Ever wondered how Australia stacks up as a consumer of wine – we all know Australia produces good stuff… Here’s an infographic.
There’s a “key” of sorts with the comparison between Luxembourg and Brazil. It’s calculated per capita.
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.
Nice place, going cheap…
Anyone want to rent our Townhouse in January? It looks like the rent will be going up slightly.
Seems our real estate agent has decided that while they’ll make us stay until the end of our lease with the threat of financial penalties if we leave early, they won’t extend us the right to live in our dwelling unhassled until then.
I spoke to someone at the agency yesterday who inquired as to our intentions to renew (at the end of January). I said that at this stage we wouldn’t be renewing. She said “give us two weeks notice when you want out”, I said “fine”… and on the very same day they put a “For Rent” sign outside our place. Two months in advance.
They’ve listed our place online and just told me on the phone that they would appreciate the opportunity for our place to be open for inspection by would be renters.
They probably compulsively google themselves – so I won’t mention them by name until we leave – but for shame real estate agent… for shame.
I will never ever buy a property listed by this company.
Chickens not humans
There’s an article in the Townsville Bulletin today guilty of the same fallacy that Pamela Anderson’s PETA protest committed. It is never “humane” to eat another being. If, as I suggest, the word humane means to treat compassionately or to treat as human. Historically the word was used as an equivalent to “human”.
The soldiers in the story were given live chickens to turn into food – without instructions for how to appropriately end their feathery lives. They are in trouble for allegedly treating the chickens inhumanely.
“A Defence spokeswoman denied claims the chickens had been treated inhumanely.”
Well. They ate the chickens. Regardless of how they treated the chickens beforehand I’d say that’s a pretty long bow to draw. You can’t have your chicken, and eat it too. That is to say – it’s one or the other. Either chickens are a food source and killing them is killing them – or chickens are to be venerated like cows in India.
To use the word “humane” in the context of things we’re eating is kind of stupid.
To start with chickens aren’t human. I know that the current definition of “humane” is to show human qualities of kindness and compassion… I still think that’s wrong. How can you eat something compassionately? You’re ultimately saying “my life is worth more than yours” – and if, like me, you regularly eat meat, you’re saying “my life is worth hundreds or thousands of you” (and more if you eat lots of eggs).
Sure, you can kill them gently. But that’s still killing them to eat.
Thus ends my rant.
8 bit cakes: The Gameboy Edition
Yes friends. This cake Gameboy features a game of Tetris.
Mmm.
YouTube Tuesday: Side hug rap
I’m a little late posting this one…
“When I hug people I leave room for the Holy Spirit…”
Just in case you’re stupid enough to think this video is serious – “Christian Side Hugs” are one of the most popular topics put forward on the Stuff Christians Like blog…
Christians also like white boy rappers who have very little sense of rhythm.
Islamic creation science
It may fascinate you to learn this… it certainly fascinated me… but holding as they do to essentially the same creation account and belief about the origins of human society (up until Isaac v Ishmael) as the Judeo Christian world – Islam has its own “Answers in Genesis” type organisation.
Slate writes a profile piece on the most prominent Islamic young earther here.
Here’s a quote (complete with links).
It may be tempting to dismiss Yahya as a crackpot, but he runs a sophisticated media operation, with perhaps several hundred members, that distributes books, articles, videos, and Web sites around the Muslim world. Two years ago he mailed, unsolicited, a visually stunning 13-pound, 800-page Atlas of Creation to at least 10,000 scientists, doctors, museums, and research centers in Europe and the United States. The cost of this publicity stunt, if that’s what it was, had to be staggering.
This must present an interesting dilemma. I mentioned a few weeks back my reservations about siding with fellow “theists” in debates about God – simply because Jesus is the key to my belief in God.
Do those who wish to fight passionately for the scientific veracity of Genesis side with the Muslims? Or do we keep our distance.
How far does ecumenical spirit extend on other issues where we share common ground – like issues of sanctity of life, and certain areas of morality?
It’s a tricky minefield to navigate where we emphasise similarities without those becoming defining issues and allowing us all to be lumped in the same category.
