Orwell v Huxley – one of the great philosophical literary battles of our time – a tale of two writers, both with grand visions of a terrible future. This battle, this age old dispute, has been recreated in comic book form featuring arguments from a book called”Amusing Ourselves To Death” so that you can better understand 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.
Brave new 1984
Psych out
I have to have a psychological test. All candidates for ministry have to go through a pretty rigorous vetting procedure.
It’s going to be fun. I hope there are ink blots.
Ultimately, wanting to go into Presbyterian Ministry seems to be the ultimate Catch 22 situation. The literal Catch 22 situation. As described by the novel that coined the phrase. Just slightly reversed – you have to be crazy to want to get in. Here’s the summary from Wikipedia…
The “Catch 22” is that “anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy”. Hence, pilots who request an evaluation are sane and must therefore fly in combat, but those who don’t request an evaluation don’t receive one and as a result can never be found insane, meaning they must also fly in combat. Catch-22, then, ensures that no pilot can ever be grounded for being insane – even if they are.
Yoof Ministar
It looks like today is just going to be chock full of YouTube videos. Here’s a great little Youth Ministry video that nicely complements the Ignatius one I posted a while back.
Pea-ping Toms
No doubt there was a guy named Tom in this competition. And I’m sure when you hit a metallic target it makes a ping. No matter. I think I’d like to travel the world attending obscure championships. Last week it was the cardboard roll fighting league – this week it’s the annual World Peashooting Championships… and yes, that is a laser sight on that guy’s peashooter…
Car Fu
If you thought the best bit about Transformers 2 was the kung fu robots then you just have to check out this trailer for a Chinese movie that’s coming out this year. It looks awesome.
Conspiracy convergence
I haven’t really watched much stuff from CollegeHumor – but the stuff I have seen tends to be really awesome, or really quite crass – take that on board if you’re going to follow any links from this video – which fits into the earlier category.
If (boring) games were movies…
We’ve all seen what happens when popular games become movies. Like Hitman. And Doom. And Super Mario Bros. They never live up to the hype.
Crap games*. Or not particularly complex games. Make for awesomeness.
*These games are not technically crap.
Deadly Read
I grew up on Choose Your Own Adventure books. But I used to cheat. I’d read them in reverse, because I didn’t want to die. It turns out that’s the wisest approach. Because the writers want you to die. Statistically speaking. This guy named Michael Niggel put together a flow chart of a typical Choose Your Own Adventure novel. It looks like this.
You can see a high quality PDF here.
Sharing the love
I’ve given up on the daily link post. Feed readers will no doubt have noticed and appreciated this already. The multiple posting glitch was so very annoying for everybody. And it just ended up cluttering the page and obscuring the Curiosities posts I’d actually put effort into tracking down and writing up. So they’re gone. You will find my latest five shared items in the right hand column. If you want real time updates send an email to my gmail (which is n m dot(.) campbell at gmail.com – without the spaces, brackets and the word dot – you’ll figure it out, but spammers won’t) and become my friend on google reader.
Anyway, in the absence of a daily post of links here’s a post full of goodness from around the blogosphere – starting with five people I know in real life, and ending with five I’ve never met but who write funny, interesting or insightful stuff that I enjoy reading…
Those I know
- Izaac has finished his series on prophecy which is meaty, engaging and considerate of people with different learning styles (it has diagrams). He’s been blogging regularly for a couple of months now, and if you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon now’s your chance. Do it.
- Tim and Amy took on the blogging thing with gusto. And then slowed down. But they’re worth following because they’re pretty awesome.
- Geoff is another guy I’ve known for a long time – since we were kids taking the North Coast Christian camping scene by storm. He’s just started a blog. It looks promising thus far (he’s defined his scope pretty nicely).
- Dr Joel blogs infrequently but in a rantingly engaging way – and often giving an insight into life in the Queensland Health system…
- Tim has updated his blog twice this week. That’s some sort of record.
Those I don’t
- Jeff has thrown a couple of links my way – and you know that means he’s a purveyor of quality stuff…
- Guthers seems to be a man of great taste – beer and coffee. Awesome. He made a bit of a comeback this week after a two month break. Who knows if this return will be permanent – the fact that he writes about coffee regularly is enough for me.
- Reuben went toe to toe with me as we took on one of team pyro’s angry Calvinists on the death penalty a while back.
- Sam and Soph cover all the bases – coffee, Christianity, culture, journalism and they have a cracking white design. Like mine but without the clutter of columns. Rumour has it that Sam and Reuben were caught talking about this blog in a Moore College lecture the other day – I have spies everywhere people…
- Justin writes good stuff infrequently. He’s an Anglican minister in the heart of Sydney. He asks good questions. And provides good answers.
Variations on a theme
Guitar hero and Rubiks Cube combinations are so last year. Real geek prodigies join string quartets and play medleys of game theme songs…
Shirt of the Day: Pressure Point
Next time you enter a fight to the death and have the choice of weapons. Choose this shirt, and make the other guy wear it. It’s a guide to all the “deadly” pop culture pressure points. Just aim for them. Simple.
Just a spoonful of sugar…
Have you ever wondered just how (un)healthy your daily caffeine fix is? For many of us coffee is modern medicine. And some people need sugar. But the more sugar you put in the worse it becomes for you. And nobody wants to be taking medicine that is bad for them. Which is why this little infographic is going to come in real handy.
Check out the full version here.
Ninjitsuit
My first thought when reading about this new, controversial “Burquini” the Islamic bikini invented by an Australian and banned in France (two things that make something more likely to be awesome) was that it looks pretty much like a ninja suit.
Am I right? Yeah. Which got me thinking further – firstly, I didn’t know what a ninja suit was actually called – which was a bit of a gap in my ninja arsenal. For the record it’s a shinobi shozoko. But it’s always dangerous to put a ninja in a box.
Besides the typical ninja uniform, the ninja would use any type of clothing that would get them closer to the mission goal. Sometimes the ninja dressed up as priests, peasants or even samurai. Whatever the mission required, they did.
So, now you’re wondering why I am still talking. You’ve got my point. Well, no. You haven’t. Have you seen the Mythbusters Ninja Episode – it’s my favourite – not because they do cool ninja stuff, but because they go to a ninja warehouse and buy awesome ninja equipment for their ninja mission.
Well, there’s a place like that on the internet. And you can buy a ninja suit for $69 (I assume US) that includes ninja shoes, ninja socks and ninja boots. You can get a different pack that comes with some gear as well for $82. I know what I want for Christmas… or a wedding anniversary present… (hint, hint).
Internet intimacy
Ji Lee is a designer from Google. He’s done some cool stuff, which I’ve written about before.
He’s put together this chart of relational interactions in the modern age.
Sadly, the blog comment does not appear. I’d say it’s about 5.5. Why not take our relationship to a whole new level, and comment a little. I’ll, conversely, try to write some stuff worth commenting on at some point.
August 16, 2009