20 years ago

@ProQuest "tear down the wall" and they did: see news report from Berlin on 9 Nov 1989

Alpha Male: a reporter checks out the Alpha course

Reporter Adam Rutherford of the Guardian is attending an Alpha course. He is writing up his thoughts in The Guardian every Friday - they are also published on the blog as Alpha Male.

Round-up of animal stories

• City birds sing higher than country cousins: birds living in cities sing higher-pitched songs than country-dwelling birds in order to be heard above the urban din.
• Beavers return after 400-year gap: beavers brought over from Norway for a reintroduction programme have been released into the wild in Argyll.
• Wallaby spotted in Cornish garden: a wallaby with a baby joey has been photographed hopping around the back garden of a house in Cornwall.
• Baby anteater finds its feet: a baby anteater has made its public debut at an aquarium in Tokyo.

Ned Flanders: America's best-known Christian?

From Saturday's Times: God is back: How Ned Flanders won the evangelical crusade: the media may portray evangelicals, such as Ned Flanders, as losers, but US-style Christianity has gone global. [Thanks to Andrew for the link]

Students need to know Bible's 'great stories': poet laureate

Children should be taught the Bible throughout their education because it is an "essential piece of cultural luggage" without which they will struggle to fully understand literature, according to the poet laureate, Andrew Motion in the article students need to know Bible's 'great stories'. Try the quiz: How much do you know about the Bible? and see also:

• Interview with Andrew Motion
• Poems which passeth understanding
• The essential Bible stories

The Bible, but not as you know it

BBC website reports on "a wave of radical presentations of the Bible, including a manga version and a Lego gospel". The report concludes by saying "Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this new wave of Bibles is how sympathetic the church is to people messing about with its sacred scriptures, whether in wording or binding, no doubt reasoning that there can be some good in anything that gets people hearing its stories".

But then, didn't Paul say: "preach the word; be ready in season and out of season"? (2 Tim 4:2)

Real Christmas in under 30 seconds

A competition has been launched challenging the public to tell the story of Jesus’ birth in just thirty seconds. It’s the latest campaign from the Churches Advertising Network (whose previous Christmas campaigns included describing the Virgin Mary as having a “bad hair day”).

This year's Christmas campaign includes 30 second ads to run on commercial radio in December, plus a competition for individuals and groups to tell the Christmas story in under 30 seconds. There's a prize of £500 for the best competition entry, plus exposure on YouTube. The impetus for the campaign came from a recent poll which found that only 12 per cent of adults in Britain know the facts of the biblical Christmas story.

Time Travel: Is Life Without Plastic Possible?

Following on from all those reports about what plastic is doing to sea life (cf David Shukman's reports from Midway island in the Pacific), and how it is absorbing toxins which are then introduced into the foodchain, BBC reporter Chris Jeavans has taken on the challenge to spend the month of August without plastic. (Where she fails, she is collecting the evidence and comparing it against her usual amount of plastic, to see how much it is possible to cut down.) Cutting down plastic when you live a wasteful lifestyle already is probably pretty easy, but cutting it out entirely sounds like no mean feat & I'll be interested to read how she gets on.

The disappearing Doctor Who knitting patterns

I blogged on Dr Who Tardis and Dalek knitting patterns last month and today the Guardian - "Hands off the Doctor Who knitting circle" - has alerted me to the fact that a blogger (Mazzmatazz), who created knitting patterns for Doctor Who-related objects and published them under Creative Commons licenses, has been instructed to remove them from her website by the BBC.

On a mystery-related note, this Saturday's episode features the Agatha Christie storyline - don't forget to check out the book titles in the dialogue!

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