Poor old pensioner's updates for Wednesday, 23 July 2008

Indeed I am that...

Floating Life explains: Personal Reflections: Praise for Centrelink. And then, at the other end of the scale ;) : Hey from New York « Deus Lo Vult.

Archive brought in from the dark and other new things on Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Yes, with some pain in reversing a few colour scripts -- some may remain to be done -- I have brought Floating Life Apr 06 - Nov 07 back from its Dark Age. ;) Visitor #155,000 (WordPress stats) arrived there Jul 22 2008 4:58:09 am from Brazil and read There are at least two movies called Swimming Upstream.

And then there is that flag widget. I had optimistically set it to 100 max, but have now upped that as it already shows 97 flags... You don't know where you'll be read when you start blogging, do you?

On Floating Life today: How Different My Life Would Have Been If… — Anthony Venn-Brown and Death of Free Internet? And other cautionary tales on "free enterprise" and lying more generally…. A little later I added Believe Me, It’s Torture: Politics & Power: Hitchens.

Quiet today: updates for Monday, 21 July 2008

The Amazon issue seems to have resolved...

On Floating Life I posted a reminder about the VodPods: ninglun’s videos - VodPod. Later I added Glue Sniffing Among Street Children | The Pakistani Spectator.

In "miscellaneous stats", I note the Floating Life on WordPress and English/ESL flag widget has been thriving these past few days, with 88 countries having dropped in.

Floating Life Apr 06 to Nov 07 has been severely redecorated.

Just one of those WWW things: Broken Images & Amazon S3 outage

Read more at Broken Images « WordPress.com Forums and Amazon S3 Outage. What it means is that there may be a problem with images on my WordPress.com blogs for a little while.

What's new on World Youth Day Sunday, 20 July 2008

Also my late mother's birthday...

On Floating Life: Pope acknowledges the ’shame’. I did a quick update this afternoon: YouTube - world youth day - and Sirdan and I at Sunday lunch.

What's new on World Youth Day Saturday, 19 July 2008

The VodPod widget on the WordPress blogs acted up overnight, but all seems well again.

On Floating Life two posts: ::: Alexander McCall Smith ::: and Pilgrim watching in Surry Hills.

Later, hardly believing what I was seeing, I posted Liberal - Conservapedia: this is not a joke.

Holy stats! Pope blesses Floating Life...

... or something like that. :)

How this past week went on the Floating Life blogs, English/ESL not included

Altogether more modest here on Blogspot though, with 38 visits and 43 page views in the past seven days.

Now the top reads:

Floating Life

1. The Hollowmen - ABC TV 332 views in the past seven days
2. Australian poem: 2008 series #9 — The Angel's Kiss  138
3. The Politics of FEAR - Barack and Michelle 57
4. Court backs WYD activists' right to annoy 32
5. "A Life of Unlearning - a journey to find the truth" 31

Ninglun's Specials

1. Sequel: Art Monthly Australia July 2008 124
2. Sydney: World Youth Day 2008 fashion 39
3. Family stories 3 -- About the Whitfields 20
4. 10. But is it art? Responses to the Bill Henson controversy 13
5. Family stories 1 -- mother 6

Floating Life Apr 06 to Nov 07

1. Friday Australian poem #17: Bruce Dawe, 47
2. On the awkwardness (and fatuity?) of discussing religion 39
3. Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in Macbeth... 22
4. Assimilation, Integration, Multiculturalism 21
5. 3 -- Indigenous Australians 19

English/ESL

1. Studying the Gothic, or Emily Bronte? 184
2. Physical journeys and Peter Skrzynecki's poems 122
3. How should I write up a Science experiment? 76
4. Workshop 02 -- NSW HSC: Area Study: Imaginative Journeys 72
5. SBHS Trial HSC 2007 Paper 1 Question 1: 52

What's new on World Youth Day Friday 18 July, 2008

First, a new record has been set on Floating Life: 480 views, according to WordPress, and that with one hour still to go. Curiously, it is the ABC's new program The Hollowmen that accounts for much of that (247 visits in the past 24 hours), and even more curiously those who have sought it out come from all round the world, not just from Australia.

Speaking of the world, you may note each of the blogs on WordPress now has a new widget: Flag Counter. That is right across Floating Life and English/ESL, but only the WordPress blogs, tallying countries that come to the whole suite. Aside from being pretty, it is also interesting, I think, and a salutary reminder of who may be stumbling into what I say.

I must also report that Aussie Bloggers Forum is proving to have been well worth joining. I commend it to all fellow Aussie Bloggers.

On Floating Life today: Catholic Church sex abuse investigations ‘a joke’ and other WYD reflections. Then there is an overdue "Friday poem" -- Australian poem 2008 series #18: YouTube - Poetry Clip: Robert Gray.

Another stats factoid:

Apparently Barack Obama is the Antichrist (Blogspot) has had 1,838 visits according to Google Analytics. Add to that 162 more from the WordPress mirrored version, posted 2 April 2008.

