You know those Think Bike ads. Don't ignore them. This is why.

On Friday morning my motorbike was involved in a head-on collision with a car. You can see what happened to the bike on the right. Miraculously I walked away.

I am grateful for the prayers of friends and relatives who found out when my wife tweeted about the incident. I’m also grateful for the fact that I walked away from it and was back at work on the following Monday.

I am also very grateful for the people who – during the time I was waiting for the bike to be recovered – stopped to check I was okay or if I needed medical assistance etc. including those who gave their details as witnesses. In total I counted:

• 5 cars
• 7 motorcyclists (4 of whom stopped and came to chat despite me waving them on)
• 2 vans
• 7 pedestrians
• 2 bus drivers ( one of whom stopped twice)

I was offered four cups of tea, the loan of two mobile phones and an umbrella! We keep getting told by various parties that “We’re all in this together” as some kind of catchy slogan but my experience shows me that so many of us already know and act accordingly.

Incidentally the A & E at King George  hospital in Goodmayes, Essex – where I went to be seen (nothing broken) is currently under threat of closure. For my part I’ll just say the treatment I received was excellent, cost me nothing (NHS at work again folks) and was carried out in a friendly and professional manner. All this was despite the unit being very busy even for a Friday afternoon. If this unit closes it will be a great loss to the community and a great shame on those who close it.

So thank you to those who stopped, thank you to the staff at King George hospital A & E  and thank you to all those who prayed.

Well these guys have releasied the dreams of every child who ever buitl a model rocket. They’ve put a Lego Space Shuttle in the air and then some – 35000m (114000ft in old money). To a seasoned Lego builder like me who has now passed that love onto another generation this is quite simply – awesome (particularly from 2:38 onwards)

Some welsh cakes I made - image (c) Ryan Cartwright CC:By-SA

Could something as small as a cake make a difference to your church?

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Gal 6:9-10 NIV

At the weekend just passed and in honour of St David’s day I baked some welshcakes for our church. Baking cakes for church is something my wife (mostly) and I (occasionally) started doing on a weekly basis during Lent 2011. It was part of an attempt to revive the coffee time that happens after the main church service on a Sunday and inspired by what became the Give up bad coffee for lent campaign. I posted a photo of the welshcakes and it seems this inspired others to make some to take to their church.

Growing up in church in the (ahem) 1970s I recall that homemade cakes were often a feature of the refreshments/social bit after the service. I’ve visited many different churches over the years and have noticed that in the past ten years the cakes have disappaeared. Usually replaced by a tin (or even paper plate) of biscuits which may or may not have some rubbery ones at the bottom. There’s nothing wrong with biscuits but I’d like to encourage you to think about making (or even buying) a cake to take to church. Why not do it for lent? I wonder if cakes were dropped in an attempt to move away from the twee image the church has acquired, images of a victoria sponge with green teapcups spring to mind. There’s nothing wrong with moving with the times – indeed the GUBC4L campaign is to encourage churches to do that by serving decent fresh coffee – but don’t overlook the power of a cake in generating some coversation and fellowship.

As an example I’ll mention that the refreshments time at our church was generally well attended by about half the people there. They’d stay for a drink and then drift home afterwards. Once we introduced fresh coffee and then cakes, more people stayed and stayed for longer, conversations continued and spread. Fellowship happened. I’ll be honest I did not expect that making fresh coffee and baking a cake would have this effect and it would be wrong of me to say it was all down to that. Much of the credit should go to the people at our church who start and have the converations and when we started baking the cakes it was mostly because we just thought people like some cake with their coffee – which it seems they do (who knew?). People are definitely the key here but sometimes we need a bit of a nudge to just tip the balance between dashing home and staying a few minutes longer for a chat. Fresh coffee and cakes are good at that bit.

Sometimes we need a bit of a nudge to just tip the balance between dashing home and staying a few minutes longer for a chat. Fresh coffee and cakes are good at that bit

So, as part of an encouragement to show some gospel hospitality – why not bake a cake this week. It doesn’t have to be a complex one. We’ve found that tray-bakes work really well. Most people don’t want a great slab of cake but a small square of iced sponge or a choclate brownie or a welshcake always seems to go down well with a cofee (or tea). Also another tip is that cakes that can be held in one hand without falling apart and not too sloppy are better. Be aware of allergies and things but if you do have people with something like a gluten intolerance making one they can eat too is just a question of googling for a recipe. Also while we like to try different cake recipies out, I’ve noticed that nobody complains if a tray bake turn up on a regular basis.

