Consciousness – Page 13

Links, Links, Links: Some tabs opened in my browser

I just spent a couple of days at Stir, a conference in Queensland featuring Al Stewart and a bunch of Christian people from around the state. It was very encouraging. But before I went, I had about a thousand tabs open in my browser that I had planned to blog. Here they are.

The Twitter users who have single letter accounts (a to z): from the Atlantic.
Taking a look at the users who make @replies easy.

“Unsurprisingly, nearly all the accounts are used heavily. The average single-letter Twitterer has Tweeted 3,266 times, follows 302 people, and is followed by 2,896. That might seem like a lot relative to the average user, but none are celebrities or power users like a Tim O’Reilly and his 1.4 million followers. @T aka Tantek Çelik, a developer, has the largest number of followers in the group with his 13,005.”

The best bit, @c and @k are now married to each other. Brilliant.

NineMSN takes a look at terrible business terminology, or management guff:

“The 2010 winner is the investor Chuck Davies who was quoted in the FT saying: “He is a deep-dive, granular, research-oriented person who really understands the inner workings of companies and is just a very free-cash flow, hard-asset-based investor.” He was speaking of one of the men who may take over from Warren Buffett; on the basis of this testimony one rather hopes someone else can be found instead.”

While the SMH deals with similar terminology applied to surrogate parenting…

“Terms such as breeder and gestational carrier are dehumanising. The experience of carrying and giving birth to a child is profound. It is also difficult, painful and life changing. The changes go beyond the merely physiological to the core of our personhood.”

I can understand the emotions that drive people towards surrogacy, and they’re murky ethical waters, but I can’t imagine what it does to a kid – especially if genetics play some role in the formation of identity.

I’ve just signed up for Kindlefeeder, and Instapaper – two services that bring online content to the kindle so that you can read stuff offline in a purpose built document reader. Fun times. Instapaper also saves stuff to your iPhone.

I love this post from Mark Thompson – I think some people are all too keen to toss out terminology not found in the Bible because of a propensity to employ it to describe ministry roles – this is a better balanced picture methinks (and a warning about what ministry is and isn’t):

“In an era when some fear their backs are against the wall and that we must do everything in our power to arrest Christianity’s slide into oblivion, the temptation to rework this classic understanding of Christian ministry is felt keenly. The ministry of the pastor is recast in terms of images gleaned from outside the Scriptures: a leader, a manager, a mission director. Yet these images must be subverted by the dynamics of the biblical gospel if they are to be of any use. The Christian leader leads by praying and faithfully attending to the ministry of the word. Effective management takes place through prayer and the consistent, faithful teaching of the Scriptures. The mission is properly directed by teachers rather than strategists, by prayer warriors rather than vision casters. It would be wrong to portray this as a battle between either/or (e.g. teaching vs leading) and both/and (e.g. teaching and leading). One is the means of the other (e.g. we lead by teaching). Christian leadership, management and mission direction is not simply a modification of what we might find in other walks of life. It is an entirely different phenomenon.”

This “List of Common Misconceptions” on wikipedia is like mythbusters for common old wives’ tales and other miscellany. Here’s one somebody quoted to me today (in a milestone I discovered my first grey hair. On a youth convention):

Shaving does not cause terminal hair to grow back thicker or coarser or darker. This belief is due to the fact that hair that has never been cut has a tapered end, whereas, after cutting, there is no taper. Thus, it appears thicker, and feels coarser due to the sharper, unworn edges. The fact that shorter hairs are “harder” (less flexible) than longer hairs also contributes to this effect.^[77] Hair can also appear darker after it grows back because hair that has never been cut is often lighter due to sun exposure.

Here’s another one:

A popular myth regarding human sexuality is that men think about sex every seven seconds. In reality, there is no scientific way of measuring such a thing and, as far as researchers can tell, this statistic greatly exaggerates the frequency of sexual thoughts.^[102]^[103]^[104]

And the BBC reckons the King James Bible changed the way we speak English. Not surprising really, given its influence on the written word. Alister McGrath has even written a book about its influence (Amazon)
(and there’s some stuff on thees and thous in there too):

“The translators seem to have taken the view that the best translation was a literal one, so instead of adapting Hebrew and Greek to English forms of speaking they simply translated it literally. The result wouldn’t have made all that much sense to readers, but they got used to it, and so these fundamentally foreign ways of expressing yourself became accepted as normal English through the influence of this major public text.”

