Barefoot in the wilderness
in search of understanding

The Vista licence

I’m guessing that most people reading this blog will have heard about Microsoft’s forthcoming new operating system, to replace WindowsXP – Windows Vista. So, before you go spending good money on this “upgrade”, make sure you research carefully what you’re getting. Start with the fact that there are now five (count them!) separate versions of the OS available (not just the two XP provided – Home and Premium). The lowest and cheapest of these, Vista Home Basic, doesn’t provide any of the advantages of the new Vista user interface or the media support. Basically, it’s a waste of money. The more expensive versions provide a varied assortment of different features, and a varied assortment of legal limitations.

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Very Short Stories

Wired has published a list of very short stories by famous authors – just six words each, in fact. Some are quite superb! Given their brevity, I can’t really post them here (copyright law can be such a nuisance!) but I really liked the first stories listed by Alan Moore and Margaret Atwood, among others.

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DIY Pollock

This is pretty fun – create your own Jackson Pollock masterpiece!

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Freedom of information?

The UK Government is planning changes to the Freedom of Information Act, “reported The Register“ earlier this week (I was away, I missed the first posting of the article…). The proposals mean that it will be much easier for the Government (or anyone else) to refuse an FoI request on the basis of cost, by increasing the number of “administrative charges” that can be used to get past the £600 limit.

any request referred to a minister is almost certain to be denied because of the extra costs involved under the new plans. “Officials can say about any request they are not keen on, we’ll send this up to ministers and that will immediately add £200, £250, £300 to the likely costs of dealing with the requests and make it much more likely that it will be refused without further consideration, and that will make it much harder to get information which ministers are worried about.
“Information that ministers are worried about will, merely because they are worried about it, become more difficult to obtain,” said Frankel.

Worse still, the limiting charge (which lets you refuse an FoI request if it’s too expensive) wouldn’t apply to each request any more – organisations would be able to lump together all requests within a 3-month period, and refuse them all if the total exceeds £600! Which basically means that a newspaper could make only one FoI request per quarter. Useful for a government that doesn’t actually want to divulge any information. No, wait, wasn’t it this government that actually introduced the FoI Act? Yes, I believe it was. What on Earth is going on?

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Writing online

A while back, I mentioned Writely, the online word processor. Well, it was bought out by Google a few months ago and has been rebranded as Google Docs, together with Google’s online spreadsheet application. It’s quite nice, but sometimes frustrating. For those who like the idea, but don’t really like Google Docs, here are a couple of other options. First, there’s ThinkFree, which is an even fuller office suite – not only world processing and spreadsheets but even presentations – all with full MS Office compatibility, and a more comprehensive interface than Google Docs. It does require Java for its best mode, but you’re almost certain to have Java installed already. Alternatively, if you’re more interested in collaborative writing than full office-suite coverage, you might like Writeboard, which lets you create shared writing spaces online that you can share with other people. It’s more about easy-to-use collaboration and the interface is minimal, but what it does, it seems to do well. Rather than the WYSIWYG efforts of the others, it opts for Textile coding to mark up the text – the same format used on this blog in the comments (and, although you’d never know, in the posts, too).

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One year older...

In case you were wondering, the lack of posts this weekend was due to our being away visiting parents. Which was nice – my mum baked two cakes for my birthday on Sunday (oh, didn’t I mention? ) because the first didn’t quite work! And I got several new DVDs, including The Incredibles, which we watched twice on Sunday and once on Monday – the children do quite like it…

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More on the Military Commissions Act 2006 (USA)

The MCA is now law in the USA.

the bill that [GW Bush] signed with such evident satisfaction has relieved the federal courts of their rights and duty to…allow prisoners to challenge their confinement under Constitutional principles.
The new law…will allow rough treatment during interrogations, so long as the President designates a practice not to be torture. But he is permitted to “interpret” international law forbidding torture to suit himself.
The government, not the courts, will now be deciding what is cruel and inhumane treatment. Only monstrous abuse, reaching the level of a war crime, such as rape, mutilation, and the like, are expressly forbidden. And prisoners will not be granted legal counsel during interrogations.
The law will allow hearsay evidence and even coerced testimony to be admitted at trial, so long as a judge deems it relevant and reliable.

