When you make outrageous claims like I do, with the frequency that I do, you will offend someone. It’s only a matter of time. Or statistics.
As the number of absolute claims made increases the probability of offending someone approaches one. I could make a graph about it. Or I could draw your attention to this handy apology that you can just fill in as the need arises.
I don’t know if this will become a regular feature… but it might. I’ve been thinking a bit about the intersection between blog life and real life. And these thoughts were stirred by Izaac when, in the comments of a recent post, he revealed how he “knows” me.
Of all the bloggers in the blogosphere (except Paul, but he never updates) I have known Izaac the longest (again, unless you count dad’s design blog… I guess…).
Here’s the story (as told by Izaac)…
“I grew up with Nathan in Maclean. He introduced me to Phantom comics – which I borrowed regularly for about 6 months until I lost interest. We had games of touch football or cricket every week after church in the church grounds until they installed a drain and a kid’s play area, which put an end to that. As Nathan was the year above me at school I think we bonded more as we got older – including after his family moved to Mitchelton. A select few of us have kept in touch from those days – I think Nathan may have trouble making new friends (he’s gonna love that one). I randomly appeared at his 21st birthday because though living in Sydney I was doing a radiography prac at the Gold Coast. I helped build the steps in his parentals front yard as well as wheelbarrowing in woodchips into the garden. On the said mentioned trip he introduced me to ‘black books’ which I didn’t find particularly funny. He was MC at my wedding. I returned the favour. S and I are about to visit Nathan and Robyn in Townsville. He couldn’t convince me to come to Brisbane to do Bible College together. He will name his first born son after anyone but me.”
I remember it quite differently.
Izaac was a scrawny little kid with an unnatural ability with a football. Sadly. He was, and is, a St George fan. We used to go camping at Brooms Head at the same time as his family, and we would play touch football together. Though when Beach Mission was on he hung out with the fun teens playing football and I had to go to the boring teens program where they talked about the Bible. I was jealous.
One of my finest memories of Izaac, well, my first memorable memories, was superimposing his head onto a scanned version of a St George player’s head. This picture still sits, framed, in his lounge room. I know that because it was there when we visited last year.
Izaac lived four doors up from Paul on Clarence Street in Maclean. I used to wish I lived on Clarence Street. But it was a big hill. And it would have sucked to walk up it every day on the way home from primary school.
I found a video of Izaac last year when I was making a video for dad’s 50th and another one for little sister number two’s 21st. I will perhaps track it down and post it. On that video Izaac stole my video camera and ran away with it. He was cruel at times. But he was funny so I forgave him. And he once borrowed my Backstreet Boys CD. Yes. I owned a Backstreet Boys CD. Yes. It is something I feel ashamed about.
Here’s a photo of Izaac MCing at my wedding. He’s the one with the microphone.
On our visit to Sydney last year we managed to coincide our trip with one of his preaching engagements for the year. He was good. I think he’ll make a very capable minister, though I’m sad I couldn’t convince him to come to Brisbane for college. We had a good time with him, and his wife, who on the internet is known as S (I know her real name. That’s how close we are) we showed them bits of Sydney that I remembered from childhood – like the Mediterranean dessert place in Croydon Park, and Reverse Garbage. Then I went to a football game with Izaac and stood with the crazy St George army while they insulted Rabbitohs fans.
If you have any questions about Izaac feel free to ask me about him. I consider myself an expert on the topic.
Ahh kerning. The art of bringing letters closer together… or tearing them further apart.
Here’s a shirt that celebrates the majesty of perfectly spaced typography.
One of the things I really hate is hearing broadcasters mangle common expressions. Especially when so many other people do. Here’s today’s grammar lesson (from here). 
The correct option is of course the bottom option. It makes much more sense. And you’re an idiot if you get it wrong.
Over at Ben’s blog during the inimitable Monday Quiz your host, Ben, asked a question about reoccuring dreams.
Kutz admitted to having a dream about a randomly appearing head that would pop up all over his parent’s home. Freaky. What’s freakier is that people all over the world report seeing the same man in their dreams. This man. Have you seen this man? If you have you should check out that website.
