Bottled water is for dummies. Anybody who has held a bottle of Evian up to a mirror knows that. It’s a joke perpetrated and perpetuated on us by the major softdrink labels – for whom it represents a license to print money.

If you buy bottled water (and I do) for any reason other than the fact that it’s a hot day, the water is cold, and softdrink is sugary and bad for your teeth, then you should check out this infographic.

If you live in that Australian town that banned bottled water (or Magnetic Island) then you should read this graph so that you have great statistics to use in your next argument.

Presented by Online Education

The heading is only true if you’re a teenage boy and obsessed with passing gas and want to know more about your flatulence. I learned new things.

Source: Online Education

A comprehensive guide to how to be bad at Facebook. If you’re one of these people you may have lots of Facebook friends but the number who think of you as a real life friend is probably decreasing. From the Oatmeal (where else?) (thanks Ali).

This person will probably also correct you on your grammar.

This is me. But mostly about this blog.

I wrote this in the car today while mulling over a talk we listened to yesterday. Why do some new atheists hate the Christian faith?

I was going to use the word “religion” in that question. But I hate religion too. Jesus spends a whole lot of time rebuking people for their religion. Religion, for those scratching their heads, is the idea that one’s actions win them salvation. It is what distinguishes Biblical Christianity from any other form of faith. For the sake of clarity I should have probably used “antitheists” rather than atheists in the title. But I’ll stick with the label the people I am thinking of apply to themselves.

At the heart of almost every objection to faith that I read from atheists is that people of faith use their beliefs to stymie the desires and actions of people with different faiths. Which is kind of a fair enough criticism. Until you think about it.

What would happen if the new atheists were in the majority and their moral framework (which basically comes down to “if it feels good, do it”) was the yardstick?

Morality is always the standard of behaviour set by the highest power one chooses to acknowledge – be it the individual, community standards, government or a deity. To suggest that morality is set internally is disingenuous and results in a really odd and selfish decision making.

The moral outcome and conclusion of natural selection is either violence or submission. How else does one survive? As soon as one entity, be it an individual or a community, acts in a way that threatens the survival of another the only natural response at that point is to act violently – or to submit and possibly die.

Richard Dawkins has famously suggested that our culture is beyond the “evolutionary” need for religion. That we’ve somehow moved past the need for our behaviour to be moderated by a higher power. Hogwash.

Even if the higher power is a figment of the collective imaginations of believers throughout human history, even if each “imaginary friend” causes their fans to act in an irrational manner towards the other teams, and even if morality that flows from a position of faith is an arbitrary and less “good” moral framework than one’s own “harm based” equation – the alternative to a planet with faith looks much worse than the current state of affairs.

People would no doubt find other reasons to kill one another. Believers must admit that religious codes have caused conflict (and continue to) since the beginning of time. This says nothing about the truth of the beliefs.

I think the reason the new atheists hate faith is not that they think faith is harmful – that cannot possibly the reason. If faith is an evolutionary survival mechanism then people are simply outworking their inherent and instinctive violent natures.

Until the New Atheists come up with a system of morality that curtails this inner violence better than religion they should shut their mouths, to deconvert people can in fact do more harm than good.

It is illogical to operate with a harm based ethical framework and a philosophical framework grounded in nihilistic survival (protect one’s ability to do what feels good) and to call for the removal of the influence of faith from public life. It is irrational, and stems from prejudice.

It can be logical to decide that oneself, on an individual level, does not need to believe God to survive and prosper – but to apply your own personal moral framework to everybody else is dangerous. It only works until someone wants something different to what you think they should want and they decide to take it for themselves.

For many antitheists the question isn’t so much of morality but that they find posited gods immoral. With their superior internal moral framework. These slightly more consistent atheists hate the God they don’t believe in for sending bears to render injustice to intemperate youths. They hate the God they don’t believe in for committing genocide by flooding the world. More accurately they hate that people are willing to describe such a God as loving.

How can a loving all powerful God allow or cause suffering? How can a loving God send people to Hell?

I commend this talk (MP3) by Tim Keller to those asking that question (he touches on the natural selection = violence idea in this talk).

