the one guy speaking is south african and shows a totally f’d up ‘scaled’ model of the fetus development stages , basically instead of actually showing the stages it just shows babys scaled to different sizes …. lol
otherwise i got a couple of gigs worth of docus etc about related subjects too:)

am in cpt cbd so you are welcome to come fetch a copy from me.

keep us updated.

I was wondering if there’s any chance or any way that I could get a hold of the slides from Wednesday’s presentation? Might it be possible for you to email them to me, or make them available on the web somehow? I would love to get the quotes used perfectly right. Thanks!

My most recent post was made yesterday, precisely because I did promise to get something out in 72 hours. (Actually, it was already more like 77 hours. Oops.) The fact that the feedback will be more thorough than I originally planned is causing extra delays. I will try to share bits and pieces in the mean time.

(Being more thorough is the one source of delays, the other would be a number of things that are happening in my life right now. For friends that are wondering what’s up in my life (others need not read the rest of this comment): my post-thesis-gut cost me 13 minutes on the Argus — i.e. I was 13 minuts slower than last year, and I wish I could determine how much of that was due to extra weight and how much from lack of fitness. In other news, Google approached me for a job interview. I’m through the phone screening, that was Thursday, so right now I’ve gotta start preparing for the first of two technical phone interviews. If I pass those, it’s off to San Fran for a nasty battery of on-site interviews. The whole process can take a few months. How does one make that tough choice of whether to work in South Africa, at the local company that I have fallen in love with, or go work overseas, for a good and healthy change of scenery?)

Hugo I am saying it like this, because i think the only way to break extreme literal interpretations of the bible is to show people the kinda hypocritical behavior one shows when doing it.

This is definitely not the only way and may not be the most popular way. It is one way, though you have to be careful to keep the person from ‘getting their back up’ and stopping thinking.

OT: I just started reading ‘Infidel’ by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The local library book group is reading that book for their meeting on the 11th. It will be interesting to see what a more general public-type group makes of it.

you said leadership is very important

Not quite… I would not suggest Gabriel rule the people. I would suggest people take more responsibility for themselves. Some form of leadership will always be present though, so I’m pondering different leadership styles. More of a peer-to-peer kind of leadership would be good. A community (or church) should be “organic”, should be flexible. When it gets highly hierarchical, with too much power in the hierarchy or in individual hands, things usually go bad. (Viva democracy?)

With regards to ladders, yes, we work together. We work with role models. We give each other a leg-up. But constructive cooperation is the way, helping one another up is the way. The way to get “up there” is not via pushing everyone else around you down.

If I look at… um… Plato, I can learn from the guy, and I can see where he was flawed and try to improve that. But I’m not going to raise myself by calling Plato an idiot. I’m not going to support my world-view by pointing out and ridiculing all sorts of silly quote mines by scientists, or saying Bill Gates is an idiot because he thought no one will ever need more than 640k memory. Finding flaws is simply too easy. Recognise the good, give credit where credit is due.

Read this blog post:

http://qmonkey.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/credit-where-it%E2%80%99s-due/

And in the end, yes, balance in all things. Criticism is necessary, the right to criticism should be defended. But criticism isn’t the best way to climb the ladder, especially not when you’re exclusively relying on criticism.

But this is perhaps also a good method of improvement. You can improve allot of positive aspect of your life by comparing them to a opinion leader, yourself or a role model don’t you think? It is not necessary a road to hell. For example if you use jesus and compare your actions against jesus then you are also doing exactly the same. You are taking an opinion leaders life to improve your own. So jesus is your ladder. So it is kinda difficult to see why jesus said if you tred on other people is road to hell. I kinda see it as a road of improvement, it just Perhaps i am misinterpreting the context you are trying to use.