Part three of the previously featured excellent web series “Everything is a Remix”…
Author: Nathan Campbell
Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.
A candle to make reading news online a sensational experience
News can be “sensational” enough as it is. Depending on where you get it. But if you’re the type that misses the scent of ink on newspaper paper then bring it back to your lounge room with the New York Times Candle.
Author smackdown: writers trading insults
There’s something a little compelling about people within a profession, whose focus is the written word, writing words about others within the profession. It’s why I perversely enjoy reading book reviews in peer reviewed journals. You always get the sense that one writer feels like they’re a little better at things than another. Here’s a collection of 30 writer v writer insults.
Mark Twain on Jane Austen is probably my favourite.
“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
What an image, and what a shame that Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies wasn’t around in Twain’s day.
Queensland Assembly: A taste of the future
I had my first taste of the Presbyterian Assembly line today. Turns out to get ahead in the denomination in Queensland you should be balding and sport a goatee.
I sat in on a day’s worth of policy debate on a bunch of boring stuff, in order to see the appointment of our new principal (pending his acceptance, other bloggers have jumped the gun on that one…). Gary Millar. Who is cool because he knows U2. Sort of.
The coffee at Assembly was awful. I sense a bit of a business opportunity.
Tomorrow morning I’m doing the “devotion” at Assembly. Five minutes on Romans 14. Devotion is such an odd word.
On wikipedia philosophy really is the starting point of knowledge
One of the things I’m increasingly realising as I engage in more critical interaction with people’s thoughts (particularly in scholarship, but also on the Internet and in person) is that it is one’s presuppositions, or philosophical framework, that produces one’s conclusions. It’s true in just about all areas and it’s one of the reasons (essentially operating alongside confirmation bias) that trying to change people’s minds online is entirely pointless.
You can take almost every conclusions somebody draws about the world back to that underlying framework. So you’d expect to see this born out in the way articles are linked in wikipedia (the web of interlinked connections between articles in wikipedia is, in my opinion, the most useful thing about it). And you do. According to this new webapp thingo by Xefer. Which illustrates the truth that all articles will eventually link to Philosophy. Which is kind of like my fairly ancient game 6 Degrees of Wikipedia.
“This sounded like a reasonable assertion, one that makes a certain amount of sense in retrospect: any description of something will typically use more general terms. Following that idea will eventually lead… somewhere.”
Like everything good on the Internet,this concept began in the hovertext of an XKCD comic.
Via FlowingData
Escher in Legos: blocktical illusions?
What happens if you take famous optical illusion artworks and build them. With Lego.
Say you wanted to turn Escher’s Relativity, which looks like this…
Into a lego based photo. Well. I won’t leave you hanging. It would look like this:
Andrew Lipton and his BFF Daniel Shiu have made a batch of these. Worth checking out.
Why Bond uses a Walther PPK
This Letter of Note is fascinating and awesome if you are a fan of James Bond, accuracy in fiction, or the idea that a passionate fan can speak out and influence process. Otherwise it’s a piece of history that might come in handy at your next trivia night.
Some background is important. Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond stories which became the James Bond movies. He received a letter from a bloke named Geoffery Boothroyd who didn’t like the gun Fleming had given Bond. It turned out Boothroyd knew a thing or two about firearms.
“I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular, I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady’s gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire; the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25.
May I suggest that Mr. Bond be armed with a revolver?”
Fleming liked this commitment to accuracy so much he named a character after Boothroyd. The character who later became famously known as Q.
The letter Fleming sent Boothroyd is below, and a transcript is available at Letters of Note.
Tumblrweed: Dear Photograph
This tumblr is kind of meta. The premise for content featured on Dear Photograph is summed up as: “take a picture of a picture from the past in the present.”
Tumblrweed would have to be one of my favourite blog tags. Some cool stuff there. Let me know if you have a favourite single serving tumblr in the comments.
Gomez: Whatever’s On Your Mind
New Gomez. Everybody. Look. It’s new music.
I love Gomez. They’re my favourite band that nobody else cares about. I have other favourite bands that everybody cares about. But for some reason meeting another Gomez fan gives me more joy than any other collective musical experience.
