Noting that "George Bush's final state of the union address was a hollow triumph: a polished delivery that barely concealed his impotence" Richard Adams says that "In his last big set-piece, President Bush was articulate, relaxed and even funny. If nothing else it will have improved his reputation as a deipnosophist . . . "

Now's there's a word to learn and drop into conversation, deipnosophist.

The Revd Dr Brian Douglas was inducted as rector of St. Paul’s Manuka, here in Canberra, less than a week ago. He will also lecture at St Mark's on sacramental theology, Anglican foundations and interfaith dialogue.

Today’s Canberra Times (29 Jan 08) reports that he and his wife have encountered a severe spate of vandalism. But Graham Downey's article also shares something of Dr Douglas's aspiration for his new ministry and his "openness and acceptance of people with different beliefs. . . . The parish was not theologically conservative."

He was very happy to continue his predecessor's ministry to gay people. "I don't think your sexual orientation excludes you from a relationship with God. Indeed, everybody is welcome here," Dr Douglas said.

Though bound by the official church position that gay people could not be married or ordained, he said that in time, that might change. "There is a difference between personal views and the view of the establishment," Dr Douglas said. "My personal view would be that I have no problem with gay people being ordained."

He identified with the Anglo-Catholic tradition in the Anglican Church but said people from all traditions were welcome at St Paul's.

James and I are happy in our present Parish. But if we did move, it's good to know that there would be a welcome at St. Paul's

Apparently the federal government is to legislate that internet service providers be required to offer a 'clean feed' to their Australian customers, with undesirable sites and content being blocked by default. This has long been Labor policy.

Websites may be blacklisted, rather than all material filtered by the use of keywords and content analysis.

The government will not make use of the feed mandatory, as the only content stream available to Australians. Consumers who do not wish to have their internet content filtered or blocked may opt out of the clean feed system. So this is not censorship so much as mandated availability of a service. Nevertheless there is some fear that people who opt out of the clean feed could be noted by the authorities their personal privacy eroded. Might not this scheme be the thin end of a large wedge?

The coverage of the blocked content might easily be extended. We already have all sorts of censorship, of cinema and publications. Could there be more?

At least the new system should be opt-in, not opt-out. Those responsible for children should be strongly encouraged to take up that responsibility, not to leave it to a nanny state.

Pancake Day is early this year, Tuesday 5th February. I take liberty to steal this 'Pancake Receipt' from Scotsman and priest, Kelvin. Ingredients: 100g plain flour, pinch of salt, 2 large eggs, 200 ml milk, 75 ml water, 50g melted butter; Method: sieve, whizz, fry.

ScienceNOW Daily News (18 Jan 2008) reports research that seems to validate the idea of "gaydar." I'm afraid mine doesn't work too well at all.

In just a fraction of a second, people can accurately judge the sexual orientation of other individuals by glancing at their faces, according to new research. The finding builds on the growing theory that the subconscious mind detects and probably guides much more of human behavior than is realized.

Humans are remarkably good at making snap judgments about others. In a hallmark study conducted by psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal in 1994, people shown 2-second video clips of professors teaching formed opinions about the professors' teaching abilities that were uncannily similar to evaluations written by students at the end of a semester. The results led psychologists to begin questioning what else people might detect in a glance.

Ambady and colleague Nicholas Rule, both at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, wondered about sexual orientation. They showed men and women photos of 90 faces belonging to homosexual men and heterosexual men for intervals ranging from 33 milliseconds to 10 seconds. When given 100 milliseconds or more to view a face, participants correctly identified sexual orientation nearly 70% of the time. Volunteers were less accurate at shorter durations, and their accuracy did not get better at durations beyond 100 milliseconds, the team reports in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. "What is most interesting is that increased exposure time did not improve the results," says Ambady.

Romantic attraction likely works just as fast, notes psychologist Paul Eastwick of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. "If people make accurate judgments about sexually relevant aspects of a person this quickly," he says, "you have to stop and wonder how we size up one another's romantic potential in a matter of milliseconds."

Psychologist David Kenny of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, says the finding demonstrates the brain's remarkable ability to make fast yet accurate appraisals. Still, he notes that with some of the images, accuracy regularly fell below 50%. It's possible that some faces are just hard to read.

