The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Taking the Fight to the Government on Civil Liberties | "Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?"

Disadvantage of getting older: you have to go to 40th birthday parties.

Advantage of getting older: the friends throwing the parties have done more interesting stuff.

Never more so in the case of Jules vs. His Rapidly Disappearing Youth... Great time on Saturday night hooking up with a lot of the old Abundant crew - who, if the ripples could be traced to their edges, really have had a profound impact on life, faith and culture in London and far beyond.

It had been common comic currency in the old days that Jules was always suing the police - making sure they were chased down properly over wrongful arrest, abuse in prison etc., but I'd missed the fact that he'd been representing some very high-profile people like Lotfi Raissi. Raissi was the first person charged in connection with 9/11... And subsequently Jules won him a huge victory by forcing the UK government to issue a complete exhonoration, which won him Lawyer of the Week in The Times last month.

Nice one Jules. Keep at them. As he notes in the interview, "in the past six years there has been an unprecedented expansion of the State into the life of the individual. Parliament has significantly failed to protect rights we have enjoyed for hundreds of years. Unless this trend is reversed soon, in ten years’ time I will be viewed on a surveillance monitor playing football in the park with my wonderful boys teasing me about how old school I sound going on about civil liberties."

It does genuinely worry me that we are sleepwalking into 1984, but we can all sleep more easily with people like Jules 'watching the watchmen.'

Connected: Phorm - don't let your ISP stalk you | The All Seeing Soc(i)ety | First Pilotless Police Drone Launches

Technorati: Civil Liberties | Jules Carey | Law

Snake on a Plane | In-Flight Mobile Use

Oh dear. The inevitable has happened: someone's come up with a way for us to use our mobiles when on the plane.

"I'M ON THE PLANE"

Next up: 'mobile free areas' on planes, and stickers telling people to keep their voices down.

I think it's sad, to be honest. Planes were one of those places where you could just relax a little, without the pressure of email and phone messages. I'm going to be posting in more detail about this another time, but a good friend sent me a fantastic article (see below) the other day by an English Professor at a US university, who is worried about how much his students are stressed by the constant demands of the infinite possibilities technology now give us. A quote in it from Thoreau came to mind as I read the news above:

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

"I'M ON THE PLANE." Precisely.

It's 19 pages. You'll have to cut some time out to read it properly. Fewer and fewer of us are willing to do that these days, and skim the surface of learning; no time to plumb depths.

Dwelling in Possibilities.doc

Technorati: Maine | mobile | plane | Texas | Thoreau

Tributes

When someone famous dies, can anyone tell me where it is that tributes actually pour in to?

I've always wondered.

New MA at Kings

Kings College have a new MA which they wondered if I'd be happy to flag up, which I am.

It's in 'Politics, Theology and Faith-Based Organisations', and you can read more about it in the doc attached below.

Service Interruption

Thanks to every0ne who pointed out the blog 'wasn't working' over the last couple of days... Guess I shouldn't fiddle with the design in future ;-)

Abnormal service now resumed.

It wasn't so much that
the stones couldn't hold him.
More that they refused to.

All had been silent, struck dumb by deathly silence, but
"All down here is petrified but him" they cried out,
as he said they would.
"He could no more be made fossil relic by us than
the sun that melts and sublimates"

Don't think it was some angel.
That morning,
the earth opened itself,
and gave him back.

Happy Easter.

_____________________________________

Modern/postmodern, epistemology
and philosophy,
arguments about text,
all distant hazes in the cortex
as this one true sensation
becomes all reality:

the pain of metal against bone
and blood and bitter wine;
hung in agonizing mezzanine:
Father above, who sent
and created earth below who received,
both now turning in rejection,
aiming their crude technologies.
Pig iron and sacrifice.

There is blood.
I am finished.

Becoming Christian ¦ Kierkegaard

Another excellent programme from BBC's In Our Time, which this week looks at Soren Kierkegaard. It's a really good introduction to his thinking, and has some wonderful sections around the idea of subverting those who consider themselves to 'be' Christians, and how Kierkegaard considered this to be impossible...

There's also an honest confession from a secular materialist, admitting that, when it comes to love, 'Chrisitans have all the great tunes'.

Well worth a listen. And if you like what you hear, go buy Pete Rollin's stuff. He might be Irish, but he's right there when it comes to interpreting this for our time.

Say no to Phorm ¦ Don't Let Your ISP Stalk You

A piece on the BBC news caught my ear yesterday. To the disgust of Tim Berners-Lee British Telecom, Virgin and my ISP Talk Talk have all said that they are going to start using Phorm in the near future. Phorm tracks your internet use, and harvests data to create a profile which these companies will then use to generate revenues from targeted advertising.

Yes, that was my reaction. No bloody way. I immediately sent off a very stroppy message to Talk Talk saying I'd immediately terminate my contract with them if they went ahead. They are hardly the most reliable people on earth anyway, and I don' t think I could trust them to manage an 'opt in' service properly. So I told them that too and said I'd sue their asses if they 'inadvertently' put me on the system.

It seems that Phorm may actually be illegal anyway, which is encouraging, though BT contest this (and claim it will 'increase security' - ffs, do they really think people are that stupid/scared?)

Whether it is or not, it is certainly against the spirit of the service. Imagine - as people have been putting it - Royal Mail opening all of your letters and reading through them, in order to send you more focused junk mail. Totally unacceptable.

We need to be very aware of these developments, and make sure we are active in resisting them. Facebook is already one of the worst offenders in terms of watered down privacy, but if ISPs are going to start, then we really are in trouble. It's all part of the business model of the internet, which in turn reflects on who we are becoming as a society: we want stuff for free, and are prepared to sell our souls to advertising to get it. As I wrote here previously, it's a model that impacts the poor most.

This isn't about 'Big Brother', it's about incrementally slightly bigger brother, who we'll suddenly one day realise has got out of control. So check your ISP. Kick up a fuss. And join BadPhorm.