FuelWatch is going down

Unless the government pulls something out of a hat. "Anti gambling senator" (I like that title) is set to use his balance of power vote to bring it down.

The idea seemed ill-conceived, wasteful and counter-productive from the beginning. Nick Xenophon has saved us a bit of grief.

Facebook blog networks

For those of you on face book who've signed up with my blog network, thanks! It's been nice seeing your smiling faces and working out some of the friends out there who are reading the blog. It can be a pretty solipsistic experience, in fact, I really only started the blog for my own convenience and started kicking things along after some friendly words from Justin Moffat and Michael Jensen, but it's nice to know there are a few of you out there.

If you haven't joined my blog network on facebook, click the link and go for it. It's a painless experience, ASIO and the CIA already know about you anyway, so why not sign up and let me know who you are as well. Chances are my file on you is slim. ;-)

MOLDI Dinners

Ben Pfahlert's post today on the Sola Panel brought back some happy memories:

MOLDI dinners: In the late 1990s, the Sydney University Christian group realized that it was difficult to get ‘not-yet believers’ to come to outreach events. So they decided to go to them. They organized dinners in King Street, Newtown, which were designed for the express purpose of discussing the meaning of life. Dinner and discussion took place in a neutral territory: a restaurant. A campus in Melbourne adopted this idea, and gave them the name ‘MOLDI dinners’. M.O.L.D.I stands for ‘meaning of life discussed intelligently’. In 2007, this campus ran nine dinners which were attended by 45 ‘not-yet believing’ Uni students.

I never went to one of these but I remember sitting around with Andrew Katay, staffworker with the Sydney Uni Christian group at the time, talking about these things, and what a great relaxed opportunity they were for talking about the gospel and all sorts of things. He mentioned one particular faculty member, a Christian who had realized he was somewhat awkward in matters of conversation, keen as he was to talk about things Christian. But he hadn't left it at that. He offered to sponsor a number of these dinners, ie pay for poor students to go to restaurants in Newtown, so that they could keep on happening. It was his way of both realizing his limitations and capitalizing on his strengths, so that people might hear about salvation in Jesus.

What a brilliant example of teamwork! It put me in mind of Philippians 1:3-5

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

where at least part of the partnership is that these guys gave money so that gospel work could continue.

The Japanese had currency printed for Australia

According to this letter in today's Age:

Making money

RE DANIEL Flitton's article ("Redrawing battle lines", Insight, 2/8): The occupation currency printed by the Japanese was not a myth. Until recently I had two notes in my collection and an acquaintance has a number, including some printed for the islands between Japan and Australia.

As regards the "Brisbane line", I am certain that a re-reading of some World War II histories will prove that neither was this a myth, that General Macarthur had it in his strategy of how the war could be won.

Ann Brown, Mount Martha

Cycling in Sydney

Time to fix it!

Georgia under attack by Russia

Report here.

At stake: Western Europe's oil and gas supply.

So far 2000 people have died and 40 000 have been made homeless (see the first report).

The Age has a helpful opinion piece by Anna Applebaum.

Children's stories and the gospel

Justin Taylor has linked to Trevor Cairney's post on Christian writing for Children, which is good news because what Trevor said deserves a wider readership.

Here's a quote from Trevor's post that I found fascinating:

The starting point for my seminar was the central proposition that the gospel of Christ is the central narrative to which virtually all other narratives have some relationship – certainly in the Western cultural tradition and literature. The central focus of the Bible is Salvation History; with its central narrative tracing both the history of Judaism and Christianity and God’s redemptive plan for his people. In the beginning God created…and it was good. But sin entered the world, man rebelled against him and so God placed a curse upon his creation that one day would end in judgement. But God always had a plan for such rebellion; a plan of redemption motivated by love. An amazing gift of grace; his own son sent to die that we might be restored to a relationship with him.

I have no idea at all how you work out that "the gospel of Christ is the central narrative to which virtually all other narratives have some relationship". I note that Trevor does qualify the statement somewhat, but now that he's put the thought into my head I am going to start reading fiction books with this question in mind. Wish I'd been at the seminar so I could have asked some follow-ups. I like the summary of the gospel that Trevor has given too, though I might have added something about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. That, I suppose, is the ultimate happy ending, though not for his unforgiven enemies.

