Ortberg - 21st February 2010

Really good start about the good life, this from an article on happiness by Nicholas Kristof.  Compares a wealthy, date-able bachelor in Hawaii with an older person who gives.  Happiness studies, and there are many of these, show that a huge part of happiness is derived from giving.  If pharmaceutical companies could bottle compassion, then "Give-back" would be a far more effective drug even than Prozac.

Richard is an ambitious 36-year-old white commodities trader in Florida. He’s healthy and drop-dead handsome, lives alone in a house with a pool, and has worked his way through a series of gorgeous women. Richard’s job is stressful, but he spent Christmas in Tahiti. Unencumbered, he also has time to indulge such passions as reading (right now he’s finishing a book called “Half the Sky”), marathon running and writing poetry. In the last few days, he has been composing an elegy about the Haiti earthquake.

Just in from Holy City which was about the Jairus story.

I loved the big that Jane Bentley did on Jesus did not just come to speak but to touch, to take on flesh (she did it much more poetically than that).

I also had a conversation with two women being "the woman" and me being Jairus.  I spoke, with a preacher's perspective, on the pain of thinking your faith and your whole vocation is on the line if this thing does not work; and the irritation that Jairus feels when he is delayed because of "the woman"; what if she is healed and his daughter is not, how does he cope with that scenario.

The women who were being "the woman" screamed at me that I needed to get Jesus to my house, there was enough of Jesus go around.  The only people who know what Jesus can do here, as he approaches Jairus' house, are Jesus and the woman.  Only she has the faith to know what he can for this girl.

Today got off to a good start with the Mormons, as I enjoyed reading the beginning of Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families".

Things have gone downhill quicker than a Canadian mogul-basher with the news that the legislators of Utah have proclaimed that climate science is questionable.  A good history (and qualified defence) of the Hockey Stick comes from Fred Pearce here (rapidly becoming my new favourite Guardian columnist) and here.

Pearce concludes by saying:

"The label was always a caricature and it became a stick to beat us with," Mann [author of the original hockey stick paper] said later. Was it flawed research? Yes. Was it hyped by the IPCC? Yes. Has it been disproved? Despite all the efforts, no. So far, it has survived the ultimate scientific test of repeated replication.

These are adapted from prayers my brother, Graeme Glover, led on 24^th January this year.

Our prayers this morning are adapted from and inspired by the works of the poet Robert Burns, whose birthday is remembered tomorrow.

Let us pray:

O thou dread power, who reign’st above,

We know thou wilt us hear.

When in this place of peace and love,

we make our prayer sincere.

Forgive us Lord when we have grace-proud faces,

And three-mile prayers but half-mile graces

Let this place show love at its best

Where the lost find hope and the tired find rest.

Some late night TV watching brought me to Robin Ince's "Nine Lessons and carols for godless people".  I didn't stay for Messrs. Dawkins and Gervais, but caught Professor Brian Cox of Cern who was on at the start.

He showed some remarkable photos, including the famous earth-rise from the moon.

He also showed this stunning photo of Saturn,

Was in Pollokshaws yesterday for the launch of Church of Scotland Priority Area's strategy for working with young people, referred to as the Option for the Young.

Urban geographer, Betsy Olson, introduced her research which has been foundational to the strategy.  She noted some perceptions of young people towards the Church in Scotland

• "Crayon" culture - Church is where you go and people get you to colour in- something there about being infantilised and not taken seriously.
  
• Church people are judgmental about who you are
• Restricted hours and access to buildings
• Concerned about evangelism - young people concerned about being told about what they have to believe
• Possibility for hostility towards faith communities from young people
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The Celtic Five P’s

Leonard Sweet talks about the Celtic Five P’s (there emerges a sixth) for beginning to think about any moment in life:

These are:

Pause: Stop

Present: Be Present to what is around us

Picture: Mentally picture the thing in our minds

Ponder: Spend time thinking about the thing

Promise: Make some kind of contract with the future

Sweet adds a sixth which is Protection, to deal with the evil which many of us encounter in the world.

Sweet adds that he was recently disturbed to discover that NASA had lost the original tape footage of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.  That this tape had just been taped over with some other random content.  This may have saved some money no doubt, but one of the key moments of the twentieth century had been lost.  He decided to apply these P’s to this moment, so he

Just back from a fantastic weekend conference with the folks from my previous congregation of Fitzroy Presbyterian in Belfast.  It was just a wonderful thing to be able to reconnect with so many stunning people who have influenced me in an enormous number of ways.  When I was a member the minister was the legendary Ken Newell, and the congregation are now looking to the future with new minister, U2 interpreter and charismatic maverick, Steve Stockman.

I was responsible for three sessions, and the notes are here:

1. Creation
   
2. Kingdom and Handout
   
3. New Creation
   

I had mentioned research that suggested that reading to children was unrelated to their test scores, but the number of books in they have in their home was.  That was from Freakonomics and hopefully I can get the quotes up soon.

Currently reading Nudge.

It's about the ways that we respond to suggestion, and how those who design environments ("choice architects") have to be aware of that.

Nudge's suggestion is that we can't tell people what to do ("authoritarianism" or "big government" if you're American) nor just leave them to decide (since people left to themselves make poor decisions).  Instead Thaler and Sunstein advocate "Liberal Paternalism"

I have just finished the chapter on Temptation, which suggests we have a cold state (clear thinking, rational) and a hot state (tempestuous and aroused).  The planner in us (the cold state) tries to manage the doer (the hot state) by reducing the choices that we are exposed to.  An extreme example of this is the clocky alarm clock which reduces our temptation to over-snooze by running away to random part of the bedroom.

This is George Monbiot and Ian Plimer debating on Australian TV.

I watched this and had some sympathy for the evoltionists who had to argue with Creationists, because the debate seemed to be happening on equivalent terms.  Facts and research from one side, equivocation and a refusal to hear any of the evidence on the other.

Monbiot repeatedly challenges Plimer on his claim that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans.  Monbiot quotes Amercian research which states that human emissions are 130 times that of volcanoes.  Plimer is uninterested and states that this number does not include underground volcanoes.  When Monbiot states that it does, and whatsmore that Plimer has been told this on countless occasions, Plimer goes off on a rant about Monbiot not being a scientist.

It's shocking to see someone with the title "Professor", who is courted by the likes of Nigel Lawson and James Delingpole of the Telegraph (where else).

The Wikipedia review of this debate records the opinion that Plimer had been "soundly thrashed".  The Wikipedia moderators have written "opinion needs balanced", but it's difficult to see what balancing opinion might be out there.