monsters = bad news

In the spirit of procrastination I was looking at some blogs and discovered the following video. It reminded me of a puppet show that I put on for my aunt when I was about 5- except my aunt was more in shock about what I said than the mother in this video. The kids expression at the end is priceless...

bagel shop

Joe Berg and I are at the bagel shop working on a project that we are presenting on Wednesday. It's a project we've designed top to bottom that involves putting household water filtration systems in Lyari, Pakistan (a district of the 15 million person megacity of Karachi)

I realised I was ready for a break when I found the following quote hysterical. Joe mused that the project purpose (in our cover sheet) should read the following:

“we will work for the successful distribution of the Playstation 3 in the Lyari community with the purpose of increasing social well beings of the people. In addition we believe that video games are their best answer to increasing hand and eye coordination among students and encouraging them towards a life of software design and engineering, thus lifting them out of extreme poverty and allowing them to be able to compete with India in the global economy”

Oh Joe, don't you know that you should start with handing out Playstation 1's first, as a measure implementing appropriate technology before you move to Playstation 3....

friday and saturday

On Friday night five of us decided to attend some kind of camp fire at Faiths house. Seriously, is there anything better than sitting around a campfire, outside of the city on a clear night? So after beating Dawn in a quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissors (honestly, everyone knows that you go with Rock first), we piled into Dawn's car and began the 40 minute trek to this little house in the woods. The largest reason why I put this up here is to show the beard progress- this will be important for later.
Now, is it just me or are most campfires almost the same. They are great, but generally speaking whenever a group of 10-15 Christian young adults get together you can count on a number of characters being represented. One guaranteed character to be present is what I like to call "the loud guy"- you know who he is. He tells jokes that often make no sense- but he's expressive, so its still funny. The loud guy made an appearance at this gathering but unfortunately I didn't get any spy pics of him.

However, I did get a spy pick of 'guitar guy'. I know you're with me on this one. It's practically a prerequisite that some guy (typically 25 years old and single) brings his guitar and starts with some EMO song and then, just so the girls really like him,- switches to some worship song he wrote while doing his devotions the other week. Classic.
Now, the following character only appears at various times. It's hard to find a solid 'beard guy' at most of these gatherings. To my delight we happened to have one last night. I did feel a little shame around him about my current beard status but was able to admire his beard from a distance. It did not help the situation when Faith (pictured far right) said 'hey 'beard man's name' my friend Chris likes your beard"... ya, that's not awkward. All in all, it was a good campfire.

Today was the greatest temperature day of all time. For such occasion I spent most of the afternoon inside watching the Raps lose Game 1 (no worries there- sidenote: ESPN's female commentator is the SINGLE WORST ANALYST IN THE HISTORY OF SPORTS- (this is not because she is a woman, rather because she doesn't know anything about basketball). Later on I took a walk to the forest near the residence for the first time in almost three weeks and shot some pics...

____ hope and love

On Sunday morning Matt and I awoke to find this sign posted just outside our door. At some point during the weekend someone had the idea to write EVERYTHING in the world that had to get done onto large sheets of paper- (this is the opposite of setting small goals- remember my pep talk!). Anyway, Matt and I received our own sheet from the Toothfairy or some magical character in a pink dress...

You'll notice that most of the things have been checked off. The unchecked boxes are so for two reasons:
1) I forgot to call the Toothfairy witty.

2) I didn't realise that item #4 was meant for me or Matt to tell two specific girls that are not currently at the seminary (and may in fact be in Florida and Toronto) that we are staggered by their beauty and unassuming grace...until just now... Oh Toothfairy, you are so witty. (hmmm... I think that means item #8 is also complete?)

ps- the toothfairies name is not mentioned but may be discerned through the clue which is present in the title of this post.

one class down...

It's 7:10pm on Tuesday evening and things are chilling out around here. The weekend was fairly ridiculous in terms of writings and such but it appears that the worst of it may be over. I still have no interviews for a project that is based on getting interviews but I've got at least 10 days to track some down...

Today marked the official completion of the class Biblical Faith and Economics. We still have one more class next Tuesday but my work was finished today when I handed in a paper and presented on Confessions of an Economic Hitman. C'est tout.

The professor is Dr. John Stapleford. He may be the greatest Christian economist that I know (never mind the amount of Christian economists that I know). He also may believe too heavily in the market to fix the world but I am not a Christian economist- so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

Without fail Dr. Stapleford says something negative about Canada at least once per week. I take this as a compliment. After all, he never makes fun of Israel or Nigeria. It is the equivalent of a young boy making fun of the girl he likes just so she'll pay some attention to him. I believe that he secretly wants to be a Canadian for the following reasons:

1) hybrid cars are more popular in Canada (I realise that is conjecture)
2) he could spell things with an 's' more than with a 'z'- see 'realise' above.
3) he could partake in protesting seal hunting.
4) he wouldn't need MediCare or whatever its called.
5) he looks sort of British and could be found watching such shows as Coronation Street and no one would even think that he is American.

In other news... I'd like to ask you to help me clarify something.

If you think back to your childhood (or even present day...Paul Randall!), how do you pronounce 'Mario' of the Super Mario Brothers.

Is it: mArio OR maRio?

If you are Italian I would especially appreciate your input- Uncle Frank?

It is possible that a Canadian used one of these pronunciations today and 11 people said 'what did you just say?

paper time!

Today is a big day for paper writing. In preparation for today I read an article by Douglas Moo called Nature in the New Creation: New Testament Eschatology and the Environment. This is one of the most enjoyable articles I've read in a long time. I highly recommend taking some time to read it.

Here's a taste..

"It must be said that the conviction that this world is destined for renewal rather than destruction, as I have argued in this paper, does provide a more substantial basis for a Christian environmental ethic. NT eschatology is not intended to foster Christian passivity but to encourage God's people actively and vigorously to align their values and behavior with what it is that God is planning to do. When we recognize that God plans to restore his creation, we should be motivated to 'work for the renewal of God's creation and for justice within God's creation.' Just as, then, believers should be working to bring as many human beings as possible within the scope of God's reconciling act, so they should be working to bring th created world as close to that perfect restoration for which God has destined it. The 'not yet' of a restored creation demands an 'already' ethical commitment to that creation now among God's people."

and...

"Central to new covenant ethics is the command that we love our neighbors. The harsh realities of the ecological crisis we now face force us to ask seriously whether we can truly love others without caring for the environment in which they live. At the heart of th modern discipline of ecology is the realization that everything is connected to everything else. The same point applies to Christian ethics. My own desire to maintain a luxurious western lifestyle by keeping energy prices low forces power plants to avoid the expense of installing mechanism effectively to clean their emissions and thus lead to suffering and even death for asthma sufferers. But our Christian obligation extends, of course, to all people"

playoff beards

The NHL playoffs started a couple of days ago which inevitably means two things: 1) games will go into double, triple or even quadruple overtime before a team wins and 2) 60% of the players on each team will grow playoff beards. According to ancient proverbs the growing of a playoff beard increases the chances of winning... or something like that.

While I am officially not in the NHL playoffs I have decided also to grow a playoff beard for many of the same reasons. It will increase my chances of doing well in school...or something like that.

Playoff beards mean that its crunch time and you have to pull out all the stops. To me, all the stops include writing...and writing... and then sleeping followed by writing.

In other news...

I had a tube of toothpaste that I thought was empty two weeks ago. Since that time I have continued to use it two, sometimes three times a day and it has yet to run dry. I believe this to be the equivalent of the widows jar of oil in 2 Kings 4. However, I believe my faith may actually be running out...

Also- I found this great little bagel shop where I go to study. I have also become addicted to diet coke.

And I'm writing a paper on the environment and eschatology. I don't think there's anything there but we'll see.

(ps... jokes about that last statement)

the shelter- 2

My reading for a class this week had to do with women in/and development, gender and development etc. Here is a quote from a book called Gender, Development and Globalization

“‘Helping poor people’- an expression often found in the literature and in the attitudes of those involved with development work- should not be the goal. Instead of ‘helping,’ the objective should be to do away with poverty by enabling the poor to find their own solutions and by recognizing their right to be fully integrated in the collective processes of human development. This is particularly applicable to women; their economic, social, and political rights must be recognized and their voices heard without patriarchal constraints to gender equality”

I found this quote particularly applicable to the situation of the shelter shutting down. While we should do all we can to 'help' the shelter- it is precisely because the workers at the shelter are attempting to enable its guests. We are not talking about hand outs. It is not necessarily about feeding people (although that is important!). Shelters allow particularly broken people time to heal and become enabled in a safe place. This is especially important for women (and often young women) who, when left without safe alternatives are likely to simply perpetuate their state of brokenness.

So, if you think that any of what I just said might be true... you can add your voice to that statement by doing something great.

Click here and write a short email to one of the contact people to say that cities need safe places for wounded people to heal.

shelters

Hey folks,

There's a woman's shelter in Oshawa that is closing due to lack of government funding.

A couple friends of mine put together an entire website dedicated to providing a means for people (me and you) to speak on behalf of this shelter. Here is what I'm asking you to do- simply go to the website, find one or two of the email addresses there and send off an email saying that you are not pleased with this situation and ask them to consider helping the shelter out.

Three minutes of your time could have a huge affect!

Click here

dynamite is not the solution to this problem.