Describing himself a "fourth generation Australian male approaching middle-age," Tom Cranitch writes in Eureka Street of 21 Jan 08 that he nonetheless does not like Australia Day, our 26 January national day and public holiday. I am a middle aged fourth generation Australian male, and I don't like Australia Day either. Besides a "realisation that the date of white settlement was not an occasion to inspire national reconciliation", what has tilted Cranitch "ardently against the day" is

its growing use by Australian nationalists for the purpose of reviving perceived certainties of a rather dubious monoculture. Instead of being used for a forward-thinking and inclusive dialogue on our country's future, it heralds an opportunity for populists to hark for a return to 'good old days' Australian values with their inherent, yet cleverly disguised, divisions and power imbalances.

The chief flag-waver for the nationalists was John Winston Howard. But not even he could have predicted how dangerous nationalist sentiment could become under his rule. I refer to the Cronulla riots of December 2005 and the shameful nationalist 'initiations' at Big Day Out events the following month, where concertgoers were encouraged to kiss our national flag or face the consequences from roving mobs of thugs. No doubt the same good Australians a week or so later were celebrating our national day with 'mates' over a lamb-laden BBQ and a game of backyard cricket fuelled by a Cold Chisel CD. Why provide such a sovereign outlet for these ignoramuses? Surely a patriot manifests their love for country by daily deed and does not need a singular date on the calendar to celebrate civic pride.

. . . It seems to me the [National Australia Day] Council has failed in its number-one aim . . . to 'unite all Australians through celebration with a focus on Australia Day'. . . . In its promotion of Australia Day, my local council issued a pamphlet that featured a young boy swinging on a Hills Hoist with his dog snapping at his heels, and the slogan 'It would be 'un-Australian' not to plan some fun'. Do organisers even think about what messages they are sending when they endorse such clichéd dribble? (sic Drivel?)

I don't own a BBQ, and won't be draping myself in the flag or any other nationalist insignia on 26 January. My wife probably has designs on an afternoon family drive and my eldest son will want me to roll the arm over at some point. I don't care if these activities qualify me for celebrating Australia Day because I don't need a whole lot of nationalist claptrap to encourage me to do them. I am a candidate for them any weekend of the year.

The Rudd Government should put a stop to this nonsense. The charter for the National Australia Day Council expires at the end of this month and it should not be renewed. The body should be dismantled and its funding given to local communities across the country to plan locally-inspired events throughout the year. This should be the case until a majority of Australians decide upon an alternative, unifying day of patriotic celebration.

Just so. The celebratory concert being put on in our national capital makes me shudder. It's a hideous mélange of pop culture and cultural cliché. We can do better. A lot better.

In Time (17 Jan. 08) John Cloud writes about the end of his 7 1⁄2 year relationship with his former partner and asks "Are Gay Relationships Different?" An interesting question.

"Michael and I loved each other, but slowly--almost imperceptibly at first--we began to realize we were no longer in love. We were intimate but no longer passionate . . ."

Cloud asks himself, "What impact had our homosexuality had on the longevity, arc and dissolution of our relationship? Had we given up on each other because we were men or because we were gay? Or neither?"

Research on gay relationships is young. The first study to observe how gays and lesbians interact with their partners during conversations (monitoring facial expressions, vocal tones, emotional displays and physical reactions like changes in heart rate) wasn't published until 2003, even though such studies have long been a staple of hetero-couple research. John Gottman, a renowned couples therapist who was then at the University of Washington, and Robert Levenson, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, led a team that evaluated 40 same-sex couples and 40 straight married couples. The psychologists concluded that gays and lesbians are nicer than straight people during arguments with partners: they are significantly less belligerent, less domineering and less fearful. Gays and lesbians also use humor more often when arguing . . . The authors concluded that "heterosexual relationships may have a great deal to learn from homosexual relationships."

But Gottman and Levenson also found that when gay men initiate difficult discussions with their partners, the partners are worse than straight or lesbian couples at "repairing"--essentially, making up. Gottman and Levenson suggest that couples therapists should thus focus on helping gay men learn to repair. . . . [They] found that gays and lesbians who exhibit more tension during disagreements are more satisfied with their relationships than those who remain unruffled. For straight people, higher heart rates during squabbles were associated with lower relationship satisfaction. For gays and lesbians, it was just the opposite. Gays conduct their relationships as though they are acting out some cheesy pop song: You have to make my heart beat faster for me to love you. For gays, it is apathy that murders relationships, not tension. Straight people more often prefer a lento placidity.

Why would gays show more beneficence in arguments, do a worse job of repairing after bad fights and find palpitation satisfying? Researchers have long noted that because gender roles are less relevant in gay and lesbian relationships . . . those relationships are often more equal than heterosexual marriages. Both guys do the dishes; both women grill the steaks. Straight couples often argue along gender lines: the men are at turns angry and distant, the women more prone to lugubrious bursts. Gays and lesbians may be less tetchy during quarrels because they aren't forced into a particular role.

