A Surprise Telephone Call

I just had a telephone call from a Christian who wanted to talk to me about the role god plays in my life. This is the first time I've had a proselytiser call me on the telephone so I am posting the basic gist of our conversation here while it is still fresh in my mind (and before I forget it).

I can't remember how he started the conversation, but I quickly interrupted him to ask which god he was talking about. He said it was Yahweh, the god of the bible.

So then I asked him to describe his god otherwise I wouldn't know what we were talking about.

He said things like god is perfect, righteous, just, kind, loving, etcetera.

I said that was interesting but how would I recognise god if I saw him.

The Christian said it doesn't work that way. He said god is invisible.

I pointed out that god "spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend". [Exodus 33:11]

I forget exactly what the Christian said but it was something about the bible having many things to say and it is unfair to pick out just one verse at a time.

I pointed out he had done exactly the same thing to me - quoted a single verse that says god is invisible!

Then I told him I wasn't relying on just one verse because Jacob had also said, "I have seen god face to face and my life is preserved."

I got the impression from his tone of voice that he thought I was making it up and he tried to call my bluff by asking where that text appears in the bible - book, chapter, and verse.

I told him I didn't know for sure but suggested he could find it easily enough. "Have you got a Concordance," I asked him.

There was a short hesitation and then a very cautious, "yes." (I don't think he knew what a Concordance was.)

So I told him to look up the word "Jacob" and that would take him directly to the verse.

But he never did find it - so I found it for him [Genesis 32:30] - because I actually have a Concordance.

Again I've forgotten his exact words, but he started pushing the idea that I had taken the verse out of context.

That's the thing that really irks me about Christians: this guy had obviously never heard about Jacob seeing god face to face until I mentioned it, and now, just a few seconds later, he was trying to tell me that I had it wrong and he knew what it really meant!

As it happens he never did get around to explaining the context and the conversation ended not long afterwards.

21st Century Journalism - Top Class Reporting

The baby of an Australian man fighting with Islamic State has been reportedly murdered by the regime. 

The Daily Telegraph reports intelligence agencies believe the baby, an Australian citizen, was killed by ISIS terrorists as punishment for its father’s attempt to flee the bloody conflict.

It has been reported that the man made contact with Australian authorities, looking for assist­ance in escaping from the battles in Syria and Iraq.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/

Not one news source provided any details about the murder.

When did it happen?

Where did it happen?

Who saw it happen?

What is the father's name?

What is the baby's name?

Where did the reporter get this story?

---

Australian baby murdered by ISIS. That's all you get. We reporters have got more important things do than run around fact-checking sensationalist rumours. The rule is simple enough: We report, you believe.

---

Say A Little Prayer

You are choking to death. 

What do you think will work best?

Someone to perform the Heimlich Manouvre?

Or a Christian to pray for you?

---

You are feeling ill.

What do you think will work best?

A priest to exorcise the demons in your body?

Or a visit to the local doctor?

Click Bait

At the bottom of almost every news story you will find a line of click-bait adverts of the type shown in this picture. They're all bullshit. They rarely deliver what they promise and they are designed, not to entertain or educate, but to expose you to an unending parade of even more advertisements.

This year they have been pushing that baby with the blue eyes. 

The caption changes from week to week but most recently it says You Will Never Guess Who Her Famous Mother. The caption is grammatically incorrect, but it's the blue eyes that encourage the reader to click on the button, not what the sign says.

Well curiosity got the better of me today. I clicked on "blue-eyes" and waded through 23 pages of photographs of children with famous parents, looking for "blue-eyes" but I didn't find her. She's got nothing to do with the story. She's just the click bait. I wasn't surprised.

As for the "children" with famous parents? They included 72 year old  Michael Douglas for Christ's sake! Did you know that this famous (72 year old) "child" has a 100 year old father named Kirk Douglas? Well now you do.

A few days later...
Last time blue eyes was touted as the daughter of a famous parent. This week blue eyes has become a famous personality in her own right - and look - she's facing the other way! How clever are those click-bait wizards?

A few more days later...
They must have got plenty of hits from the first blue-eyed girl because now they've doubled the quantity. It's obvious the photographer's intention was to make these new girls appear as attractive as the original "blue-eyes", but he didn't quite make it. In this week's click-bait advertisements the blue-eyed girls are looking rather creepy; almost sinister.

A couple of weeks later...
Looks like they are sticking with "creepy" blue eyed children this year:

Actually, in real life, this girl has grey eyes, not blue, but she couldn't be used as click-bait if her eyes were grey - so off to photoshop they went...

From The Science Pages This Week

Three items where I didn't bother to read past the headline:


NASA Wants To Launch A Magnetic Shield 
To Restore Atmosphere On Mars
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/03/

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Wants To Found A Moon Colony
http://www.inquisitr.com/4035063/

Woolly mammoth on verge of resurrection, scientists reveal
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/16/


My prediction: None of these things will happen during the next hundred years - and the woolly mammoth thing will NEVER happen.

What A Surprise

President Trump told President Xi Jinping of China on Thursday evening that the United States would honor the “One China” policy, reversing his earlier expressions of doubt about the longtime diplomatic understanding and removing a major source of tension between the United States and China since shortly after he was elected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/


The Chinese government has granted President Trump and his business something they had been seeking for more than a decade: trademark protection for the use of the Trump name in the construction industry.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/17/

In the world of diplomacy, governments do each other favours on a government to government basis. In this 21st century though, the American president also gets a nice little bonus to keep for his very own. Lucky old him.

TV Reception

I was having trouble with the TV reception so I climbed up on the roof to adjust the aerial which was attached to the chimney. I moved the aerial around and my friends down below kept watch on the TV screen.

That's good...
No...
Yeah...
A bit more...
Where you had it just then, that was really good...
No, you missed it...

It was a hopeless task. When I had the aerial firmly braced against the chimney the reception was no good. When the reception was good I was always holding the aerial away from the chimney - but as soon as I moved it back towards the chimney, the reception failed again!

Eventually I got utterly pissed off. I picked up the aerial and hurled into the branches of the tree that grew alongside the house - and up through the chimney came the voices of my friends down below:

"That's it. Perfect. Keep it there..."

So that's where the aerial stayed until I moved on three years later.