Umm. See this post. This is awful. Just awful. Maybe it’s the look on his face. Half constipation. Half naked aggression.
In which the author considers the types of videos he shares from YouTube
For a moment, just a fleeting second, on Tuesday, I had a pang of conscience. I post a lot of videos here that I loosely categorise as “Christians doing stupid stuff and posting it on the Internet”… I was wondering why it is I post such videos. The other sites that do it seem to do it because they don’t like Christianity very much. But that’s not me. I love Christianity. I love the church. I love broken and stupid people trying to serve God with their gifts. And yet. I watch a video like this:
And I think “I just need to post that” – I didn’t post that video on Tuesday, and I only post it now, because it illustrates a point. Stripped of context that video is really dumb. In context, it’s an instructional video for a holiday kids club (judging by the title) that I assume has been uploaded to YouTube to cut down on pointless time in leaders meetings. A nobel aim. One that should be applauded (there are “private video” settings on YouTube though – which are probably more suitable for this sort of thing).
There are Christian videos online, and there are videos from “Christian Culture”… and there are those that just brilliantly highlight what is wrong with some of the parasites that have attached themselves to Christian culture…
Others just contain laughably bad theology.
So, I felt a little guilty about laughing at brothers and sisters in Christ. I thought “people laughed at Noah when he was building an ark, just because something looks stupid doesn’t mean it is.”
Then. I read this post on the Dilbert Blog by Scott Adams called the mockability test. And it kind of summed up why I think we need to call out Christians when they do ridiculous stuff. And lets face it. If God hadn’t directly said to Noah “build an ark I’m going to flood this place” – it would have been pretty ridiculous to build a massive ark and start collecting pairs of animals (I might be looking at you, creation museum builders).
Here’s a snapshot from the Dilbert article:
“I have a theory that some sort of mockability test would work like a lie detector in situations where confirmation bias is obscuring an underlying truth. In other words, if you believed that hard work often leads to success, and yet I could easily make jokes about it, that would be a contradiction, or a failure of the mockability test. And it would tell you that confirmation bias was clouding your perceptions. To put it in simpler terms, if a humorist can easily mock a given proposition, then the proposition is probably false, even if your own confirmation bias tells you otherwise.”
What I really want, when I post these videos, is for any of my readers who are interested in seeing the gospel being spread to their neighbours to take stock – and make sure that everybody in any of their flocks, spheres of influence, or family, avoids doing stuff that makes Christians a laughing stock.
The cards are stacked against us as it is with our counter-cultural gospel without us building extra obstacles onto our culture. You know the type of obstacle I’m talking about. The type that makes it look like being a Christian requires twirling flags around and speaking in tongues, or being completely off your face (though I’d put those people in the “calling out heretics” category not in the “hey this is slightly wacky” category), or just looking like an idiot. And I want non-Christian readers to go “yeah, those people are on the fringe of Christianity and converting doesn’t mean I have to have a lobotomy”…
So that’s why I’m going to keep posting videos of Christians doing dumb stuff on the internet. Because family members do dumb stuff all the time – and it’s loving to call them out on it in the hope that they’ll stop. It’s tough love.
What do you think? Should we be mocking videos of Christians, or people calling themselves Christians, doing stupid stuff? Are there reasons I haven’t considered for, or against, my argument?
Coffee Chair: Why did this idea take so long?
Clever. Very clever. I can see these coffee chairs springing up in cafes around the world.
“It seems a coffee mug on a saucer silhouette when you look in front of the chair, Handle on the backrest is useful when moving the chair to a different location, and also when hanging a handbag or bag. Coffee Chair satisfies you both aspects, functional and decorative design, and certainly differentiates with other chairs, therefore can be used in cafes, restaurants, design companies and etc.”
Haven’t bought a Valentine’s Day present? Try Smittens
Hey you. Yes, you with the face.
This one time, I didn’t do anything for Valentine’s Day because Robyn and I had said “it’s so commercial and stupid, lets not do anything” – what she meant when she said that was “I hope you do something for me as a surprise”… so at 11:30pm, when I had sensed that she was upset at me for some odd reason, we went out to steal a frangipani clipping from a roundabout. How romantic.
Never again will I be so blasé about the commercially driven romantic non-holiday. So. I give you. Smittens. Gloves for handholders.
Problem solved.
