	Welcome
	More about us
	Diary & Information
	Community Café
	Clubs
	Contact Us
	Movie pages

Resources:

Practices For Growth
Resources

A Journey through
Easter Week

Community Café

Tag Board

Blog

Here are the thoughts and news of the people in our community. Leave a comment as you wish. If you want to join the blogging ask Mark.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Why have a robot?

Simon occasionally sends me link to things that he thinks are blog worthy. Occasionally he is right!! (ok often, but I don;t always credit him...) This is definitely one of them. If you have ever questioned what use there might be for robots in the world, this answers your question.

"This is Asahi, a beer pouring robot from Japan. It can refrigerate up to six cans of beer, two mugs, and with a simple push of a button it will pour a beer into the mug with perfect head every time."

Do they sell them on ebay??

Posted by: Mark | 1:12 pm |

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Girl Talk is the Future of English

This was the the title of an article in the Sunday times at the weekend [I think]. I alluded to it last night, so here is a little more.

The American teenage girl is the most powerful influence on the English language around the worls ... Young women in Britain as well as North Amreica are years ahead of young men in adopting new words... style of speech is characterised by inserting drawled words wuch as "like" and "so" to add emphasis to a sentence, which rises to a pitch at the end.

American word of the year: "truthiness" - the quality of stating concepts one wisjes or believes to be true.
most useful word of the year: "podcast" - a web feed of audio or video files downloaded from the internet. [note get a Ricky Gervais pdcast here]
Others: "Muffin top" - a bulge of flesh over low-cut jeans; "whale tail" - the appearance of a thong above the waistband; and [personal fav] "lollipopalooza" - a gathering of attractive young men, otherwise known as lollipops

Very, very funny! Reminds me of tutoring Mica who would arrive each week with her new word of the week. I had by the end a full dictionary on my office white board!! What with texting and creative teenage girls the future of the english language looks secure...

What's your favourite new word?

Posted by: Mark | 1:42 pm |

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Cafe Church - FRWY.ca

In keeping with my general tradition of posting about examples of cafe church that I find, here is another. By the look of the website this looks to be a great example.

FRWY.ca café is an innovative, non-profit coffee house and community commons that was started by a progressive, urban, artistic, missional church community called The Freeway

Their selling points are great!:

great coffee | art space | live music | dj showcases
wireless internet | resources | sacred space
deep community

This is a really interesting outline of the idea of Third Place. For example:

There are essential ingredients to a well-functioning third place. They must be free or inexpensive to enter and purchase food and drink within. They must be highly accessible to neighbourhoods so that people find it easy to make the place a regular part of their routine -- in other words, a lot of people should be able to comfortably walk to the place from their home. They should be a place where a number of people regularly go on a daily basis. It should be a place where the person feels welcome and comfortable, and where it is easy to enter into conversation. And a person who goes there should be able to expect to find both old and new friends each time she or he goes.

Do places like this really still exist? Clearly the good old English pub is the prime example - but things are changing on that front aren't they?

Anyway, to appreciate it all you also need to see their church blog, the colloquy. Enjoy! The only downer of the whole endeavour is that they haven't got a good grgaphic that I can put on this post!!

Labels: cafe church, mission

Posted by: Mark | 1:20 pm |

Bono Interview

I was trawling my inbox this morning and found this article that I meant to blog about and I can't find whether I actually did or not. A rare and fascinating interview with Bono from Rolling Stone magazine. Given the website this is, you might be interested in this quote:

What is your religious belief today? What is your concept of God?

If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there's a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in "straw poverty"; i.e., the story of Christ makes sense to me.

How does it make sense?

As an artist, I see the poetry of it. It's so brilliant. That this scale of creation, and the unfathomable universe, should describe itself in such vulnerability, as a child. That is mind-blowing to me. I guess that would make me a Christian. Although I don't use the label, because it is so very hard to live up to. I feel like I'm the worst example of it, so I just kinda keep my mouth shut.

Do you pray or have any religious practices?

I try to take time out of every day, in prayer and meditation. I feel as at home in a Catholic cathedral as in a revival tent. I also have enormous respect for my friends who are atheists, most of whom are, and the courage it takes not to believe.

How big an influence is the Bible on your songwriting? How much do you draw on its imagery, its ideas?

It sustains me.

As a belief, or as a literary thing?

As a belief. These are hard subjects to talk about because you can sound like such a dickhead. I'm the sort of character who's got to have an anchor. I want to be around immovable objects. I want to build my house on a rock, because even if the waters are not high around the house, I'm going to bring back a storm. I have that in me. So it's sort of underpinning for me.

I don't read it as a historical book. I don't read it as, "Well, that's good advice." I let it speak to me in other ways. They call it the rhema. It's a hard word to translate from Greek, but it sort of means it changes in the moment you're in. It seems to do that for me.

You're saying it's a living thing?

It's a plumb line for me. In the Scriptures, it is self-described as a clear pool that you can see yourself in, to see where you're at, if you're still enough. I'm writing a poem at the moment called "The Pilgrim and His Lack of Progress." I'm not sure I'm the best advertisement for this stuff.

Labels: media, social justice

Posted by: Mark | 11:07 am |

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

The 10 Steps to Happiness

These are a list of things I found on the bbc website which Psychologists where recommending for a Happy New Year.

I intended to refer to these at our family meeting on Sunday. I was looking forward to the banter that would have inevitably resulted [Si?]. Some are interesting, some I like and others, well...what do you think?

1) Plant something and nurture it
2) Count your blessings - at least five - at the end of each day
3) Take time to talk - have an hour-long conversation with a loved one each week
4) Phone a friend whom you have not spoken to for a while and arrange to meet up
5) Give yourself a treat every day and take the time to really enjoy it
6) Have a good laugh at least once a day
7) Get physical - exercise for half an hour three times a week
8) Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger at least once each day
9) Cut your TV viewing by half
10) Spread some kindness - do a good turn for someone every day

Posted by: Mark | 11:00 am |

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

A Perfect New Year's Day Walk

We figured that this was a suitable way to blow out the News Years Eve cobwebs. Along with many other people it seemed! But it was a great walk. At Saulcey Forest near Northampton they have built a tree top walk. It is basically a ramp that rises to 15m above the ground, and then a platform that rises another 5m. I really was impressed, and so was Jack, once he dragged his tired 7 year old legs along the muddy path to it. And what is more it is free - even the car park!! Well worth a visit!!

Posted by: Mark | 4:04 pm |

Christmas is Over

Today is the big return to work for many people - the proper "holidays are over" return. The decorations will begin to come down, the new toys will find permanent places to live, getting on with this new year will begin. I have to say that I have enjoyed Christmas. Much more effort went into the preparation advent-wise this year and I felt the benefit personally.

I also enjoyed all the usual things: silly toys, sad cracker jokes. Here is the worst cracker joke i found:

Why do firemen wear red suspendors?
To keep their pants up

Possibly one for the American market?

And here is my favourite present [thanks Asher ;o)]:

Posted by: Mark | 12:35 pm |