Finally- having done this for year – I can tell you that sometimes you just don’t feel like baking, this where the scripture above comes in and don’t forget that there will be others who can make a cake as well. You don’t have to go so far as a rota (if two people make cake there’s just more to eat!) but it’s a great way for people to contribute. Also people bring cakes in on or near their birthday, sometimes leftover cake is brought in. If you can’t bake then look in the cake aisle of your supermarket. A lot of them will do generic “celebration” tray-style cakes now which are cheap and serve this purpose very well.

A parent will always be the best protection for a child on the Internet. Image CC:By-NC-SA OllieBray

In the last few weeks a campaign has come across my screen a few times. It is called “SafetyNet” and is being run by Premier Christian Media and SaferMedia. The campaign aims to gather enough signatures to convince the government to leglislate so that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must “[block] pornography at network level whilst giving adults a choice to ‘opt-in’ to this content”.

The website and FAQ document are full of statistics which – as with any statistic – cannot really be argued with. These range from the percentage of UK households with internet access to how many children regularly access explicit images on their home computer. There are also a bunch of sound bite quotes to join the dots between these facts and the aims of the campaign.

As said, facts are facts. If a USA survey says “1 in 3 10 year olds have accessed pornography online”, I’m not going to argue. I’m not altogether sure why 73% of UK households having internet access adds to the problem this campaign is trying to resolve but I don’t doubt the figure is correct. What concerns me are the conclusions and the way they are trumpeted to convince people to sign the petition.

Perhaps I should introduce why I feel I can write about this. I am a UK Christian parent (so therefore fit neatly in the target demographic for this campaign), my children are between 5 and 9 years old and thus are well within the group this campaign seeks to “protect”. I am also works with and understand the “network level” Internet this campaign talks about. I have been building hosting webservers and websites since the mid 1990s and I still do. So not only am I one of the people this campain targets I am also one of the ones who understands the technology involved – by the sound of it I understand better than they do.

Why this won’t work

The title of this piece is provacative but I believe it is true. Forcing an ISP to “block pornography” at “network level” is unworkable, unsafe and dangerous. Here is why..

How do you define “pornography”?

You can’t (as the campaign does) try to get away with a dictionary definition because we are dealing with parents here who may well have their own idea of what is appropriate for their child to view. Limiting it to just ‘the explicit representation of sexual activity’ may not be enough. As an example if that were all that was being blocked I still would need to check what my 8 year old was stumbling across on Google images at which point the “protection” is not coming from the blocking but from me (as it does now).

How do the ISPs determine what gets blocked?

Certain websites will be obvious by their name/domain but is the campaign really so naive as to expect the site owners to be scrupulous in what they call their websites? Alsowhat of images provided through otherwise inncent websites? Google images for example has a safesearch option. Set that the “off” and your child will get a bit of surprise. But as the images are hosted and served by Google, the ISP cannot block them. So using the vaunted “network level” blocking, the explicit images can still be viewed. Other sites will be similar. In the end the only way for an ISP to properly block explicit content is to do it on an image-by-image, video-by-video basis. To do that they’d have to employ a lot of people. Given the constantly changing nature of world wide web content, this is something I cannot see any ISP being able to do properly.

Blocking is never 100%

Anyone who uses filtering or blocking software will tell that things slip through. Don’t believe me: how about your eMail spam filters, how about your anti-virus software. If they are so good why are you still supicious of links in eMails you weren’t expecting? If you are not supicious, you should be. Let’s look at Google images again. Google are huge, they dwarf any ISP by comparison and yet they still don’t guarantee that safesearch will hide all explicit or offensive images, they have a “report offensive images” link on their search results. If Google can’t make any guarantees how can I be sure an ISP would block everything?

Network level blocking means blocking sites and images before they get to your house. Such things already exist. I use a free (and very good) service called OpenDNS which – among others things – allows me to have it block websites that either decalre themselves as “adult” or have been reported as such by other users of the service. Such sites are blocked before they even get down my phoneline. So this is pretty much what the campaign is asking for. It doesn’t work. Well that’s not true, it does work just not 100%. Google images is not blocked and other sites which have mixed content are not always blocked.

