This is cool.
Everybody’s favourite word cloud generator – wordle.net – has a secret. If you want phrases to come up as phrases you can simply insert a tilda (~) into the mix.
From here.
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.
Conspiracy, correlation and causation
It looks like climate change is going to scupper one man’s ambition to be the next leader of our country. While Malcolm Turnbull considers this inconvenient truth, some might be thinking “at last, climate change has done something good”…
Some are looking forward to the day that climate change does away with our particular stretch of the Great Barrier Reef so that North Queensland can have waves.
And those who sell air conditioning are rubbing their hands together and counting their pools of money ala Scrooge McDuck.
This whole climate change phenomena has me thinking…
Many of my friends are skeptics. Some of my friends are believers. Most of the skeptics believe that the climate is changing (as it always has) though not because of human intervention. I oscillate between the two positions. I do think it’s funny that we’re worried about how much carbon dioxide is in the world when I always thought the net mass of chemicals everywhere was a constant… anyone who remembers photosynthesis lessons in high school science knows we just need to plant more trees…anyway. I’m not a climate scientist and do not intend to talk about what I don’t know in this post…
I have a theory that there are links there are between a few different philosophical outlooks on life.
I’m wondering about what correlation there is between the following beliefs and climate change.
- Christianity
- A “young earth”
- The effect of sin/the fall on the planet
- An old earth
- Atheism
Biblical Christianity suggests that God intervenes in the workings of his creation, that it is under his control (particularly the Psalms) and that sin has tainted the planet as well as its people. There is an obvious link between humanity and any problems with the planet.
Because Atheism rejects the idea that anyone is in control – and must therefore assume that our finely balanced universe is always on the cusp of imploding under its own improbable existence* – atheists should be more concerned about climate change and therefore more ready to jump in and lend an environmental hand even if they’re not convinced by the science. Just in case.
My friends who believe in a young earth should find it heaps easier to believe that humans are partly responsible for what happens to the environment because we’re a more significant part of the planet’s history – and the change is occuring over a much faster period of time if the hockey stick graphs are to be believed. This has to be balanced against the fact that many of them are really good at ignoring scientists anyway.
Answers in Genesis has an article that pretty much sits on the fence, and one that suggests claims of our impending demise are greatly exaggerated…
My Christian friends who believe in an old earth probably fall into one of two categories – they’re either the most skeptical of all when it comes to climate change, or they’re died in the wool believers. For the skeptics, the assumption that God’s sovereignty extends to the planet, meets the assumption that humans haven’t been around for long enough to have had a remarkable impact on the planet’s health.
For the Christian “climate change disciple” the idea that humans have wrecked the planet is consistent with the Bible, and the idea that scientists can teach us about how everything works is consistent with the way they understand the world.
I don’t understand atheist climate change skeptics. Where does their justification come from?
Regardless of these philosophical positions the suggestion that Australia should introduce an emissions trading scheme before the rest of the world is just silly. It comes from some sort of cultural aggrandising that suggests that somehow whatever our relatively small nation does will have an impact on the global scene.
From what I understand of the issue – particularly with relation to energy production (a fair bit at that point) – there are two things we could do that would have a major impact.
- Stop exporting coal
- Start exporting more uranium
I can’t see either of those happening any time soon.
*Not really what atheists think…
Coffee masterpieces
Karen Eland is an artist who not only paints using coffee – she puts pictures of coffee in famous paintings. And as such, she is now my favourite artist.
Here are some good ones – there are heaps more…
Surviving the Zompocalypse Part 2
Here’s a nice vodcast on how to survive a zombie apocalypse…
And here’s a nice little webapp for calculating just when your city will be overrun by zombies. Based on modelling conducted in the District of Columbia…
How Twilight Works
The Oatmeal is brilliant. Here’s the best review of the Twilight phenomena I’ve read yet…
First off, the author creates a main character which is an empty shell. Her appearance isn’t described in detail; that way, any female can slip into it and easily fantasize about being this person. I read 400 pages of that book and barely had any idea of what the main character looked like; as far as I was concerned she was a giant Lego brick. Appearance aside, her personality is portrayed as insecure, fumbling, and awkward – a combination anyone who ever went through puberty can relate to. By creating this “empty shell,” the character becomes less of a person and more of something a female reader can put on and wear. Because I forgot her name (I think it was Barbara or Brando or something like that), I’m going to refer to her as “Pants” from here on out.
Coffee infographic
The same group that brought us the awesome apostrophe flow chart has produced arguably the best infographic ever made.
It’s so good I’m posting the whole thing.
Spice up your life
If you live in a cluttered kitchen you could choose to organise your spices with one of these expensive Magnetic Spice racks ($44USD).
For more money.
Sometimes DIY isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Find Jesus in your pancakes
You know how people are always “finding” Jesus in their burnt toast, or odd patterns of mildew on walls… well here’s a guaranteed way to find Jesus in your breakfast…
Eight bit embroidery
This is a terrific Flickr set of eight bit cushions, quilt covers and miscellaneous manchester.
Here are some favourites.
This lot flips over and becomes this lot…
Retreating into a bottle
I’d like to live in a beer bottle one day. I think this is probably someone’s pet. The site I found it on wasn’t too sure. But they were hippies – and we can’t expect too much from hippies. I have a new goal in life… not to live in a beer bottle – but to have a crab living inside a broken beer bottle.
To those stuck in the past…
Hey you. Yes you. The 50 people a week who still come here via the old nathanintownsville.com domain – stop it. No seriously. It’s going to stop working in about a week. I’m not renewing it.
Update your bookmarks. Seriously.
On indoctrinating children
There’s a great opinion piece in the Times alongside the article about the Christian children being used in atheist advertising. It takes apart the atheist argument that parents should not indoctrinate their children. The writer makes good points.
I commend the article to you…
If you believe something important to be true, then you shouldn’t pretend it is an open question. This goes for secular humanists as much as for religious believers. If, for example, you are a convinced atheist, and you think that belief in God is false at an intellectual level and damaging through its distorting effects on morality, then of course you would want to share this conviction with your children. It would be unjust to keep it from them. Similarly, if you believe in God, and you believe that this faith is not just a lifestyle choice or a cultural imperative but an objective truth with profound implications for human existence, how could you not share this conviction with your children? Yes, you want to nurture their freedom and you hope they will discover things for themselves. But if it is a question of truth – whether scientific or moral or spiritual – then you will inevitably want to guide your children along a certain path, knowing full well that they may one day choose to veer off in another direction.
Atheist ad fail
Whoops.
See those cute un-indoctrinated kids…
Turns out they’re Christians. And worse. Evangelicals…
Mix it up
This seems slightly pointless – but it’s a nice little piece of design.
Mix tapes were cool. If you’re feeling a pang of nostalgia you can buy one of these tape like cases for a USB drive and put your favourite MP3s on the stick.
Hooray.