“David Crystal in Begat, however, set out to counter exaggerated claims for the influence of the King James Bible. “I wanted to put a precise number on it,” he explains, “because some people have said there are thousands of phrases from the King James Bible in our language, that it is the DNA of the English language. I found 257 examples.””

Pretty funny that he’s from Begat, given its use in genealogies of the Bible.

I’m a long time mafia nut – I, at one point, was planning to write the next great mafia novel. I read heaps of “true crime” mafia confessionals to prepare. Maybe one day I’ll do it. In the meantime I’ll savour stories like this one. Where the good guys win. Slate has a look at how modern mafioso are making a dollar.

“Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Mafia has begun stealing millions from the EU through a sure-fire scheme—wind energy. Enticed by government underwriting of renewable energies—Brussels ordered all 27 EU nations to use one-fifth renewable energy by 2020—the Mob has focused on its own backyard. (Italian wind power sells at Europe’s highest rate, a guaranteed 180 euros per kilowatt-hour.) In 2008’s Operation “Eolo”—named after the Greek god of winds Aeolus—eight alleged Mafiosi in the Sicilian coastal town of Mazara del Vallo were charged with bribing officials with luxury cars for a piece of the wind energy revenue. Police wiretaps recorded one man saying, “Not one turbine blade will be built in Mazara unless I agree to it.”

Animoto seems like a cool site for making videos that are “killer”… which means videos that connect with young people. You have to pay money for the good stuff.

Stanley Fish has written an interesting book on how to write and read outstanding sentences (Amazon Link)
. Sounds fun.

Slate reviews it:

“[Fish suggests] we should be examining the “logical relationships” within different sentence forms to see how they organize the world. His argument is that you can learn to write and later become a good writer by understanding and imitating these forms from many different styles. Thus, if you’re drawn to Jonathan Swift’s biting satire in the sentence, “Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse,” then, Fish advises, “Put together two mildly affirmative assertions, the second of which reacts to the first in a way that is absurdly inadequate.” He offers, “Yesterday I saw a man electrocuted and it really was surprising how quiet he became.” Lame, and hardly Swift, as Fish is the first to admit, but identifying the logical structure does specify how satire functions at the level of the sentence and, if you want to employ the form, that’s a good thing to know.”

January 23, 2011

The limits of modern science and the notion of “best explanation”

Here’s a New Yorker article about the shortcomings of the scientific method. Basically it looks at the idea that heaps of scientific ideas are greatly exaggerated by early results without adequate testing and as experiments continue the results become less impressive.

“The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws…

“Once I realized that selective reporting is everywhere in science, I got quite depressed,” Palmer told me. “As a researcher, you’re always aware that there might be some nonrandom patterns, but I had no idea how widespread it is.” In a recent review article, Palmer summarized the impact of selective reporting on his field: “We cannot escape the troubling conclusion that some—perhaps many—cherished generalities are at best exaggerated in their biological significance and at worst a collective illusion nurtured by strong a-priori beliefs often repeated.”

Such anomalies demonstrate the slipperiness of empiricism. Although many scientific ideas generate conflicting results and suffer from falling effect sizes, they continue to get cited in the textbooks and drive standard medical practice. Why? Because these ideas seem true. Because they make sense. Because we can’t bear to let them go. And this is why the decline effect is so troubling. Not because it reveals the human fallibility of science, in which data are tweaked and beliefs shape perceptions.”

So what does this all mean. Obviously science has great explanatory power. And can largely be trusted, over time, to give us an improved understanding of the world we live in, and how it works. But we’ve got to keep remembering that science is a human tool used by stupid people and subject to mistakes, and external pressures like the need to publish in order to secure research funding. There’s a really interesting quote at the end of the article that dovetails nicely into this thread on the Friendly Atheist, where the problem with holus bolus acceptance of scientific naturalism is demonstrated once again (particularly see my question in the comments). Arguments to best explanation are great. And necessary. But we’ve got to keep a bit of epistemic humility and perspective and remember that one generation’s best explanation is the next generation’s $2 archaic science textbook on sale in the nostalgia section of the op shop.

“We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.”