So, remind me again – who’s the enemy in this “War on Terror”, this “defense of liberty”? Government directly controlling the judicial system, hearsay evidence and torture permitted, no legal counsel? Something is badly wrong in the USA. I just hope it doesn’t get that bad over here.

(From The Register.)

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Procter's Sausages

Procter’s Sausages are very nice. Why am I telling you this? Because a friend has started the Sausage Monday campaign. So, go support it

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We're all (not) going to die

It’s difficult to know who we’re supposed to be terrified of any more.
But one thing is certain: the US and UK governments consider it our patriotic duty to be terrified of someone. Whole security and surveillance industries of global dimensions are being spawned and supported by government money, and people are getting killed in putatively counterterrorist wars, so it’s essential that public fear be sustained. We just lack consistency on who the Diablo du jour should be…
Unfortunately for the Bush/Blair team, Kim Jong-il is the wrong monster very much in the wrong place. Over 140,000 US troops in Iraq still can’t secure the little stretch of road between Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone. A military crisis in east Asia, everyone knows, is far beyond any US capacity to address.

(From The Register)

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Public transport

Next month, my twin nephews are being christened up in Blackpool. It’s a six-hour drive, which would mean 12 hours of driving in just two days – not great, particularly with small children in the car! So we thought of using public transport. After all, it’s more environmentally friendly, as well as being less stressful. So, off we go to the train website to find that, for two adults (our children are below 5 and so travel free), the trip would cost £150! Checking flying as an option (mostly to compare with the train) shows that it would cost us £180.

Can that really be right? It’s nearly as expensive to get the train as it is to fly? And, what’s worse, driving costs less than £30 in petrol. Even adding “depreciation” and other overheads wouldn’t get it anywhere close to the cost of taking the train.

So our problem is this – it’s too expensive to take the train. It’s cheaper to drive the car. Something’s wrong here, surely?

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Against torture?

Are you worried that the US Government is signing into law an Act that allows the use of torture and removes standard rights from the accused? Are you puzzled that the “most Christian nation on Earth” is the one doing this? Will Samson writes:

It seems indeed silly that as a nation we require a National Religious Campaign Against Torture. Imagine a national religious campaign against robbery or murder, values that are not only imbedded in all three predominant religious traditions but are also cornerstone legal values of almost all organized societies. Torture has been perceived through the ages as an offense on the level of robbery, murder and so many other obviously condemnable actions. Yet, here we find ourselves, in 2006, having to remind people that torture is a violation against God, our religious values and our ability to live as moral citizens of the planet.

(Thanks to Mike at WorD for the link.)

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Updated design

No need for alarm – I just tweaked the stylesheet for this blog. If you notice any oddities, do let me know!

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Worldmapper

While on the topic of world maps (see opposite), I remembered something I’ve been meaning for quite a while to link to: WorldMapper. This site plots maps of the world with the areas of the countries directly proportional to various attributes – population, wealth, tourism, literacy rate and many more – while keeping the shapes recognisable. It’s fascinating.

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Pink card

From the Department of Science Fictional Prophecy comes this account of Tony Blair’s grim determination to impose ID cards on the UK:

Blair dug down into the breast pocket of his tunic and came up with the pink identification card, carried compulsorily by all members of the Hundred Suns Federation. (A.J. Merak, Dark Andromeda, 1954)

(From Ansible.)

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Word of the Day by RSS

The Oxford English Dictionary have started an RSS feed that will give you a new word every day. Perfect for all word lovers!

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IgNobel prizes announced

This year’s IgNobel prizes have been awarded. The Biology prize goes to the somewhat disturbung discovery that hiccups can be cured by rectal massage. The Chemistry prize was awarded for investigating the effects of temperature on the ultrasonic velocity in Cheddar cheese. In Physics, they honoured an investigation of why dry spaghetti breaks in more than one place when bent. And, in Maths, the winners had calculated how many photos you need to take to ensure that no one has their eyes closed.

