Category: Culture

On a wing and a prayer

We all know Santa couldn’t possibly exist because of the sheer workload involved in delivering so many presents (here’s a study)…

But apparently Angels, as we understand them – based on representations in art, and on top of Christmas Trees – are anatomically unable to fly.

Prof Roger Wotton, from University College London, found that flight would be impossible for angels portrayed with arms and bird-like feathered wings.

Even a cursory examination of the evidence in representational arts shows that angels and cherubs cannot take off and cannot use powered flight,” said Prof Wotton. “And even if they used gliding flight, they would need to be exposed to very high wind velocities at take off – such high winds that they would be blown away and have no need for wings.

December 25, 2009

An open letter to annoying people who have music autoplaying on their websites

Dear stupid,

Please do not have music autoplaying on your website. Actually, please do not have any sound autoplaying on your website. You might think it’s totally cool and awesome. You might assume that everybody wants to hear what you can do with a little bit of code.

You are wrong.

People these days browse using tabs. They might have 30 tabs open with things they are considering blogging. They might have had the sound off and your tab opened for days.

They might be about to listen to some new awesome tunes that their CEO told them about while he’s standing there listening to it.

If these things are true they don’t want “Our God is an Awesome God” blaring out in all it’s bad midi glory from a tab they can’t find and quickly terminate.

And their CEO might think that they’re some weird “Jesus Freak” who listens to bad music on the company’s dollar – when in fact they are a normal Jesus Freak who blogs about stuff like this on the company’s dollar.

Luckily, my CEO knows that I’m leaving to go to Bible College – so he already thinks I’m a weird Jesus Freak – his comment about my “choice” of music was “you can keep that”…

This is the band I was checking out. I shut a lot of tabs – but I believe this was the cultprit(sic).

I also hate MySpace.

Regards,

Nathan

December 23, 2009

Copywrongs

You know what is worse than Christians flagrantly disregarding copyright and intellectual property laws* (you know the whole “Thou shall not steal” bit of the Bible)… Christians flagrantly disregarding copyright for the purpose of bad commercial parody.

Making money by stealing other people’s intellectual property is much worse than just stealing their intellectual property for yourself. Making money by stealing someone’s material for second rate parody “Jesus Junk” is somewhere down the bottom. Here’s a story that made my stomach churn.

Jesus Junk - a really bad shirt

Trademark attorney Michael G. Atkins of Seattle said legal parodies of commercial trademarks are protected under the First Amendment, but such religious products generally don’t fall into that category.

“You could take Microsoft and change their logo around to make fun of Microsoft, and that would be legal,” he said. “But I can’t use the Microsoft logo to promote my Christian theme because there’s no real connection there. That’s illegal.”

Here’s what one of the creators and purveyors of Jesus Junk had to say for himself (as reported in the USA Today story)… Kerusso is the company responsible for producing a bunch of terrible shirts.

Kinnett views the commercial spoofs — which only make up 15% or so of Kerusso’s merchandise — as modern-day parables.

“If Jesus were here today would he make parody T-shirts? I doubt it,” Kinnett said. “But in his day, he did use parables. He used things that were common and recognized in everyday life to make a point or say something with a deeper meaning.”

* I still think Christian copyright holders should not “hold” their “rights” for the sake of the kingdom – but if they don’t then the end users have to respect that decision (and the law).

December 22, 2009

When I survey

This week the Sydney Morning Herald published yet another survey on religiosity in Australia. The results continue to show that the majority of Australians call themselves Christians while the minority are actually actively involved in church… how should the church fix that disparity?

The more conventional Christians, those who believe in – and occasionally worship – a personal God make up a neat 50 per cent of the nation.

There are some interesting demographic breakdowns…

Women are more certain that God created the world (27 per cent to 18 per cent) and wrote the Bible (40 per cent to 28 per cent) but aren’t so sure every word of the Good Book has to be taken to be literally true (25 per cent to 30 per cent). The least Christian community in Australia is young men; the most Christian are women of a certain age.

It seems that the “progressives” are gaining some traction.

They [Christians] are convinced (94 per cent) that Christ was a historical figure; fairly confident (91 per cent) that He was the Son of God; increasingly sceptical (72 per cent) about the Virgin Birth; and oddly – considering its key importance to the faith – uncertain that He rose from the dead (85 per cent). These beliefs are held very confidently. The Nielsen poll found almost nine out of 10 Australian Christians were absolutely or fairly certain of their beliefs.

Across all faiths and no faith 34 per cent of the population thought these texts were the word of God. A clear majority (61 per cent) thought they were written by man. Christians showed far greater confidence in the Bible (58 per cent) than other religions showed in their texts (35 per cent).

Then the findings just got a little weird…

Astrology
Christians seem hardly more likely (44 per cent) than the rest of us to put their faith in the stars.

Psychics
The Christians in our midst are markedly more likely (52 per cent) to put their faith in telepathy, clairvoyance, psychic healing etc.

The beliefs regarding science and the origin of life were also pretty interesting…

Most Australians believe God played a part in the process. That He created all life at a stroke about 10,000 years ago is believed by 23 per cent of us. That He guided a long process over time is believed by another 32 per cent. The beliefs of Australian Christians are even more dramatic, with 38 per cent supporting Genesis and another 47 per cent favouring the God of Design.

In the year in which the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth was celebrated around the world, only 12 per cent of Australian Christians believe his theory of natural selection. For all the talk of Darwin’s preeminence in modern science, attitudes to evolution remain the litmus test of belief and disbelief in Australia. Christians offer the most meager support, while 89 per cent of those who deny God’s existence back Darwin.

