Nathan Campbell – Page 98

What a week…

I feel like I owe you all an apology. But there’s a blog out there that collects lame apologies from people for not posting on their blogs… and I want no part of that. I’ll find the link soon. I promise.

Here’s a snapshot of my last eight days. Well. A series of snapshots. We spent the week in Townsville where I was consulting for the company consulting for the V8 race that was held up there over the weekend.

Here’s the media centre I sat in for four days.

Fun week. Townsville still feels a bit like home. And I do love working in PR. But it was back to college today. Five subjects this semester. Hopefully there’ll still be time for this little ol’ blog.

July 12, 2011

Friday Tunes: New Third Eagle Song possibly related to Independence Day

I think the music just keeps getting better and better from this guy…

July 8, 2011

My new work car… for this week

I’m having a fun week this week. Being a PR person again. Here’s my work car.

Tomorrow I’m going to play with some army jets and famous car drivers.

(This post was meant to go live on Monday and explain my lack of activity this week)

July 8, 2011

Mad Skillz: How to run a debate at a theological college

Weird. Apologies to Arthur and Tamie. Just found this post in my “pending pile” thinking I’d posted it on the 24th of May. So, here you go. An extension to Mad Skillz for 2011.

Arthur and Tamie are pretty cool. I can tell that just by looking at their blog. And when you read it you’ll see that sometimes you can judge a blog by its cover. Or design. Anyway. I met Arthur once. At NTE. He was starting a Christian forum that I enjoyed participating in for a while back in ’05. Fast forward a few years and Arthur and Tamie are in Melbourne, studying at Ridley, ready to head to Africa to teach people about Jesus.

So anyway, Arthur and Tamie have a mad skill. They can run debates. At college. That are interesting. Here’s how.

Here’s how Arthur and Tamie ran debates at Ridley Melbourne.

Rationale (what and why?)

1. Make it engaging. The debate is for exploring issues together, not for being settled and definitive.

2. Make it fun. The debate is serious but it must not be dour. Be sure to create levity: compering that is warm and amusing, and speakers who love to laugh.

3. Make it irenic. The debate must be winsome and bridge-building, tactful and wise from top to bottom. Kill off potential antagonism and division.

4. Make it polemical. The debate must actively challenge people’s thinking. To that end, it’s useful to phrase the topic in terms of an artificial dichotomy: “Will the real Mars Hill please stand up?” “Mission: stay or go?”

5. Make it practical. The debate topic must relate directly to ministry and mission. A poor topic: “NT Wright’s understanding of justification is more accurate than that of John Piper.” A more useful topic: “New justification = better mission.”

6. Make it public. Although the debate is an in-house event, make sure it’s good enough to be published. Conduct it as if you will put it online—and then do so!

Procedure (when and how?)

1. Run one debate each semester. It’s quite easy to organise and is fantastic for building community.

2. Hand-pick the speakers. They need to be people with a good level of charisma and people-skills: people who can truly engage with the audience, acquit themselves well, and bring a positive light to both the issue and the college community. The speakers should also represent the whole college community, including both students and faculty, women and men.

3. Use an appropriate format. A traditional debating format may be fine, but be ready to vary this in service of the topic.

4. Prepare the teams. Gear up the speakers to interact directly with the topic, giving them guidelines and appropriate scaffolding, then leave them to prepare on their own.

5. Promote it effectively. Advertise with posters two weeks before the debate, and promote it creatively and casually.

6. Keep it short. 45 minutes is plenty of time for the entire debate.

7. Present it creatively. Pay close attention to the craft of the whole event. For example, introduce the debate using video clips, music, or infographics.

8. Announce a winner. This is not to pronounce a judgement on the issue at hand, but to promote reflection. Presenting a winner helps move the audience from being passive observers towards being proactive thinkers. Get an adjudicator who can do this aptly and wisely.

9. Provide a way forward. The topic isn’t abstract, so conclude the debate with recommendations for the audience, such as books to read or conversations to have.

July 4, 2011

“By the book” evangelism: no longer means what you think it means

The World Council of Churches has taken upon its good self to release a guideline for converting the dirty heathen. Here is the document – Christian Witness in a Multi-religious world. But for now. This seems:

a) Dumb.
b) Possibly well motivated.
c) Unlikely to be effective.
d) All of the above.

Here’s a Reuters story that will no doubt filter through the interwebs and the media this week.

“It reaffirms their right to seek converts but also urges them to abandon “inappropriate methods of exercising mission by resorting to deception and coercive means”, saying that such behaviour “betrays the Gospel and may cause suffering to others”.

That seems ok. Right? Coercion is bad. But what could they possibly mean by that? Bait and switch “we’ll give you food if you convert” doesn’t really appeal to anybody but the most hardened numbers driven pragmatists.

Here’s what the story suggests…

“Christian missionaries have long been accused of offering money, food, or other goods to win converts in poor countries, either from other faiths or from rival churches.”

The problem, I’m noticing, is that this seems to suggest some sort of dichotomy where we are to seek converts using words and logical arguments, rather than actions. Deeds follow doctrine. Love is an important part of Christian testimony. It should be precisely that we offer the above, without strings attached, that serves as evangelism in multi-religious impoverished countries.

The WCC document actually recognises this tension (and having had a read through it, doesn’t do a bad job)…

Acts of service, such as providing education, health care, relief services and acts of justice and advocacy are an integral part of witnessing to the gospel. The
exploitation of situations of poverty and need has no place in Christian outreach. Christians should denounce and refrain from offering all forms of allurements, including financial incentives and rewards, in their acts of service.