(_Thanks to The Register for reminding me._)

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Another reason not to go to Vista

Vista is Microsoft’s upcoming, “new and improved” operating system, due out early next year. In addition to the much-touted features, MS has introduced something they call the “Software Protection Platform”. And by “protection”, they mean that it protects their revenue, not you. What this new “feature” does is to escalate the Windows Genuine Advantage programme (you remember – when MS refuses updates to your OS because it doesn’t recognise the registration number of your perfectly legal software) so that Microsoft can “force PCs identified as running counterfeit Microsoft software, into reduced functionality mode in Windows Vista“. That’s right. Not only will they refuse you updates if their records or computers are broken. Now, they will stop you using the perfectly legal software you bought. It wouldn’t be so bad if we could be sure they wouldn’t get it wrong, but the evidence from the WGA programme strongly suggests that they will, quite often. As The Register said: “We predict tears. Lots of tears.”

This could be a good time to buy a Mac or, if you don’t want to buy new hardware, to install Linux (which is easier to install, run and use than Windows, can be run alongside Windows as you learn it, and is free – you can even order a free CD rather than download it, or buy an explanatory book which comes with a DVD that lets you run Linux straight from the DVD and only install it once you’ve decided you like it).

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(_Thanks to The Register for the tip._)

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NaNoWriMo 2006

It’s October, which means that National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner – 30 days of frantic writing to try and complete 50 000 words of fiction and hence a minimal “novel”. Quantity, not quality, is the goal here So, once November starts, posting may become less regular here. Consider yourself warned!

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Eagleton on Dawkins

Terry Eagleton has, at the London Review of Books, written an excellent analysis of Richard Dawkins’ writings on religion.

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology…
Dawkins sees Christianity in terms of a narrowly legalistic notion of atonement – of a brutally vindictive God sacrificing his own child in recompense for being offended – and describes the belief as vicious and obnoxious. It’s a safe bet that the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t agree more. It was the imperial Roman state, not God, that murdered Jesus…
The Christian faith holds that those who are able to look on the crucifixion and live, to accept that the traumatic truth of human history is a tortured body, might just have a chance of new life – but only by virtue of an unimaginable transformation in our currently dire condition. This is known as the resurrection. Those who don’t see this dreadful image of a mutilated innocent as the truth of history are likely to be devotees of that bright-eyed superstition known as infinite human progress, for which Dawkins is a full-blooded apologist. Or they might be well-intentioned reformers or social democrats, which from a Christian standpoint simply isn’t radical enough.

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In the ancient texts?

Father Jake posts an interesting quotation from Ignatius (2nd century bishop and martyr).

When I heard some people saying, “If I don’t find it in the ancient documents, I don’t believe it in the Gospel,” I answered them, “But it is written there.” They retorted, “That has got to be proved.” But to my mind it is Jesus Christ who is the ancient documents.

Good point, I feel. And particularly interesting to see it articulated at that time and place. It’s not just a newfangled idea – it’s part of the Christian faith, root and branch. Christ is the be all and end all – the written documents are secondary to that reality.

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Edited version of the Bible

A new Bible translation is causing controversy after it cut out difficult parts surrounding economic justice, possessions and money.
The new bible version, released by the Western Bible Foundation in the Netherlands, has created a storm by trying to make the Christian gospel more palatable.
According to Chairman Mr. De Rijke the foundation has reacted to a growing wish of many churches to be market-oriented and more attractive. “Jesus was very inspiring for our inner health, but we don’t need to take his naïve remarks about money seriously. He didn’t study economics, obviously.”

(From Ekklesia.)

(P.S. Read to the end of the article…)

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New parish church website

Not likely to interest many of you, I guess, but the new website for our parish church has just gone live. It’s based on Pivot, the same software that drives this blog, which means that the Vicar (or anyone else with an account) can update the website without have to edit lots of HTML pages. Which should mean that it stays more up to date

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Amish and terror

There have been various responses to the brutal murder of five Amish girls recently. Here’s one that’s well worth reading, from the National Catholic Reporter.

it was not the murders, not the violence, that shocked us; it was the forgiveness that followed it for which we were not prepared. It was the lack of recrimination, the dearth of vindictiveness that left us amazed. Baffled. Confounded.
It was the Christianity we all profess but which they practiced that left us stunned. Never had we seen such a thing.

And here’s another, from Sojourners.

As my husband and I talked about the spiritual power of these actions, I commented in an offhanded way, “It is an amazing witness to the peace tradition.” He looked at me and said passionately, “Witness? I don’t think so. This went well past witnessing. They weren’t witnessing to anything. They were actively making peace.”

