Of course there are more reasons than I can say or know, but the first one that comes to mind is that I have someone to be thankful to for e.g. mandarins, books, all flowers everywhere, girls in buses, cycling, freecycling, Leonard Cohen, the cabbage trees and soggy flats around Lake Wairarapa, the sun spilling down the Hutt valley into the harbour, the front-marking cloud to the west that looks as solid as a mountain range, the gaps between languages, having been launched into the world with loads of food within arm’s reach and some good work to do, and having more people than I can count who I love and who seem to be reasonably fond of me. For many of those things there is someone to whom I can be more immediately thankful, like the mandarin tree or my parents or the universe, but it seems wonderful to me that there is some one person ‘behind’ all those, who is presumably not less than all of them, and who might be pleased that someone is grateful.
A history of economics by John C. Médaille [250KB PDF]
Feudalism was better than what we’ve got now, says JCM [100KB PDF]
Tom B on Wellington thinking about going carbon neutral
I recommend Pan’s Labyrinth, A Scanner Darkly and Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others).
6-min video introducing MapLight.org which shows money–votes links in US state politics [via WC]
mhjb.co.nz seeks assistance: does anyone know where I can find a long recording of outdoorsy dusky nature sounds? Cicadas, birds, frogs, that sort of thing.
Tash took this at UWA when I was over in Perth last year.
REMINDER: Tomorrow evening is the Winter solstice party at our house, feat. swap meet.
SubversNZ on a new Christian political party for NZ
Tom B on holes in WCC’s aspiration of carbon neutrality
Last night’s Angela Davis talk. The atmosphere was worshipful, ceremonial. I wondered what it would be like if Jesus turned up to give a lecture, maybe in the Hunter Chambers or the Town Hall. 200 people had been turned away at the door, even after an overflow room with a video link had been filled up. It was like she wasn’t there, like an icon of her was there instead. She said it herself in fact – many people when they meet her feel they’re encountering their youth. She was the instantiation of an idea, or a hope, or maybe a vibe. She could have said anything, we would have clapped and cheered. We weren’t there for her, we were there for us. Well they were: I didn’t really belong; I didn’t fight the good fight, I don’t believe. What she did say was more of less this: notes from this evening’s Angela Davis lecture [45K PDF]
Oy vey but there’s a lot of good stuff on at the film festival this year. Sing out if you’d like to go to something with me.
massive green news round-up from WorldChanging
Time photo essay: what the world eats
Alex Steffen on privatising responsibility:
There is no combination of purchasing decisions which will make the current affluent American lifestyle sustainable. You can’t shop your way to sustainability, as I’ve put it before. On a planet running up against so severe a set of deadlines – global warming, the extinction crisis, the poverty crisis, etc. – prosperity as currently delivered is frankly immoral, even when purchased with an eco-chic package.
That doesn’t mean that I think prosperity itself is wrong. Quite the opposite. Nor do I think we could talk people out of wanting prosperity if we tried – heck, I hope for a generous amount of prosperity myself, one day. But we need to redesign prosperity, using innovation, new thinking and new technologies to render it sustainable.
And here’s the essential break between lite green and bright green thinking: the reality is that the changes we must make are systemic changes. They involve large-scale transformations in the ways we plan our cities, manufacture goods, grow food, transport ourselves, and generate energy. They involve new international regulatory regimes, corporate strategies, industrial standards, tax systems and trading markets. If we want to change the world, we need to forge ourselves into the kinds of citizens who can effectively demand such things.
Dire practicality demands that we reject the privatization of responsibility. None of us can make this great transformation happen alone, and it removes pressure from our leaders to take needed steps when some suggest that the changes that need to be made in the world start with our personal choices. They don’t.
Happy 07-07-07
I think shoes and clothes are important to skaters. I think freedom probably is even more so. It’s hard (impossible?) to find e.g. skate shoes not made in China, Korea, Thailand or Vietnam, and no way of knowing what the conditions are like for the people who make them, and good reasons to believe they are having a pretty shitty time. This is the same for all our clothes, but I have this feeling that because skating is about freedom and independence and not being controlled they might be able to be mobilised on fair trade issues. What do you think?
Wes Jackson of The Land Institute says
Technological fundamentalism is a far greater threat to our species than religious fundamentalism of any stripe.
JHK on Live Earth (which event I didn’t hear about till afterwards, oddly)
TradeAid anti-slavery petition & factsheet
In “The Other Enlightenment Project”, Stephen Batchelor says:
Today the force of the term ‘agnosticism’ has been lost. It has come to legitimate an avoidance of the existential questions posed by birth and death. Just as the modern agnostic tradition has tended to lose its confidence and lapse into scepticism, so has Buddhism tended to lose its critical edge and lapse into religiosity. What each has lost, however, the other may be able to help restore. In its encounter with secular culture, the Dharma may recover its agnostic imperative, while agnosticism may be helped to recover its soul.