Clarification on the future of this blog

It's no secret that I have transferred posts from here to WordPress, and I mentioned on Not an April Fools joke: this blog is winding down that I may delete the posts here and shut the blog down.

Obviously I have not.

There are still active comment threads as you can see.

So I am proposing to keep this blog open, even if it is just to carry the kind of entry you have seen over the past few days -- but it may well be that I will find some other uses for this blog at some time.

We shall see.

What's new on World Youth Day Thursday, 17 July 2008

Indeed it is. And Floating Life joins in with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales -- just the beginning -- followed by Brightens up the city a bit, doesn’t it?

What's new on Wednesday, 16 July 2008

On Floating Life: Court backs WYD activists’ right to annoy - News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), and on Ninglun's Specials: About the Whitfields: from convict days « Ninglun’s Specials tells of an important update there.

Busy today. More later perhaps.

Later

On Floating Life I added Ninglun scores a first about my adventures in Redfern Centrelink.

What's new on Tuesday, 15 July 2008

On Floating Life three today, two the fruit of an excellent Monday night on ABC1.

• ENOUGH ROPE with Andrew Denton - episode 176: Bob Hawke
• Channel 4 - News - Dispatches - Undercover in Tibet
• The Politics of FEAR - Barack and Michelle Portrayed As Militants « E Pluribus Unum

Watching that count over at Ninglun's Specials:

1. Sequel: Art Monthly Australia July 2008 1,012 views so far
2. Sydney: World Youth Day 2008 fashion 321
3. The Bard, a Rabbit, and Ninglun 301
4. 10. But is it art? Responses to the Bill Henson controversy 299
5. Family stories 3 -- About the Whitfields 284

I have rearranged the Floating Life Vodpod and tidied the tagging system. There were 97 pod views yesterday, a milestone day. In total that pod has now had 2,087 views.

What's new on Monday, 14 July 2008

Allons, enfants de la patrie...etc. And a significant day for Rabbits too, or at least for one Rabbit somewhere S-W of here...

On Floating Life I have added a possibly temporary tag for World Youth Day 2008, while on the Floating Life VodPod I have added some relevant items, and rearranged the pod, and systematically tagged it at last. See also the Ninglun on Blogspot Pod.

I have posted again about yesterday, among other matters: Marcel and the pilgrims, and other reflections… and made a slight adjustment, on reflection, to the earlier post on yesterday's gathering. After a heads-up from the author, I have posted A Life of Unlearning — a journey to find the truth — the book. Later in the afternoon I observed lots of pilgrims when I was Just back from tuition… in Chinatown and around Central Station.

Meanwhile the rush on Ninglun's Specials has ceased, it appears. The all-time top hits there now stands thus:

1. Sequel: Art Monthly Australia July 2008 993 views
2. Sydney: World Youth Day 2008 fashion 317
3. The Bard, a Rabbit, and Ninglun 300
4. 10. But is it art? Responses to the Bill Henson controversy 296
5. Family stories 3 -- About the Whitfields 279

While not re-opening Ninglun on Blogspot exactly, I have decided to mirror these update posts, or some of them, here.

For all the lovely people...

who visit this blog still, a change of clothes. :)

It has been a long time since I was here...

That's because my blogging takes place on WordPress these days, but at the top of the side bar here you can see a feed from my Gateway there. Just go to the top item to see what the latest is.

Not an April Fools joke: this blog is winding down

All the posts, though still here for the time being, have been exported with their comments to New Lines from a Floating Life. In due course they will be deleted here.

Induction of Andrew Collis, South Sydney Uniting Church

Yesterday saw more people in South Sydney Uniting Church than I have ever seen there. The occasion was the induction of Andrew Collis who had been serving as acting minister since the end of 2006, Vlad Korotkov having gone overseas, and then to Melbourne.

Representing NSW Synod (Sydney Presbytery) Neil Eriksson presided, and assisting were Dorothy McRae-McMahon, the assistant minister at South Sydney, and Pastor Sione Mohetau Hau of the Tongan congregation that shares the building with SSU. The Tongan Choir towards the end of the service was one of the highlights of the service. Other UC ministers present included Bill Crews from Ashfield; South Sydney participates in an Exodus Foundation literacy project for Indigenous students. The service began with an Aboriginal smoking ceremony performed by Uncle Max Eulo, seen below at St Vincents Hospital last year,and among Aboriginal groups in the congregation was Mark Spinks, chair of Babana Aboriginal Mens Group Redfern.

Father Brian Stoney from the Cana Community was also there, as Cana uses the church as a shelter during the week and SSU has been a partner in a number of ventures with Cana over the years. (I missed the Easter services this year so hadn't seen Brian since last year.)

One of the hymns sung appealed:

Faith will not grow from words alone

from proofs provided, scripture known;

our faith must feel its way about,

and live with question-marks and doubt.