Coffee and PC
If Blur were still around (and they may well be) then not only would their claims of superiority with regards to Oasis be borne out (on the basis of longevity alone) but this post title would be representative of the kind of song they’d write now…
That was a tangential segue worthy of Today Tonight. But tonight. In all its glory. I give you. The Coffee Casemod – a computer case with a built in, and working, software controlled drip filter coffee machine.
It is awesome. I commend it to you.
Here’s how to make your own.
Pictures and words
This was my day at work today. And the second day of Izaac and Sarah’s excellent Townsville adventure.
I needed models for our photoshoot. Zack and Sarah were available. Here are some of the photos I took while I was along for the ride. Robyn got off school early and joined us for the afternoon.
I’ll no doubt upload more photos to this photoshoot album one day…
McDonalds takes “green” literally
I can’t tell if this is really dumb or reverse-subliminally brilliant…
McDonalds want to be considered a green company. So in Europe they’re changing their background colour from red to green.
Green is the new black. And the new red.
Wii Pray
This video has been doing the rounds a bit lately – it’s part of a clever campaign for the game Dante’s Inferno. The campaign almost purely makes fun of Christian culture.
Here’s one of the earlier advertising stunts…
The Gervais Principle
Office culture is best understood through the lens of popular culture. That’s why Office Space and Dilbert are so popular.
The Office is another one of those seminal “texts”* on office life.
A blogger named Venkatesh Rao has combed through the Office and diluted from it a new “principle” to supersede the Dilbert Principle when it comes to our understanding of office life.
He breaks office employees down into three categories – the sociopath, the clueless, and the loser.
Below is an extended quote from his first post. He followed it up with a second. Check them out.
The Gervais Principle is this:
Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.
The Gervais principle differs from the Peter Principle, which it superficially resembles. The Peter Principle states that all people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. It is based on the assumption that future promotions are based on past performance. The Peter Principle is wrong for the simple reason that executives aren’t that stupid, and because there isn’t that much room in an upward-narrowing pyramid. They know what it takes for a promotion candidate to perform at the “to” level. So if they are promoting people beyond their competence anyway, under conditions of opportunity scarcity, there must be a good reason.
Scott Adams, seeing a different flaw in the Peter Principle, proposed the Dilbert Principle: that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to middle management to limit the damage they can do. This again is untrue. The Gervais principle predicts the exact opposite: that the most competent ones will be promoted to middle management. Michael Scott was a star salesman before he become a clueless middle manager. The least competent employees (but not all of them — only certain enlightened incompetents) will be promoted not to middle management, but fast-tracked through to senior management. To the sociopath level.
And in case you are wondering, the unenlightened under-performers get fired.
*Because thanks to my arts degree (or QUT equivalent) I know that everything is a “text”…
How heavy is the internet?
This heavy apparently…
Here’s how that conclusion was reached…
“To reach this figure, they added together public data on the weight of every computer, server and connecting cable. To this they added 6,075,000kg of iPhones, and over 6,800,000kg of Blackberries. Finally, they added the weight of 287,524 viruses and 85 billion+ webpages.”
Via Slashdot.
More on the Millenium
After my post on the Millennium last week I found this veritable treasure trove of articles on the millennial question.
They’re from the Gospel Coalition – and there are a couple of responses from a pre-mill that are worth reading through too…
Justin Taylor writes – What You Must Believe if you are a Premillennialist, and then this piece on Thrones in the Bible…
Here’s a quote:
When Christ returns, the NT is clear that a number of things will end at that time (sin, corruption, death) and a number of things will begin at that time (our physical resurrection, final judgment, new heavens and new earth). In other words, when Christ returns, it’s “curtains” on sin and death. But in Premillennialism, there are still a thousand years of sin and death and corruption. I don’t want to be insensitive to my Premillennial friends, but it struck me a few years ago that the Premillennial position seems relatively depressing: Christ returns–but death and sin and rebellion continue.
Then Kevin De Young chimed in with his two part sermon series “Making Sense of The Millenium” – here’s part one, here’s part two…
And here are some responses from a pre-millenialist – part one, and part two…