If only I’d spent more time playing with crayons as a kid and less time trying to eat them or whatever it was I did.
From Flickr.
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.
How to confuse your elderly relatives by the power of the internet
A friend of mine allegedly taught her little brother that the correct name for “green” was “yellow”. That sounds cruel. And it is (it’s also funny). Similarly, this guy told his 81 year old dad that Twitter is Google. Confused? So is he.
You can follow his tweets and provide him with answers here.
Some of the latest:
Inception in system folders in a minute
This should make things clearer if you’ve struggled to understand Inception.
INCEPTION_FOLDER from chris baker on Vimeo.
Via Kottke.
Slow Mo Guys make super slow mo even more fun
You’ve all spent hours watching slow motion videos online right? Didn’t you know that’s pretty much what the Internet was invented for?
Here you go.
This is probably my favourite.
Mad Skillz: How to make toasted Mars Bar sandwiches, and some variations
While I’ve enjoyed posting mad skillz from a few other people (and I have a few more to go), I thought I might contribute a skill of my own… so, without further ado, I give you my updated guide to the production of the world’s most delicious toasted sandwich. For this batch I expanded the recipe to include marshmallows. So I give you. The Toasted Mars Bar and Marshmallow Sandwich.
You’ll need:
Fun size Mars Bars
Marshmallows
Bread
A sandwich toaster (might be best to get a second one, because if you’re not careful you’ll be trying to get rid of the taste of marshmallow for weeks)
Process
It’s all fairly self explanatory:
1. Chop up the marshmallows.
2. Place them on the bread, away from the edges, because you want to make sure they don’t spill over the edges onto the hotplate.
3. Cut up the Mars Bar – I used fun size ones, I think they used to be bigger. This batch probably could have done with some more chocolate to be honest.
4. Place the Mars Bar bits on top of the marshmallow. Put it in the sandwich toaster. You’ll need to check it as it cooks a few times in case a bit of marshmallow leaks. Trust me.
5. Serve. Delicious.
Now. That looks pretty good right? But you can make it a little more gourmet with the introduction of some puffed pastry in the place of the bread.
Either cook them on the toasted sandwich maker (be sure to oil it) – it’ll take about 15 minutes…
…or in the oven – I let these go for about 17 minutes in the end.
With a little bit of egg glaze (1 egg and a dash of water)…
The parcel worked better than the open one.
You could probably dust these with icing sugar to present them all fancy and stuff. They’re best eaten hot, but the insides get very, very, hot. So don’t burn your tongue.
Imperial Propaganda reveals truth about Star Wars
A few weeks ago the wool was pulled away from our eyes on the question of Super Mario’s innocence. Thanks to the power of propaganda. Now it’s time for us to learn the truth about the empire. Darth Vader was a good guy, painted in a negative light by the victors of the history wars of the future.
Although, there’s a question about who is winning that “culture war” with these rebel alternatives.
From PBH.
Is this Inception Chair just a dream?
Brilliant. A movie reference. Within a chair. Within a chair. Within a… you get it.
Inception Chair. They come apart too. So each chair is a chair of its own right. Or something.
Atheists who love the Bible
Both Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins have written recently about their love of the KJV. The new-atheist glitterati are doing their bit to pry the Bible out of the hands of “the religious” and into the hands of English teachers.
There’s a great article on The Punch by the Bible Society’s Roy Williams responding to this trend of atheists damning the Bible with faint praise. It’s well worth a read. The comments aren’t. They’ve become a playground for the type of person who thinks writing lengthy rant comments to reinforce one’s own views is a good use of one’s time. While I love comments here. And discussions (online and in person) there’s something about the complete lack of respect that anti-theists show to any “woo believers” on the internet that just makes me angry and pushes me from my position of centre hugging moderate towards religious extremist. If I read many more of these threads I’ll be voting Family First and donating to the Australian Christian Lobby in the hope of making atheism illegal.
From the article:
“Dawkins is quite candid on this score. He admits that he cannot abide translations of the Bible other than the KJV, whether they are closer to the meaning of the original ancient texts or not. He wants the KJV taught in schools “not as history, not as science and not (oh please not) as morality. But as literature.”
There are serious problems with this argument.
