Category: Consciousness

Nine famous blogs you should read

I always link the little guy – but I also read the big guys… Here are some sites I subscribe to.

  1. Lifehacker – how to live cleverly
  2. Boing Boing – Weird stuff
  3. Kottke.org – The arts 2.0
  4. Smashing Magazine – Design
  5. The Simple Dollar – Frugality
  6. Book of Joe – Weird stuff
  7. Slashdot – Tech News
  8. Six Revisions – Design
  9. Gizmodo – Gadgets and fun stuff with technology (occasionally inappropriate)

Got any favourites that you think I’d like (bearing in mind that this is not an exhaustive list)… share them in the comments.

September 9, 2009

Nine of my best series and tags

It seems a shame that there are some 2,100 posts just floating around in my archives, waiting to be discovered. If you are one of those who came in late here are some of my favourite bits…

Features

1. Our Daily Fred – the best from Fred and Friends.
2. The Beginners Guide to Taking Over the World 
3. A self help guide to writing self help books
4. Our New Zealand holiday
5. YouTube Tuesday
6. Nigerian Scams/Scambaiting
7. Shirt of the Day
8. Anti-green
9. Guide to better living

Tags
1. Photography
2. PR tips
3. Toilet humour
4. Segways
5. Ninjas
6. Cool Art
7. Tetris
8. Pacman
9. Super Mario Bros

September 9, 2009

Blogged to the nines

It’s the 9th of the 9th 2009 today. 09/09/09. Wonderful. To make the most of it I’m going to post nine lists of nine things. Exciting stuff. Stay tuned.

September 9, 2009

A question of absolutes

This seems to be dominating my thinking and conversation today. So it’s going to dominate my posting too.

I am so sick of every issue in the world – from the question of league v union, the question of musical taste, through to the question of morality and “evil” – being turned into a murky pot of subjectivity where claiming objective knowledge of an absolute is frowned upon.

You can’t even call Hitler evil anymore.

Things just are. They either are, or they aren’t. The question of which game you prefer (league, or union) is subjective. The question of which game is better is objective.

Signing up for an “objective” assessment requires pretty clear terms of reference. Which is almost impossible because of this desire to be “relative” in all things.

September 8, 2009

How I find this rubbish (and the time to post it)

A lot of readers – both casual readers who I know in real life, and fellow bloggers, have made comments on my seemingly inhuman ability to track down the stupid stuff I post here. And almost as many wonder how I find the time.

I have been umming and ahhing about sharing my “secret” with the world. But today, Jeff, speculated that I have invented some sort of time travelling device just so that I can surf the Internet.

It’s time to come clean. Here’s the method to my madness.

  1. I try to write one or two substantive posts a day in my main page part – and I try to cover off each category in a week (including a little bit of whatever is going on around me in day to day life. These bits are easy. I don’t have to go looking.
  2. I subscribe to a bunch of blogs in each category I write about (I have 349 subscriptions in Google Reader).
  3. Each morning I skim through them as quickly as I can – there are usually about 600 posts when I log in before heading off to work. I read all the posts by people in full, skim the gadgets, bookmarking aggregators and the “how to” blogs I subscribe to looking for eligible blog fodder.
  4. When I see a post I like, that I don’t want to rewrite substantively, I share it.
  5. When I see something I want to post I “star” it.
  6. When I have a spare moment I go through my starred pile and post them. Posts in the curiosities column take me about five minutes. I have 207 posts in the queue. You can see what’s “coming up” on my Starred Items page.
  7. I visit the blogs of people who comment regularly, or who I know, and keep up with discussions because you never know when someone’s going to say something blogworthy.

During work hours I’ll keep my Google Reader open for down time, I have my gmail open all day (and get emails when people comment), and I keep Windows Live Writer open to work on the longer posts when I’m on the phone or waiting for a meeting.

September 7, 2009

My (not yet) famous Spag Bol

I’ve now been tagged in two memes. I’m a good sport when it comes to such things. So thanks Ali. I will use this opportunity to once again share one of my recipes with the world.

