Gay marriage and the search for a clear Christian perspective

I have been working on this issue in my head for a while.
Australia, while not exactly at a crossroads, is certainly feeling the eagerness of the gay lobby to make gay marriage a point of public debate. As well it should be.

So if the essence of that debate is to hear both sides, I sure wich I had heard or could write down a coherent Christian perspective on it.

It's worth noting, should anyone read this, that the debate is not Gays vs. Christians.
No. Yet Christians seem the only group called on for their opposing view. (Right-wing conservatives are too but always seem to invoke God sooner or later.)

And for most Christians the idea of widening marriage to include same-sex couples is uncomfortable.

Now, I am just looking for a better explanation, from Christians, of why society should prohibit same sex couples from marrying, beyond the argument that it contravenes the Bible's family model and thereby makes us uncomfortable.

I am eager to get comments on this from Anyone.
Will post more later.
Luke
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Sydney muggers, beggars, buskers and chuggers

Just tried to have a pleasant walk from Chifley Square to Macquarie Street, up to the Hyde Park Fountain then back to Martin Place.

It's the banking and courts sector of the city, a city that prides itself on cleanliness and modernity.

But we don't need rubbish other cities have to get that 'lived-in' feel... We have annoying people.

Apart from the homeless, of which there is more than ever (and in the middle of winter) the charity muggers and buskers are way out of control. Way!

Cancer Council are the worst. No amount of money you give one will stop their galpal asking you tomorrow when you walk by.
I hate that I so often fit their target demographic. I hate that their demographic is busty backpacker.

And then the buskers.
Hyde Park, if u were there right now, is held hostage to a seedy Latin classical guitarist. He's playing on bended knee to nobody like a lonely Zorro. His amplification was that of a booming Holden Monaro or possibly a Wiggles concert.

But no chicks were fawning and the kids weren't screaming out of joy.


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My Transformers - Revenge of the Fallen review. Beware of motion sickness.

The iMax phenomenon has struggled to keep attracting crowds over the years.

Was it that no one wanted to pay $25 to see the same film other cinemas were showing for half that?

Did teh tension wane during the third revision of Creatures of the Deep? Or did teenage boys figure out that the latest action prequel looked pretty much the same on a 10-storeyhigh screen as it did on a 5-storey high screen?

Last night, I went to see the Transformers (Revenge of the Fallen) sequel at iMax Sydney and found a new reason to never go back.



Motion sickness.



I blame director Michael Bay. And let's be clear, he's such a blatant megalomaniac that if Megatron was real he wouldn't have the balls to take Bay down. (Plus, wasn't megatron a gun in the cartoon series? A gun can't fire itself, kids.)

So, Bay has made a fast-cut 200 minute training video of how to make sand explode.



I may be too old for such mindless action - and it has never been so mindless, or continuous, and endless - but the absolute absence of a coherent plot and characters worth caring about, (human or otherwise), meant that the death of Autobot CEO Optimus Prime washed over me like just another wave of sand.



Worst of all, the action moved so fast between the Transformers that I felt giddy trying to follow who was hitting who. I should not have cared. There are no death blows, no sweet spot that takes out their flux capacitor or secret move to render them undriveable. No, that would stunt Bay's plans to film essentially the same fight scene for two soulless hours.



Oh, and if one of the characters, say, Optimus Prime, does die? Just resurrect him.

It wouldn't be the first thing the film steals from The Matrix.



The US rating system provides the most concise review available: PG. Bloodless Violence.





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Donnie Darko Damndamn

I accidentally just read the solution to what's going on in the film Donnie Darko.

Forever damn damn.

Now, who wants to know?

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Obama's first 87 days

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Hello, everybody. It is good to see you. Just had an excellent meeting with Prime Minister Rudd and his team. Obviously there are very few countries that are closer than the United States and Australia. And Prime Minister Rudd's government, I think, has shown the kind of vision not just domestically but on the international stage that we greatly admire.
 --------
It's really rather remarkable that we're at this place. Not just because it seemed an impossibility with ballsy Hillary leading the polls, or in Australian when Howard was re-elected and some of us considered getting in a leaky raft and heading for Java.

Obama has been elected, he's reversing some repulsive Bush laws and trying to reverse a major economic meltdown by consulting both sides of congress.

