Surfing highlights: Wednesday, 28 Nov 2007

Short of time to post today so there's only one old link.

Alice Stevenson's website has been open on a tab in my browser for a while now, so I finally made the time today to browse through her work. It's been a while since an artist has caught my fancy enough for me to look through their entire portfolio. With intricate patterns and motives from nature in pastel colours, her pieces are lovely to behold. A definite a source of inspiration for me.

"Diary of a collector", commissioned piece for World of Interiors, November 07.

Surfing highlights: Tuesday, 27 Nov 2007

I have more links than I can post, so here are two vintage links. The first one is from yesterday while the other is about a week old.

Plugging In to Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord by Ben Ratliff. New York Times writes about how church bands are now one major way Americans hear live music. So we now have bands that "carefully calibrate [their] sound toward the pop culture disposition of [their] target age group" and "scavenge some of their musical style from the radio and television". I understand and even appreciate the drive to sound relevant, but on the back of yesterday's seeker service confessed flaws I wonder how good it is to pander to our 'consumers' taste too much.

Dusting off the great books by Matt Kaufman. While this talks primarily about the resurgence of interest in the great Western classics among African-American and minority students in America, it also touches on how Western classical literature contains truths about "great and transcendent themes like the relationship between God and man, man and man (and woman), man and the state."

Today's links are more light-hearted. I rarely notice, let alone click on advertisements, but this sidebar pic for ModCloth finally made enough of an impression (it's been up for a while) on me. The retro-looking plaid dress from the advertisement rocks, but what I really covet now is the dress Flowers at dusk.

MDA Senior Management Rap Watch the Singapore Media Development Authority top dogs rap about their jobs and vision for Singapore media! Who says that market trends, KPIs, adding value to the economy and service-orientated architecture can't be cool?

Aside hearing them attempt to stay in time with the beat, other highlights include the Chief Information Officer mixing a black superman-like suit with internal systems integration and the very-Singaporean bit about how easy it is for customers and licensees to pay their fees and fines.

Well, I think that it's a commendable effort by middle-aged/senior managers to connect with their young consumers' idea of hipness. But only in Singapore can you get (middle-aged/senior) managers compliant enough to attempt such a thing.

Surfing highlights: Monday, 26 Nov 2007

Not the same street by Virginia Heffernan. Why Sesame Street is inappropriate for children now: Cookie Monster is pre-diabetic, Oscar is depressed and Alistair Cookie smokes then eats his pipe. Maybe in 25 years Barney would finally be labeled unsuitable too.

Conservapedia. Basically wiki with a Conservative Christian perspective. Started initially as a homeschooling project, this site is unashamedly pro-American, which is unashamedly off-putting. Read the wiki page on Conservapedia and the Conservapedia page on wiki here. Also, how Conservapedia's article on how it differs from wiki here.

NAMBLA stands for North America Man/Boy Love Association and supports the legalisation of sexual relations between adult males and under-aged boys (or in other words, for the abolishment of age of consent). Click here for the wiki page, cos I didn't visit their actual site. I wonder why a female counterpart to this organisation hasn't been formed. Not that I want one to.

FIRST-PERSON: A shocking confession from Willow Creek Community Church leaders by Bob Burney. So seeker-services, with their "de-emphasis on taking personal responsibility for Bible study combined with an emphasis on felt-needs based 'programs' and slick marketing" are now acknowledged as being ineffective in producing mature believers.

5 Kinds of Christians. This examines the range of "beliefs, commitment levels and public practice" in American Christians and subsequently divides them into five distinct groups. What is interesting is the bit about how the church is to respond effectively to address the ramifications of these findings.

Picture: Judy Ross textile.

Surfing highlights: Friday, 23 Nov 2007

Step away from the pot pie by Kimbery Eddy on Boundless. I'd re-read this for her tips on cooking for one (or two) to avoid always defaulting to eating out.

