Get it. These are “tracts”… I’ll be here all day. These are from a blog dedicated to such ethereal ephemera called Old Time Religion. They remind me that I should finally start my “bad Christian books” blog – I’ve got about thirty books on my shelf that I haven’t blogged yet, and I still haven’t finished reviewing Help Lord the Devil Made me Fat.
Let me just start by congratulating PETA for sinking to a new low with the name of their blog. The PETA files. Because we all think animal rights should be associated with child abuse, for the lols.
Then, let me move on to highlighting PETA’s latest ridiculous campaign.
“When PETA heard that the Committee on Bible Translation had revised the New International Version (NIV) of the Christian Bible to use gender-inclusive language, such as replacing “men” with “people,” we thought, wouldn’t it be great if the new NIV showed consideration for female (and male) animals too? So we wrote to the Committee on Bible Translation and asked them to use “he” or “she” rather than “it” to refer to animals in the next edition of the NIV.
“Language matters. Calling an animal ‘it’ denies them something,” PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich told CNN. “They are beloved by God. They glorify God.”
Since God loves all His creation (and if you’re not convinced of this, try reading Matthew 25:40, Isaiah 11:9, or Luke 6:36), it’s only fitting that humans do the same by showing respect to every living being. Maybe Psalm 50:11 says it best: “I know and am acquainted with all the birds of the mountains, and the wild animals of the field are Mine and are with Me, in My mind.” Perhaps if we change the way we speak about animals, our thinking will follow.”
Here’s the CNN piece referred to in that post…
There are some more stupid quotes from PETA in that article, here’s the meat of their argument.
“God’s covenant is with humans and animals. God cares about animals,” Friedrich said. “I would think that’s a rather unanimous opinion among biblical scholars today, where that might not have been the case 200 years ago.”
Now, I’m not sure that PETA has even a rudimentary knowledge of Greek or Hebrew – but they may be interested to learn that their beef is with the languages themselves, not with the Bible translators. Because the languages have male, female, and neuter nouns – and you’d have to bring gender to the table by your own agenda, to suggest that animals are anything other than an it. You’d have to create a bias in the text. Which is exactly what translators shouldn’t be doing.
David Berger, a Hebrew scholar lets them have it on this basis in that CNN article:
“In Hebrew all nouns are gender-specific. So the noun for chair is masculine and the noun for earth is feminine. There’s simply no such thing as a neutral noun,” Berger told CNN. “It’s unusual to have a noun that would indicate the sex of the animal.”
Another scholar, from Baylor University, David Lyle Jeffrey, disagreed with the rest of the nonsense from PETA’s suggestion…
“I agree with their contention that God cares for all of creation,” Jeffrey said. “It is true that we have a responsibility to reflect that affection.
“In gender-inclusive Bible translation the generic terms for humankind, let’s say, are then replaced with an emphasis on he or she. Instead of the generic he, you say he and she. I don’t quite see how that would work with animals,” Jeffery said.
“Do we need to know the gender of the lion Samson slew? What would it give us there?” he said. “You could try to specify that, but you would be doing so entirely inventively if you did. It’s not in the original language. … Nothing is made of it in the story.”
“When you get to the point when you say, ‘Don’t say it, say he or she’ when the text doesn’t, you’re both screwing up the text and missing the main point you addressed.”
Now, Wikipedia didn’t think Jeremy Wales was suitable subject matter for an article, but they do think that Fart Lighting and Goldfish Swallowing deserve entries. I’m not sure what Jeremy should think about this. He is less newsworthy than flammable flatulence. Though perhaps the problem with my article about him was that it was somewhat embellished.
In case you’re wondering:
Fart lighting, or pyroflatulence, is the practice of igniting the gases produced by human flatulence, often producing a flame of a blue hue. The fact that flatus is flammable, and the actual combustion of it through this practice, gives rise to much humourous derivation. Other colors of flame such as orange and yellow are possible with the color dependent on the mixture of gases formed in the colon.
Although there is little scientific discourse on the combustive properties of flatus, there are many anecdotal accounts of flatus ignition and the activity has increasingly found its way into popular culture with references in comic routines, movies, and television; including cartoons.
You can read more about the science involved at the BBC.
Goldfish swallowing was an American school fad starting in the 1930s, where a live goldfish is swallowed.
