A friend of mine allegedly taught her little brother that the correct name for “green” was “yellow”. That sounds cruel. And it is (it’s also funny). Similarly, this guy told his 81 year old dad that Twitter is Google. Confused? So is he.
You can follow his tweets and provide him with answers here.
Some of the latest:
This should make things clearer if you’ve struggled to understand Inception.
INCEPTION_FOLDER from chris baker on Vimeo.
Via Kottke.
You’ve all spent hours watching slow motion videos online right? Didn’t you know that’s pretty much what the Internet was invented for?
Here you go.
This is probably my favourite.
A few weeks ago the wool was pulled away from our eyes on the question of Super Mario’s innocence. Thanks to the power of propaganda. Now it’s time for us to learn the truth about the empire. Darth Vader was a good guy, painted in a negative light by the victors of the history wars of the future.
Although, there’s a question about who is winning that “culture war” with these rebel alternatives.
From PBH.
Both Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins have written recently about their love of the KJV. The new-atheist glitterati are doing their bit to pry the Bible out of the hands of “the religious” and into the hands of English teachers.
There’s a great article on The Punch by the Bible Society’s Roy Williams responding to this trend of atheists damning the Bible with faint praise. It’s well worth a read. The comments aren’t. They’ve become a playground for the type of person who thinks writing lengthy rant comments to reinforce one’s own views is a good use of one’s time. While I love comments here. And discussions (online and in person) there’s something about the complete lack of respect that anti-theists show to any “woo believers” on the internet that just makes me angry and pushes me from my position of centre hugging moderate towards religious extremist. If I read many more of these threads I’ll be voting Family First and donating to the Australian Christian Lobby in the hope of making atheism illegal.
From the article:
“Dawkins is quite candid on this score. He admits that he cannot abide translations of the Bible other than the KJV, whether they are closer to the meaning of the original ancient texts or not. He wants the KJV taught in schools “not as history, not as science and not (oh please not) as morality. But as literature.”
There are serious problems with this argument.
For a start, the 47 men who “wrote” the KJV would have scoffed at any suggestion that their primary task was to produce fine literature. Appointed and supervised by the Bishop of London (later Archbishop of Canterbury), Richard Bancroft, they were chosen on the basis of two criteria.
First, their pre-eminence as biblical scholars – in particular, their detailed knowledge of at least one of the three ancient languages in which the books of the Bible were originally written (Hebrew and Aramaic in the case of the Old Testament; Greek in the case of the New Testament).”
My trips to Sydney won’t be the same anymore. Gould Books is a must visit for me, and has been since I was a kid staying in one of the terrace houses across the road. Every day of that week was a new a reading adventure. Until I picked up a very tattered copy of Lord of the Rings (which my clever mother recovered with a Coco Pops box. So it was sad to read that the man who put the Gould into Gould books died. I’ve never been to a bookshop with so many books and such a lax approach to fire safety and cataloguing.
“We don’t want to do life together”… because churches should be a mile wide and a couple of inches deep.
This is vaguely funny Christian satire, a couple of steps above not funny at all Christian satire.
This is doing the rounds on Facebook, and probably everywhere else in the Christian internet too. But I’m a day or two behind the times.
In the latest case of dumb things dumb people do because they are dumb and think dumb… ethicists have suggested that calling animals “pets” is demeaning and dehumanising.
“Despite its prevalence, ‘pets’ is surely a derogatory term both of the animals concerned and their human carers…”
Domestic dogs, cats, hamsters or budgerigars should be rebranded as “companion animals” while owners should be known as “human carers”, they insist.
Even terms such as wildlife are dismissed as insulting to the animals concerned – who should instead be known as “free-living”, the academics including an Oxford professor suggest.
The worst thing about the findings of this pro-animal journal:
“It is edited by the Revd Professor Andrew Linzey, a theologian and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, who once received an honorary degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury for his work promoting the rights of “God’s sentient creatures”.”
That’s some great theology right there. Because animals have sensitive egos.
Also. We can’t talk about bad human actions in terms of animal behaviour:
“Phrases such as “sly as a fox, “eat like a pig” or “drunk as a skunk” are all unfair to animals.”
It’s this sort of thinking that leads to the development of stupid weasel words. I mean. Vacuous and empty phrases that lack any grace or clarity.
From my perspective, Steven Tran is many things. Talented photographer. Blogger. Budding theologian/preacher. Friend. Coffee companion. Dancer.
That’s right. Dancer.
Have you ever known somebody for a while only to have your eyes opened to their true nature a surprising amount of time into that relationship? It can be disconcerting. I don’t think I’ll ever look Steven in the eyes the same way having watched him take me completely apart in a game of Michael Jackson’s Dancing Whatever on the Wii recently. It was, well, wow. It was wow.
I’ve never seen anybody play Wii dancing quite like Steven did. It was like the old days. The Timezone days. I’d be there with my friend Simon, playing Pro Evolution Soccer, or whatever the arcade equivalent was. And there, next to us, would be some very serious looking dancers. Faces still. Limbs flying. Serious expressions. Steve was like that. And he knew all the moves.
