It seems that whenever an election rolls around Christians are concerned about three issues and (unfortunately) three issues only: abortion, same-sex marriage and scripture in schools. That’s not to say Christians don’t care about other issues these are simply the three that get the most air-play during the: “I don’t even know who to vote for this time around” conversations.

To that end I thought that this week it would be worth examining exactly what a Christian perspective on homosexuality is and why it matters whether or not homosexual couples can be recognised as legally wed under Australian law. We’ll be using the Bible to inform our discussion as we explore why it is that so many Christians lobby against gay-marriage.

Some questions we’ll be thinking about in particular are:

“If gay-marriage is wrong because marriage is designed to honour God and reflect Jesus’ relationship with the Church then why is it okay for any non-Christian couple to marry?”

“Do all humans have a fundamental right to marry whomever they want?”

“Isn’t God a god of love?”

“Don’t we value the separation of Church and State? So why are you forcing your values onto a legal issue?”

“Is it wrong to be gay?”

All are welcome. If you’re free Tuesdays at 3pm come along to the foyer of the education building at Sydney University and join us for a discussion.

I’ve recently started meeting up with an older Christian guy once a week. It’s been most excellent so far. Our meetings are quite brief, generally I’ll tell him what’s been going on in my life and he’ll offer some advice and a Bible passage for me to read. This week the passage was Romans 6.

This passage centres on the idea that we are dead to sin and alive in Christ. I think this passage really taps into a particular rift that exists between Christian and non-Christian world views that being the idea of a ‘natural’ state of being.

I am not a scientist. And I don’t pretend to know anything profound about evolution but it is my understanding that as humans we want to survive and evolve and as such we are constantly pushing the boundaries of our understanding and pushing the human race forward. Part of this need to evolve is evidenced in our natural and innate urges: to eat, to sleep, to make friends, to have sex, to feel safe et cetera.

Romans 6 is a good reminder to me that there are two broad ways of reconciling what is a ‘normal’ or innate urge is. Romans 6 tells us that God is the ultimate arbiter of what is right and wrong for he created us. It is good to remember that there was a time before the fall when the natural human inclination was to have a loving and subordinate relationship with God.

As humans our natural inclination is often toward selfishness. Which is a shame. As a Christian our natural inclination should be toward selflessness and, moreover, Godliness. For if we are truly in Christ then we aught to crave what is good in His eyes.

So much fun!

I’m a big Mario fan. Huge fan of everything from mario tennis to mario paint. However, for me the platforming mario is the best mario. A lot of people consider Mario 64 to be among the best video games of all time, and whilst putting mario on the 3-D plane did wonders for the franchise I couldn’t help thinking that Super Mario Brothers 3 for the SNES was still a superior game. Indeed, if a save option was avaliable for Mario 3 it would rank as number 1 in my greatest video games of all time.)

New Super Mario Bros. Wii (NSMBW) is better than Super Mario Brothers 3 (SMB3). Where number 3 had the racoon suit NSMBW has the penguin suit allowing players to walk easily on ice and “torpedo” along it obliterating all enemies in the way. The game follows a very similar map style to that of SMB3 with the player navigating through worlds that progressively get harder and harder. Each world contains two castles each ruled over by a boss. Once a player defeats all eight bosses and rescues the princess we can all go home.

Mario goes underground

The game also introduces propeller mario and ice mario. Propeller mario shoots into the air when you shake the wii remote and ice mario can freeze enemies into blocks of ice that can then be picked up and thrown. A new bonus that is somewhat useless is the blue mushroom that makes mario tiny. Mario can now go down little pipes to bonus levels and can also jump higher with longer hang time. However when you are hit as tiny mario you die and as such it’s hardly a satisfying bonus to collect (also you can jump on enemies to kill them which is so frustrating).

Pow blocks abound and all the things you thought you should be able to do you now can, like stomping on blocks from above something not seen since Mario 2: 6 golden coins for the Gameboy.

