And other “interesting” Christian marketing.
I wish you could buy some of these items directly from this page.
I heart Annabel Crabb
I know I shouldn’t be saying that sort of thing on the first day of my second year of marriage – but I mean it in a platonic sense. Annabel Crabb is my favourite Parliamentary Press Gallery Journo – she provides obtuse analysis – with a beautiful turn of phrase – see her comments on Bronwyn Bishop at the end of this story.
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I have my work computer back. …
I have my work computer back. Which is awesome. Two screeny goodness. Mmmm
and another thing…
I went to a workshop today about the future of tourism marketing in Queensland. The state body – whose name I won’t mention to avoid being picked up in their newscans – is moving to a “need oriented” market segmentation – identifying the desires of consumer subsets and marketing accordingly, and doing away with traditional demographic research.
It made me think about what I want in a holiday – and why.
The following are five holidays I’d like to go on before I’m old… a lot of them are currently coffee focused.
1. I’d like to go to England to watch Premier League matches and visit the home town of awesome British bands like Radiohead and Muse.
2. I’d like to visit a coffee plantation in Africa or South America.
3. I’d like to go to Italy and drink Espresso in a little cafe in the middle of nowhere, and visit coffee machine making factories…
4. I’d like to go to Germany and drink German beer in German Beer Breweries.
5. I’d like to do a road trip around and through Australia.
Apparently I’m a “Social Fun Seeker” by market segment – the others are Active Explorers, Unwinders, Self Discoverers, Stylish Travellers, and Connectors.
I’d be interested to know how other people plan their holidays… most of our holidays now seem to be taken up with visiting family members in South East Queensland.
Another thing
Manly are through to the Preliminary final after belting the Dragons the other night. Awesomeness.
Another post about God
I’ve heard some strange claims about direct instructions from God – but this one takes the case – who knew Allah was a Bruce Willis fan?
A 40-year-old man walking his dog in the nude was Tasered by police when he refused to follow an officer’s commands.
David McCranie of the Tallahassee Police Department in Florida says an officer on patrol spotted the man shortly after 8pm Friday.
The man was asked what he was doing and told the officer, “Allah told me to watch a Bruce Willis movie and walk the dog,” McCranie said.
McCranie said using the Taser was the only way to subdue the man without having to hurt him.
The man was then sent for mental health evaluation and treatment.
The love god
I was listening to ABC radio last night at around 11pm. As you do. And I heard an insightful interview with Australian social commentator Hugh Mackay. Mackay is widely regarded as having his finger on the pulse of Australian culture and society – along with futurist Clive Hamilton he’s one of the media’s most widely quoted sociologists. His views are pretty widely respected. Mackay was speaking on his own personal views on spirituality and religion – his criticisms of the “organised religion” and “the church” were the same we hear trotted out time and time again – too focused on sex etc – which are probably true in some ways. The church is portrayed as being hung up on church – largely because that’s where the greatest distinctions between Christians and the world express themselves. Mackay was anti-church but pro “God”, pro spirituality and anti militant atheism in a refreshing way – he suggested that Dawkins in the God Delusion takes the best of science and compares it with the worst of religion with unsurprising results.
Mackay is a smart man. He forms a compelling argument based on his unique knowledge of culture. However, he misses the boat when it comes to the following statement:
“love is God”
This conclusion was the result of much thinking and reflection – and some interaction with the church in the past. While it’s almost exciting to hear the “intellectual left” moving away from the aforementioned secular humanism – this represents a more insidious misconstruing of any theological or logical understanding of a creative force – people keep turning abstract nouns like “science” and “love” into God.
This new intellectual position on “god” takes humanity’s most powerful emotion and deifies it essentially reinventing God in an airy fairy palatable package. While it sounds nice it doesn’t really make sense. It’s really essentially a bastardisation of the biblical position of “God is love” so it sounds right – but it really only considers one element of “God”. What does this love centric theology do with issues like the existence of suffering and bad stuff? I don’t know – I didn’t hear the rest of the interview. But if you’re so inclined you can hear it here.
I’m reading Hilton’s cool new …
I’m reading Hilton’s cool new updated blog http://demeillon.net/
It’s the end of the world as we know it…
So the large Hadron Collider has been turned on. While I may have spent yesterday running around yelling “Panic Panic!!!” and singing Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole… they’re not actually colliding any serious particles until later this year.