The point again is that even with Google images safesearch on strict and OpenDNS I still have to monitor what my children surf. Again the “protection” for my children comes from me not any blocking.

It’s all or nothing

The campaign allows for the fact that adults can request the ISP blocking is switched off. This sounds fine as long as all the adults use one connection and all the children use another. But that’s not how the world is. Those 73% of UK houueholds with Internet access probably have a single main connection each. Many of they almost defnitely have a mixed range of ages using the Internet. So if a parent wants the blocking switched off, the child gets it switched off too. ISP blocking at “network level” is by defnition all-or-nothing. Now you may argue that parents should not be watching such content if they have kids. But I’ll wager they do and if they have the blocking turned off, the children the campaign seeks to protect are no longer protected.

I’m not here to tell other adults what to do and by the sound of it the campaign doesn’t want to either but if an adult wants it turned off (and I doubt this would be something the ISP would want to keep switching on and off on an hourly basis) then it’s off for the kids and again the “protection” that should be provided by the blocking will have to be provided by the parent (as it is now).

It gives a false sense of security to parents

You’ll have gathered by now that this is my main point. The campaign raises concerns which all parents whose children have Internet access should consider. But the solution offered is poorly thought through. As you have seen above ISP blocking will still require a parent to monitor what their kids are surfing. This is good and I wholeheartedly agree that a parent/guardian is the best protection for children online. As parents we should be interested in what they are doing whether online or not. But what worries me is that this ISP blocking idea would cause a lot of parents to stop paying attention (or pay less of it) to what their children are doing online. It would give a false sense of security. Lets revist the anti-virus analogy. Anyone running a Microsoft Windows PC should run anti-virus software, that is a given. But just having it there does not mean you will be “safe” from malware, phishing or other nasties. Ask anyone who supports Windows PCs and they will tell you that you are only as good as your last update and also just becuase you have software which the manufacturer promises will protect you (no matter how much you pay for it) you still have to be vigilant. It’s the same with blocking or filtering. They model is flawed. It does the best it can under the circumstances but its flawed.

Don’t sign it

In the end all of the above shows that ISP blocking would still require a parent to monitor/participate/be involved in their child’s online activity. That means the blocking is nest to useless. Even if you presume it will help or do some of the job for you, you still run the significant risk that your child will find an image, video or site that you’d rather they didn’t. Sadly pornography is part of our culture and so is the Internet. But the Internet does not work like a TV, radio of a shelf of magazines in the newsagents. It’s different and it needs to be handled differently.

The SafetyNet campaign might have the safety and protection of children at its heart but its using the wrong tactics. Those tactics will not help vulnerable children any more than an 18 certificate on a DVD will. Educate parents, get them to speak to their kids, help them. Don’t try to scare them into signing up for a law which a) won’t get passed and b) would be worse than good if it was.

Filtering, blocking and other such technologies can help a parent, but in the end, technology cannot protect our children, only we can.

Update – 12 March 2012 I’m not the only one who thinks this campaign is a bad idea. There are also some good points raised here: http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/237955.html

Last year – along with some others – I launched a campaign called Give up bad coffee for lent (GUBC4L). Inspired by conversations about posters half-heartedly slapped on church walls, too-cheap-to-be-any-good washing up liquid and of course naff, tasteless (and usually inagreen teacup) instant coffee, the campaign aimed to put a little generosity back into our churches. This is the reason for the questions above. Don’t ignore them, they’re as valid as questions about what songs you sing, Bible version you use or style of preaching you deploy.

Following Lent the GUBC4L name seemed inappropriate so we renamed it to Entertaining Angels. Another term bandied about is Gospel hospitality.

Whatever it is called the idea here is that people coming into God’s house (for whatever reason) should be treated as if they were coming into our own.

Since this idea started we’ve heard stories of churches where people turn up just for the coffee afterwards, where the aroma of fresh coffee (and the lure of a home-baked cake) have sparked conversations and strengthened relationships. In our own church a couple of cafétieres/french presses were donated and we started baking cakes. The result is that the coffee time is popular enough that we have to turf people out as we’re locking up. Hospitality counts, it matters, it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) require an edict from the church leadership and it has the potential to revolutionise church life.

Get involved

If you want to join in then by all means comment here or alternatively show your support by adding the Entertaining Angels Twibbon on your facebook or twitter avatars. You can also use the twitter hashtags #EntertainAngels or #GUBC4L.

