Alan Berning

Trying to clear a bottleneck of stories I haven’t posted on. Mea maxima culpa.

Heidi Campbell ‘Can an online community be a church ? IRS says “No”!‘, When Religion Meets New Media (24/8/10)

Joshua M. Z. Stanton ‘Cyber Dialogue: The Future of Inter-Religious Engagement‘, Patheos (6/9/10)

Eli Yishai ‘Shas minister shuts down online payments on Shabbat, holidays‘, Haaretz.com (14/9/10)

Matthew Razak ‘Fallout Online viral advertising moves to religion‘, Destructoid (18/9/2010)

Reuters ‘Vatican Bank head in money laundering probe–sources‘, FaithWorld (21/9/10)
Vatican probably the only place in the world that allows people to use ATM’ s in Latin.

Mollie ‘Code name Esther‘, GetReligion (1/10/10)
The Biblical connection of the computer worm that got through Iran’s Digital Veil (that’s what we’re calling it, by the way).

Reuters ‘France charges man for burning, urinating on Koran‘, FaithWorld (5/10/10)

Randall Munroe ‘Online Communities 2‘, xkcd (5/10/10)
You can see “Religious Blogs” in the lower right-hand corner, east of the “Sea of Zero (0) Comments” and southwest of the “Blogosphere (Core Region)”.

tmatt ‘Bible-toting bullies with webcams?’, GetReligion (5/10/10)
and in the same vein
Jeff Kunerth ‘Religion plays different roles in cyberbullying debate‘, Orlando Sentinel (5/10/10)
as well as
Erica Brown ‘Outrage at humanity’s use of technology‘, Washington Post (7/10/10)

Elizabeth Drescher ‘Gen X, Gadgets, and God‘, Religion Dispatches (8/10/10)

Reuters ‘Brazil “values voters” go YouTube against prez hopeful Rousseff‘, FaithWorld (8/10/10)

Phew! That’s broken the back of it. Some more tomorrow, then we return to our regular programming schedule.

Now that I have your attention: it’s been almost a year but I can now finally call myself a contributor.

I’ll eventually have something current to say but I thought I’d first clear some backlog – it’s just too hard to pass up an opportunity to write those two words  in the same sentence.

Monks in Roman Catholic monasteries are expected to support themselves, balancing a life of prayer and work according to the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict. The monks at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank make their money from the sale of ink and toner cartridges.

So unfortunately they are not responsible for this:

A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center Credit: Yuri Beletsky

In 2002 the Rev. Bernard McCoy, the monastery’s superior, had the idea for LaserMonks.com. They now also (of course) have a Facebook page.

Proceeds from the sale of products assist the monks good works and sustain their life of prayer – as they prepare to wage war against the Enemy in a post-apocalyptic future!

Oh well – we can dream, can’t we …?

via 2 Entrepreneurs Help a Monastery Thrive, The New York Times (01/06/2009) & Lasermonks: The Business Story Nine Hundred Years in the Making, McGraw-Hill, 2007 [Amazon & Google Books]

The Institute of Jainology has launched their Jainpedia project: an online depository of digitised Jain texts from collections around the world. Helmed mainly by British Jains, the project aims to incorporate the numerous manuscripts held in British institutions, as well as those remaining in India.

Primarily targeted at academics, Jainpedia also hopes to make itself available to “millions”. In order to make texts in Sanskrit and Prakrit more accessible the texts will be ‘amplified’ with translations, commentary and audio-visual supplements. Ratilal Chandaria, Chairman of the Institute, explains

The resource will continue to develop by allowing users to blog their Jain experiences online and therefore weave their everyday practices into the richness of the UK Jain tapestry.

Jainpedia plans to launch to the public in late 2012 and I can only assume that all the talk of public availability means it will be free to access. Funding for the project included equal contributions from the Institute and the Heritage Lottery Grant.

Mansi Choksi ‘Religion reloaded‘, Times of India (25/10/09)

Photo credit: Rusti Curry

The Glo Bible aims to update scripture for the iPhone generation (okay, I just decided that there’s an ‘iPhone generation’). This DVD-ROM features HD videos, maps and ‘virtual tours’ of 1st century Jerusalem and is suspiciously reminiscent of creator Nelson Saba’s iLumina (2002). Odiously, this DVD-ROM isn’t something you actually ‘buy’ for the US$90 price tag, but only “license” for use on three computers. A press release for the ‘service’ says of the creator

Saba has a calling to create projects that communicate Scripture and his personal vision is to use the gifts God has given him through the creation of projects and tools such as Glo, which will enable the world to know Christ.

I’m sure God had such proprietary attitudes in mind when he gave Nelson this vocation. Then again, it’s not terribly surprising when you realise that Saba has lodged a patent on “Systems and methods for providing a zoomable user interface“.

A bit of a weird round-up this time, but airport security stories have been turning up on the religion blogs lately.

The first story concerns a Canadian Roman Catholic bishop who was discovered with sexual images of young children on his laptop hard-drive by airport security. Tmatt at GetReligion asked “What made them search a bishop?” and, a week and a bit later, he was able to answer. From a story in Halifax’s Chronicle Herald he found why security staff became suspicious:

Bishop Raymond Lahey avoided eye contact, changed his vocal tone and gave evasive responses when a border agent at Ottawa International Airport questioned him last month about his electronic equipment.

A Canada Border Services agent asked the bishop if he was carrying any electronic media such as cellphones, laptop computers or BlackBerrys when he arrived at the airport at 3:43 p.m. on Sept. 15, says a search warrant application. Bishop Lahey had just arrived from London, England.

The bishop told the border agent he had two cellphones.

The agent then asked the former head of the Diocese of Antigonish if he had a laptop. Bishop Lahey hesitated before saying he did. In all, the bishop was carrying a laptop, two cellphones, four memory sticks, three memory cards and a portable hand-held device.

The agent flagged Bishop Lahey for a secondary inspection because of his behaviour and the fact he was a man traveling alone who had visited countries known to be sources of child pornography, says an Ottawa police officer’s application for the warrant on Sept. 23.

The other story concerns observant Jews being allowed by America’s Transportation Security Administration to carry vegetable material (lulavs, etrogs, etc.) for Sukkot. Those American security guards may be humourless, but at least they’re culturally sensitive.

Newsography:
Tmatt ‘What made them search a bishop?‘, GetReligion.org (1/10/09)
______ ‘This made them search the bishop‘, GetReligion.org (12/10/09)
Dan Arsenault ‘Warrant describes evasive bishop‘, The Chronicle Herald (9/10/09)
Michele Chabin ‘Jewish Holiday Objects Allowed Through U.S. Airport Security‘, Religion News Service (2/10/09)

Image courtesy of:

FINALLY. Jeez, they took their time.

Israeli scientists have written out the Hebrew Bible on a silicon chip smaller than a pinhead. The SMH reports that it’s the Old Testament, but I wonder if they just misunderstand the difference between a Torah and a Tanakh. They DO provide the word count – 308,428 – and in Hebrew that could well be the entire Tanakh. I could probably do some of that, you know, “research” but that would require the kind of energy that I don’t have this time of year.