*Found this article online. This is an excellent article. From : http://www.signsofthetimes.org.au/archives/2004/july/0704article3.shtm*

A Christian’s View of Censorship

Just driving to work one is confronted by pervasive pornographic images. If it offends you, do something about it, says Jason Bolster.

An abused woman flees to her parents. Her estranged husband follows, to become her father’s honoured guest. While dragging her home, a mob surrounds a guesthouse demanding to pack-rape him. Their host says, “Rape his wife and my virgin daughter instead,” and throws them outside. The next morning, her husband hacks her to pieces and sends messengers to parade her throughout the country.”

Should such a story be censored? Read the biblical account in Judges 19 and decide for yourself.

The censorship debate perpetually smoulders at the fringes of consciousness, to periodically ignite with no negligible difference being made. Last year, the New South Wales Education Department excised a book from the Higher School Certificate curriculum because of its objectionable passages and the classification system that had previously applied only to movies, was extended to music. Now younger teenagers need proof of age to buy some CDs.

The church has often been the spearhead for calls for censorship, offering two broad categories of arguments.

Scripture prohibits violence and restricts sexuality to marriage. The material in many books, movies and plays is indecent and immoral. When immorality is portrayed favourably, as it usually is in M-rated movies, Christians rightly protest. But this draws the simplistic counter-argument of: “Then don’t watch what you don’t approve of.” In our free society, we watch what we please, civil libertarians assert, and we should let others do likewise. Accordingly, in the 1980s, the regulators’ role changed from a role of censorship to that of classification.

Rather than censorship, they add vague and misleading adenda to promotional material for movies. For instance, regarding the hit comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral, they wrote: “Mature. Medium-level coarse language.” From this one is apparently supposed to deduce that half the script’s lines begin with expletives and that its humour is built on blatant and socially unacceptable depictions of grooms sleeping with bridesmaids. But in its defence, the system does acknowledge the need to shield children from violent or pornographic material.

But are they really shielded? Certainly not from the temptations. Nobody can avoid almost pornographic billboard depictions exploiting women as sex objects. Such pale in contrast to the Internet, which is impossible to censor. Youth and Pornography in Australia, a study by the Australia Institute in March 2003, found that 84 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls aged 16 or 17 have discovered sexual and violent sites on the Internet by accident. The sites frequently contained simple links from low-level pornography to photographs, stories and live video of “almost any sexual practice imaginable,” including rape, incest and bestiality. According to Institute director Clive Hamilton, “Material that would be given an X-classification if it were on video is easy to get on the Internet by children.”

While finding that 73 per cent of boys and 11 per cent of girls have watched X-rated videos, it says that the material on the Internet is far more degrading to women and violent than is any film.

Nevertheless, there is increasing violence and sexuality in movies, and this is being promoted to children. M-rated films such as Hulk, Spiderman and Batman also have extensive ranges of merchandise—including clothing, toys and fast-food meals for children—advertised during children’s viewing time on television. Trailers for films appear on screens in the foyers of cinemas, depicting violence, swearing and sex.

In professing to prevent children from viewing, proponents of pornography admit it’s a moral hazard. There are well documented cases of films inspiring horrific crimes, but more commonly, viewing changes a viewer’s attitudes.

A study in Developmental Psychology (March, 2003) reveals that men who had most identified with violent television characters as children committed three times as many crimes and were 88 per cent more likely to bash their wives, regardless of their aggression level as children, social status, parents’ aggressiveness or parenting style. Adults, not children, commit sex crimes, murder and other violent acts; when children are culprits, it is almost invariably because their families condoned porn and violence around the home.

This second category of arguments against censorship—that it is detrimental to society—is subtly different from the feminist argument that pornography is detrimental to women. Feminists applaud the TV show Sex in the City for its assertive women who instigate sex; some Christians call it pornographic. This demonstrates the problem with prohibiting pornography—defining it.

Successful lobbying against pornography requires unity, not just of the church, but of all anti-pornography groups. C E Cottle’s research in 1989 identified three categories of attitudes to pornography: religious–conservative, liberal, and anti-pornography feminist. After comparing their “logical and ethical structures . . . and their political and legal implications,” it concluded, the viewpoints are too incompatible to sustain stable and effective political alignments.” In 1988, J Money warned against “adhering” to such viewpoints “as if they were apolitically indisputable” when they are “dangerously political.” Finding a legal definition of obscenity, then, seems almost impossible.

