Noddy management

Following the news that Enid Blyton has been voted the UK's favourite writer, comes a confession from a senior academic that her own management style was forged by Blyton. In addition to detailing some of the lessons she has learned from Blyton, she analyses some key characters:

"The Famous Five is the ideal Harvard Business team. There's Anne the administrator; Julian the born leader with his determined chin and propensity to issue orders; Dick the playful networker; George the maverick you would place somewhere in Development. But don't delegate to Timmy the dog: he can't be trusted. "

How to be a thrifty gardener

The Guardian has published a useful two part series on credit crunch gardening:

• How to be a thrifty gardener
• The propagation game

These are extracts from The Thrifty Gardener: how to create a stylish garden for next to nothing by Alys Fowler. It says "Gardening has never been more fashionable - or more expensive. And yet you don't have to spend a fortune. Nothing could be easier or more satisfying than making your own planters, compost or even weedkiller".

How noses are calibrated

The company I work for actually helps people calibrate their sense of smell! In case you're wondering if this is a wind-up, let me explain : in the gas industry, the gas doesn't smell until an odorant is added. The best piece of equipment for testing if the right amount of odorant has been added is still the human nose - until a 'better' alternative is developed. And like all equipment, even the human nose needs calibrating for this work. The BBC recently featured the labs where this happens.

Two endings and a new beginning

Some people fear that the world may end tomorrow (10 September) when the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland gets turned on. [ BBC Radio 4 is offering special programmes about it all week, and has a Big Bang Day on the actual day of activation].

OR

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper (T.S. Eliot The Hollow Men, 1925).

OR

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new! (Revelation 21)

Wordling Infusion

This is the result of pasting the first-ever post on this blog into Wordle. Click on the image above to enlarge it.

Back to Church Sunday 2008

Sunday 28th September 2008 is Back to Church Sunday 2008. The churches in Loughborough have their own Back to Church Sunday website. The national website has various resources including prayers.

Have you Wordled yet?

Google is a web application that is now regularly used as a verb. Another web tool that looks set to follow this trend is Wordle. It generates “word clouds” from text that you provide, giving greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Then the clouds can be tweaked with with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The resulting images can be printed or shared via the Wordle gallery.

A number of Christian bloggers have created Wordles from Bible books and passages, for example:
* The Beatitudes (which Emmanuel Church studied over the summer)

* Philippians (forthcoming sermon series at Holy Trinity, Leicester)

Pizza topping in peril

Pizza toppings will be a little less tasty in future now that the anchovy has been highlighted as a "fish to avoid" by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). More info here:

• Over pizzas, over salads but now overfished: demise of the anchovy
  
• In praise of ... little fishes
  
• Read the MSC's updated Advice On Fish Sustainability


• The FISHONLINE website

If you have any tins of anchovies left in the storecupboard you might want to try Janssen's Temptation (scroll down for recipe) - a classic that everyone should try at least once!

And now for the good news...

Information specialist Phil was recently asked "Are there any sites that provide good news? I'm fed up of reading about miserable information!". So he's pulled together a number of good news resources. He concludes his listing by saying: "Take a moment out to read one or two of them. Smile at someone you don't know. And, just for a moment, count how many blessings you have".

A new way to bin the bags

Following on from the journalist's month without plastic, I have given more thought to this myself. Although I take re-usable bags to the supermarket, there’s still the problem of fresh produce and the need to get it weighed and priced (the alternative would be to stick a price label on every single potato or cherry tomato!).

I was therefore thrilled to find, in one of my favourite catalogues, that someone has come up with Weigh & Store Bags. These are reusable bags which mean that "instead of using the polythene ones provided at the fruit and veg counter, [you can] place fresh produce inside Weigh & Store Bags and proceed through the checkout. Back home, you can place these breathable mesh bags and their contents straight in the fridge or cupboard”. An alternative from the funky Onya Bags company is Onya Weigh. This pouch contains 4 strong bags made from tulle (each of which will carry up to 2 kilos of produce).

In both cases the bags are lightweight (so they don’t add to the weight on the scales) and see-through (so the sales assistants can easily see the contents).