What do the other 11% who deny God’s existence back?

Heaven, hell, angels, witches and the devil get a tick from about 10 per cent of those who doubt or disbelieve the existence of God. A quarter support miracles; 27 per cent put their faith in astrology and UFOs; and a mighty 34 per cent believe in ESP. So a third of the nation’s atheists, agnostics and doubters have turned their back on God, but not on magic.

But it seems Australia is trending towards atheism. Nearly half of young men aged under 25 identify as atheists. Atheism is de rigueur for the angry young man.

Men outnumber women by two to one in the ranks of the deniers. They are joined by nearly half (42 per cent) of Australians under 25. But only a quarter of those over 55 are as sure that no God awaits them as their end approaches.

Here are the results for a similar survey in the US.

  • 82% of American adults believe in God
  • 76% believe in miracles
  • 75% believe in heaven
  • 73% believe Jesus is God or the Son of God
  • 72% believe in angels
  • 71% believe in the survival of the soul after death
  • 70% believe in the resurrection of Jesus
  • 45% of adults believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution
  • 40% believe in creationism.
  • 61% of adults believe in hell
  • 61% believe in the virgin birth (Jesus born of Mary)
  • 60% believe in the devil
  • 42% believe in ghosts
  • 32% believe in UFOs
  • 26% believe in astrology
  • 23% believe in witches

December 22, 2009

The problem with surveys

You know what I hate more than anything else in TV news bulletins. The viewer poll. The viewer poll is not news – nor is it indicative of the public’s actual thoughts on an issue. It is a revenue raiser. A tax on those stupid enough to phone or SMS an expensive number.

You can write a survey and skew a question any way you want. For polling to be legit it needs to be carrier out objectively by a company that can produce and moderate results to ensure a proper sample of the community is represented – and it needs to include the number of people who didn’t care enough about the issue to respond either positively or negatively.

Dinosaur Comics explains…

Here’s a completely unrelated Dinosaur comic that made me laugh…

December 21, 2009

Well, well, well

Dave Miers is raising money to buy wells in Cambodia. You should head over to his blog and read the post and think about donating.

Once you’ve done that you should do your last minute “really useful gift” shopping at the St Eutychus Store. Buy some food for some kids who don’t eat good…

There isn’t enough time for cards to be sent out before Christmas – so you’ll have to do the environmentally responsible thing and select an e-card.

December 21, 2009

The coolest video you’ll see tonight

Without question – provided you’ve only watched the videos I’ve posted and not some pre-release footage of Iron Man 2… without further ado (this is awesome in full screen).

December 18, 2009

Rhapsody in iPhone

I thought having two iPhones was excessive – check out what this guy can do with six.

Via Human3rror

December 18, 2009

Running rings around earth

Wouldn’t earth be cool if it had rings like Saturn. I’d totally live on a planet like this…

December 18, 2009

Slow motion explosions

While cool guys don’t look at explosions and exception can probably be made for looking at slow motion explosions – even slow motion explosions involving toy cars.

December 18, 2009

YouTube Tuesday: Seeing, but not perceiving

Eagle eyed observers will notice that it’s Thursday and not Tuesday – and they may be asking what happened to this week’s YouTube Tuesday. Eagle eyed observers would not be alone in asking that question. I only just realised I’d missed it… so here you go.

Turns out eagle eyed observers are a rarity. 75% of the participants in this experiment did not register the obvious change that takes place…

December 17, 2009

How restaurant menus work

Ever wondered why you go to a restaurant and end up ordering the dish that’s not the most expensive on the menu but is certainly not the cheapest. Here’s the answer.

2. The Anchor The main role of that $115 platter—the only three-digit thing on the menu—is to make everything else near it look like a relative bargain, Poundstone says.

Via CafeDave.

December 16, 2009

Periodic table of Internet

There have been a bunch of awesome periodic tables created for the internet – this one is created about the internet. Here’s the big version on Flickr.

December 15, 2009

106 billion snowflakes

Chuck Palahniuk may have been a bit of a nihilistic fatalist when penning this line in Fight Club.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.

But he’s right. In a way.

Have you ever wondered how many people have ever lived on earth?

I have.

The modeling here is interesting. And here’s an infographic from Flickr that seems to be based on the same research.

This means, as the Whitlams famously suggested, that if someone is one in a million there aren’t just five more in New South Wales – there are in fact 106,000 people just like them who have lived throughout history.

December 13, 2009

Journalism and literal blowholes

The exploding whale video is one of my favourite YouTube videos of all time – and is in fact one of the most popular ever uploaded.

The journalist who reported the story in 1970 has now written a book about the story.

“We’re hearing this noise around us and we realize it is pieces of whale blubber hitting the ground around us (from) 1,000 yards away. A piece of blubber the size of a fingernail could kill you if it hit you in the right part of the head, so we ran away from the blast scene, down the dune and toward the parking lot. Then we heard a second explosion ahead of us, and we just kept going until we saw what it was: A car had been hit by this coffee-table-size piece of blubber and had its windows flattened all the way down to the seats.”

Now he’s pigeon-holed as the whale guy.

Linnman, now a reporter and morning host for KEX Newsradio 1190 AM in Portland, said not a day goes by that someone doesn’t mention or reference the story to him.

He has learned to accept his fame and people’s undying interest in the bizarre story by writing a book, “The Exploding Whale and Other Remarkable Stories From the Evening News,” featuring detailed accounts of his day on the beach along with some of his favorite feature stories from his career.

December 13, 2009