Flat3D

Mammon…

Today I got some new mammon…

Number 1
My long awaited upgrade to Windows Vista arrived!
When I got my laptop way back at the new year, it came with a promise of a free upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium (to salve peoples wallets prior to the release and stop them waiting for the new version).
This came with a few issues… Firstly the free upgrade cost just under £20. Apparently for shipping, but now I have it I know it didn’t cost £20 to ship, especially with the issue #3 below!
Secondly, Vista was released in January, my “Express” upgrade arrived today, 4 months later.
And the long awaited issue number three… My £20 shipping fee was used to send a package (no bigger than a standard DVD case), but even with the excessive shipping costs it took almost 3 weeks (from “item has shipped” email to arrival) to get here!
Anyways, it’s here, but my greek coursework, seminar preparations and general exam prep will mean it won’t be going on the Vaio this week! Maybe sometime in the future and I’ll comment on here…

Number 2
This took considerable deliberation…a new kayak isn’t exactly too cheap to buy. But after some research and deliberation I reckon that if needed, for eg if I leave the country, a big chunk of the investment can be recouped in a sale, or it can wait til I return (or even go with me?!?). Also if God leads me down that path and it goes with me, now may be the only chance I have to get one that I can use long into the future (once the capital has been laid down, the activity becomes practically free…!)
Until now Paul and I have been paddling loaned boats from Lyle and fairly old ones at that. They are fine to use, but kind of restrictive in terms of length (particularly with the revolutionary design advances in kayaks of the last 5-10 years).
So yeah, after some internet research and brochure browsing, PC and I went up to coast and creek in Ballymoney and had a look at our narrowed down choices, basically between two boats for me, the Dagger Juice or the Pyranha Recoil, both river running boats with playboating features for surfing and playing! After trying to fit into the Juice I realised it wasn’t happening and we both ended up going for Medium Recoils with the good but not extravagant rapid plus spec in blue and white.
However Chris informed us that the demand was great and Pyranha were back ordered, so we joined the queue waiting til early/mid may for our boats.
Today Chris contacted me to let me know he had a blue/white boat and a yellow/orange boat from a cancelled order in the store! So PC and I headed up and picked them up!
The recoil with rapid plus spec comes in either blue/white or yellow/orange. As Lyle, Tom and Ian all have yellow/orange pyranha boats (different models though) we went for the blue/white so we didn’t look like a synchronised kayaking team up at the beach! But as it stands, PC will be the lone wolf and the other four of us will be riding the waves in graceful synchronicity!

Here is the Recoil M in blue/white that PC got.
Here is a Recoil in Yellow/Orange like mine (this is an L size, mine is an M size like PC’s)

Some things….

…I have stumbled across in my study-dodging…

I watched a scientific experiment to determine if a professional psychic or a monkey had more psychic ability. The monkey came out on top. (Thanks to Brainiac - Science Abuse).

I learned how to make a 3,000+ lumens, XGA data projector for under £150 using an old LCD monitor and old overhead projector.

I finally managed to book my car in to get its door fixed (the part has arrived from peugeot at last!)

And just to lower the tone even more…
There is a character who is quite famous in Japan amongst kids (so Emiri assures me). Shimajiro is a little kitten who goes through the trials and tribulations of growing up so that japanese kids can learn from his experiences.
This is probably the best, at least its the only subtitled one I could find…

These are funny even if you don’t know much Japanese:
Here Shimajiro learns to use a Japanese Style loo…and here he receives lessons in every day manners from the Manner Ninja!

In other news I am down with the kids!
A few weeks ago I went to Junction 1 to get some new trainers… I started off going to the Nike store, but everything was fairly spidey with silver and gold bits and stuff, so I moved onto the Reebok store. I found a pair of trainers I liked and went to make the purchase and the sales girl informed me that there was a sale on guys shoes, if you buy one pair you get a second half price, and as the price is fairly low in there anyways I figured I might as well. So I went off a-lookin and found a pair of white trainers with red bits I quite liked, so I got them. Tonight I found out (thanks ben) they are from Reebok’s G-Unit range. Not being into hiphop and not being down with the kids I didn’t know they even existed…
As Ben pointed out the irony of leaving the nike shop due to the excessive “bling” factor and ending up with these things…
Still they do the job, look alright and were only a tenner!
Mushn’t grumble…

