2010 has been a pretty big year for us. Moving. Changing churches. Starting a new job (or study)… they’re meant to be some of the most stressful things around. But is has been fun. Here are some photos. Consider this a photo essay of our year… If I can be bothered I’ll caption some of the photos later.
Author: Nathan Campbell
How to pick up (Christian) ladies: tips from Greg D
This slightly creepy guy named “Greg D” runs a slightly creepy website (which is now “under construction” so you might need to check out the cached version. And also includes video tips. His “meetup” group is still running.
Conversation starter: “Are you in a gang”…
Introducing geeks
Meet the Geeks: Short Film from Sano Sagara on Vimeo.
I think I’m a Bible geek. A coffee geek. A food geek. A wannabe tech geek. And an Internet geek.
What sort of geek are you?
My 13 Favourite YouTube Videos from 2010
A Monkey riding on a pig, with a catchy song
Creed Shreds (A slight written language warning on this one)
A bit of Remi Galliard
A Chimpanzee Riding on a Segway
Bill Bailey plays U2
Chinese army redub
Subtitled Hymns
Old School Christian Advertising
Ninja Fight
Joel Osteen on Bacon
K-Strass the Yo-Yo Master
Steve Jobs in adjectives…
An Anti-Farmville Ad
Defining Faith
My biggest problem with the New Atheists boils down to this:
That’s not faith. Here’s how Hebrews 11 defines faith:
1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.
I would suggest, humble readers, that this definition of faith – belief in the unseen – is not the same as deliberately not seeing. Which is the way most atheists seem to frame it. Seeing something and denying it is not faith – which is a problem for some Christians, I’ll admit. But thought and faith are not in opposition – faith simply deals with that which we hope and do not see. I don’t have faith that a chair will hold me. I trust that it will. Because I have watched it, or experienced it, holding me. That’s where, I think, faith and trust are different.
If I had found any contradictory evidence (ala point 1 of the above definition), ie if I had seen it – then it would no longer be faith keeping me in a position (according to Hebrews 11) but stupidity. Taking something “on faith” does not mean not seeking to confirm the thing by investigation, or observation – and it does not mean holding a position contrary to logic, reason, or observation. This is where I think Atheists 2.0 have it most wrong. At least second most wrong. I think not believing in God is where they have it most wrong…
That is all.
My 11 Favourite Songs from 2010
In no particular order. Because order is difficult. Picking ten proved difficult too. I ended up with 11. As you can see, and read.
Grizzly Bear – Two Weeks
Local Natives – Airplanes
Two Door Cinema Club – Undercover Martyn
Florence and the Machine and Dizzy Rascal – You Got the Love
Whitley – Head First Down
Gotye – Eyes Wide Open
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Mumford and Sons – Awake My Soul
Boy and Bear – Fall at Your Feet
Deerhunter – Helicopter
Angus and Julia Stone – Big Jet Plane
Kids say the darndest things about Christmas
This cute little nativity story pretty comprehensively sums up the modern confusion about Christmas. I walked into EB (a computer games store) yesterday and noticed their current catalogue reads “What Would Santa Do”…
Trials and Tribulations
After a few days holidaying in Airlie Beach and catching up with friends in Townsville, which have been really nice, tomorrow sees me “trial for license” – part of the ongoing process of becoming a Presbyterian minister.
I’m preaching at a fairly old school Presbyterian Church in Townsville in front of a few members of the North Queensland presbytery who will “appraise” my performance and pass judgment on my ministry suitability.
I’m preaching on the Beatitudes. Here’s a paragraph from my sermon.
“But I want to suggest, at this point, that we’re not looking at the beatitudes right if we understand them as a set of rules to follow to be part of God’s kingdom. I grew up thinking that the word “beatitude” was a description of what these verses mean – I thought they were a set of instructions for how we should behave, and what our attitudes should be. The beatitudes. But I think the meaning of these verses does hinge on what the word beatitudes actually means. It’s latin. It means “blessings.” And it picks up on that repeated “blessed are” phrase at the start of each verse.
The beatitudes aren’t about what we have to do to be in the kingdom – and in fact, as soon as we read them that way we’re slipping into the same trap as the Pharisees. We’re making rules and regulations for belonging to the kingdom.”
Then I say that the beatitudes are about God’s blessing of us, through Jesus, whose life and ministry are modeled on the beatitudes. Doesn’t seem heretical to me… how about to you?
Also (pretty official)…
I have a new day job. For January at least. But I haven’t signed any of the paperwork yet. Doing some marketing of some sort for a government department that houses books. I’m not sure what the rules about writing about this sort of thing are yet (because I haven’t started). But it’s pretty providential timing. And I’ll be working with my friend Amy. Who is an occasional commenter here. Should be fun. I like the idea of not completely losing my marketing/PR skill set. But this job also has some nice menial components to it which won’t entirely do my head in during the college break.
It’s Official: Boy and Bear the new Mumford and Sons
I’m as excited by Boy and Bear now as I was about Mumford and Sons when I wrote this post. Check out this Crowded House cover.