If this is a real video... I would actually like to meet the person who decided this was a good idea.
I imagine the logic went something like this (said in my best southern accent (even though it apparently happened in Oregon..))

Person 1: "hey y'all, there's a big ole whale on that there beach"
Person 2: "what cha think we oughtta do 'bout it?"
Person 1: "shucks... gots me..."
Person 2: "well, we could blow er up...?"
Person 1: "hmmm... that there sounds like a good idear"

Stan the Man and his fake news

Stan the Man is pictured to the right. He is the older one, in case you were confused. I have a graduate assistantship with him- which so far has meant stimulating work on the internet for hours on end as we prepare all of the materials for classes that are going to be delivered overseas.

I believe in this picture he's saying something about the need to have copyrights on all of our materials, while I am thinking about how much I don't care...

just kidding...

Seriously though Stan is good for two things (well, more than two... but for this post we'll keep it simple).
1) he has an incredible variety of music- today included some Tennessee backwoods country folk & the soundtrack from Gladiator... (in between I snuck some Damien Rice in there...)

2) It is not uncommon for him to print out interesting articles for me to read. What follows is one of those articles...

** disclaimer: this article could be fake news as well but its probably not...**

"Before Jon Stewart"

The truth about fake news. Believe it.

By Robert Love

Just before his famous confrontation with Tucker Carlson on CNN ’s Crossfire two years ago, Jon Stewart was introduced as “the most trusted name in fake news.” No argument there. Stewart, as everyone knows, is the host of The Daily Show, a satirical news program that has been running since 1996 and has spun off the equally funny and successful Colbert Report. Together these shows are broadcast (back to back) more than twenty-three times a week, “from Comedy Central’s World News Headquarters in New York,” thus transforming a modest side-street studio on Manhattan’s West Side into the undisputed locus of fake news.

The trope itself sounds so modern, so hip, so Gawkerish when attached to the likes of Stewart or Stephen Colbert, or dropped from the lips of the ex-Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” anchor Tina Fey, who declared as she departed SNL, “I’m out of the fake news business.” For the rest of us, we’re knee deep in the fake stuff and sinking fast. It comes at us from every quarter of the media—old and new—not just as satire but disguised as the real thing, secretly paid for by folks who want to remain in the shadows. And though much of it is clever, it’s not all funny.

Fake news arrives on doorsteps around the world every day, paid for by You, Time magazine Person of the Year, a.k.a. Joe and Jane Citizen, in one way or another. Take for instance, the U.S. government’s 2005 initiative to plant “positive news” in Iraqi newspapers, part of a $300 million U.S. effort to sway public opinion about the war. And remember Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist who was hired on the down low to act as a $240,000 sock puppet for the president’s No Child Left Behind program? Williams’s readers had no idea he was a paid propagandist until the Justice Department started looking into allegations of fraud in his billing practices.

Fake news has had its lush innings. The Bush administration has worked hand-in-glove with big business to make sure of it. Together, they’ve credentialed fringe scientists and fake experts and sent them in to muddy scientific debates on global warming, stem cell research, evolution, and other matters. And as if that weren’t enough, the Department of Health and Human Services got caught producing a series of deceptive video news releases— VNRs in p.r.-industry parlance—touting the administration’s Medicare plan. The segments, paid political announcements really, ended with a fake journalist signing off like a real one—“In Washington, I’m Karen Ryan reporting,” and they ran on local news shows all over the country without disclosure. All of this fakery taken together, it may be fair to say that the nation’s capital has been giving Comedy Central a run for its money as the real home of fake news.

But let’s dispense with the satire, whose intentions are as plain as Colbert’s arched eyebrow. And let’s step around the notion of fake news as wrong news: The 1948 presidential election blunder DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN, for instance, or even the New York Post’s howler from the 2004 campaign, DEM PICKS GEPHARDT AS VP CANDIDATE. Those are honest mistakes, set loose by overweening editors perhaps, but never with the intention to deceive. That wasn’t always the case, as we shall see. In the early days of American journalism, newspapers trafficked in intentional, entertaining hoaxes, a somewhat puzzling period in our history. In modern times, hoaxes have migrated from the mainstream papers to the tabloid outriders like the old National Enquirer, the new Globe, and the hoaxiest of them all, The Weekly World News, purveyor of the “Bat Boy” cover stories.

The mainstream press covers itself with the mantle of authority now. Six of ten Americans polled in 2005 trusted “the media” to report the news “fully, fairly and accurately,” a slight decline from the high-water mark of seven-in-ten during the Woodward-and-Bernstein seventies. What’s more, in a veracity dogfight between the press and the government, Americans say they trust the media by a margin of nearly two to one.

But here’s a question: Can we continue to trust ourselves? Are we prepared for the global, 24-7 fake news cage match that will dominate journalism in the twenty-first century?

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