I have three girls under ten and I have often thought I would like to write stories for them. Trevor's post is a good encouragement to this and it would be terrific if a few people read it and were spurred on to making their own efforts.

Actually I did once tell my daughter a story about a cat that didn't keep his word, got lost and ended far from home without its parents. It was all rather unpleasant really now that I think of it. Maybe that's why I stopped trying. Right now our youngest loves The Little Red Hen because she can read the words for herself. Hmm. I reckon this blog entry is one paragraph too long, starting to ramble now, and the dreaded ellipsis seems almost inevitable...

Oh, I know what I wanted to ask. Anybody read any good kid's books lately?

Broughton Knox writes to his parents

DBK writes:

I would wish never to be addressed as "Dr" on the strength of a DPhil, as these junior doctorates can become a snare to seduce young scholars, especially, from the path of sound learning.

-DBK to parents 9.2.54, Knox Family Papers. Quoted in Cameron p. 124

Peter Jensen preaches

We had a wonderful sermon at church this morning, from Peter Jensen, on the subject Why did Jesus have to die?

What hit me most powerfully, however, were Peter's first words in response to the question "How did you become a Christian?"

Peter responded immediately, and I quote, "The thing that appealed to me first was that God judges."

An extraordinary statement! Peter became a Christian as a teenager at the 1959 Billy Graham crusade. I may come back with a bit more on what he actually said in his sermon at some stage, but I sat contemplating those particular words for quite a time. There is a school of thought that says we need to preach judgement less rather than more, especially when dealing with teenagers who may be sensitive and emotionally vulnerable. Whatever we may think of this, Peter's experience was that the understanding of God's terrible judgement was quite literally the key to his teenage conversion to Christ.

Bionic eye

Invented in Australia, and reported here.

Christian writing for children

Trevor Cairney posts on it here.

From the Faithful Writer conference.

Heroin is not addictive

Not very addictive anyway, let's not go overboard with bold claims. We were taught this in undergrad Psychology decades ago. But the myth of quick and dreadful addiction persists in popular culture. Theodore Dalrymple, author of Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy, explains that we ought to look further for reasons why people continue to use heroin:

WORLD: What's the key evidence that heroin addiction is a spiritual or moral condition?

DALRYMPLE: There is lots of evidence. First, there are historical examples of thousands and indeed millions of opiate addicts giving up their addiction because of motivation to do so. Mao Tse Tung took a very dim view of opium addicts and threatened in the end to shoot them. When Mao threatened to shoot you, you took it seriously. Millions of people gave it up. It would not have made sense for Mao to say to people with rheumatoid arthritis, "I will shoot you if your joints don't become normal." It did make sense, even if it was wrong, to threaten to shoot addicts. There is therefore a conceptual difference between the two conditions.

You need to go to the post on Justin Taylor's website to get to the article. I left a comment. Hopefully the evil technology beasties will leave it alone this time! ;-)

Labor fears Costello

So says Hartcher.

The man was the brains behind a strong and growing economy, and is a good debater. So like or loathe, Labor has cause for concern if PC stays.

Near enough is good enough

Most of the time anyway.

There are undoubtedly exceptions, but that pretty much proves the point.

Stem cell therapy that works

Reported in the Age, today.

But note, not embryonic stem cell therapy, which has produced nothing of therapeutic value but involved the killing of many human beings.

Man runs 100 kilometres, stops.

See here.

Thanks Dave.

Jury duty

Here's an incredible story from today's SMH about a high profile court case, aborted because of one phone call which may have been a hoax.

This is a huge can of worms. From now on, all that guilty criminals who are placed on trial need to do to slow things down is to phone a friend.

We should name names

I've left a comment on Justin Taylor's blog, on the post entitled Keller and Powlison: Should You Pass on Bad Reports?.

Have a look and see if you agree.