That was also the theme of the occasional address by Dr Anita Monro, Lecturer in Liturgy, United Theological College.

RELATED: Local paper growing in range and interest. The South Sydney Herald is one of the works of South Sydney Uniting Church, but not a "church paper".

Yes, there are other viewpoints

All readers, whether they count themselves Christians or not and whether they are US citizens or not, could do worse than visit thoughtfully, perhaps even prayerfully, the following site:

Linked image.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this site is known to our own Kevin Rudd.

I would be very suspicious...

... of anyone who comes along and tells me to throw out good psychiatric care in favour of exorcism and demonology. Dangerous stuff, best kept, if anywhere, in the kind of crap movie I spit at on Possibly the worst movie I have ever seen… 

Today's crusade de jour in the Sydney Morning Herald does raise serious questions about coffee shops, mental illness, Pentecostals and dodgy practices: see They prayed to cast Satan from my body and related stories linked there.

THEY call themselves the Mercy Girls. And after years of searching they have found each other.

Bound by separate, damaging experiences at the hands of an American-style ministry operating in Sydney and the Sunshine Coast, these young women have clawed their way back to begin a semblance of a life again.

Desperate for help, they had turned to Mercy Ministries suffering mental illness, drug addiction and eating disorders...

Instead of the promised psychiatric treatment and support, they were placed in the care of Bible studies students, most of them under 30 and some with psychological problems of their own. Counselling consisted of prayer readings, treatment entailed exorcisms and speaking in tongues, and the house was locked down most of the time, isolating residents from the outside world and sealing them in a humidicrib of pentacostal religion...

Go to Do Christian teachings have a place in treating young people with mental illness? and read the extensive comments. I would say "yes" and "no" is the only possible answer to that question. It really does depend on the person, the nature of the problem, the nature and quality of the spiritual and psychiatric advice on offer. Take Kate's comment:

Although I'm not a Christian, my spirituality has helped me with my depression, providing comfort, support, and the motivation to keep going. That said, antidepressants and cognitive behavioural therapy have saved my life. Prayer can't cure mental illness any more than it can cure diabetes.

One theme that does emerge from all this is that psychiatric and counselling services need to be more readily accessible.

Sin - a quickie

The Catholic Church has published a new set of Seven Deadly Sins, as you no doubt already know. I take this version of the list from a forum on the Australian queer site SameSame:

Here are the 7 new "modern" sins:

1. Environmental pollution
2. Genetic manipulation
3. Accumulating excessive wealth
4. Inflicting poverty
5. Drug trafficking and consumption
6. Morally debatable experiments
7. Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

A mixed bag, in my view, and cynics might say a politically correct update of the medieval list. Well, it is probably a fair enough tool for discussion, but I really don't hold to the "deadly sins" business at all, as a Protestant in background. That, of course, is not always a good background, as there have been times Protestants, Calvinists especially, are so besotted with "falling short of the glory of God", as the 17th century Westminster Shorter Catechism (Presbyterian) in part defines sin, that they worry about whether polishing shoes on a Sunday is a "sin" befitting eternal fires of hell. (Compare on the "new" Seven Deadlies Helen Raser on ABC Unleashed.)

Frankly, a God who worries about such thing is a neurotic God, in fact an unspeakably stupid God. And I prefer to think God is neither.

Yet I do believe in sin.

I may come back to that. Meanwhile, a theologian whom Barack Obama apparently has some time for -- but of course if he is the Antichrist... -- is the German-American colossus of 20th century theology, the in some respects conservative Reinhold Niebuhr. See Reinhold Niebuhr's Doctrine of Sin, and for an overview The Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Modern Western Theology. From the latter:

Niebuhr's criticisms of the inhumane treatment of workers in Henry Ford’s factory made him an outspoken advocate of socialist principles in social and economic matters, and in 1932 he supported the socialist candidate for President. His advocacy of socialism continued until he came to support the mixed economics of the New Deal policy in the early 1940’s on the grounds that it was "more just and realistic than Marxism or laissez-faire" (Brown 1992, 7).

Niebuhr strongly concerned himself both with protecting automobile industrial workers and with changing the social and economic conditions that produce the problems that industrial workers must face. But in ding this he did not follow the methods of the Social Gospel. Rather, he criticized both the moral idealism of the liberal-leaning churches and their unconditional rejection of violence. In fact, he frankly acknowledged that his education in liberal theology was insufficient for the challenges of real ministry, and found the so-called "Neo-Orthodox" theological tendencies more useful. This preference is evident in Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). Subsequently, Niebuhr's famous "Christian realism" viewpoint came into focus after his participation in the Oxford Conference on Church, Community, and State in 1937 with John C. Bennett. This developed view appears in The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941 and 1943), a two-volume publication containing his Gifford Lectures of 1939.

See also Dispatches from another America on New Lines from a Floating Life.