Zoomtard

Oh my God. My mind is so thoroughly blown that I have to keep my unintended Zoomtard hiatus going until the weekend. See you then.

Your Correspondent, A man ahead of his time

I am glad I don’t have to defeat my lady’s evil ex’s because that would mean defeating a tattooed motorbike enthusiast who is actually quite the gentleman, which would be difficult and I would be sad because I love her even more than I love this movie which is the best compliment I have ever paid anyone, especially her.

Your Correspondent, His smile brought a puppy back to life.

The Avett Brothers are much better than I initially thought they were. This video was good enough to get me to turn off the new(ish) Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip album.

Your Correspondent, Is frightened by those who don’t see it

I spent last week in Coleraine in Co. Derry. I have spent this week in Stafford in Engerland. In both cases I am in the company of great friends but this week I have to do no work. Also, even though I am in Engerland, there are very few flags anywhere. Last week I was in Ireland but there were lots of British flags. I know my northern friends might find this tiresome but it really does weigh oppressively on me. As Space Bishop has argued:

when people put up those flags they aint doing it to say “im british” or “im irish” i recon they’re doing to say what they are not.

But last week, although at times difficult, was fantastic and one of those weeks where I can talk slowly and meaningfully and say “God really did teach me alot.” New stuff like, as against his usual torrent of compliments and amazements in the face of my awesomeness. Here are some (but far from all the) mighty fine things about Coleraine.

1. It has simply the best traffic management system I’ve yet encountered. Driving around Coleraine is a relative pleasure. It is geographically coherent, traffic lights are well sequenced, pedestrian crossings are logically placed and there is parking everywhere. It really changes how you experience a city.

2. The Giants Causeway is astounding. Forget all those haters who claim it is “tiny”. What were they expecting? A causeway filled with giants? I will refrain from commenting (further) on the idiot Americans who I overheard speculating that the basalt was black because of an oil spill. It is spectacular and even when crowded with people is a lovely place to sit and ponder the age of the Earth and the majesty of God.

3. And then right after go worship the generosity of that God in the Bushmills Distillery. I loved this place so much I went twice. Delicious whiskey at the end of a tour through an actual working distillery, smelling the smells and seeing the stills and spying on the quality control dudes updating their Facebook status pages. This is unmissable.

4. Cool people live up here. Not just my friends. But when you walk around the town you notice that there are sub cultures peeking out of Norn Iron society if you bother to look. Lots of rockers and some surfer types and some crusties and generally much more than the bland evangelical suburbanness I have experienced elsewhere in the North.

5. Finally, saving the best till last, I encountered some more of that bland evangelical suburbanness in the form of Mount Sandel Christian Fellowship. Except these guys were so far from bland or suburban. They seem like the kind of community Presbyterianism in the North needs to mimic: quite diverse, engaged and non-hierarchical. Spending time with these guys was good for the soul and if you live anywhere near there, you should check them out.

Also, who can fail to love a region that has a drive in church, just like Jesus intended:

Your Correspondent, Can usually be found steepling his fingers and cackling

Last week my friend Andy Carroll and I hosted a thing called Late Night Extra at the Presbyterian Church’s Special Assembly in Coleraine. It was an evening session of mild parody, lame jokes and most excellent interviews. We did a thing called the Top 10 @ 10 and the 3rd night one is posted here for those who wanted access to it. They are not all our work. Lots of friends presented really good ideas to us and so don’t try to give us credit for anything, except being generally awesome. Also, this list is pretty good, at least in the sense that we have lots of left over ideas for some other time. Enjoy!

10. Think “dressing casually” means wearing t-shirts from every Christian summer team you’ve been on.

9. You give them a book that on the back claims to be a “great way to reach your unbelieving friends!”

8. You can turn a discussion about the offside rule into a conversation about Jesus as our “last defender”.

7. Even when they bring up the Gospel, you can turn the conversation back to the offside rule.

6. Use Facebook to suggest all your friends “befriend” Jesus.

5. When you go out for a meal with friends, you leave a tract instead of a tip.

4. You ask them to mind your pets in the event of you being raptured.

3. Every time your friend calls around you “just happen” to be watching the end of the Passion of the Christ.

2. Pray for their salvation daily. In their company.

1. Your idea of a “drinking game” is to make a disapproving noise every time they raise a glass to their lips.

Your Correspondent, May reduce the risk of cancers

Last week my friend Andy Carroll and I hosted a thing called Late Night Extra at the Presbyterian Church’s Special Assembly in Coleraine. It was an evening session of mild parody, lame jokes and most excellent interviews. We did a thing called the Top 10 @ 10 and the 2nd night one is posted here for those who wanted access to it.