Howard sits smug sipping chamomile in Wollstonecraft while Rudd further buries his asinine legacy in - oh, the glorious irony - a cloak of openness and transparency.

And now Obama and K-Rudd are striking up a chummy rapport that looks scarily like the wide-grinned, smirky good times Howard had with Dubya at Camp David.

But how has Obama gone, now that the symbolic 87 days has been reached (symbolic because no one else cares about it and I get in 13days early)?

Obama has struggled to fashion a clear message - is he pessimistic or optimistic about the recession. Bit of flip-flopping there - and that point, about two months in, was when I first realised that he has spin doctors in his ear. They don't have the sway of Karl Rove et alm - See Obama on every mag cover except the most obvious one: O magazine - but his cards were played a little wildly until he started looking stern yet hopeful when he was asked about the economy.

Obama's face can tell a thousand words. Jon Stewart noted Obama hasn't pulled out his 'shut the **** up' face since his deputy made some major gaffes. Through his first 87 days Obama has kept a look of 'I was made for this job' as much as a look that silently yells 'I'll get you, you kids that left me to clean up your unholy mess'.

I listen to the New Yorker's 'Comment' podcast which observed this week that Obama as had it easy from the Republicans as they squabble over the best stance to take on O's stimulus package. Hilariously, most are happy to say it's irresponsible to spend so much cash when the economy (and debt) is swelling under so many GFC pressures. But spending IS at least half the method to getting out of a rut. That's why men got out and dug useless holes in the great depression, only to fill them in again. (Tax cuts are the other half, which just shifts the source of the money to be spent).

And can they complain about overspending when they just unloaded a 3trillion dollar debt onto the next President.

At least Howard isn't sniping at his replacement from the sidelines.

Costello is doing enough sniping for Rudd to feel he has an impotent opposition in common with Obama too.

Lastly: good speeches. Where are they Obama? It's not West Wing enough for me so far. We have only hjad one HOPE CHALLENGE AMERICAN DREAM oration so far!!

Thankfully, the humour and wit is back in the oval office. Obama is razor sharp and can hild journos at bay in a media scrum without missing a chance to make an awfully risky joke now and then. Rudd has some work ahead to keep up with his new buddy if he is still to become Deputy Sherrif.

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Auden's poem

What a poem.

Auden; September 1, 1939
 sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
 Waves of anger and fear
 Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
 Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night
.Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's faceAnd the international wrong.Faces along the barCling to their average day:The lights must never go out,The music must always play,All the conventions conspireTo make this fort assumeThe furniture of home;Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood,Children afraid of the nightWho have never been happy or good.The windiest militant trash Important Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal loveBut to be loved alone.From the conservative darkInto the ethical lifeThe dense commuters come,Repeating their morning vow;'I will be true to the wife,I'll concentrate more on my work,'And helpless governors wakeTo resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now,Who can reach the dead,Who can speak for the dumb?All I have is a voiceTo undo the folded lie,The romantic lie in the brainOf the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of AuthorityWhose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone;Hunger allows no choiceTo the citizen or the police;We must love one another or die.Defenseless under the nightOur world in stupor lies;Yet, dotted everywhere,Ironic points of lightFlash out wherever the JustExchange their messages:May I, composed like themOf Eros and of dust,Beleaguered by the sameNegation and despair,Show an affirming flame.

Do u enjoy this poem?
What would take u there?  Maybe if u were in there, unravelling his contradictions and sorting the rhetoric from the moral pronouncements. (Those to whom evil is done...)

But what's going on that u were challenging yourself on such brutally obvious standards (love each other or die).

I haven't read this poem before (shock!) And now I find it became an author's-grave-turning hit in the days after sept.11. (Horror!)

I enjoy the poem for the way the simple life of people is put up against the calamity and distress of his predicament - and ours, eternally.

Hang on. Skyscrapers? Is he dead even? Seems he could still be kicking. Ring him! Allege that as a child u were afraid of the night and that in God's eyes we are neither happy nor good. That should put the fire up his conservative dark.

Buckle-blog.blogspot.com

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Latest thoughts on U2 NLOTH

I think they have put the sense of humour back in but maybe its TOO irreverent?