There are, however, some guidelines available. Recent studies at the University of Michigan found that violent television has the most impact on children when: violent characters are of the same sex as the child; the child can sympathise with violent characters; the show is realistic and presents violence as a part of life; and violence was rewarded (that is, depicting “good” police shooting people who “deserve” it is more dangerous than depicting violent criminals who find justice). The important factor, then, is the author’s or playwright’s intent.

Some works portray depravity to revel in it; others underscore a moral point by describing a society that ignores it. The Bible does the latter. The last five chapters of Judges are as essential to Scripture as is Psalm 23. They hold a “mirror” before Jews of the 11th century BC, reflecting their society: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit” (Judges 21:25). Is there a place for such “mirrors” nowadays? If so, how can the law distinguish revelry from prophecy?

I suggest the legal yardstick of “prevailing community standards” be used to persuade. There’s no need to campaign for legislative changes, only to declare that the “prevailing community standard” is higher than the mass media assumes. If Christians and others with moral or social concern were to familiarise themselves with the complaint procedures of their appropriate national authority, and to tell them how the prevailing standards they’re aware of contrast with what they see, hear and read, things might change.

To quote researchers Eysenck and Nias, “Pornography and violence in the media are only symptoms of a much more widespread disease, namely a general loss of values, Christian, moral or social.” Redressing this loss of values might involve crying like the prophets of ancient Israel. It might also involve producing unsavoury “mirrors,” the modem equivalents of Judges 19.

*Found this great site www.christnotes.org esp the 28/1/08 post on “Are you looking for answers in the wrong places.”

Click on WEEKLY WISDOM to get to the site.

Weekly Wisdom

Provided by Christ Notes Bible Search

 Stephen R. Covey– How to use Time wisely from www.bottomlinesecrets.com

he busier our lives become, the harder it is to complete everything we set out to accomplish each day. On the surface, it seems that what keeps us from being more productive is the lack of time. In reality, the problem isn’t our lack of time, but our lack of ability to manage it.

To successfully manage time, you must set priorities and distinguish which tasks are important and must be addressed immediately and which tasks can wait.

HOW TO DETERMINE IMPORTANCE

All activities can be divided into four categories, or quadrants. It’s best to sketch these quadrants on paper by drawing a box and dividing it into four parts. Each quadrant will contain different activities, depending on how you rank them.

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Quadrant I: Activities that are important and urgent. These must be given top priority. Examples: Crises and projects that have deadlines.

Quadrant II: Activities that are important but not urgent. These activities can be delayed at any given time, but deferring them indefinitely leads to problems. Examples: Building relationships, planning ahead, preparing for meetings and important occasions, developing and empowering others, and enjoying recreational activities that lead to self-renewal.

Quadrant III: Activities that appear to be urgent but that aren’t important. They land on your desk and interrupt projects you’re already working on or they are rushed in by a coworker or an assistant. As a result, these activities are often major time killers. Examples: Phone calls, some meetings, interruptions.

Quadrant IV: Activities that are neither urgent nor important. They essentially waste time, but we often indulge in them for escape. Examples: Trivia, gossip, mindless books and TV shows.

Avoid focusing exclusively on Quadrant I, which includes crisis-management activities that can lead to stress and burnout.

Spending too much time on Quadrant III and IV activities, which are not important, demonstrates irresponsibility.

The secret of using your time effectively is to pay careful attention to the activities in Quadrant II. While they are not urgent, they are important and greatly improve your productive capacity.

Spending time on important activities, such as planning, building relationships and preventive maintenance (including maintaining your own physical and spiritual health), reduces the number of crises you have to face and keeps your life on track and in balance.

One particularly important Quadrant II activity is thinking through your goals and identifying the principles of living that you value deeply. The insight gained from considering your long-term needs will make you more willing to say no when you are faced with a low-priority project and more able to say yes to an important task.

IDENTIFY WHAT IS IMPORTANT

We cannot identify what is truly important unless we step back and think at length about our daily routines. Only after considering what life is really all about will you be able to set priorities skillfully.

If you are not sure which roles and values are most important to you, take a few minutes to imagine your 80th birthday party. Visualize all the people close to you, your family, friends and business associates, as they pay tribute to you.

What would you like them to say about your achievements as a spouse, parent, neighbor, teacher and manager? Write down the comments you would like to hear. Use this exercise to prepare your personal mission statement, summarizing the values and lifetime goals to which you aspire. Now you are ready to plan your time by setting priorities in line with your personal mission in life.

PLANNING YOUR TIME

Your objective is to balance your activities so you can devote adequate time to advancing toward your personal goals in each of your roles.

