Miscellaneous | Betchablog

8Jan/073

Straight to Hell

Yep, apparently I'm going straight to Hell...

My friend Simon, who teaches religion, put me onto this little survey to see where your religious affiliations lie. It appears that I'm not a very good catholic.

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

Emergent/Postmodern

89%

Classical Liberal

79%

Modern Liberal

79%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

50%

Roman Catholic

43%

Neo orthodox

36%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

36%

Reformed Evangelical

Fundamentalist

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.co

I'm not sure who the dude in the photo is... any ideas? I'm also not sure what all those percentages are meant to represent, but I'm sure glad that I'm described as 89% Postmodern and 0% Fundamentalist.

I've never really understood all the fuss about organised religion. If being told what to think and how to act is something that floats your boat, then go for it. But it's really not my thing... I think I can be just as spiritual, just as good a person, just as able to treat others fairly and equally, without the stifling organisation that most religions seem to entail. Just do unto others...

What I really resent is all the wars and strife that religion has caused over the ages. I especially resent all the indigenous cultures that have been ruined by well-meaning missionaries spreading the word of a God that was irrelevant and unnecessary to those cultures. And finally, I have absolutely no time for much of the fundamentalist, indoctrinated views that are sometimes espoused in the name of organised religion.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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5Jan/070

Talent Night?

Yes, the school I teach at has a talent night each semester, and somehow or other a group of teachers at school put a little group together to play a couple of songs. While I can't truly claim to have any great musical talent, I can wield a bass guitar well enough to hold the rhythm section together, especially with a great drummer like Charlie. The rest of the band was Rob, Darrell, Alanna and Kevin, all wonderfully dedicated and talented teachers who don't mind getting up and showing their wild side in front of the kids. The kids seem to really enjoy seeing their teachers get up and "give it a go", and it's that spirit that make schools such wonderfully human places...

So for anyone brave enough to take a peek, here is a YouTube video of two songs we performed on the night... the sound quality isn't great and the camera work is a bit shaky, but it just goes to show what can be done when a kid in the crowd just happens to capture something like this on his cellphone, and then it's up on YouTube within a few hours.

It was, I must admit, a lot of fun.

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31Dec/060

Happy New Year

I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2007.

I feel like 2006 has been an absolute rollercoaster of an adventure for me, and I've enjoyed all the challenges and opportunities it's offered, and I'm very much looking forward to the new year.

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24Nov/061

This is Santa, how might I be helping you?

This just made me laugh...

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23Oct/060

Just a Face in a Crowd

This is pretty cool. Jump over to MyHeritage.com and you can submit a photo of your face and have their system try to run a facial features analysis to find other people who look like you. I'm not sure exactly how accurate it is, but it's a lot of fun. Thanks to Samanatha and Lauren in my Grade 10 class for the heads-up about this.

I wasn't too sure how accurate these were... So I tried again...

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20Oct/060

Bits of Colour

This ad for Sony is pretty amazing.

here.

What I thought was most amazing is that those balls are real... not computer generated. You can watch the "making of" video at their website. Pretty cool!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (54.4MB)

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30Sep/060

Action Painting Online

I had the pleasure recently of visiting the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It's an amazing gallery building and my daughter Kate and I enjoyed going through it to see the exhibitions and displays. We both really enjoyed the Jackson Pollock exhibition, No Limits Just Edges.

The art of Jackson Pollock, (who just happens to share the same birthday as me) caused quite a stir in Australia in 1973 when the government at the time purchased the infamous Blue Poles for $1.3 million. It was quite a controversy at the time, with the media making all sorts of claims - from "he was drunk at the time' to 'it was painted by monkeys'. In hindsight, the painting was recently valued at $40 million so it seems Gough's government made a good decision after all.

Anyway, if you're an art teacher, or just want your students to have a bit of fun, you might like to check out www.jacksonpollock.org for a bit of interactive online action painting. Hopefully they will realise that creating art by dripping paint on a canvas is a little bit trickier than just, well, dripping paint on a canvas. After getting the kids to mess about with this tool, there are a lot of useful discussions worth having about line, colour and composition and how these elements work together.

Thanks to Kate for the masterpiece above!

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