Cartoons in real life
Ben posts Peanuts comics on Thursdays. They’re a fun reminder of days flicking through Snoopy comics and playing the Snoopy Game on the Amiga.
Well, this post should excite him greatly – a real life Charlie Brown – courtesy of a Mr Tim O’Brien – who produced this for an exhibition entitled “Monsters”. It’s great.
Another artist name Pixeloo – or whose site is named Pixeloo – has put together a bunch of “real life” cartoon (and game) characters… they’re kind of freaky.
Naming Rights (and wrongs)
A new “study” has found that names count. It’s pretty much the same theory expounded on in detail in Freakonomics – that people with dumb names will be picked on, or come from dumb families – and these environmental factors will cause them to grow up pretty screwed up. The study found that:
“Boys with unpopular, girlish or uncommon names often are ridiculed by peers, come from families of low socioeconomic status and face discrimination in the workforce based on a preconceived bias about their names, according to the study, which analysed more than 15,000 names.”
According to the SMH article the top 10 bad-boy names are:
- Alec
- Ernest
- Garland
- Ivan
- Kareem
- Luke
- Malcolm
- Preston
- Tyrell
- Walter
15 and a half minutes of fame
I may have extended Corey Worthington’s 15 minutes of fame by referencing him in this letter I wrote to The Australian – but then he went and got booked for speeding and made the news by himself. My letter was a response to a stupid piece by Phillip Adams suggesting young people should get to vote because his 16 year old daughter is smarter than the average voter. My letter was edited slightly to fit in the space available so the second bit seems to be a bit of a non sequitur.
Baked anatomy
From the guy who brought you all the other awesome anatomy posters.
A bunch of links – July 13, 2009
- #578. Treating the announcements at church like an open mic night at a comedy club.
- Don’t make contact painful
- Five Best Content Filtering Tools
- Take Awesome Sunset Photographs
- Blogosphere Spirituality: An Assessment
- On Philosophical Apologetics
- Riffs: Karen Armstrong on the Science/Religion Cul De Sac and N.T. Wright on his Differences with Piper
- Darwin and God
Ten things I enjoyed about the Townsville 400
- The feeling of professional satisfaction – the organisation I work for played an integral role in bringing the event to Townsville, I have written more about V8s than anything but energy generation. I know lots about energy generation. This photo is largely unrelated.
- The noise – is absolutely thrilling. The “pop” the cars make when changing gears sounds like fireworks. We were sitting in stands next to the starting grid and the start of the race was phenomenal.
- The crowd – was massive. It’s weird how into the sport fans of V8s are – they’re covered in team merchandise.
- The professionalism – The V8 organisation, the teams and the drivers are the most personable sports stars I’ve ever interacted with – if sitting in a room as a bunch of drivers talk about the sport is “interacting” – the Melbourne Storm weren’t far off. But these guys can sell merchandise and know who butters their bread (the sponsors).
- The carnage – everyone goes to races for crashes.
- The spectacle – it’s a visual feast, fast cars, colourful starting grid set-ups, the mini racing, the utes… it was a grand day out.
- The teamwork – one of the things I’m really starting to appreciate about motor sports (and cycling) is the team tactics – and the contribution to “individual” success that comes from the surrounding team – like the pit crews. They change tires, fuel up and do running maintenance in a blur. We were sitting opposite the pits and I spent as much time watching the pit crews as watching the cars.
- Photography – I was determined to snap a few photos of moving cars looking like they weren’t moving with the background all blurry. I got a few such shots – you can see other photos from the day here. I took about 1,300 photos.
- The Jesus car – Andrew “Fishtail” Fisher drives a ute in the V8 Ute race – his team is called “Jesus – All About Life” – he gets great exposure and they read out the full name of his “sponsor” every time he gets mentioned (see point 4). The exposure is tremendous. In the first ute race he ran three other drivers off the road – and busted a tire while doing so.
- My wife – I went to the V8s with Robyn. She makes everything more fun.
3 Reasons to keep your fish tank clean
- When fish tanks stop being clean they start being smelly.