It is not clear how it became a fad: various people have made claims. A 1963 letter to the New York Times claimed that the fad began in late 1938 when Lothrop Withington Jr., a Harvard freshman with “[class] presidential aspirations,” was encouraged by his “campaign managers” to do so as a publicity stunt: “Reporters and photographers were inadvertently present in the Harvard Freshman Union when Withington swallowed his live goldfish (with a mashed potato chaser) and started a nationwide fad in the spring of 1939.” The editor replied that “unless the Editor’s memory is deceiving him, the goldfish-swallowing craze among school and college boys had begun at least as early as 1930.”[1] However, a Time magazine noted in a 1939 article, “Harvard Freshman Lothrop Withington Jr., son of a onetime (1910) Harvard football captain, started the fad sweeping U. S. campuses…”
Apparently breast cancer awareness week is a movable feast. It happens whenever somebody decides that Facebook hasn’t had enough “awareness raising”… this time round it’s not quite as innuendo laden as the last few years. Women are being asked to put a vegetable as their status.
This one is pretty dumb, so it hasn’t caught on with the same gusto that the others have…
But, in case you’re wondering, this is what they mean.
Blueberry: I’m single
Pineapple its complicated
Raspberry: Im a touch and go woman
Apple: Engaged
Cherry: In a relationship
Cucumber: I just had sex!
Banana: Im married
Avocado: Im the “other one”
Strawberry: Cant find the right one
Lemon: Wish i was single
Grape: wants to get married.
How this relates to breast cancer is just completely beyond me. I think people just want to launch a meme, so they tack a popular cause onto it, say “this is a secret, don’t tell any men” and then release it into the wild.
I’ve made my opinion on this kind of “awareness raising” pretty clear previously, at least this one is relatively free of gutter level innuendo, but please. Just stop. It was funny (almost) once, it was hackneyed the second time, and now it’s just ridiculous. Why don’t we try just talking openly and honestly about breast cancer rather than copy and pasting for a cause or engaging in this “lets not talk about the elephant in the room” style of drumming up awareness for your cause.
Gary posted this the other day, it also goes nicely with my rant the other day about annoying status updates.
Nuclear power. Two words, that when combined, are guaranteed to polarise. Especially now. I’m ambivalent on the issue. It seems like a good idea, until things go wrong. But the other day Seth Godin posted this little visualisation of some real data that is effective in its ability to frame the debate.
He puts the dissonance between opinion and reality down to the influence of coal marketers. Which opens up an interesting can of worms in the energy debate. I’m nonplussed about the debate, I’m more interested in the simplicity of turning data into a visual and the persuasive power that has.
Here’s what Godin says is the underlying reason this visual has the impact it has:
“I think that any time reality doesn’t match your expectations, it means that marketing was involved. Perhaps it was advertising, or perhaps deliberate story telling by an industry. Or perhaps it was just the stories we tell one another in our daily lives. It’s sort of amazing, even to me, how much marketing colors the way we see the world–our reaction (either way) to this chart is proof of it.”
There’s truth in that, but there’s also truth in the idea that the simplicity of a graphic like this one is a much more powerful manner of persuasion than the complication of talking about figures and research. That has always been the case, but the way the Internet works (this visualisation has gone, and will continue to go, all over the internet) means that a simple picture like this cuts through in a way that numbers don’t.
We spend so much time cultivating our image online. But everybody knows the truth. Which is why I prefer to look like the guy on the right (at least that’s how I hope you think I look, metaphorically speaking).
I am really a 6’3 tall, athletic polymath. So there. My profile doesn’t lie. Well, I am tall.
From Comical Concept.
Dear ____, from ____ templated jokes are one of those little internet memes you probably haven’t heard of and I don’t care about. Or you might have. I don’t know. There’s a tumblog somewhere. Most of them aren’t funny.
But these are kind of clever.
Funny because it’s true. Via Joy of Tech.
Content farms are the bane of the content creator’s existence. Other people flooding the Internet with cheap mass produced content has the same effect on the content market that any mass producing of something once good and pure has… it cheapens the experience for everybody, big companies make all the money, and then eventually something shifts in the market. It happened with beer. It happened with coffee. Now Google is stepping in to stop content farms leeching off the Internet with their search engine snake oil.
If none of this makes sense to you – then don’t worry – this infographic and accompanying post from techi.com is here to help.
Good has an infographic of stuff that costs more by volume than petrol – so stop your whining.
The plural for status is statii. Right? Anyway. I was talking to my buddy Mike. I have many buddies named Mike. And I won’t tell you which one he is. It’ll be more fun, and safer, that way.
There are two types of status updates on Facebook that are guaranteed to raise my ire, three types that I will respond to in anger. Well, passive aggressive snarkiness. Four that make my ears steam. Let me count the ways. Oh Facebooker.
This post should not be read as a personal indictment if you are the sort of person who does this. And if you’re reading this thinking that I’m writing about you specifically, I may well be, but I do love you, and I only want what’s best for you. Think of it as a Public Service Announcement that will hopefully help me to keep on liking you.
