Nathan Campbell – Page 158

Angry Birds Plush Toys, not actual size

TechCrunch has a scoop (not uncommon for the leading blog about goings on on the Internet). Everybody’s favourite iPhone game characters, the Angry Birds, are becoming tangible. Check out this range of plush toys headed your way (TechCrunch has photos of all of them).

Now, I can tell you that these birds aren’t actual size because somebody smart at
Wired/a> conducted some mathematical modelling on the game to determine its physics, and as a result, calculated that the red bird is five metres tall.

They worked out that there’s no air resistance in the angry birds world, and thus, gravity is the only force working on the bird (which moves at 2.46 angry birds per second in the horizontal direction).

“The only force acting on the bird (if the bird is not moving too fast) would be the gravitational force from the Earth. This is where I see lots of intro-student mistakes. They tend to want to put some force in the horizontal direction because the bird is moving that way. DON’T do that. That is what Aristotle would have you believe, but you don’t want to be in his club. There is no horizontal force in this case – no air resistance.

Check out the maths at Wired to see how the calculation of the bird’s height (actually 4.9m) was made.

October 30, 2010

Cookie Flow Chart

Should you eat a cookie? Yes.

If you’re into impulse control more than I am, perhaps apply this flowchart to your decision making matrix.

From Sheldon Comics, Via Twenty Two Words.

October 30, 2010

Bay of Plenty

If you’ve always thought your photos were missing that special something. Perhaps an explosion. Or Shia Lebouf. Then Get Bayifying. A nice online webapp that turns your photos into a still from a Michael Bay movie. You too can turn a photo like this (with the obligatory ancient wonder in the background)…

Into this… Jets. Guns. Explosions. Saturated Colour.

Beautiful. No wait. Baytiful.

October 30, 2010

How to convert an atheist

It’s easy. You’ve been doing it wrong.

Ask these questions:

1. Are you a serious atheist?
2. Are you a seeker of truth?
3. Are you open minded?
4. Can I draw you a picture of a circle. A very large circle (a visual aid is good).
5. Imagine the circle is filled with all knowledge.
6. How much of this knowledge does a circle of your knowledge represent?
7. Ask “is it possible that God could live outside your circle of knowledge?”
8. Thank them for being open minded.
9. Convince them that they are actually agnostic.
10. Remind them that they are a seeker of truth.
11. Suggest that there could in fact be a God.
12. Suggest that they find out why so many other people believe in God.
13. Point them to Psalm 14:1 – call them a fool.
14. Give them a book. Preferably the book from this video.

Foolproof. Right?

What could possibly not satisfy the questioning intellect from that approach?

October 30, 2010

How does Jesus Dance? The Jesus Lean

Apparently he does the “Jesus Lean” and we should too…

“Lean back, then snap. Kick the Devil in the tooth”

Bounce for the king people. That’s the real act of worship. Forget anything Romans 12 might suggest.

You can get B-Shoc, the artist here, to come along to “revolutionise” your youth ministry.

October 30, 2010

Beattie’s Law of Newspaper Headlines

If you’re from Queensland you might immediately associate this headline with former Premier Peter Beattie. Don’t. It has nothing to do with him. If it did, the law would read: “Be in them as many times as possible.” This one is cooler:

“If there’s a question mark in the headline the answer is either (tabloid) “no” or (broadsheet) “who cares?”

Think about it. It’s true. Isn’t it.

October 29, 2010

School’s Out

Today marked the last day of class for the year, and the day I handed in my last essay. Just five exams in the next three weeks between me and three months of resting my brain (perhaps).

A word of warning though, over the next three weeks this little corner of the internet is going to, once again, be filled with amusing anecdotes from the desk of Nathan Campbell. That is to say it’s going to be filled with notes from my studying, for my benefit. Because blogging is my learning style. And hopefully for the benefit of others. And for your entertainment. Stay tuned for my attempt to create some church history history with my series of Early Church History Trading cards, and some theological venn diagrams, some Greek, and who knows what else I might throw in the mix. Maybe some Hebrew vocab memory hooks. Exciting times.

October 29, 2010

More music to study to: Architecture in Helsinki

It’s late. I’m tired. I need energy. And steel drums.

October 28, 2010

Aristotle on the Areopagus

I’m finding all sorts of fun quotes playing around with primary sources. Here’s a quote from Aristotle’s Rhetoric about use of emotion in court proceedings – with a mention of the Areopagus, the council Paul appeared before in Athens in Acts 17:

“The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case. Consequently if the rules for trials which are now laid down some states — especially in well-governed states — were applied everywhere, such people would have nothing to say. All men, no doubt, think that the laws should prescribe such rules, but some, as in the court of Areopagus, give practical effect to their thoughts and forbid talk about non-essentials. This is sound law and custom. It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity — one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it.”