January 23, 2011

Slow photography

A while back, somewhere or other (I found it, I found it), Arthur linked to this slow blog manifesto. I read it. I thought about it. I rejected it. Mostly because slow blogging here would bore me, and I hope you. And you’d fall asleep. Fall out a window. And die. And I don’t want that (though if you want a slow blog check out Venn Theology).

But I do like the idea of thinking about what you’re doing and why. And I think less is more is a good rule of thumb – if not one I’m buying into here. I have limited time to blog the whole internet and publish it as a book before the Internet disappears.

As a photographer, I have a tendency to shoot, and shoot and shoot. It wasn’t uncommon during our tour of Greece and Turkey for me to finish a day with over a thousand pictures. And plenty of them were of the same thing as I fiddled with camera settings. This means editing. Lots of it.

So I’m a fan of this “slow photography” concept:

“For most people, including me, photography is most often about documentation or record-keeping. It is about taking a photograph as an effort to grab a moment as it rushes by, to stage a tiny revolt against the tyranny of time. That’s why traditionally we photograph at moments you might think of as scarce. Few people photograph their daily commute, but most of us only go to high-school prom once—or maybe twice. A baby soon becomes a child, but humans look vaguely middle-aged for decades.”

Slow photography is about moving on from trying to record everything (which is my approach here) to trying to create beauty. Which is what I’m after when I take photos.

“The difference between documentation and the beauty impulse is that the latter has the power to produce not just a memory, but an emotional response in any viewer. That’s very different from the impulse to record. For group pictures are never beautiful, nor are photos in front of the Eiffel Tower. (It is big, and the subject is too small.)”

What this looks like is a three step process (according to that article – which elaborates on these points):

Step 1 in slow photography is spending a long time studying the subject.
Step 2 is the exercise of creative choices—the greatest pleasure that our automatic cameras rob us of.
Step 3 is playing around in post-production, whether in a darkroom or using photo-editing tools

Here’s a photo I took that maybe falls into that category…

January 23, 2011

Buy a guitar: +10 to mad guitar skillz

Robyn has two guitars. She only needs one now. The second was her classroom guitar back in the days when she was a school teacher. So I’ve just listed one on ebay. I had some fun with the description.

“Being an acoustic guitar it will also add +5 to your charisma, and if you are a single man +7 to your picking up girls ability. Whether you’re a rocker, a surfer, or a crooner – this guitar could have you on the turn off to the backstreet, that leads to the causeway, to the highway to success and stardom. Lets not sell its attributes too highly. We’re all about realism here. And you’ll be able to keep it real yourself if this guitar enters your possession.”

Please bid generously. And feel free to ask questions on the sale page – I will do my best to answer even the silliest ones.

January 20, 2011

Gym Etiquette Flow Chart

Etiquette is a murky thing. Throw some nudity or heavy weights into the mix and we’re talking perilous social waters.

I went to a gym once. Well, more than once. Twice. Well more than twice. There were three periods in my life when I was a member of a gym. I didn’t like it very much. But who does? I might rejoin one soon. I harbour a secret desire to be able to wink with my pecs.

Anyway. Seeing people at the gym who you know can present some awkward social situations. Especially if you’re naked. I’ve never understood people’s desire to get naked at the gym. It’s a subculture I just don’t get. Go home sweaty and shower when you get there. Seriously.

Anyway. Here’s a flowchart. From Slate.

January 19, 2011

On Humans and Snakes

This is a sermon I’ve preached a few times now. I fluctuate between thinking it’s good and thinking it’s bad. It’s almost a theology of Snakes. I hit about five passages – though it’s ostensibly based on Numbers 21 and John 3.

Feel free to check it out and tell me what you think. If Shane Warne’s stock ball was the leg break – this is currently my stock “one off sermon”…

I’m aware of a few problems with it that I’ll fix next time around – and it was written prior to my year at college, so if I started again it might look different. But it does have a killer opening illustration. And that’s something.

