Consciousness – Page 40

Salad LOLs

I subscribed to PETA’s media releases recently just for the laughs. It hasn’t disappointed. They’re about to protest the Southern Baptists. They want to convert them to vegetarianism.

“PETA members — including one dressed as Jesus carrying a sign reading, “For Christ’s Sake, Go Vegetarian,” and another dressed as a chicken with a sign that says, “Jesus Loves Me Too”– will bring a pro-vegetarian message based on biblical teachings of compassion to people attending the Southern Baptist Convention in Louisville on Tuesday. Other members will hold signs reading, “Thou Shalt Not Kill. Go Vegetarian” and “Blessed Are the Merciful. Go Vegetarian.” They will also hand out leaflets that relate vegetarian living to Christian teachings.”

Seems they’re a little bit confused about the difference between chickens and people. That sentence could be made much clearer with a comma – either after the “compassion” or after the “people”… the easily misinterpreted (if you don’t put too much effort in) sentence pretty much somes up most of my problems with PETA – then there’s the fact that the Bible makes eating meat perfectly acceptable. The fact that meat tastes so good means that God meant us to be carnivores. Surely.

June 23, 2009

Missed opportunity

After my last post Stuss wanted to know if I planned to enter the Miss Universe Australia pageant in order to secure publicity for Townsville. I checked out the terms and conditions of entry – and unfortunately I don’t qualify.

Whilst they don’t specify a gender requirement I’ve been ruled out on two of the seven conditions.

1. Be an Australian citizen or Permanent Resident.
2. Be aged no less than 18 and not more than 27 on 30/02/2009.
3. Have been residing in Australia for at least six months prior to April 2009.
4. Have a valid passport.
5. Never have been married.
6. Never have given birth to a child.
7. Not have committed any crime or been involved in any inappropriate behaviour, photographs or films, which may cause embarrassment to both parties if disclosed at a later date.

June 23, 2009

How to get media attention for your location

I’ve spent the last 3 and a half years trying to get Townsville positive news coverage around the globe. It’s a great place. It’s worth publicising. But, this morning I had an epiphany. Here’s an easy 3 step process to get your home town/city/village some positive media coverage.

1. Win Miss Universe Australia
2. Visit your home town
3. Turn up at your old job at McDonalds with cameras in tow

It’s that simple.

June 23, 2009

Maturity

Once upon a time I annoyed people when I tried to push their buttons… now I ask honest questions, have them ignored, and annoy people all at the same time.

I guess this is growing up.

June 19, 2009

Economic downsizing – Arnott’s biscuits

We had some leftover biscuits in our office after a meeting today. Arnott’s Biscuits. The variety pack. The one with Kingstons and Monte Carlos in it.

The economic crisis is obviously biting pretty hard – both of these perennial favourites were about half their normal size.

June 19, 2009

On foolishness

I’m working on my next sermon. For the night services at Willows on the 28th of June. Here’s the passage I’m preaching on – it’s in the context of a series on evangelism in the mornings… an imaginary Freddo Frog to the person who first guesses what direction I’m going in with this passage…

1 Corinthians 1
“17For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Christ the Wisdom and Power of God
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”[c]
20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”[d]

1 Corinthians 2
1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[e] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”

June 17, 2009

Disagreeable spam

My awesome comment spam filter protects me (and you dear reader) from all sorts of online nastiness. Ads for drugs, the opportunity to lose weight quickly, and naked celebrities (sadly that phrase will probably produce a boost in hits – if you’re one of the people who arrived here googling “Naked Celebrities” then please visit your local church – or read this Mark Driscoll eBook). A lot of spam is encouraging and supportive. The spammer tells me they’ll be back regularly – and they often are. But some spam is just down right mean. Like this guy, Anthony Dip, who disagrees with me…

“In my opinion you are not right. Let’s discuss it. Write to me in PM, we will communicate.”

Strangely his disagreement was with the hard copy Wikipedia post, which was factual and almost completely sans editorial.

June 17, 2009

Izaac thinks aloud…

Friend Izaac now has a blog. He has put a link to it in his gmail status so I assume that means it’s open for business.

You should check it out.

He’s funnier than me. But he’s a St George supporter so there’s a trade off.

June 17, 2009

Reader Poll – Into the future

Hello Readers,

I’d like your advice – yes – particularly you lurkers who never comment.

It seems increasingly likely that my geographically specific domain name will become redundant – and it’s problematic even if our geographical location maintains its status quo – because it gets picked up in all sorts of Google Alerts that I don’t necessarily want it to…

So, I’m plotting and planning a change. And I have two current conceptual options (to be narrowed down to specific domains) that would move this away from being purely a site for my personal ramblings and in to something more defined. I don’t want to write my suggested domains down in case some enterprising reader snaps them up and holds them to ransom.

