On The Frivilous Side: Spam News Stories

On occasion, I like to post something random and light-hearted. To sort of change the pace once in a while. Here's such a post.

You gotta love spam. What follows are a collection of real live spam e-mail titles I've received in my mailbox, excepting a bunch of obscene ones. Which one of them do you think would be the most unlikely news story?

• "Barack Obama Wins Ku Klux Klan Endorsement"
• "Bush And Putin Agree To Restart Cold War During G8 Summit"
• "Attack Of The Zombie Negro: Dick Cheney"
• "MLB players boycott All-Star game"
• "Mccain Vows TO Replace Secret Service With His Own Bare Fists"
• "Britney Spears And Michael Jackson To Write Parenting Book"
• "Obama Comes Clean: "Im An Elitist, Ultra-Liberal.."
• "Mccaine vows to remain celibate"

If I really had a lot of spare time, I'd probably write fake news reports for each one of these. The stories probably wouldn't be all that more wacky than some of what gets published in tabloids nowadays.

Don't Drive a SUV, Fly a Private Jet

Or so the irony goes. On a somewhat related note, this Mr. Fish cartoon vividly portrays the irony in some of the methods used by some environmental activists. I don't want to discount all activism, but this just shows that there ARE blind spots. And sometimes the people that most furiously fight a problem are also part of that problem.

Human Biology Meets Electoral Politics

Mr. Fish once again has crafted a witty cartoon that strikes to the core of what electoral politics is all about.

John McCain's Style

This fake dialog between Jay Leno and a few of the presidential candidates is hilarious, especially the way it precisely portrays John McCain's personality!

Here's a sample:

"LENO: So what are your thoughts on making Rudy your vice president?

MCCAIN: Well let me tell you something about that Jay, when I was serving my country in Vietnam I was entrusted with the responsibility to make tough decisions. That means I am the best man for the job.

LENO: I don’t follow. You are running for president, not vice president. I am wondering about Rudy.

MCCAIN: I am proud to say I was a foot soldier in the Reagan years as one who pushed for lower taxes, an aggressive foreign policy, and hope for America.

LENO: Dammit, I just want you to answer my question!

MCCAIN: I have the experience, the know-how, and the leadership to get things done.

LENO: I give up. "

Liberty or Death Revised

(HT: Doug Wilson's Blog)

The Meat Eaters Credo

"Vegetables are not food;
vegetables are what food eats.
Fruit are vegetables
that fool you by tasting good.
Fish are fast-moving vegetables.
Mushrooms are what grows
on vegetables when food's done with them."

Thursday's Mini Codices

Here we go again:

• For those who haven't found it yet, Dust and Ashes Publications has many fine used Christian books listed on E-bay at all times. Right now they have some great books listed from Bonar, D.L. Jones, etc. In fact, in the 13 hours this fine specimen by Martin Luther will be going to the highest bidder.
• The Philosophers Guide To Easy Money cracks me up. Especially the part about "Teach philosophy at a medium size Christian college...one of your students may become rich--after changing their major from philosophy to business--and end up hurling money at you out of deepest gratitude". Haha! That is a good one.
• Librivox is continuing to unlease some of A.C. Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Great stories! And they're being made available as (legally) FREE MP3 audiobooks!
• Maybe reading isn't a lost art afterall, at least according to a Globe&Mail article

On Reformed Apologist "Homeboy" T-Shirts

You may have seen the "Cornelius Van Til is my Homeboy" or "Gordon H. Clark is my Homeboy" t-shirts.

Upon examining this new trend, I see a great deal of fun and creativity in it. However, of all the people I may conceive as being "homeboyish", Cornelius and Gordon don't necessarily make the grade. They are good apologists, but evidentially (or maybe presuppositionally) they are not the "hip" type.

Whatever criticisms about his method you may have, you must admit that nobody looked quite as transcedental as as Francis Schaeffer.

So, I unveil a new t-shirt design which will rival the aforementioned ones.

Saturday's Mini Codices

Here is today's installment:

• Have you ever seen the reporter who keeps on hitting the people he interviews with a microphone?


• Have you ever seen the film that Karl Marx would have made if he had Disney at his disposal?


• The Shepherd's Scrapbook posted a link to a great PDF file posted which contains a full index of the works of John Owen! Not only does it have English phrases, but Greek/Latin/Hebrew terms and a Scripture index!


• Scott Stevens was a great NHL defenseman who delivered debilitating checks. His top ten checks are posted on the internet.


• Ever feel overwhelmed by the monstrous task of reading, replying to, and organizing your e-mail? Here are some helpful hints. And if that isn't enough, this is helpful too.

Six Degrees of Wikipedia

"Six Degrees of Separation" is a theory in which it is alleged that any person on the earth can be connected with any other by 6 or more degrees of separation. That would mean that if you hop through your web of aquaintences, you can eventually get to anyone (even famous people) quite quickly. This theory, while still heavily debated, is probably at least generally true. Unless you are thoroughly isolated, chances are you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Joe Smith. And if you need more degrees of separation than that you or Joe probably live in an igloo or live among some remote undiscovered tribe.