And, another, from Ben Witherington.

Somewhere out there, there is someone who is muttering about meekness being weakness. There is someone out there suggesting that violence is the way to answer and silence senseless violence. There is someone simply ignoring the words of Jesus that those who live by the sword die by the sword.

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Mapping free will

Here’s a neat idea, passed on to me by John Peck from one Donald Bailey. We are often told that we can only have one of these possibilities – either we are free to make choices or God is in charge of the Universe. Now, I’ve said quite a few times on this blog and elsewhere that I believe this to be a false choice, that in fact the Bible tells us that both of these things are true.

The neat idea is this – consider theology as akin to mapmaking. Now, when we make a map of the world, we are faced with a problem: how do we reduce the three-dimensional shape of the Earth (a sphere) onto a flat two-dimensional piece of paper? Inevitably, when we make the map, we lose part of the reality. The most famous style of world map is the Mercator projection. This maintains the directions between any two places on Earth (useful for navigation) but at the expense of seriously distorting the areas of the countries (it makes Africa look far smaller than it really it, and all northern and southern countries appear far larger – this is why it’s been accused of allowing the rich northern nations feel more globally significant than they ought). By contrast, the Peters projection allows all regions to have the correct relative areas, but at the expense of sacrificing the constant direction. Looking at either form of map tells us true things about the world – and both are good methods, as good as it is possible for them to be. But neither is true to the exclusion of the other. Both are true and accurate, but limited, representations of the true nature of the world. So, then, both free will and divine sovereignty are true and accurate – but not to the exclusion of the other.

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Meek and mild?

In Church today, the Gospel reading was Mark’s account of Jesus saying that the Kingdom of God belongs to children. One point the preacher made was that this meant those outside the Covenant – for children had not taken their place within the Covenant community. However, he also looked at some Christian views of children, especially the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” idea. He suggested that one reason for this phrase becoming so commonplace was the unfortunate fact that, in English, “mild” and “child” rhyme. He quoted an old Charles Wesley hymn:

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon your little child.

Render this in French, though, and it just doesn’t work (and apologies for my terrible French – errors doubtless my own rather than the preacher’s!):

Gentil Jesu, bon et doux
Regardez lez enfants…fou

Doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it

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Veiled

In the wake of Jack Straw’s recent statements about women wearing veils, Ruth Gledhill has a fascinating discussion of the diverse ways veils and headcoverings are worn in Islamic cultures. She also mentions a nice quotation from a forthcoming interview with Bishop NT Wright, in which he points out that asking a muslim woman to remove her veil is rather like asking a secular western woman to remove her blouse. And, lest anyone point fingers about “repressive” Muslims, don’t forget that there are plenty of Christian churches (especially in the USA) in which women are expected to keep their heads covered and their mouths closed.

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St Francis' day

Today is the fourth of October – St Francis’ day. To celebrate the occasion, here’s one of my favourite stories about him.

One day, Francis told Leo, one of his companions, to go and preach in the church of a neighbouring town. Leo declined. Francis ordered him under his vow of obedience to go, so Leo went. However, shortly afterwards, Francis has second thoughts. Who was he to order such a holy man as Brother Leo around? So Francis stripped himself and ran after Leo, reaching him after he had entered the church. Francis apologised to Leo and the two of them proceeded to preach in the church (to great effect, as always).

This is Francis – passionate, humble and beloved.

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The least of these

Mike at WorD proposes this update of a well-known phrase:

They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we abduct you and torture you in the name of our own security, or see your Middle Eastern background and arrest you and hold you without trial?’
The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did to me.’

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Gatekeepers beware

Father Jake muses on those who see themselves as the church’s gatekeepers and whether their activities are in line with Christ’s words.

Sometimes, those who are already members of the Church see their role as gate keepers. They want to keep the riff raff out of THEIR Church. Anyone who wants to be part of THEIR Church must believe just like they do. I don’t consider these folks to be gate keepers – I see them as gate blockers, stumbling blocks that attempt to keep others out of the kingdom of God. Jesus is pretty harsh in his description of such stumbling blocks.
“Whoever is not against us is for us…If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” (Mark 9:40,42)

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