a couple of handy image generator websites

i forgot about this one last week when mentioning the atheist bus slogan: There's probably no God. now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
http://ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus/
here's what i would've put up in response to Philippians 4.4-7

there's also a whole bunch of similar sign generators over at RedKid.net, like bumper stickers and alphabet soup!

Pogonotrophers ahoy

despite my positive thoughts about Rowan Williams below, this is a great opening comment from his fellow pogonotropher, David Bentley Hart:

In a bracingly venomous Spectator article on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent remarks about sharia law in Britain, the journalist Rod Liddle opined that it must be Rowan Williams’s beard that has won him the reputation of an intellectual. Certainly, Liddle remarked, “it cannot be anything he has ever said or written”. I have to confess my doubts that Liddle has really read much of Williams’s oeuvre. No one who had – whatever reservations he or she might harbour as to the Archbishop’s wisdom, prudence or pogonotrophy – could possibly dismiss the man as a featherweight or a fraud.

read the full article here

Jesus' family

there's a great post by peter bolt on Jesus' family.

my favourite was the name of Jude's grandson, Zoker! now that's a good boy's name...

Gaudí en la favela

a few years ago i stumbled upon a documentary about a guy in a brazilian favela who had been decorating it in a style uncannily like Gaudí. like all those living in the slums of brazil (he lives in sao paulo), he built his house from things he found, but in his case there was a tree on his 'property'*, which he incorporated into his dwelling, and it has gone from there.
bbc has a good report on their website here

the info for the doco is here, i'm pretty sure i watched it on abc, but it's probably pretty hard to find.

i love the creativity, the organic nature of his art, the unpretentiousness of it all (he trawls through building sites for things to keep adding to it). it reminds me of the refrain in Gen 1, where creation is to be fruitful and multiply - the creation keeps on creating with its God-given createdness. that is, Ezekiel's perfect temple is beautiful, but that perfect architecture gives way in Revelation to the perfect presence of God with us, and the river that feeds the trees that bring life and healing.

i love cities, but my favourite description of metropopli (?) comes from the sociologist Max Weber, who looked down from a sky-scraper and from there saw the city as an ecosystem, everything organically reacting to each other element. it's therefore not surprising to see the mixing of the metaphors of perfect city and garden, rather very fitting!

* i don't think favelas can ever be official even though there are millions living in them, they're 'domus non grata' (i don't actually speak latin, but that's my best guess!)

religion in the classroom

here's another piece of gold from onn

Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming
what i really like is you're not heaps sure who they're having a go at. it starts off having a go at the cousin of the young-earth creationist, the premillenialist (maybe once removed? i can never work that out). but by the end of the clip, i'm not so sure. what do you think?

h/t byron, who is back with a whole bunch of stuff thinking about this world.

300

it's been a while between posts.

for my 300th (only days, coincidentally before my 30th!), i thought:

if i was doing my own translation of Genesis 3, i would call Adam Graham, and Eve Olivia. Graham Ground and Olivia Living. heaps better than Adam Adamah and Chawa Chay (ie adam of the earth and eve of the living).

would you hire me as a translator?

i hear mtc has relaunched but i don't believe it

not sure if this counts as irony, but still haven't been able to load up the new moore college website since it's launch yesterday (and yes, using moore college's network)

i realise this isn't a glorious return to blogging, but exams were pretty full on, and getting married this weekend will probably keep me busy for a little while to come.

Historical Fall in the key of B

so far i've narrowed my doctrine essay down to the following points:

• Babes or bound (the historical debate - Pelagius vs Augustine)
  
  
• Blocher or Barth (the current debate)
  
  
• (Bavinck and Bloesch - minnows, relatively, yet helpfully starting with a B)
  
  
• Bible (Romans 5 and Genesis 3)

and finally, inevitably, painfully:

• Bibliography

i'll probably talk about Ricoeur also, but i may have to deliberately rename him Bicoeur for the purposes of this essay.

check here and also here for the background.

don't know why all this matters? this is why.

temporary new blog address

for the special period of the AFL final series, in homage to the very important MTV awards, my blog has been moved to here. for a limited time only. this blog will return to the regular location after then.

(it only makes sense if you click)


h/t John

Honourifics

there was a lively discussion on 702 about the place of honourifics - titles of respect.