To hell, with Dante (I first read it as 'To hell with Dante!' and thought 'What's so wrong with Dante that they have to swear at him?') by James Tonkowich on Boundless. Anyway. This article gives a low-down on Dante's background and discusses his vision of hell in The Divine Comedy. Which reminds me that I bought Inferno for S$20 in August but haven't touched since. Meh.

Go gently into the night, a Christianity Today editorial about the ethical immorality behind embryonic stem cell research. My favourite exerpts:

"…a new moral sensibility has developed that serves precisely medicine's crusade against mortality: Anything is permitted if it saves life, cures disease, prevents death. …The problem is not in wanting to stay healthy …but in 'values [that] are so youth-oriented that we are really disparaging the elderly' … [and] the very thought of death."

Apparently even Christians are no better at accepting and cherishing mortal death, with "churches rarely sing[ing] about heaven, once a staple of Sunday morning worship."

Picture: wallpaper from Romo fabrics

Listing

I like to collect things. Among the things I like to collect are one-off articles or posts online that catch my fancy. Problem is, I don't know how to store 'em. Bookmark? Too many. So I've been copying and pasting stuff onto this word doc since January. I now have a 15 page document.

New system now. I'm gonna paste the links in one post that I'll update each time, along with a short description of what the link is about and why I liked it in the first place so that I can actually remember. Oh yeah. And I get to share it with my handful of readers.

Cheers.

Standard Christian Caution

That’s a really apt phrase coined up this morning during a discussion with Fergus.

It started with discussing a controversial music video. I went on to say that I think modern Christians shy away so much from judging that it’s reached a point of being a fault. When there is something that is really wrong, and warrants speaking out against, we tend to shy away from doing so by suddenly becoming very relativist.

I agree that it's a fine line between forming an opinion and handing down a judgment for matters of right and wrong. In fact, I think that they’re both two ends of the same continuum. One way of resolving this was to say that it's ok to judge ideas (eg the idea of a fat Christianity or immodest entertainment), but you stop short of judging the person behind it. Granted, you can’t really separate the two but you can at least make a cosmetic difference. ‘I think that China Wine is unnecessarily immodest' and 'I think that Sun is being a really bad example' both essentially express the same opinion, but the first statement tries to avoid talking directly about Sun.

Yet, the opposite of Standard Christian Caution leads you into Judgmental Obnoxious Opinion territory, which is probably a greater temptation for me. I mean, what's not to like about unleashing a whirlwind of blistering words upon small-minded and defensive people?

Don't you judge me for that, you hear?

News article

Introspective blog causes outward anger

Monday, Subang - Large crowds gathered in Subang Jaya today to protest the lack of activity on Introspection, the blog of renowned online plagiariser Athalia Kim Lee. Crowds numbering up to 3000 gathered near the Lee household from as early as 10am, when morning surfers logged-on to find no significant new updates in the last six days. The angry mob was eventually forced to disperse after the Fifth Royal Malaysian Guards sprayed tear gas into the crowds.

One furious protester, who requested to remain unidentified, said: "This is ridiculous! We work very hard and when we log on to Introspection, we expect to have something new. My children are lost without her". Two other protestors suffered crush injuries while a bystander was reportedly treated at a nearby clinic for respiratory difficulties. Introspection has been undergoing some changes of late, most notably, a url change that sparked a mild panic among ardent fans late last week. Disgruntled fans, however, were pacified when Athalia's new url was leaked by sources close to the blogger, and hits on her blog peaked on Saturday night, when many were expecting Miss Lee's maiden post at her new address.

Professor of Philosophy of Blogism, Steve McKenzie, said late yesterday that "when a high-demand blogger tries to hide from her readership, this usually results in anger. And when this trend is met with a distinct lack of new posts, such anger has been known to turn violent". Professor McKenzie's words were fulfilled this morning when at least one fan attempted to chuck stones at Athalia's dog, whom at press time, remains unnamed. -Reliyabelsauce

***

This story was reported on 14 May this year by F. Ong. I'm digging it out and publishing it here because [fill in the blanks yourself]. For the record, I am not an online plagariser! This is enough to sue the reporter.

To the rest of the world, hello once again and welcome new readers!

Here's to many more posts.