This is cool. While doing a little googling for that last post I came across this. It’s called 66 Clouds.
You can buy posters for each book of the Bible – or a coffee table book. It’s exactly what it looks/sounds like. Word clouds of each book of the Bible, get it on Amazon
Obviously you can make your own with wordle.net. Where you can even tweak the colours. But ’tis nice.
As I travel the internet defending the veracity of the Bible (most recently in this thread on Steve Kryger’s post on the popular ThePunch.com.au) it’s often struck me that one of the major truths about the Bible that is lost in the noise as the nu-atheists, armed with their well-thumbed copies of tomes by Dawkins and Hitchens (replete with highlighted cliff-notes so that they all sound on message), clamour all over just about any thread that dares to mention God, is that the Bible is actually a collection of volumes. Volumes collated over a great amount of time – and finally signed off by a series of councils in the early years of the church.
One of the Bible’s great strengths against other religious texts is this diversity of authorship and development. The consistency of message and theology demonstrated across the 66 books is impressive (even if some people would rather look for contradictions – contradictions which are usually just poor reading/interpreting of the text – the number of contradictions is hugely overwhelmed by the number of corroborations and overall consistency). So here’s what I’m picturing in my head. It’s a piece of performance art. Of sorts. Perhaps better described as a piece of literary art. And I hereby claim this idea as my own – and if you think it has legs I’d like you to tell me (also, if it doesn’t)…
Here’s what I think we should do.
Design a set of the 66 books of the Bible in separate volumes (one chapter per page to pad out some of the smaller books – and perhaps some “Study Bible” or commentary type notes, just so Jude is publishable…
I’m thinking nice typography and minimalist cover designs (or perhaps designs like these from Jim Le Page), maybe with spines that link together as an image. Good quality printing. It’d probably be expensive. Maybe with an approximate date of composition on each spine (I know this is notoriously hard to pin down).
Image Credit: Jim Le Page, on Flickr.
But what do you reckon? It’d make a nice statement about what the Bible is, and be oddly functional – because you could take a single book to church if you know what the sermon is going to be on in advance… Anybody have any idea what a set of 66 volumes would cost to publish?
Some people out there aren’t big fans of Haikus. Those 5/7/5 Japanese poems. I am not some people. I even resigned my job with the power of Haiku. So I’m impressed with this website that searches the wikileaks site for naturally occurring haikus. Like these:
Instead, he gulped three
cans of Coca-Cola while
inhaling his food.
He added that there
should be ‘no blank checks, no checks
at all,’ for Hamas.
The vessels are met
either on shore or a short
distance off the coast.
It uses a snippet of code that you can run over any text you want. Which you can get here.
Did you get a video camera for Christmas? Wondering what cool projects you can use it for? I have some answers. Six, in fact.
Buy a sword. Attach it to the end.
Set yourself up as a first person shooter.
Do the (previously posted) third person car set up (language warning)
Attach the camera to a big helium balloon and send it into space (dizziness warning)
Follow this instructable and see yourself in third person. Computer game style.
I didn’t get a video camera for Christmas – but I did get one just before we went overseas. And I got a remote controlled helicopter (like every other male child adult this year). I don’t know how it would go if I attached one to the other… but here’s a purpose built cameracopter – that can be controlled by the power of iPhone. Which is awesome.
Simone drew a picture of my dad. It’s funny.
She also wrote a post about me for my birthday that I haven’t linked to yet, but truly appreciated.
This is cool. An artist named Donna Munsel produces/paints art using beer (amongst other things – here’s her portfolio).
This is a nice bit of anti-Comic Sans propaganda – comicsanscriminal.com – that you should be aware of. Especially if you are a church. Please delete that font from your computers. There is no good reason to be using it in 2011.
Keep this in mind:
Although, apparently it is good for dyslexics.
You can even sign this pledge at the end.
This is an amazing photo of lightning. Taken by a camera that can capture images at one-sixth the speed of light.
Pretty cool. Because they also fired rockets into storm clouds with some wires to trigger the lightning.
“The rockets trailed wires behind them to direct the lightning through the camera’s field of view. Artificially triggering the lightning strike likely didn’t alter the natural workings of the thunderstorm, Dwyer noted. And, he said, “the advantage of triggered lightning is that we can repeat it.”
Wow. More details here.
Nice video.
Containing some subliminal adverts for Google’s products.
We haven’t had to watch the weather radar at the Bureau of Meteorology this week. It has been pretty obvious that it has been raining, and that the rain was going to stick around.
But this XKCD comic was too timely not to post.
From XKCD.
XKCD tackles the big issues. As you can see, from this little examination of the possible moves in a game of noughts and crosses.
From xkcd.
If fonts were people/super heroes.
From College Humo(u)r…
I’m filing this for “response letters I’d like to send one day”… there’s a slight language warning. Via DeadSpin.
Here’s the transcript of the original letter:
“Gentlemen:
I am one of your season ticket holders who attends or tries to attend every game. It appears one of the pastimes of several fans has become the sailing of paper airplanes generally made out of the game program. As you know, there is the risk of serious eye injury and perhaps an ear injury as a result of such airplanes. I am sure that this has been called to your attention and that several of your ushers and policemen witnessed the same.
Please be advised that since you are in a position to control or terminate such action on the part of fans, I will hold you responsible for any injury sustained by any person in my party attending one of your sporting events. It is hoped that this disrespectful and possibly dangerous activity will be terminated.
Very truly yours,
Roetzel & Andress
By Dale O. Cox”
Here’s the response the team sent:
“Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some a*&#&$ is signing your name to stupid letters”
