Month: February 2008

Categories
Future

Future technology

SatelliteA recent article in The Age by Michael Dwyer discussed technological innovations which are just around the corner. One of these is the PAL-V, a personal air and land vehicle, an enclosed three-wheel motorcycle with fold-away rotor and propeller which, when deployed, cause the vehicle to function as a gyrocopter. The “environmentally certified” engine enables speeds up to 200 km/h both on land and in the air.

Another innovation considered in a recent US National Security Space Office report is Space-Based Solar Power. The idea involves placement of very large solar arrays into continuously sunlit Earth orbit to collect electrical energy and beam it back to Earth. This idea has been around for over 30 years, but previous studies have concluded that the technology is too expensive relative to other energy sources. The latest report argues that the cost may be justifiable on national security grounds.

Another innovation is video eyeglasses, which look similar to normal sunglasses but act as digital displays, enabling the wearer to see the real world through the glasses while at the same time seeing an overlaid computer display. The glasses essentially enable you to live in two worlds at the same time, if your brain can multitask quickly enough.

Categories
Present

Makeshift camps for the desperate

Camp“Even after losing all our belongings, some marauding gangs are still following us inside the police station, threatening us with dire consequences if we don’t leave.” That’s how one refugee described conditions in Kenya, in an article in yesterday’s Daily Nation. More than 800 people have been killed in the last month in post-election violence, and more than 300,000 people have been displaced from their homes.

There are at least 44 makeshift camps throughout Kenya housing those who have been evicted from their homes because of their ethnicity. It is estimated that two thirds of them are women and children. The stories of cruelty and barbarity are horrifying. An email received a couple of days ago from friends in Kenya says:

“A neighbouring pastor of International Christian Fellowship was shot on the chest twice as he prayed and prepared for Sunday service the next day by unknown assailants and is in intensive care unit in Nairobi Hospital… Police and military officers and friends of ours advised us to vacate Nairobi for our own safety. They said even the armed forces have tribal differences waiting to ‘burst’ any time… In the primary slums where we work we get regular reports of people of different tribes being given 24 hours eviction notices or face death… Children have began to hate each other in schools/ universities on tribal grounds…”

Categories
Past

Codex Sinaiticus

CodexOn this day 149 years ago, Constantin von Tischendorf “discovered” the Codex Sinaiticus – one of the most important extant New Testament manuscripts – in the Monastery of Saint Catherine at the foot of Mt Sinai in Egypt. Von Tischendorf sent the manuscript to Tsar Alexander in St Petersburg. It was then preserved in the Russian National Library until 1933 when it was sold to the British Library.

Although the Codex Sinaiticus contains a number of transcription errors, it is one of the two earliest surviving manuscripts which contains the full canon of the New Testament, the other being Codex Vaticanus. The estimated date of writing is between 330 and 350 A.D. The Codex Sinaiticus originally contained the whole of the Septuagint Old Testament, the complete New Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and possibly some other writings as well.

In spite of the transcription errors which it contains, Codex Sinaiticus has provided important evidence of the early creation date of the New Testament. In the 19th century many were arguing that the New Testament was written much later. Von Tishcendorf, in his book When Were Our Gospels Written?, said: “Providence has given to our age, in which attacks on Christianity are so common, the Sinaitic Bible, to be to us a full and clear light as to what is the real text of God’s Word written, and to assist us in defending the truth by establishing its authentic form.”

Categories
Faith

The Big Ask

InviteDavid Foster and Monday Morning Insight have been asking the question, “Why aren’t your people inviting other people to attend your church?” It’s a good question, perhaps one of the most important questions which can be asked in trying to understand the decline in Christianity in the west.

Most people care about what other people think of them, and when they decide whether to invite a friend to an event they subconsciously tend to balance their own enthusiasm for the event against their perceived likelihood of something embarrassing happening. It seems to me that enthusiasm increases when new things are happening, lives are being changed, significant growth is occurring, and the message being preached is consistent with the message being lived out in the congregation. On the other hand, the perceived risk of embarrassment rises when the message being preached is inconsistent with the apparent reality, services are boring and irrelevant, and freaky people are allowed to scare visitors away.

If what the New Testament says is true, and the good news of Jesus still applies today, then all churches should be of the enthusiasm-causing kind. The fact that most churches today in the west are of the embarrassment-causing kind shows just how far we have gone astray and become human-centred, rather than Jesus-centred.

Categories
Books

Making up your mind

Decision pointCan decision-making be turned into a science? Michael Useem seems to think so in his book, The Go Point: When It’s Time to Decide. The author invites us to spend some time in the shoes of different people from history who have been faced with important life-or-death decisions. He invites us to consider all the facts, formulate our own decisions, then compare them with the actual decisions which were made and analyse the decision-making process to learn lessons.

The name of the book is uninspiring, but the book itself is written in an engaging manner and the scenarios give the reader plenty of opportunity for thinking. In Chapter 1 we find ourselves fighting fires in Colorado, and analysing each decision made over a period of several hours before 14 firefighters were killed. In Chapter 4 we analyse the decision-making mistakes made by General Lee which led to the loss of the battle at Gettysburg. Chapter 5 provides decision-making exercises for teams.

So what are the ingredients of good decisions? The book provides a number of them, including: prepare for decisions under stress; establish clear priorities; look to the future instead of rethinking the past; break hard decisions into smaller steps; consult those most familiar with the context and situation; and clarify what the decision entails before trying to make it. This is a useful book which I highly recommend.