But here are my options:

1. I like to think that the one thing uniting all of my disparate postings and rambling musings is an overarching appreciation of “cleverness” – some things falling into the “too clever” category. I see this site as almost a repository of other people’s clever ideas. This domain would have something to do with the study of cleverness pertaining to stupid and needless gadgetry, coffee and the rest… it also begins with the letter “c” which works given my categorical nomenclature.

2. I also am entertaining a mild fascination with the Biblical character Eutychus. Eutychus is the guy who fell asleep during one of Paul’s rambling sermons and fell out a window to his death – only to be raised by Paul (no doubt through some sense of remorse for being so boring). I hope this changed Paul’s preaching. I like to think of Eutychus as the patron saint of not being boring.

3. I could go down a more boring avenue and pick some other word, or combination that would remove both my name, and location from the equation – I don’t intend to become anonymous, I like the sense of transparency and accountability that comes from using my name. I would just like it to be able to be more permanent and less tied to a state of flux.

So, your thoughts – option 1, 2 or 3…

June 17, 2009

The unsingleness post

Right. So the post I wrote on singleness over the weekend has prompted a couple of follow up points (from the discussion in the comments).

Here are two extra ideas. And they’re for the guys (mostly).

There was a comment that attempted to point out that while the point of my post was that you shouldn’t necessarily be stressed or impatient, I personally had made significant life changes in order to pursue a girl.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that guys should not pursue girls. I’m not suggesting you sit on your backside and wait for a girl to fall into your lap (though that quite literally worked for someone I know). It’s like prayer – no reformed Christian that I know prays about something and does nothing – you pray and act accordingly. It’s the same concept.

So, two points.

1. If you’re a guy and you want a specific girl – pursue her (until she either says yes when you ask her out) or makes it clear she’s not interested (though my theory is you get three strikes – because you want to be sure).

2. If you just want a girl in general, then don’t be desperate. Desperation is a turn off. For either gender. In my opinion. You’re better off being patient and content.

This time I can’t claim to have received that advice from my wise old grandfather.

June 16, 2009

The last post…

For today. And I think I used that title before. Perhaps. But I don’t care. 19 posts in one day (inclusive – but ignoring the fact that it’s after midnight). That’s got to be a record. I suspect maybe a third of them were actually worth posting.

It’s lucky the blog off is off though. For the sake of the others.

June 14, 2009

The Singleness Post

So a while back I alluded to the fact that I was going to write something on singleness while I could still remember my single days enough to say something with sufficient empathy.

Here’s the post.

The best advice I received on singleness was from my incredibly wise, old, grandfather. Ever the pragmatist. He was deeply committed to my gran and they were married for a long, long time. His sage advice to me, a young upstart bemoaning my single state one afternoon in Inverell was:

“What are you worried about, I was 48 when I married your grandmother. You’ve got plenty of time.”

That is all.

June 14, 2009

Beaten to the punch

Facebook’s vanity URLs have been launched. Some other Nathan Campbell beat me to the Nathan Campbell punch – so I, as in gmail, am nm.campbell.

It took me a few minutes to realise you had to go to www.facebook.com/username to sign up.

I’m a bit annoyed. I wanted Nathan.Campbell. Robyn didn’t even care, but got her preferred option just the same.

June 13, 2009

Tickle me Elmo?

I don’t normally get excited about Chinglish. It seems vaguely racist to laugh at another country’s attempts to come to grips with a literally foreign language.

But I couldn’t resist this…

Seeing a cute furry thing with that written on the box reminds me a little bit of our family’s pet kitten – Cadbury. I was a cat person for about four months*. Until Cadbury met an untimely demise due to a windblown pot plant… to cut a long story short it crapped all over little sister number 2’s arm.

Just one of those stories I’ve always wanted to put on my blog but never had a pretext for… until now.

* I have no real recollection of how long we had the cat for – but it was most traumatic when he/she/it died. We even had a day off school.

June 12, 2009

Bleeching

That’s right – we’ve finally got a spot for some quality blogs on this blog. Actually, thats unfair, i find Nath’s blog is quite entertaining and good for procrastinating (case in point – i have a law exam tomorrow). I fully support the promotion of baconny goodness (however, i’m sure bacon lip smakers are going down in sales since swine flu), all things ninja, and food, and nerdy nintendo stuff. Nath has that pretty well coverered. I intend to use my bleeching (blog leeching) for the greater goood. Exactly what that means will have to wait for another bleech as i need to go and do something more productive with my life. Anyway,
I’ll keep you posted…

June 11, 2009