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

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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.

Dear Introspection,

I'm sorry for my absence these three weeks, I'm sorry that you've waited here patiently for me all these days only to have me pass you by. Meanwhile, I read other updated blogs every day or spend whatever free time I had elsewhere instead of with you.

But I never forgot you. I always had you open in a tab on my browser and I often thought about things that I wanted to tell you.

I will come back and tell you my stories, okay?

Tracing circles in the past

It's good to revisit your roots every now and then. Both to remind yourself of the place that you came from, and that there's always a good chance of landing back in that territory again. Because in the larger scheme of things, you always go back to where you began. Ashes to ashes. Arguably your spirit, that imperishable side of you, wouldn't be the same anymore after a lifetime of relentless shaping, still you return to your origins. But I digress.

I stayed in for lunch today. It's a sort of harking back to the good ol' days of approximately 10 months back, a response to the relentless need to revisit my old hunting grounds with a recent perspective of past events tucked neatly under my belt. The terrain isn't what most would call picturesque. It's rocky and bare and I'm not sure why it's so important to reconnect with it, but it is.

I grew up a lone ranger. In some instances, I don't think I had a choice about that and having grown used to being in that state, in instances where there is a choice otherwise I hardly take the initiative to seek out companionship. My approach is to take it if it comes, but I assume that I'll be by myself.

So, 10 months ago I was prepared to eat alone most lunches for a long, long time. I went out to the courtyard and once drove around Cyberjaya in Lucy, looking for quiet places to go to if I ever wanted to get out. But that didn't happen in the end. I should be grateful, but it came at a price. One that I didn't pay and was hardly aware of then. I'm still digesting it, but the lump isn't going down. Even if I had known I doubt that the outcome would have been any different, but I think it would have made me feel less helpless and alone now. Maybe it's an empowerment thing. I don't like being left out of a relevant circle of knowledge.

Or maybe I'm just being irrationally insecure. Knowing things doesn't always help. That's one thing that I've been learning.

Forgiveness breaks the cycle

An excerpt from a Boundless article about the 2006 Amish shooting in Lancaster Country. The wiki account is here.

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Hope and Healing Among the Amish
by Jenny Schroedel

As the Grandfather of one of the girls prepared her body for burial, he encouraged the young boys around him to seek to forgive the man who had taken his granddaughter's life. "His words came naturally to him because they are the reflection of how he has lived over the course of a lifetime," wrote Gregory Jones in the Charlotte Observer. "They startle many of us who live in the midst of violence, who tend to harbor desires for vengeance, even if we do not act them out violently."

Ultimately, forgiveness is not a denial of wrongs committed, but a willingness to accept that there are things that we cannot undo or even understand. It a deeply humble act, as we offer up the work of executing justice to God. The Amish realize that it is not their job to carry bitterness to the grave. As a child psychologist friend of mine, Russell Carleton, said, "When you forgive someone, their act no longer defines your life."

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I'm having a very hard time digesting past acts, and these words hit me hard.

It's so hard to be humble enough to accept that there are things that cannot be undone or understood.

Sometimes

there are tiny emotions deep inside of you that have to stay hidden because bringing them up to light would kill them.

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you read and re-read things that make you want to cry, even while you're thinking "I shouldn't be inflicting this upon myself. I have no reason to do so."

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Yeah, that's a good question. Why do we keep doing things we don't want to do?