I am on the record, as an intem­per­ate youth, sug­gest­ing that Folk Music is of the devil. I recant.

In my dotage I am really enjoy­ing alt.country, folk, blue­grass and other music with banjos.

There’s a slight lan­guage warn­ing on this clip — well, it’s not slight. It says a bad word start­ing with f many times. The rest of the album is free of cringe­wor­thy cursing.

I give you. Mum­ford and Sons.

I’ve also really been enjoy­ing Fionn Regan. But his “Put a Penny in the Slot” video has embed­ding dis­abled. So you’ll have to go to YouTube to watch it.

Mov­ing fur­ni­ture is a pain. Wouldn’t life be grand if all fur­ni­ture was Tetris shaped?

Here’s a chair to bring your mov­ing dream one step closer to reality.

Amy pointed out recently that “Chem­i­cal Free” is a stu­pid claim to make for any­thing of sub­stance — but food particularly.

She had a point.

These cup­cakes how­ever, com­pletely embrace the inner chem­i­cal…

Mmm. I’ll take

Pac­man cars are great for run­ning over blue ghosts. Just make sure you’ve used the right fuel.

From Flickr.

And another one.

If you’ve got some ink, some pota­toes, and too much time on your hands you too could cre­ate an army of potato peo­ple. If you don’t have any of those things there’s always this gallery…

I would like to live a long healthy life. Here is a list of activ­i­ties I should avoid — that you should too — if you also want to live long lives.

1. Drive the biggest 4WD you can find.
2. Don’t ride a quad bike.
3. Don’t cycle or run on pub­lic roads.
4. Don’t get a pilot’s license as a hobby.
5. Avoid groups of intox­i­cated men.

There are more. What are your tips for avoid­ing an untimely death?

This one’s from Flickr — and is (fic­tion­ally or oth­er­wise) sched­uled for release in 2035 with a pric­etag of $500,000.

Start sav­ing.

At only 1077 pounds with the new S260 super­charged engine, the 0–60 time is only 2.02 sec­onds. The steer­ing wheel, brakes and gas pedal have been replaced with a “T” han­dle. Lotus has upped the Track Pack to han­dle up to 3G turns. With a top speed of 188 miles per hour, you’ll zip past the other traf­fic, trains and some small planes on the way to work.

You can buy me this for $14,000. You’d have to really love me. Which you do. Right?

It’s a slightly more awe­some Segway.

Hov­er­crafts are not just very unique and unusual gifts, they are actu­ally avail­able. They only require gaso­line and will trans­port you at approx­i­mately 15 mph. Oper­ate them over con­crete, asphalt, grass or shal­low wet areas, but you can­not hover over water, sand, stones or dirt-filled areas due to the bot­tom­side vacuum.

I’m not sure what to make of these stats from the research on the Jesus All About Life campaign.

Some of these are the same stats I posted the other day — but a report on the research can be found here.

Believer or non-believer, 54% of Aus­tralians ranked Jesus as the num­ber one most influ­en­tial per­son in his­tory beat­ing Albert Ein­stein who came in at sec­ond place (16%) and Charles Dar­win who was ranked third (9%). Research com­mis­sioned by www.allaboutlife.com.au revealed Aus­tralia is a nation of believ­ers with approx­i­mately 5 in 6 (83%) respond­ing that Jesus was a real fig­ure from history.

It’s odd… going by the ongo­ing dis­cus­sion over here the one in six peo­ple who don’t think Jesus is a real his­tor­i­cal fig­ure are gain­ing a bit of trac­tion while clearly swim­ming against the tide* of pub­lic opinion…

This research gives a great insight into people’s beliefs about Jesus and their faith today. The fact that Jesus is revealed to be the most influ­en­tial fig­ure in his­tory shows his mes­sage is as rel­e­vant today as it was 2000 years ago and peo­ple still look to him as source of inspiration.

To me, this sug­gests the JAAL cam­paign was bark­ing up the wrong tree a lit­tle. Jesus doesn’t need an image upgrade. He doesn’t need wishy washy feel­good state­ments posted online… Peo­ple think he’s alright.

What he really needs is accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Because peo­ple are much less sold on the facts.

“Of these believ­ers 43% believed Jesus had mirac­u­lous pow­ers and he was the son of God. Aus­tralia still has faith with 2 in 5 Aus­tralians stat­ing they actu­ally prac­tice a reli­gion and only 27% not believ­ing in a God or uni­ver­sal power of any sort.”

*Mmm. Deli­cious cliche.

From here.