Month: September 2009
The perils of oversharing
Facebook is dangerous for parents. I’ve covered that before. It’s bad enough when you’re not spared the gory details of nappy changing… but it’s worse when the parents in question are middle aged, trying to check up on their children, and not quite au fait with the technology… like this mother.
Watch out for Germans with baseball bats
I love how websites can collect data and make recommendations that are useful these days. iTune’s Genius thing is awesome, and Amazon’s book recommendations based on what others bought with books I’ve picked have led me to a couple of purchases… but this is just beautiful…
Found here…
Extreme Chess
I’ve always laughed at the idea of Chess as a sport. But this concept called “Blitz Chess” is how the game should be played.
Five smooth criminals
Some criminals are clearly better motivated than others, and some clearly come with more ingenuity… but here are five funny crime stories from this week…
From here.
This guy robbed a woman and then went back to ask her out on a date…
This one’s actually pretty clever… a pair of street criminals in India have a nice little racket where one surreptitiously squirts poo on foreigners shoes in crowds – and the other runs a shoe shining business and points out his partner’s crime.
This guy is claiming innocence on some 37 speeding tickets because his monkey mask means police can’t definitively say that he’s behind the wheel.
One little piggy went to market, while this guy buried a gun in his fat rolls (Eglon style) and tried to smuggle it into prison.
And finally, this guy slipped a loaded gun into his pants and left the safety off. You’ll never guess what happened.
Kung Pong
Take two of my childhood favourites. Combine them. And you have perfect blog fodder. Like this Ping Pong/Street Fighter mashup…
Songbirds
This is pretty awesome.
Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
Why is it awesome?
“Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating. I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper.”
Found here, from here (in Spanish).
I lost a friend today
I occasionally notice the number of friends I have on Facebook reducing. It hurts. Well, not really.
Today was one such occasion. I looked at the number and thought “I’m sure I had one more than that yesterday, which one of my casual acquaintances or school friends could possibly have unfriended me this time?”
I got offended for a millisecond, and then I remembered I unfriended someone yesterday who posted the same status over and over and over again for the last three weeks. It was someone I didn’t really know all that well. I met them once. I think. I feel no regret. Or grief.
That is all.
More on Church
Someone asked me the other day if I can pick the direction the comments in a post are going to go in. I said I thought so. I’ve decided I was wrong. Sometimes I write things, particularly about Christianity, that seem pretty cut and dry, and objectively clear in the Bible, and I get interesting comments that criticise me for making a claim the commenter disagrees with…
That’s fine. I like being disagreed with, I don’t have a monopoly on truth. But the Bible does. Or it claims to, you can take or leave that. If you take it, there’s no room for being wishy washy. The Bible says we’re saved to be part of the family/kingdom of God. You can’t do that alone. It’s not a family of one.
I might be getting the Bible wrong, but if I’m standing on the verses of the Bible that talk about what I’m talking about, and you’re disagreeing with what I’m saying, without looking at what the Bible says, then be prepared for me not to take the disagreement particularly seriously.
Let me be clear what I’m not saying – going to church does not make you a Christian, but if you’re a Christian you’ll go to church. In fact, if you’re a Christian, you’re already part of the “universal church”, the family of God – and you should love your Christian brothers and sisters and want to be with them in church… if you don’t, then questions need to be asked.
There’s a murky area where there are some situations where church is not possible – people in hospital, in permanent care, and who, like the thief on the cross die before having a chance to go to church… but really… there aren’t a whole lot of excuses to not be treating Christianity like a family thing… which means being part of a family. Not going it alone.
Christianity.net.au says something about this probably a little clearer…
“The Christian life was never meant to be lived solo, God has gifted each member of his church to serve one another, you can’t do that solo. It is near impossible to live a Christian life alone, it runs counter to everything God has done for us. However, some people can’t help but live alone. The thief on the cross could not join a church, he had no choice; but where we have a choice, we really should become a part of God’s church.
It’s like someone who gets married, but never moves in with their husband. It is true that you can be married without living together, and there may be extreme circumstances that you can think of where someone may get married and not live together (if someone is on their death bed for example). But a real marriage involves relationship. Becoming a Christian means being a part of God’s family. “
There’s an interesting and timely post on the matter at the internetmonk’s site about the old “Jesus – Yes, Church – No” mentality…
I’d love to see what arguments people could put forward that actually work against the idea I’m putting forward that aren’t pie in the sky hypotheticals. I’m not suggesting that church saves you, but if you’re a Christian there’s just no way I can see how you could reject gathering with God’s people.
Love languages
You know how there are five Greek words for love? This is a good thing. Because it allows for clarity when you’re using a language of love.
We’ve got one word in English, and it’s contextually defined. I love God. But I don’t love God like I love my wife. And I don’t love my wife like I love my lunch. This is part of the reason that Christian music is so culturally odd.
Am I the only one who gets uncomfortable when we use the analogy of a human relationship when talking about meeting God. I know the Bible does it. But it just sounds odd when people tell the media they hope this new Jesus advertising campaign is like the preliminary to a first date with Jesus.
