15 articles about Life

Call it what you like – the hymn re-write movement; re-imaginings and adaptations of old hymns or simply putting old hymns to new music. This is a trend that’s here to stay. The only surprise, really, is that it went away for a few years. Here is a little introduction to some of the groups making great music. There are also lots of free tracks, which doesn’t hurt.

Indelible Grace

This is a kind of super-group – albums are composed of hymns sung by various artists. The production quality is excellent – this is hymns done right.

• Get the full picture by visiting the Indelible Grace website
• Listen to one of their live concert albums, The Hymn Sing: Live In Nashville
• Get Arise My Soul: An Indelible Grace Sampler free

Red Mountain Music

RMM is a music group formed by members and friends of Red Mountain Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

• Here’s Red Mountain Music’s website
• Download the B-side collection – a bunch of songs that aren’t on their albums.
• Get Help my unbelief free

The Gospel Coalition

Now, the Gospel Coalition do a lot more than music, but nevertheless, this is well worth a listen.

• Sing Them Again: The Gospel Coalition Hymn Sing Sampler
• Zac Hicks has released Lord, I Believe for free, as a communion hymn, via Justin Taylor

Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith, of Indelible Grace, has released a lot of his own albums of hymns, available to listen to on Bandcamp

Sojourn Music

Sojourn Music have also released some lovely work on Bandcamp including their album, The water and the blood

Sandra McCracken

Sandra McCracken, of Indelible Grace, has a sampler of her New old hymns on Noisetrade and plenty of her own music.

Page CXVI

Page CXVI are dedicated to making hymns accessible and known again. Their work doesn’t seem to have the production finesse of some of other groups here (is it the vocals that feel flat?) but they’re worth checking out.

Ordinary Time

From their website: Ordinary Time is an independent folk acoustic trio rooted in the Christian tradition. The band’s oeuvre seamlessly weaves the hymns of generations past with their own new songs – often indistinguishably – producing a sound that ranges from bluegrass-tinged Americana to sacred harp hymn arrangements.

Mexicoco is the brainchild of my talented wife, Lisa Kember. Lisa shows groups of people the techniques and skills they need to make their own chocolates. Lisa also makes incredible chocolates with exquisite flavours influenced by Mexican cuisine. They’re amazing – you’ve never tasted anything quite like them!

Have you heard of chocolate tempering? It’s the art of melting and setting chocolate so that it’s beautiful, crisp and glossy. If you’ve ever tried to make your own chocolates, you’ve probably already realised that chocolate is naturally dull and squishy. There’s an art to making it beautiful and tasty, but you can learn it, and Lisa can teach you how it’s done.

If you would like to learn how to make professional-looking chocolates with fillings that taste really good, you can.

Have I piqued your interest? Take a look at the Mexicoco website. We’re looking for shops to distribute Lisa’s hand-made chocolates. Can you help? Please get in touch!

Praise the Lord! We’re expecting this black and white smudge will be born in April.

I shall be getting baptised this Sunday. I’ve been a Christian for many years, but haven’t yet done this. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate my faith and the way that God has made me right with Him. The symbol of washing away my sins, leaving me clean and unblemished is a powerful one. Baptism is also clearly necessary. Jesus is baptised, and we are told to be baptised too.

Job replies to Eliphaz, who is chastening him for lamenting his birth after all Job’s sons and daughters were killed:

How forceful are upright words!
But what does reproof from you reprove?
Do you think that you can reprove words,
when the speech of a despairing man is wind?

(Job 6:25 – 26)

I read this as: Despairing people say all kinds of things. Don’t correct the theology of what they say – that doesn’t help them. Instead, be compassionate and comfort them instead.

Having a technically orientated brain, like mine, makes the first option so much more inviting. Telling friends what they should think is so much easier than humbling myself to walk alongside them and support them.

I love science. It provokes a sense of awe and wonder in me that is often not prevalent in my day-to-day life. Seeing the intricacies of Creation and – better yet – understanding something about them gives me a thrilling feeling.

I’m very grateful to the teachers who have demonstrated the finer points of physics, chemistry and biology to me over the years. So it’s with a sense of frustration that I watched this movie from the Training and Development Agency for Schools. It shows a really cool chemistry experiment called Screaming jelly babies in which a (poor unfortunate) jelly baby is dropped into a test-tube of hot potassium chlorate. The sugar in the jelly is, um, “rapidly oxidised” which is a scientific way of saying that it fizzes, burns, glows and smokes until there’s not a lot left. It’s a fantastic demonstration, but, hang on, what’s that the teacher says as he’s heating the test-tube?

