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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.
Buy a guitar: +10 to mad guitar skillz
Robyn has two guitars. She only needs one now. The second was her classroom guitar back in the days when she was a school teacher. So I’ve just listed one on ebay. I had some fun with the description.
“Being an acoustic guitar it will also add +5 to your charisma, and if you are a single man +7 to your picking up girls ability. Whether you’re a rocker, a surfer, or a crooner – this guitar could have you on the turn off to the backstreet, that leads to the causeway, to the highway to success and stardom. Lets not sell its attributes too highly. We’re all about realism here. And you’ll be able to keep it real yourself if this guitar enters your possession.”
Please bid generously. And feel free to ask questions on the sale page – I will do my best to answer even the silliest ones.
Baltimore’s Police Chief on The Wire: “I don’t like you”
The Wire is a gritty police drama focused on the city of Baltimore. It doesn’t really depict the police institution in the most flattering light.
David Simon, the director of The Wire responded, and I think we can all say “oh snap”…
Others might reasonably argue, however that it is not sixty hours of The Wire that will require decades for our city to overcome, as the commissioner claims. A more lingering problem might be two decades of bad performance by a police agency more obsessed with statistics than substance, with appeasing political leadership rather than seriously addressing the roots of city violence, with shifting blame rather than taking responsibility.
Coming soon, Obama’s views on how the West Wing makes the presidency glamourous.
Via 22 Words.
Fat Atheists, PZ Myers, Chuck Norris, and the Internet
I mentioned Conservapedia in that last post. And it’s hilarious. Have you read it? Apparently being an atheist makes you fat. It’s their “Article of the Month” at the moment – Atheism and Obesity,” basically the argument boils down to “atheists are fat. Y’all.” Actually. Most of the atheists I know are fat.
Here’s an excerpt…
“Two of the major risk factors for becoming obese according to the Mayo Clinic are poor dietary choices and inactivity, thus given the above cited Gallup research, it appears as if non-religious are more prone to becoming obese than very religious individuals.[8] The Bible declares that gluttony is a sin.[9] Furthermore, the Bible declares the physical body of Christians to be temples of the Holy Spirit.[10] Therefore, it is not surprising that many very religious Christians would leave healthy lives.
Christianity is the world’s largest religion and it has seen tremendous growth over its 2000 year history.[11] In the last fifty years, Christianity has recently seen explosive growth outside the Western World.[12][13][14][15] In 2000, there were twice as many non-Western Christians as Western Christians.[16] In 2005, there were four times as many non-Western Christians as there were Western Christians.[17] Of course, a big reason for the explosive growth of Christianity outside the Western world was due to highly religious people propagating the Christian faith and there are now more non-Western missionaries than Western missionaries.[18] Besides non-Westerners often being less sedentary, non-Western diets are often healthier than the diets Westerners consume and there is significantly less obesity in those non-Western cultures.[19][20][21] Therefore, in recent history Christendom has seen a large influx of very religious people who live healthy lifestyles and have low levels of obesity. For example, the noted Evangelical preacher Rick Warren recently made a public commitment to lose 90 pounds.[22] Have you seen any of the prominent atheists make such a pledge?”
The article then goes on to feature pictures of fat atheists. Like PZ Myers.
Who is contrasted with the super-fit, and Christian, Chuck Norris.
Perhaps the best bit of the article is Chuck Norris’ warning for Christian parents about atheists and the Internet.
“Atheists are making a concerted effort to win the youth of America and the world. Hundreds of websites and blogs on the Internet seek to convince and convert adolescents, endeavoring to remove any residue of theism from their minds and hearts by packaging atheism as the choice of a new generation. While you think your kids are innocently surfing the Web, secular progressives are intentionally preying on their innocence and naivete.
What’s preposterous is that atheists are now advertising and soliciting on websites particularly created for teens.
YouTube, the most popular video site on the Net for young people, is one of their primary avenues for passing off their secularist propaganda.[35]”
Wikipedia is ten, and a haven for atheists
Interestingly – half of all english language wikipedia editors have no religion. No wonder the Christian Right wanted to start their own (see Conservapedia) More interestingly, wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (not to be confused with Jeremy Wales), thought that statistic was worth including in a ten year summary of the site.
And look. An infographic:
Via TechCrunch.