According to the rules of this “meme” I’m to pick an ingredient from Ali’s recipe and share a recipe that uses the ingredient. Luckily there are a few ingredients to choose from… I’m going to go with butter. Because that rules almost nothing out. And I’m going to share my recipe for spaghetti bolognese. It’s not quite a “from scratch” special – I could, given the inclination, probably use fresh tomatoes. But I haven’t yet. And I like this one a fair bit…

What you’ll need (I normally do a big batch of this because it’s just as good the next day, and the next, etc.):

Ingredients
(some quantities are estimates)

  • Spaghetti
  • 1kg Mince
  • 1 big tin of Heinz Tomato Soup (500ml)
  • 1 big tin of crushed/diced tomatoes
  • 1 jar of sun dried tomatoes
  • Lots of mushrooms
  • A carrot (grated)
  • 2 medium sized onions
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • Assorted herbs and spices (of an Italian bent)
  • 100ml of cream
  • Enough butter to lubricate the saucepan/wok, and nicely brown the onions and garlic

What to do

  1. Slice the onion, crush one clove of garlic, cook on medium to high heat with the butter.
  2. When the onion starts browning, add the mushrooms.
  3. Add the mince.
  4. When the mince starts to brown add the sun dried tomatoes (I normally add a little bit of the oil from the sun dried tomato jar/container too. Stir them through.
  5. Add the tinned tomato and tomato soup – tomato soup is great because it has a rich, slightly salty flavour. This mix is, in my opinion, better than any pasta sauce on the market.
  6. Cook your spaghetti while letting the bolognese simmer.
  7. Add the carrot.
  8. Add the cream, stir through, the sauce should be a goldy colour.
  9. Crush your other garlic clove and stir it through the bolognese. Add your herbs based on taste and personal preference.
  10. Your spaghetti should be ready soon – throw a piece at the wall to see if it sticks (remove any water from the spaghetti strand first).

Serve in a bowl with cheese.

The end.

I tag whichever four of you volunteer first.

We’ll probably be doing this with our cooking friend this week – let me know if you’ve got ideas for ingredients that I might not have considered.

September 7, 2009

The union war

K-Rudd has declared an end to the History Wars that crippling battle for supremacy between Australia’s academic elite… but there’s one philosophical battle between the elite and the working class that will not be ended by Prime Ministerial decree…

We’re flying to Brisbane this weekend. We’re heading south for a Rugby match. Of all the things to head south for… I don’t really like Rugby. But Robyn does. So we’re going to watch Australia play South Africa.

Robyn really likes Rugby. She owns a number of jerseys and actually understands the rules enough to yell at the ref about an infringement before he gives a penalty. This is what marriage is about.

But, so that my protest is recorded for posterities sake – here are three areas where Rugby League is clearly the superior game…

  1. Pointscoring – the union point scoring matrix is messed up. It discourages attacking play. Union can not hope to be a spectacle while a penalty goal is worth more than half an unconverted try. There is no incentive to chance your arm for a try when you can do half the work and score more than half the points. Drop goals are also significantly overvalued. If Union swallowed its pride and adopted League’s point scoring methodology attack would be suitably rewarded.
  2. Penalties – Penalty goals are only such an issue because penalties are so common. Seriously. Is there anything in Union that you’re actually allowed to do? Every time the ref watches the play closely he blows his whistle and the team in possession boots the ball between the posts.
  3. Scrums – The claim by Union fans that I find most risible is that their scrums are superior to those used in League. Contested, yes, superior, no. 98% of scrums contested in a Union test are packed more than once, 65% result in penalties. 12% result in wins against the feed (I made these stats up). They’re just as pointless as the scrums in league – it’s like a coin toss to see whether the attacking side gets a penalty or has to stand around in a hemorrhoid inducing group hug.

But I’m a good husband. So I’ll go along without pointing out too many of these areas.

September 4, 2009

Argument with argument

I have a bone to pick with logic. I am sick to death of putting forward great arguments backed by examples and employing a suitable amount of pathos only to be ignored because I’ve broken one of the codified rules of “logical argument”.

I have news for you Messrs Logic and Reason – nobody cares if you think I’m arguing with a “straw man” or producing some sort of syllogismic fallacy. Nobody cares if you hate analogies so much that the very presence of one as a piece of supporting evidence is enough for you to completely ignore the material at hand and instead dish out a lecture on what are essentially the “Queensbury Rules” of discourse. Nobody likes the Queensbury rules. They’re for losers who can’t fight with all the tools at their disposal.

Perhaps my line of reasoning is a straw man – but your job isn’t to point out that this invalidates my argument, it’s to correct my thinking. Perhaps my analogy isn’t perfect. Few are. A perfect analogy is like a rare pearl – hard to find and expensive.

When did the style of a debate become more important than the substance?

September 4, 2009

Visible Holiness

I mentioned my theory of the “Holiness Shelf” back when I had about ten readers (but curiously could attract 31 comments on a trivial post).

The Holiness Shelf is a dedicated space on a public bookshelf. Typically at eye level. The idea is that people judge you by the books in your collection, and your music and DVDs. If the first thing they see is overwhelming holiness manifested in your well thumbed “Gospel and Kingdom” or “The Cross of Christ” they’ll judge you positively.