I realise that in telling you all to check them out, I am actually contributing to the demise of my enjoyment of my enjoyment of Gomez. I’ll then just have to go back to enjoying them. For their own sake.
Ahh. Holidays…
Semester One finally finished for me yesterday. Which is delightful news. Because it means that other than a PR contract I have to fulfil in Townsville in two weeks, and some bits and pieces over the next two weeks (like preaching on Revelation 19-20 at Scots). It would be horrible to forget that. Wouldn’t it. To turn up at church not realising you’re meant to be preaching.
Anyway. Semester One essays will eventually be posted over at Venn Theology. I was particularly happy with the essay I wrote on the relationship between special and general revelation (reading the Bible, and science). Other essays included a look at hope in the book of Jeremiah, a review of a German guy’s view on Luke (his name is Conzelmann), and one on the role/authority of tradition in the church.
I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and I was infinitely less stressed this year. Not sure why. Maybe it was the almost complete lack of social life.
Anyway. That’s a long way of saying you may see more, or less, of me in coming weeks. Depending entirely on how long Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood takes me to finish…
What does your perfect holiday day look like? Especially a winter holiday day. I’ll be trying to produce a string of them in the next few weeks, and could do with some inspiration.
If Mary Poppins made shampoo…
I lolzed. Or whatever the past tense of lol is. Lold?
Dora the Inceptor
This is simultaneously clever and spooky.
Dalai Lamer: Today Show host now a viral sensation thanks to bad joke
So the Dalai Lama walks into a TV interview and the interviewer tells him a joke about a pizza shop. And becomes a viral sensation.
I like Karl Stefanovic, and I think it’s hilarious that this little bombed joke is making its way around the Internet, despite what the SMH says a lot of clever blogs are laughing with Karl. Especially because he is essentially laughing at himself.
What I don’t get is the enduring popularity of the Dalai Lama. Buddhism has great PR. He’s just an old man who doesn’t really stand for anything. And he smiles a lot. A few years ago I made this video. Before YouTube was around. So I put it online today.
The Dalai Lama Singing Don’t Worry Be Happy from st.eutychus on Vimeo.
Westboro v Mars Hill Church
Interesting times. Our favourite loopies (Westboro Baptist) have announced their intentions to picket Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church. How would you respond to such a threat? The sad thing is the media like to run stories on Westboro. I think this is especially likely because this appears to be two sheep fighting, rather than a sheep and a wooly wolf. So choosing a response is important, and an opportunity to articulate the differences and how different approaches to Christian belief are a matter of articulating a consistent message with the Bible, rather than a matter of choosing your own particular interpretation.
Here’s what the Westboro Baptists have said is their reason for targeting Mars Hill.
“WBC says the reason they’ll be at Mars Hill Church is, “To picket the false prophet and blind lemmings at Mars Hill Whore House where they teach the lies that God love [sic] everyone and Jesus died for the sins of all of mankind. You have caused the people to trust in lies to their destruction, and to your damnation. Shame on you for calling yourself the Mars Hill Church! False advertising doesn’t come close! Paul would turn over in his grave at your God-hating, Christ-rejecting lies! You have a form of godliness, but you deny the power thereof…WBC will speak the truth to you in love—as God defines ‘love’. We will tell you that, in fact, there is a standard God has set in this earth that He commands you obey. Your disobedient sin is taking you to hell, and you must repent and mourn for your sins. God does not love everyone—in fact, He hates the majority of mankind, and has purposed to send them to hell when they die. You would know these things if you would pick up a Bible and actually READ THE WORDS!””
Team Driscoll* is responding by offering Team Phelps some donuts.
Which is a brilliant display of grace and a stunning contrast between the two. Despite my reservations about some of what Driscoll does, the man is a smart engager
*”I’m on Team Driscoll” t-shirts would be an interesting product to produce, because the modern angry young contempervant church planter/fanboy is the Christian equivalent of a twi-hard. That’s a market. Right there. 10% my way please…
Mumford and Sons cover Vampire Weekend…
Get it from Stereogum (it’s a download). Amazing.
Here they are covering the song England by the National.
In other exciting musical news, the new Gomez album is out tomorrow.