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Joshua Harris on ‘Sanctuary moments’ (ones where God steps into our lives to impact change in us) from the message ‘Is He Enough? (New Attitude 2004) [ mp3] … I am not advocating for you that you wait for some sort of mystical experience. I want you to have a sanctuary moment here at new Attitude, but you know what, that’s not going to look like some moment in worship where God just wipes you out, knocks you on the floor, takes away your desire for marriage and sex, and really fills you with a hatred for the opposite sex and you stand up and say I’ve had my sanctuary moment. No… ...

In the week that saw a cloud of gas leak from Total’s North Sea Elgin-Franklin field, the scramble for gas offshore Mozambique continues apace as Anadarko and Cove announce further finds, adding to the significant plays booked by ENI in 2011. The BBC’s Antonia Quirke ponders the impact exploiting these resources will have on this hitherto pristine corner of the world: There is a sense on Vamizi of anxious anticipation. Some hope that the Mozambique government will run the project well and money will filter down to the islands which are particularly poor. Many people have feared the worst from the start. An islander tells me that when they heard that gas had been found to both the north and south, they watched all night as the illuminated exploration vessels searched and searched ever closer to their shores. ...

Better late than never, thankfulness was supposed to be one of my 12 focus areas for 2012. Here goes in any case: New starts, new beginnings and the christening of god daughter number 3 Both bosses concurrently on holiday - doesn’t happen all the time, useful to have a few days where I’m free to set my own agenda Progress at work - leak in the plant which turned out well given I was on top of the issues right from the get go Reconnecting with old friends - the beauty of having an oddly spelled surname is it’s instantly recognisable. Friends who care - who take my singleness as a significant enough concern to try to hook me up

The mini heat wave that was, threatened to leave nerves frayed and tempers flared all week in Room 3.26 before - like a duplicitous conman - it vanished as abruptly as it had arrived. It just so happened that the air conditioning - perhaps suddenly burdened by the heat load and the multiplied tinkering of the occupants of the various offices in our section - huffed and puffed to an untimely death; leaving us in varying degrees of grumpiness. I had taken half the Friday off, looking to spend the afternoon strolling leisurely up and down Union Street, binging on the copious amounts of skin that had suddenly appeared, coaxed out by the warmth from beneath the bland greys and austere blacks that had been the standard fare for the last few months. The flirty weather had other plans though, and Friday morning arrived with a chill in its wake putting the dampers on any thoughts of prancing about town. I promptly cancelled my holiday, resigning myself to a full day of number crunching and copious amounts of milky, weak tea. So much for an early return to warm, sunny days! ...

Some of my more memorable passages in Binyavanga Wainana’s witty, somewhat self deprecating if irreverent memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place relate to his early contact with Pentecostalism whilst growing up in Kenya. In one of those he describes his mother’s desire one Sunday morning to attend a church and how they end up in one that is unmistakable Pentecostal: The heat and light are blinding and people are jumping up and down and singing what sounds to me like voices from an accordion. It smells of sweat and goats. We sit. All hot and in Sunday sweaters and collars and vaseline under the hot iron roof, and people spit and start and this is because we are frying, not because God is here. ...

To God be the Glory.. :)

Ninety one days into the new year, I do not appear to have made any significant progress on the one thing on my 2012 to do list which my mother is most interested in - finding myself a potential wife. Following on a review from late last year, I decided a multi-pronged approach would work best - fusing online dating with physical meet ups and the occasional introduction from mutual friends. Arguably, there have been opportunities with potential, even though the bulk of them have not been. In any case here goes the journey so far: ...

My lazy Saturday - the slightly chillier air put paid to any pretensions of activity I had planned for the day - ended being defined by three conversations. In all honesty, two were conversations I could have done without, but I ended up caught up in them anyways. I wake up to see an offline message from my Q, my friend of just under a week. She’s a Geek’s Geek complete with geeky glasses and loads of tech speech. We end up talking about everything and nothing for the better part of three hours. In a sense it feels like de ja vu all over again - the easy conversation, shared interests and comfort even in silence were hallmarks of the early days of my bonding with EJ. Probably still early days, but there does seem to be a real opportunity for something to develop here. ...

Joshua Gans on The True Cost of Parenting, and why $180,000 may not necessarily be as outlandish as it sounds especially when the opportunity cost of stay at home parenting is factored in: Parents know their children, have their interests at heart, are on call all the time and mean you don’t have to worry about child care. This is precisely the utilitarian services that the high priced nannies are being valued for. Once you include stay-at-home parents, you’ll find that we are all paying much more for nannies than we think. ...

Are emotions prophetic? The short answer is No, but Jonah Lehrer at The Frontal Cortex offers a good summary of the long answer [pdf]: Every feeling is like a summary of data, a quick encapsulation of all the information processing that we don’t have access to. (As Pham puts it, emotions are like a “privileged window” into the subterranean mind.) When it comes to making predictions about complex events, this extra information is often essential. It represents the difference between an informed guess and random chance. ...