January 17, 2011

10 Flood related words/phrases I don’t want to hear again for a long time

1. Mother Nature – a gross misrepresentation of agency. At least be prepared to blame God, but better yet, blame the broken world we live in thanks to sin. See here.
2. Grave fears – seems insensitive in the extreme. How about “serious fears” or just “we fear for their lives”…
3. Inundated – seriously. I heard a lady who had miraculously survived a torrent but who had been cut by barbed wire say her legs had been “inundated” with scratches.
4. Essential items – when talking about bread, milk, and toilet paper).
5. Road closed – especially when it comes to people who have been stupid enough to drive through flooded causeways
6. “Channel Seven” – Ben was onto something when he suggested Channel Seven’s coverage seems to be more about self promoting than flood coverage. You don’t have to throw the words “Channel Seven” in front of any noun to indicate possession. Try “our”… or don’t talk about the thing you’re flying in at all. Mention your reporter by name. Humanise yourselves.
7. Rubbernecking – it’s an ok word when it’s original, but it becomes hackneyed very quickly.
8. We are “____” – insert parochial catchcry here – but “Queenslander” is particularly abhorrent. Anna Bligh’s “Remember who we are, we’re Queenslanders” represents most of the things that are wrong with our state. Least of all, because it works.
9. Anything Julia Gillard says – she talks like a robot version of Kath and Kim. Emotionless strine. If Anna Bligh can run rings around you then you’re in big trouble.
10. Inland tsunami/wall of water.

Some flood related puns/cliches for good measure:

1. Anything Noah related – any jokes about pairs of animals or building an ark.
2. “uncharted waters”
3. A new watermark.
4. “pooling our resources”
5. “swamped”
6. “fatal flood” – alliterative, but unoriginal. Headline writers have been using it since the early chapters of Genesis.
7. “burst its banks”
8. Any personification or application of agency to a stream of water that is actually simply taking the path of least resistance from one place to another.
9. Describing flood losses as “down the drain” or “down the gurgler”
10. Descriptions of flood damaged locales as “ground zero” or a “war zone”

The “Sainted Krishna” prize for “Mixed Spiritual Metaphor” goes to Anna Bligh for:

“I hope and pray that mother nature is leaving us alone to get on with the job of cleaning up and recovering from this event.” source: halfway down this story

January 15, 2011

A spot of rubbernecking

Rubbernecking sounds like the kind of thing hormonal teenagers do in the back of the school bus. But no. Rubbernecking (verb) is the act of taking a squiz at something. In Brisbane, it’s the verb used to describe going flood spotting. Something the police and the Premier are eager for us not to do.

But we did.

Yesterday we had a little drive into Brisbane’s CBD. Here are the Instagram results.

Floating bins in the driveway of 111 Eagle St – a new development

Some fellow rubberneckers – beyond the police tape

A view of the Storey Bridge

One of the jetties at the Eagle Street Pier, the arch is the top of the pedestrian access gate

Sandbags on Queen Street

Creek Street as a Creek

Down the River from the Eagle Street Pier

January 14, 2011

There’s an Internet Law that describes why you people don’t comment…

It’s called the 1% Rule. It has its own wikipedia article. And getting a wikipedia article is more difficult than you might think. So it must be true.

But here:

“The 1% rule states that the number of people who create content on the internet represents approximately 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content (e.g., For every one person who posts on a forum, there are at least ninety-nine other people viewing that forum but not posting).

The “90-9-1″ version of this rule states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.”

That explains it.

January 13, 2011

How to serve a community during a flood

I was talking to my friend Mike O’Connor on Facebook today. Mike is the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Rockhampton. And I love the way he thinks about how to serve and engage the Rocky community. He’s got a good eye for a media story and keeps Christianity on the agenda in a positive way.

I’ve been watching on Facebook as the Rockhampton flood situation unravelled. Mike has been on the front foot the whole time. And the stuff they’re doing up there, with help from his network of friends around the country, is pretty phenomenal.

Here’s a little video they put together:

Here’s what they’ve got on the agenda as a church so far as Rocky continues to deal with current flooding, and future clean up. From Mike:

What they’re doing
1. We have become the child care facility for anyone wanting to have their kids minded during the clean up
1.a We are going to do evening BBQ to feed people when they pick up their kids
2. We were GIVEN 5 chest freezers (new) yesterday to freeze meals to give to people and when we’re done we can give the freezers away.
3. We are still organising a team of people who can just labour – door knocking an area to assist people in the clean up.
already in place and set to roll when the waters go down.
4. Obviously helping people from church flooded in.

How you can help

This sounds like a CMS ad – but you can help by praying, giving, or going.