The idea, for the unconcerned among you, is to recreate the conditions of the big bang by colliding particles travelling at close to the speed of light. The intention is to find the Higgs Boson or the “God Particle” – how Mr Peter Higgs name became synonymous with God is beyond me.
When you perform a task of this magnitude a lot of nut cases come out of the wood works – there’s a group convinced the experiment will create black holes which will destroy the world. They made a youtube video – which I haven’t seen so won’t link to. There are crazy Christians who seem a little concerned this will somehow “disprove God” or help atheists in their thinking. And then there are the stupid, ignorant atheists – perhaps my favourite group in this situation who provide comments like this on the news.com.au forum:
“I love how 99% of the negative comments about the LHC are all from Christians. I’ll Believe Physics, thats been proven, over christianity, which hasnt been proven, anyday…Christians: Look at it from a ignorant christian perspective. They are spending 11billion to prove that God created the earth. Meanwhile i dont see Christians spending money to prove that Science didnt create the earth..” – Alex from Adelaide.
Thanks Alex for your valuable insight.
Christians do not argue that science didn’t create the earth because to do so would elevate science from a study of observable phenomena to a sentient being able to perform the act of “creation”.
My other favourite was this one:
“The church must be soiling itself waiting for the day that scientists proove there is no god and that we were created from the big bang and they have the hard and fast proof. The biggest business in the world “the church” will be bankrupted. Unless of course religion can actually proove god exists. Science will have the hard and fast proof very soon. Posted by: Andrew of Australia“
Andrew is obviously pretty angry at the church – angry enough to make a claim about science’s ability to prove or disprove the metaphysical.
Atheists, in the main, are a fairly ignorant lot, often influenced by militant atheists to “believe in science” as some form of religion. Here’s the thing Alex, and other atheists out there, us Christians also believe in science. Some Christians even engage science as a weapon (think Creation Science Ministries or whatever those guys call themselves). Scientific outcomes are driven by starting hypotheses – and these are driven by the organisations funding the research. Science is not an objective entity. Science is a broad church. The reality is that science is now driven by ideology and commercial imperatives more than any church I know. Throw money into the mix and see what sort of “scientific findings” we can come up with. Most churches are driven by a goal to spread the gospel – for free. Most churches I know are “not for profits” and their “wealth” is tied up in physical assets used for the cause. Would you have churches meet in our “public” school buildings Andrew?
Not if the Sydney Morning Herald has its way. I’m no Hillsong apologist – in fact I have massive problems with their “prosperity” theology and their music, and and endless list of other gripes that I won’t go into. But this article on public schools as secular institutions being no place for any form of religion is dangerous and stupid. It’s also the worst piece of ideologically driven journalism I’ve seen for a long time, and it belongs in the opinion pages – not the news.
Quotes from the article below:
“A teacher at one public school said students had returned to class after an Exo day concert complaining about attempts to convert them, while the Federation of Parents and Citizens’ Associations says it is an attempt to sneak evangelism into schools and reveals the need for new laws.”
“The NSW Education Act says that “instruction” at public schools must be non-sectarian and secular except in designated religious education classes.”
“A spokeswoman for the Federation of Parents and Citizens’ Association said religious recruitment in schools was inappropriate. “We need to ensure that children when they go to school aren’t exposed to discreet evangelism,” she said.”
I would think that an opt in program clearly run by a church group openly trying to promote the bible is hardly “discreet evangelism” or “instruction” or an attempt to “sneak” evangelize.
Snakes on a plane
Life imitating art. Just like Palin’s VP nomination could eventually imitate the plotline from “Commander in Chief” where an aging president dies having chosen a young, underqualified, female VP candidate who has to take the reigns unprepared.
Scary if you’re on an Air India flight – or an American.
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Chroming
Google launched a browser today – Chrome. Pretty exciting. I’m using it right now. To type this email in my gmail to send it to my google blog.
Should I be concerned? So much of my life is tied to google – what if that “don’t be evil” maxim they celebrate actually is just a facade. Maybe Google is the precursor to the robots that took over the world in the Matrix…
If this worst case scenario does end up being true – then at least I’ll go down in a blaze of blue and white efficiency blended with usability, utility and usefulness. It’s worth checking out. Just google it.
Garage Sailling
With the cost of living rising I can’t understand why there aren’t more people out garage sailing on weekends. It’s fun. It’s cheap. It’s full of bargains. Or, stealing a similar sales pitch triplet from Lock Stock – “It’s a deal. It’s a steal. It’s the sale of the…” hang on, that probably violates my sense of self censorship.