- When fish tanks stop being clean your fish start being dead. Flushing a beloved family pet (who has been in the “family” longer than my wife) down the toilet is distressing. Even if it’s just a fish. Flushing two of his fishy brethren at the same time is even sadder.
- When fish tanks are not cleaned regularly the pump gets all slimy and stops doing its job. When your pump stops doing its job your fish die and the clean up job is much bigger and more daunting.
5 Points about Calvin
Calvin is famous for his slightly misattributed and grossly misunderstood “five points of Calvinism” – I’ve got a reputation for being “not a five point Calvinist” mostly because I don’t like hyper-Calvinism. Calvin was mostly terrific – having done some research though I can’t say I’m fully on board with his philosophy of government.
Here are some things I learned about Calvin this week that I thought were interesting.
- Calvin wrote some stuff under a pen name to avoid persecution from the established Catholic church – including Charles d’Es-perville, Martianus Lucanius, Carolus Passelius, Alcuin, Depercan, and Calpurnius – these would be good names to consider for your children or characters in a novel if you’re staunchly, but secretly, reformed.
- Calvin was, by nature, incredibly humble – he wanted a life of quiet scholarship. He requested an unmarked grave. He was pastorally sacrificial. He submitted all things to the sovereignty of God. He championed a doctrine that made human agency incredibly small. He instituted a political system in the city whose church he lead removing power and authority from the church and putting it in the hands of the people. The idea of having a theological movement named after him would have been an anathema. It seems to me that this aspect of his character is in stark contrast to the pillars of the “new Calvinism”.
- Calvin was, by nature, incredibly arrogant. He was so incredibly confident in his personal views on scripture and Government – and did not particularly like opposition. God seems to prefer to work through guys who are an incredible paradox of confidence and humility – I’m not sure that humility and arrogance are the polar opposites people suggest. They seem to be two separate characteristics with related distinctives.
- Calvin was politically savvy enough to know when not to be political. This greatly enhanced his influence on the political sphere.
He was expelled from Geneva the first time round because he wouldn’t pander to the rich and powerful (by serving them communion). He was brought back to reform the political structure of the city a few years later. But he didn’t use this as an opportunity to grandstand or point score (at least from the pulpit)… To quote the helpful biography of Calvin I linked to the other day:
When Calvin returned to St. Peter’s Cathedral in 1541, he unceremoniously but symbolically resumed his pulpit activity by expounding the Scriptures at the exact verse where he left off prior to his exile.
Several days earlier, Calvin had consulted with the Small Council, the real political powerhouse of the day, and encouraged them to make important reforms. They were so willing to help him in the Reformation of Geneva that they not only approved his proposals to revise the protocols for church order, but they also appointed him to a committee to design a constitution for the Republic of Geneva.
- Calvin’s post-reformation political realignment of Geneva pioneered the separation of church and state, and the separation of powers. His restructuring of Geneva’s government removed power from the head of the church to a church council, and to a separately elected government in the city. These groups functioned as checks and balances. He separated government of the city from the church to protect the church from the interference of the government and the wealthy – not the other way around.
He was, however, not a fan of government being “secular” – his philosophy of government, or theology of government, revolved around the government acting in a Christian manner. Again, a couple of insightful quotes from that biography…
Calvin practiced what he preached. A consistency of ideals, both in church and state, permeated his thought and action. He was prudent enough to realize that the best way to reform the culture was an indirect one, i.e., to first reform the church.
…
”With the publication of the Ordinances, Geneva created a unique Christian commonwealth whereby church and state cooperated in preserving religion as the key to their new identity.”
Why I didn’t blog much over the weekend
- I organised the Willows Presbyterian Church Calvin 500 Conference.
- I spoke at said conference about Calvin v Servetus
- I organised the dinner part of said conference (and made coffee) where Mike Raiter talked about the New Calvinism.
- I attended the Townsville 400 V8 Supercar Event
- When I wasn’t doing those things I was cleaning out my big fish tank after a mishap with the filtration killed three of my pet fish and endangered the life of a pet turtle.
- I was telling the national director of MTS why I like MTS but don’t think it’s for me.
- Or I was watching The Ashes and Robyn was using the laptop.