The marble of doom... Mac users will know what I'm talking about! add your time...

Yup, even when an Apple Mac doesn't work (which is not that often), it DOESN'T work in style ;-) For those who don't have a mac, the marble of doom comes up when an application 'hangs'. it looks a lot like the picture below (just a lot smaller, of course).

Check out 'The Marble of Doom' and add your time...

So, what are the WORST offenders on the Apple OS platform? Take a guess?! I could have told you that Firefox is up there.... Firefox often crashes on my machine... BUT, it is still prefer it above all of the other browsers.

Technorati tags: Apple Mac, Marble of Doom, broken mac

The cover of our new book! 'Methodism in Southern Africa: A celebration of Wesleyan mission'

The cover of our new book!
Originally uploaded by digitaldion.

Here's a 'sneak preview' of the cover of OUR new book! Wessel and I have been working on this project for some years now. It is finally coming to fruition!

Among the authors are past Bishop Stanley Mogoba, Prof Joan Jackson (Joan Millard), Bishop Gavin Taylor, Revs Pete Grassow, Gcobani Vika, , Kevin Light, KK Ketshabile, Dr Sol Jacob, Dr Wessel Bentley, Dr Dion 'bionic leg' Forster.

Here's the 'back page blurb' from the book:

One cannot be a faithful Christian without being in mission! The question is, however, what is true mission? And more specifically what mission does God want you to do in your context? This book is a rich resource that will aid you to work out the answers to these critical questions. In its pages you will find challenging insights from our past, helping you to understand the unique and special mission focus that God has given to Southern African Methodists. You’ll be able to get some insights into what the Church is currently doing in mission, and perhaps even find some places in which you can involve yourself or your congregation. But most importantly, this book will help you to think about how you can take the healing and transforming love of Jesus Christ into an unknown future. The contributors to this book include past and present Bishops, University lecturers, Pastors and Ministers of Churches, all of whom are dedicated to Christ and committed to helping you fulfil your call to mission. This book is a collaboration between the Education for Ministry and Mission Unit of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, and Africa Upper Room Ministries. The profits from the book go towards the ministerial students fund of the Methodist Church and help in the training of ministers.

The book is being marketed and sold through the Africa Upper Room ministries, so to place an order please contact the AURM book manager, John Mitchley at johnmurmafrica@tiscali.co.za. You can contact him telephonically at 011 948-9978, or send a fax to 011 948-9997.

For those who will be attending Methodist SYNODs in May this year, we hope to have this book, AND our next book (which is in the final stages of editorial) launched simultaneously.

Technorati tags: new book, Methodism in Southern Africa, Wesleyan Mission, Wessel Bentley, Dion Forster, Upper Room

An indespensible tool for preachers and more astute Biblical scholars - free Biblical Greek tools online.

The internet is filled with many wonderful gems (and a few rotten tomatoes!) that can enrich one's study of scripture. I use quite a few 'online tools' when I do research, and even just when I am preparing a sermon or a short talk or presentation.

If you search for 'Powerpoint' on this blog you'll find quite a few posts about the presentation tools that I use, and tips on how to use them.

Today, however, I want to recommend a tool for students and scholars of the Bible that will help to deepen and enliven the content of your presentations or sermons. The tool is called "The resurgence Greek project". It is one of the very best free Biblical Greek resources available on the internet!

Whether you are proficient in Biblical Greek or not, this resource will be invaluable to you in delving a little deeper into your text (particularly if you are wanting to do some exegesis or expository preaching and teaching).

It is simple to use and very powerful. Of course you'll need an internet connection and also a java enabled web browser. You can either do research on a single passage (see the image below). What is amazing is that you simply allow your mouse to hover over a word and it will give you a complete (technical) overview of the word, its use in that context, and an explanation of the meaning.

The second very useful tool for Greek students is that you can produce 'flash cards' and 'vocabulary lists' to help you study for your tests and exams!

Of course along with tools like this (that allow one to do some pretty serious grammatical syntactical work) there are many other great commentaries available for free that will enrich one's historical and social understanding of the text (both in the time when it was written, but also in subsequent interpretations and uses throughout the centuries since). If you can suggest any particularly good, or useful, tools for this please would you drop a line in comments?

I am also looking for some free resources that will help with developing good solid daily devotions, weekly liturgies based on the common lectionary, and then of course sermon illustrations and powerpoint slide backgrounds and video clips.

By the way my pastoral commission went exceptionally well on Wednesday! I hope to get a chance to write a few words about my NEW venture tomorrow!! The long and the short of it is that I now have freedom to speak of the NEW post that I have accepted (it is an international post, that is based in Cape Town). Keep your eyes on this space for details!

Technorati tags: Bible study, Free resources, Greek, Internet, expository preaching

Mertyl the great (aka my Orange 1967 Vespa VLB 150cc) is back!!

