Well, dear reader, I have some excit­ing news. Com­ing soon (very soon in fact, less than three weeks). I will be tour­ing the sunny shores of Corinth (Greece) and Eph­esus (Turkey) with a col­lege group. I am hop­ing to be blog­ging while I’m over there. I’m telling you now because I don’t want it to be a sur­prise if a) I sud­denly stop blog­ging for two weeks, or b) you want to invite me to do some­thing really awe­some while I’m away and I don’t answer the phone.

It’s also start­ing to get very close.

Robyn is com­ing too — she’s actu­ally doing the trip as a sub­ject (she can do it as a sub­ject because she’s only doing a one year course, I can’t).

If you’d like to come on the trip then enrol in a degree at QTC and head along next year.

David Thorne didn’t like his lat­est elec­tric­ity bill. Which involved an inex­plic­a­ble $600ish increase. He tried his best to come up with rea­sons for the jump in a series of emails with his elec­tric­ity com­pany. In these emails he claimed to have been exper­i­ment­ing on alter­na­tive sources for energy.

He seems like a funny guy.

“As every meter read­ing for the last two years at this address has been under two hun­dred dol­lars, rather than pay you $766.05, I would pre­fer to spend that amount on thirty eight piz­zas, ensur­ing suf­fi­cient fat reserves to sur­vive hav­ing the heat turned off, or have my apart­ment lined with poly­ester socks and wear a suit made out of car­pet — pos­si­bly gen­er­at­ing enough power to start my own grid com­pany. I would then con­struct a num­ber, cal­cu­late an amount based on this and send out accounts stat­ing that the amount is based on a num­ber and is there­fore math­e­mat­i­cally cor­rect. If any­one ques­tioned the basis of the num­ber the amount is cal­cu­lated from, I would sim­ply declare “I have the power” and point out the sci­en­tific implau­si­bil­ity of their exper­i­ments, forc­ing them to inves­ti­gate other, more viable, designs.”

But we already knew that.

I found “Help Lord — the Devil Wants Me Fat” so stay tuned for the next instal­ment on that front. But in the mean time, here are a cou­ple of options for tak­ing a pos­i­tive approach to your weight loss.

Via Jesus Needs New PR.

And Jog­ging With Jesus, another book from the Devil Wants Me Fat author.

• internetmonk.com — With All Due Respect…
  
  

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• Evan­gel — Hawking’s ‘god’
  
  

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• kottke.org — Usain Bolt wants to play soc­cer
  
  

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• Sur­viv­ing The World — Les­son #731 — Bat­man
  
  

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• xkcd.com — Open Mic Night
  
  

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• Dinosaur Comics — this comic inspired by my good friend joey comeau, who when he lived with me was mr “candy and red bull for break­fast, candy and red bull for lunch, all-you-can-eat buf­fet of tum­my­aches, regret and recrim­i­na­tions for din­ner”
  
  

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• Dinosaur Comics — the sin­is­ter forces that con­trol the world are actu­ally just one super needy guy
  
  

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• Sur­viv­ing The World — Les­son #737 — Microna­tions
  — Clas­sic sur­viv­ing the world on my favourite polit­i­cal sub­ject, microna­tions.
  

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• Justin Tay­lor — Paul the Mis­sion­ary
  
  

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• Van­ish­ing Point — Get­ting Peo­ple To Com­ment On Your Blog, or Hand Feed­ing Baby Deer In Their Nat­ural Habi­tat
  
  

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• TechCrunch — Yes, iTunes 10 Is Finally Here. Get Down­load­ing
  
  

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• some­thing this foggy day — I ♥ Kir­ri­billi and Jesus
  
  

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• internetmonk.com — What’s “New” about the New Calvin­ism?
  
  

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Preach­ing from the iPad is such a great jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for buy­ing one. I’ve said that since day one. I want to write an iphone pro­gram (though I have no tal­ent) that func­tions as an autocue con­troller for text on an iPad. Autocue con­trollers are tra­di­tion­ally knobs that twist either sit­ting in the hands of a news­reader (that’s what they were at ABC online when I had a job interview/audition there a bunch of years ago) or the pro­ducer (that’s what they were when I was read­ing the news for QUT News on Bris 31 when I was at uni).

Any­way, that’s a digres­sion. If you’re already ahead of the curve you’ll want one of these iPad lecterns so that you can preach the gospel unhin­dered, like Paul at the end of Acts.

From Lit­tle Moun­tain Pro­duc­tions, via Pas­torGear.