…it’s getting really hot. Probably not just hundreds of degrees, but nearer thousands of degrees. The powder is starting to turn into a liquid…

Thousands of degrees? I don’t think so. The melting point of the potassium chlorate is 356 °C. The Bunsen burner flame itself tops out at about 1500 °C. Heck – if the temperature rose much above 800 °C, the borosilicate glass of the test-tube would start to melt!

The point I’m making is that if we hold teachers to high standards of accuracy, we should hold people who teach teachers to even higher standards.

…Is that there’s no back-door. If I forget the passwords, I’m stuck. I wouldn’t change them for the world – they’re both great pieces of software that I use lots. It’s just that my sieve-for-brain can’t remember the Access Codes. I end up with old Truecrypt volumes, file containers and Keepass databases lying all over the place. Still, they (clearly) don’t contain anything important, because I haven’t missed them.

Our thirteen-week-old daughter had a very slightly dicky tummy, which was enough to make us wonder what the cause might be. One of the first things we needed to rule out was dodgy water in her bottles.

To make up the bottles, we boil freshly drawn water in our kettle. We leave it to cool for about half an hour (boiling water in plastic bottles can apparently release more Bisphenol A) before pouring it into freshly sterilised bottles, which are then sealed.

I remember advice for campers indicating that water should be boiled for some time to kill pathogens. Whilst our kettle boils the water thoroughly, it only maintains a rolling boil for a few seconds. The question is, does this kill the nasty microbes?

According to Survival Topics and The Backpacker’s Field Manual by Rick Curtis

“Boiling is the most certain way of killing all micro-organisms. According to the Wilderness Medical Society, water temperatures above 160°F (70°C) kill all pathogens within 30 minutes and above 185°F (85°C) within a few minutes. So in the time it takes for the water to reach the boiling point (212°F or 100°C) from 160°F (70°C), all pathogens will be killed, even at high altitude.”

So that’s a yes.

An interesting aside: Reading about bacteria lead me to this article discussing how long bacteria survive on dry surfaces. The answer that you didn’t really want to know is that depending on the bacteria, they can live for days, weeks, months or years. So break out the anti-bac surface spray!

Oh – and our daughter’s dodgy tummy was caused by her starting to teethe. You live and learn.

We rented a flat in Dunfermline through KLS from October 2006 to May 2007.

Good points:

• Efficient at signing us up and taking our money
• Eventually repaid deposit in full

Bad points:

• Two month notice period. (It’s in the contract, but one month is almost universal at other agencies.) Don’t be caught out.
• Unconcerned by faulty fittings (light fittings, oven) and lack of smoke alarm
• Require written proof that all utility bills and council tax are paid up to leaving date. This is unusual, as the utility contracts are not tied to the property, but to us. The council had to make a special exception for us and send us a screenshot of their payment database.

Conclusion: Avoid if possible.

“Don’t worry, there’s no alcohol in this red wine sauce – it’s cooked.”

Heard that before? It’s the accepted wisdom about hot food made with alcoholic drinks. However, all is not as it seems – the accepted wisdom is wrong.

In this article, it’s explained that baking or simmering for 15 minutes leaves 40% of the alcohol. 1 hour of cooking leaves 25% of the alcohol.

The raw taste of the alcohol very quickly fades when the food is heated, but a large amount of alcohol remains.

I’ve just been reading about Xylitol, the sweetener used in Smint, Orbit Complete and lots of other sweets and chewing gums.

It’s a bit like the aspirin of the mint-world. It helps re-mineralise teeth, improves bone-density in osteoporosis sufferers and helps prevent ear infections.

It has no known side-effects, other than a mild laxative effect at high doses. Unless you’re a dog. Even small doses can cause hypoglycæmia (low blood sugar levels) in dogs, which can be fatal.

Charlie says, “Don’t play with matches and keep your Smints off the floor.”

[Updated to add: Paracetamol is equally dangerous to cats. In case you were interested.]

I’ve got stacks and stacks of statements at home, because I thought I had to keep them, for tax assessment purposes, for seven years. I’ve just done a little research, and found that I can recycle rather a lot of that pile.

How long must I retain my records?
If you send in your tax return after the normal filing deadline of 31 January, either because it was issued late or because you sent it back late, you must usually keep your records for 15 months after the date you sent it in. This applies to both online and paper tax returns.