The theory was first proposed by Hungarian writer Karinthy Frigyes. There is a neat little web tool which is called "Six Degrees of Wikipedia". I'm not sure where else it can be used, but I've added it as a "widget" to my Google home page. You enter two names and it tells you how many degrees of separation there are between the two people in the Wikipedia database. The degrees of separation are not measured by aquaintences, but rather by article links. So if the Joe Plymoth article links to Bob Smith's, that would be 1 degree of separation. However if Joe Plymoth has a link to Mike Walters, and Mike Walter's article links to Bob Smith, then that would be two degrees of separation between Joe Plymoth and Bob Smith.

Six Degrees of Wikipedia is neat in concept, but there is one little problem which spoils it. The problem is Wikipedia's entries for years (ie 1542) and for particular days (ie November 19). These entries link almost anyone. For example, we know that the combination of anarchist Abbie Hoffman and Protestant reformer John Knox should test the 6 Degrees of Wikipedia separation theory to the brink. These fellows have very little, if anything at all, in common. However, if John Knox was born on July 20th, 1505 (hypothetical) and Abby Hoffman stagged some antic on July 20th, 1969 (hypothetical), they would be listed as having a very low degree of sepration since the common date makes them "close" in the Wikipedia database. This sort of disparity calls into question most attempts to use Six Degrees of Wikipedia for anything useful. If there is no intersection of arbitrary dates, then it seems the results can sometimes be meaningful to show how contextually/informationally related two people are.

Anyways, let's look at some of the Degrees of Wikipedia. And we'll need enough data to try to see to gauge performance:

• John Knox, Abbie Hoffman (3 degrees)


• Barry Bonds, Ghandi (5 degrees)


• Martin Luther King Jr, David Duke (3 degrees)


• Bill Clinton, Al Gore (1 degree)


• Bill Lee, Ronald Reagan (3 degrees)


• Jacob Arminus, John Calvin (2 degrees)


• Ghengis Khan, Greg Bahnsen (4 degrees)


• Stephen Harper, Donald Knuth (3 degrees)


• Michael Jordan, Peter Seller (3 degrees)


• John Lennon, John Wayne (2 degrees)


• Neil Young, George Bush (3 degrees)


• Francis Schaeffer, Toronto Maple Leafs (3 degrees)


• Ken Kesey, Hunter S Thompson (2 degrees)


• Cornelius Van Till, Rick Warren (4 degrees)


• Jerry Rubin, George Wallace (3 degrees)


• Sparky Anderson, Lou Whitaker (2 degrees)

What do you think? Do these degrees of separation do justice to the people in question? Not in whether they know each other, but rather in how closely related (in terms of ideas, context, history) they are? I guess it is up for debate. It does seem that 1 or 2 degree separations have genuine relation to each other in terms of their context. And anyone that rates as a 4 or 5 degree separation definately displays no or very little relation to each other. However, it seems that the 3 degrees seems to be frequently attained merely by linkage through arbitrary dates (ie. Francis Schaeffer's birthday and a milestone in the Toronto Maple Leafs history). So, maybe the results aren't that off base if we are careful to account for skewing due to arbitrary date linkage.

One thing is for sure, none of this test data even reached 6 degrees of separation. Almost any two people can be linked through Wikipedia within less than 6 degrees of separation, and some can be linked up even without the presence of arbitrary date linking.

Satire in Politics: The Rhino Party

The Rhinoceros Party was a Canadian political party operating Canada from the 1960's to the 1990's. It was a satirical absurdist sort of guerilla political theatre operating in real life politics. Their listed party leader was a Rhino from a zoo in Montreal.

The movement was not just limited to Canada and former Boston Red Sox pitcher and goofball Bill "Spaceman" Lee actually ran for U.S. President under this ticket. And more recently, the absurdist principles of this political party have been revived under the tickets of "Absolutely Absurd Party" and the "Neo Rhinos".

The Rhinoceros party had a weak record in Canada. They never won a seat, though they grossed over 100,000 votes in 1980!!

Some of their platforms included peculiar promises such as:

• Selling the Canadian Senate at an antique auction in California


• Abolishing the environment because it's too hard to keep clean and it takes up so much space


• Repealing the law of gravity


• Paving Manitoba to create the world's largest parking lot


• Providing higher education by building taller schools


• Making bubble gum the national currency, so that it could be inflated or deflated at will


• Instituting English, French and illiteracy as Canada's three official languages


• Ofering to retrain those constituents who want to become illiterate by enrolling them in a state educational institution


• Running more than one candidate per riding as an MP's salary is certainly enough to support more than one person

The Rhino Party is also said to have claimed that if they got to the point of victory, they would dissolve and force a second election. And for further entertainment, you can check out a tentative list of frivolous political parties. The "Prince Edward Island Draft Beer Party" looks like they had an interesting platform in the 1979 provincial election.