Sit­ting in church his­tory today try­ing to grap­ple with the dif­fer­ent fig­ures from the early cen­turies of the church I thought “wouldn’t it be great to have trad­ing cards of fig­ures in church his­tory” I was all set to start blog­ging them in the lead up to exams, when I decided to google it. It seems some­one else has had the idea and is going to actu­ally pro­duce them. They’re doing the­olo­gians more broadly.

But I will not be deterred. So com­ing soon, in the spirit of Ben’s Jane Ayre trad­ing cards, will be the St. Euty­chus (and Andrew Bain) guide to his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. I’m also going to venn dia­gram hereti­cal views of the trin­ity. Because every­body likes a good Venn diagram.

On my way to col­lege today I was lis­ten­ing to Queens­land Trea­surer Andrew Fraser in a reg­u­lar Fri­day morn­ing slot he has on ABC radio with his oppo­si­tion equivalent.

For those not liv­ing in Queens­land, or dis­in­ter­ested in the com­ings and goings of our polit­i­cal scene, our politi­cians emerged from a cri­sis meet­ing about the unpop­u­lar­ity of our gov­ern­ment with one new “pol­icy.” Our Pre­mier has ordered her min­ions to “walk a mile” in the shoes of Queensland’s con­stituents. She wants her MPs to spend a cou­ple of days in the real world. Work­ing real jobs.

Basi­cally the whole thing is being por­trayed as an extended photo opp. Which it cur­rently is. There’s an assump­tion amongst our polit­i­cal class that being seen on a con­struc­tion site wear­ing a flu­o­res­cent vest and a hel­met wins votes. And it cer­tainly links gov­ern­ment poli­cies with job creation.

But I pro­pose a novel idea for the Bligh Gov­ern­ment. Being in touch with the peo­ple is a valu­able thing. I think there is some merit to this exer­cise. But if the gov­ern­ment wants this to not be writ­ten off as a vac­u­ous PR exer­cise they should ban the cam­eras, and do no media inter­views about the expe­ri­ence. They should each be allowed to make a speech to par­lia­ment about their expe­ri­ence and changes they think should emerge from work­ing with real peo­ple. But that should be it. A media black­out. No inter­views. No con­trived photo oppor­tu­ni­ties. No inter­rupt­ing a real person’s work day for the sake of the 15 sec­onds it’ll buy on the news. That is how to make this a pos­i­tive PR exer­cise not a neg­a­tive one. The peo­ple you’re impos­ing your­self on don’t need to be treated like per­form­ing mon­keys who hap­pen to spe­cialise in work­ing a real job.

That is all.

What would events in world his­tory look like in Face­book updates? Sadly these are just one block image and not sep­a­rate ones. But they’re very funny. From Cool Mate­r­ial.

Appar­ently you can. Glen McCracken is tak­ing on Mod­ern War­fare 2, attempt­ing to reach level 70 with­out killing any­body. He’s been going for a while, he’s up to level 21.

“Along with his aston­ish­ing zero kills, Glen has died 1,339 times. I caught up with gaming’s favorite paci­fistic player, and although he admits that “things are already start­ing to slow down,” he remains pos­i­tive. “With my Tac­ti­cal Inser­tion and smoke grenade combo, I’m get­ting more points than ever,” Glen says confidently.”

Mod­ern War­fare is a team game — and while you’d think hav­ing a player delib­er­ately not killing peo­ple would be an imped­i­ment to team suc­cess — he has a win­ning record.

“Glen isn’t killing any­one, but how are his point grab­bing tech­niques affect­ing his teams? Appar­ently, you’ll want him by your side. Glen has a win­ning record. He has 62 wins and 52 loses so far.”

You can track his progress in this reg­u­larly updated story.

Let­ters of Note. If you’re not read­ing it already. Do your­self a favour.

Here’s a let­ter from a Japan­ese kamikaze pilot to his children.

“Even though you can’t see me, I’ll always be watch­ing you. When you grow up, fol­low the path you like and become a fine Japan­ese man and woman. Do not envy the fathers of oth­ers. Your father will become a god and watch you two closely. Both of you, study hard and help out your mother with work. I can’t be your horse to ride, but you two be good friends. I am a cheer­ful per­son who flew a large bomber and fin­ished off all the enemy. Please be an unbeat­able per­son like your father and avenge my death.”

A bit chill­ing. A bit sad. Very inter­est­ing. Imag­ine grow­ing up with that let­ter in the place of one of your parents.