For a start, the 47 men who “wrote” the KJV would have scoffed at any suggestion that their primary task was to produce fine literature. Appointed and supervised by the Bishop of London (later Archbishop of Canterbury), Richard Bancroft, they were chosen on the basis of two criteria.
First, their pre-eminence as biblical scholars – in particular, their detailed knowledge of at least one of the three ancient languages in which the books of the Bible were originally written (Hebrew and Aramaic in the case of the Old Testament; Greek in the case of the New Testament).”
72 million reasons to be depressed the rapture didn’t happen over the weekend
If there’s one thing Harold Campling’s stupidity did manage it was to generate more global buzz around the return of Jesus than any other preacher in the last 20 years. My Facebook and Twitter feeds were filled with rapture chatter – and not just from Christians. People knew about Campling’s predictions. And if you were anything like me – you looked at your watch when the world was meant to end and thought about Campling. I felt sorry for the people he fleeced, and sorry for his future.
But his message reached tipping point. It went viral in a way most brands can only dream of. People are still tweeting #rapturefail messages as we speak.
The secret to this success was the incredible amount of money he poured into getting his message across. That’s what showed he was serious. That and the contributions he secured from other people who also bought into his message.
So now I’m thinking much the same thing I think when I see how much money people pour into building dinosaur theme parks. Wouldn’t it be great if Campling’s message (even if his eschatology is completely screwy) just focused on promoting the gospel of Jesus. Proclaiming the future return of Jesus, who came to restore our relationship with God. If you have $72 million to sink into an advertising campaign and you think the world is going to end on a particular date – just book your campaign to finish on that date and make it all about Jesus. Not about your weird interpretation of dates. Especially if your words, like Campling’s, run completely contrary to everything the Bible says on the issue.
It makes me sad that Campling’s stupidity is now being hijacked as an opportunity to mock anybody who has Christian faith.
If that’s the style of argument the atheists want to bring to this debate then we’re going to have to start judging their claims on the basis of the behaviour of their fringe. But that’s revisiting old ground.
It makes me sick to see so many people talking about the return of Jesus (not the rapture) in the trivial and derogatory way they are thanks to Mr Campling. Which is why I think the Bible takes false teachers pretty seriously.
Sad day for second hand books
My trips to Sydney won’t be the same anymore. Gould Books is a must visit for me, and has been since I was a kid staying in one of the terrace houses across the road. Every day of that week was a new a reading adventure. Until I picked up a very tattered copy of Lord of the Rings (which my clever mother recovered with a Coco Pops box. So it was sad to read that the man who put the Gould into Gould books died. I’ve never been to a bookshop with so many books and such a lax approach to fire safety and cataloguing.
Shallow Small Groups for contempervant people
“We don’t want to do life together”… because churches should be a mile wide and a couple of inches deep.
This is vaguely funny Christian satire, a couple of steps above not funny at all Christian satire.
This is doing the rounds on Facebook, and probably everywhere else in the Christian internet too. But I’m a day or two behind the times.
No “pet” names, it’s insulting
In the latest case of dumb things dumb people do because they are dumb and think dumb… ethicists have suggested that calling animals “pets” is demeaning and dehumanising.
“Despite its prevalence, ‘pets’ is surely a derogatory term both of the animals concerned and their human carers…”
Domestic dogs, cats, hamsters or budgerigars should be rebranded as “companion animals” while owners should be known as “human carers”, they insist.
Even terms such as wildlife are dismissed as insulting to the animals concerned – who should instead be known as “free-living”, the academics including an Oxford professor suggest.
The worst thing about the findings of this pro-animal journal:
“It is edited by the Revd Professor Andrew Linzey, a theologian and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, who once received an honorary degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury for his work promoting the rights of “God’s sentient creatures”.”
That’s some great theology right there. Because animals have sensitive egos.
Also. We can’t talk about bad human actions in terms of animal behaviour:
“Phrases such as “sly as a fox, “eat like a pig” or “drunk as a skunk” are all unfair to animals.”
It’s this sort of thinking that leads to the development of stupid weasel words. I mean. Vacuous and empty phrases that lack any grace or clarity.
Church Sign Fail
I have mentioned in the past that I’m less than excited by most church signs that try to be pithy and end up sucking.
Why churches don’t just use these boards to promote the big idea of each sermon, or you know, the gospel, is beyond me.
Here’s a bit of a doozy in Brisbane (sent to me by my brother-in-law).