The Entertaining Angels (GUBC4L) twibbon.

Image based on photo by falcon1961 - CC:by

Yesterday we parked near a Smart car. Our son (8) looked at it and said “Hmm, let’s see how smart this car is then…”

He then asked the car “What’s two times ten?”

There was an obvious silence and he walked away saying “Not that smart then. Doesn’t even know its two times table!”

Kids eh?

By contrast last year VW put out a brilliant ad featuring a child in a Darth Vader costume which was brilliant. This year they are looking to top that and (while I have no affinity to them) the “teaser” (yes a teaser for an advert) and the ad itself are really very good (I think the teaser is best myself).

They made me laugh anyway.

Teaser

Advert

• SOPA proposes to give powers to the US Department of Justice to shut down any website on suspicion of copyright infringement
• The decision will be largely based upon the finger pointing of the copyright holders, media companies and multi-national corporations
• Even websites hosted outside the US will be attacked because the bill will allow the DoJ to force Google, Paypal et al to blacklist the “offending” website
• The bill operates on a guilty until proven innocent basis.
• The sites in question would have 5 days to prove they are innocent during which time the site will be shut anyway.

Like me, Terry is interested in the subjects of free (as in freedom) software and free culture. With regards the latter (and unlike me) he has got off his backside and started to do something. This post describes Terry’s project to produce a science fiction “TV” series and release it under Creative Commons licences. This is both ambitious and encouraging. As you know I have focussed [my own attempts](http://www.crimperman.org/tag/freedom/] at free culture onto the church and the way “worship” resources are locked down and restricted by archaic copyright and “intellectual property” laws. One obstacle I have come across is that if resource producers do not release the material under free licences then any attempt to bring freedom back into our media and other cultural elements will fail. Terry has encountered this and “Lunatics” is an admirable response.

Right now the issue – as ever – is financial. This project is – by nature – on a much smaller budget than mainstream productions but – like the Blender open movie projects before it – it still requires some cash to get started. Also like the Blender open movies, backers get rewarded for their donation.

You may not like science fiction, you may not like the concept of Lunatics but you may know people who do. If you like the idea of free culture and are fed up with the ever-increasing tide of restrictive actions by media companies – try supporting one of the good guys.

Update

The target funding has now been reached. This is exciting news as it means there is support for such a great venture. You can still find out about the project and catch up with the latest news at the project website lunatics.tv.

Guest post – Terry Hancock

Lunatics - somebody's got to be crazy enough to go first!

Support this project

Lunatics is a story about the first permanent settlement on the Moon. Politics are inevitable, physics is implacable, and the colonists are indomitable fanatics. After all, normal people don’t really colonize new worlds, do they?

“Lunatics” itself is largely based on character comedy, but we take the science and technology very seriously. Much of the technology in planned Lunatics scripts is not only real and relatively new, but also largely ignored in prior science fiction. Perhaps the greatest realism, though, is in the way the characters are presented.

The series and all the original source material will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, and it will be created using (mainly) the free software Blender 3D application on GNU/Linux workstations. It is a free-culture production from end-to-end. We are taking advantage of the massive body of existing free-culture work (music, sound effect, graphics, and so on) to help make all of this possible. And once we get our series up and running (we plan to do 18 episodes a year, of about 30 minutes length each) we will be one of the biggest free culture film projects going!

What makes this possible is a fan-financed business model which has been pioneered by only a handful of free-culture projects. But it’s enough to show that it can be done.

This project will require a lot of innovation on everything from merchandising business models to real-time animation techniques.

Right now, we are trying to raise $2400 through a Kickstarter project to support pre-production work — especially paying artist Daniel Fu a commission for creating character design drawings which will be used to create the 3D characters for the series.

Backers at any level will get early access, and for those who pay just $15 or more, we have a variety of “rewards” — ranging from character art posters to the complete “Character Art Book and Writer’s Guide”.

We also have corporate sponsorship levels if you know someone who’d be interested — for $400, you can get your company logo printed prominently on our pre-production materials, and featured on the website. Needless to say, a couple of such sponsorships would go a long way towards meeting our goal (these are limited to just 4 slots to make sure we have room for your logo).

Like all projects, we have to start small and work our way up. I don’t have a fan-base of thousands to draw on yet, because Lunatics doesn’t exist… yet. But with your help, we can get there!

Thanks!