Wohoo! My beautiful orange Mertyl is back in action!! I was called by Uncle Regie of KR and Sons in Zasm Street, Waltloo, Pretoria to say that they had finished the painting, bending, and bashing to get Mertyl back in shape!! She looks great!

In this picture you'll see Mertyl (with her left legshield repaired after the accident), a friend Rev Paul Oosthuizen (with the helmet - he is bringing her home for me), my friend and colleague Prof Neville Richardson (who drove us to collect Mertyl), and Uncle Regie the 'doctor of Vespa' who has her looking as good as new!

I am so pleased that she is back!! However, I won't be riding her for a few months yet - tomorrow is week 4 since my accident, which means I still have 8-14 weeks before I am off my crutches and back up to speed!

Thanks for the help Uncle Regie, Neville, and Paul!! It feels GREAT to have Mertyl where she belongs, safely in my garage at home!

10 Fantastic Firefox extensions that will make your web use more pleasant and productive

I am an avid Firefox user. I gave up on Internet Explorer in the stone age, and have only used Safari (on the Mac and PC) for a few small tasks. Firefox is just such a great browser! It blocks popups, warns me of phishing scams, and runs reliably and quickly on my Mac.

Another fantastic element of Firefox is that it is constantly improving, and that there are many individual developers out there making 'extensions' to help improve your web experience.

I use a few extensions, among them are Zotero (which is a great plugin that allows you to save academic information from articles, web pages, books, and journals, for easy insertion into your MS Word document (it even works with Open Office!)).

However, here are 10 fantastic extensions to Firefox that will be a great help in your web browsing!

Let me know if there are any others that we should be aware of.

Technorati tags: Top Firefox extensions, Zotero, useful

Please pray for me - an important meeting, and some news to follow.

Please pray for me tomorrow. I have a very important meeting tomorrow afternoon at 4pm with a group of ministers and lay persons from the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. It is part of the process that I am going through in order to be released from my current post (as Dean of the Methodist Church's seminary) in order to move into a new, very exciting, challenging, and incredible ministry.

I'll soon be able to share some news about exactly what I will be doing from next month. All I can say at this point is that I will be moving back to Cape Town. My new ministry will involve work with both Churches and other groups of persons who are seeking to bring about social transformation and spiritual renewal. I will do quite a bit of international travel, have a bit more time to do research and write, and will work with various denominations and Church groupings.

Calling is a complex phenomenon - this is my 17th year as Methodist minister and my 5th year as a full time scholar and the Dean of the Church's seminary, John Wesley College. In these 17 years I have experienced incredible blessing, joy, and fulfillment in serving Christ in the Methodist Church. However, I have become increasingly aware that my primary calling is not to train persons for ministry - it is wonderful to be able to influence change and shape the lives of servants in the Church, but it does seem to remove me from the 'coal face' of mission and evangelism by just one step! Moreover, while I enjoy the challenges and rigours of academic life; research, conferences, teaching, supervision, and writing, these are not the primary avenues in which I believe God is calling me to spend my energies and efforts. I will continue to teach and supervise students in their senior degrees (Masters and Doctorates), and I will still engage in research and academic writing, but I will do it out of choice, not as a requirement for my job.

Those who are close to me will know that I have spoken of moving into a new avenue of ministry that will bring me closer to using my influence, gifts, passions, and abilities to bring about healing and transformation on a much wider scale. Just such an option was presented to me some years ago, and arose again at the end of last year. I am so excited about the new possibilities and prospects!

So, please pray for me, I long simply to be obedient and to spend my life doing what I can do most effectively to bring about God's will, to God's glory, here on earth.

The Vatican comes up with a 'firmware update' on the 7 deadly sins...

In the sixth century, Pope Gregory handed down a list of "seven cardinal vices." Now the Vatican has issued an additional seven "social sins."

You offend God not only by stealing, taking the Lord's name in vain or coveting your neighbor's wife, but also by wrecking the environment, carrying out morally debatable experiments that manipulate DNA or harm embryos," said [Bishop Gianfranco] Girotti, who is responsible for the body that oversees confessions.

The seven social sins are:

1. "Bioethical" violations such as birth control

2. "Morally dubious" experiments such as stem cell research

3. Drug abuse

4. Polluting the environment

5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor

6. Excessive wealth

7. Creating poverty

The original deadly sins:

1. Pride

2. Envy

3. Gluttony

4. Lust

5. Anger

6. Greed

7. Sloth

(posted on boingboing).

So, what do you think? Is there anything that they've missed? What about "thou shalt not purchase a Windows 'beige box', it offendeth the Lord", or "4x4 drivers shall not drive off the pavement and smash the Vintage Vespa's of innocent drivers", OR, what about some POSITIVE commandments to COMBAT sins, like "thou shalt purchase the books of Dion Forster"... Sorry, that last one doesn't count... It was just a thought... BUT, the first two are serious ;-)

Technorati tags: Vatican, 7 deadly sins, religious firmware update, Mac vs Windows, cult of Vespa

The best Priest in the world! Can you guess who?