"In heterosexual couples," Levenson says, "men become very sensitive to their wives' sadness and anger. It's toxic to most straight men and disappointing. They want their wives to idolize them, and they are very, very good anger detectors. And they don't see any of it as funny. In gay couples, there's a sense of 'We're angry, but isn't this funny?'"

Cloud speculates that gay men are worse at making up after fights, because to do so is less important for their sex lives. Maybe, but I'm not convinced.

Finally, I think gay and lesbian couples may prefer more heart-racing during conflict because of what happens to gays and lesbians as kids. . . They repress for years, and when they finally do have relationships, they need them to carry sufficient drama into those emotional spaces that were empty for so long. Gays need their relationships to scorch.

That's one reason gays and lesbians end relationships sooner than heterosexuals. In a 2004 paper, psychology professor Lawrence Kurdek of Wright State University in Ohio reported that over a 12-year period, 21% of gay and lesbian couples broke up; only 14% of married straight couples did. Too many gay relationships are pulled by the crosscurrents of childhood pain, adult expectation and gay-community pathologies like meth addiction. Kurdek has also found that members of gay and lesbian couples are significantly more self-conscious than straight married people, "perhaps due to their stigmatized status," he writes.

Legalizing same-sex marriage would probably help prolong gay relationships, if only because of the financial and legal benefits married couples enjoy. Federal benefits are unavailable to lesbian and gay couples even in Massachusetts, the only state that allows those couples to obtain marriage licenses. Kurdek says in a 1998 Journal of Marriage and the Family paper that even though gay and lesbian relationships end more often than straight marriages, they don't degrade any faster. In other words, it takes squabbling gay and straight couples the same amount of time to enter what is known as "the cascade toward divorce." But straight couples more often find a way to stop the cascade. For gays, breaking up usually means simply moving out, not hiring divorce attorneys.

. . . Divorced men are also, not surprisingly, happier than men stuck in bad marriages. And yet if ours had been a straight marriage, I have little doubt we would still be together. We had financial security and supportive families. We almost certainly would have had children. This isn't regret--fighting my homosexuality would be like shouting against the rain. But while the researchers are certainly right that straight couples have something to learn from gay couples, I think the inverse is true as well.

As I think more about Second Life, it occurs to me that its land-based economy would have appealed to Henry George. In SL, virtual land is a proxy for access to Linden's computer resources and almost the only basis for 'government' revenue.

Henry George (1855-97) was a self-taught American journalist and political economist. In 1879 he published Progress and Poverty, which was a huge success. George argued that a much of the wealth created by social and technological advances in a free market economy is captured by land owners and monopolists via economic rents, and that this concentration of unearned wealth is the root cause of poverty. George considered it unjust that private profit was being earned from limiting access to natural resources while productive activity was taxed. This, he said, was wage slavery.

George advocated abolition of all taxes save those on unimproved land value. Modern economists like Milton Friedman agree that Henry George's land tax is potentially beneficial. Some environmentalists support the idea of resource rental or tax.

George was influential in Australia, where some land tax is still levied. His popularity has declined, but his ideas are still advocated by some and his influence continues through bodies such as the Henry George Foundation of America and the Center for the Study of Economics and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Australia's Henry George League is now Prosper Australia. It proposes a system of resource rentals as a foundation for more equitable public finance. Those who benefit from the use of community resources, particularly natural resources, its says, should be required to pay the community for the privilege. "It is a simple but far-reaching change--stop punishing labour with taxes and start collecting the rental value of land." Rent on buildings and improvements would go to the person who owns them. But rent on the land and other natural resources would go to the community. This would include all resources such as land, water, oil, coal, and the electromagnetic spectrum. Other tax would be abolished. Resource tax would be perhaps 10% or more, but the prices of general goods and services would fall.

Mostly through curiosity, I have been experimenting with Second Life. It's surprising how psychologically engaging it can become, quite quickly. My appreciation of this is reinforced by a 5 Apr 07 piece in Wired, in which Regina Lynn discusses the reality of virtual rape in an environment such as Second Life. It's not that I want to dwell on the negative aspects of the Second Life experience; quite the opposite, for Second Life has much potential for good. But Lynn's article draws out the potential for psychological engagement with what can quickly become much more than a game.