This is Walsh & Keesmaat’s remix of Colossians 1:15-20:
In an image-saturated world
a world of ubiquitous corporate logos
permeating your consciousness
a world of dehydrated and captive imaginations
in which we are too numbed, satiated and co-opted
to be able to dream of life otherwise
a world in which the empire of global economic affluence
has achieved the monopoly of our imaginations
in this world
Christ is the image of the invisible God (more…)
James Hanson on scientific reticence, sea level rise, urgency and the IPCC [via PB]
EVENT: The Next Wave Conference, August 24 & 25 (climate change & you)
Blah blah blah is on tonight, 8pm at Ramsey House
personal peak oil response plan
Kathy complains I don’t write here anymore, just post links. That’s fair, that’s fair. But what links! · I like hanging out with open people, it’s demanding, it makes me lift my game, feel awake, up and at them. · More cars were sold in 2006 than in any previous year. · On Friday I skied by myself a lot, sometimes in whiteout, waiting for other skiers and boarders to pass, letting them map for me by their movements the bumps and dips. · That’s all I’ve got.
sextet of dope Simpsons scenes [via Russell B]
So last night I was jaded having had one too many Gamay Noirs after work (it was a good day at work, I finally made a cover for a book I’ve been stalling on for eversolong, we had a class trip to Satay Kampong (recommended) and then to PARAMOVNT for Helvetica. Great film, could have been edited down a bit, was a fun way into thinking about modernism and reactions to it. Made me think about how the big temptation for design is to be about what it is always about: surfaces, surfaces, beautiful lies – but what we are all hanging out for is the truth. Helvetica caught a wave because it pretends to be neutral, an empty vessel, timeless, no history, no attachments; and we all want to forget our pasts.), so though I’d said I’d go to town with Kathy & co., I was very much not in the mood for that. But in this shifty-sand world every kept promise is a good brick, so we went out, found the French man at Hope Bros and it was all go, we were up for it clubbers, I bumped into old friends and we made some new ones, and it was all very good.
Best graph ever, from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey [2.5MB PDF, via D the Great]. It appears the Latinos are doing something right:
Well you can text ‘free’ to 883 to donate $3 to Amnesty International if you like.
A sermon from me about prayer
Background material: NT Wright on the Lord’s prayer and Luke & jubilee
Here is a Wendell Berry quote, from The Unsettling of America:
The question of human limits, of the proper definition and place of human beings within the order of Creation, finally rests upon our attitude toward our biological existence, the life of the body in this world. What value and respect do we give to our bodies? What uses do we have for them? What relation do we see, if any, between body and mind, or body and soul? What connections or responsibilities do we maintain between our bodies and the earth. These are religious questions, obviously, for our bodies are part of the Creation, and they involve us in all the issues of mystery. But the questions are also agricultural, for no matter how urban our life, our bodies live by farming; we come from the earth and return to it, and so we live in agriculture as we live in flesh. While we live our bodies are moving particles of the earth, joined inextricably both to the soil and to the bodies of other living creatures. It is hardly surprising, then, that there should be some profound resemblances between our treatment of our bodies and our treatment of the earth.
From Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue [via], by which I make sense of my life:
In what does the unity of an individual life consist? The answer is that its unity is the unity of a narrative embodied in a single life. To ask ‘What is the good for me?’ is to ask how best I might live out that unity and bring it to completion. To ask ‘What is the good for man?’ is to ask what all answers to the former question must have in common. But now it is important to emphasize that it is the systematic asking of these two questions and the attempt to answer them in deed as well as in word which provide the moral life with its unity. The unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative quest. Quests sometimes fail, are frustrated, abandoned or dissipated into distractions; and human lives may in all these ways also fail. But the only criteria for success or failure in a human life as a whole are the criteria of success or failure in a narrated or to-be-narrated quest … A quest is always an education both as to the character of that which is sought and in self-knowledge.
It is making decisions with insufficient data and trying not to flee the results.
goodworks.co.nz: “find a job with a purpose”
Listen to Karl Barth on the powers, freedom, Judaism, etc., etc.
Wes Jackson talks about the sins of agriculture
Interview with pin-up legend Bettie Page [via K]
Lately my non-religious friends are getting more apocalyptic than my religious ones.