Here’s the media release from the World Council of Churches spruiking its document.

I set out really wanting to dislike this document. Who is a post-modern ecumenical council to try to tell us how to do a job the Bible already spells out pretty clearly? And I’ve decided it’s actually not bad. And it’s sad that there’s a perceived need for a document like this. Have a read and tell me what you think.

July 4, 2011

Transmermaid: A mash up

The Little Mermaid is like Transformers for girls. Right? She wanted to transform into a human. That’s the only way I can explain the motivation behind this mashup.

Via 22 Words.

July 4, 2011

Transformers 3: More than meets the eye?

This week. Hopefully. Amongst a fairly packed schedule. I’ll watch Transformers 3.

Now, I’ve geeked out a bit over Transformers in the past, and some people have suggested that the movies are some sort of artistic nadir. Some have suggested that a third movie is scrapping the bottom of some well plumbed depths, to mix a metaphor. But not me. Because I realise that unlike Cars 2, this isn’t an automotive movie created to shift more merchandise. This is an automotive movie (featuring battling alien robots no less) that is created from the merchandise. Inspired by toys. It’s completely different. It’s not selling out to the corporate masses – it’s the natural conclusion of a market predicated on convergence of revenue streams.

Not to mention the artistic merit, and Michael Bay’s status as the maestro in his particular field. Not convinced. Watch.

July 3, 2011

Tumblrweed: Accidental Chinese Hipsters

In the same stream as Dads are the original hipsters comes Accidental Chinese Hipsters – a celebration of the monkeys and typewriters principle of fashion – namely, that when billions of people have a finite number of clothing choices eventually some will incidentally, or accidentally, become hipsters.

My friend Mika tipped me off on this one.

July 3, 2011

Tumblrweed: When the What

Chronological visualisations on graph paper. Need I say more? Possibly. But seeing it will make things much clearer. When the What.

July 3, 2011

The alarming Christian precursor to Dorothy the Dinosaur

It’s hard to know when this sort of children’s television (EdI placed the apostrophe there after some deliberation, I assume only one child ever watched this, but then I had a further dilemma because children is plural. So I was going to suggest two childs = a children. And two children watched this. And then I realised that because children is a collective noun the apostrophe belongs there anyway) was actually appealing.

You have to do a little bit of source criticism on this to figure out how much of the craziness is attributable to the original, and not to the editors, but if anybody knows anything about the origins of this ‘ere show, I’d love to hear about it.

June 30, 2011

Oxford’s internal style guide outlaws the Oxford Comma

What!? (that should be understood as an interrobang).

Long-term, or even observent, readers will know that I have a soft spot for the Oxford, or serial, comma.

When I’ve been questioned on such usage in the past I’ve simply appealed to the authority of Oxford. But now. It seems. Oxford isn’t so into the Oxford comma, this from a style guide for marketing the university:

“As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’”

Talk about going off message – the brand guardians of the Oxford comma have lost the plot.

Via Kottke.

June 30, 2011

Mithridatism: The art of not being allergic to poison

File this in the category of things that are cool and contain slight references to plot elements from the Princess Bride.

Mithridatism is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word derives from Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus, who so feared being poisoned that he regularly ingested small doses, aiming to develop immunity. Having been defeated by Pompey, legend has it that Mithridates tried to commit suicide using poison but failed because of his immunity and so had to resort to having a mercenary run him through with his sword.

This is what Wikipedia is for.

June 30, 2011

Science says confronting marauding, potion imbibing Gauls leads to brain damage

Yeah. That’s right. Scientific studies of the world of Asterix and his gallic drug addicts has demonstrated that more than 700 traumatic brain injuries occurred within the pages of the popular comic. Helmets apparently don’t really help.

More information about the study can be found here (all the proper peer reviewed stuff is here)

“Seven hundred and four TBIs were identified. The majority of persons involved were adult and male. The major cause of trauma was assault (98.8%). Traumata were classified to be severe in over 50% (GCS 3-8). Different neurological deficits and signs of basal skull fractures were identified. Although over half of head-injury victims had a severe initial impairment of consciousness, no case of death or permanent neurological deficit was found. The largest group of head-injured characters was constituted by Romans (63.9%), while Gauls caused nearly 90% of the TBIs. A helmet had been worn by 70.5% of victims but had been lost in the vast majority of cases (87.7%). In 83% of cases, TBIs were caused under the influence of a doping agent called “the magic potion”.”

Hopefully that’s some valuable tax payer funded research. Because this is important and groundbreaking stuff that will help tourists in Europe no end.

June 30, 2011

Awkward Family Photos: It is what it says it is

This should totally be a tumblog. But it’s not. It’s just your run of the mill blog. Oh well. In our family awkward family photos involved bad hair. Big hair. Big bad hair. I don’t have any to share. But check out some of these family moments. Captured for posterity through the wonders of photography.

June 29, 2011

Get Lamp: A documentary about text based adventure games

Like many people of my vintage who were introduced to computer games in their very early stages, I played quite a few text adventure games in my youth. Back in my day games didn’t even have pictures. You had to use your imagination. And type relatively specific commands to achieve even the simplest of functions.

I haven’t watched Get Lamp, this 2 hour doco yet, because I’m on my in-laws’ farm, and doing so would wipe out their mobile internet quota. Somewhat ironically. Given it is about text. But I’m filing this in the “watch later” pile. Get lamp gets its name from the first command one would type when finding themselves in the eponymous dark room at the start of just about every text based game known to man.

Did you play any text based adventure games? Get nostalgic in the comments.

June 29, 2011