Here are his tips to dancing like a star…
I must confess, the whole experience reminded me of a South Park episode, it has a rude title that some might find offensive, and I haven’t watched it recently so I can’t remember if it has rude words, but here’s a link to the clip…
I’ve really been enjoying Community. A show about a group of stereotypes at a community college (TAFE).
Really worth checking out (even if you didn’t think Four Lions was the funniest movie ever made).
If I could pick one person in the blogosphere to meet in real life it would be Ben of Vanishing Point fame. He is famous. And if you don’t read his blog it’s your loss. And if you don’t look at his paintings and think “gee, I’d like to buy one of those” you are blind, or have no taste.
Amongst other things, Ben is an expert public transport commuter. So he offers the following guide as his mad skillz week submission. Thanks Ben.
Commuting is rubbish. If you like it, you are strange. I commute 3 hours a day. It’s rubbish. Lots of people all close together, being annoying. Morning breath in the morning. B.O. in the afternoon. Your day is bookended by badly smelling humans. You need to do what you can to minimise the pain. Seat positioning can help in this regard. Here are a few tips I’ve gleaned through years of experiance, pain and toil.
1. Be prepared. The biggest mistake commuters make is in thinking the quest for a good seat begins when the train door opens. Novices. Did the Mona Lisa begin when Leonardo Da Vinci started putting paint to canvas, or when his uncle (Kevin Da Vinci) gave him that set of Derwents and a Star Wars pencil case for his 7th Birthday? For real. Before the train even rolls into the station, you must be alert. All your senses must be working hard. None of this lollygagging around in the crowd chatting with your buddies, or reading mX. You need to already be visualising the seat that will be yours. Believe it to be yours already.
2. Determine your platform position. It’s all about vantage point. This comes with practice, but you must learn to read the platform before you. Seperate from the pack. They will blindly congregate regardless, like antelope heedless of impending predators. But you must find the courage to be your own man and/or woman. Be the lion. Don’t stand at the bottom of the escalators in the middle of the platform. Too crowded. But don’t go right up to either end either. This is where the hunters like yourself will be working on their own game. Go three quarters of the way to either end. No man’s land. Your land.
3. Avoid the frail and needy. Look around you on the platform. Are you near some elderly people? A guy on crutches? A lady with a pram? Move away fast. Sure, you’ll beat them on to the train and get a sweet seat, but all for nothing. Your groundwork will have been in vain. You’ll soon feel bad and give up your seat for one of these kind, and spend the remainder of your journey suffering the consequences. Reading your novel standing up, trying not to fall over. Trying to avoid skin to skin with sweaty armpit guy. If you can’t find a blank bit of platfom, you need to find a bit that is made up of peers, ie, people you won’t feel bad about taking a seat from.
4. Hit the ground running. Or more accurately, approach the slowing train walking. Don’t wait for it to come to you. Walk beside it, looking for where the doors will stop. Sort of like a relay athlete running a bit before he gets the baton thing passed to him. Apply caution and acceptable level of politeness to avoid falling down The Gap, or sending someone else falling down The Gap. When the door opens, you need to be directly beside the door. Not in front, or you’ll be one of those annoying people who doesn’t let people get off before they get on. But certainly not way back behind the rest of the pack. Be right beside, so you can just slip in fast.
5. Choose swiftly. Okay, you are on the train. All having gone well you should be very near the front of the pack. Don’t dillydally pondering upstairs vs. downstairs, carriage vs. vestabule, 3 seat vs. 2 seat. Consider that before the train has even arrived. Every second counts. Find an opening and go. You are the lion. Be bold and go for the prize. It’s all paid off now. You are in position. Settle, and enjoy the fruits of your labour. Look how far you are from sweaty armpit guy. It feels good doesn’t it. That sweet coctail of comfort and victory. Be happy. Be proud. You have won.
Van Gogh would have made art with bacon if bacon had existed back when he was alive. That’s the only reason I can think of that he didn’t create art with bacon. Bacon is a relatively recent development, and its PR department has convinced us all that it has been around for thousands of years.
Compare this:
To this:
For a guide to making art with bacon check out this instructable (the bacon starry night has its own entry).
Check out the Scream…
Speaking of Canadian Mitch (and Canadian Steph), one of the fun things about getting to know them this year has been watching them come to terms with Australian coffee culture. Steph even works at one of my favourite cafes.
I hadn’t realised why the learning curve was so steep for them, until I saw this video:
One of the great things about being a Bible college student is Bible college jokes make sense. Apologies to all my non Bible College readers for this one…
My friend Canadian Mitch sent me this. He has a photo blog, you should check it out.
Also. If you are a college student (particularly a first year at QTC) starting to stress about exams – check out my college resources page, I posted heaps of exam prep stuff last year.
Ok. So I’ve posted a billion videos like this before, and real life Mario videos have been disappointing since the Super Mario Bros movie. But this is kinda cool.
I don’t remember Mario having a handgun though.