I’m really looking forward to the new Gotye album. Here’s his first song:
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.
Research shows Christians are nicer than atheists
Yeah. Read it and weep those of you in the religion poisons everything mob. The results are in. In America anyway.
Forty percent of worship-attending Americans volunteer regularly to help the poor and elderly, compared with 15% of Americans who never attend services. Frequent-attenders are also more likely than the never-attenders to volunteer for school and youth programs (36% vs. 15%), a neighborhood or civic group (26% vs. 13%), and for health care (21% vs. 13%). The same is true for philanthropic giving; religious Americans give more money to secular causes than do secular Americans. And the list goes on, as it is true for good deeds such as helping someone find a job, donating blood, and spending time with someone who is feeling blue.
England’s Telegraph follows this USA Today story in breaking the news.
No doubt there’ll be a long queue of atheists lining up to debunk this theory on the internet. Because they’ve got so much spare time (since they’re not out and about, you know, helping people.
And the answer to the question of why this is the case isn’t “because we’re told to be good from the pulpit” – no, it’s good old peer pressure, in the form of community.
What is it about friends-at-church that fosters good citizenship? It could be that requests to get involved carry more moral weight when they come from someone you know through your congregation rather than work or your bowling team. Or perhaps religious congregations simply foster peer pressure to do good. At this point, we do not know the precise magic civic ingredient in religious friendships.
Not knowing exactly how religious friendships foster good neighborliness thus leaves open the possibility that the same sort of effect could be found in secular organizations. But they would probably have to resemble religious congregations — close-knit communities with shared morals and values. Currently, though, such groups are few and far between. (Communes might qualify, for example.)
Interesting. Thoughts?
Music to Study to: Boy and Bear and Deerhunter
Speaking of music. I’m enjoying the Boy and Bear EP With Emperor Antarctica:
And a bit of Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest I suspect many of you will like the former more than the latter…
Compare and Contrast: Owl City and the Postal Service
I heard this song somewhere, and then a friend favourited it on YouTube.
I’d always thought it was by the Postal Service, until I shazammed it (is that a verb?). Turns out I was wrong. And thousands of Internet people have already commented on the similarities.
And if you think the Postal Service sound a lot like Death Cab for Cutie that’s because Ben Gibbard is in both bands.
So there you go, I’m educating you all so that you don’t have to continue listening to the inferior knock off.
Facebook Email… umm… I mean “New Messages”
So, Facebook have announced their gmail killer that isn’t really a gmail killer at all – but a new fangled way of controlling what you read and who you read it from. The new “messages” accounts (which include an optional Facebook email address) will be rolling out in invitation only beta for a while. If you want an invite you should go to this link (if you haven’t already).
I’m the kind of guy who wants Facebook and Google mining all my data so they give me more relevant ads and less ads about Christian dating and bad coffee. You might not be…
Segway proto-prototype
I used to ride one of these around Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall (I was a gopher for a law firm). I didn’t have a helment.
Via Bits and Pieces and 22 Words.
For those who fail at spatial orientation
Some people. No, some women, struggle with knowing right from left. It’s true. They seem binarily opposed and permanently fixed relative to one’s eyes and hands. It seems like it should be more than a fifty-fifty bet. But still, they struggle. So now, I present you all, these gloves. May they be a blessing for the female drivers in your household.
Happy Meals? Happy times… a study of burgers over time
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt does cool stuff with food. And he’s just done it again. He set out to debunk a popular myth about McDonalds – the idea that their burgers not decomposing is somehow a damning indictment on their food. How? Well, he cooked some home made burgers and recorded similar results.
Here’s where he describes his experiment, and here are the findings.
His conclusion:
“… the burger doesn’t rot because it’s small size and relatively large surface area help it to lose moisture very fast. Without moisture, there’s no mold or bacterial growth. Of course, that the meat is pretty much sterile to begin with due to the high cooking temperature helps things along as well. It’s not really surprising. Humans have known about this phenomenon for thousands of years. After all, how do you think beef jerky is made?
Now don’t get me wrong—I don’t have a dog in this fight either way. I really couldn’t care less whether or not the McDonald’s burger rotted or didn’t. I don’t often eat their burgers, and will continue to not often eat their burgers. My problem is not with McDonald’s. My problem is with bad science.”
Shirt of the Day: The making of a Pacman Ghost
Ever wondered where those Pacman Ghosts come from? This shirt design (currently up for voting on Threadless) has the answer.
Thrilling News
Dear readers,
Thank you for your patience with my excruciating number of exam related posts in the last two weeks. My fellow students like it, and it helps me to clarify my thoughts.
You will be glad to know that other than a couple of Greek posts I might make in the next day or two, the exam related content is over and done with for another nine months.
I now return you to the regular irregularity that is st-eutychus.com.
