Search engine gives revenue to good causes

I've just come across a new online search engine with a social purpose, which gives 50 per cent of its advertising raised revenue to good causes. Each search using VeoSearch.com generates income from advertising, half of which is then donated to sustainable development projects, promoted on the website. Users of the search engine also have the opportunity to set up an account for free and nominate causes to benefit.

The search engine does not perform its own searches, but uses Google, Yahoo, Ask and Exalead. The search engine has already dealt with more than 17,900,000 searches and has over 33,000 members, generating more than £19,900 for good causes. Visit www.VeoSearch.com to start searching - the website also provides more information about how it works, the charities that benefit and how to set up a personal account.

deovox: an update

Damaris soft-launched deovox, a free audio devotional aimed at helping people get back into regular bible study, in February. Following feedback, the developers have come up a number of improvements. The intention is to provide a devotional guide for use by individuals, enabling them to benefit from each episode more than once. Damaris aim to release two episodes a week: these will provide a resource that can be used throughout the week and the devotional guides will help people to get the most out of each episode. Each episode contains a wealth of material that guides the listener deep into each passage.

The next episode has just been released, with a daily devotional guide. You can sign up for the Deovox Update email which will link the two recent episodes and provide daily devotions for the following week, or just check out the deovox website.

Of First Importance blog

Of First Importance is a daily devotional blog: each day it will provide a thoughtful quote to help you remember what's "of first importance": the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are options for email delivery (see right hand side of blog) and RSS feeds.

WebWatch: Manage your money

Christianity magazine has a regular WebWatch column, with themed reviews of Internet sites. This month the theme is Manage your Money:

"Over the last couple of months we’ve been analyzing how the Web can help Christians with their stewardship of all God has given. We’ve spoken about stewardship of your time and your thoughts, but we haven’t yet addressed the area most people instinctively think of when they hear the word “stewardship”... Your money.

So let’s talk about it now. How do we use our finances effectively in God’s service? How do we even get them under control? Can the Internet really help? Well, yes it can, in a mind-boggling variety of ways."

Dilemmas of a time traveller

This week's CultureWatch from Damaris includes an article on the moral dilemmas raised in a recent episode of Doctor Who: Dilemmas of a time traveller. The themes of choices, responsibility, suffering, morality, and ethics are considered in the light of the Doctor's decisions in episode two of the current series 'The Fires of Pompeii’. The article concludes with some recommended reading for a fuller treatment of the problem of suffering.

Walk to Work Day

Did you know that today was Walk to Work Day? The Walking Works campaign from Living Streets aims to encourage people to leave their car keys on the sideboard and walk all or some of their way to work. Read the musings of the BBC website on the topic.

If you only found out about the Walk to Work Day after the event, you can still take part in the Step into Spring Pedometer Challenge which kicks off that day and runs for four weeks. If you keep track of the number of steps you walk, how much calories you burn and how much carbon you save, then send in your results - you could win a digital camera! Click here to find out more.

Dr Who Tardis and Dalek knitting patterns

Instructions for knitting your own Dr Who Tardis and/or Dalek

(courtesy of a tip in the weekly newsletter from www.moneysavingexpert.com).

World Book & Copyright Day (April 23)

Since 1996, World Book and Copyright Day has been celebrated on 23 April to honour books, widely recognized as invaluable cornerstones of societies’ educational, cultural and social systems.

23 April is a symbolic date for world literature for on this date and in the same year of 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors such as Maurice Druon, K.Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.

It was therefore a natural choice for UNESCO's General Conference to pay a world-wide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone, and in particular young people, to discover the pleasure of reading and gain a renewed respect for the irreplaceable contributions of those who have furthered the social and cultural progress of humanity.

Blake's "Jerusalem" banned

If your nationality means that you celebrate / note St George's Day, then you may be saddened to hear that Blake's Jerusalem has been banned by a leading British church.

The Patron Saints website is a useful resource should you want to find out a bit more about St George, or indeed the other British patron saints.

Health warning: This blog post was written by a Scot, who is unimpressed by both St George and Jerusalem.

Internet Evangelism Day (April 27)

April 27 is Internet Evangelism Day - a resource for churches, Bible Colleges, groups and individuals because …
... over 1 billion people use the Web
... the Internet is changing the world
... God is using the Web to transform lives
... “We’d love to use the Web for outreach, but we don’t know how”

Their website carries a wide range of resources explaining how best to build church websites, write blogs, create video clips, and interact in many other ways with the worldwide web community, to share the gospel. Includes a free e-book on web evangelism.

Taxonomy of biscuits

Following on from the news that chocolate teacakes are a cake rather than a biscuit, here's a link to a taxonomy of biscuits from the NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown.com website. Biscuits explained expounds on the difference between biscuits, cakes, crackers, chocolate covered biscuits, and chocolate bars.

If you are still not sure how to spot biscuits, here are three clues:

• They come in packets
• They have two sides
• You could dunk them in tea

Dawkins - and the Doctor and the art critic

Just had to blog this news item that combines a defence against secularism in art (from a non-Christian), Richard Dawkins, and Doctor Who!

The writer defends Christian art - and the Bible as literature - against attack from leading humanists such as Dawkins. He says: "we should celebrate the Christian legacy in western art and society - and stop the Dawkins army from denying us the possibility of drawing inspiration from faith to create the art of the future".

The Doctor Who angle is the news that Professor Richard Dawkins is to appear in the current series as himself. The article pointed me to Outpost Gallifrey, described as "the most popular Doctor Who fan website on the Internet and homepage of online Doctor Who fandom".

