Never trust or hire a motivational speaker with a mullet.
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.
Core business
I couldn’t think of an Apple pun better than that. Sorry.
Marketing expert Martin Lindstrom has released Buyology, a book on modern marketing, covering the results from a study onto response to common marketing methodologies and global brands.
The findings, featured in The Australian, suggest that sex no longer sells. And that Apple is probably a cult. But we all knew that.
They found an enormous correlation between a powerful religion and a powerful brand. Precient points are:
“In a world where religion in many societies has begun fading away, brands have begun to take over the role of belief. We as human beings need something to believe in and brands have become almost mini-religions,”
“Think Apple, they have their own ‘temple’: their flagship store; their own religious leader: Steve Jobs; their own cross: the Apple logo; their own rituals (hundreds — just ask an Apple fan); their own enemy (Microsoft) … you name it.”
“These days sex isn’t as mysterious any more as it is everywhere, so that’s the reason why sex doesn’t sell.”
Devine intervention
Miranda Devine sparked controversy by pre-emptively blaming green policy for the fires in the SMH last week. There was an outcry. I even wrote about it. I started following a fake Miranda Devine on Twitter (there’s also a fake Andrew Bolt) – but I can’t link to them because Twitter is down again.
The same venerated publication has another scribe – who leans more to the left – Elizabeth Farrelly. She fired this verbiage seemingly in the direction of her colleague in her take on events.
“Cut the trees! Burn the undergrowth! Hunt the sharks! Lynch the greens! Reprise, repay, repel. But in truth, to swim fish-filled, murky waters at twilight is to tattoo a big ‘BAIT’ sign on your behind. And to inhabit the bush, especially as climate change takes hold, is to make yourself fuel.
Certainly, we should feel compassion. And certainly, there should be regulations. Quite probably there should be more assiduous back-burning. But to blame green policies – to cull already endangered shark species, to reduce tree cover – is to blame nature for human folly.”
Now all the Herald’s big guns (except Annabel Crabb and Peter Hartcher who both write exclusively about politics) have had their say on the matter.
Child labour
I mentioned earlier today that I’m not really comfortable giving parenting advice. But whipping up one of these little practical costumes seems like a reasonable idea to me. Put your kiddy’s crawling to good use. It’s much cheaper than a roomba.
Also spotted at bookofjoe.
Have your cake, and eat it too
This is the greatest invention since sliced cake. Seriously. Ever tried being obsessive compulsive and cutting a cake for a wide range of size preferences? No? Me neither.
But I imagine this cake tin that does the distributing for you is the answer. Found at bookofjoe.
$US36 seems a small price to pay for party parity. Ok, not really parity in the mathematical sense, more parity in the sense of being satisfied with your portion size – I just liked the alliteration.
Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box
Kottke.org is a mostly terrific blog on the “liberal arts 2.0”. It’s where I found that Abbey Road timelapse. And many other interesting things. Including this. Perhaps an iconic image depicting the current economic climate…
Huh? It’s a bunch of shipping containers you say. What has that got to do with the economic times you ask. Well, they’re stockpiling containers in Hong Kong because China’s exports have slowed dramatically. So there you go.
The Hotel Noorla in Ingham has a couple of shipping containers converted into almost quaint hotel rooms. Maybe some entrepreneur should get in and buy the lot of them.
Road rage: Life on Abbey Road
I would hate to live somewhere iconic. Particularly somewhere iconic involving The Beatles. Like near the famous Abbey Road pedestrian crossing.
You’d have to watch this every day. People trying to relive the glorious moment.
Dead bird smelly
There’s a joke I was told once about a Native American named “dead bird smelly”. I can’t find it online and that’s a travesty. It’s very similar to the joke about the kid named refrigerator.
Speaking of dead birds… Twitter is broken. Again. It is apparently the most regularly broken social networking site.
The guru’s guru
I’ve never been one for gurus. Particularly self proclaimed ones who spit out pithy statements at random intervals.
Simone just hailed me as a guru of trivia, which was nice, which got me thinking about the concept of a “guru”.