I'm sure that there are very many contenders for the title of 'best priest in the world'. However, in truth, there can be ONLY ONE, and his name is Father Ted!

If you don't know who Father Ted is, you haven't lived yet!

Seriously, I like Fr Ted because he is so 'human'. He's a real person, with real concerns, and real questions, Oh, and he's NOT really a real person! In fact he is a fictional character with a great Irish accent!

Well, if you're fan of Fr Ted you may like the picture set in the links below.

The Guardian's got a slideshow of photos from the annual Ted Fest, a gathering for fans of Father Ted, a sacrelicious show about drunken, cheating, foolish priests banished to a remote Irish island that never ceases to cause me to fountain milk from my nostrils (even when I haven't been drinking milk). Father Ted was created by Graham Linehan, who also made The IT Crowd, the nerd super-sitcom that's coming back for a third season next fall. Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Technorati tags: Priest of the year, Father Ted, Irish+Catholic, Comedy

The cutest, and coolest, free piece of software you will ever get!

Is your screen full of dust, smudge marks, maybe even potato chip grease? Clean it today for free! Simply click the link below!

Start Cleaning now…

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Update: If you’re looking for the screen saver version of this, please check out Dog Screen Cleaner Screensavers for this pug plus 3 new dogs. Available for PC and Mac.

Also video version (4.7MB AVI file)

Praise God! Peace wins over injustice! Non-violence wins a small victory in America.

You may remember that I reported some time ago about a Mathematics Professor who was fired for taking a pacifist religious stance (since she is a Quaker) against the University pledge that students were expected to sign. The pledge asked students to do whatever was necessary to protect the United States of America, all that she did was to insert the word 'nonviolently' as a qualifier to the word 'necessary' - and because of that she was fired.

Well, here's the follow up story! Thank God that peace has won a victory of injustice! These truly are signs of the Kingdom of God, an eternal, peaceful, Shalom.

Atonius sez, "Marianne Kearney-Brown, the Quaker math teacher who was fired by California State University for inserting the word 'non-violently' into her loyalty oath to the state, has been reinstated after Atty General Jerry Brown clarified that the oath doesn't require employees to take up arms."

The idea that someone could be fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath came as a surprise to many Californians who were unaware that public employees are still required to sign it. The pledge was added to the state Constitution in 1952 at the height of anti-Communist hysteria and has remained a prerequisite for public employment ever since. All state, city, county, public school, community college and public university employees are required to sign the 86-word oath. Noncitizens are exempt.

Link (Thanks, Antonius!)

See also: Cal State University fires Quaker for inserting "nonviolently" into loyalty oath

Technorati tags: pacifism, justice, shalom

A sub 3 hour Argus!

Yup, I woke up to see the first riders leave for the 109km Cape Argus, and guess what!? THEY did it in under 3 hours (in fact I think all of the riders in the 'elite' group did it in under 3 hours). I, on the other hand, did a sub 'NO' hours run (unless there can be a tme for getting on my crutches and making my way to the couch! ;-)

This year would have been my 10th Argus (I had an entry with the Power / MAD (Make a diference) team, but decided not to ride, back in January already, because it would mean taking leave in my last month of work at EMMU / John Wesley College).

Megan and I have agreed that we will ride together next year. That will be a good motivation for my recovery!

Well done to all those who rode!

Scanning the brains of jazz musicians.

This research shows that Jazz musicians 'switch off' (or at least slow down) parts of their brains - I know a few first year students who have the capacity to do the same thing! Ha ha.

Seriously, this is quite interesting. Since Jazz requires the capacity to move outside of the confines of what is generally acceptable in the composition music (through the inclusion of 'blue notes', crossing octaves, combining irregular timing etc. in the composition). I'm sure that there are many other things that require a similar capacity (e.g., surgeons who deal with the gore of cutting up a human body, social workers who face the brutality of human frailty and economic subjugation in their clients, sex workers who have to perform unnatural acts for survival, ministers who are constantly faced with crises, deaths, and sorrow, oh and of course Justin Timberlake fans.... say no more).

I thought this was quite interesting.

According to new research, jazz musicians unconsciously switch off regions of the brain involved in self-censorship and firing up the area linked to self-expression. The scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders used fMRI to scan the brains of jazz musicians as they played a specially-designed piano keyboard. From a press release:

The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, Limb suggests.

The researchers also saw increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.

“Jazz is often described as being an extremely individualistic art form. You can figure out which jazz musician is playing because one person’s improvisation sounds only like him or her,” says (professor Charles) Limb. “What we think is happening is when you’re telling your own musical story, you’re shutting down impulses that might impede the flow of novel ideas.”

Link to press release, Link to scientific paper in Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE (via Michael Leddy's Orange Crate Art)

Technorati tags: neuroscience, the human brain, control