Representative? Hope not.

Apologies in advance for this dude's acting skills. Methinks he was going for the "act so stupid everyone will realize that this is not a serious character" schtick.

The Mariana trench to scale

I remember learning about the Mariana Trench in elementary school, and the teacher telling us that it was deeper than Mt. Everest was high. Found a pretty cool visual to-scale illustration:

Christopher Hitchens Knows what a Christian is

Reblogged from Eternal Perspectives:

In a recent interview, Christopher Hitchens, the fervent atheist and author of God Is Not Great, showed he has a much clearer understanding of what it means to be a Christian than the Unitarian minister, who claims to be a Christian, interviewing him.

Marilyn Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make a distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

Christopher Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

The Muppets are back!

If you're one of my 2 frequent readers, you'll know I'm a Muppets fan. A new youtube video "Beaker's Ballad" (Dust in the Wind):

They've posted another video on their youtube channel. Enjoy:

Compendium O' Links

A short entry today...

First a pretty cool look at the super bowl, were it to be played between the heros and villains of DC and Marvel comics. The super hero bowl!

A little segue from sports into politics: a pro-choice sports columnist comments on this Tim Tebow ad controversy.

Another political link: It is 2010, and one would think that race wouldn't matter any more. But what do I know.

One last political link: a fascinating read about how John Edwards destroyed himself and his campaign because of his ... proclivities.

The ancient romans should sue the Swiss for patent infringment.

Want a nice recipe for the superbowl? How about the bacon wrapped sausage? or Bacon Wrapped Tater Tots? or even Bacon Nachos?

Speaking of food, here are a couple of food challenges that don't sound too hard: Eat 5 saltine crackers in 1 minute with no water, and eat 5 powdered donuts in 5 minutes with no water. The world record for the donuts is 3 minutes. Time to call the Man vs. Food guy.

Just because we don't have enough to worry about: Top 5 ways the world could end without warning.

Finally, I'm just going to link to Dubious Quality, since most of my posted links are from him. Instead of cherry picking his best, check it out. My favorite from today's DQ entry: A 90 y.o.'s car with 557K miles.

Tim Tebow, Abortion and the Superbowl

By now, you've undoubtedly heard about the controversy that is the Focus on the Family commercial featuring Tim Tebow and his mother.

If not, quickly, FotF is paying 2.5 million for a commercial during the Superbowl featuring Tim Tebow's mother. Apparently she was advised to abort because of various complications with her pregnancy. She didn't, gave birth to Tim, who since has become one of the best college quarterbacks in the nation (note, as a football fan myself, I qualify that he is very good in the college game, but probably not so in the professional).

Here's a fantastic take on the situation from a Christian blog, The Gospel-Driven Church:

The furor over the proposed Tim Tebow pro-life Super Bowl commercial is interesting. Free speech would seem to apply, especially since it's not obscene material. But in general, I think the sort of approach the Tebow ad is said to take is problematic. Abortion's potential to deprive us of a Beethoven (or a great college quarterback), I think, is a losing argument anyway, following the logic. How many aborted babies would have grown up to be deadbeat dads, child abusers, drunk drivers, or even serial killers? The point of the pro-life movement shouldn't be protecting potential VIP's and superpeople, but protecting lives because lives are precious.

Compendium O' Links

Cool links from the last few weeks:

A video recreation of that US Air flight that crash landed into the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey. Very cool.

A Christian show princed, i.e. punked, on live TV.

Neil Peart, of the band Rush, added percussion (and a lot of it) to the Hockey Night in Canada theme song. I love it. Compare the original with the new version. A couple related asides. Did you know that "Peart" is pronounced PEER-T? Neither did I. Also, apparently CBC sold the rights of the song to CTV/TSN sometime over the last few years. What were they thinking?

Another cool link from DQ: A video conception of what the Earth would look like if it had rings like Saturn.

Finally, for the day at least, a very cool story about a guy who maintained a blog and twitter account letting the world know where to find leaked albums early. Completely anonymous, the world knew him as DidItLeak. Together, he and his 11,000+ followers seemed to be a pariah for the RIAA and the music industry. So when his feed went suddenly blank a few weeks ago, people thought that the RIAA shut him down. But it turns out that he passed away from Cancer on January 16. This was his side hobby while enduring this dreadful disease.

Enjoy. That's all for now.

Mini Compendium o' Links

A few cool links today:

Some nature videos:

Sucker Footed bat
Venus Fly Trap

A nutty video:
William Tapley, aka the 3rd Eagle of the Apocalypse, aka The Co-Prophet of the end times. Unfortunately, I think he's serious.

And finally, Crayon sculptures


That's all for now.

How to Know You won't lay down your life

Reblogged from The Gospel Driven Church, which retweeted from Steve Timmis, co-author of Total Church.

* “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus Christ

* If I’m not prepared to jeopardise a friendship so that I can tell others about Christ, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life.

* If I’m not prepared to miss out on promotion so I can stay & help plant churches, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life…

* If I’m not willing to pursue people who are different from me in order to bless them, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life…

* If I refuse to give up a holiday abroad so I can support someone in gospel ministry. I can be fairly confident I won’t give up my life…

* If I’m not prepared to give up my bed to go and serve someone, I can be fairly confident I won’t give up my life…

* Can’t ultimately be sure until I’m called on to do so. But there are indicators in what I am reluctant to give up…

* How can I be sure I would lay down my life for sake of Jesus & the gospel? Perhaps I’ll be like Peter in his bravado and subsequent denial?