Auto tune the news (which I’ll acronymise to ATTN) is my new favourite YouTube feature. It’s very clever. Though I’m sure I’ll get sick of it soon. Here’s the latest…
Simone recently posted this list advising the next generation of some strategies to help them function better in the classroom and perform more adequately as a human being. I thought I’d posted a reply on her blog but it turns out I hit the wrong button. Better late than never, here is my contribution to the list.
The next 5 things that will help you function better in the classroom and perform more adequately as a human being.
6. It really doesn’t matter who the leader of the line is. Especially in grade 6.
7. Your teacher has no time to look for your lost pencil. Neither will she/he believe that it has simply wandered away. Take a piece of string and tie it to your wrist if it keeps being a problem.
8. Ninety-nine percent of people have complete control over their arms and legs. Your teacher will not believe you when you say your hand jumped off your arm and slapped a girl in the face.
9. Yes, you must finish picking up your bag of rubbish before you attend your playground wedding. Even if you are the groom.
10. Never pin boys down and kiss them. Even if it is your betrothed who was unable to attend your playground wedding because he was picking up papers.
I scored an invite to Google Wave thanks to Chris – though his blog is defunct and linking to it seems cursory at best.
It seems to be one of those products that will be good once it gets to a critical mass. There’s only so much fun you can have talking to your dad with both of you saying “is this working”…
Once people are using it to collaborate and share files and stuff it’ll be good.
It will just be dangerous if you accidentally type something in one wave that’s meant for another and the person you’re waving to sees it before you delete it. Typing comes up on the screen in real time. Without you needing to submit stuff.
That has the potential to be more embarrassing than reply all.
The interface is really nice and clean, and fairly straightforward. I’ve been flying blind – I haven’t watched any of the video tutorials yet – and so far it has been fairly simple to work out.
If you’ve scored a wave invite you can find my gmail address right at the bottom of the page.
Here’s a little story, picked up by the Friendly Atheist, that highlights why getting people who think they’re Christians to rightly understand how Biblical law works, how it should (or mostly shouldn’t) be applied today.
At the very least we should be able to point out that the law was written for the Jews, who were God’s people. So that they could be different to the people around them. It wasn’t written for the Jews to impose on everyone else.
An American redneck decided to use a little bit of Old Testament sanctioned force to bash a homosexual man.
He even has a tattoo that proclaims the need to understand homosexuality as an abomination.
Now, it’s all well and good emblazoning that sort of verse on your arm. But, as even atheists know, this is problematic given a verse that appears just a chapter later…
"You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:28″
We need to fix this kind of thing if we want to (rightly) argue that God’s intention for relationships between humans is for sex to occur in a marriage between a man and a woman. And that Christians should not be practising homosexuals (because the New Testament reaffirms God’s intentions and understandings of sexual expression).
Even Answers in Genesis can understand that this definition of marriage applies to Christians – they commented on a recent story where a judge in the US ruled that an interracial couple could not marry because the Bible forbids it… Which is strange.
What the Bible does say in the Old Testament is that Jews (the people of God) should not intermarry, and in the New Testament that Christians should ideally marry Christians – but that if two non-Christians marry and one becomes a Christian they should stay married.
Here’s what Ken Ham said (again mentioned in an article on the Friendly Atheist) when he was asked about interracial marriage in the Bible. It’s somewhat convoluted, but at the end of the day it is useful. From the Answers in Genesis website…
At AiG we have always taught that biologically there is only one race (Adam’s race), however, spiritually, there are two races (the saved and unsaved). It is the two spiritual “races” that God clearly instructs in His Word not to mix in marriage. In other words, when someone asks me “does the Bible deal with interracial marriage?” I answer, “it sure does, it makes it clear the saved ‘race’ should never knowingly marry the unsaved ‘race’—and that’s all the Bible teaches about ‘interracial’ marriage.’” Biologically, there is no such thing as “interracial” marriage as there is only one “race”—we are all descendants of one man, Adam.
I’m not sure that Ham’s stance would extend to the unsaved being able to enter into any marriage they want…
But at the end of the day we (Christians) need to make sure our house is in order before throwing stones, literally or otherwise.
