I spent a couple of days trying to decide whether to post this picture. My mum said it was ok.
Via Reddit.
We’re thru
While being technically acceptable the use of the word “thru” really annoys me. And this sign vandal.
Virtual billboards
Streetview is cool right? For the luddites (who are unlikely to be reading a blog) it’s Google map’s feature where you can actually experience moving along certain streets because they sent a car that looks like this out into the wild to take photographs.
These photographs have been built into maps. Making it much easier to stalk people or check out the neighbourhood you are thinking about living in.
Google is great at turning things like this into money. So Make is reporting that Google has patented technology that will allow them to turn billboards in their street view photographs into spaces for adwords. If these adwords are location based this will be a fantastic tool for geographically specific advertising.
Hell’s bells
My friend Mike is a minister in Rockhampton. He made the local news today for being generally awesome. You can read the story here.
Hell, the pizza chain, created a stir in Brisbane this week which led to a story in the Rockhampton paper, which Mike commented on online, this comment led to an interview, and a great story. Featuring this little gospel presentation that simultaneously showed that Christians are a bit normal.
This is a great example of how churches should be using the media. I thought I had written a post on that before, but I can’t find it. So I’ll write it today.
Ordained eight years ago, Reverend O’Connor said he did not find Hell Pizza offensive, irreligious or blasphemous.
“I find it amusing and would probably use it for sermon illustration,” he said.
“Christianity is not about rules and regulations, it’s about having a relationship with Jesus.”
Reverend O’Connor said St Andrews was a growing church with a number of young adults among the congregation.
“It’s important to interact with cultures that surround us, not standing back and labelling everything as evil.
“I’m just a normal bloke who likes having a beer, watching the footy and who loves Jesus,” he said.
“Hell is a real place, but it’s unhelpful for Christians to be jumping up and down about a pizza shop. We’re on about Jesus, not about being anti-everything,” he said.
In praise of hot wives
Dear person who writes their online profiles mindful that your wife reads it,
We get it. You love your wife. You think she’s hot. That’s why you got married.
The rest of us may be inclined to disagree. We may believe that our own wife is hotter.
The fact that you need to reassure yourself that your wife is hot is great. But it comes across as, umm, a bit overstated.
Regards,
Nathan.
You might be wondering why I’m posting this. Well, I was trawling the archives of the Stuff Christian Culture Likes and came across this post. It’s one of my favourites.
Here’s Stephy’s take:
Fortunately, Christian hotness standards are not quite the same as conventional (secular) hotness standards. Value is supposed to be placed on the person rather than on appearance. Even so, hotness is still a valuable commodity even in Christian culture. The public declaration of a spouse’s hotness is a lovely gesture, but can become disquieting when expressed so frequently and fervently. It can begin to sound as if they are trying to convince themselves of something. Could thou protest too much?
My absolute favourite part though, and the part that makes this utterly postworthy, is if you do a bit of a phrase search on Twitter (I can’t guarantee that the results you get will be the same and/or safe for work/your holiness) you get a bunch of people talking about their hot wives. And a startling percentage are Christians. From my quick profile check of the people at this link I would say that close to 80% of the people using the phrase on Twitter either define themselves as Christians in their little description or tweet regularly about the Bible.
How odd.
For the record, I think my wife is hot – but seriously – I don’t need to tell you that.
A silver wining
Climate change had to have a benefit somewhere… and I’ve found it.
“The consequences of warming are already detectable in wine quality, as shown by Duchêne and Schneider (2005), with a gradual increase in the potential alcohol levels at harvest for Riesling in Alsace of nearly 2% volume in the last 30 years. On a worldwide scale, for 25 of the 30 analysed regions, increasing trends of vintage ratings (average rise of 13.3 points on a 100-point scale for every 1°C warmer during the growing season), with lower vintage-to-vintage variation, has been established (Jones, 2005).”
Here’s the study (pdf).
Via BoingBoing
Man pens mathematical theory of singleness, gets girlfriend
You can get a PhD writing about just about anything these days. But applying an obscure mathematical theory about the probability of the existence of alien life to the question of your own singleness would appear to be about the limit. Surely.
But that’s what Peter Backus did. He took the Drake Equation – a mathematical analysis of the chance that alien life exists – to decide that there were only about 26 girls who would make appropriate partners for him in all of the United Kingdom.
The Drake Equation (penned in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake) says N = R* x Fp x Ne x Fi x Fc x L. I’m not sure what that means, but it found that there could be 10,000 civilizations in our galaxy.
The Backus iteration of the Drake equation had the following findings:
His equation looked at the total number of women in the country, then narrowed it down using relevant factors including the number of women in London; the number of “age-appropriate” women (those aged between 24-34); women with a college degree; and those who Backus would find physically attractive.
In the paper Backus summarized that on a given night out in London there is a 0.0000034 percent chance of meeting a woman that meets his criteria and who is also interested in him. That makes his odds of finding a girlfriend only about 100 times better than finding an alien.
You can read his thesis here (pdf).
In a random turn of events he now has a girlfriend who meets all his criteria.
Warranted Belief
Mikey keeps posting quotes from this philosopher guy Al Plantinga (wiki). It turns out the book he’s quoting from – Warranted Christian Belief – is available in its entirety online. And free.
