I just told my employers that I won’t be here next year because I’m going to Bible College.
Good times.
I’m feeling a little deflated having been here for four years and thoroughly enjoyed it.
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.
YouTube Tuesday: What if?
Do you ever engage your imagination in the pursuit of speculative scenarios.
How would the world be different if Hitler had won the war? What if Ghandi had lived? What if Hillary Clinton had won the US Presidential Election?
What if James Dean had lived?
Or better – what if George Lucas had directed Singing in the Rain…
What’s your favourite what if? Or, what’s the best YouTube video you’ve seen this week – post it in the comments.
A folksy confession
I am on the record, as an intemperate youth, suggesting that Folk Music is of the devil. I recant.
In my dotage I am really enjoying alt.country, folk, bluegrass and other music with banjos.
There’s a slight language warning on this clip – well, it’s not slight. It says a bad word starting with f many times. The rest of the album is free of cringeworthy cursing.
I give you. Mumford and Sons.
I’ve also really been enjoying Fionn Regan. But his “Put a Penny in the Slot” video has embedding disabled. So you’ll have to go to YouTube to watch it.
Tetris chair looks tessellatingly comfortable
Moving furniture is a pain. Wouldn’t life be grand if all furniture was Tetris shaped?
Here’s a chair to bring your moving dream one step closer to reality.
Chemical Cupcakes
Amy pointed out recently that “Chemical Free” is a stupid claim to make for anything of substance – but food particularly.
She had a point.
These cupcakes however, completely embrace the inner chemical…
Mmm. I’ll take
How to paint your next car
Pacman cars are great for running over blue ghosts. Just make sure you’ve used the right fuel.
From Flickr.
And another one.
Mr Potato Head and his many potato friends
If you’ve got some ink, some potatoes, and too much time on your hands you too could create an army of potato people. If you don’t have any of those things there’s always this gallery…
How to not die
I would like to live a long healthy life. Here is a list of activities I should avoid – that you should too – if you also want to live long lives.
- Drive the biggest 4WD you can find.
- Don’t ride a quad bike.
- Don’t cycle or run on public roads.
- Don’t get a pilot’s license as a hobby.
- Avoid groups of intoxicated men.
There are more. What are your tips for avoiding an untimely death?
Christmas Wishlist: Sportscar Segway
This one’s from Flickr – and is (fictionally or otherwise) scheduled for release in 2035 with a pricetag of $500,000.
Start saving.
At only 1077 pounds with the new S260 supercharged engine, the 0-60 time is only 2.02 seconds. The steering wheel, brakes and gas pedal have been replaced with a “T” handle. Lotus has upped the Track Pack to handle up to 3G turns. With a top speed of 188 miles per hour, you’ll zip past the other traffic, trains and some small planes on the way to work.
Christmas Wishlist: A hovercraft
You can buy me this for $14,000. You’d have to really love me. Which you do. Right?
It’s a slightly more awesome Segway.
Hovercrafts are not just very unique and unusual gifts, they are actually available. They only require gasoline and will transport you at approximately 15 mph. Operate them over concrete, asphalt, grass or shallow wet areas, but you cannot hover over water, sand, stones or dirt-filled areas due to the bottomside vacuum.
Unbelievable statistics
I’m not sure what to make of these stats from the research on the Jesus All About Life campaign.
Some of these are the same stats I posted the other day – but a report on the research can be found here.
Believer or non-believer, 54% of Australians ranked Jesus as the number one most influential person in history beating Albert Einstein who came in at second place (16%) and Charles Darwin who was ranked third (9%). Research commissioned by www.allaboutlife.com.au revealed Australia is a nation of believers with approximately 5 in 6 (83%) responding that Jesus was a real figure from history.
It’s odd… going by the ongoing discussion over here the one in six people who don’t think Jesus is a real historical figure are gaining a bit of traction while clearly swimming against the tide* of public opinion…
This research gives a great insight into people’s beliefs about Jesus and their faith today. The fact that Jesus is revealed to be the most influential figure in history shows his message is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago and people still look to him as source of inspiration.
To me, this suggests the JAAL campaign was barking up the wrong tree a little. Jesus doesn’t need an image upgrade. He doesn’t need wishy washy feelgood statements posted online… People think he’s alright.
What he really needs is accurate representation. Because people are much less sold on the facts.
“Of these believers 43% believed Jesus had miraculous powers and he was the son of God. Australia still has faith with 2 in 5 Australians stating they actually practice a religion and only 27% not believing in a God or universal power of any sort.”
*Mmm. Delicious cliche.
Hacking Wordle
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.
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…