The key to both these questions hinges on the unjust suffering and death of Jesus for his enemies.

I don’t understand how antitheists can be angry at a belief that calls for this sort of action – John 15 says…

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

Where Jesus did not just walk the walk – he ran it – Romans 5 says…

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

That’s what, in my mind, makes Christianity impossible to hate. How can you argue with a person who is willing to follow that same model? (Luke 9).

“Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”

It’s completely counter-instinctive to take that position. Particularly if instincts are defined as actions that contribute to one’s survival under a natural selection model. Christianity doesn’t seem to bear the hallmarks of a tool of natural selection because it rails against the basest element of natural selection – selfishness, and works against our natural inclination to violently defending our rights. I can’t see how the continued existence of such a mindset can be bad for society – even if some believers use their faith to call for different standards of behaviour.

Seriously – if you can’t tolerate a little bit of moral criticism – or persecution – from those with opposing views to you (just because you don’t have evidence to support their deity) – then move to France. It’s really not that bad – and the moderate Christian voices will eventually gain traction as they try to encourage other Christians to put Jesus at the centre of the gospel not religious acts.

I don’t want to go down the path of the “no atheists in the foxholes” fallacy – but how many atheist martyrs are there? How many atheists are dying in Christian nations? I’m sure there are atheists dying for their lack of belief in Islamic nations – but they’re not getting special treatment, the Christians are dying there too.

That is all.

We’re “home”. Well, home for the next four years. After two days of exhausting driving we have arrived safely in Brisbane. We’ll be unloading the truck at our new house in Grovely tomorrow morning if anybody reading really wants to swing by to help.

We left Townsville at lunch time today. We were going to leave first thing this morning, but our removalist no showed yesterday (they called to tell us at 3pm).

It’ll be sporadic blogging only today and tomorrow.

I used my phone for this post.

The correct response, when confronted with someone correcting your grammar, syntax or spelling, is an appeal to authority (Shakespeare) with a simultaneous request for their contradictory evidence from a superior authority (confident in the knowledge there is no greater authority on the written word). This may not work when it comes to obvious spelling or punctuation mistakes – but it should help keep the wolves at bay.

I have two slightly contradictory pet peeves. On one hand, I hate reading bad grammar – particularly their/there/they’re, its/it’s and your/you’re. This is mostly because I hate making the mistake myself. I feel so incredibly stupid when an error is pointed out. I think, deep down, that I am a perfectionist. On the other hand – I hate when people point out bad grammar – mine or otherwise. Nothing raises my online hackles more than the superiority of a grammar pedant. I tried being one once. It didn’t make me feel nice. I don’t know how others can do it – it must come from hating bad grammar more than one hates appearing like a complete and utterly superior prig.

If knowing how stupid you feel when someone points out your error does not stop you pointing out the errors of others (sticks, logs and all that jazz), and if you’re so sure that you will never make your own scorn worthy mistake so that you run no risk of hypocrisy, then perhaps you should continue reading – and remember that people actually think less of you when you correct your/their friends in public. Not more.

I will say that I think the exception to this rule is when an institution makes a mistake – and the closer the institution is to the rules of grammar the funnier it is. When governments have grammar style guides and stuff up bridge inscriptions that is funny. When we laugh at Chinese translators mangling English while making their country more open to visitors that is cultural imperialism.

I’ve read a couple of articles today courtesy of Twenty Two words that helpfully reminded me that being a “Grammar Nazi” does not make one superior – nor does it actually make somebody a better writer. Imagine how the very Bard himself would be remembered if he had bowed to the pressure of the grammar pedants of his day.

Firstly, grammar pedants speak too early too often and provide no evidence for their claims. They expect us to sit idly by and accept their views on the movable feast of language while providing not a skerrick nor shred of corroboration for their claims. Up with this I shall not put.

Here’s an article that compares grammar experts with etiquette experts who make claims and then move the goal posts when someone disagrees.

This article provides recourse for people like me who want to rid themselves of pesky comments from friends who suffer from badgrammaritis (symptoms include the inability to let bad grammar pass unpunished).

