Stuff! 09/10/10
A couple of hilarious videos and interesting articles, especially one on a new type of phishing attack – well worth the time to read.
Worse Speech Ever?
Minerva, Ohio councilman Phil Davison (who has a Master’s Degree in Communication) gives a speech no one will soon forget.
Seagal and Van Damme in True Impact!
Action icons in the ultimate power flick!
Lashing Out at God in Prayer
It’s fashionable these days to teach that it’s OK to lash out at God in prayer the way Job or Abraham did. RC Sproul addresses this idea and shows us how those outbursts aren’t meant to be followed as models of Christian prayer.
Canada unveils new speed bump: optical illusion of a child
A rather worrying deterrent don’t you think?
Tabnabbing: A New Type of Phishing Attack
“Most phishing attacks depend on an original deception. If you detect that you are at the wrong URL, or that something is amiss on a page, the chase is up. You’ve escaped the attackers. In fact, the time that wary people are most wary is exactly when they first navigate to a site.
What we don’t expect is that a page we’ve been looking at will change behind our backs, when we aren’t looking. That’ll catch us by surprise.”
Stuff! 09/04/10
I haven’t posted some “Stuff!” in quite a while. I was derailed and lost momentum. Which is not good when blogging; you’ll be on a roll then all of a sudden, boom, you’re on the wayside watching the internet speed off without you. Oh well. Today I’m back on the train and the wind is blowing in my hair. Enjoy the links!
How Netflix Pays Its People
Interesting scheme indeed: “…Operating under the idea that its engineers and professionals should be treated as adults, Netflix allows salaried employees to take as much vacation as they’d like.”
PhD Illustrated
The power of a great visual illustration.
Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live
“Security experts and privacy advocates have recently begun warning about the potential dangers of geotags, which are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras. Because the location data is not visible to the casual viewer, the concern is that many people may not realize it is there; and they could be compromising their privacy, if not their safety, when they post geotagged media online.”
Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World. Welcome, Big Brother
“In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris.”
Climategate Recalls Attacks on Darwin Doubt
“The public has been intimidated into thinking that “non-experts” have no right to question “consensus” views in science. But the scandal in at the University of East Anglia suggests that this consensus on climate may not be based on solid evidence.”
A Marriage Tail
One of the clearest explanations of why gay-marriage is not really marriage.
The Origins of ABC
Absolutely fascinating history of typography and the origin of our alphabet.
Chapel Library Christian Resource
A wealth of “Christ-centered materials from prior centuries worldwide.”
12 Alternative Uses for Coffee Filters
A very helpful list!
Stuff! 06/06/10
Another week and more random stuff from the internet.
WolframAlpha
An awesome and forward-thinking search tool developed by eccentric math genius Stephen Wolfram. Definitely one to bookmark. It’s my new toy!
Papercuts
Check out these fantastic and whimsical A4 paper sculptures by Peter Callesen. Truly amazing art.
Guatemala Sinkhole
The startling and frightening pit in photos. National Geographic compares it to other famous sinkholes from across the globe.
Porn Stats
The average age a child first sees porn online is 11. Chilling.
No Dogma, No Fruits!
“It can be difficult to convince another Christian that the doctrines of grace are biblical. I know because I’ve tried (sometimes winsomely, sometimes not). Convincing an egalitarian of complementarian is a challenge too. Ditto for any other disputed doctrine. But in my experience what’s even more difficult is convincing the average Christian that doctrine matters at all.”
Was life really created in a test tube? And does it disprove biblical creation?
“Headlines are buzzing with the news of Dr Craig Venter’s sensational “creation of a synthetic life form”… So what was actually achieved, and what does it mean?”
Believe It or Not
“I think I am very close to concluding that this whole “New Atheism” movement is only a passing fad—not the cultural watershed its purveyors imagine it to be, but simply one of those occasional and inexplicable marketing vogues that inevitably go the way of pet rocks, disco, prime-time soaps, and The Bridges of Madison County.”
Franz Reichelt
This one came out of nowhere but hey, Stuff! is random right? Anyway, it’s the interesting and tragic tale of Franz Reichelt, an “Austrian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for his accidental death by jumping from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design.”
Stuff! 05/30/10
After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all
“The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.