RDB take plenty good photo
Said Justin Martyr (100–165):
[The demons] struggle to have you as their slaves and servants … they get hold of all who do not struggle to their utmost for their own salvation—as we do who, after being persuaded by the Word, renounced them. Specifically in the baptismal renunciation of the devil and all his works. and now follow the only unbegotten God through his Son. Those who once rejoiced in fornication now delight in continence alone; those who made use of magic arts have dedicated themselves to the good and unbegotten God; we who once took most pleasure in the means of increasing our wealth and property now bring what we have into a common fund and share with everyone in need; we who hated and killed one another and would not associate with men of different tribes because of [their different] customs, now after the manifestation of Christ live together and pray for our enemies and try to persuade those who unjustly hate us, so that they, living according to the fair commands of Christ, may share with us the good hope of receiving the same things … The teachings of Christ were short and concise, for he was no sophist, but his word was the power of God. [via tSJCotACiANZaP]
2nd-century rabbinic riff on creation feat. speaking letters (“The light of the first day was of a sort that would have enabled man to see the world at a glance from one end to the other … It takes five hundred years to walk from the earth to the heavens. … There are also five different kinds of fire in hell.”)
Greens protest ANZ (my bank) over its support of rainforest logging
Consider pledging to close accounts with ANZ & National if they don’t quit it
Says Stanley Hauerwas in a recent podcast:
If you want to understand the Scripture, go find your worst enemy, and try and figure out what it would meant to forgive them. then you will be in a position to start reading the New Testament. You won’t get it from ‘the text’, you’ve got to be part of a community of forgiveness to even know what it would mean to understand this text as Scripture.
EVENT: Jesus wants you to register for the Next Wave conference this Fri/Sat
CouchSurfing.com
“Discipleship as craft, church as disciplined community” by Stanley Hauerwas
Jonathan Boston showed us this more or less terrifying image during his presentation on Saturday. The white area is the extent of sea ice over the Arctic as at Tuesday last week. The pink line shows where the ice usually is at at this time of year (or more accurately, the median extent for Augusts from 1979–2000):
A poster I designed, in collaboration with Kathy, Esha and Erin:
Koinonia Fund is an ethically-invested Kiwisaver fund for Christians
Daniel McClelland is playing Friday after next at Sub Nine
Well, I didn’t write any letters yesterday, but I did visit ANZ Lambton Quay today, and I brought along a printout of the Greens’ petition. I said I was considering following the Greens’ advice and quitting ANZ unless they quit investment in evil logging companies. The receptionist didn’t appear at first to have heard about the issue, but when I explained further said “we’ve been told that ANZ don’t have anything to do with them”, but that she didn’t know anything more than that. I asked her if there was anyone around who did know and she went away for ten minutes but couldn’t find anyone. I’m not sure what she was doing for the ten minutes, but I’d like to think that this is at least now on the radar of a bunch of people down there. Someone is going to give me a ring “to answer any further queries you may have”. So that’s nice.
Hot tip: In Adobe Acrobat Pro 7, I was getting the error message “You do not have permission to write to this file” when enabling commenting in Acrobat Reader. The solution was to rename the original file, removing all punctuation.
A brochure about how you can support Human FM & Joel Carpenter
In other news, I hear tell Tool are coming to town. Does anyone have any details about this?
Hoyts make Dom Post
Russell Norman on the ANZ/deforestation bizo [YT vid, feat Rob A]
From a discussion panel with Richard Hays, Richard Stubbing and Stanley Hauerwas [60MB mp3], here are Richard Hays’ three sets of three questions around the topic of How does scripture inform how we think about politics in a situation very different from that of the NT Christians?
Questions we often do ask but for which there is no basis in the NT
Questions we should ask ourselves
We’re looking for a housemate or two
pilgrimage to Eastern Orthodoxy and pacifism
Said Wendell Berry in What are People For?:
The natural or normal course of human growing up must begin with some sort of rebellion against one’s parents, for it is clearly impossible to grow up if one remains a child. But the child, in the process of rebellion and of achieving the emotional and economic independence that rebellion ought to lead to, finally comes to understand the parents as fellow humans and fellow sufferers, and in some manner returns to them as their friend, forgiven and forgiving the inevitable wrongs of family life. That is the old norm.
The new norm, according to which the child leaves home as a student and never lives at home again, interrupts the old course of coming of age at the point of rebellion, so that the child is apt to remain stalled in adolescence, never achieving any kind of reconciliation or friendship with the parents. Of course, such a return and reconciliation cannot be achieved without the recognition of mutual practical need. In the present economy, however, where individual dependences are so much exterior to both household and community, family members often have no practical need or use for one another. Hence the frequent futility of attempts at a purely psychological or emotional reconciliation.