I also can't get the image out of my head that its a shimmery pink ballon covering a rough object. Spherical, but pointy in parts. Like sputnik!
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Schoolgirl, 15, makes small fortune as prostitute | News.com.au

The terms "child prostitution" must not have got enough clicks. This headline is appalling base logic from Australia's biggest news website.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25113466-401,00.html

Up next: pedophile gets hilarious sneak peek at friend's kids
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How that U2 album was leaked

Some poor web guy at Universal Music is getting more attention than any web staffer could ever desire.

Universal Australia - located primarily in a cool, renovated warehouse in Sydney's The Rocks, accidentally released the latest U2 album for a few hours last week.

I'm a web producer that worked in the music industry for 6 years and can see how itKs occurred.

The release date was not until March 3 for Oz but a standing element would have appeared a fortnight out to pre-order the album NO LINE ON THE HORIZON. Poor sod has made it for sale.

He/she must now be sitting at home, fretting - not just that he/she is now jobless - that they:

A) got on Bono's angry radar
B) set back Universal a few hundred-thousand in CD or download sales
C) U2's manager Paul McGuinness is a large Achtung Baby himself and he's got heated before over file-sharing (strangely Bono amnd The edge are on record saying they don't care bout illegal downloads, just if u on-sell it)

D) started such a serious online boondoggle between file sharers and lastFM.

LastFM is an online radio/playlist sharing service. Allegedly, the US music industry's copyright agency RIAA got riled after the U2 release ended up on p2p sites 3 miliseconds after our web worker flicked the wrong switch. The RIAA is said to have demanded the playlist info from lastFM of thousands of subscribers.

Clearly, that raises lots of privacy issues of the kind that got facebook doing an about-facebook this week.

I knew the person doing the job previous to the current person in the role and they went on to great things in a global tech company.

This guy needs to start his CV afresh.


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Twitter goes mainstream but Australians still looking for "ON" button to PC

It all just gets away from us so quickly down here in Australia.

The websites now known collectively as 'social media' escape many people I know and even friends of mine who believe they are practically 'linked in' wouldn't have heard of a site with that name yet. Some are yet to join facebook and seem to be still waiting for it to die leaving all of us patsies exposed as trend lemmings.

Then twitter walks in the door. This facebook-lite seems to me a perfect follow-up technology for when we all get tied of posting items and albums hoping for a friend to post a three-word comment of recognition.

Twitter is like all the best RSS feeds amalgamated and thank God, it's usually made more personal by the human posting it.

Even CNN's postings have personality thrown in and they've already been credited with taking tweets mainstream.

You can run a twitter account from tjhe web but using a phone or computer application makes reading and posting nuch simpler.

It works with not 'friends' but 'followers'.

But start following a lot of regular twitterers and the feed of update jumps from distracting to overwhelming.

Twitter will probaby end up more like a news-social widget on people's devices where they follow a select bunch of people (friends and celebs) plus a few news /entertainment/ sport/business services.

So why is our nation of luddites skeptical at every new morph of the web?

Baby boomers are holding a lot of the most influential posts and until that changes, I imagine little else will.


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No Spoiler On The Horizon

I have gone in search of more on U2's new album after they just released a single hours after an appearance at Obama's We Are One concert.

Irish music writer Neil McCormick's one of the lucky few who has been privvy to No Line on the Horizon. He talks about it in his blog post today. Here's a nugget from his entry today:

    So what can I tell you without infringing copyright? It took two listens to find my way into it, which has to be good a thing. It is dense, twisty, shiny, modern pop music, a big mash up of Eno ambience, Edge electricity, rhythm and soul. There are verses and choruses, though not necessarily in that order (and quite often its hard to tell which is which). It doesn't feel the need to hit you over the head, but has the Ninja confidence to sneak up and take you unawares. It makes love like its making war. It hasn't frontloaded all its big guns. There is a surge in the middle perfectly timed to quell any uprising, and a killer twist at the end. It could be the glittering sonic mind meld of pop rock and soul that Zooropa wanted to be. Or maybe, like Bono, I'm am just prone to exaggeration.

from www.atu2.com

<a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/neil_mccormick/blog/2009/01/15/u2s_no_line_in_the_horizon_the_new_album">read Neil's blog entry here >></A>