I’m a little late posting this one…
“When I hug people I leave room for the Holy Spirit…”
Just in case you’re stupid enough to think this video is serious – “Christian Side Hugs” are one of the most popular topics put forward on the Stuff Christians Like blog…
Christians also like white boy rappers who have very little sense of rhythm.
I can’t tell if this is really dumb or reverse-subliminally brilliant…
McDonalds want to be considered a green company. So in Europe they’re changing their background colour from red to green.
Green is the new black. And the new red.
This video has been doing the rounds a bit lately – it’s part of a clever campaign for the game Dante’s Inferno. The campaign almost purely makes fun of Christian culture.
Here’s one of the earlier advertising stunts…
Office culture is best understood through the lens of popular culture. That’s why Office Space and Dilbert are so popular.
The Office is another one of those seminal “texts”* on office life.
A blogger named Venkatesh Rao has combed through the Office and diluted from it a new “principle” to supersede the Dilbert Principle when it comes to our understanding of office life.
He breaks office employees down into three categories – the sociopath, the clueless, and the loser.
Below is an extended quote from his first post. He followed it up with a second. Check them out.
The Gervais Principle is this:
Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.
The Gervais principle differs from the Peter Principle, which it superficially resembles. The Peter Principle states that all people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. It is based on the assumption that future promotions are based on past performance. The Peter Principle is wrong for the simple reason that executives aren’t that stupid, and because there isn’t that much room in an upward-narrowing pyramid. They know what it takes for a promotion candidate to perform at the “to” level. So if they are promoting people beyond their competence anyway, under conditions of opportunity scarcity, there must be a good reason.
Scott Adams, seeing a different flaw in the Peter Principle, proposed the Dilbert Principle: that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to middle management to limit the damage they can do. This again is untrue. The Gervais principle predicts the exact opposite: that the most competent ones will be promoted to middle management. Michael Scott was a star salesman before he become a clueless middle manager. The least competent employees (but not all of them — only certain enlightened incompetents) will be promoted not to middle management, but fast-tracked through to senior management. To the sociopath level.
And in case you are wondering, the unenlightened under-performers get fired.
*Because thanks to my arts degree (or QUT equivalent) I know that everything is a “text”…
Photographer Agan Harahap put together a little gallery of World War Two photographs featuring superheroes. The good guys could not have won the war without this sort of external help…
That heading is possibly a lame reference to the Ninja Turtles’ catch cry – if you didn’t pick that up… if it needs explaining it’s clearly a bad title.
While I may not have succumbed to the temptation to post the JK Wedding Dance that everybody in the world loved I will succumb to posting the Lego version.
Here’s a site from the 826NYC organisation that brought you my favourite super hero supply warehouse. This little fundraiser for budding rivals is best described using the blurb from the site…
“Jerseys are a great way to show support for your heroes–if your heroes happen to be athletes.
What if your heroes are found in the bookstore instead of the ballpark? What if books are your game?”
Captain Ahab is probably my favourite… but there’s an “Epic Whale” Moby Dick shirt too…
Mikey linked to this article by his fellow Tasweigian – Will – who wrote a thoughtful piece on a Christian approach to Copyright that I agree with most of.
Except for the bit where he makes a distinction between tangible and intangible assets. Which I have a problem with. We have turned the intangible into a commodity. Ideas are worth money. Entertainment is big business. Companies rise and fall on the back of protecting ideas. Creativity is worth money. And while Will asserts that borrowing someone’s story does not constitute a violation of commandment number eight – I would suggest that there are ways that it can.
Sermon illustrations are a grey area. I’ve never had one pinched. But I know people who have. I think there’s enough out there without stealing people’s real life anecdotes and presenting them as your own. There’s a place for appropriate attribution.
But, as I’ve indicated in discussions both here, and elsewhere, I sympathise with Will’s position.
“IP restrictions in general are bad for Christian proclamation. I listen, watch and read widely as I prepare my sermons. I have been known to, ahem, “borrow” an illustration or two. I have been known to read quotes from books in order to make a point. God help us if these sources were to stand on their IP rights. “
And I find this statement interesting…
“The Biblical practice of remuneration for gospel work is primarily one of patronage – a stipend, gift, donation so that you may be free to give of yourself, not a wage so that you can earn your keep. “
It has implications for the way we approach our own rights in the context of our ministry.
Andrew Katay has been posting about the nature of remuneration for ministry.
I came to the conclusion elsewhere (in one of my old posts linked below) that the church has a responsibility to pay its financial dues to those whose work it uses, and workers have the responsibility to live out the gospel and serve the body with their gifts.