The economics of football (soccer) substitutions
An economist’s study of the optimal timing of substitutions in football matches (spanning a bunch of 2009/10 leagues) discovered the following:
Dr. Myers analyzed the substitutions and ensuing results of every game played during the 2009-10 season in the top English, Spanish, Italian and German professional leagues, as well as the 2010 Major League Soccer season and the 2010 World Cup. He concluded that if their team is behind, managers should make the first substitution prior to the 58th minute, the second substitution prior to the 73rd minute and the third prior to the 79th minute. Teams that follow these guidelines improve—score at least one goal—roughly 36% of the time. Teams that don’t follow the rule improve about 18.5% of the time. He noted 1,037 instances the rule could have been applied and found that managers abide by it a little less than half the time. He also found that the timing of subs has no effect on the team ahead in the score or if the match is tied.
Via Freakonomics, more at the Wall Street Journal.
The Human Project
If you liked the noun project – but would like your nouns with a little more narrative – then the Human Project might be worth watching, it’s one designer’s quest to explain globally recognised pictograms.
My mind blown: Don’t Panic
The iPad is pretty much the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I only just noticed.
Here’s a passage from So Long and Thanks for All the Fish – one of the five books in the trilogy.
“Fenchurch leaned across him and drew over her canvas bag.
“Is it anything to do with this?” she said. The thing she took out of her bag was battered and travelworn as it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half-buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapoured oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words “Don’t Panic”.“Where did you get this?” said Arthur, startled, taking it from her.
“Ah,” she said, “I thought it was yours. In Russell’s car that night. You dropped it. Have you been to many of these places?”
Arthur drew the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy from its cover. It was like a small, thin, flexible lap computer. He tapped some buttons till the screen flared with text. “
iPad + wikipedia = Hitchhiker’s Guide.
Actually, if you read the Wikipedia entry for the guide. Which is kind of meta. It says:
“The Guide’s numerous entries are quoted throughout the various incarnations of the Hitchhiker’s Guide series. As well as offering background information, the Guide’s entries often employ irony, sarcasm and subtle commentary on the action and on life in general.”
Which means it’s probably more likely that an iPad plus reddit is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Maybe it’s some combination of reddit, metafilter, Lifehacker, wikipedia, and wolfram alpha.
So it seems fitting that you can buy this cover:
The lengths kids will go to to avoid boring church
Don’t be boring and your parishioner’s kids won’t steal their parent’s cars. This is what Eutychus would have done if cars were around.
Tumblrweed: Minimalist Movie Posters #54
I’ve posted heaps of Minimalist Movie posters in these parts in the past. Here’s a Tumblr devoted to providing more every day.
Some samples.
There are heaps. Check ’em out.
The Gladwellerator
Everybody wants to be the next Malcolm Gladwell. The man has a freakish ability to draw seemingly disparate factoids together into a cohesive, best-selling, argument.
Want some ideas for a book that will sell? Check out the Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator.
Gourmet “fast food”
It’s not exactly “Fancy Fast Food” – because it’s not taking the food and repurposing it into something a little bit fancy. But this DIY McRib looks pretty tasty.
“After a quick trip to McD’s, I broke the sandwich down. A very standard-issue six-inch white-flour roll with a dusting of cornmeal on top, lightly toasted. A scattering of raw white onion slivers, which add flavor and crunch. Exactly two dill pickle slices — not three, not five, just two. A slathering of sweet, tangy, tomato-based barbecue sauce with hints of smoke, almost St. Louis style. And the heart of the sandwich, a boneless, flavorless pork patty preformed to look sort of rib-ish, with ridges implying a rack of baby backs. (I have to admit that, to its credit, the meat was terrifically moist, which is probably due to the amount of fat in there.)
Starting with that fatty cut of pork, I decided to reinterpret the McRib using pork belly, which, over the course of a three-hour braise, turns from a three-pound cut into something like the preformed pork patty’s blindingly spectacular cousin. While it cooked, I made a quick pickle and a simple barbecue sauce from scratch, and sliced some red onions — sweeter than the white — to add even more crunch. I stuck with store-bought rolls, but you could easily up the homemade factor and make your own basic white sandwich roll or go really indulgent with a brioche. Sure, it might take a little more time than simply popping down to your local McDonald’s for a McRib, but you’ll never have to worry about whether it’s been taken off the menu.”
There’s a step-by-step guide, and recipe, here.
David Brent appears in American Office, tears hole in space-time continuum
Ricky Gervais made a guest appearance, as David Brent, on the American version of the Office recently. Which created a weird question that now needs resolving:
“The pilot episode of the American Office was an ever-so-slightly altered version of the same script of Ricky Gervais’ first episode of the UK Office. As separate entities, this makes sense. After the pilot, the American version deviated almost entirely from the plot of its UK counterpart. But now that it’s confirmed that these two do exist in the same world, how could two human beings could live such eerily similar days — repeating pretty much the exact same lines of dialogue? ”
Some possible explanations, and further considerations, here at Movieline.
So you’re going to write a novel
This made me laugh a little bit. But not a lot. These days that’s enough…