What sort of parent…
… lets their daughter, no, encourages their daughter, to sing and dance like this on national television.
Only in America.
Gym Etiquette Flow Chart
Etiquette is a murky thing. Throw some nudity or heavy weights into the mix and we’re talking perilous social waters.
I went to a gym once. Well, more than once. Twice. Well more than twice. There were three periods in my life when I was a member of a gym. I didn’t like it very much. But who does? I might rejoin one soon. I harbour a secret desire to be able to wink with my pecs.
Anyway. Seeing people at the gym who you know can present some awkward social situations. Especially if you’re naked. I’ve never understood people’s desire to get naked at the gym. It’s a subculture I just don’t get. Go home sweaty and shower when you get there. Seriously.
Anyway. Here’s a flowchart. From Slate.
New Starbucks drink size is bigger than the human stomach
This is just crazy. Who needs this much over-roasted coffee anyway?
This is what it looks like for real.
This has been all over the interwebs. But I think I saw it first on ChurchCrunch. It’s originally from the National Post.
Why you should work hard in science
Now I wish I hadn’t spent all of Chemistry at high school picking lines from random songs for my classmates to identify.
Oh well. The dinosaur cloners will need public relations people. I guess that’ll be my in.
From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Comics, via the Friendly Atheist.
More fun with Benny Hinn
I am truly surprised that there aren’t more Benny Hinn mashups out there. I’ve posted a couple before.
An ode to Sarah Palin
This is every bit as terrible as you think it will be.
Actually. It’s more terrible.
Death wears a snuggie
Apparently the guys responsible for launching nuclear missiles dress down a little bit when they’re sitting at the command console. Which, I think we’d all agree, is a good thing. I’d hate for an itchy shirt to cause somebody to bump that red button. From Wired.
Though tedious, missile duty is not without perks. The uniform regulations are relaxed, though not by design. Once the blast door thuds shut and a crew is free from the prying eyes of the public or enlisted personnel topside, out come the pajamas and hooded sweatshirts.
In a favorite missileer uniform patch (right), the Grim Reaper sits at an ICBM console, dressed in bunny slippers. In the real world, death wears a campus T-shirt, JCrew bottoms and the ubiquitous Snuggie. The silly blanket-robe hybrid is suited to the missile force, keeping an officer toasty while allowing him to interact with the weapons console unobstructed.
Missileers learn that on alert, comfort is as important as humor. One enterprising fellow liked to string a hammock between the two command chairs and stretch out for his long shifts at the console.
There’s something a little kafkaesque about the whole picture isn’t there? The guys who can blow up the world are wearing these:
Seattle’s Real Life Superheroes: In the News
I bet one of these guys is Mark Driscoll. If you get to 2:30 – I reckon he’s the one on the right.
“We stand for a message. And the message is that we are against violence and we are against the crimes you are going to do”
Red Dragon carries a wooden sword. That could be Driscoll too.
On Humans and Snakes
This is a sermon I’ve preached a few times now. I fluctuate between thinking it’s good and thinking it’s bad. It’s almost a theology of Snakes. I hit about five passages – though it’s ostensibly based on Numbers 21 and John 3.
Feel free to check it out and tell me what you think. If Shane Warne’s stock ball was the leg break – this is currently my stock “one off sermon”…
I’m aware of a few problems with it that I’ll fix next time around – and it was written prior to my year at college, so if I started again it might look different. But it does have a killer opening illustration. And that’s something.
This is a post about the best media release ever written
This is an introduction sentence.
This is a quote from that release.
“The science behind this Earth-shattering news release lies in its simplicity – no science, just pure old press release craftsmanship. It started with an incredible brainstorming session that asked a very simple question: “what makes a press release amazing?”
Elaborate notes from that brainstorm were then formulated into mesmerizing sentences, paragraphs and pages…all expertly designed to make you pause and reflect at the brilliance of this press release.
Every single word of this news release was track changed, stetted, then track changed again to its original draft. Upon final approval, it was spell checked, fact checked and printed for posterity. The result is a two-page, 1.5-spaced news release that is like no other news release in existence.”
This is a link to that post – which is a promo piece for a PR agency. It’s an interesting way to do it.
If you want to know about how to write your own press release, read this post. If you want me to write one for you, or have a look at one you’ve written. Please email me. We can talk.