Regards,
Nathan
Forewarned is forearmed…
Lest you think the story about a farting boy was the low point of my internet browsing today, think again, there’s a report going round that the off-cuts from circumcision procedures in hospitals around the world (the foreskins – hey, it’s in the Bible so it’s ok to mention here) are being sold for hundreds of dollars a pop to help develop moisturiser. Fancy that? Fancy that! Fancy, that. Three appropriate responses.
The Stir’s Christie Haskell dug deep into the largely hidden industry of baby foreskins. An infant’s foreskin has special cell properties, similar to those found in stem cells. Their versatility means that they can be used to cultivate skin cells.
Because of this, they’re not tossed out with the rest of the medical waste after a birth. Instead, hospitals sell them to companies and institutions for a wide variety of uses. Companies will pay thousands of dollars for a single foreskin.
Some of the strangest purposes they’re put to:
- Cosmetics: Foreskins are used to make high-end skin creams. The skin products contain fibroblasts grown on the foreskin and harvested from it. One foreskin can be used for decades to produce fancy face cream like the SkinMedica products hawked on Oprah.
- Skin grafts: In addition to making products for skin, a baby’s foreskin can be turned into a skin graft for a burn victim. Because the cells are extremely flexible, they’re less likely to be rejected. Currently, this technology can be lifesaving in providing a real skin “band aid” to cover an open wound while a burn victim heals. Researchers at Harvard and Tufts are working on advanced skin replacements that use human foreskins.
- Cosmetic testing: All those cruelty-free cosmetics you buy? Some of them are tested on foreskins. This yields better results, since they’re human skin. And it saves the lives of the rodents your shampoo would otherwise be tested on.
Yeah. From here. Corroborated here (and elsewhere – or it could be some sort of horrible joke)
The things Fox calls news: Boy passes gas on school bus
I think this might be old.
But it doesn’t stop it being a damning indictment on the editorial policies of local branches of Fox News.
Seriously.
“Boy farts on school bus, gets detention” wouldn’t have even been given a run in my school newspaper.
Pikachyou – a balaclava for pokemon wannabes
Rob a bank wearing this. Go on. I dare you. Well, not really. But this would be an interesting “signature” approach to crime.
From DeviantArt.
Old Testament 102: My sample Daniel answer
If there happens to be a question about the meaning of Daniel this is what my answer will look like (though I’ll pad it out with some Bible):
Ask a Christian doomsday cult fanatic what their favourite book of the Bible is, and in the mix with Revelation and Ezekiel will no doubt be the book of Daniel. Daniel is a tale of two halves – the latter half has been widely recognised as apocalyptic in nature – a cryptic condemnation of foreign rulers, and a message of hope for the people of God in the midst of foreign persecution. But what to do with the first half of the book? Chapters 1-6 read like a series of court tales in a foreign land, with enough similarities to a Disney movie to spawn countless retellings in children’s stories in churches around the globe. But could it be that simple?
Short answer, no. Like many stories that appear to be straightforward and geared towards children (Shrek for example) the story contains an undercurrent of harsh and satirical criticism of foreign rule – a mocking of inept kings, with a hopeful note for the people of God. God is in control, despite Israel’s political dilemma.
The identification of Daniel as a Menippean Satire was proposed by Valetta. Valetta identified the fourteen elements of satire from the late (second century) BC period. A recognition that has implications for the dating, and interpretation, of Daniel. Debate in scholarly circles has been largely settled on the question of a sixth century prescriptive dating of the second half of Daniel – while scholars are not ruling out predictive prophecy per say, some, such as Goldingay, note that such a level of detail is not common in Biblical prophecy (though such an assumption seems also to depend on ruling out a single, early, author of Isaiah), other problems presented for a sixth century dating include a series of historical inaccuracies that are best explained if the book is written in the second century with a sixth century setting. The only scholar of note still advocating a sixth century dating is Tremper Longman. Longman’s position sees him advocate a fairly simplistic application of Daniel’s first six chapters, he sees them as stories of bravery under fire, to be imitated by believers facing hostility.
Daniel as satire presents a more robust application – foreign rule is seen to be ridiculous, or worthy of ridicule, in comparison to the greatness of God’s rule. Clues for the satirical reading include the use of the language of the court (Aramaic) for much of the negative presentation of foreign rulers, the refrain “oh king may you live forever” occurring at intervals and incidents where the king is experiencing a particularly humiliating or traumatic time, and the presence of all fourteen elements of the Menippean Satire described by Bahktin. A satirical reading also integrates more comfortably with the apocalyptic undertones of the second half of the book – positioning the whole book as a rebuke of foreign rule designed to inspire hope within the oppressed people of Israel. The satirical take on the king (probably Antiochus IV) softens the target for the deadly blow of chapters 7-13, the prediction of his downfall. The book then contains a united condemnation of foreign rule, a message of judgment, and a message of hope for the oppressed.