Tags:

• film global warming

Being Yourself

Eltham 24-7
If you're in the area, the Church Army and 24/7 in Eltham are using our Being Yourself exhibition on the high street on the 11th. I've always wanted to see it on a high street. We did it at the Christian Resources Exhibition, but the high street is where it belongs!
Inspire magazine are covering it at the moment, or see the Eltham 24/7 site.

Or, for that matter, check out the Being Yourself site if you haven't been there yet.

First impressions of Greenbelt

I went to Greenbelt for the day on Monday. I hadn't been before, and thought I'd best pay it a visit sooner or later, what with the years of nagging that I've been subjected to from various friends. It does inspire fanaticism, does Greenbelt. And hatred too. In some churches I've attended I'd have been excommunicated for peeking through the fence. In others people practically burst into song at the mention of its name. All of which is quite intriguing.
So what did I make of it? Well, in my mind it appears to be two festivals crammed into one. The first is a forum for new ideas, for creative approaches to faith and church, and for informed debate and political Christian action, all things lacking in mainstream Christian festivals. Great. The other half, however, is tie-dye shirted irrelevance. You have these two things going on side by side, interesting conversations competing, quite literally, with spontaneous drumming sessions. I feel like I’ve been to two festivals.

The bad news first - sadly, the hippy half seems to be doing much of the art side of the festival. I was looking forward to seeing some good art, and aside from a disturbing (in a good way) exhibition on self harm, there wasn’t much to see. Most of the ‘art’ seemed to be primary coloured banners tied to trees, rainbow windmills, that sort of thing, a little disappointing for something that bills itself as an arts festival.

The ones in the hemp clothing are also running the site. The Greenbelt ‘vibe’ is something people really wax lyrical about, but to me the overall atmosphere was just willfully odd. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m always a little suspicious of people in crazy hats. Trying to be different, or anything that’s alternative for the sake of being alternative, is usually a futile exercise, and being ‘zany’ is often a poor excuse for genuinely being your own person. (I saw a Volkswagen van in the car park with ‘make love not war’ painted on it. Surely, that’s gone beyond irony and well into farce by now) So if it were up to me, there’d be less of the dreadlocked vegan elements, though I’m sure fans of the festival will disagree. But that was just my impression as a new comer, and I was only there for one day…

The good news is that the other half of the festival was great. Where other gatherings have central ‘teaching tracks’ and main meetings, here you have dozens of things to choose from in any given hour. It’s a festival that recognizes that each person has their own interests and passions, and that everyone is on their own journey with God. We don’t all need the same truth download. You can choose what you want to feed your mind with, and no one is assuming that we all need to hear the same thing. If you need milk, there’s milk. If you want meat, it’s like a South African barbecue. There are poets and novelists, MPs, pacifists, thinkers and philosophers. Yes, there are Bible teachers too, and worship leaders. There are filmmakers and programme commissioners. There was a Muslim there, not to debate, but to talk about his conversion to Islam. Draw your own conclusions. There are bishops and social workers, charity workers and asylum seekers, ecologists and environmentalists. There was a talk on The Da Vinci Code, again, but we won’t hold that against them.

There are dozens of issues here that the church in this country needs to be talking about. There are far too many Christians who aren’t engaging in serious conversation about the environment or social action, because they’re too busy fretting about whether everyone’s got a sound understanding of Romans. Unfortunately those people won’t ever go to Greenbelt. Like so many things, the festival is bound to appeal least to the people who need it most, and that’s a real shame.

In short, I’m not entirely converted to the Greenbelt cause, but it’s still the only Christian festival I’d ever want to go to.

How cool would this be if it works?