Update I: The comment's gone but the question remains—the New Testament names Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5); Peter (Galatians 2); Euodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4) and 'Cretans' (Titus 2:12), and a number of individuals in 2 Tim 4. Then in the gospels we have Judas, Peter, and all of the disciples in one way or another shown up as betrayers, spineless, proud, inconsistent, hypocritical and foolish. In each instance, and more, bad reports are passed on for the benefit of readers. So the post by Tim Keller and David Powlison is a useful reminder, but flawed because it is selective in its attention to the biblical evidence.

Update II: Lisa in the comments for this post points to a useful discussion on the 9 Marks blog, covering similar ground.

Update III: Justin Taylor has just kindly sent me an e-mail letting me know that no comments were deleted. So any comment of mine or anyone elses that disappeared can be blamed on the evil technology demons!

888

Oops!

I mean, this is blog post number 888.

I'm always out by one. Story of my life.

Beijing smog

Things are looking particularly urrky and murky.

And, in an event some Chinese would call propitious, this is blog post number 888.

Another!

Beautiful...Sydney midwinter day.

Here are the words I thought of this morning as I was walking home. They start with the letters p, o and r; not necessarily in that order.

propinquity.

proleptic.

portmanteau.

portentous.

I could have added 'professional', and 'porcupine', but as I didn't think those words when I was walking home, I won't.

Violence in the book of Psalms

Have you noticed the level of violence in the book of Psalms? I've posted about it on the Sola Panel, today.

Beijing Olympics and persecution of Christians

I've posted about this over on the Sola Panel blog.

While some are free to bolt, others have been bolted behind bars.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies

The report is here.

An obituary is here.

Solzhenitsyn had a strong Christian faith and has now gone to meet his Lord and Saviour.

His short book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, is a picture of life in the Soviet gulag with a wonderful testimony of faith from one of the prisoners, a Baptist pastor. An easy way into Solzhenitsyn's writings.

De facto marriages

How dreadful! The government is considering imposing responsibilities upon de facto couples that they should have taken on voluntarily in the first place. See here.

From the article:

"Marriage is being imposed on everyone whether they like it or not," says Patrick Parkinson, professor of law at the University of Sydney. "It will come as a shock to some people."

But in the days when it was a much bigger issue for couples just to move in together without declaring their intention to marry—not all that long ago really—the big justification used for thinking it was OK was that love would hold the couple together forever. Marriage was just a piece of paper that formalized things, and you didn't really need it.

I guess time, and the current situation whereby the government needs to impose marriage-like responsibilities on marriage-like relationships, has shown how empty that argument always was.

Stop Dave, I'm afraid

Three minutes 12 seconds of pure robotic fear. Still one of the great moments in sci-fi cinematography.

Facebook and blogs

If you're on facebook, there's a new application called 'blog networks', which may be worth checking out. I haven't really looked into it, but if you want to become a fan of this blog and of the Sola Panel blog, apparently you can. Can't hurt to try. If you're on facebook, all your personal information is likely already on a server in a vault somewhere in a mountain in Utah, so one more application isn't going to matter much, and may even be useful.

Tony finally gets it

Tony has rediscovered the lost art of efficient blogging. Brilliant! That's how it's done. And because you have included more than one link, and a reference to something that's not online, it's not just art, mate. It's scholarship.

Costello will stay

This is surely right. Peter Costello will stay and become the next leader of the Federal Opposition.

The great commuter race

From Ryde to the city, as reported in the SMH. The guy on foot nearly won!

In the same race, the bus passenger gets some advice:

At 8.40 it takes on the Anzac Bridge and we get to Druitt Street by 8.47. Here, the woman in front advises us to hop off and walk up to the QVB. We don't arrive until 8.54; she was right.

Yes! I've only been beaten up that hill twice, when I've walked (OK Dave, jaywalked!).

Yesterday evening I got off the bus at Lyons Rd Drummoyne and jogged back with an 8 kg pack on my back (I weighed it when I got home, out of curiosity). It was slow but, for the first time, not sluggish.

But cycling is what I'd be doing if Fifi let me.