Found for us by a dear friend at a church fete.
Love that one-piece.
Uggh.
Glad I studied engineering, really.
26 06 2008
Someone once told me that you can tell everything that is worth knowing about someone by looking at their bookshelf, and their record collection.
Two choice titles spotted at a doctor’s surgery today:
Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice.
Endoscopic Interpenetration.
I wonder what kind of music he listens to?
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : books
Fiction: short; proleptic; and otherwise.
19 03 2008
Arthur C. Clarke has just died. The short story by Vinge above is strangely appropriate. He wrote tons of science fiction, and was credited with coming up with a number of technological developments well before their time in his works, such as geo-synchronous satellite orbits. [In fact, I'm sure at some point I read an entire book by him where he congratulated himself for being such a visionary. It was a very disappointing read. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the thing, and am having trouble tracking it down - any ideas?]
Apparently he did this by grounding his fiction in realisable scientific principles, unlike, say, Jules Verne.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
- Arthur C. Clarke
He famously wrote a 10-word story for Wired.com. They asked for 6 words, but he refused to lower the word-count:
“God said, ‘Cancel Program GENESIS.’ The universe ceased to exist.”
There are a number of examples of proper 6-word fiction stories (some that actually tell a story) at Wired.com, and a handful of graphics.
Some of my favourites:
Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn
Automobile warranty expires. So does engine.
- Stan LeeMachine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore
And, ever the quirky systematic nerd:
Tick tock tick tock tick tick.
- Neal Stephenson
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Categories : books, culture, nerdy, tech
Phew.
9 02 2008
Calvin reading… check.
Hebrew translation… check.
Greek translation… check (well almost, but will be by tomorrow).
Time for a holiday. See you all in a week.
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Categories : bible, books, christian, snorkeling, travel
Unsung comic-book heroes
31 10 2007
I just came across an epic battle of wills, wits, and penmanship.
The Superest is a battle between artists where one player draws a character with a superpower, who is then responded to by another character with a power that cancels out the first.
It’s fun, and whilst some of the links are a little tenuous, in the main it is very clever.
Make sure you start at the bottom, as the page is set up with the most recent post at the top.
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Categories : books, culture
New edition out
24 10 2007On newsstands now. Get your copy today.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : books, culture, nerdy
Bestseller
19 10 2007One of my friends has just written a new book. I’ve read his work before, and generally it’s of high standard. It’s been sent off to the publisher, and will be available for purchase soon from Koorong, Amazon, and your local mega-church book stall.
If you would like to pre-order your copy, fill out your details in the box below, hit Submit, and one will be reserved for you.
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : books, culture, nerdy
Radical Reformission
21 08 2007
I’ve just started reading Mark Driscoll’s The Radical Reformission.
It’s an interesting read. Mark is at once insightful, blunt, and engaging. Here’s a sample that illustrates all three:
“My problem was that I thought sin was something you do, not understanding that sin is something you are, like being French Canadian.” (p12)
Nice.
As yet I haven’t read much. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out over the course of the book.
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Categories : books, christian, church, culture
So now I’m a published author
7 06 2007 Of sorts.
I stumbled across lulu.com the other day, which is one of a number of print-on-demand book publishers. You send them your document, and they will print the number of copies that you require, from as low as 1 copy.
It sounded kind of nifty, and I wanted to give it a go. I never got around to properly binding my engineering ungraduate thesis up into a book, so I thought I’d publish it just to see how it went. I received my copy in the mail today, hot off the presses. The quality is really quite good - equivalent to paperback textbooks that I’ve bought over the years. Plus my name is on the cover.
I’m impressed. I can’t wait to actually write something that is worth publishing…
Comments : 1 Comment »
Categories : books, nerdy
What I’m reading
25 01 2007I just started a new book today. It’s one that Phill and Colette gave us for Christmas, called Dominion and Dynasty, by Stephen Dempster. It’s part of the New Studies in Biblical Theology series.
What is does is look at the Hebrew Bible as a whole, and tries to see what overall shape the Scriptures have. The “wide-angle lens” approach looks not at the Old Testament as we have it, but rather at the final canonical form of the Hebrew Bible, the one that Jesus most likely had. The focus is on the Tanakh, referring to the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi’im) and the Writings (Ketuvim), the traditional division within the Hebrew Scriptures. This is different to the OT in a number of organisational ways, giving a different order to the books at a number of points (one of the more significant examples is that the Old Testament finishes with a prophetic expectation from Malachi, whereas the Tanakh ends with Chronicles, which has a certain note of expectation that God’s promises to his people will be fulfilled).
So far (I’ve read just over one chapter) it’s been interesting just seeing the groundwork defense of what his thesis is being laid - he has to argue quite strongly against a bunch of modern scholarship just to establish the idea that the Scriptures might be considered a unity. Having just studied for an Old Testament theological exam, I’m looking forward to thinking through again the broad ideas that run through the books when taken together, rather than the atomistic verse-by-verse or chapter-by-chapter we exegetes often get caught up on.
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Categories : books, old testament, theology