Remember: Your aim is not to do things as quickly as possible. Instead, it is to make sure that you do the right things on time. Those are the tasks that will advance the goals you have set for yourself.

Your planning must allow you to consistently spend time on your most important needs and thus stop you from being diverted by less important things, no matter how urgent they seem.

Plan weekly. Scheduling day by day leads to a focus on urgency and a loss of perspective, so be careful to plan your activities on a weekly basis and concern yourself with people and relationships, not with schedules.

Review your mission statement. Before the week begins, ask yourself what is the most important thing you could do in the coming week for each of your roles in life. Before you put anything else in your schedule, set aside time for each of these activities.

Put first things first. Finding time in your schedule for the important things in life is like fitting odd-shaped rocks into a jar.

If you put in the large rocks first, the jar will hold quite a few of them and still have plenty of room for pebbles, sand and water. But if you start by putting in a lot of the smaller pebbles, there will be no room left for the large rocks.

Similarly, if you arrange your schedule to address the most important tasks first, you will find time for everything else. If you don’t do this, your day will be fully occupied with trivial matters before you get a chance to do the things that truly matter to you.

AND.

This below is some sort of a famous writing from Michael Lee.

When I was small, I have never considered the importance of time.
I would just laze around, watch TV, lie in bed, and play video
games.  As I grew older, I thought about the things that I have
achieved.  To my surprise, I haven’t accomplished a lot. 

I resolved to myself that I will do things that will contribute
to the benefit of mankind.  I studied very hard and learned a
lot of lessons from my experience.  I lack self-confidence
before, so I want to help other people overcome this predicament.

I became obssessed with self-improvement, so I started a
newsletter.  I’m also working on an ebook about persuasion as
I’m writing this.  I want to help anyone in need because it
feels so good to solve other people’s problems.

I urge you now to make the most use of your time.  It may be
joining a fundraising organization.  You may also learn new
skills or crafts.  Create a goal and go for it!

Don’t be a couch potato.  Don’t just sit around and be contented
with the monotonous patterns of your daily activities. 

Do something nice and give all your best to the fulfillment
of a worthwhile endeavor.  It will give you a very deep sense
of happiness and satisfaction.

Some people complain that they don’t have enough time to take
action on their goals.  They have to go to their 9 to 5 job,
then when they go home they feel so tired all they can think
about is watch TV, relax, and sleep.

I’m not saying that leisure is a no-no.  In fact, everyone should
take time out once in a while to recharge and revitalize their
energy.  The key is to have a balanced life.  Set aside a
fraction of your time to carry out your dreams and ambitions.
Reserve some time to establish healthy relationships.

Ok, I hear you.  You’re saying that you really just can’t budget
your time?

Don’t panic.  Here are some time management tips.

1) If possible, do more than one thing at the same time.
 
Exercise while watching your favorite TV show.  Listen to
educational tapes while waiting for the bus. 

Be forewarned! Never do this if it puts you at risk or in
danger; for example, don’t text while driving.

2) Don’t do something later if it can be done concurrently with
an activity at present.

If you’re going to the market to buy some eggs, think of the
other things that you have to purchase so that you don’t have
to return again.

If you have an appointment with the dentist today and you also
have to go to the bank (which is near the dentist’s clinic) at
any day, schedule the two activities on the same day.

3) Be organized in everything that you do.

Put labels on bottles.  Put similar files on one folder.  Make a
list of things you have to do for the day.

You can also use your mind to organize things you have to
remember.  Studies have shown that you could only retain
information that fit between 5 to 9 categories at a time. 
This is the 7+-2 rule of Neurolinguistic Programming.

If you have many things to do, try to group related things together.
You can combine activities such as reading books, listening to
educational tapes, and watching training videos into a category
such as “Education.”  Then you can group swimming, playing
basketball, and paying fees for the gym in a category called
“Fitness.”  Get the picture?

Time is one of our most valuable resources.  Once lost, it can
never be reclaimed.  We must use time wisely for our development
and advancement; so that when we are old, we can look back and
recollect the pleasant memories and deeds that we have achieved.
Time well spent is worth much more than gold.

Proverbs 1:7 

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
       but fools ^[a] despise wisdom and discipline.

Do you know how a bird takes its first flight?

At first I thought that a bird takes its first flight by just flying off the tree just like that in cartoons.

But wrong am I.

A bird takes its first flight by dropping itself off the tree (which is frightening) and it descends first, then it traces its path of descent , then it rises and flies high after that.