As with all wii games Mario really comes into it’s own with the muliplayer functionality. Up to four people can play at any one time and the developers seem to have really made the game so that this experience is genuinely fun. You can work together but you also get in each other’s way so it’s not really harder or easier with more people but it is a lot more fun. You can pick up your team mates and throw them, or eat them up with your Yoshi (by the way Yoshi is amazing and he eats EVERYTHING).

The best thing about the multiplayer is what I call the “little-brother-bubble”. So many fights and frustrations come from playing co-op games with siblings that just aren’t very good. No matter how flawless you are in your excecution you’ve got to start all over again because your brother (or even girlfriend) can’t keep up. NSMBW gives you the ability to float in a bubble by simply pressing A anytime you are in a multiplayer game. While in the bubble you cannot be hurt by enemies and you cannot collect items. You can also travel through walls meaning that if you are about to fall into lava or just can’t get past a tricky bit you can bubble your way through it. The catch is you need to be popped by a team mate to resume playing. If all players are in bubbles then you all lose a life because there’s no one to pop you.

Penguin Slides

Finally if you loose all your lives you aren’t transported back to the start of the world, rather you resume from where you left off and are given 5 more lives with which to work.

The worst part of NSMBW is the length. I’ve been playing it for about a week with different people and therefore 3 different save files and already on two of the files I’m up to world 8. Its a game that seems (too) easy to finish but hard to complete with 100%. But I don’t want to go back and complete it 100% I just want a game that lasts at least to the end of my summer holidays.

8/10 if you buy it.

9.5/10 to play your mate’s copy on a casual basis.

On one occasion she vomited all over a laptop. Awesome. (Cat vomit smells like catfood. Catfood smells like ass.)

The whole point of this is that Flick now has a facebook page, much to the delight of all who know her but felt that a real life friendship just wasn’t enough. The coolest part of Flick’s facebook account is that her religion is listed as Christian-Purrsbyterian. Punishingly good.

Anyway Flick’s pretty cool and I’m her friend on facebook. MLIA.

So lazy Flick

Next time I think I’ll talk about the new Mario game for Wii rather than a digital profile of an animal… Yeah that might actually be interesting.

Preparation for the event was fierce. I scoured all possible cinemas to secure the best available seats. With most of the Greater Union Cinemas almost sold out my lady friend and I decided we’d try our luck at Hoyts Broadway where seating was unallocated, we’d just have to get there early.

Once tickets were secured I had to make sure I didn’t miss a second of the adrenaline fueled, hallucination inducing action. To this end I had a nap from about 9-10pm. ACTION PACKED NAP!!!

I was driven to the cinema by my lady friend’s lady friend (don’t ask) and we lined up in what was a rather underwhelming line. I had expected wall to wall 14 year old girls squealing at the prospect of seeing Bella mope around with Charlie waiting for Edward to come back. I guess this has a lot to do with Twilight’s fading popularity. A really unfunny person would say that the franchise is in it’s twilight! But not me, I wouldn’t say that, I’m way funnier than that…

Seats were awesome, as was the giant bucket ‘o slurpee I had and the delicious vanilla choc top (best flavour of choc top for sure)

So the film itself is actually really good. The first film was awesomely crap. But this is half genuinely awesome and half genuinely crap. The way I viewed it was the bits that stayed true to the novel were crap and the bits that screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (who also wrote the first film and also a couple of OC episodes) embellished were either hillarious, compelling or both.

Director Chris Weitz can pick a good script but really can’t direct. The amount of shots that didn’t add to the plot and were just plain dizzying was absurd. Beyond this he really can’t create any sort of tension and in a film that is based around the sexual tension of the two leads that’s pretty poor.

As for the acting. Well there were only about 2 or 3 awkward “wow you really need acting lessons” moments. Thankfully these all occurred when Taylor Lautner had his shirt off.

Kristen Stewart got paid to touch that

In fact, Taylor had is top off an awful lot in the film. At times it was actually gratuitous. I mean it was like a female actor walking around in a bikini for 80% of a film aimed at teenage guys and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Due to the incredibly thin story line (Edward leaves, Bella pines) I think this is the closest thing to a porno that’s hit cinemas since “Zac and Miri make a porno” even that was more of a romantic comedy with nudity. Bad acting, no real plot, and lots of toplessness; sounds kinda like a pornographic film to me. The only thing saving it I guess were the awesome production features.