Ultimate Bible Quiz

The Bible is a rich and wonderful compilation of 66 different writings, written in many different genres by several different authors. Nearly everyone has read or heard some part of the Bible, but do you know the Old Testament from the New? Do you know the Biblical characters and events? Take this quiz to see!

"I'll have those trousers in Earl Grey, please"

I received the new Craghoppers catalogue over the weekend and noted two features of interest: that one of this season's colour choices for clothing is Earl Grey, and that Craghoppers are now including a small range of Fairtrade clothing (trousers, shirt and fleece) - although this is only a option for menswear.

Competition: win a green Spring Clean

If you keep meaning to use "greener" products for household cleaning, then why not enter a competition to win all you need? Ecover are giving away 25 Ecover Household Starter Packs (containing new Bathroom Cleaner, Multi Surface Cleaner and SquirtEco, plus 2 bamboo cleaning cloths) and 10 runner-up prizes of Healthy Homes Booklet. The Ecover website also offers lots of tips on greener living.

New Infusion Programme online

The Infusion Summer 2008 programme is now available on the website.

Pudding Party

The Infusion Pudding Party took place in Loughborough last night when we sampled a variety of puds - from the calorie-laden to the healthy & fruity.

Here's my recipe for Cranachan:

Ingredients: 2 tablespoons (medium) oatmeal, ½ pint whipping cream, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 8oz raspberries (fresh, frozen or canned).

Method: Toast oatmeal, then cool. Whisk cream and sugar until thick, then fold in oatmeal and raspberries. Chill for at least two hours before serving.

What was going on outside Emmanuel Church?

Read the Emmanuel Church overview of The Big Picture - a world record breaking community picture built on the grass outside Emmanuel Church in March 2008. Part of Hope 08, it comprised almost 500 panels, each painted by a community group, school or individual. In total around 2,000 people took part in painting the boards, which together made up an 80 metre long and almost 8 metre high picture of the Easter story!

Coffee and Teacakes

A couple of stories that caught my eye this week - expensive coffee and cheaper chocolate teacakes:

• Animal dung coffee at £50 a cup: Fancy a cup of an exclusive coffee? What if it is a gourmet coffee blended from animal droppings and currently being sold at a London department store for £50 per cup. Two rare coffee beans (Jamaican Blue Mountain and the Kopi Luwak bean) are used to create Caffe Raro which is thought to be the most expensive cup of coffee in the world. What makes it unique is that the Kopi Luwak beans - which sell for £324 a kilogram - are eaten, then passed, by the Asian palm civet (a cat-like mammal).

• Teacake set to cost taxman £3.5m: Chocolate teacakes have been wrongly classified as a biscuit for two decades and the European Court of Justice has ruled that the UK Treasury must pay out £3.5m as a result. Customers paid VAT on Marks and Spencer teacakes for 20 years before the authorities accepted the product was a cake, which does not command VAT.

What's in your fridge?

As a result of spending six months in Australia I keep some food items in my fridge (including jam and some fruits) that I never did before - although the need to keep food items cool is less of an issue when you grow up in Scotland! Today the Guardian has an article on What should go in your fridge? discussing the fact that - with the trend towards larger and larger fridges - many of us store an increasing range of foods. The writer talked to a wide range of culinary and food hygiene experts to find out what we should and shouldn't keep in our fridges. It makes for interesting reading!

What's the meaning of green?

In the 1970s Kermit the Frog sang about the hardship of being green (video of its not easy being green) but now the term "green" is now used universally. An article on the BBC website ponders What is the meaning of 'green'? noting that retailers, politicians, High Street firms (especially supermarkets) have jumped on the bandwagon, and an entire industry of smaller green firms has been developed.

RSS feeds from Emmanuel and St. Mary's

The Emmanuel and St. Mary's website has recently launched RSS feeds to keep you updated with changes to the site. If you're new to the world of RSS then it's an easy and free way of getting only the latest news from a website delivered to you (there's more from Wikipedia HERE or from the BBC help pages HERE).

If you do use an RSS reader, Google Sidebar or similar, this is a new and easy way of getting the very latest news from Emmanuel or St. Mary's quickly and easily. Click on the links below to be taken to the special feeds:

• Emmanuel
• St. Mary's
  

Sowing, reaping, keeping

Laurence Singlehurst is Director of Cell UK and former Director of Youth With A Mission, England. Laurence visited Holy Trinity, Leicester last Sunday and preached on 1 John 2:12-17 in the morning and evening; you can listen to his morning and evening sermons online.

In 2006 IVP published Laurence's book Sowing, reaping, keeping: People sensitive evangelism. This book is a book to "help you tell others about Jesus". It takes principles from the parable of the sower and explores what it means to "sow the seed of faith, to reap the harvest when the seed of faith has taken root and to nurture the faith as it grows'.

By offering biblical and straightforward steps, the author provides a helpful framework on deepening encounters and relationships with people, and then guides us through ways in which we (as individuals, groups or churches) can go about each of these stages, seeking God's help at every turn.

Doctor Who does books

In the Year of Reading, its good to see that the new series of Doctor Who (which kicks off on Saturday) features two episodes set in a library and one which features Agatha Christie's ten-day disappearance and provides viewers with the opportunity to "spot how many titles of Christie novels are hidden in the dialogue".

A two-part story Silence in the Library and River's Run apparently promises "an abandoned library, moving shadows, the gruesome Nodes, and the horrifying Data Ghost" - the Radio Times reviewer says the latter is "possibly the most spine-chilling scene I've ever seen, anywhere".

10 stories that could be April Fools... but aren't

From the BBC: 10 stories that could be April Fools... but aren't

However, the Guardian caught me out with this: Deconstructed Delia