10. You buy 1 of the recommended books, read the 1st chapter and then leave it on your shelf.

9. You spend every moment during praise sessions scheming on how to oust the organist.

8. You ignore all those inklings you have to pray and instead have that 1 minute conversation with someone you won’t see again until next SA.

7. You listen to Ajith Fernando talk about the supremacy of Christ, leave, and then promptly unleash hell on a University of Ulster parking attendant.

6. You choose seminar streams based on how attractive the other delegates are.

5. When you go home, the only thing you really talk about is how long the queues were for breakfast.

4. Look really holy by appearing to take notes but actually drawing caricatures of all the speakers.

3. You think to yourself, “I know 8 people who could really have benefitted from this conference.”

2. You go home and talk about Late Night Extra, but not Ajith Fernando…

1. … Or God!

Your Correspondent, When he cuts the cheese, he breaks the mold.

For those who wanted it, our 1st list from the Special Assembly in Coleraine last week.

10. People hurry for the front seats on Sunday morning.

9. Someone raised their hand during worship.

8. Someone in the congregation received “a word from the LORD”.

7. You actually listened to what that person had to say.

6. You use real wine at Communion.

5. You invite visitors to stay around for tea, coffee or Irish coffee.

4. When your Minister showed up at the Youth Group Hallowe’en party wearing a collar, they thought it was a costume.

3. Your Youth Group is allowed to have a Hallowe’en party.

2. Instead of traybakes, you have nachos and homemade guacamole.

1. You have started calling yourselves a “community” church.

Your Correspondent, He thinks therefore he’s right

Don’t you just hate how science journalism pretty much always sinks to tabloid level simplifications? It has been a long long time since I was even vaguely familiar with the ins and outs of maths but calling the incompleteness theorem “now notorious” is preposterously false.

In the ensuing New Scientist article we are reassured that developments on Godel’s incompleteness theorem won’t lead to apples refusing to fall. The solipsistic trend in scienalism (scientific journalism should really come up with jargon phrases to describe itself). Apples fall because we discovered gravity, right? And if we were wrong, apples stop falling.

We are told that we are starting to see maths as “something more akin to a scientific theory such as the “standard model” that particle physicists use to predict the workings of particles and forces: our best approximation to reality, well supported by experimental data, but at the same time manifestly incomplete and subject to continuous and possibly radical reappraisal as fresh information comes in”. This, allegedly, is an “an undoubted strike at mathematicians’ self-image”. I have never met a mathematician who thought that a Platonic view of numbers was “proven”. Even if their own view tended towards maths not being an invention, their “self image” wasn’t bound up in it.

Unless.

Unless they thought maths was part of some Enlightenment project to desacralise the world. Of course, I have never met such a person but they may well exist. It is undecideable. Doron Zeilberger of Rutgers University is quoted as saying:

We have to kick the misleading word ‘undecidable’ from the mathematical lingo, since it tacitly assumes that infinity is real,” he says. “We should rather replace it by the phrase ‘not even wrong’. In other words, ‘utter nonsense’.

Waiting on my bookshelf for some day when I fancy dense stylized prose and have finished all my David Bentley Hart I have a book by David Foster Wallace about infinity. Maybe I’ll write some more then but I was wondering if the numerous numerate Zoomtard readers have anything to contribute to my frustration with this kind of writing?

Your Correspondent, Spent the summer staring out the window.

Christiane Kubrick, Stanley’s widow, talking about her uncle Veit Harlan, who made movies for the NAZIs:

“Where my uncle was an enormous fool, as many talented people are, was that he mistook his gift for intelligence,” says Christiane. “He was a great big famous film person. He looked better and talked better and had enormous charm. So he thought he was also far more intelligent than Mr Goebbels. Goebbels was 10,000 times smarter than my uncle.” She pauses. “Film people, actors, are puppets. We are silly. We are silly folk.”

While few of us will end up preaching for fascist states, preachers make this mistake all to often too.

Your Correspondent, He quit these pretentious things and just punched the clouds

To simply say that this is a harrowing, devastating and dark tale of how a village can be torn apart by malice, hypocrisy and evil might be to put you off, which would be a dreadful mistake because it is simultaneously a fable that speaks of how Germany got embroiled in two world wars and a simply unmissable and undisputed classic.

Your Correspondent, Has your condolences because he stole them while you weren’t looking.