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.

Presumably in honour of ‘Burn a Koran Day’ on the 11th of September QUT employee Alex Stewart, who works in the university’s legal services department, posted a video to YouTube (since removed) that featured him rolling ‘joints’ with pages from the Qur’an, then the Bible. Stewart started to suspect things may have gotten out of hand when The Courier Mail (click there for a still-live video) turned up two days later to ask if the marijuana was fake, which Stewart confirmed as grass clippings. Police were reported as unconcerned his performance may have been illegal. He started this thread on the Brisbane Atheists Meetup group, and a day later expressed worry (since deleted) that he may lose his job over a comment by QUT’s VC Peter Coaldrake:

Now, I know I’m behind in my posting, but this is getting ridiculous. A lot of the feeds in my RSS reader have been spewing up old news and this is one of them (although I can’t work out which it was, as I’ve had the tab open for ages). Still, it’s interesting anyway.

Apparently this video made the top 3 topics on the front page of Digg, bringing it to the attention of its host YouTube for the first time. YouTube deemed this “inappropriate content” and it was removed. Predictably enough, this was deemed ‘censorship’ by many in the YouTube community, and it was rehosted multiple times.

I’m not sure exactly what YouTube deems “inappropriate” in this case. One or two of the images used in the slideshow are vaguely offensive, but it’s mostly pretty puerile stuff.

blargfrit ‘YouTube Pulls Atheist Video After Making Front Page of Digg.com‘, disinformation (6/1/09)

No longer do you need to make the long trek all the way to St Peter’s to see the Pope: now you can stream him direct to your smartphone! The Pope2You portal features links to their Facebook and iPhone apps, WikiCath and the Vatican’s YouTube channel.

This is something of a turn-around for the Vatican, after the Pope came under fire earlier this year after he lifted excommunication of  the Holocaust denying Bishop Richard Williamson. Footage of a television programme in which he did so on air was soon produced, and the Pope admitted that somebody should have done a web search before he was let back in. And while cautioning that the internet can be used to spread hate and pornography, people should try to foster a world-wide sense of fraternity, and even use it evangelise.

The architect of Pope2You was Rev. Paolo Padrini, of iPhone app iBreviary fame. His mission (pun intended) with the Facebook app was to keep the focus on the Church, rather than the personality of the Pope. This does not mean all clergy refrain from Facebook profiles, however, including some Cardinals.

Padrini is not sure, however, if the Pope is even aware of his own portal.

apud Ariel David ‘Vatican takes tech-savvy approach‘, msnbc (22/5/09)

… one of the signs of the Muslim End of Days has been realised. Over-zealous bureaucrats in Egypt have mandated the wholesale slaughter of the country’s pigs to try and avoid outbreaks of Swine Flu. Of course, according to Prophecy this was supposed to be accomplished by Jesus, and accompanied by the smashing of the crosses. Still, you get the idea.

In their defence, Egypt has been struggling with Avian Flu for the last few years, so it isn’t unexpected they might be a bit worried about the latest epidemic. More cynical observers, however, have noted that the owners of the nation’s pigs are almost exclusively Coptic Christians, and suggested that President Mubarak commissioned the cull due to pressure from Islamist opposition party the Muslim Brotherhood, who completely oppose the keeping of haram pigs on “Islamic land”.

The story reached the outside world and our own fair site when video of the culls hit YouTube, and the methods employed have raised the ire of animal welfare activists. I’d rather not provide a link to the rather graphic imagery of the footage, but you’re all web-savvy kids: I’m sure you can find it yourselves. Muslim practice requires that slaughtered animals have their throats slit in an effort to minimise their suffering, but witnesses claim this is only carried out on the boars, while sows and piglets are stabbed or beaten to death. One method purportedly involved spraying them with a chemical that took 30-40 minutes to kill them.

apud AFP ‘Pig cull YouTube video sparks outrage‘, Sydney Morning Herald (18/5/09)