Charles Wesley's secret code diary cracked

A priest / academic has unlocked the 270-year-old secrets of Charles Wesley's coded diary, throwing light on the turbulent relationship that he had with his brother John in the early years of the Methodist movement they founded. The cipher for Wesley's journals, partly written in a personal shorthand (when he wrote about sensitive subjects, such as his disputes with John Wesley over the future direction of Methodism), were cracked by the Rev Professor Kenneth Newport. Newport, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Liverpool Hope University, spent nine years transcribing the thousand page hand-written manuscript held in Manchester.

19 September is Tea Time

Whether it’s lapsang souchong or a mug of builders’, it’s hard to beat a nice cup of tea. Unless it’s a nice cup of tea that could help make a fairer world...

On 19 September, Christian Aid is asking people across the world to get together, put the kettle on and help give poor communities the chance of a better future.

• Order your free event pack

• Download free resources – including delicious cake recipes

• Send out your invitations

August means animal stories in the news

Bird-feeding may be banned in Berwick-upon-Tweed but there have been more positive wildlife- and animal-related stories in the media recently:

• A night out with tag-team hedgehog
• Military penguin becomes a 'Sir'
• Wild dolphins tail-walk on water
• Three-legged dog loves train ride
• Animal magnetism

As time goes by...

Infusion was originally known as Emmanuel & St. Mary's 20s & 30's Group when it started in 1996. We changed our name in 2000 for a number of reasons, including the fact that a number of members had become "30ish+" with the passage of time.

So it was interesting to see (via a friend's link on Facebook) that Twenty Thirty, a Christian organisation in the United Kingdom that organises social events for people in their twenties and thirties (whether single, couples or married), has recently expanded to include a wider age range and renamed itself Twenties Thirties Forties.

This blog has previously noted the Looking at life.. ministry from Care for the Family, aimed at supporting "20 and 30-somethings". At least their name will be able to stay the same even the age range moves on...

Magnetic Cattle

Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same way? Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction, reports the BBC. The scientists researching this phenomenon have concluded it is that the cattle and other stock are aligning themselves with the earth's magnetic field.

I had to check the date on this story, as it was funny enough to be an April fool's wind-up. What the article doesn't say is whether kangaroos, with their lower greenhouse gas emissions exhibit the same behaviour.

The joy of simply faffing around

How do you spend a Bank Holiday Monday? Visiting relatives or tacking the garden or DIY? As this is the last Bank Holiday until Christmas, maybe you should just take it easy? Read the Guardian on The joy of simply faffing around or perhaps catch up on some sleep....

What should Christians make of the Olympics?

As the 2008 Olympics draw to an end on a Sunday, you may be interested to read a thoughtful blog post on What should Christians, especially those who are non-sports fans, make of the Olympics?

Animal Olympics

I had been hoping that the 2008 Olympics might be an excuse for the BBC to show again two "documentaries" from earlier Games. In the run-up to the 2004 Olympic Games, BBC One's Animal Games proved to be a big hit with viewers. "Athletes" from the mammal, fish, bird, herptile (reptiles and amphibians) and insect worlds competed in human events. All competitors were scaled to human size to allow them to compete against each other. This was followed by the Animal Winter Olympics (which doesn't appear to be available as a DVD) in 2006.

The programmes were light-hearted but informative. An online photo gallery from Animal Games is available.

How splendidly ripping!

Enid Blyton is the UK's best-loved writer, according to a survey conducted for the Costa Book Awards. The popularity of children's writers continues throughout the top 50, with Roald Dahl, JK Rowling, Beatrix Potter, CS Lewis, AA Milne and Dr Seuss included. There's been a lot of media coverage (I caught the BBC, Guardian and Radio 4). Commentators tended to agree that it was "simpler" to write about childhood when Blyton was publishing than now.

Revisit your childhood reading at the Enid Blyton Society and EnidBlyton.net, and see also Nostalgia Publishing.

Virtual Water: How Much Do You Think You Use?

The scale of British water consumption and its impact around the world is revealed in a new report today, which warns of the hidden levels needed to produce food and clothing, reports the Guardian.

The UK has become the sixth largest net importer of water in the world, the environment group WWF will tell a meeting of international experts in Stockholm, with every consumer indirectly responsible for the use of thousands of litres a day. Only 38% of the UK's total water use comes from its own resources; the rest depends on the water systems of other countries, some of which are already facing serious shortages.