Today I learnt that the United Nations Security Council (members: United States, Russia, Great Britain, France and China) supplied 86.7% of the world’s arms (guns not limbs) in 2004. I also learnt that between 1998 and 2001, the US, Great Britain and France earned more from selling arms than they gave in aid. I’m not sure what to do with these wonderful learnings. (Source: Richard F Grimmett, “CRS Report for Congress: Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1997–2004″, via Hope in Troubled Times by Bob Goudzwaard et al)
I lay out Pacific Ecologist magazine for the Pacific Institute of Resource Management. The next issue is due to be done in October. I’m probably not going to able to finish before going overseas. Do you know anyone with InDesign skills who might help us out? It’s not a volunteer job, but it will be at a discount rate.
Tertullian, around AD200, said: “The Lord in disarming Peter henceforth disarms every soldier” (from Stanley Hauerwas and Enda McDonagh, “Abolishing War? An Appeal to Christian Leaders and Theologians”).
We’re still looking for a housemate or two
Evil, caring and mental health
I’ve bought my tickets for Frankfurt.
I haven’t forgotten about the boycott ANZ/National banks business. I’m waiting for the Greens to reply to me about whether the banks are still bad. Their campaign website is getting stale.
David Farrar‘s short notes on the Wellington Council election candidates
Guardian somewhat impressed with NZ’s climate change response [via Rob]
You may be interested to learn that another 900,000 km2 of ice melted since last time I mentioned it a month ago. For comparison, New Zealand is about 270,000 km2. The ice cover got down to 4.1 million km2, and seems to have reached its minimum for the season, and has broken the previous record minimum by 1.2 million km2.
Arctic ice extent at 16 Sept 2007 (left),
and the previous minimum – 21 Sept 2005 (right)
What can you do? Steve Hatfield Dodds suggests writing to your MP or city councillor to let them know climate change is important to you. 42collective have eighty other suggestions.
ANZ funds milling of native trees in Tasmania [via frogblog]
Lin Yutang said
The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and nervous. They steal them of their inalienable right of loafing and cheat them out of many a good, idle and beautiful afternoon.
Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, said
The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb. Better witness is borne to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art which have arisen in the community of believers than by the clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so frequent in the Church’s human history.
If the weather is clement we will have a picnic this Sunday at noon in the Botanic Gardens, say in the Dell, a happy little fairtheewell, before I travel further than I have travelled. You are most welcome to join us.
Wellington brethren & sistren, who are you going to vote for? Voting closes midday on Saturday October 13. I am quite clueless, too busy to research, and I need some guidance. Here are my thoughts so far: Kerry Prendegast is no good because she is in league with the devil (property developers), so is unlikely to work for the common good. I’m not sure in detail why she’s no good. Ray Ahipene-Mercer is good because he was endorsed by Sue Kedgley in a previous election. John McGrath is very no good because his advertisements are utterly vacuous, his brother doesn’t want his company Mojo associated with him, and he’s a property developer. Paul Bailey is good because Cam & James heard him talk and were impressed.
A Wendell Berry quote:
Charity is a theological virtue and is prompted, no doubt, by a theological emotion, but it is also a practical virtue because it must be practiced. The requirements of this complex charity cannot be fulfilled by smiling in abstract beneficence on our neighbors and on the scenery. It must come to acts, which must come from skills. Real charity calls for the study of agriculture, soil husbandry, engineering, architecture, mining, manufacturing, transportation, the making of monuments and pictures, songs and stories. It calls not just for skills but for the study and criticism of skills, because in all of them a choice must be made: they can be used either charitably or uncharitably.
Kevin Rudd on churches and politics in Aussie
Two other blogger’s votes: goNZo, David Farrar
OK, a blog update. Thank your lucky guitars. I’m in Leipzig, in the former GDR. It’s 20:41. I’m in the hostel closest to the Hauptbahnhof, the main train station. It’s the biggest train station in Europe. I came here from Weimar on an ICE, an Inter-city Express. They’re fast: as we were slowing coming into the station I noticed a speedo on the wall reading 133km/h. Weimar was all civilised squares holding the people in and the greenery out. I had a beer in a cafe in Marktplatz (Market Square) opposite a chemist that was 440 jahren alt. Later at Buchenwald concentration camp I saw a photo of Hitler addressing a mass gathering in the same square. Such a feeling of forboding on the bus trip out from Weimar, up through gentle autumn forests all yellow and orange and green. It’s an awful place, incomprehensible. You might say the doctrine of original sin means that all of us should acknowledge our unlimited capacity for evil, but most of us, even if we assent to it, tuck that thought away and out of sight. But that’s not possible in Weimar, where the last stop on bus route 6 will always be Buchenwald. The German friend I was staying with last week said that what he loves about Germans is that Germans don’t love Germany — apart from fringe loonies with shaved heads, there’s no nationalism here anymore. I’ve digressed, entschuldigung. I’m in my hostel. I’m trying to decide whether to ask my silent laptopping dorm-mates if any of them want to go for a beer, or whether I should just slip out into the night alone instead, and see what I can see. I’m here for five days. Is it going to be museums, tourist traps and aimless wandering, or is something going to come from out of the blue?
