Firefox 3 Field Guide

I love it. Firefox 3 is to Firefox what Firefox was to IE. It’s faster, easier, and seems to run lighter. You might find it helpful to look at the Firefox 3 Field Guide posted by dria.

Spring of Light Christmas Caroling

For the second year in a row, our motley little church gathered outside Jeremy’s house and walked around the neighborhood, singing Christmas carols. Some folks actually came out to listen, and one couple even hugged us! Merry ho ho! Here’s to next year and more caroling.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Christmas, caroling, choir, church

The Floyd Gang

Give four middle aged guys plastic guns with BB pellets, and you’ve got the Floyd gang.

Blogged with Flock

One Laptop Per Child Reaches 275,000 in Peru

Laptop project enlivens Peruvian village - Giving- msnbc.com

Negroponte’s “One Laptop per Child” has begun spreading throughout Peru over the past six months. According to MSNBC, Peru purchased the largest number of laptops thus far by ordering 275,000. Apparantly, the ability to record is one of the most exciting features for children:

“What they work with most is the (built-in) camera. They love to record,” says Maria Antonieta Mendoza, an Education Ministry psychologist studying the Arahuay pilot to devise strategies for the big rollout when the new school year begins in March.

Already several competitors are trying to create a similar product. Intel is introducing the Classmate and several companies in India and Brazil are also trying to introduce laptops.

I find this whole project an exciting picture of how private enterprise, education, and government can work together in seeking for solutions to various challenges in our world. Kudos to Negroponte and his whole team!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: negroponte, laptop, classmate, peru, free market

Curb Your Dogma!?

When I was in college in the early 80s, Larry Norman had a t-shirt with a picture of Phydeaux and the words, “Curb Your Dogma!” I loved it. With fresh burns from fire-breathing fundies, this little phrase expressed my sentiment completely: too much dogma, not enough love.

I see these same ideas circulating regularly among various Christian/x-Christians groups who are frustrated by the lack of love they’ve experienced in the church. I still related to the frustration, but I believe it is a bit misdirected. Dogma, properly understood, would not restrict love, but provides a channel through which loves flows.

Chesterton says that without dogma, some solid unshakable ideas, man becomes subject to the trends of the moment.  So the real problem with the loveless fundamentalists, is not dogma, but possibly a lack of understanding how dogma works in our lives.

Reading a recent issue of Touchstone, I saw a great quote by Flannery O’Connor that perfectly captures the role of dogma in the journey of faith. She says, “Dogma is an instrument for penetrating reality…It is one of the functions of the Church to transmit into prophetic vision that good for all time.” The challenge of dogma is the challenge is taking a stand, and then acting on the basis of that stand.

Some folks would like the freedom to turn right and left at the same time. While this might be an interesting theoretical puzzle for quantum mechanics, I don’t live in a theoretical world. I live in a world where I must chose. Those choices open new possibilities while removing others.

Christian dogma is the freedom to choose to live by a set of ideas that happen to be older than the latest best seller that will soon be on the discount shelf for half price (and may never even see a reprint). Instead of a short-time vision, Christian dogma stretches across centuries and has shaped the formation of cultures and civilizations.

O’Connor continues by saying that “Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.” Over centuries, weak and fallible humans have struggled to see the implications of Christian dogma.

In spite of human flaws and failures, this dogma has reaffirmed a value of human life not tied to status, race or sexuality. We must imagine the struggle of redefining person in a world where landowners alone enjoyed the status of person. Taking Paul’s lead, the Church Fathers wrestled through the implications of their Christian dogma and what it meant for the status of all human beings. Working out their idea, has not always been successful but the world it created is far different from the world where the ideas first emerged.

Each generation of Christians faces this challenge of revisioning their world through the eyes of light that Christian dogma provides. Instead of building fortresses around our ideas, thinking that is what it means to be faithful. We look out upon a world of finance, computers, war, politics, entertainment and more, and we consider how does this dogma enlighten the way, guiding us to be visionaries who do not stumble but are walking (in trust) toward the full light of day.

The Holy Spirit and Hyperlinks

Oddly enough, after I posted the social computing diagram (that I picked up from Alex at the TechTarget blog), I thought of the Trinity–and the Holy Spirit in particular. The way the Internet has connected ideas (past, present, and even future) provides an analogy for thinking about who the Church Fathers called the “Fellowship of God.”

Many people pause and question the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (three persons, one God).  It doesn’t make sense in a highly individualized world. And in fact, Enlightenment theologians rarely mentioned the Trinity (when compared with the writings of the Fathers).

Coming from the word pneuma, spirit means wind or breath. The wind moves over the surface of the connecting everything. We breathe to live. Breath in-spires or inspirits us. When I speak with another person we share words. The words are sounds carried by breath. Thus we share breath. Some have used the doctrine of the Holy Spirit to speak of a non monist, non dualism–challenging both East and West.

But that’s another story. Back to social computing. The amazing interconnectivity of the web reveals the amazing interconnectivity of humans across the planet (space) and across cultures (time). This provides an analogy for thinking about the Holy Spirit who is present to all particularities at the same time. (Accepting of course that the Triune God is beyond all referents while anticipating all referents.) He is not limited by particularity but can interact with particularity, which is difficult for us to process, so we ask, “How could God hear and answer all prayers at the same time.”

This might begin to help us think about questions like that. The Church Fathers thought about this and used the term perichoresis to discuss it.

Rush Limbaugh and Viral Communication

Yesterday morning, a Rush Limbaugh billboard was defaced.  A public official made a phone call to the local paper at 8 am; he quipped,  ”It looks great. It did my heart good.” By 8:28 am the story was posted on the Balimore Sun website and Drudgereport picked it up shortly after that. The story traveled across the country, causing a flood of calls to the city, and even became a point of humor on Limbaugh’s show.

By 5 pm, the story was one of the top stories in the history of the newspaper’s website. This story is fascinating not for the political nature but the speed of viral information when people feel passionate about that information.

Obviously the viral nature was not anticipated by the local official and no one probably anticipated the fast response. This is pretty amazing how fast information can travel across the nation/globe and generate immediate response.

We’re paying more attention than you think!

The great fear aabout web readers is that we’re losing any long term attention span. We link from thought to thought like endless web browsing with no goal in mind. Turns out we may not be so distracted after all. According to a recent study by Poytner Institute web news readers actually have a greater attention span than print news readers.

The EyeTrack07 survey by the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism school, found online readers read 77 percent of what they chose to read while broadsheet newspaper readers read an average of 62 percent, and tabloid readers about 57 percent. Read more.

Hat tip to Pajamas Media.

SXSW 2007

sign o times.jpg

Originally uploaded by dulasfloyd.

My first visit to southby. Cool conference. I plan to post a few observations next week but right now I am getting ready for a retreat.

Let me just say that if you’re interested in the new web world, this is the place go. Lots of exciting discussion on new possibilities coming into view.

I’ll comment more specifically when I have time.

I command all you trees to fly!

I command all you trees to fly!

Originally uploaded by dulasfloyd.

Went Christmas tree shopping and the weirdest thing happened!