A World that Stands as One

Here's excerpts from Barack Obama's speech, overnight in Berlin [read or watch the whole speech here]

"...The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers - dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean. [...] As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya. Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all. [...] The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down. [... ] History reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other. [...] Now the world will watch and remember what we do here - what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time? Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words "never again" in Darfur? "

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Random Shorts

:: An interesting article about living with autism (via the Washington Post)

:: On technology recommending movies (and music),via the WSJ This quote sums it up nicely for me:

And sometimes, even when technology can get it right, many of us will still opt for the old-fashioned way. After all, it's nice to listen to a computer recommending a movie we might like. But sometimes it's even nicer to listen to a person we know we like.

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New U2 .... November (maybe)

I've read a few reports, that the new U2 album is 'likely' to be released in November, if it is the case, we're seeing a trend's emerging ... Beautiful Day was released just after the Sydney Olympics; Vertigo just after the Athens games., and (if this is true) after Beijing .. so mark down 2012 for the follow-up.

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Too much time to think ...

Just read this interesting post by Jonah Lehrer, about why thinking too much can lead you to "buy the wrong house". I kind of agree, having more time to make a decision, does not necessarily lead to making the 'right' decision

Ap Dijksterhuis, a psychologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands (and expert on unconscious thought), has done some cool studies that look at how people shop for "complex products," like cars, apartments, homes, etc. and how they often fall victim to what he calls a "weighting mistake". Consider two housing options: a three bedroom apartment that is located in the middle of a city, with a ten minute commute time, or a five bedroom McMansion in the suburbs, with a forty-five minute commute. "People will think about this trade-off for a long time," Dijksterhuis writes. "And most them will eventually choose the large house. After all, a third bathroom or extra bedroom is very important for when grandma and grandpa come over for Christmas, whereas driving two hours each day is really not that bad." What's interesting is that the more time people spend deliberating, the more important that extra space becomes. They'll imagine all sorts of scenarios (a big birthday party, Thanksgiving dinner, another child) that will turn the suburban house into an absolute necessity. The lengthy commute, meanwhile, will seem less and less significant, at least when compared to the allure of an extra bathroom. But, as Dijksterhuis points out, that reasoning process is exactly backwards: "The additional bathroom is a completely superfluous asset for at least 362 or 363 days each year, whereas a long commute does become a burden after a while." For instance, a recent study found that, when a person travels more than one hour in each direction, they have to make forty per cent more money in order to be as "satisfied with life" as someone with a short commute. Another study, led by Daniel Kahneman and the economist Alan Krueger, surveyed nine hundred working women in Texas and found that commuting was, by far, the least pleasurable part of their day. And yet, despite these gloomy statistics, nearly 20 percent of American workers commute more than forty-five minutes each way. (More than 3.5 million Americans spend more than three hours each day traveling to and from work: they're currently the fastest growing category of commuter. For more on commuter culture, check out this awesome New Yorker article.) According to Dijksterhuis, these people are making themselves miserable because they failed to properly "weigh" the relevant variables when they were choosing where to live. Because these deliberative homeowners tended to fixate on details like square footage or the number of bathrooms, they assumed that a bigger house in the suburbs would make them happy, even if it meant spending an extra hour in the car everyday. But they were wrong.

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Tourism

Given the price of fuel (and the cost of airfares) here's a new trend (from the US) to take that round the world trip, without leaving home, and fake it. (from Wall St. Journal)

Rock Lyrics...

Recently there was a piece in the Guardian, responding a piece by Germaine Greer saying that rock/pop lyrics have no literary worth. I've always thought some songs are poems, set to music (eg... 'Hallelujah') and could well be studied as such.

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On Villains

There was a great piece in the Herald over the weekend about why villains are so crucial to a film's success.

And the reason we tend to relate to the baddies or the villains is that really we're not watching anything that's outside of anything that we know.

In fact, there's a subconscious connection with them because the things that they're doing tend to be things that we understand anyway. We have our own moral structures and society has helped construct us in a way that we tend not to do those things. But we're certainly capable of understanding the actions themselves - up to a certain point [...] We love villains because they tend to be the only person in the story who knows what's going on. They're the ones, he explains, making everything happen, they're proactive and the protagonists are reactive - at least up to about two-thirds of the way through the movie. "If they don't make a move, nothing happens. They're the engine of the story ... and, remember, movie villains tend to be in the movie maybe 10 per cent of the time. There are long stretches where they're nowhere to be seen. The protagonist is mostly wandering through a fog looking for clues and somewhere in the background is this entity who knows everything.

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Fixing our Broken Society

Here's an excerpt from the leader of the opposition in Britain, and the key thrust of his speech is responsibility, and responsibility isn't a one-way street.

We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people's feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification.

Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more.