Pray for the Rockhampton Church as they seek to serve their city.
There was a team from Brisbane lined up to come to Rockhampton to help – their status is now “unsure.” If you’ve got some spare time in the next weeks or months, and would consider travelling to tropical North Queensland to help out – let me know, and I’ll pass your details on to Mike. They’re particularly interested in hearing from tradesmen of all varieties. Especially electricians – who need to certify each house. But they’ll take anybody.
Give money…

You can give money to the Presbyterian Church’s Flood appeal by Direct Debit:

Presbyterian Church of Queensland
Westpac Bank
BSB 034 010
Account No 131237

January 13, 2011

The Building I work in…

So, I have a summer job. And for today and tomorrow that summer job involves sitting at home. Not being flooded. This is why. This is the building I am working in.

Maybe Friday won’t be my first day back after all.

January 12, 2011

Danny Naliah: Australia’s Westboro Baptist

Some people should learn to keep their mouths shut. A few years back Danny Naliah had much of Australian Christendom on his side when he spoke out against Islam and fell foul of Australia’s religious vilification laws… free speech is important. But it seems he has a desire to walk around as a test case. Here’s his idiot filled statement about the Queensland floods.

“Around 8pm on Friday night the 7th of January we had a strong prompting by the Holy Spirit to repent on behalf of Australia. As we started doing so, I was reminded that every time America went against Israel, there was disaster in the land and this has been documented over the years.

Then at once I was reminded of Kevin Rudd speaking against Israel in Israel on 14th December 2010. It is very interesting that Kevin Rudd is from QLD. Is God trying to get our attention? Yes, I believe so.

Also the Lord said to us, “ I will humble Australia and bring her down on her knees. As she has taken pride in my blessing, and man has taken the glory and not given it to Me”.”

Idiot.

Apparently the floods are God’s punishment of K-Rudd for speaking against Israel. This is the same guy who said the bushfires were God punishing Victoria.

I wonder what he’s going to do if New South Wales goes under. And you’ve got to wonder what these people did wrong (using his thinking).

Here’s what Jesus said about people in natural disasters (from Luke 13) as quoted last time Naliah opened his stupid mouth…

““¹Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ²Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? ³I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. ⁴Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.””

Don’t be one of those classless Christians who meets people’s grief with talk of judgment. I’ve seen murmurings like that from friends on Facebook. And I don’t like it. Sure. Judgment is part of the broken world we live in. Be one of those Christians who meets grief with love, and the promise of hope in Jesus.

That is all.

January 11, 2011

More flood photos taken with Instagram

I like this app a lot.

The Go-Between Bridge from the Library window

Boats doing their thing on the river

I took a walk down to the pontoon on the way home.

The walkway is pretty covered

It started getting a bit foggy

I managed to get the train home

And I reckon this sign was a little redundant

January 11, 2011

Watching the flood

At the moment I’m sitting on level five of a building in Southbank, overlooking the river. I’m watching a truck out the window, across the river, on the Riverside Expressway. It’s crawling. The same truck has been in about the same spot for the last fifteen minutes.

I’m also playing with Instagram – an iPhone photo app that I like.

And delving into the Twitter hash tag world for the first time.

These floods are amazing – and weeks of watching the rest of Queensland go underwater have instilled an odd panic in lots of people. The office is pretty bare. Lots of people have left. Rumours are flying (thanks to Sky News) about the impending closure of Brisbane’s public transport system. Nobody is quite sure whether or not that’s happening. Us marketers/PR people are a hardy bunch, and will no doubt be the last out of the doors.

Yesterday my sister-in-law who lives in Toowoomba walked into a shop just before the inland tsunami swept cars and utes around the streets like an over-zealous street cleaner.

My parents-in-law are bracing for a second round of flooding on their farm outside Dalby. It’ll probably go higher than the last one – and doubtless do more damage.

These floods are crazy. Crazy.

January 11, 2011

Blogging Meet-up (of sorts)

Our friends Izaac and Sarah are visiting us this week. So tonight we’re having dinner with Andrew and Simone. A chance to turn the virtual into the real. Should be fun. I told Simone she had to come up with some controversial conversation topics. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Stay tuned for reflections on what it’s like to meet those people in real life, from the other people.

January 10, 2011