I’ll keep all my P60s too, but that’ll really be a weight off my shelves! (Remember that if you run a business or are self employed, the rules are different.

An article from Ananova about a smokeless cigarette says:

The smokeless and tobacco-free cigarette uses a rechargeable heating coil in a plastic cigarette-sized stick to dispense nicotine without smoke.
…
The company promises that dragging on it releases “a similar taste” to cigarettes without the health issues from tar, arsenic, cadmium and formaldehyde that a normal cigarette contains.

The question raised at the end of the article is, “Which aspect of cigarette smoking is bad?” Is it the addiction to nicotine, or is it the harmful chemicals that go along with that? If it’s the life-threatening effects of tobacco – the carcinogens in the smoke and so on, then if smokers will accept the substitute (and it is affordable) then there is every reason to use a substitute.

The obvious way to reduce smoking related disease is to reduce the number of people who smoke. However, despite plenty of effort from the government, among others, stop-smoking campaigns are not working. We are creatures of habit, and while we dislike change, we are even more hostile to change that’s imposed upon us. This may be borne out by research that shows that approximately 40%-60% of patients with a smoking-related disease still smoke after being told they have a chronic disease¹.

If nicotine is harmful, then this would make it a candidate for proscription. In concentrated form, nicotine is used as an insecticide. It affects the autonomic nervous system and, in small doses, causes the heart rate to rise, causes blood vessels to constrict and increases the feeling of alertness². Nicotine is physiologically addictive. An overdose (i.e. smoking while using nicotine patches or an inhaler) can cause nausea and palpitations. Long term use of nicotine replacements like inhalers and patches may cause cell damage in blood vessels and lungs. Clearly, addiction to nicotine can in itself be harmful.

From the evidence I’ve seen, I think that nicotine replacement therapy is the least-worst option for smokers. Patches and inhalers³ offer significantly reduced health risks compared to smoking, and allow nicotine dependence to be reduced gradually, which is a more effective method of quitting than stopping immediately (cold turkey) but offers health benefits over ramping down cigarette use⁴.

In the end, the effectiveness of any method of quitting must be linked to the determination of the smoker to quit, but encouraging these supportive medicines and technologies must be a Good Thing.

¹ Adjusted smoking prevalence among adults with a smoking-related disease: The third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES-III), United States, 1988-1994

² Nicotine, from answers.com

³ Use of Nicotine Inhalers Could Reduce Rates of Smoking-Related Illnesses ; 2003; Darrell E. Ward

⁴ Mistaken fears over nicotine aids

Also:
Beyond ‘Smoking Kills’

Yesterday, most of the country paused for three minutes at twelve o’clock to remember the victims of the tsunami and earthquake disaster.

UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said: “This is to commemorate the victims of the catastrophe in south east Asia and is in solidarity with the people of the affected countries.” (Source: BBC News)

My thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the disaster, and with those who are part of the relief effort.

Is a three minute silence appropriate? I’m not entirely comfortable with it. The feelings of shock and horror at the scale of the disaster, sympathy for those whose lives have been shattered, and a desire to help are all commendable, but I’m concerned about the motivation behind holding the silence – what are we remembering, and why?

The two-minute silence was first observed in Cape Town, South Africa in 1916 following the publication of South Africa’s first casualty list of World War I. Sir Harry Hands, the Mayor of Cape Town, ordered a two-minute silent pause, to follow the firing of the Noon gun, in commemoration of those lost. (Source: H2G2 (mostly))

In this country, King George V requested a silence to be observed on the anniversary of the inception of the armistice, the cessation of hostilities as a prelude to peace negotiations between the Allies and Germany. He said, “All locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead.”

I don’t think that I am dishonouring those killed in the recent catastrophe by drawing a distinction between the tsunami and the wars in which so many died.

Both war and natural disasters leave a lot of casualties, but I stop in silence once a year in November to remember that those who died in war did so to defend their country, to defend the freedom of my family and me.

The difference is this: Victims of disasters have lost their lives, while those we honour at Armistice Day ceremonies gave their lives.

The wonderful news of the last few weeks is that Lisa and I have got engaged! I proposed on Saturday, 22nd March, and Lisa said yes about 1.2 seconds later, which makes me a very happy man.

So you can see why I’ve been rather busy, these last four weeks.

Never a man to do anything in a hurry, I’ve been surprised at just how quickly everything has fallen into place, now I’ve met the Right Girl.