Calvinism is back...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night
This is the feature article that "Saturday Night Fever" was based on. 20 years after writing it, the reporter admitted it was mostly fabricated...
Saturday Night Fever
Watched this tonight. It's one of those movies, you wonder why it became so iconic...
Monday, March 29, 2010
Music Stuff
We received lots of positive feedback about music yesterday, everything just seemed to click. One thing that worked really well was we had four singers - 3 females on melody and a bloke doing harmonies. It was really strong and full.
The song selection worked really well too, and one lady told me it was the best combination of songs we'd had. The irony is that I didn't actually select the songs with any purpose. I'm working through our song pool alphabetically, and these four just happened to fall together. When I looked at the 4 songs, I actually thought that they wouldn't work together, and I would never have picked them purposefully.
This reinforces a suspicion I've long had that music directors make far too big a fuss about song selections on any particular week. Indeed, I think they can fall into patterns of thinking that ensure we pick the same sorts of song combinations every time (eg. 2 quick ones to start, to slow ones to finish). My current theory is that you get together a good pool of songs, and then your choices can be random and it will work, week by week.
Oh, and for those who are wondering, the song list was - Come Thou Fount, Consider Christ, God of Wonders, and Grace Unmeasured.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Lost Boys
We had a Corey Haim Memorial Viewing of The Lost Boys last night. The g/f had never seen it before. It's a really well crafted little teen flick...
Saturday, March 27, 2010
A New Song...
I'm currently spending many hours looking a new songs to add to our music roster. It is a time-consuming process! Please feel free to recommend songs to me in the comments. I need about 8 new songs for this year. I've got 2 or 3 definites and a handful of maybes. One song I really like is "Holy (for you alone are)" on the City Alight album. Nice anthem...I'm always looking for good anthems. The congregation loves singing them...
Friday, March 26, 2010
bz week
The good: Caught up with 3 mates on separate evenings, had a good time at community group
The bad: Did not spend much time with son or g/f :-(
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Finished Chapter 11
I've found it really hard to find time for writing recently. Managed to squeeze out the last few hundred words of chapter 11, which describes the building of Australia's very first church. 11 chapters down, 9 to go. I am nearing the home stretch...
Role reversal
The teenager just came downstairs and told me to turn the guitar down, because he was trying to sleep...
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Greatest Show on Earth
I've been reading Dawkin's latest book, "The Greatest Show on Earth". I have little interest in Dawkin's puerile philosophy and theology, so I avoided "The God Delusion". But when it comes to science writing, Dawkins is very, very good. His style is direct and engaging, and he has a great knack for explaining difficult ideas. So far, "The Greatest Show on Earth" is an impressive book. I predict it will become the standard "defence text" for evolution, and will set the parameters for the ongoing creationism debate.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Is the West in decline?
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Hartcher makes this good point -
Obama gets his health plan through
This is a pretty big achievement. Will be interesting to see how he goes on the other half of the deal - reigning in health costs...
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
People's Question Time
The PM takes video questions "from the people" on Sunrise. I've got some sympathy for him. Most people come on and basically say, "Please give me more money" - or variations thereof. It must be very discouraging to be a politician, really...
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Media CEO Quits for CPX
Allan Dowthwaite is leaving Anglican Media to become CEO of CPX. He will be missed.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Vine and Trellis
MM have now printed over 55,000 copies of the Vine and the Trellis. If you know anything at all about Australian publishing, you will know that these are astonishing numbers. Well done to everyone involved. I haven't yet read the book, but everything I hear about it is stellar.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The War on Baby Girls
The China one child policy, combined with ultrasounds and abortion, is leading to a catastrophic gender imbalance...
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Corey Haim and Corey Feldman - their last scene together
Warning: you are a complete retro-dag if you click on this link
Friday, March 12, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Floating Brothel
Did anyone else watch The Floating Brothel on the ABC a few weeks ago? It was a doco about The Lady Juliana, the first convict ship to arrive in Australia following the First Fleet. One of the women featured in the story was Rachel Turner, a convicted thief who became the lover of the ship's surgeon on the voyage out to NSW, and who bore him a son. He abandoned her in the colony, but she soon became attached to the colonial shipbuilder, Thomas Moore, and the two of them were married. This interests Sydney Anglicans, of course, because Thomas Moore was the sponsor and co-founder of our theological college, which bears his name. By all accounts, later in life Rachel was well known for her piety, but she came from a notorious beginning. Rather a nice little parable there...
Hymns for Bands
Check out this site. This guy gets the chords right for guitars and hymns, which a lot of people still don't do.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Wheelchair bound man assaulted by youths
This is horrific. I hope the offenders are severely punished.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Music @ Church
I've taken over organising our AM music at church, commencing this week. Have just put together a few weeks of the roster, and have mailed the team. Hopefully I'll be able to keep the whole thing sailing smoothly along...prayers...
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Eternity Newspaper
Just picked up the latest copy, and was very impressed. John and the team have done a sterling job. They seem to have picked up plenty of advertising as well, which is good to see...
Humid...
I was looking forward to some delicious autumn weather, but Sydney has served up another hot and humid weekend.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Buck Rogers Begins
They are re-making Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as a web serial. Here is the first part. It features Gil Gerard and Erin Gray from the 80s tv series as Buck's parents.
Friday, March 05, 2010
More Books
I used my other Dymocks voucher last night. I bought "The Classical World" by Robin Lane Fox, and "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins. Regarding the later, I had no interest in Dawkins "The God Delusion" which everyone agreed was a pretty terrible book. But Dawkins does actually know something about biology, and he is a good writer too. It will be a good read.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Child flees bully, run over by bus
This story makes me so angry. I hate bullys with a passion. A 13yo chasing an 8yo...for an 8yo, a 13yo is like a giant. Gosh, this is infuriating.
Costello on the Federal takeover of hospitals
"Bear this in mind. The Federal Government could not run a home insulation program. Do you think it can run every hospital and hospital department in the country?" more here
Monday, March 01, 2010
Using Nuclear Waste?
A greenie friend of mine is rethinking nuclear energy, after new technology enables proposed reactors to "eat" nuclear waste. Quote -
So instead of getting less than 1% of the energy out of uranium, these fast reactors get about 99.8% of the energy out of it which means they're incredibly more efficient in terms of using the uranium resource. And actually we've mined enough uranium already to run the whole world in these reactors for about 500 years.
Books purchased
Received quite a few gift cards for Dymocks for xmas, still haven't used them all. A gift voucher for a bookshop is a pretty safe gift for me. Anyway, went to Dymocks on Saturday and bought the following four books -
* Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
* Breakfast at Tiffanys - Truman Capote
* Empire: How Britain made the Modern World - Niall Ferguson
* Tales of the Unexpected - Roal Dahl
These were all from the "Popular Penguins" series - they have plain orange covers and are only $9.95 each. I've bought plenty from that range.
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