Culture – Page 116 – St. Eutychus

Songbirds

This is pretty awesome.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Why is it awesome?

“Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating. I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper.”

Found here, from here (in Spanish).

September 11, 2009

YouTube Tuesday: God’s Top Guns

Worst. Ministry. Commercial. Ever.

September 8, 2009

The camp camp

I’m sorry. I feel compelled to put finger to keyboard to comment on a social phenomena probably best left to Ben.

I can no long stay silent on this topic. It’s divisive. It’s controversial.

I think my gaydar is broken. It used to be well honed because gay men had an air of difference about the way they presented themselves. They were more articulate, more likely to wear shirts with plunging necklines, and more likely to wear tight pants.

Over the weekend (which we spent in Brisbane for the Rugby and some impromptu father’s day meals) I could have used these descriptors on 90% of the men I cam across. Statistically this figure should have been much lower. Even in the valley.

What’s going on? This can’t really be any good for either camp. Neither the camp camp, nor the straight camp benefits from this fashion osmosis.

It reminds me of the time I walked into City Beach and couldn’t tell which clothes were for men and which ones were for women. But that’s another story.

I’m just saying…

September 7, 2009

When to make unpopular decisions

John Howard has re-entered the political fray – and probably done more bolster Rudd’s leadership than to aid his former parliamentary colleagues. He’s commended Rudd on a couple of points – and made this interesting comment, which I think probably applies to starting at a new church too…

From the SMH.

The time for unpopular or difficult reforms should always be in the first term for new prime ministers, who tended to be cut a lot of slack by the public.

When you’ve been there two years, you haven’t done anything that’s the least bit unfriendly – jeez, it gets hard in the third year.

September 3, 2009

YouTube Toosday: Mario Cart the movie

This joins a long list of old games being turned into movie trailers. And it’s amusing, if you like this sort of thing…

September 1, 2009

Photos without borders

Polaroids are dead. Apparently. They’re no longer being made. Which is sad. Who doesn’t like a bordered photo that you have to shake?

Turns out lots of people do. So much that you can get an iPhone app that turns your iPhone into a polaroid camera – you even have to shake it for it to develop. It’s called ShakeIt.

Then, thanks to the magic of the internet and the extensive collection of iPhone apps to cover every unimaginable possibility – you can mail it to yourself as a postcard. Using ShootIt.

Failing that you can jump onto Rollip – an online service that turns all of your photos into electronic polaroids. There are a few extra effects you can add…

August 30, 2009

Preparing for the Zompocalypse

It’s just not right to let mathematicians have all the fun. Especially when it comes to modeling the impending Zombie Apocalypse. So this political scientist jumped on the zombie bandwagon – which I imagine looks something like the truck at the end of Shaun of the Dead, or a rusty ute… but I digress. This Polsci (that, like zompocalypse, is a portmanteau (which is a cool word but a crap way to name a church planting movement… I’m just saying…)) has explored the various possibilities of post zombie politcal fall out. Here’s the neocon response…

“While the threat might be existential, accommodation or recognition are not options. Instead, neocons would quickly gear up an aggressive response to ensure human hegemony. However, the response would likely be to invade and occupy the central state in the zombie-affected area. After creating a human outpost in that place, humans in neighboring zombie-affected countries would be inspired to rise up and overthrow their own zombie overlords. Alas, while this could happen, a more likely outcone would be that, after the initial “Mission Accomplished” banner had been raised, a fresh wave of zombies would rise up, enmeshing the initial landing force — which went in too light and was drawn down too quickly — in a protracted, bloody stalemate.”

August 30, 2009

What the Bible says about Poker

Ecclesiastes 4:5.

“The fool folds his hands and ruins himself.”

I’m just saying…

August 30, 2009

New strategy for the new atheism

The iMonk puts forward a little insight into how the goalposts are moving when it comes to discourse with atheists. I tend to agree with his diagnosis of the problem.

Some great insights.

“One of my letters this week stated that a 17 year old raised in an evangelical family was now an avid atheist, with many of the hijinks of evangelicalism as evidence of manipulation and control. He couldn’t mean take off your shoes and spin your socks over your head while singing “Jesus mess me up?” Why would that bother anyone?”

“You see, evangelicals have made such outrageous assumptions and promises about happiness, healing, everything working out, knowing God, answered prayer, loving one another and so on that proving us to be liars isn’t even a real job. It’s just a matter of tuning in to an increasing number of voices who say “It’s OK to not believe. Give yourself a break. Stop tormenting yourself trying to believe. Stop propping up your belief with more and more complex arguments. Just let go of God.”

“Keller is still great. C.S.Lewis is still helpful. [William Lane] Craig is still impressive. But I’m not sure their arguments are on the right channel. Vast numbers of people aren’t asking for philosophy. They are asking what will let them live a life uncomplicated by lies, manipulation and constant calls to prefer ignorance to what seems obvious.

What we’ve said and written is fine. What we’ve lived in our homes, private lives, churches, workplaces and friendships has spoken louder.

We are the ones who appear to not believe in the God we say is real. We are the ones who seem to be forcing ourselves to believe with bigger shows, bigger celebrities and bigger methods of manipulation.”

August 30, 2009

Pip tip

I’m not sure how big the problem of improperly discarded olive pips is. It could no doubt lead to some sort of olive oil fueled apocalypse… but I like the underlying principle expressed by this image…

Perhaps in my quest to get lurkers out of the shadows I should post a comment on every post?

August 29, 2009

Lego bricks and mortar

Fixing up collateral damage from World War Two has been an expensive proposition. More than 60 years later a European bloke got so fed up with the holes left by explosions in Berlin that he patched the holes with Lego.

August 28, 2009

The Piano Man

Adam, a friend from Brisbane just won a piano competition. A biggish one (as much as I can tell about piano competitions) and the reaction on Facebook from our mutual friends.

There’s a streaming thing where you can watch his performance in the heats. And probably the semis and the final as well.

Now that the Australian Festival of Chamber Music is over I’m clearly lacking in cultural content on this page – so here it is. For your viewing pleasure.

2 – 09 – Adam Herd

August 28, 2009

Pieces of eight bit

This video is rightly being hailed as the best lego stop motion 8-bit tribute of all time.

It’s a pretty small pool I guess – but all the typical post fodder is included – Pacman, Mario and Tetris make an appearance…

August 28, 2009

Under the hood

If you’re a Christian and you want to evangelise and you need convincing that being loving is the best to achieve this outcome then you need to watch this interview that Denton did with a former leader of the Klan.

If you’re either not a Christian, or already convinced that speaking the truth with love is already the way to go, then you should watch the video too…

I am fascinated by the fact that both Denton and BoingBoing (where I found it) push the guy in question’s courage when the thing that strikes me is his love for his enemies.

August 28, 2009

Losing your edge

It’s been ages since I last paid out U2 and their myriad fans. This little rant is Ben’s fault, well, more correctly it’s Warren the word over-use watchdog’s fault. Warren doesn’t like the word edgy – because edgy people/groups/things don’t need to proclaim their edgyness. As soon as they apply the label they lose their edgyness. Immediately.

Which brings me to this guy:

Surely he’s now about as edgy as James Blunt and should consider a more appropriate sobriquet. As Warren would say:

“But as soon as you drop the ‘E’ word, you’ve set yourself up for a fall, and you sound like your daggy uncle saying ‘I really like to get jiggy and bust a move to 50 cent, dog, for real’. Not good.”

August 28, 2009