We have all heard admonitions at some point or other that the word unique cannot be modified — a thing is either unique or it is not. This would be considerably more convincing if it were not so obviously untrue, as people modify unique quite frequently, and have done so for a long time. Through the magic of Google Books you can now search through enormous numbers of books and magazines from the 19th century and see literally hundreds of writers who use more unique, less unique and even that bugbear of the purists, somewhat unique.

(And speaking of literally, the next time someone tells you that it cannot be used to mean aught but literal, you might point out that it has been used in various figurative and nonliteral senses for hundreds of years, by such literary figures as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Richard Milhous Nixon.)

The article points out that most grammar conventions and corrections are given without any sense of evidence – in fact, on Facebook where both bad grammar and pedantry runs rampant, corrections are given with a sense of superior satisfaction but no reference to any rules or conventions that actually back up the criticism.

The erudite conclusion from the NY Times article is proof that a predilection for pedantry does not give you the exclusive rights to good writing. It’s today’s rule breakers who become tomorrow’s rule makers. To use an analogy – pedants are the engineers of the writing world while the rest of us are the artistes – the architects and interior designers, the painters, the landscapers and the Feng Shui consultants.

So I say outpedant the pedants, and allow yourself to gluttonously revel in the linguistic improprieties of yore as you familiarize yourself with the nearly unique enormity of the gloriously mistaken heritage that our literature is comprised of. For those of you keeping score at home, that last sentence contained a verbal noun, a split infinitive, an improper -ize, an inflectional comparative, a blatantly misleading word choice, at least one example of catachresis, an unnecessarily passive construction — and it ended with a preposition. All of which I’m willing to bet appear in Shakespeare.

I have no idea how many media releases I put out in the last four years – it would be close to a thousand. I had a pretty prodigious output in my first couple of years (this isn’t actually a good thing – I didn’t feel like I could refuse to write a release on a dumb  topic back then). Occasionally I was allowed to put out releases with puns in the headings – when they weren’t too cringeworthy (or rude, I might post my rudest (and funniest) one in the comments).

1. Kopi cats dropping an inimitable brew – This one was special because it is my biggest and most successful story of all time. It’s also about cat poo. Cat poo coffee. This release made it to Indonesia, India, the UK and Europe. Kopi is Indonesian for coffee – and the cat poo coffee is called Kopi Luwak.
2. Operators hit a Homer – Ulysses beds locked in – I had a lot of fun writing really high brow headings about this story. There was a saga where Townsville couldn’t secure enough advance beds to house the Ulysses Motorcycle Club’s AGM. They wanted to be able to book guaranteed beds two years in advance. Other headings included – Ulysses offer not a Trojan Horse, and Space problem means Ulysses Club may take 2008 odyssey elsewhere.
3. Be blown away by North Queensland – a release about helping the tourism industry recover from the perception that we were damaged by Cyclone Larry.
4. Cummins: recipe for marketing with bite – Advertising guru Sean Cummins came to Townsville to run a marketing workshop.
5. TREC joins starship Enterprise – I really like puns based on acronyms. I don’t know why. This one was about the Townsville Regional Engineering Cluster joining Townsville Enterprise. Here are some others. ACASPA: a friendly host (about a conference that came to Townsville because it was a friendly city), ATEC’s message for tourism operators (about the Australian Tourism Export Council’s conference), Townsville operators AIME for success (about the Asia Pacific Incentives, Meetings and Events expo) and Tourism industry hunts pieces of ATE treasure with island rebranding (about the Australian Tourism Exchange – a Tourism trade show).
6. Regions join fellowship of the zing – I wrote a lot about energy generation. This one was about Townsville joining with Mackay, Mount Isa and Cairns to lobby for energy.
7. Solar plea: don’t stick it where the sun don’t shine – K-Rudd’s solar flagship program will put billion dollar power stations around Australia. Townsville wants one.
8. McDonald no longer on the farm – our new Economic Development manager (at the time) had a background in agriculture.
9. Dream time becomes a virtual reality* – About a local indigenous tourism operators use of some grant money for AV equipment.
10. New flights to boost capital expenditure* – About Virgin Blue launching four new routes to Townsville in one day.

* These ones had rude or politically incorrect alternatives.