Vote By "Proxy"

In Canada, apparently dead men can vote.

English Instructions At Their Best!

Some time ago a co-worker bought me some Oolong tea while he was in China. The instructions are just wonderful.

Anyone Out There?

Am I really that boring as of late? There has been an eerie echo here as of late. I haven't had one single comment on any of my last 10 posts!!! That is nearly a month! I'm unable even to solicit comments even by making a post that explicitly solicits comments. I've been crafting a theory about this. I suspect my profound insights and clever reasoning has scared away some of the more feeble minded readers (ie. all of them).

Putting Someone/Something Down With Dignity

There was once a day when the art of insulting someone was actually quite a refined art. The idea back then was not necessarily to find a despicable noun or verb to associate a person with, but rather to discover a humorous witty quip that may take more than a few brain cells to parse.

I guess you wouldn't necessarily call them "insults" persay, they were more literary sabre rattling. Men who had a way with words, tended towards having a way with clever jabs too.

For instance, mark the following jab which Mark Twain documents in "Roughing It":

'Once, while editor of the Union, he had disposed of a labored, incoherent, two-column attack made upon him by a contemporary, with a single line, which, at first glance, seemed to contain a solemn and tremendous compliment--viz.: "THE LOGIC OF OUR ADVERSARY RESEMBLES THE PEACE OF GOD,"--and left it to the reader's memory and after-thought to invest the remark with another and "more different" meaning by supplying for himself and at his own leisure the rest of the Scripture--" in that it passeth understanding.'

And lest we misappropriate these colorful jabs exclusively to frontier ruffians, let's consider the exploits of the noble and pious preacher Charles Spurgeon. He had a way with words too. And one would prefer not to be on the business end of his witticsms. In his "Commenting on Commetaries", he executes some most creative assesments:

"The author professed to offer his work with great diffidence, and he had just cause to do so: he had better have burned his manuscript."

"This book reads to us like utter nonsense. We question if anyone except the author will ever be able to make head or tail of it, and he had better be quick about it, or he will forget what he meant."

"It is easy to divide an egg by letting it drop on the floor, and in this fashion this author divides texts."

Funny Video

This is a funny video for you soccer/philosophy fans.

http://www.youtube.com/v/xrShK-NVMIU

Special thanks to Michael Haykin for finding this gem on another blog.

Daylight Savings Time - Business Opportunity?

This kid apparently isn't joking. Just recently he's busted into the residental clock changing market.

I'll change your clocks for half his price or a cold beer. And no I will not do VCR clocks. If your VCR isn't flashing, you are already a step ahead of the game and don't need my help.

Hair & Facial Hair & Theologians

Warning: I consider this to be one of the weirdest posts I've ever made.

One interesting observation is the fact that the "norm" in 21st century Evangelical male hair & facial hair is radically different than that of the earlier reformers, puritans, and theologians. For example, at almost every point in history beards, moustaches, goatees, sideburns, and longer hair was not only accepted, but almost the norm among evangelical male Church leaders. However, in North American 21st century Evangelicalism, the norm has shifted over to shorter hair and clean shaven appearance.

The norm for me is a buzz cut and a (usually) cleanshaven face. On occasion I will grow a bit of a goatee or a beard.

Many Christians understand I Corinthians in such a way that it would forbid any males in any culture from having "long" hair. And yet, it would appear that (at least from the drawings of them), most learned theologians of the 1600's and before had long hair (at least by our standards). Being a guy who rarely has more than 1 inch of hair, I have no problem fitting into the idea that a guy should have short hair.

One interesting vein of thought is that the early evangelical pioneers, reformers, and theologians actually looked a bit more like the hippies of the 1960's than mainstream evangelicals of the 1960's.

I submit some examples (left column is well-known theologians, right column is 1960's counter-culture hippie-type musicians). Please understand that I..

1. Do not insinuiate that these individuals share similar lifestyles or views (in fact, their views of life and the meaning of life were VERY different)
2. Am not condoning the lifestyles of the people on the right side or calling into question the integrity of the people on the left side.

I merely want to provide some comic relief and some "Hmmm.." for the readers of this blog.

Top left -> John Bunyan
Top right -> David Crosby

Middle left -> B.B. Warfield
Middle right -> Jerry Garcia

Bottom left -> John Calvin
Bottom right -> Cat Stevens (interestingly, he converted to Islam later in life)









They kind of look like each other (with strong emphasis on KIND OF). By the grace of God, however, the people on the left column had a more solid foundation and a worldview that was able to provide them with TRUE peace. This, however does not change the fact that the people on the right were also created in God's image and also have displayed vast amounts of creativity, skill, etc.

Related Tags: facial hair, reformers, hippies, theologians, long hair, hair, humor

A Cross Section of My Readers

:)

Mr T

Julie Staples has posted an absolutely GREAT post consisting of a collection of facts on Mr T. They just don't make TV stars the same any more ;)