Modernism/Postmodernism

Tonight at RUSH Ronnie started by going through some bits in a book he thought were good that basically tried to explain postmodernism, modernism and Christian tradition as three distinct seperate entities… It went through some other stuff too, like secularism and pluralism, but the main focus was modernism and postmodernism. He then moved on to talk about his bugbear of how he thinks Christians are blending more into society today than they used to when he was a lad and he wanted to discuss how we are adopting aspects of our current, postmodern culture into our faith.
But the more I think about it, and thought about it, the more I have a problem with the idea put forward. And I tried to bring this up for discussion at RUSH, but after a sentence of explaination to try to show people what I mean, Ronnie interrupted me thinking it was my entire point and headed off in another direction. So I just left it, but I thought I would put my thinking up here and see if it’s coherent or just random babbling of an overworked student (is there such a thing??)…

I started by saying that Christianity has survived through and been able to engage with many cultures in our own countries history (let alone various cultures). I also tried to point out that society isn’t simple, people aren’t just post-modern or modern or any single worldview and in the midst of this Ronnie grabbed a perpendicular point and ran with it, far away before I could try to salvage it…

But here is my question in its unsoftened, uncushioned form… Is postmodernism a threat to Christianity? Has modernism been a threat to Christianity?
The more I’ve been thinking about it the less it seems so. Surely modernism and postmodernism and the worldviews and related cultures that came before are spawned out of attempts to understand human culture. Not necessarily attempts to actively push Christianity or God out of the picture, but rather attempts that just don’t take God into account. And this leaves short comings, short comings that hinder the understanding of the gospel and of Christian truth sure… but many of these shortcomings don’t make it into popular thought (here I mean thought that is popular with everyone, not the university professor, book writing kind of thought that academics will refer to as popular thought). Rather what you find is what I was talking about earlier, a mishmash of modernist, postmodernist, secularist and traditionalist thought. People talk about science as modernists, they talk about justice as traditionalists, they talk about judgement as postmodernists and secularists… and that is what makes up our culture.

Basically it seems to me that we should be aiming to engage with this culture. We should be aiming to accept the aspects of it that do not clash with scripture and reject the aspects that do. And surely this means accepting aspects of postmodern thought (such as understanding that we are individuals and require differing approaches to differing things) but rejecting others (such as the lack of absolute truth) and the same for modernist thought. Surely this engaging with culture really doesn’t matter as to what is postmodern or modern, but what is ok and valid by scripture and what is not…
I mean the issue of allowing culture to infiltrate faith isn’t a new one and it isn’t unique to postmodernism. Just look at how Ahab went the wrong way while trying to live up to his wife’s culture and all that it entailed…

What do you think? Post-modernism a threat? Or a misunderstood challenge?

Easter

Easter around the world

Easter this year has been interesting for me. I don’t know if people are taking it more seriously, or if in times of increasing religious diverstiy, Christians are making more out of celebrating it… but it has felt much more public and open than I remember it being…. Perhaps a lot of it is due to Mel making the Passion of the Christ and thrusting Christianity back into the public conscience…

This Easter the brain shrinking goggle box transported me to Manchester where I watched the Manchester Passion (I know it was last year, but I was in Japan) and the Philippines where former “GamesMaster” presenter Dominic Diamond went to join in the crucifixion rituals and in preparation rediscovered his Catholic faith and in the end opted out of the act itself (whether through fear or understanding I’m not sure) and witnessed the apparent change in his life as a result of it (“Crucify Me”)…
Then tonight after evening worship I returned home to find the Passion of the Christ being shown on Channel 4… (And Patton will be glad to hear that I actually recognised some of the aramaic that is shared with Hebrew! I’ve managed a whole 4 words so far!)

Now I didn’t spend the weekend in front of the TV, but those times I happened to be in front of it, these were the things that I saw. And it surprised me that Easter, which previously had been so reserved and held back had become such a public event. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great, provided that we can keep to the real meaning forefront and it doesn’t drop back to the chocolate, eggs and bunnies thing that it seemed to be when I was a child.
It is also encouraging that (although in this case somewhat dubiously) famous people are looking for truth where it might be found, rather than looking where people think it’s cool to look…