Anyway, I digress. On Saturday I teamed up with my regular garage sailing companion – Mr Ferguson, and a relative newcomer to the experience Mr Mildenhall. Craig and I have established some rules for our garage sailing trips that I think are worth sharing with the masses. He’s also harnessed the powers of modern technology to make garage sailing a breeze. I make no apologies for continuing the sailing motif.
The rules:
1. You must barter, bargain, beg or negotiate on price. If the vendor refuses to drop the price you must try to get extras thrown into the deal.
2. You must buy something – somewhere during the day you must make a purchase.
3. Someone (usually me) has to buy a particularly stupid item for under $1.
4. Car doors must be locked at each stop.
5. Team members must be prepared to convince reluctant participants to buy something they clearly don’t need (like a fishtank).
6. You must have a friend available with a Ute or 4WD to pick up your bulky purchases.
Other observations on garage sailing regarding optimum conditions are best expressed by some mathematical equation where as time increases the opportunity to bargain increases and price decreases. But at the same time – availability of goods also decreases. The optimal time is somewhere in the middle – where bargains can be found – but the premium items have been snapped up by second hand dealers. Another element is consumer mood – where if you don’t get up at 6am – ie start somewhere closer to 9am – bargains are available and optimism is high.
Craig, being the technological early adopter that he is makes the process refined and efficient. Coordinates and details of each garage sail listed in the Townsville Bulletin are plugged into Google Maps – and routes are plotted with Craig’s laptop GPS system. Craig also now has wireless broadband – which means he can take photos of an item, email it to his wife and contact her via skype for approval. This is revolutionary stuff – and will change the face of Garage Sailing for ever.
I’ll try to put up a photo of this week’s “trophy” a porcelain cow shaped gravy boat/milk jug – but for now you’ll have to content yourself with this pic…
From the vault
I was reading something today – and there’s a language warning on that page – naming and shaming the 10 worst game consoles of all time. I had a pretty privelaged upbringing when it came to consoles – dad was a freelance computer game reviewer for a newspaper and some magazines – so we used to get things for free to play with – and our experience would help shape the stories. Sometimes we got to keep them.
One of these units – which I remember quite fondly – didn’t make that top 10 list. But in all honesty probably should have. The Commodore CDTV was pretty groundbreaking in its day. It was one of the first units to integrate a CD like disk (well a CD – a precursor to the DVD) with a television.
I have fond memories of playing Defender of the Crown – a strategy game with some third person sword fighting thrown in (mostly to rescue damsels in distress who would become your bride – but occasionally to steal all the other person’s money) on the machine.
Anyway – this really is just a chance to pay a little nostaligic homage to such a crap machine. And is the first in a series of posts designed to convince my wife that an X-Box 360 is a necessity, not a luxury. Videogames teach valuable life lessons.
On Russia – for Ben
Russia is a strange and mystical country full of socialists and iron-fisted military types. It surprises me they can see through the vodka induced stupor to bomb the crap out of a neighbouring country – let alone do so in defiance of a brokered peace deal.
In all seriousness this conflict – and its timing (while the world is at play at the Olympics) worries me. Russia and China need an opportunity to flex their military might in the face of the US. This looks like a chance for them to do that. The US is stuffed – if they bite, they’ll probably either lose or have to nuke the crap out of Russia – neither seems like a wise move. The bearing it will have on the current presidential campaign will also be interesting – if McCain takes a strong stance it leaves Obama having to make an awkward decision.
The only easy solution I can see is for the US to topple Hugo Chavez in response – strike a blow against socialism and one for market based democracy. The analogies there are pretty endless – they’re similarly geographically remote from philosophical allies, they both influence the natural resource security of the larger country – and both have heads of state unpopular with the local neighbours but popular with the military superpower at the other corner of the globe.
That’s not really a solution – more a pointer to how complex this whole resource based empire game is. To quote the West Wing – “Free trade stops wars”.
Oil should be decommodified and used up as fast as possilbe. For free. By the masses. Then we’d have to use some initiative to wean ourselves off this dependency on a finite resource. Cost of living would stop growing astronomically and we’d all be happy.
On golf
Golf is a stupid sport. I’m glad it’s not in the Olympics. Someone once told me that to get ahead in corporate life you should learn to play golf – and also learn to lose to your superiors. I think not learning to play golf almost guarantees the latter.
Anyway, golf is a stupid game. I’m not sure what prompted this post.