Of course as soon as a politician says this there is a clamour - "but what about all of you?" And let me say now, yes, we are human, flawed and frequently screw up.

Our relationships crack up, our marriages break down, we fail as parents and as citizens just like everyone else. But if the result of this is a stultifying silence about things that really matter, we re-double the failure. Refusing to use these words - right and wrong - means a denial of personal responsibility and the concept of a moral choice.

We talk about people being "at risk of obesity" instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it's as if these things - obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction - are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.

Of course, circumstances - where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make - have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.

There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries, thinking they can do as they please, and why no adult will intervene to stop them - including, often, their parents. If we are going to get any where near solving some of these problems, that has to stop.

And why would a different government be any different? Not least because we understand that the causes of our broken society lie not just in government policies but in our national culture.

Changing our culture is not easy or quick. You cannot pull a lever. You cannot do it top-down. But you can give a lead. You can give a nudge. You can make a difference if you are clear where you stand.

Imagine if there was a Government that understood, really understood, that encouraging personal and social responsibility must be the cornerstone of everything that it did and that every move it took re-inforced that view.

Saying to parents, your responsibility and your commitment matters, so we will give a tax break for marriage and end the couple penalty. Saying to head teachers you are responsible and if you want enforceable home school contracts and the freedom to exclude you can have it and we will judge you on your results. Saying to police officers you are responsible and the targets and bureaucracy are going but you must account to an elected individual who will want answers if you fail. Saying to business, if you take responsibility you can help change culture and we will help you with deregulation and tax cuts … but in the long run they depend on the steps you take to help tackle the costs of social failure that have driven your costs up and up.

It is the responsibility agenda and it will be the defining thread of any government I lead. [..]

Above all, I believe that this cultural change needs to start at home. The values we need to repair our broken society and to build a strong society are values that should be taught in the home, in the family.

That is why I have put the family right at the heart of my programme. Action on knife crime. Better policing and criminal justice reform. Reforming schools. Reforming welfare. These are all vital components of the social reform we need so urgently.

But in the end, the state cannot do it all. In the end, the best regulation is self-regulation, not state regulation. That's why the family comes first. That's where we can really turn things around and start to repair our broken society.
[Full speech]

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Apologetics

I recently read this interesting post 'The Apologist's First Question' from Ravi Zacharias (excerpted from his new book Beyond Opinion) on Slice of Infinity, It was quite a challenging read: "perhaps the greatest obstacle to the impact of the Gospel is not its inability to provide answers, but our failure to live it out". Ravi Zacharias told two stories from his experience:

I remember well in the early days of my Christian faith talking to a close Hindu friend. He ... said something I have never forgotten: "If this conversion is truly supernatural, why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians I know?" His question is a troublesome one. In fact, it is so deeply disturbing a question that I think of all the challenges to belief, this is the most difficult question of all. I have never struggled with my own personal faith as far as intellectual challenges to the Gospel are concerned. But I have often had struggles of the soul in trying to figure out why the Christian faith is not more visible.
After lecturing at a major American university, I was driven to the airport by the organizer of the event. I was quite jolted by what he told me. He said, "My wife brought our neighbor last night. She is a medical doctor and had not been to anything like this before. On their way home, my wife asked her what she thought of it all." He paused and then continued, "Do you know what she said?" Rather reluctantly, I shook my head. "She said, 'That was a very powerful evening. The arguments were very persuasive. I wonder what he is like in his private life.'"
Because my Hindu friend had not witnessed spiritual transformation in the life of Christians, whatever answers he received were nullified. In the doctor's case, the answers were intellectually and existentially satisfying, but she still needed to know, did they really make a difference in the life of the one proclaiming them? The Irish evangelist Gypsy Smith once said, "There are five Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian, and some people will never read the first four." In other words, the message is seen before it is heard. For both the Hindu questioner and the American doctor, the answers to their questions were not enough; they depended upon the visible transformation of the one offering them.

He then goes on to make a few points about the spiritual character of the apologist:

The spiritual condition and character of the apologist are of immense importance. This call to a life reflecting the person of Christ is the ultimate call of everyone who wishes to do apologetics. [...] Likewise, we cannot simply vanquish the person in an attempt to rescue the message. The value of the person is an essential part of the message. This means the apologist's task begins with a godly walk. One ought to take time to reflect seriously upon the question, Has God truly wrought a miracle in my life? Is my own heart proof of the supernatural intervention of God? That is the apologist's first question.

And therein lies quite a challenge.

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.

New Zealand… “Slice of Heaven”

Milford Sound and Queenstown have been named the top two destinations in the world by members of the world's largest online travel community. (Article here). No, I don’t think I’m biased at all. I would say though if you like Milford Sound, next time you’re in NZ visit Doubtful Sound, (see picture below).