Tuesday, 9 June 2009

Useless Superpowers

Threadless, home of the world's best t-shirts, recently came up with this design:



How cool would that shirt be. Cooler still would be having some of those superpowers. Turn into a laptop forever would be my favourite, personally. Which superpower would you want? :p

Thursday, 28 May 2009

Cadbury Eyebrow Ad

This has to be one of the strangest ads I've seen. It's obviously very effective though, because it's left quite an impression on me.



Funnier still are all the spoofs being made of it. The first one I saw was one made in my school, as an ad for a Film and TV Competition.



Then I saw another one on facebook, advertising this year's Mid Year Camp (run by Evangelical Students, a university christian group). Not sure if this link works, but here goes:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=204124330542&ref=nf


What next!

Saturday, 25 April 2009

Not hope at all

A stop-motion photography video that my good friend made. Great piece of work.

Saturday, 18 April 2009

Darwin's God

If you do not want your belief in evolution to be challenged, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!

Written by Cornelius Hunter, Darwin's God explores the relationship between the theory of evolution and its metaphysical assumptions. Hunter argues that the core of evolutionary theory hinges on presuppositions about the nature of God. Evolution, fundamentally, is thus very religious.

Having read several books on evolution and design, I still never cease to be impressed by the ideas these authors have to offer. Personally, this is probably the strongest book I've read that exposes the weaknesses and frailty of evolution. It does not offer an alternative solution, but this was the author's intention (he does so in his second book, Darwin's proof). Hunter very bravely tackles the most common and powerful arguments for evolution, and (even to my surprise) dismantles them within pages.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the evolution/faith debate. It's written with accessible language, and basically cuts to the chase by engaging with evolution at its very heart. Strong evolution supporters will probably find this book very unsettling, if only because of how deep it cuts. It's hard to describe just how revolutionary it's been in my own thinking. I'm happy for anyone to read this and discuss some of its ideas with me. Let me know if you'd like to borrow it.

These quotes (on the back cover of the book) summarise it very well:

Biophysicist Cornelius Hunter argues perceptively that the main supporting pole of the Darwinian tent has always been a theological assertion: 'God wouldn't have done it that way.' Rather than demonstrating that evolution is capable of the wonders they attribute to it, Darwinists rely on a man-made version of God to argue that He never would have made life with the particular suite of features we observe. In lucid and engaging prose, Hunter shines a light on Darwinian theology, making plain what is too often obscured by technical jargon.
- Michael J. Behe

This wonderfully insight book will prove pivotal in the current reassessment of Darwinian evolution. Darwinists argue that evolution has to be true because no self-respective deity would have created life the way we find it. Hunter unmasks this theological mode of argumentation and argues convincingly that this is not merely incidental but indeed essential to how Darwinists justify evolution.
- William A. Dembski

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Old desk, new desk

In 2005, I started my first year at UQ and lived in a little rented apartment in Station Road, Indooroopilly. My room came with a queen-sized bed (a very springy one), which was nice, but it meant that there was little floor space. The only way I could fit a desk into my room was if it was no more than 1.1m long.

At IKEA that year, I found the perfect fit - the Mikael workstation.


It fit in the room like a glove. It had a nice amount of file storage space at the top; I could put CDs and my printer on the shelves, and it even had a built-in whiteboard! The only problem was that I had a CRT monitor then (about the size of the one in the picture), and it meant that I had very little actual desk space. It was nearly impossible to do any work on the desk.

A few years later I bought an LCD monitor, which improved things.

I now had some desk space, and so could actually complete uni assignments on time. Mostly.

Then I became a school teacher. Believe it or not, marking large amounts of papers is one of the job descriptions, and I found myself forced to use the dining table, or my desk at work. Claire and I moved house, which afforded us more space for a larger desk, but I could not find anything suitable that wasn't extravagantly priced.

And then came Edison (from Super AMart)!

Edison was shorter than Mikael, but provided more than 3 times as much desk space! And the best thing was, at the time, it was reduced from $299 to $199! I grabbed it as soon as I could, and, after about 6 hours of assembly, it now stands proudly in my (still unpacked) study.



Built-in CD rack, filing cabinet, keyboard drawer, cupboard, plus a huge desk extension...it's almost like having two desks rolled into one! What a beauty. I can enjoy my computer workstation on the right, plus the massive space on the left for marking and writing reports and generally being messy. Mmm. I hope to have this desk for a long long time.

And since I like doing this, here's another desk challenge for you. You'll need to click and enlarge the last picture for this. Can you find on my desk the following: