So, I’m sitting at home, watching Spicks and Specks, writing our work Annual Report… and this awesome ukulele player named Jake Shimabukuro did a segment. I looked him up on YouTube. Here he is in a duet with Tommy Emmanuel. It’s times like this I wished I kept at the ukulele lessons… and only times like this…
PS – I did, briefly, learn the ukulele as a child. Our church didn’t have tambourines, we had a ukulele group…
The Guardian’s atheist journalist who attended Alpha has finished. His experience makes for fascinating reading. It’s honest. Critical. And engaging.
He ends up deciding that atheists are far better off hanging out with Christians than yelling at them. Which is refreshing. And has some great insights into the good, the bad, and the ugly of evangelism.
Check it out.
He’s also got an insightful interview with the head of the Alpha movement, Nicky Gumbel, about all sorts of things to do with the course. It’s worth a read.
One of the criticisms I’ve heard of Alpha (I haven’t done it) is its focus on tongues – here’s what Gumbel says…
“Yes, I think it’s one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It’s not the only gift and it’s not right at the heart of the New Testament, but it is there, and I think we don’t give it much more emphasis than the New Testament gives it, which is not very much. If you came to our weekend and heard it I don’t think you would feel this is something that is weird.”
Interesting. He has a longer treatise on tongues that is also pretty on the money. I won’t reproduce it all here.
My favourite quote in the whole Alpha Male series was this one – describing the low point of the experience for journalist, Adam Rutherford:
“The low point followed, when Barbara, with whom I had had fun, explained that following my sturdy but polite defence of science and attack on healing (the most galling session), she became convinced that with regards to the supernatural, there was “something rather than nothing”. I had managed to reinforce her latent suspicion of science towards a more faithful position. Christ alive, how disappointing is that? She is thoughtful and intelligent. She listened and argued with me, and chose an emotional and visceral position instead. As I do this for a living, I will certainly modify my rhetoric as a result.”
Yeah. Cop that atheists who think being smug is the way to change minds.
Bank robbers are a misunderstood breed. They’re nothing like the bogans in Two Hands… Hollywood was closer in the movie “How to Rob a Bank…” that I reviewed a while back.
A very professional gang in Sweden did it this way (and got $150 million in the process):
But that’s not the best bit. The best bit is that they delayed the pursuers by:
Two men have since been “questioned” by police, it seems they’re not the actual robbers but may have been involved. The best quote in the story about the robbery is this one from a criminologist:
“They are definitely no amateurs.”
You think?
If you’re going to stage a protest against any organisation or individual it pays to remember who has the power. Otherwise you might end up like this guy. Who didn’t like that bulldozers were working on a project he opposed, and parked in front of them…
Lesson learned.
I’ve been sick all week with something a bit gastro like. I won’t overshare. This is more to explain the number of posts you’ll be getting today – there’s not much else to do when you’re sitting on the couch. I tried going back to work yesterday, lets just say lunch didn’t work out so well.
The turtles are copping a little bit of the blame because my symptoms look a bit like Salmonella, and turtles are known to carry that bacteria.
I’m thankful that it’s school holidays so Robyn is here to keep me company.
I feel pretty ok, except when:
a) I stand up.
b) I eat.
c) I haven’t taken any anti nausea medication.
That is all.
Mmm, never eat raw toast again. Well, except for the bits you keep artistically bready in order to create this fantastically geeky breakfast art.
Instructions for building your own artistic toast makers can be found here at instructables.
I created the St Eutychus fan page on Facebook yesterday and became the number one fan. Literally. I was first. Now there are eight. That’s an 800% increase.
Three in eight fans share my surname.
One in eight fans is named Eutychus.
Currently 25% of my fans are named something piratey (one is named Roger, the other has the surname Davey)
It has useful benefits. If I get over 100 fans I can claim Facebook/st-eutychus. You can post links there for me to blog here, and if you do, you’ll win a nice, intangible prize…
Atheists have a bit of a siege mentality going on when it comes to being a persecuted minority in the US. But they’re not the hardest done by… that’d be the Jedis…
“The founder of the Jedi religion inspired by the Star Wars films was thrown out of a Tesco supermarket for wearing his distinctive brown hood.”
Imagine if that was someone wearing a burka.
He got upset, and took them to court. Here’s the report.
Tesco’s response was priceless. A prime example of treating a fool according to their folly:
“But Tesco hit back in the spirit of the epic space saga and claimed that the three most well known Jedi Knights in the Star Wars movies – Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker – all appeared in public without their hoods.”
This is perilous territory, but I’m running out of areas to hand out my wisdom… But two years in I know everything there could possibly be to know… except the parenting stuff… I am being sarcastic by the way…
I don’t really like giving advice where I’m not qualified. But I’m Gen Y. So I know everything about work. Here are my five essential ways to get ahead in the workplace…
I’m not sure if I’m a fully fledged geek or not… but here are five areas I think are essentials…
As a follow up to my last post – here are five skills that are almost essential for successful manliness…
Again, feel free to share your own “skillz” in the comments…
Kottke has a list of essential skills for living (ages ago, I’m clearing out my queue)… you should read it.
Here’s my list of not so common skillz that I’ve decided are important.
Share your non-essential skillz in the comments.
These guys get style points for getting the piece shapes right, and getting the theme music spot on too.
Thanks to Scooter, whose blog seems defunct so I won’t link to it in order not to get your hopes up.