Shorts..

On the quest for the (mythical) heroic leader (via The Independent):

Human beings are invariably flawed. Every person who is capable of moments of greatness is also capable of cruelty or stupidity. The only way to check this is for us to be constantly watching each other – even the best amongst us – and to never be blinded by admirable acts. We will never reach a point where we find the good leader and can sigh, sit back, and relax. If you care about the state of the world, you have to keep watching and pressuring and fighting, forever.

On social responsibility (via Alertnet):

[Is it] time for Media Social Responsibility? (something analogous to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), in which organisations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, employees, communities and the environment).

[Sally Begbie in a recent conference] quoted Boutros Boutros Ghali - "CNN is the 16th member of the Security Council" - and while making clear that agencies must remember that the media always has ratings and readership to consider, she asked whether it was time for journalists to take on the idea that they too have a responsibility to give the voiceless a voice.

Here is details of the conference.

Religion in the US

This week the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released the US Religious Landscape survey, which has shown some interesting results:
:: 70 percent of Americans (surprisingly 57% of evangelicals), affiliated to a religion - agree that many roads lead to eternal life
:: 21% of Atheists believe in god. Does this mean that Atheism is not a theological statement, but rather a form of self-identity.
:: 49% of men say religion is very important in their lives - while 63% of women did.
I wonder if a survey of the religious landscape in Australia, would draw similar conclusions.

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World Refugee Day

In case you are not aware today 20 June is World Refugee Day; and in that vein here's a couple of links:

:: A Day in the life of a 12-year-old in a Darfur camp

:: On where the refugees are:

While conflicts in Africa continue to displace hundreds of thousands of people, this year the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, is highlighting the fact that refugee numbers have increased from 10 million to nearly 12 million due to the persistence of refugee crises in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And here's a link to coverage of World Refugee Day, and the UN Refugee Agency website.

My Acrostic playlist

Perhaps its my compulsion with lists, though too much time can't be ruled out ;-) – but here’s two acrostic playlists, using my name (by artists, and then song titles):

Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms
U2 – Dreaming with tears in my eyes
Nichole Nordeman – My Offering
Caedmon’s Call – Walk with me
Abby Dobson – You will find your way
Newsboys – You Are My King (Amazing Love)

Andrew Osenga – Roses in a dead man’s hand
Leigh Nash (and Dan Haseltine) – With every breath
Daniel Lanois – Falling at your feet
Radiohead – All I Need
Interpol – Take you on a cruise
Deliroius – You split the earth
Glen Hansard+Marketa Irglova – Sleeping?
Erin O’Donnell – Your love will get me there

+++

Daughter – Pearl Jam
Until your love broke through – Rebecca St. James
New Partner – The Frames
C.S. Lewis Song – Brooke Fraser
Always on this line – Sarah Blasko
Needful hands – Jars of Clay

Arithmetic – Brooke Fraser
Love is blindness – U2
Dear friends – Sarah Masen
Refine me – Jennifer Knapp
I need thee every hour – Jars of Clay
Don’t dream it’s over – Crowded House
Go and sin no more – Rebecca St. James
Exit music for a film - Radiohead

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Is…

:: the Internet, [Google] making us stupid? (aka Uncle Google and Aunt Wikki)
Here’s an article about how the internet is impacting the way we search for and read, (and I have noticed a few of these in myself recently).

They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. The Atlantic Monthly

See this piece from NPR too.


:: the media making us feel bad?

Here’s a piece via the Wall St Journal, suggesting that the news is not all bad; not as bad as we are always told, sure the petrol prices could be a little lower but for the most part we’re okay.

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Obama on Fatherhood...

This is for me, one of the more significant speeches he will give. A couple of quotes..

...Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation. They are teachers and coaches. They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success and the men who constantly push us toward it.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing – missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. [...] We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child – it’s the courage to raise one.

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And here's a link to the full text, as prepared for delivery.

Wikipedia told me so...