Gurus tend to annoy me. Today, I’d like to introduce you to the guru of the internet. Seth Godin. I subscribe to Seth’s blog – mostly because he is a marketing guru. And sometimes he says useful things. The rest of it is twaddle. Like this:
“If it acts like a duck (all the time), it’s a duck. Doesn’t matter if the duck thinks it’s a dog, it’s still a duck as far as the rest of us are concerned.”
That’s a quote from a post on “Authenticity“.
Seth is a guru to so many people – but he has gurus too. Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired is one of those gurus. He’s like the grand daddy guru of the internet. He does seem pretty cool.
Kevin Kelly has gurus too. His gurus are people involved in the emerging church movement. He says as much here. Almost. He’s a Christian and he likes relevant stuff.
Being a fan of the emergent church means being a fan of Mark Driscoll. Almost. He was one of the people who started the movement but has since distanced himself from it. In writing. It’s probably not fair to lump him in with them – but it works for the sake of this little soliloquisious (surely the adjectival form of soliloquay) syllogism.
Mark Driscoll is now the guru of a generation of young Christian men who want authentic Christianity.
His guru is Jesus. So following the chain from Seth Godin – everybody’s guru – gets you to Jesus.
I guess my point is: Everybody you may consider a guru will have their own guru – once you get to the top of the pile of gurus that’s the guy worth following. Follow the guy with no gurus.
The mobile generation
From Flickr via CrunchGear
I may or may not be allowed to talk about Robyn’s school and things that she tells me. But I thought this was pretty crazy.
We were talking about this last night – and a timely study has revealed children are now getting their first mobile phone at eight in the UK.
A certain teacher I know had to write a note home to parents asking them not to call their children on their mobiles during class time.
I’m all for children having mobile phones. That’s great. Provided they’re not just using them to send naked pictures to each other like the Herald keeps pointing out. I’m no luddite. My kiddies will have their own mobile phones and Facebook pages at birth. That way I’ll be able to keep tabs on them. That’s probably an exaggeration. But calling them while they’re at school? In class? No way. How embarrassing for the kid who gets a call from his mum during spelling:
Kid: Hi mum
Mum: Hi kid, did you remember to brush your teeth this morning.
Kid: Yes mum, I did remember to brush my teeth this morning.
Mum: Good, just checking.
Kid: I really don’t know why you needed to call me to talk to me about it.
Mum: Just checking up because I care. I love you.
Kid: (mumbling) I love you too.
Mum: What was that? Speak up son.
Kid: I love you mum.
Entire class: laughter, teasing, poking, prodding…bullying.
Why would you inflict that on your child? Seriously.
I’m really not qualified to give parenting advice. But parents. Don’t try this at home.
Plus there’s the disruption to the rest of the class. I think that’s the point of this teacher’s objections.
Sermonising
I’m writing my sermon for Sunday in Google Docs. It’s on 1 John 1:1-4.
Here’s the Google Docs analysis of what I’ve written so far:
| Counts | Selection | Document |
| Words: | – | 3815 |
| Characters (no spaces): | – | 16912 |
| Characters (with spaces): | – | 20720 |
| Paragraphs: | – | 82 |
| Sentences: | – | 524 |
| Pages (approximate): | – | 5 |
| Readability | Selection | Document |
| Average sentences per paragraph: | – | 6.39 |
| Average words per sentence: | – | 7.28 |
| Average characters per word: | – | 4.43 |
| Average words per page: | – | 763.00 |
| Flesch Reading Ease: [?] | – | 84.78 |
| Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?] | – | 3.00 |
| Automated Readability Index: [?] | – | 3.00 |
That’s the formula (from this test) that gives a readability level of 3. I guess that’s good. It’s probably not helped by the number of sentences. I write punchy sentences for sermons. I also speak naturally at about 160 words a minute (that’s the broadcast standard for journalism) – but should slow that down. At that pace this sermon should go for about 23 minutes.