My hot wife says this post is a preachy know-it-all rant that makes it sound like I’m some sort of social media guru. I’m not, I’m just Joe Average. Your typical Facebook friend. But I have a blog. A voice. A platform. And I’m happy to use it to tell you what Joe Average is thinking, or at least what I’m thinking. And that’s loving. Isn’t it?
Here are the types of Facebookers that get my goat. And if you’re one of them – feel free to come back at me in the comments.
1. The “Facebook is out to get you” Rumour Miller.
Facebook is a company that makes money by selling its user base to advertisers. Deal with it. If you want to use the platform then you need to get with the program. You are the commodity. You are not the customer (unless you buy ads). Sometimes Facebook will change the way they do business. Businesses do that. They announce these changes. It’s not hard. If you hear a nasty rumour about how Facebook is out to get you and exploit you – it may well be true. But please go to google.com or snopes.com and do a little research. Just copy and paste your chain-letter style status update into google and see what comes up. Chances are it’ll be a hoax. 90% of the time it is. 9% of the time its something that some conspiracy nut has blown out of proportion – and the other 1% of the time Facebook is doing something to make a bit more money. That’s its job. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Two friends, possibly connected by mutual friends, who knows – posted the same status update tonight about a change Facebook made two years ago. A change that wasn’t even really a change, and certainly wasn’t the kind of change this conspiracy laden status suggested it was. Sure. Facebook is going to show you if your friends like or interact with a particular brand or advertisement. Newsflash. This is a social network.
2. The Megachurch Wannabe.
I get it. You are the minister, assistant minister, or student minister at a fantastic church. And you want your church to get Facebook attention. We all do. But this stuff sounds better if other people are talking about it. Not the person who is paid to. Here are some secrets. Nobody likes the overly pious memory verse machine. They get hidden. Nobody likes the walking church bulletin who advertises an event every time they open their mouth. You are not Mark Driscoll. You are not John Piper. You are you. Be you. Let Piper be Piper. Let Driscoll be Driscoll (or point out how bizarre his stream of status updates can be and get lots of hits on your blog). A stream of Piper imitators in one’s status feed is annoying and it dilutes the effectiveness of the original.
Don’t talk too much about your awesome prayer life, sermon, Bible Study, worship session, Bible reading, quiet time, anything a bit jargony that is going to make others feel inadequate or your non-Christian friends and family think you’ve joined a cult. Sure. We all want our non-Christian friends to read our statii and know we are ruled by the Lord Jesus. But not posting drunken pictures on Facebook will help with that impression, as will myriad other things. And a couple of updates per day or week, in proportion to updates about what you are actually thinking or doing would be fine. Thankyou.
There are a few subsets of the megachurch wannabe that almost became special categories in this rant. Don’t spread Christian chain status updates about how we want a million people to like Jesus on Facebook, or how if you don’t make something your status for an hour it means you don’t love God. I won’t copy your status. Almost ever. As a general rule. I don’t want to be some sort of status quoting robot. And I love God. I’m sure there are others like me.
The Christian superparent/superspouse. I get it. Your wife is hot. Your daughters are amazing and daddy date worthy (there’s an incredible cringe factor to that term). Your sons are growing up to be real men of God. That’s great. Show us some photos. That’s what Facebook is for. Tell us you’re proud of them. But don’t keep telling me how hot your wife is, or about your plans for an amazing daddy date (seriously. Creepy). We know you love your family.
If you do want to plant a megachurch just follow these ten steps to success.
3. The Oversharer.
I’ve been over this before. But it just keeps happening. Let me state this clearly. As clearly as possible, and with as much love as I can muster.
I DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT THE POO YOUR CHILD JUST DID.
Ever. And your child doesn’t want to google themselves one day and find out that their potty training produced wonderful shapes. Nor that they had a poosplosion on the carpet. In fact. Nobody wants to know. Especially if one day they are going to visit your house and sit on the chair that was once covered by infant defecation. We get that you love your child and that parenting can be a funny and frustrating process. But you don’t need to rub our virtual noses in it.
As a general rule most people don’t want to read about the minutiae of your daily life. There’s a point where enough information crosses over into too much information. Why straddle that line? Why not stay metres away from it. But try not to be so vague you’re completely boring too. That’s too far.
4. The Grammar Pest.
I’ve saved this one until last because it’s actually the one I find most annoying. I cringe at bad grammar, and bad spelling. I don’t understand how, with the advent of the in-browser spell check, anybody can post gibberish in their statii anymore. It’s not that hard. Come on people.
But. To publicly correct somebody, unless they are a professional proof-reader and you are their colleague, is just mean spirited and almost only ever designed to make the one doing the correcting look good. And it doesn’t. Nobody is buying what you’re selling. Nobody. We all see through it. People hated you as a child and scribbled on your face with red pen. We get it. Now there’s a grammar sized chip on your shoulder and you feel the need to make your contribution to every conversation a comment about somebody else’s mistake. Good for you. You will die alone. But your will will be immaculate. Error free. Leaving everything to your 18 cats.