Marshall Poe's 2006 mediation on the online encyclopedia:

The power of the community to decide, of course, asks us to reexamine what we mean when we say that something is "true." We tend to think of truth as something that resides in the world. The fact that two plus two equals four is written in the stars—we merely discovered it. But Wikipedia suggests a different theory of truth. Just think about the way we learn what words mean. Generally speaking, we do so by listening to other people (our parents, first). Since we want to communicate with them (after all, they feed us), we use the words in the same way they do. Wikipedia says judgments of truth and falsehood work the same way. The community decides that two plus two equals four the same way it decides what an apple is: by consensus. Yes, that means that if the community changes its mind and decides that two plus two equals five, then two plus two does equal five. The community isn't likely to do such an absurd or useless thing, but it has the ability.

[via The Daily Dish]

On the US Primaries

:: Hillary's concession speech, is well worth the read. Here's another few pieces about the significance of Hilary's campaign, and what her concession means to some. And Clinton's response:

"To those who are disappointed that we couldn't go all of the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours. [...]

Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it..."

:: Obama's speech after clinching the nomination. Its the language of optimism, idealism, and hope that Obama represents which is so attractive to many in the US, and abroad.

# One piece on the polls, suggesting Clinton beats McCain; and McCain beats Obama although here's another one suggesting that Obama might win.

One things for sure it is going to fun to watch.

On Religion

Religion and Science

The truth of the matter is that religion and science are not
competitors, but fundamentally different responses to the human
situation. Religion begins where science leaves off. Theories of how
humanity or the universe came about are strictly beside the point.
Claiming to have a better explanation of the natural world than
orthodox science - as creationists do - does nothing to advance the
cause of faith.

Religion expresses the human need for meaning, not a demand for
explanation. For those who have it, faith entails understanding the
limits of the human mind and an acceptance of mystery. Even if all the
problems of science are some day solved, humans will still be
searching for purpose in their lives, and for that reason alone they
will need religion.

(John Gray reviews Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions) via The Daily Dish)

On the Problem of Evil, and Heaven.

Heaven, one of the tenderest verses in the Bible has it, is where God will wipe away all tears from our faces. In her novel "Gilead," Marilynne Robinson adds, in a line just as tender, if a little sterner, "It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required." Robinson, herself a devout Protestant, means that the immense surge of human suffering in the world will need, and deserves, a great deal of heavenly love and repair; it is as close as her novel comes to righteous complaint. But one could also say, more skeptically, that Christianity needs the concept of Heaven simply to make sense of all the world's suffering—that, theologically speaking, Heaven is "exactly what will be required." In the end, Heaven, it seems, is the only tenable response to the problem of evil. It is where God's mysterious plan will be revealed; it is where the poor and the downtrodden, the sick and the tortured, will be healed; it is where everything that we went through on earth will suddenly seem "worth it." [...]

But Heaven is also a problem for theodicists who take the freedom to choose between good and evil as paramount. For Heaven must be a place where either our freedom to sin has been abolished or we have been so transfigured that we no longer want to sin: in Heaven, our will miraculously coincides with God's will. And here the free-will defense unravels, and is unravelled by the very idea of Heaven. If Heaven obviates the great human freedom to sin, why was it ever such a momentous ideal on earth, "worth" all that pain and suffering? The difficulty can be recast in terms of the continuity of the self. If we will be so differently constituted in Heaven as to be strangers to sin, then no meaningful connection will exist between the person who suffers here and the exalted soul who will enjoy the great system of rewards and promises and tears wiped from faces: our faces there will not be the faces we have here. And, if there were to be real continuity between our earthly selves and our heavenly ones, then Heaven might dangerously begin to resemble earth.

A passage from James Wood's review of Bart D. Ehrman's God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. [via The Daily Dish]

Is it over?

Barack Obama needs (about) another 10 delegates to clinch (NYT) the Democratic Party's nomination for President. It has been one interesting and intriguing campaign, and it will be interesting to hear the speeches from both Clinton and Obama today.