It’s a tactic I recommended to many single guys, while I was myself single. I’m not sure it works.

Ali makes a good point in this post that people are now judged by their online presence. Facebook has replaced the bookshelf. Which is why it’s important to list good bands and intelligent books in your Facebook profile (I’ll post a list of impressive books for your profile later). Christians are pretty bad at judging each other on the basis of faith and holiness too – so the availability of information like what books, movies and music you like opens you up to all sorts of questions from others. Should I tell everybody that my favourite movies are Fight Club and the Godfather (both R rated)? Or should I pretend I love the Passion of the Christ (which I’ve never seen), and Amazing Grace (which I did like)?

The personal “brand” we build online opens us up in a new way to Christians who may or may not be weaker brothers, and may or may not be the judgemental type who emphasise the “not of the world” part of “in the world, but not of it”. This raises questions about what you should and shouldn’t blog about if you’re bloggingly inclined. You should read Ali’s post, and join the discussion there.

I post just about anything. I’m not sure I’d want people making an assessment of my holiness on the basis of that which appears in the right hand column of this page. Especially the bits about toilet paper.

I don’t want to be more discerning about what I blog about, it would take away half the fun. But nor do I want to be judged solely on what I blog about.

September 3, 2009

Cereal Offender

I love cereal. I eat it all the time. I think that cereal companies should be most upset that they’ve been pigeon-holed as “breakfast cereal”.

I don’t think trivial rebrands solve any problems, so I don’t understand the NRL’s pitch to change their logo in order to resurrect its credibility.

If a lobby group consisting of Kellogs, Sanitarium and other major cereal players was to form in a bid to rebrand their products as all day things I would totally understand that sort of thing. And support it.

I am eating a bowl of Fruit Loops as I write this.

That is all. 

September 3, 2009

Leaning tower of pizzas

No posts yesterday. I’m a slacker. Actually, it’s quite the reverse. I was busy. I’ll try to rectify this today.

Round two of my little “cooking school” is happening tonight. We’re doing gourmet pizzas. By popular demand. Anybody got a favourite pizza topping/strategy?

Oh, and check out this cool optical illusion…

Find out what’s so special about it here.

September 3, 2009

The father of all links posts

Ah, another week, another post chock full of links from the narrow sector of the world wide that I like to call the blogosphere.

I thought I’d get a little bit geographically specific with this little link edition. Just to give you an idea of the spread of blogs that I read (that you should too). This is by no means comprehensive – but here are some of the homes of regular commenters, people I know, and people I reckon you should discover (along with some choice posts from their sites).

Right-o. Lets go.

Starting with those in my own neck of the woods – the Townsville scene… (in no particular order). 

  1. Tim – doesn’t post often and when he does it’s usually a YouTube video.
  2. Leah – is the Andrew Bolt of the North Queensland Christian blogosphere, or perhaps the Tim Blair. She also covered North Queensland’s lost and found saga this week where a local lad from a local church went missing in the bush, and was found a couple of days later.
  3. Stuss – has picked up the pace a little, though most of what she’s saying is about gardening and decluttering. Which is fine. Because both are good things.
  4. Phoebe – hasn’t really said anything for 21 days. I just counted. But no list of bloggers from Townsville would be complete without her.
  5. Joel – if Leah is the Tim Blair of the Townsville blogosphere then Joel is the Piers Ackerman.
  6. Carly – is an education student and gives some interesting insight into the female psyche with pieces like the one she wrote last week about Oprah.
  7. Chris barely posts enough to rank a mention. But he’s a blogger. In Townsville. So he sneaks in.

If you’re in Townsville, and I’ve missed you, let me know in the comments.

Moving south, here are some of the notables in Brisbane…

  1. Kutz – I mentioned his new endeavour last week. It’s been trickling along. I’m sure more comments from nice friendly readers would keep his motivation levels up.
  2. Tim and Amy – The same could be said for these two. They’ve kept a pretty steady pace and you should go over, read what they have to say, and say hello.
  3. Simone – well, I’ve talked about her blog enough for you to know what goes down over there. She gets a prize for being the third blogger to mention my dad* this week. Her little piece of speculation about narrative in the new creation was interesting enough to get my hippocampus firing today.
  4. Will Henderson – gets the prize for being the first to mention dad*, and also for being the first Acts 29 affiliated church planter in Australia – a story that apparently hadn’t received all that much coverage before I mentioned it the other day (based on some posts like this one from Jeff Attack)… check out the website for his upcoming plant. Unfortunately it’s a bit grungy. And we all know how I feel about grunge.