That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography.”
The Council of Trent – The Sixth Session: Justification Canons
It’s interesting to read Rome’s official stance on reformation doctrine, particularly the doctrine of justification by faith alone. All people who hold to this doctrine (that is all who believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone) have been declared by the Roman Catholic church as accursed. And yet if we (evangelicals) are right on the gospel and Rome is wrong (and there can only be one correct view) then they have actually placed the anathema on themselves.
Is The Thickness of Two Short Planks A Forgotten Divine Attribute?
“None of the systematic theologies I own include `being as thick as two short planks’ in their treatments of the divine attributes; but it appears that there is a trend today to rectify this neglected aspect of God’s being.”
Pornography — The Difference Being a Parent Makes
“Ryan Tate got more than he bargained for when he made his protest to Steve Jobs. In a strange way, we are now all in his debt, because the response from Steve Jobs now puts Apple on the line. In the end, the real meaning of this media eruption is less about computers and “apps” and more about parents and kids.”
Mark Zuckerberg responds to privacy concerns
“We have heard the feedback. There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services. We are working hard to make these changes available as soon as possible. We hope you’ll be pleased with the result of our work and, as always, we’ll be eager to get your feedback.”
And this guy says don’t believe it (Why you shouldn’t trust Facebook’s apology)
“Facebook isn’t sorry. It says it’s sorry, but it isn’t sorry. Sure, it’ll come up with tweaked privacy settings to defray criticism, just like it did in December 2009. And in August 2009. And in March 2008. And in December 2007.”
50 Freely Available Professional Fonts For Your Designs
Need some really neat and professional fonts? This here is a very good list.
Stuff! 05/22/10
This is the first in what I hope to be a regular series of posts compiled mostly of stuff I’ve encountered online throughout the week, both religious and secular in nature. The title: “Stuff!” Of course.
Fed Up With Facebook? Delete it, and Here’s How
“In the blink of an eye, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from boy wonder to Big Brother, from Mozart to Mao. The man and his machine have suffered a populist fall precipitous enough to make even Tiger Woods wince with empathy. All this calamity, of course, begs the obvious question: “How did things go so horribly wrong?”
“The model of adolescent faith is not the kid who can avoid the bad, but the kid who stares down the darkness in herself and in her world by seeking God in just such places. The model of adolescent faith is not shiny, happy kids, but honest kids, that in joy confess a God who works in backwards ways, in ways where the first are last, and the suffering are embraced, where all who taste death are promised God’s very presence. They are not good kids that avoid all that is bad, but faithful kids that go into the world to seek God in the real, in the reality of existence, which is both beautiful and horrible.”
“Contemporary worship suffers from an emotional bias. It is disproportionately upbeat. I am not necessarily talking about the tempo of the music, although this bias is sometimes reflected in the tempo. I am talking about its emotional tone. The culture of evangelical worship has little tolerance for grief in the assembly.”
London unveils creepy-looking mascots for 2012 Olympics
“Olympic mascots have always been the object of scorn (remember Izzy?), but these two, uh, things take the absurdity to a whole new level. There’s a complicated backstory to the characters which was written by a children’s author. It explains why the mascots have one eye (it’s a camera lens to see the world) and yellow lights on tops of their heads (an homage to London taxicabs), but fails to tell the tale of why they look like early rejects from a Pixar movie.”
Seattle’s Best Coffee Stirs Up Heated Opinions
“Seattle’s Best Coffee revealed a redesigned logo this week. Unfortunately, its ambiguous look brings to mind a lot more than just a cup of joe.”
How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
While we’re still on the subject of design, here’s one take on the web design process that I’m sure every web developer can relate to. Hilarious and sobering.
Ian McKellen – Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
What would we do without the internet?
If Team Pyro did the Daily Show, it’d probably look like something like this.
Nike knows how to make commercials. But its latest World Cup ad has got to be one of its best ever. Helmed by Alejandro Inarritu (director of “21 Grams” and “Babel”) the nifty video is peppered with humorous visions of the future, skillful soccer plays, and hilarious cameos. An instant classic.
Me
Writer, designer, father of two, husband of one. Armchair theologian. Inconsistent blogger and photographer. Still, I try.Tweets