A man who claims to have developed a free energy technology which could power everything from mobile phones to cars has received more than 400 applications from scientists to test it.Sean McCarthy says that no one was more sceptical than he when Steorn, his small hi-tech firm in Dublin, hit upon a way of generating clean, free and constant energy from the interaction of magnetic fields. 'It wasn't so much a Eureka moment as a get-back-in-there-and-check-your-instruments moment, although in far more colourful language,' said McCarthy. But when he attempted to share his findings, he says, scientists either put the phone down on him or refused to endorse him publicly in case they damaged their academic reputations. So last week he took out a full-page advert in the Economist magazine, challenging the scientific community to examine his technology.McCarthy claims it provides five times the amount of energy a mobile phone battery generates for the same size, and does not have to be recharged. Within 36 hours of his advert appearing he had been contacted by 420 scientists in Europe, America and Australia, and a further 4,606 people had registered to receive the results.

The Observer | UK News | Scientists flock to test 'free energy' discovery

Blogged with Flock

fossa!

I was just doing a little research for children's story that I've been working on recently. It's about lemurs, and I needed to do a bit of reading up on Fossa (pronouced Foosa), Madagascar's largest predator and the only thing that a lemur fears.
I was just going to keep my reading to myself, but look at it - second only to lemurs themselves, it's the coolest animal in the world. So cute, and yet so deadly! It's so sneaky that until 1996 scientists thought it was nocturnal, but it's not, it's just the ninja of the cat family. It can run up trees, leap from branch to branch and take a lemur down in mid-air.
(If you had your big toes on the outside of your feet instead of the inside, you'd be able to run up trees too.)

Anyway, I stole these rather fine photos from here and there's a nice little article here if you're bored.

Blogged with Flock

Crop circles

Am I wrong in saying that everybody loves a good crop circle? I don't think so.

I read a report on wired news today about this, not so much a circle, more like a clever piece of 3D modelling.

Aliens, clearly. Unfortunately, the aliens have also sold out, and are now ads for Nike and Big Brother.

Blogged with Flock

short films, again

I was at the Rushes Soho Shorts festival last night. A tiny little underground bar called 22 Below is showing films, as well as a Costa coffee place, several bars and restaurants, and a buch of galleries and cinemas. Unfortunately I only heard about it yesterday, so I've missed a lot of it.
Perhaps I'm in danger of becoming obsessed with short film, but I reckon in the next year there's going to be a huge upsurge of interest in the genre. Video ipods and video on mobiles has been slow to catch on, but it will, and when it does there'll be a whole new market ripe for exploitation.

Blogged with Flock

Futureshorts

Went to an outdoor film festival on sunday night, in Greenwich park, part of Stella Artois' effort to associate cinema with their overpriced Gallic lager. The main feature was Ferris Beuller's Day Off, an inspired choice - lots of people joining in with the singing, or shouting 'do it!' at that bit when Cameron pushes his Dad's ferrari out the window. (if you haven't seen it, there's no point in attempting to explain how a ferrari can be pushed out a window...)

The best bit was the short films tent though. It's worth getting along to any event that Future Shorts puts on. There's one this weekend in fact. Sunday night at Tooting Lido, the pool is celebrating 100 years of splashing, and there's a programme of short films about swimming on the sunday night. If you're fortunate enough to have a decent independent cinema near you, (Brixton Ritzy, Rio Dalston, Greenwich or Clapham Picturehouse, etc) keep an eye out for their monthly set of films too. There are trailers for each month's programme on their myspace site.

get swimming

I fully understand why councils are reluctant to maintain lidos, since you only really want them for about six or seven days of the year. But they say today might be the hottest day ever recorded in this country, which means you need www.lidos.org.uk

Lidos in the United Kingdom

Blogged with Flock

The London Noise Map

This is my online toy of the day, a map of london by decibel level. My old flat was there, on that noisy pink road at the top, with noise levels at 70-75Db.

and here's where I live now, in the middle of  all that blissful quiet 45-50Db yellow on the right there.

The London Noise Map 

Blogged with Flock

News

It's a bad day for Politics students and newsreaders everywhere as Polish president Lech Kaczynski prepares to announce his twin brother as prime minister.
Just thought it was interesting.

Also news related, have you ever come across 10x10? It's a website that monitors the news wires and picks out the top 100 words being used in the news for every hour. It's quite an intriguing visualization of what's going on in the world at any given moment.