But Dominic Steele, director of Christians in the Media, hopes it will have real resonance.
”They’re a first invitation to a conversation about having a date with God or potentially starting a relationship.”
I understand the rationale – it just makes me cringe a little. You don’t “date” your father – unless you’re Mark Driscoll’s kids. My response to this language is the same as my response to “daddy date”. Maybe this is a case of unhelpful definition creep when it comes to the word date. It seems to come with a whole lot of eros baggage when it may instead be either storge, agape or philia type love.
Ship to shore
Just for the record – I agree with Amy – I’m glad the young Australian sailing girl seeking to break the world record didn’t tragically drown… but really, crashing your boat on the first day of a significant attempt to prove your sailing mettle? Better stick to, well, anything else really.
Also, does anyone else remember the show Ship to Shore? With Hermes the bald bad guy, and the red headed protagonist? Kelvin? It was funny. I laughed. I can still remember the theme song.
Putting the Cafe into McCafe
Did you know that the first McCafe was built in Australia in 1993? It took eight years for the concept to be launched in the US.
Before I got pretty serious about coffee (but long after I gave up instant coffee), and before I gave up McDonalds for a year (three months and nine days ago), I held McDonalds coffee up as a bastion of consistently average coffee. It’s the mean, mode and median of coffee. It truly is average. Which means there’s a lot worse.
That’s pretty much the same conclusion a coffee reviewer came up with when he recently tried the coffee for the first time.
“Just as McDonald’s buys food staples from multiple suppliers in huge lots to blend out the flavor profile to a single, consistent stew spread across entire nations, their coffee is little different. Although their supply chain for coffee appears to be a lot more thoughtful than the one for, say, beef, another difference is that McDonald’s makes bigger, nameless vats of “mutt” coffee from multiple suppliers who each produce vast nameless lots of “mutt” coffee.
But as we mentioned up top, the espresso here may not be good, but it isn’t outright awful. And therein lies the marketing foolishness of Starbucks: years of dumbing down their product to fill an ever-expanding armada of cafés has made it rather push-button and brain-dead. So much so, that any fast food chain with an ounce of ambition, such as McDonald’s, can make a relatively legitimate quality play for their customers. Slap on a recession and a cheaper price tag, and Starbucks is suddenly dog-paddling to stay afloat in the deep, rapid waters of fast food competition.”
Evangelism and relationships
We’re doing Introducing God at church this term. We just did week seven tonight. We’ve got an odd mix of people where probably 75% of the regulars are Christians who are hoping their irregular non-Christian friends will turn up, or are just there in lieu of small groups.
I’ve been sitting with a couple of guys – one of whom is a new Christian from a very non-Christian background (the guy I’m cooking with), the other is his housemate who has grown up in a staunchly Christian home who is not a Christian. Tonight was good. We’re at the stage where a relationship exists and some pressure can be comfortably exerted.
Having a relationship with someone is pretty important if you’re going to understand where they’re coming from in order to offer an alternative or a critique on their life.
Mikey Lynch is an AFES worker in Tassie who has handed out tasks to his student leaders to make sure they have relationships with non-Christians. These relationships are important. And his challenges look fun.
The challenges are things like:
- Catch up with an old school friend,
- Be chatty to everyone you interact with,
- Catch public transport and chat to the people you sit next to,
- Go to the pub and talk to people at the bar,
- Piggy back on someone else’ hobby.
Nine nein
I was going to do nine lists today. But I give up. Work got in the way.
Nine Christian blogs you should read
These are not necessarily my favourite blogs by Christians – but they are the ones that are most likely to cover interesting trends in evangelical Christianity (in the Australian sense of the word evangelical – which mostly means reformed)…
- John Piper’s blog at Desiring God, his son Abraham Piper’s 22 words is another one of my favourites… his current post is a cracker.
- Mark Driscoll’s blog at the Resurgence – lets face it, what Christian male under the age of 30 isn’t at least a little bit of a Mark Driscoll fanboy. He’s a Mac, and Piper is a PC.
- Tim Challies blog – great link posts and book reviews.
- Between Two Worlds – nice short summaries of the American Christian blogosphere.
- Craig’s blog – the Australian equivalent of Between Two Worlds – nice short sharp summaries of important discussions and developments around the Australian scene.
- The Internet Monk – trying to define him is difficult. Post reformed, post evangelical, partly Calvinist – usually interesting or thought provoking.
- Church Marketing Sucks – a nice little site dedicated to improving the way churches communicate Jesus.
- Communicate Jesus – an Australian equivalent to Church Marketing Sucks.
- Stuff Christians Like – the Stuff Christians Write writer has his finger right on the pulse of Christian culture – warts and all.
A list of nine barely does my subscription list justice, there are heaps of notable omissions both from gospel ministers in Australia to collective blogs like Pyromaniacs or the SolaPanel – and a bunch of quality blogs by bible college students.
It would be remiss of me not to mention Design4Church – a most excellent blog about graphic design for churches at this point…
Any good ones I’m missing?