Now, on to Sydney. The city of my birth and home of many good blogs.

  1. Izaac is back from a holiday and taking on the challenge of posting about Christian love and social justice.
  2. Ben celebrated his birthday yesterday – and I promised him a link. Then he posted a story about how the Governator has the Conan sword in his office – that I was all set to feature in my next little string of “Curiosities” posts.
  3. At the fountainside Soph asks the important questions about train etiquette – something we’ll have to (re)familiarise ourselves with next year.
  4. Ben (of the Bathgate variety) lists five things that made him tough(er). I score one on his list.
  5. Dave Miers managed to scoop Mikey Lynch by posting an interview with Andrew Heard, one of the Geneva Church planting crew (another post on the network from Dave), before Mikey could wrap up his series of similar interviews with church planting figures (including Will Henderson and Al Stewart).

Mikey (from Tasmania) was also the second person to, somewhat vicariously, mention dad this week because his name came up in one of the posts from the aforementioned series of interviews.

It has also become apparent – from what Andrew Heard said on Dave’s blog and what Al Stewart said on Mikey’s – that the Geneva portmanteau was only a vicious rumour, and that the name is actually a reference to Calvin’s work in that city. Which is a good thing.

And to conclude, here are my favourite ten posts from my blog this week (including bits from Robyn and Benny).

  1. Benny on Ministry
  2. Robyn on Grammar (PS – you should all encourage Robyn to blog more – she needs some comment love…)
  3. Good bad haircuts
  4. Bad relevance
  5. How to pick a cafe
  6. Cool stuff to do with your photos/iPhone
  7. Tips from a guru (my dad – since he’s the flavour of the blogosphere these days…*)
  8. The one about being wrong.
  9. The one about yawning.
  10.  The one about being a PK, and the follow up about being a PK being a bit like being Harry Potter.

* I should point out that these constant mentions of dad being mentioned are a mixture of patri-pride and because I think it’s slightly funny that he feels a sense of discomfort about being in the spotlight. It’s not because I think he’s super special (though he is). And if you want to join the fan club here’s the video I made for his 50th.

September 1, 2009

If I ran a law firm…

I’d call any charitable work “antibono” because I think Bono gets too much free publicity in social justice spheres already.

I’m just saying.

August 31, 2009

Franky does acrobatics

Turtles are the best pets. They’re funny. Clean. And they do cool stuff. Like this. Most of the fun finishes about halfway into this video. But it’s only 48 seconds.

August 31, 2009

Benny on equality

There have been many articles popping up the last few weeks on gender pay inequality, and I have noticed many contain the following analysis:

Women:

1. Get paid less.
2. Work fewer hours around the work office as they undertake more family related duties.
3. Generally have less work-related experience compared with a man of the equivalent age, due to having a more disrupted career (due to family commitments).
4. Have less super at retirement, due to working/earning less.
5. Have difficulty getting into higher work positions, sometimes linked to the impact of family duties on work commitments or a disrupted career path.
6. Are worse off financially, and do not have the same career progress as men.

Further, this can lead to second-degree problems, such as women being financially disadvantaged when involved in a relationship breakdown, due to losing the financial security built into the family unit and having lower savings/lower future earning capacity/less superannuation than the male counterpart.

This is all fair enough. However, I think it is important to recognise that the characteristics above are not necessarily evidence of different earning realisations due to pure gender-related pay discrimination. It seems that most of the arguments that stem from these points is misdirected, often mistaking inequality of opportunity or pure wage discrimination based on gender with different earning capacities due to circumstance leading to inequality of outcomes. A true example of discriminatory pay rates would be if, for the same inputs, there were differing outputs, as in for the same factors (including hours worked, qualifications, experience), there was differing pay. and at present, with the recognition of the above factors, I think the evidence being spread doesn’t align with the suggested problems, or required solutions, being touted.

However, the main point I want to make is that currently it seems that the pro-equality groups direct their anger at the businesses/employers for failing to ignite gender equality. Why is it the employer’s role to do this? Businesses should not be required to fulfil social welfare redistributive role. Employers should be required to pay an employee what their work-related characteristics require. Employers shouldn’t have to act on the idea that 10 years of life experience is equivalent to 10 years of on-the-job experience. If, as a society, we want to undertake wealth redistribution on whatever grounds, there are better institutions and better ways of doing this.

It is unclear exactly what the ultimate goal/solution of recognition of gender wage inequality will be. However, I think it is important to recognise the above distinctions, and most importantly, be careful what solutions are implemented, and not use business enterprises as a blunt weapon for attempting to right the perceived wrongs in society.

August 31, 2009