'Zidane' is word number 36 at the moment, and 'Italy' is only number 52. If I were Italian I'd be a little upset at the news today. All the headlines are about Zidane, and I'd be going "excuse me, world champions, yes? Italy?"

Blogged with Flock

Hampstead ponds

This weekend I was introduced to the joys of Hampstead Heath's swimming ponds. So cold, and so green, but so different from swimming in a pool.

Here's Lou, self professed evangelist of the pond swimming cause, at Hampstead yesterday.

Just one word of warning. If you go, follow the signs and swim in the designated pond. If you rock up and swim in the first pond you come to, it'll be this one:

technorati tags:london

Blogged with Flock

National siesta day

"In Britain the Siesta has not been part of our culture. But that is changing. Research shows that a siesta in the middle of a working day recharges our energy levels, increases memory, concentration and human productivity by up to 34%."

Siesta 2Siesta Awareness

Blogged with Flock

flaming lips

Flickr: Photos from supajem

saw the flaming lips at the O2 festival in Hyde Park on friday. Awesome. Dancing spacemen, santas, aliens, superheroes, confetti, balloons, and of course wayne in his space bubble...

Blogged with Flock

Meteorogical meditation

"At The Cloud Appreciation Society we love clouds, we're not ashamed to say it and we've had enough of people moaning about them. Read our manifesto and see how we are fighting the banality of ‘blue-sky thinking’."
The Cloud Appreciation Society


On the subject of things found in the sky, this week I have also been enjoying Flock.

It's a free browser, it's simple, uncluttered and it's very cool. Best of all, you can just highlight something, right click and blog it in seconds. Magic. You can get it here, so not actually in the sky at all.  (Thanks to Mark for the tip.)
Unfortunately it doesn't yet work on xanga, but that should be only a matter of time... The integration with blogger, typepad and flickr is awesome.

Blogged with Flock

Unknown white male

I saw this the other day at the ICA. An intriguing documentary. A man wakes up on the New York subway with no idea who he is, where he has come from or where he is going. The film follows his story as he works out who he is, and the reactions of his friends and family.
Since he's forgotten all the events of his life, he gets to see the sea again for the first time, fall in love again for the first time. He has to meet his own dad and his sisters, and watch old holiday videos without any of the memories attached. Being a photographer, he his friends film the whole thing, and it raises a whole load of questions about who we are and what makes us us - are we the sum of our experiences, or is there a fundamental personality that exists apart from our experiences?
If it's showing anywhere near you, do go and see it...

www.unknownwhitemale.co.uk

crimes against humanity

Some strong words here from E F Shumacher on economic priorities. It really resonates with me as a christian, though Shumacher is actually applying the principles of Buddhism to his economic theory. I don't think we've even begun to work out how to genuinely live as Christians in our current economic system. There are ways to live differently as real communities that we haven't explored at all.

“If greed were not the master of modern man - ably assited by envy - how could it be that the frenzy of economism does not abate as higher ‘standards of living’ are attained, and that it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic advantage with the greatest ruthlessness? How could we explain the almost universal refusal on the part of the rich societies to work towards the humanisation of work?
That soul destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of ‘bread and circuses’ can compensate for the damage done - these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence - because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.”

E F Shumacher, Small is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered, p24

easter

Here are a pair of short easter films that we developed at work this year. Take a look...

eternity

everything is complete, and there is no more time to keep

A brief exercise in comparative religion

If I were not already a Christian, I think I would subscribe to one of Kurt Vonnegut’s religions.
I quite like the teachings on Bokonon in ‘Cat’s Cradle’, whose principle rule is this: “Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”

Even better however, is the religion introduced in ‘The Sirens of Titan’, the magnificently named Church of God of the Utterly Indifferent. Here is a prayer from said church, from the lips of the Reverend C Horner Redwine.
“O Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagneic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia - what could we do for thee that thou couldst not do for thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say ‘Somebody up there likes me’. And no longer can a tyrant say ‘God wants this or that to hppen and anybody who doesn’t help this or that to happen is against God.’ O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!”