I think when we want to use someone else’s IP, even when they have sacrified their right to that IP, we should be attributing it to them. While I believe all exercises of spiritual gifts to be spiritually inspired I think acknowledging the work and contribution of the person is the right thing to do. So I’d draw the line at stealing personal sermon illustrations without attribution to the person. If it’s a good illustration it should cope with the attribution without falling over in a pile of steaming awfulness.
Copyright is a complex mix of ethics, law, and theology. Here are some great resources for thinking through the issue…
Simone is a Christian songwriter of repute – she posted about copyright, song writing, and changing song lyrics. She got lots of comments. And she posted a follow up.
Communicate Jesus has a bunch of great posts about copyright for churches, and a post for Christian creatives to consider how they can generously give of their abilities. Steve from Communicate Jesus also points out that it’s illegal to screen YouTube videos in church without a CCLI video license (CVLI) or consent from the video’s producer.
This PDF is a handy guide to copyright for churches.
And here are my previous thoughts on the matter…
Hopefully some of these links will prove helpful for anyone traversing the murky waters of copyright and IP in the church.
Back in July Amy gave quite a reasonable point of view on the damage Twilight might do to young girls.
Here’s what she said…
“I am really worried about the worldview this presents to teenage girls (say 13 and 14 year olds). A lot of people in (US) Christian circles are jumping on Twilight as being okay for their kids to read (unlike Harry Potter – but you don’t want to get me started on how shortsighted that is) because they think it supports abstinence (which honestly, it really doesn’t – not having sex because you might kill someone is a lot different to choosing to for moral reasons).”
“Almost as soon as Bella meets Edward, she decides to give up college or any idea of a normal life (including seeing her family), so she can become undead like him. That’s right girls – find the right guy and just get him to look after you. You won’t ever have to think about looking after yourself.”
An opinion writer from the Herald has essentially regurgitated the same point of view.
She celebrates characters from chick literature of the past – like the girls from Little Women and Anne of Green Gables…
For more than a century, Jo March and Anne Shirley have been teaching little girls that there is more to life than hooking up with a rich, handsome bloke. Now, in 2009, we have a heroine who tells them that it’s worth their family, their education and their soul.
But in the same piece presents an interesting ethical dilemma as though it’s a fait accompli…
“They conceive a half-vampire, half-human child. Baby vampires are particularly dangerous, apparently, as they have as little restraint as any baby and have been known to slaughter entire cities when they’re hungry. But with customary thoughtlessness and confused morality, Bella refuses to have an abortion. Her decision puts a lot of people to a lot of trouble.”
Assuming, for a moment, that vampires are real… why is this refusal to have an abortion framed in such black and white terms? It would seem to be more complex than that…
I don’t want to pretend to be all that interested in maths. I’m not. But I am interested in party tricks. Especially party tricks that make me look smart.
Here’s Wired’s collection of mathematics hacks to impress your friends (except the friends of yours who have maths degrees who don’t like jokes about e^x. That’s you Benny. Dan has a maths degree and he liked my jokes…
“To multiply, say, 11 x 32, add the digits of 32 (3 + 2 = 5) and insert the sum between them: 352. Numbers with two-digit sums use a slight variation: For 11 x 84 (8 + 4 = 12), add the 1 from 12 to the 8 and leave the 2 in the middle: 924. “
d’Armond Speers is obviously a bit angry at the name his parents gave him. So he decided to seriously mess up his son’s life by speaking to him exclusively in Klingon for the first three years of his life.
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers told the Minnesota Daily. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
Luckily for the kid, it seems is all turned out ok…
As for Speers, who still gets nostalgic when he recalls singing the Klingon lullaby “May the Empire Endure” with his son at bedtime, the experiment was a dud. His son is now in high school and doesn’t speak a word of Klingon.
Although some of the things he’s done lead people to believe he’s a “Star Trek” fanatic, Speers said it’s actually a passion for language that attracts him to Klingon.
Let it never be said that I have standards. I present to you… Mr Methane, Britain’s premier flatulist. His website has annoying music. But it’s not as bad as this video.
Single themed blogs are so hot right now.
If you’re not aware of these already then maybe you should be…
I’m not sure that “Just Google It” will ever make it to that list…
When you’re young you’re taught many lessons that you ignore. Like don’t eat watermelon seeds. Don’t pull faces when the wind is going to change. Don’t wear old undies when you go out in case you’re in a car accident. And don’t carry everything with just one hand.
This is so you don’t end up like this guy. Who at least is able to compete in world arm wrestling championships.