Speaking of which the wolves looked amazing. Beyond that the visions of Edward were actually really cool as they dispelled into smoke.

In all this was a really enjoyable film that you should see for a laugh. Don’t take it seriously and you’ll enjoy yourself. Now I’m going to catch up on some sleep.

Oh and check out http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2738615.htm for what Margaret and David had to say about it.

It is at this stage that the powers that be have decided to throw me out into prac. I failed my prac. I hated my prac. I’ll be doing another prac at the end of semester one 2010 to make up for this one that I failed. Then I’ll do another prac at the end of 2010 to make up for the prac I missed at the end of semester one 2010.

Basically I don’t know if I still want to be a teacher. I could get a degree in business? Learn about money and stuff. Then make a bunch of money. However, I do like the idea of lots of holidays, and recently it was said to me that: “There are only two professions worth doing in this world: nursing and teaching”. Maybe I should become a nurse…

But I’m let to feel a little let down. I mean it’s natural that I would want to blame someone for this. I don’t like failing. And I turn my anger to the University of Sydney Education department.

In my three years of study I’ve had one day’s worth of observation. That’s one, single, day. So out of six semesters I’ve observed actual teaching on one occasion. During that day I saw a top year 8 class in three periods.

With this hefty experience of the real world under my belt I travailed out into the real world of teaching and was promptly crushed. I really believe that the first prac should just be observing. Perhaps even put out with students doing their second or third prac to observe how they deal with classes. It’s so different to actually having your own class. It’s all the awful parts of teaching without any of the good bits. I saw no reward from my toils. Hours each night wasted as the kids just plain refused to learn.

I’m obviously doing something wrong. I need to figure out what. But kicking me out of my prac placement isn’t going to help me figure that out. Thanks a lot De La Salle Revesby Heights. Why don’t you go pray to St. John a bit more? I’m sure he’s heaps responsive to your prayers, being dead and all.

Anyway now I’m just getting bitter. As the great sage and poet Mandy Moore once sang in my favourite song from the film A Walk to Remember: “Someday we’ll know if love can move a mountain, Someday we’ll know why the sky is blue.”

So for the past six months or so I’ve been playing Pokemon Fire Red version on my Game Boy Advance. Up until the last fortnight I hadn’t really put much effort into it at all.

In the last two weeks I’ve been paying it special attention, making sure that I catch them as my quest and train them as my cause.

SUPER HAPPY FUN TIMES

So tonight I finished Pokemon Fire Red, the first time I’ve ever finished a pokemon game. My line-up was as follows:

Blastoise, Pidgeot, Raichu, Gloom, Graveller, Flareon.

I rock!

This is kind of how I’m feeling at the moment. I really don’t like prac right now. The students are oppositional, they are disobedient. I try to punish them and they don’t turn up to their punishments. I actually considering calling 20 parents because no boy would turn up to a detention today. I can imagine what calling them would be like: “who are you?” “Do you even know my son?” “He says you got it wrong.”

For part two of Why don’t I like prac? I’m going to focus on the boys rather than on me. I’m teaching at an all boys’ Catholic school in Sydney’s southwest. The boys are “average” intelligence and ability meaning they are as dumb as doorposts. They refuse to do any work that you set for them. They are oppositional and don’t respond terribly well to authority. The boys know the ins and outs of the school’s punishment system much better than I do and aren’t afraid of it at all.

I don’t know the schools punishment system very well. I’m not sure the best way to discipline these boys.

The school also has a reward system based on school merits. Five school merits and the kids get a super merit at assembly. They respond to these threats of punishment and reward quite well. However, it makes me think of them as dogs. Good kids get treats; bad kids get discipline. Why should I have to dangle a merit above their head to make them do work? Why does all the motivation at this school come from external factors? And above all, why should I care about the learning of a kid who is actively opposed to learning? Why does he bother turning up to school at all?

I feel that the school I’m at trains kids rather than teaching them. Plato said that he never let education get in the way of his learning. I say school is where learning goes to die.