• Mr
  
• Mrs
  
• Master
  
• Miss
  
• Ms
  
• Uncle
  
• Auntie
  
• Grandma
  
• Grandpa
  
• Grandfather

Do you use all of these - do you rebel against any of these?

on the radio a demographer said the honourific terms for grandparents were rapidly dying out as everyone says 'i'm too young to be called grandma'.

i had nan/grandpa on one side of the father, grandma/granddad on the other.
but none of my parents' siblings ever got the auntie/uncle - dunno why.

of course the Mrs/Miss vs Ms is a weird one - some people i know are completely revulsed by Mzzzzz - what does it mean, they say. they actually get quite angry when they fill in a form with Mrs and receive it back with Ms.

maybe it's nice to go from miss to ms, saying you're grown up now - in much the same way as boys go from master to mister at a certain age. it could just be about there being only two terms - much like German - either Frau or Herr (Fraülein - Miss - is dying out i think, and there's definitely no Herrlein!)

the basis for blogging

on monday there was a flotilla of bloggers (not sure of the collective noun) - mark justin michael craig george and karen (erro turned up 20min after the advertised finish time - i don't think that counts as attending. not really). (i think mark has the blog links all set up).

conversation started by thinking about 'why blog?'; it turns out for quite varied reasons.

• some as a postcard to home,
• others don't blog so much as comment,
• some i know use their blog as a prayer letter,
• others are using each post as a chapter for a book or a hoped-for book,
• some want to challenge world-views by being provocative and testing how far they can push the boundaries,
• there are blogs that are a window into a soul - or a magnifying glass, bringing you closer than you ever could be meeting them in person,
• there are comedians,
• agony aunts,
• artists,
• film/art/music critics,

i could go on.

in this 259th post, i wonder why i blog, and i think it's the same as when i began:

writing something down in public place (on a wall, on the internet) is both cathartic and stimulating. as opposed to writing an invariably unpublished letter to a newspaper, or a song that is never sung to anyone, or a play that is never performed (all of which i've done), even if noone ever says anything (comments, scibbles it out, yells at you, doesn't speak to you), at least it's out there. you've said 'this is what i'm thinking about this at this stage of my thought life. i think this is a fair presentation of it. if you want to say anything, please do, but you don't have to.'

i think that's it. but enough about me, why do you think i blog?

Oliver Cromwell

Hi.
i've been pretty busy
drowning in a church history essay
there's no answer.
so i turned to my old friends, monty python, for some themed comic relief.

this is a pretty nice little vid put together by 4x4wheeldrive productions, whoever he/she/it is.
the song was on a CD i had called 'monty python sings'. i don't know who borrowed it. it's sad. so long ago. and i probably used to know this song off by heart too!!!

for those interested, my (unanswerable) question is, How important was Geneva in shaping English Protestantism? possible answers so far: not very. heaps. a bit. depends who you ask. depends how you define 'geneva', 'english' 'protestantism' 'important' and 'shaping'. tho i'm sure there are some nuances to 'how', 'was' and 'in' that i haven't thought thru yet.

my first poll (ahhh) reprieve.

UPDATE: snappoll doesn't like apostrophes.

third time lucky (the cut and paste option failed also)

here's the new one: snappoll


read on for the instructions:


it's up to you to decide how this blog should look, as regards my previous post, regarding RefTagger.

minor change

after a recommendation from Reuben, i've decided to add RefTagger to my blog. it basically means when i write a bible reference like Ezekiel 33:11, if you move your cursor over it, it should just pop up! it's that easy. no running around to find a bible, no opening a bible gateway (or your bible viewer of choice's) window. just hover. like a hovercraft.

speaking of which, what ever happened to hovercrafts?

anyway, talking about minor change, here's Django Reinhardt (legend) with minor swing:

backmasking for beginners

a post on Led Zep IV over at F&T reminded me about the eerie art of backmasking. my old music teacher once put on Queen's another one bites the dust, which when backmasked (ie, unmasked by playing it backwards i presume), appears to say 'start to smoke marijuana'. we then got to try it ourself, doing it both backwards and forwards (ie saying 'start to smoke marijuana' and seeing if it said 'another one bites the dust'). we did it on a cassette player with an adjustable head so you could read the tape going the other direction. it was pretty cool. a few years ago i tried the same thing with the Beatles' i'm so tired, which pretty obviously says 'paul's dead man. miss him, miss him' as i recall. Revolution 9 also says 'turn me on, dead man' under 'number 9'

as a youngin', i was pretty freaked out. we were played a gospel choir, and that was backmasked, and the subtitling told us we were hearing them say good things about God. even backwards! however when played death metal, they all seemed to be saying that Satan was a swell guy and they had fun serving him. [i'm not quite sure then where the other popular idea going around back then came from, that people in satanic churches read the bible back to front - is it back-to-front or all thru?!]

for your paranoid pleasure, check out this guy's site for a dozen more obvious songs backmasked (without you having to destroy your dad's records!)

it did put a lot of fear in me, but in retrospect it shouldn't have, for several reasons:

1. enough songs are, and always have been, explicitly immoral and crude, and generally against the very idea of God, that putting messages in backwards isn't really necessary
   
2. you have to be a] paranoid, and b] have someone tell you what it says in most cases for you find it plausible
   
3. who says we can hear stuff backwards anyway? it's not like it's straightforward - it's not like reading a word backwards, it's a completely different thing

it seems you can separate this into two groups: some are really bored people putting things into their music (including things really really slowly such that it just sounds like bass, or the converse - really fast so it seems like a quick electronic squeak - both needing to be played at an appropriate speed to get any meaning from them), or it's the paranoid people imagining things.

but i don't know - maybe there is something to it. but i doubt it. it's cool tho!