(From “Braindancing–Dilip Mukerjea”)

A bird would never have left its nest if it were afraid of falling. This also just happens to be the true learning curve for the human brain, and therefore, in all human endeavors. We cannot expect to become “black belts” instantly.

The brain is a success mechanism; all brains. People in positions of authority should know this and allow for the initial descent as it precedes the inevitable ascent. This natural tendency should of course, be coupled with appropriate encouragement, training and usage in the relevant fields of endeavour.

The first flight of a young bird is equally applicable to the natural learning curve experienced by the human brain.

*Hee hee another geeky article. Alright, let’s not call it geeky, call it interesting…*

Extracted from Scientific American Dec 2006-

By: David Biello

In the ultimatum game, two players are offered a set amount of money. If they agree on how to divvy it up, they will keep that money for thmeselves. If they don’t neither will get anything.

The game pits selfish impulses against social norms of fairness. Researchers at the University of Zurich recently found that damping activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain can set free our selfish side using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which alters the firing of neurons ( propagation of impulses) in the area where it is applied.

Almost 45% of men who experienced TMS on the right side of their prefrontal cortex accepted the most unfair offers in the ultimatum game.

In comparison, about 15% of those whose left side had been stimulated and around 9%  of the control subjects that did not receive the TMS accepted inequitable offers. Science published the findings online on October 5.

Cool site: www.sciam.com/ontheweb

*Maybe I should get hold of one of those TMS thingy and do that to my friends….. and ask for favours, lend me 1 million$$$? nah. you know i’m kidding.*

*I think this shows that human nature can indeed be modified by something external, or a phenomena…..hope my right sided prefrontal cortext isn’t too active.*

Got lots of stuff to type up on including last week’s sermon which I had spent two hours typing on but accidentally deleted it.. and yup more bible study writings coming soon. Heee…

And ya.. Thank God for his grace today as I’ve received an a_a_d ( guess the blanks) at work today…. It’s really by His grace! I’m really encouraged by it, but I’ll put it aside and continue to improve my working modus operando. But I also feel slightly pressurized by it…..

*A really interesting article I found — intriguing. Geeky stuff intrigue me. hawr hawr. The more boring it is the better. Lol*

The Expert Mind/(Become good at anything)

From the Scientific American Journal Aug 2006, By Philip E. Ross

Excerpt:

         Effortful study is the key to acheiving success in chess, classical music, soccer and many other fields. New research has indicated that motivation is a more important factor than innate ability.

         Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well.

(HOW?! Interesting hur)

A man walks along the inside of a circle of chess tables, glancing at each for two or three seconds before making his move. On the outer rim, dozens of amateurs sit pondering their replies until he completes the circuit. The year is 1909, the man is Jose Raul Capablanca of Cuba, and the result is a whitewash: 28 wins in as many games. The exhibition was part of a tour in which Capablanca won 168 games in a row.

How did he play so well, so quickly? And how far ahead could he calculate under such constraints? “I see only one move ahead,” Capablanca is said to have answered, “but it is always the correct one.”

He thus put in a nutshell what a century of psychological research has subsequently established: much of the chess master’s advantage over the novice derives form the first few seconds of thought. his rapid, knowledge-guided perception, sometimes called apperception, can be seen in experts in other fields as well. Just as a master can recall all the moves in a game he has played, so can an accomplished musician often reconstruct the score to a sonata heard just once. And just as the chess master often finds the best move in a flash, an expert physician can sometimes make an accurate diagnosis within moments of laying eyes on a patient.

But how do the experts in these various subjects acquire their extraordinary skills?…blahblahblah…… ( before I get sued for plagiarising..)

• Researchers have found evidence that chess grandmasters rely on a vast store of knowledge of game positions. Some scientists have theorized that grandmasters organize the information in chunks, which can be quickly retrieved from long-term memory and manipulated in working memory.
• To accumulate this body of structured knowledge, grandmasters typically engage in years of effortful study, continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond their competence. The top performers in music, mathematics and sports appear to gain their expertise in the same way, motivated by competition and the joy of victory.

blah blahblah………………( no plagiarising……)

The one thing that all expertise theorists agree on is that it takes enormous effort to build these structures in the mind.The 10-year rule states that it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to MASTER ANY FIELD.

The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that EXPERTS ARE MADE, NOT BORN.

Training trumphs talent.

*end of excerpt*

—————————————————

Wow imagine me staying ten years in my field in order to become an expert in my field????  Piano can consider lar…..started at age 4 but not really an expert though.

But the important thing is to continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond my competence.

So I need to read more and to THINK more in depth of the rationale and way of doing things in my profession.

Oh well.