They even provide this helpful infographic.
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These hoodies are pretty cool.
I really like Muse. I have for years. They’re at that stage though where so many people like them that it’s not cutting edge any more. And if there’s one thing I like being it’s cutting edge… Even my sisters like them now. Despite years of complaining when I played them back when I was living at home… it happened with Powderfinger too. And I probably would have liked U2 once… while it’s sad that my musical taste is so dependent on the taste of others, that’s not the point of this post.
How do you find a new favourite band? I found this post via some bookmarking service (Digg, or Reddit, or What’s hot in Google Reader – I can’t remember which). You can use mathematics to find a new band. And the results look promising.
“Now let’s see. I take a sample of 215 bands including those on top of the Billboard 200 (who are these people?) and calculate an average number of plays per each listener (via last.fm data). All things equal, the higher the average, the the more devoted the band’s fans are.”
Then you graph it…
“Each red dot is a band. Y-axis represents the total number of the band’s listeners, the x-axis represents the average number of listens per each band’s fan, the blue line is the “alien average”. The swarm in the left bottom corner is the “moshpit of doom” – your band is nothing special in the public’s eyes if you are there.”
If a band has a huge amount of listeners then it probably appeals to some common human emotion and everybody can enjoy their songs. If a band has little listeners, but plays per listener (PPL) rate is high, it must mean the band was able to appeal to some sort of less common emotion and the higher the PPL the harder it is to substitute the band by some other band.
This is a graph using Coldplay as the base…
And here’s how you find the music you should try out…
The things you can do with technology…
I spent most of last week accompanying a photographer around North Queensland to update our work image library…
Here are some of my photos…
Everyone knows, that apart from my wife, all the really good looking Christian girls go to pentecostal churches.
If you’re a young man hoping to lure a princess away from the Pentecostal Castle to a more moderately expressive church then you need to know how to fit in on your covert visits.
This video will help…
Via David Ould.
Traveller is an odd word. I’m firmly in the two “l” camp, but spell check is not… Irregardless, if you are a sophisticated traveller – be you the one “l” version or the two – you no doubt have found yourself in want of a classic bidet experience when visiting less than salubrious digs (not by choice obviously, given your level of sophistication).
This will no longer be a concern. You can even go camping. Safe in the knowledge that your bidet can come with you.
LinkedIn is a pretty dumb professional networking tool that takes all the fun out of Facebook. I’m on it somewhere. If you find me I might accept your invitation, but I probably won’t.
I haven’t written a link post for a while. But it’s time. I just discovered that a heap of people I know have blogs that I didn’t know about. And it was pretty much by accident. People should be like me and post links to their blogs on Facebook more…
Anyway, here goes, a list of friends or casual acquaintances, mostly from Brisbane, who have blogs that are pretty amusing. Some I’ve been following for a while, others not so much… I might do it in order of the length of time I’ve been following…
SDAL – Scott’s blog has been on my radar for a while, though I’ve been pretty much a serial lurker. He posted a link on my Facebook status once when I asked if anyone had blogs that I didn’t know about. He blogs about fun stuff like comic books, art, movies and obscure stuff. I think Ben would like him.
Phil Richo is Andrew’s brother and thus Simone’s brother-in-law. He blogs mostly about politics. Which I like. But you might not. If you do. Check him out…
I followed Phil’s blog to Brad’s blog. Brad officially falls into the casual acquaintance category because although he linked to one of my posts recently he refused my Facebook advances some time ago. And I hold a grudge. It’s a shame. Because his blog is pretty funny.
The other link on Phil’s blogroll was to Josh Mansfield‘s blog, it was intersting, though I’m not sure why he thinks you shouldn’t say the word crap.
Brad’s blog was a veritable treasure trove of links to others.
Nick Gauci for example has a blog called a wealth of riches, I had a look, it lives up to it’s name.
Richard W has set his sights on having the eighth worst blog ever. Which, given he currently has a few intriguing posts about chemical elements, is unlikely.
Is anybody else out there in lurker land in possession of a blog that should be plugged?