[i hope the thing with the tape made sense. there's two sides to a cassette reel, normally only half is played, whilst the other returns to the spool. when you spin it, that bit gets played. but if you move the head that reads the tape to the 'returning side', you are backmasking. easy!]

Reformation

i was looking for a book on the reformation for church history 2.

typed it into a search engine and found up the top of the page this:
coincidentally, just the one i'd been thinking about.


next but one was:


now i don't want to judge a book by it's cover, and, hey, you get free postage at fishpond for $50+ - so maybe i could just them to throw it in!

motorcy... cle

i've had this song in my head for a while now
by Arlo Guthrie - famous for

1. being the son of Woody Guthrie,
   and for
2. his 18 minute song Alice's Restaurant Massacree.

it goes:

I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorsickle
And I don't want a tickle
'Cause I'd rather ride on my motorsickle

And I don't want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy ...cle.

that's about it. he has an interesting story to explain the song, youtube clip here, one version of the 'verse' here.



just as an aside, i had a squiz at his website - he wants his church to be on some Massachusetts state currency!

it just happens he's gone and bought the church that Alice used to live in (you remember Alice?) and, keeping the name 'Holy Trinity', has dedicated it to all those around the world who believe that there is one truth and infinite ways to approach it.

apparrently on the front door his guru has written,

One God - Many Forms
One River - Many Streams
One People - Many Faces
One Mother - Many Children

this church has been re-consecrated to the service for which it was originally intended - Service to God and to all sentient beings.

never let it be said that there are any sentient beings Arlo doesn't care for.
i wonder how many orang-utans he gets coming thru...
(i still like his songs tho.)

Café Event Horizon approaching fast

‘Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet – people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It’s a well known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to ewar, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result – collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds – you’ve seen one of them – who cursed their feet, cursed the ground, and vowed that none should walk on it again. Unhappy lot. Come, I must now take you to the Vortex.’
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Trilogy in Four Parts. Pan Books: London. 1992 (first published individually in 1980), p200

Do you think Sydney (and possibly our entire world) is in danger of this happening – but with ... CAFÉS?

To illustrate – I was on Cockatoo Island on the weekend, where no-one lives, and only slightly more know of its existence, let alone that you can camp there overnight as we did. And there was not one, but two cafés there!

Is it just the allure of the legal drug caffeine, or do we really need so many cafés? Are they just replacing all the milk bars and sandwich shops which have all gone the way of platform sneakers? Or is this perhaps the true cause of the global economic collapse - way way way too many cafés!

A Nietzschean T-Shirt

what about this for a t-shirt design?

Front:
  "God is Dead" - Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900


Back:
  "Friedrich Nietzsche is dead" - God
'For man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment' - Hebrews 9:27


t-shirt design at foghorn (i tried to embed from there but it doesn't seem to work really at all)

idea from Sproul, R.C. The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped Our World. Wheaton: Crossway, 2000; required reading to get into Philosophy 2

indian sayings

i don't want to be needlessly rude or offensive. neither do i want to be unnecessarily bound to social conventions, but i don't need for that to be at the expense of others when the only reason is to alienate them.

so i'm questioning the use of terms with 'indian' in them - indian summer, indian giver, indian file etc. not being from north america, nor having studied american history, i have no real understanding of where these terms have come from - but cannot but assume they are offensive.

maybe indian file is ok - it just means to walk in a straight line (what my parents told us to do as kids walking where there was no footpath)

but indian summer - like what happened in sydney a couple of weeks ago, where it was unseasonably hot - and then it was back to autumn again - am i offending anyone by calling it an indian summer?

as for indian giver, it's not a nice thing to call anyone, true or not (that is, a gift given and then taken back), but it's probably even worse considering its possible origin - but i don't know so maybe it's fine!

i just worry, like jerry seinfeld, that there is so much that i say, that is offending people for no reason, other than my thoughtlessness - it would be good if that weren't the case!

as for jerry, however, what do you say instead of reservation? i made us a... booking? i think he ended up saying 'i asked them to set aside a table where we could sit and know noone else will be sitting there' or something similarly awkward!