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.
I am back home now and happy to be but any moment now all the things I need to do will crash back in on me.
Boycott Caltex, who’s parent company Chevron funds bad military in Burma
freerice.com improves your vocabulary [via D]
A friend of mine is looking for ideas for facebook applications to develop. Can you suggest any?
From Vernon Small’s DomPost story on the Electoral Finance Bill [via Russell B]:
When National has stopped making political hay from the bill – no earlier than the next election, I guess – and when Labour has stopped settling old scores, they might both like to return the debate over election funding to its fundamental aims. At the same time they should find a significant role for the people who actually own the electoral system, rather than use the power of incumbency to tilt the electoral landscape their way every three years.
Wattson shows how much electricity you’re using in real time
Another reason to boycott Chevron companies (such as Caltex)
Said Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America:
There is no philosopher of so great parts in the world, but that he believes a million of things on the faith of other people, and supposes a great many more truths than he demonstrates. … It is true, that whoever receives an opinion on the word of another, does so far enslave his mind; but its a salutary servitude which allows him to make a good use of freedom.
I went to a presentation on Simply Good Food, a community-supported agriculture scheme. I was impressed by their food, methods and philosophy. I wasn’t impressed that their membership fee is $500. That would be fine if I was buying into a co-op with that money, and getting a share of ownership in the operation, but that’s not how they roll. My $500 would help them cover the risk of starting a new venture, and only buy me the right to buy organic produce directly from SGF. So I hope some other group comes along and imitates their production and delivery scheme, but in a co-op structure.
42 Collective: ideas for lower-cost lifestyles
Xero: online accounting package for $50/month
Tom Beard on the stupid DomPost windfarm article
I read in the DomPost today that Transmission Gully is supposed to cost $955m. If my calculations (based on the NLTP) are correct, that’s about eight times more than the entire government spending on public transport planned for Wellington next year. Which is stupid. We could write to Fran Wilde about it.
From a review of The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre McCloskey:
For the last generation, we’ve been admonished to lock “utopia” in the attic of historical nightmares and dwell within the cheerfully commercial boundaries of the capitalist imagination. It’s been busy and entertaining and, until recently, it’s been safe. The poor were forgotten or chastised, the critics were stifled or bribed, and the billions in the slums of globalization’s wake were silenced with promises and missiles. But as Mike Davis puts it in Planet of Slums with grim and austere eloquence, “the gods of chaos are on their side.”
Google wants to make renewables cheaper than coal
Agin the Kindle [via RF]
Brilliant Peter Garrett (Midnight Oil) is Australia’s new Environment Minister
David Newton on interfaith dialogue, parts one and two
A sermon from me about endurance, or living through an apocalypse [32KB PDF]
Web/print design job going – ask me about it.
Stanley Hauerwas: Sacrificing the sacrifices of war, in which he quotes Yoder:
…the gospel [is not] that war is sin. That also is true, but alone it would not be the gospel. The gospel is that the war is over. Not merely that you ought to love your enemy. Not merely that if you have a ‘born again experience’, some of your hateful feelings will go away and you maybe can love. Not merely that if you deal with your enemies lovingly enough, some of them will become friendly. All of that is true, but it is not the gospel. The gospel is that everyone being loved by God must be my beloved too, even if they consider me their enemy, even if their interests clash with mine.
A room is available at our house
The state of scripting languages
Birthday drinks at my place from 8pm tonight.
John Patterson:
PINE TREE LAND
will tane come back
will tane want this land
will tane want this
pine tree land
NECK TIES
cmon
burn your neck ties mike
burn them
free your self
from that hang mans rope
I ought to be writing or at least researching for a sermon I have to deliver in three days. Instead I’m reading an excellent new interview with Kim Stanley Robinson. A quotelet:
… the word sustainability is now code for: let’s make capitalism work over the long haul, without ever getting rid of the hierarchy between rich and poor and without establishing social justice.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins
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