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.

A unified theory of Supermanness

A scientist have finally figured out Superman. He was, until this point, a riddle wrapped in an enigma. A blue and red enigma. Why do superheroes wear tights? Is it for mobility or aesthetics?

This new study, by a guy named Ben Tippett, started by debunking commonly held misconceptions about the Kryptonian.

“Siegel et al. Supposed that His mighty strength stems from His origin on another planet whose density and as a result, gravity, was much higher than our own. Natural selection on the planet of krypton would therefore endow Kal El with more efficient muscles and higher bone density; explaining, to first order, Superman’s extraordinary
powers. Though concise, this theory has proved inaccurate. It is now clear that Superman is actually flying rather than just jumping really high; and his freeze-breath, x-ray vision, and heat vision also have no account in Siegel’s theory”

The report found that Superman does not have many powers – he in fact has one power that manifests in different ways.

“We conjecture that all of Superman’s powers come from His ability to alter the inertial mass of objects in his immediate vicinity or with which he is in personal contact.”

The findings were supported by convincing diagrams.

Five reasons to write lists

  1. Traffic. If there’s one thing I learned from the last week it’s that lists work. Every “how to write a better blog” post I read suggests writing lists.
  2. They’re easy – lists are the easiest of posts to write. You start with a half baked idea and build.
  3. They’re easy to read – the structure is nice, points are enumerated,   discussion is easier.
  4. They’re finite – the reader knows what they’re getting. You know where to stop.
  5. They’re controversial – lists start discussions. That’s why magazines have had “top 100” features forever. People have different ideas about what shouldn’t be on the list – or thoughts as to why your list is wrong.

There’s a great article here about why “lists of n things” are such popular fodder. You should read it.

Some quotes…

Structurally, the list of n things is a degenerate case of essay. An essay can go anywhere the writer wants. In a list of n things the writer agrees to constrain himself to a collection of points of roughly equal importance, and he tells the reader explicitly what they are.

It’s fine to put “The” before the number [in the title] if you really believe you’ve made an exhaustive list. But evidence suggests most things with titles like this are linkbait.

Lists are in. They are great Internet fodder. If you want to get discussion happening about something – write a list.

Nobody likes Beck

Glenn Beck is a bizarro Christian shock jock in the US. Atheists hate him.

He praised Muse on his show this week. A representative from Muse apparently emailed him asking him to retract. He was going on about how Muse are libertarians who don’t want a one world government.

Beck retracts his endorsement at four minutes and twenty six seconds into the story.

Robobama

And we worry that K-Rudd might be robotic. Check out the amazing consistency of Obama’s smile.

Barack Obama’s amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

Slap stick

This made me laugh more than it should have.

Blockheads

Minifigs are great. Especially knitted ones. But if you don’t want to order a customised minifig from brickarms for your A-Team Lego movie you may have to build Mr T piece by piece…

Like this…

There are heaps of these on Flickr.

Including ninja turtles…

Comic book characters…

And transformers…

Stocking take

These are a couple of cool stocking ads – for stockings so dark you’ll be holding up inanimate objects.

Hat tip to Daily Vowel Movements – which continues to be excellent. You should subscribe. You won’t regret it.

Taking the “O” out of Lego

I love Lego. If you ask me why I want to have children one of the reasons high on the list is that I’ll get to play with Lego again.

The worst thing about Lego is that it hurts when you tread on it. It hurts a lot. Someone should invent cuddly Lego…

Oh wait, they have. You can even buy a knitting pattern.

And look, he comes apart…

Found here.

Breadwinners

Sandwiches are great. Bread + Filling = Great idea. They’re great. They’re the reason the expression “the best thing since sliced bread” was coined. Why else (other than toast) would you slice bread?

Well. Now you can figure out if you’re being ripped off by that cafe that wants you to pay $14 for a BLT with this sandwich calculator.

From BoingBoing.

And then, since we’re in the mood, why don’t you check out the winner of a recent “BLT from scratch” competition… here’s the post that set the rules

“From scratch means: You grow your tomato, you grow your lettuce, you cure your own bacon or pancetta, you bake your own bread (wild yeast preferred and gets higher marks but is not required), you make your own mayo. All other embellishments, creative interpretations of the BLT welcome.”

The winner was an American chef living in Sydney… here’s the concluding post from the competition.

Here’s his winning sandwich – but the best bit is the photographic flow chart he made (and the fact that he harvested his own salt from the ocean)…

Colbert v Dawkins

Given that (thanks to PZ Myers) 90% of my current visitors are atheists, I’m going to keep writing about atheism.

Here you go, a nice dialogue, between two people, about God… both are smug.

Everybody wants to claim Colbert as one of their own – either he’s a Christian satire, a conservative satire, an actual conservative, or a Christian… He’s probably a mix of all of those. He certainly has a track record of active involvement in church. And he looks like Will Bailey from the West Wing…

Anyway. This made me laugh. If only atheists were really like Richard Dawkins. Online, anyway.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Richard Dawkins
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

A Rube awakening

The pinnacle of Rube Goldberg machine technology is the breakfast machine. That’s what we’re all aiming for. Here’s one that delivers a complete breakfast – courtesy of a Gizmodo feature

And here’s a video of the thing in action.

Aliens on holidays

What would happen if aliens took over all our picture perfect holiday destinations?

Something like this. Franco Brambilla took a series of postcards of popular spots and inserted aliens.

Lose lose

What’s worth more – the aliens you slaughter in computer games or the files on your computer?

I guess you can find out if you want. By playing this game. That deletes a random file on your computer for every alien you kill.

“Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted. Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land? Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?”

You can, if you’re game, try it here… if I wanted to wipe a hard drive this would be pretty fun…

I don’t recommend it. Watch it in action below.

lose/lose from zach gage on Vimeo.

Should we forget the forgetful?

Another day, another thought provoking iMonk post.

I don’t know if I mentioned this at the time… but during our Westminster Confession/doctrine classes at church a while back (so long ago I don’t remember the exact chapter we were discussing) I asked a question about whether non-Christian Alzheimer’s patients can be evangelised.

There’s a whole theology of disability that’s a little bit anemic. The post I’m referring to by iMonk is a question about how the Baptist Church handles the baptism of people with mental disabilities. It’s profound. Read it.

Then tell me what your thoughts are on the issue…

Also, if you’re an atheist and you want to hijack this post for your own snide purposes – I’m going to delete the comments. Feel free to comment constructively, but we’re working on the assumption that evangelism is a good thing and not a form of brainwashing or abuse.

One take wonders

One take videos are impressive. This one has the best elements of one take direction and “flashmob” audience participation.

It’s not quite Forrest Gump in one minute. But it’s impressive.