Might be worth a read if, like me, you keep getting in over your head in philosophical arguments with atheists. It’ll save you reaching out for the succor offered by a quick Google. And it’ll give you an intelligent “scholar” to quote…
Here’s a (long) quote on historical criticism – particularly on why it’s hard to argue with people who presuppose that the miraculous accounts in the Bible are mythical because they are miraculous, and why this shouldn’t be convincing:
The Troeltschian scripture scholar accepts Troeltsch’s principles for historical research, under an interpretation according to which they rule out the occurrence of miracles and the divine inspiration of the Bible (along with the corollary that the latter enjoys the sort of unity accruing to a book that has one principal author). But then it is not at all surprising that the Troeltschian tends to come up with conclusions wildly at variance with those accepted by the traditional Christian. As Gilkey says, “Suddenly a vast panoply of divine deeds and events recorded in scripture are no longer regarded as having actually happened.” Now if (instead of tendentious claims about our inability to do otherwise) the Troeltschian offered some good reasons to think that, in fact, these Troeltschian principles are true, then traditional Christians would have to pay attention; then they might be obliged to take the skeptical claims of historical critics seriously. Troeltschians, however, apparently don’t offer any such good reasons. They simply declare that nowadays we can’t think in any other way, or (following Harvey) that it is immoral to believe in, for example, Christ’s resurrection on other than historical grounds.
Neither of these is remotely persuasive as a reason for modifying traditional Christian belief in the light of Troeltschian results. As for the first, of course, the traditional Christian knows that it is quite false: she herself and many of her friends nowadays (and hundreds of millions of others) do think in precisely that proscribed way. And as far as the implicit claims for the superiority of these Troeltschian ways of thinking go, she won’t be impressed by them unless some decent arguments of one sort or another are forthcoming, or some other good reason for adopting that opinion is presented. The mere claim that this is what many contemporary experts think will not and should not intimidate her.
Overthinking box office figures
I’ve recently discovered “Overthinking It” a brilliant blog specialising in over analysis of pop culture.
They don’t like Avatar much over there (and I must confess I still haven’t seen it).
But they make a good point about how unfair it is to measure movies by box office spend:
In 1997, I paid $7 to see Titanic.
In 2009, I paid $15 to see Avatar.
Even adjusted for inflation, this is insane.
I tend to like densely populated places, so these were both fairly high prices for movie tickets at the time, and location isn’t a major contributor toward the change in ticket price. Yes, I saw Avatar in 3D, but the 3D is there specifically to raise the price of the ticket, not because of the higher costs. It’s price inflation disguised as a “value-add.” For the sake of box office numbers, that doesn’t really matter, now does it?
Furthermore, according to the World Bank:
In 1997, combined global gross domestic product was $30.1 trillion in nominal terms.
In 2008 (the latest year of available data), it was $60.6 trillion.
So, between Titanic and Avatar, the price of my ticket more than doubled, and the size of the global economy also more than doubled. Talk about a fair fight.
But, to offer a little more insight, from the same source:
In 1997, the gross domestic product of China in dollar terms was $953 billion.
In 2008, it was $4.33 trillion.
That’s an increase of 354%.
Pat Robertson is an idiot who needs to read the Bible
It takes a natural disaster to bring out the best and worst in Christianity. Pat Robertson is one of those insidious televangelists who will jump on any bandwagon in order to promote his gospel – not the gospel – his gospel.
So it doesn’t surprise me to see him trying to capitalise on a terrible tragedy (the horrific earthquake in Haiti).
Here’s what Jesus says about this sort of situation in Luke (12 and 13)…
54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
57 “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? 58 As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way, or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. 59 I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.[c]”
Luke 13
1 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
A taxing issue
Feel free to dismiss this post as an anti-U2 rant simply designed to sling mud at the choir boy reputation that the band enjoys in Christian culture.
But I think this is pretty funny…
Bono, like many other wealthy celebrities, tries to avoid paying tax by using an off shore tax haven. But what about all those tax dollars that are directed towards foreign aid you say?
“Tax avoidance and tax evasion costs the impoverished world at least 160 million US dollars every year. This is money urgently required to bring people out of poverty.
“U2 is just one part of the problem. This is a much wider and systemic problem in our global financial system. Every company and individual has the responsibility to pay the right amount of tax.”
Now this probably pales in comparison to the contribution Bono has made, and I don’t want to rob him of the credit he is due.
But Bono, with shades of Metallica’s anti-napster campaign is crusading for the poor musicians suggesting that governments should monitor the internet in order to prevent file sharing. While pointing the finger firmly at the evil Internet Service Providers.
A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.
Making headlines today… redux
I haven’t quite been able to shake my SMH addiction.
Today’s featured story bar has an eery little look at degenerate 60s rockers with their much younger (and prettier) partners… Surely they did this on purpose.
Can’t find your Bible – now you have an excuse
Finding time to read the Bible just for reading the Bible’s sake can be tough. Especially with so much good stuff on TV. But if you’ve ever wanted an excuse not to read the Bible… I’ve got your back. Get one of these camouflage outdoor Bibles. Throw out all your others. Then leave it sitting somewhere in the great outdoors – and you’ll never find it again.
The blurb:
We carry the most popular camouflage Bibles on the market today. Ever been on a tree stand, or a mountain top or stream and wished you had you Bible along for meditation? Makes a perfect gift for the Christian Outdoorsman.
Need proof that this is an essential item to add to your Bear Grylls (who really is just that travel writer from Black Books) inspired adventures. Here’s video of someone reading one in the Amazon (the world famous rainforest not the online bookstore).
The Outdoor Bible in the Amazon from Bardin & Marsee on Vimeo.
If you haven’t clicked the link – you should – it’s to a site called “The Christian Outdoorsman“. It sells quality “Jesus Junk” for the nature lover/hunter.
You can even get this shirt that uses a proof text about Deers panting for water to somehow justify hunting…
Alternatively, if you do want to read the Bible – get it on your iPhone. Nobody in their right mind loses an iPhone.