Wikileaks: Of dams and fingers
So, the Wikileaks saga drags on. At least Oprah is gone from our shores…
The whole Wikileaks thing kind of fascinates me. It’s the archetypal immovable object up against the irresistable force. Freedom of speech (particularly of the press) and a desire for transparent government meets public safety, national interests and diplomacy. Chuck in an Australian with a God complex and a stated desire to change the way governments do business, a few tortured souls willing to sacrifice life, limb and well being in order to leak classified documents they’ve obtained illegally… it’s got all the hallmarks of a follow up to the Social Network – the UnSocial Network.
Part of me thinks transparent government is a good thing. Part of me is fascinated by the trainwreck as governments respond to the saga – Julia Gillard’s uninformed “this is illegal” is one such example. And doubtless it presents problems for governments involved – we’re not talking cynical dictators here, but democratically elected representatives who are trying to serve their people. Leaking information is reprehensible – it’s not up to a lowly member of the military to decide what state secrets come out, and it’s doubtless against their employment contracts (and of course, treasonous). Some information is dangerous. And a dangerous world is likely to require dangerous information – information that shouldn’t necessarily be broadcast to everybody, the problem with the Assange model is that it draws no distinction about who should receive what information. Which is naive. Why should Al Qaeda have access to the same information as the average American citizen about how the American government operates? That makes no sense. It’s not as though governments aren’t thinking about transparency themselves – they just err on the side of caution when it comes to disseminating information. Wikileaks errs on the side of stupidity.
The press has always been free to publish fruit from a poisonous tree – provided it’s in the public interest. And I reckon wikileaks, broadly speaking, falls into that category. They’re not stealing the documents themselves, hacking databases or surreptitiously accessing information from behind iron curtains – they’re simply a distributor. But a distributor with an agenda. Just like Fox. So while I reckon the leakers are in the wrong, I think it sets a dangerous precedent to go after the distribution channel rather than the leaker. Wikleaks simply represents the new media’s style of distribution. Too the masses, for the masses, by the masses. The “information is power” equation functions on the law of diminishing returns. More information available to more people doesn’t mean more power. It just robs power from those who previously held it. It’s diluted. In a lot of ways it’s better that the information is available to everybody than that it’s available to a select few on the black market. That’s part of having a free press and a commitment, in principle, to democracy. It’s one thing for Julian Assange to speak of getting rid of the US’s stranglehold on politcal power globally – but what do you replace it with? He’s a typical anarchist in some sense – he doesn’t seem interested in the future, just in displacing the present.
Attempts to control information in this day and age is like standing in front of a cracking dam wall and plugging the gap with you finger. It won’t work. And you’re going to get smashed when the wall cracks. I think that’s what this has taught me. I’d say governments are better off just aiming for complete transparency. The idea of not doing anything you’re ashamed of is as old as debates about privacy. But it works. If governments were more open to freedom of information requests and being transparent then there’d be less chance of damage happening through leaks. Give the people a torrent and it’s likely that bad news would be buried in the sheer volume – and when it surfaces you can always acknowledge that it was there and say “that’s why we’re making this information available”… the Internet is changing the way information can be disseminated and the management of the leaks, from a PR/news cycle perspective has also been interesting. It seems Julian Assange has no real editorial brain. He hasn’t done a great job at managing the flow of information, the bang to buck ratio is poor. Pushing a glut of information out there at once is guaranteed to bury some of the good stuff. Even if you pick a few strategic articles to promote the release by giving juicy exclusives to particular outlets. His strategy has been bad. His personal strategy has been pretty bad too – even though he’s won over a few celebrity campaigners who have adopted him as a cause de jour. The Swedish claims seem a little bit too convenient – but the man does appear to be a bit of a self-interested slimeball with delusions of grandeur.
Here are some good wikileaks articles for your perusal:
The Ugley Vicar considers the motivations behind Assange’s program. Including this quote about the function of wikileaks:
“The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive ‘secrecy tax’) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.”
The Guardian, a mainstream paper who were the beneficiaries of some of Assange’s leaks asks questions about the motivation behind them and the changes the leaks might bring.
The Economist points out that wikileaks is just the tip of the iceberg, or rather, an example of how easily information can spread in the Internet – suggesting that plugging this leak won’t stop the dam bursting:
“Yet the debate over WikiLeaks has proceeded as if the matter might conclude with the eradication of these kinds of data dumps—as if this is a temporary glitch in the system that can be fixed; as if this is a nuisance that can be made to go away with the application of sufficient government gusto. But I don’t think the matter can end this way. Just as technology has made it easier for governments and corporations to snoop ever more invasively into the private lives of individuals, it has also made it easier for individuals, working alone or together, to root through and make off with the secret files of governments and corporations. WikiLeaks is simply an early manifestation of what I predict will be a more-or-less permanent feature of contemporary life, and a more-or-less permanent constraint on strategies of secret-keeping.”
Here’s an hour long documentary on Wikileaks that you can watch at your leisure.
After PayPal, MasterCard, and other financial institutions went after Assange and Wikileaks – 4Chan struck back for the internet, launching DoS attacks on their servers.
I’ll watch the inevitable movie though. So what do you reckon – is Assange a hero or a villain?
Questioning the premise of Angry Birds
What happens when the troops start questioning the methods employed by their generals? Revolution. That’s what.
And so it begins.