Here’s a picture of Mars Hill.

Image Credit: Me, from our trip to Greece

Now the ever reputable Professor B. Winter tells us (that is, his students) that the Areopagus:

a) did not actually meet on top of Mars Hill (speculative – based largely on its current shape and size (who knows how big it was 2,000 years ago), and the number of people in the Areopagus.
and b) had a function to perform as the gatekeepers for the gods of Greece, the Areopagus basically had a set of rules to govern what gods could and couldn’t be accepted into Greece, and Paul’s presentation in Acts 17 is said to meet those parameters…

It’s interesting that they had a reputation for only talking about essentials, from hundreds of years before Paul, and yet the members of the Areopagus invited him to speak.

“19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this(AH) new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.”

It’s also funny how Luke’s view of the Athenians, and possibly, by context and extension, the Areopagus, differs from Aristotle’s:

21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”

October 27, 2010

Cicero on Preaching

While trying to get my head around Augustine’s On Christian Teaching (which isn’t particularly complicated) I’ve been reading the work of some of his influencers. Including Cicero, the great Roman Orator and champion of the Republic. Cicero wrote a book called De Oratore (On the Orators) which you can read in a parallel Latin/English .txt version here. It’s not pleasant to navigate.

He had some good stuff to say about preaching.

“This is why, in those exercises of your own, though there is a value in plenty of extempore speaking, it is still more serviceable to take time for consideration, and to speak better prepared and more carefully. But the chief thing is what, to tell the truth, we do least (for it needs great pains which most of us shirk), — to write as much as possible. The pen is the best and most eminent author and teacher of eloquence, and rightly so. For if an extempore and casual speech is easily beaten by one prepared and thought-out, this latter in turn will assuredly be surpassed by what has been written with care and diligence. The truth is that all the commonplaces, whether furnished by art or by individual talent and wisdom, at any rate such as appertain to the subject of our writing, appear and rush forward as we are searching out and surveying the matter with all our natural acuteness; and all the thoughts and expressions, which are the most brilliant in their several kinds, must needs flow up in succession to the point of our pen ; then too the actual marshalling and arrangement of words is made perfect in the course of writing, in a rhythm and measure proper to oratory as distinct from poetry.

These are the things which in good orators produce applause and admiration; and no man will attain these except by long and large practice in writing, however ardently he may have trained himself in those off-hand declamations; he too who approaches oratory by way of long practice in writing, brings this advantage to his task, that even if he is extemporizing, whatever he may say bears a likeness to the written word; and moreover if ever, during a speech, he has introduced a written note, the rest of his discourse, when he turns away from the writing, will proceed in unchanging style. Just as when a boat is moving at high speed, if the crew rest upon their oars, the craft herself still keeps her way and her run, though the driving force of the oars has ceased, so in an unbroken discourse, when written notes are exhausted, the rest of the speech still maintains a like progress, under the impulse given by the similarity and energy of the written word. ”

October 27, 2010

Music to study to: Angus and Julia Stone

I am thoroughly enjoying Angus and Julia Stone’s Down the Way at the moment. Its great music to write to, and the Dire Straitesque, or Knopfleresque, guitar solos are an interesting mix with their folky ennui. It looks like Mumford and Sons were a slippery slope into folk.

Here are a few of their songs if you’re uninitiated.

And a couple of nice live versions to finish:

October 27, 2010

Minority Report: Professional Athletes as victims

Here’s a hint. If you’re an ex-professional sports star, particularly an incredibly well paid member of one of the most lucrative sports in the world, say the NBA, and you’ve made millions from being an oversized white, anglo-saxon, possibly protestant male – that doesn’t entitle you to claim minority status if you’re in the running to be governor of your state. Being tall also doesn’t qualify you for “minority” status in a way that helps you empathise with the marginalised and downtrodden.

“When Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Dudley addressed the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs’ monthly “Coffee & Issues” breakfast on Sept. 24, he reprised a comment he’d made at an earlier interview with the Urban League of Portland.

“I heard him say he ‘understood what it was like to be a minority because he had played in the NBA.”

Yeah, even if he meant it as a joke it’s a pretty stupid joke to be making when you’re running for office. Basically, if what you say as a joke kicks up a media controversy and turns significant portions of the community against you, it’s a campaign no go zone.

Especially if your “minority” is one that millions strive to become and never achieve rather than being a quirk of your birth (though being ridiculously tall probably falls in that category).

October 26, 2010

The fastest path between four points: Math and Baseball

No, I’m not exploring my creative side by doing one of those drawings where you get those little coloured plastic cogs, and a pen, and swirl them around a page. That diagram is the result of careful mathematical study of the geometry of baseball, it represents the fastest path around all four bases – useful only if you hit a deep ball that doesn’t go over the fence and you want to run home – it’ll shave milliseconds off your time.