Here are the stats on the passage itself:
| Counts | Selection | Document |
| Words: | – | 103 |
| Characters (no spaces): | – | 433 |
| Characters (with spaces): | – | 535 |
| Paragraphs: | – | 1 |
| Sentences: | – | 5 |
| Pages (approximate): | – | 2 |
| Readability | Selection | Document |
| Average sentences per paragraph: | – | 5.00 |
| Average words per sentence: | – | 20.60 |
| Average characters per word: | – | 4.20 |
| Average words per page: | – | 51.50 |
| Flesch Reading Ease: [?] | – | 78.33 |
| Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?] | – | 7.00 |
| Automated Readability Index: [?] | – | 9.00 |
I think it’s a good thing that my sermon is more simple than the passage right? Shouldn’t an explanation be easier to understand than the thing you’re explaining? Otherwise it would be pointless.
Out of interest I pulled one of dad’s sermons off the MPC website and ran a comparison.
| Counts | Selection | Document |
| Words: | – | 3032 |
| Characters (no spaces): | – | 12835 |
| Characters (with spaces): | – | 15893 |
| Paragraphs: | – | 58 |
| Sentences: | – | 276 |
| Pages (approximate): | – | 4 |
| Readability | Selection | Document |
| Average sentences per paragraph: | – | 4.76 |
| Average words per sentence: | – | 10.99 |
| Average characters per word: | – | 4.23 |
| Average words per page: | – | 758.00 |
| Flesch Reading Ease: [?] | – | 82.04 |
| Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?] | – | 5.00 |
| Automated Readability Index: [?] | – | 4.00 |
The best bits – February 19, 2009
Here's what has excited me from the blogosphere today.
- ★ Getting Started with GTD #5 – Action
- Another Lesson from Starbucks
- Neatolicious Fun Facts: Beer
- How Obama’s sentence-structure works
- Facebook Reverts Back To Old Terms Of Service [Breaking]
- Doorknocking Tips
- Queensland – retirements and web launches one day, election the next?
- The cost of a wedding…
- Mobile Phones To Get Universal Charger
- Managers as servants
- Obama: grammatically sound
- Best Resume Ever
- 10 Easy Steps To Advanced Photography Skills
Facts about Beer. Including a 4000 year old recipe.
Leah on a story doing the rounds that Australian weddings cost more than $50,000. I think, after doing a rough countback, that we did ours for just under $15,000 including our honeymoon. And that “we” includes our very generous parents.
“Instead of the standard “org chart” with a CEO at the top and employees growing down like roots, turn the whole thing upside down. Employees are at the top — they’re the ones who actually get stuff done — and managers are underneath them, helping them to be more effective. (The CEO, who really does nothing, is of course at the bottom.)”
Band names
I read something somewhere about band names today. It reminded me that I need to record the following for posterity’s sake.
If I were in a band – and that’s a big if because it would require musical talent – I would call my band Panache Attack. I am putting that here, now, to claim it.
If I were in a punk band – not such a big if because it doesn’t require musical talent – I would call it Disorderly Fashion, and we’d all wear the same suits on stage.
If you had a band what would you call it?
Benaud steps down
Sad. But now I guess we’ll see how accurate the 12th Man’s portrayal of the handover process was.
I’ll never be able to think of Benaud as anything but a constipated turtle thanks to someone who made that comment in my youth, but cricket won’t be the same without him.
Oh well, as long as Bill Lawry doesn’t get more air time out of this I’ll be ok.
Dog was I, ere I saw God
That title is pretty much the best palindrome I could come up with after racking my brain for about 5 minutes.
I didn’t think I’d be able to post something cleverer than the ambigram shirt for some time. I was wrong. How about a 224 word palindrome? Still not impressed? How bout a 224 word palindromic poem?
Don’t believe me? Here it is:
“Dammit I’m mad.
By Demetri Martin
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I’m in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level “Mad Dog”.
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I’m a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I’m it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I’d assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
“Sir, I deliver. I’m a dog”
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I’m mad.”
EDIT: Thanks Joel for picking up my palindromic error in the title, all is now fixed.