In one sense, online sexual assault, for example, is just words and pictures--pornographic and violent, but not physical abuse. But it's more, Lynn says, for

If you've never immersed yourself in online life, you might not realize the emotional availability it takes to be a regular member of an internet community. The psychological aspects of relating are magnified because the physical aspects are (mostly) removed.

That's where I find Second Life to be intriguing and risky.

Even regular users might not realize how wide open they are until something drastic happens--they fall in love, get dumped, have a huge fight or get attacked in the online parallel of rape.

. . . you don't want to lose the long-term investment you've made in your character. And these days, your real world income or professional reputation can depend on your online self. In a 3-D marketplace, your avatar's name is your brand. You can change the appearance of your cartoon without much impact, but changing your name makes it too difficult for customers or clients to find you. If an online environment becomes too hostile or scary, or causes you such great anxiety you cannot work or interact with friends, more has been taken from you than your playtime. Your friends will gather around to give you emotional support--but your customers will wander off and shop elsewhere.

. . . The truth is, anywhere people gather, we bring all of our potential with us--for love, for sex, for community and creation, and for violence and destruction, too. That's why we still enjoy pondering whether cybersex is real sex and whether an online affair is more or less damaging to a relationship than a physical affair. It's a tacit acknowledgement that while the time-space continuum may change, people don't.

No matter what costume they wear or role they play, people in Second Life remain human.

I enjoy Christmas, but no so much these days from family doings, parties, or presents. I enjoy it as a celebration of the birth and life of Jesus. I enjoy the worship, the music, the fellowship.

Patricia Redlich wrote in the Irish Independent last Christmas that as a gay man, he feels stifled by Christmas.

It's the day after Christmas, the time of the year when there's real pressure on family to come together. As a gay man I don't know what I'm celebrating any more and I'd rather not be here, with my parents, brothers and sisters. I find the whole thing stifling and I just don't fit in. The trouble is that I'd be on my own if I tried to do something different. I consider myself to be independent, but come Christmas all that seems to change.

It's a time when other people take stock of their lives, and talk about the future. But I have no significant other in my life, so I'm very alone, and this shows at this time of year. My family are thoughtful and invite me around, but I have no real affinity with them. They seem to speak another language, one that revolves around their neighbours and their values. I feel like one of those poor old single uncles, an identity which is forced on me because I am gay.

It all seems so soulless, and because I'm now 40 years old I feel all washed up in terms of ever having anyone in my life. The cycles of loneliness I feel around Christmas are just getting worse as the years go by. I do see a counsellor. But at the end of the day, if you are alone on Christmas Day -- even in a house full of people -- what progress is that, when what you're really doing is crying out for a partner who truly knows you.

Yes, Christmas can be a time of reckoning. We are away from work, but are not away on holidays. We're with family, who love us but are not soul-mates. Since often all we have in common are family ties, we talk superficially, attempting to communicate across everyday banalities like bin collections. In the absence of articulating our innermost thoughts, we're lonely. And end up making false comparisons between our lives and those of the others. That's Christmas en famille -- well, very often anyway. The glue which holds families together is powerful, but not necessarily a question of emotional intimacy -- at least not until the chips are seriously down. You do understand, don't you, that what you felt this Christmas had really nothing to do with you being gay. Your letter would have made just as much emotional sense if you'd been married with three children but unhappy about your job prospects, or your lack of an adequate sex life with your wife, or your eldest son who was beginning to be wayward. The point is, you had time on your hands and your essential loneliness surfaced, compounded, of course, by the fact you had nobody you felt you could truly talk to.

We keep ourselves busy not just because we need to earn a living, look after our health, or conquer the daily chores of self-sufficiency. We do so to fill the gap in our sense of ourselves. We're busy in order to keep loneliness at bay. Personally, I've always hated that neatly packaged distinction between loneliness and being alone so beloved of psychologists, philosophers and poets. Yes, I know that in an ideal world we'd all be mature enough to comfortably withstand the absence of others. We should also be able to confidently move through a crowd -- be it family gathering, a friend's house party, or a charity event -- doing nothing more than some social nattering and with nobody special to smile at across the room. It's just hard to be that complete. People don't go seeking partners just for fun. Like you said, we need to be seen. And a significant other is most likely to do just that.

What I do believe strongly, however, is that we can engineer being seen, or truly known. And it starts within. You've to learn to be comfortable in your own skin. Or as one analyst once put it to me, you've to learn to truly occupy your couple of square metres of space. You need to be there, not solidly obstructive, but strongly present. In order to deal with emotional damage, we devise strategies of survival, which are immensely creative and should not be knocked. Unfortunately, such strategies are invariably about hiding our true selves in some shape or form. That's what fear does to a person.