People make mistakes. If you love them you should tell them in private. Not shout it out for the world to see. And if you do that – you better make sure that you cross every t, dot every i and catch every rogue apostrophe before hitting enter. Because if you don’t – I’m watching you. And I’m coming for you. Don’t be a grammar hypocrite for a moment. Grammar Pharisee is probably a better name for these people than grammar nazi – communication is about the spirit, not about the law. Shakespeare taught us that. As did anybody else who deliberately broke a rule for the sake of better writing. Because everybody likes to see a bully get their comeuppance.
I can’t take a book seriously if it uses Papyrus (the font – a cover made from papyrus would actually be classy) on its front cover. Sorry.
I’m less likely to take a book seriously if the banner ad on its web page features a guy smoking a cigar hugging what I presume are his daughters. Looking every bit the pimp.
I’ll take it even less seriously if it features the following chapters:
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Give a Flip Factor
Chapter 1. Strong Words for Weak Dads
Chapter 2. Teach Your Daughter How to Fight
Chapter 3. Teach Your Daughter How to Shoot Guns
Chapter 4. Teach Your Daughter How to Sense BS
Chapter 5. Teach Your Daughter How to Rebel
Chapter 6 . Teach Your Daughter How to be Classy
Chapter 7. Teach Your Daughter to be a Visionary
Chapter 8. Teach Your Daughter to Despise Anti-Intellectualism
Chapter 9. Teach Your Daughter How to Party
Chapter 10. Teach Your Daughter How to Hunt
Chapter 11. Teach Your Daughter How to Avoid the Date from Hell
Chapter 12. The Ten Commandments for My Daughter’s Potential Boyfriend
Chapter 13. An Application to Date My Daughter
Chapter 14. About My Dad: From the Author’s Daughters
It is becoming more and more apparent to me, as I talk to people from the pre-blog generation, that there’s a bit of a genre problem when it comes to blogs, and what they are. For me this means I need to tread a little more carefully, lest I say something, under my own brand/name/banner that’ll come back to bite me. This post is going to become part of my disclaimer. Have you read it? You should. Because at some point if you’re going to engage with a text (and blogs are texts) you should be doing it on its terms as well as your own. Context is king.
But there is a lesson here for non-bloggers too – the onus isn’t entirely on the blogger to take people who don’t understand blogs into account. We have to consider such an audience, but we’re not writing to that audience as a primary audience.
Blogs are, by nature, opinionated, personal, and sometimes controversial. They are, by nature, quickly produced, biased, and not peer-reviewed. The more people fail to take this into account the harder life will be for bloggers.
But, on the blogger side of the fence, posts are permanent, googlable, searchable on RSS feeds and site searches, and available to the public.
If we want people to stay accountable about what they write (ie write under their own names), and we want to read what they write, then we need to not hold words that in the past would have been quickly forgotten against people. Or, at least, we need to make some attempt at understanding the genre before we impose our own anachronistic cultural readings on a situation.
Nothing I’ve said has come back to haunt me yet (except maybe one time where I mouthed off a bit about why a particular ministry wasn’t for me). I’ve been pretty careful with what I’ve said, and I’d stand behind it. But that doesn’t mean words can’t be twisted, misunderstood and abused – and at some point, the onus is on the reader not to do that.
That is all.
This song is awful. Just awful. Many people are calling it the worst song in the world (Dave Miers isn’t). I wish Autotune technology would become sentient and eat all the awful autotuners out there. And Justin Bieber. That’s a singularity I could get behind.
But the story behind this story (the music video has had more than 27 million hits and the single is roaring up the charts on iTunes), is that this 13 year old girl’s parents paid a company (Ark Music Factory – here’s Rebecca Black’s Profile on their website) $2,000 to make a viral video. That’s $2,000 well spent. Except for all the hate. TechCrunch’s wrap up of the viral side of the story is worth a read. Gawker’s coverage is also pretty good (here’s another, and a story about the company behind the video), and here’s a C-Net wrap up.
Her story has gone mainstream media – where she responds to all the hate and reaches out to Justin Bieber…
Here’s a parody…
Now, if only the Old Spice man would weigh in on a Bieber/Black duet we’d have some sort of viral perfection.
A while back I paid homage to the Oxford, or serial, comma. The comma that comes between something and and and when the and is followed by something else in order to add clarity to a list.
For example. I like planes, trains, and automobiles.
That last comma. That’s it. Turns out it’s popular (see the comments on that post).
I’m posting now because I found this graphic – and I think it’s nice.
Nice like an Oxford comma.
Vampire Weekend also wrote a song about everybody’s favourite comma (with a slight language warning).