If you are running to first, or between first and second (or second and third, or third and home), which I believe in baseball parlance is a single (what would I know, I’m from Australia, we play cricket) the straight line is no doubt still the best bet. This circuitous route shaves about 25% off the time taken for the run – because turning sharp angles slows runners down substantially.

Some quotes from the story:

The issue is that turns slow runners down. The tighter the turn, the greater the slowdown, so while the straight-line path between the bases is the shortest, its sharp corners make it one of the slowest. Rounding the corner is faster, making the path a bit longer in favor of an efficient turn. And indeed, baseball players typically do this: They run straight along the baseline at the beginning and then, if they think they’ve hit a double or more, they bow out to make a “banana curve.”

But this can’t possibly be the quickest route, observes Davide Carozza, a math teacher at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., who studied the problem while was an undergraduate at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. It’d be faster, he reasons, to veer right from the beginning, running directly from the batter’s box to the widest portion of the curve. Of course, a runner is best off running straight toward first base until he’s certain he’s hit more than a single. But Carozza noticed that even when the ball heads straight for a pocket between fielders, making a double almost certain, runners almost never curve out right away.”

One of Carozza’s colleagues, Stewart Johnson, optimised the path by computer (coming up with that diagram).

“The result was surprisingly close to a circle, both in its shape and its speed: It swung nearly as wide and was only 6 percent faster than Carozza’s circle. On this path, a runner would start running 25 degrees to the right of the baseline — toward the dugout rather than toward first base — and then swing wide around second and third base before running nearly straight to home. Johnson also computed the best path for a double, and it swings nearly as wide, venturing 14 feet from the baseline.”

October 26, 2010

Augustine (and friends) on the evils of wearing make up

Augustine quotes a couple of his friends use of the majestic voice (a style of public speaking that appeals to the emotions) on the subject of women wearing make up. Here’s a hint. They don’t like it.

On the insult make up does to God’s artwork

“Suppose a painter should depict in colors that rival nature’s the features and form and complexion of some man, and that, when the portrait had been finished with consummate art, another painter should put his hand over it, as if to improve by his superior skill the painting already completed; surely the first artist would feel deeply insulted, and his indignation would be justly roused. Dost thou, then, think that thou wilt carry off with impunity so audacious an act of wickedness, such an insult to God the great artificer? For, granting that thou art not immodest in thy behavior towards men, and that thou art not polluted in mind by these meretricious deceits, yet, in corrupting and violating what is God’s, thou provest thyself worse than an adulteress. The fact that thou considerest thyself adorned and beautified by such arts is an impeachment of God’s handiwork, and a violation of truth.”

On Hair Dye

“Thy Lord says, ‘Thou canst not make one hair white or black;’ and dost thou wish to have greater power so as to bring to nought the words of thy Lord? With rash and sacrilegious hand thou wouldst fain change the color of thy hair: I would that, with a prophetic look to the future, thou shouldst dye it the color of flame.”

On wearing make up being worse than adultery

“Hence arise these incentives to vice, that women, in their fear that they may not prove attractive to men, paint their faces with carefully-chosen colors, and then from stains on their features go on to stains on their chastity. What folly it is to change the features of nature into those of painting, and from fear of incurring their husband’s disapproval, to proclaim openly that they have incurred their own! For the woman who desires to alter her natural appearance pronounces condemnation on herself; and her eager endeavors to please another prove that she has first been displeasing to herself. And what testimony to thine ugliness can we find, O woman, that is more unquestionable than thine own, when thou art afraid to show thyself? If thou art comely why dost thou hide thy comeliness? If thou art plain, why dost thou lyingly pretend to be beautiful, when thou canst not enjoy the pleasure of the lie either in thine own consciousness or in that of another? For he loves another woman, thou desirest to please another man; and thou art angry if he love another, though he is taught adultery in thee. Thou art the evil promptress of thine own injury. For even the woman who has been the victim of a pander shrinks from acting the pander’s part, and though she be vile, it is herself she sins against and not another. The crime of adultery is almost more tolerable than thine; for adultery tampers with modesty, but thou with nature.”

October 26, 2010

Augustine on the purpose of good deeds

“Now of all who can with us enjoy God, we love partly those to whom we render services, partly those who render services to us, partly those who both help us in our need and in turn are helped by us, partly those upon whom we confer no advantage and from whom we look for none. We ought to desire, however, that they should all join with us in loving God, and all the assistance that we either, give them or accept from them should tend to that one end.“

I was thinking something along these lines the other day – one of the problems I have with a particular school of thought that says Christians should be doing good deeds for the sake of bringing order to God’s creation as we look forward to the new creation is that I think we actually do good deeds as a means to a different end – and I think this other view is guilty of a category error where a means becomes and end. I like what Augustine says here. And I think it fits with John 13:35 (and myriad other passages):

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

October 25, 2010