Thus we live shadow lives, to a greater or lesser extent. And when in hiding, we cannot be known, or properly seen, by anyone. That's what makes us so lonely. The task therefore, is to shake off that shadow self, or to soften it at least. The funny man may then become serious, the straight-laced more daring, the shy more outgoing, the entertaining one more left of centre stage. It's not about going out to grab the limelight, but rather about having the courage to show yourself, in the process daring to make mistakes.

Yes, it's hard. Because first and foremost we have to look at ourselves with true compassion, heal the emotional hurt with that compassion, and slowly trust ourselves to emerge. And if all that sounds far too heavy for a cold January morning, you could start by saying what you think or feel -- even just once a day. ...

Well, yes, but God does not isolate in us silence. God meets us in silence and in community. If one can celebrate Christmas a part of a community of faith, that's wonderful -- enjoy! Otherwise, why bother? Do something else that brings peace and joy.

Today is January 12, the feast day of St. Aelred of Rievaulx. Highly regarded as one of the most loving and most beloved of historical Christian figures, Aelred was deeply accepting not only of himself but also of others, in his and their diversity.

The Canberra Times (11 Jan 08) reports data showing that Canberrans are building bigger houses than ever before, despite shrinking block sizes and fewer people in each household.

Figures compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the average size of new houses has increased from 174sqm in 1996 to 254sqm in 2006. Australia-wide, the average new house grew from to 203sqm to 247sqm over the same period.

At the same time, the average number of occupants in a Canberra house has decreased from 2.8 to 2.6 people. Yet residential blocks had been getting smaller during the past 20 years. Canberra was developed as a garden city, but new suburbs are now crowed with McMansions. In developer-designed suburbs, green spaces like parks are reducing. The builders say that now one will buy a one-bathroom house today. To improve inaffordability, the ACT Government recently introduced small house blocks of up to 250sqm blocks for compact houses, many with two bedrooms.

The old Australian way of life was a modest house with a big backyard. The suburban home in which my parents and their three children lived was quite small, but there was room in the garden and we children spent much time outdoors.

The ANU School of Environment and Society's Professor Patrick Troy said the environmental implications of bigger houses on smaller blocks were clear.

Housing is a major driver of environmental stress because we are consuming more energy both in the construction and the running of larger houses. New suburbs are pretty barren places because there is just not enough space for trees and shrubs that provide shade, people don't have the capacity to grow their own food and there is also less capacity around dwellings for children to be able to explore nature.

These options are likely to be attractive to young singles and couples who do not wish to buy into a multi-unit complex or look after large backyards. [They] could also be attractive to the empty nesters that may be looking to downsize from their larger houses.

I much prefer our compact apartment in an inner suburb, with wide tree lined streets. Much more enjoyable than a McMansion in a barren, cramped. outer suburban wilderness. As well as greener.

When the climate is getting hotter and rainfall getting lower, it's easy to obsess about the weather. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology says that 2007 was Canberra's hottest year on record, stormiest year in 37, and fourth consecutive hottest year on record.

Canberra's average mean temperature rose by 1.8°C to 14.8°C. The average maximum temperature was 21.2°C, above the historical annual average of 19.6°C; the current record is 21.8°C set in 2006. The hottest 2007 day was 12 Jan, with 40.5°C at Canberra Airport, the third-highest temperature ever recorded in Canberra.

Nights were unusually warm; the average minimum temperature of 8.3°C was 1.8°C above the historical average of 6.5°C, the warmest annual average minimum temperature on record. Canberra has had a reputation for morning fog and overnight heavy frost, but no longer. There were 80 frosts observed in 2007, below the annual average of 93, and 29 fogs, below the annual average of 48.

February 2007 was the stormiest month ever recorded, with 14 thunderstorms reported, including the powerful hailstorm of 27 February which caused extensive damage (including to our garden). For the whole year, Canberra recorded 38 thunderstorms, the highest number since 1970, and well above the average of 26 per year. Despite the storms, Canberra's total 2007 rainfall of 565.8mm recorded at Canberra Airport was below the historical annual average of 623.2mm.

Australia as whole, meanwhile, experienced its sixth warmest year on record, more than half a degree above the annual average temperature. Southern Australia had extreme temperatures, with NSW, Victoria, South Australia, the ACT and the Murray-Darling Basin all setting records. We must acknowledge that climate change is a reality.