Recommended retirement age

An awesome quote I read this morning, despite being from a man who has raised my ire on more than one occasion. Beautifully put by none other than Sir Alex Ferguson:

Retirement is for young people. I’m too old to retire.

The real St. Eutychus?

Was Paul truly boring? I've got a new theory. Perhaps he was a bit more like Driscoll. In fact, perhaps he was better! Maybe he was really funny and interesting. I mean, why else would people listen to him preach all night? I bet he had heaps of hilarious stories from the baths that would keep the gentiles entertained for hours.

All things to all men, does that sound like someone who doesn't know how to hold an audience to you? Chris Rock has nothing on old St. Paul.

How can you reconcile this now-proven reality with the data contained in Acts 20:9 where Eutychus 'fell asleep' while Paul was preaching? Did he have no sense of humour? Was he just a really young 'young man' and needed a nap? Was he narcoleptic?

I would like to suggest that perhaps a psychosynopticising reading of the text may provide the answer. And so, I present to you my alternative reading of Acts 20:9:

lachschlaganfall
n. a condition in which a person falls unconscious due to violent laughter

A perhaps confusing conclusion to an inadequate essay

Having looked at history through the eyes of Barth, it seems that he understood his great battle to be with prolegomena to Scripture. His view of revelation and his Christology were driven by his attempt to escape from the epistemological presuppositions of his time and to establish a pure way of allowing God to speak. McCormack rightly makes the point that while Schleiermacher was concerned to establish the independence and absoluteness of religion, Barth was seeking to establish the independence of revelation. In this, the two men find both their similarity and their difference. In his desire to remove God’s Word from underneath the scalpel of historical criticism, Barth separated the Word of God from the Bible and located it in an experience of the Bible instead. In this, Barth was unable to himself escape from a philosophical prolegomena which he himself had inherited from Kierkegaard, despite distinguishing himself from some aspects of it. Having charged others with the crime of the possession of a theological prolegomena, Barth himself is not immune to the charge.

Telos

The purpose of this blog was to help me capture certain thoughts before they run away. My thoughts tend to do this. Here one week, gone another. My memory is less than stellar. And less than Stella.

And so, in a conversation the other night, I heard someone say something cool and said, "That's cool. I'm going to put it on my blog."

But I've now forgotten it.

I've also forgotten who said it to me, though I think I've got an inkling of that.

What was it that was so cool but I've now forgotten? Was it you who was talking to me? What did you say?*


*Not actually being the person or having even said anything cool to me in the last 48 hours ought not to be an impediment to offering suggestions.

Control freaks

This is interesting/amusing:

In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the “close door” button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003.

Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. “You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat,” said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. “Guess what? They quit calling you.”

In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 “walk” buttons in New York intersections do nothing. “The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on.”

From here.

Seeing as you're all addicts

Why don't I have a competition too?

You have to email me a drawing of your most 'elegant' Venn diagram that comprises of four regions. Ie, a diagram which most elegantly allows you to diagrammatically represent the possible combinations of four sets.

Ie, if this diagram is an elegant representation of the combinations of 3 sets:



then what would be one for four?

Rule #1: You don't talk about fight club.
Rule #2: No research. This has to come from your own head only. Google and wikipedia aren't your friends this time.

Best directions ever

Can I suggest using google maps to get directions to China from Japan? Check out direction number 43.

Sometimes losing is a win

The guy who scores the first goal (a minute or so in) in this video, Emmanuel Garcia, is one of the better roller hockey players on the planet. We also became good friends over in Colombia during the 1999 schoolboys' world championships.



We had to lose to Argentina by less than 10 goals in order to go through to the next round. After a few minutes Emmanuel had scored 3 and we were looking like we were in trouble. I came on and marked him for the rest of the game. He only scored one more goal that game. We lost 6-0 and made it through.

Using a machette to cut through red tape

Richard Clarke, just check your pacemaker before reading this one.


Courtesy of xkcd.

Lovin' it

So I was 'reliably' informed the other day that the word 'love' was not in fact a verb (Newsboys, you got a lotta splainin' to do) and had not been used participially before the advent of the McDonald's "I'm Lovin' it" advertising campaign run by Haye & Partner since September 2, 2003 (in German) and Septemer 25, 2003 (in English).

To this, I present:

IRVING BERLIN WROTE "I'LL BE LOVING YOU, ALWAYS" IN 1925. JOSEPHINE BAKER MADE THE FIRST RECORDING IN 1926.

FRANK SINATRA RECORDED THE SONG IN 1942. THAT SAME YEAR, THE SONG BECAME THE THEME MUSIC FOR "PRIDE OF THE YANKEES", THE STORY ABOUT LOU GEHRIG.

THE MOVIE STARRED GARY COOPER, TERESA WRIGHT, AND WALTER BRENNAN. IT WAS NOMINATED FOR ELEVEN ACADEMY AWARDS.

Source.