i am sparticus: Words

Misquoting Jesus

While I was in San Francisco I went into Borders to see if I could pick up some Douglas Coupland books on the cheap and while browsing through the books on prominent display I came across Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman. What struck me though was not the title of the book as much as the hook quotes on the back.

In Misquoting Jesus Ehrman reveals that:

The King James Bible was based on corrupted and inferior manuscripts that in many cases do not accurately represent the meaning of the original text.

The favorite Bible story of Jesus’s forgiving the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11) doesn’t belong in the Bible.

Scribal errors were so common in antiquity that the author of the Book of Revelation threatened damnation to anyone who “adds to” or “takes away” words from the text.

Note to the publishers, when making the statement 'Erhman reveals that the favourite bible story....' you should probably check that the top selling, "most widely accepted contemporary bible translation" in the world doesn't reveal this fact in the main text of the bible. What? It Does? Gosh, and every other contemporary bible translation notes this as well? Who'd believe it!

Similarly, it's not that revealing to say the King James Bible is based on corrupted and inferior translations (for an arbitrary definition of corrupted and inferior at least) when the international bible society notes this on their publicly available website about bible translations.

As for the last fact, what exactly is he revealing? The content of Revelation 22:18-19 that's been around for 1900 years old? That scribal errors were common? That John didn't want anyone altering what he wrote? Hardly new facts.

The only thing revealing about the quotes on the back of the book is that it shows that the publishers have been to a seminar called "The 'is the bible true?' fad and how to cash in on it".

How To Take A Myspace Photo Part III

Frequently Asked Questions? Frequently Asked Answers more like!

However I try I can never get in the camera shot when I try to take photos of myself? Help me!

This is a common problem and while nothing makes it go away other than practice there is a cheap alternative if you're desperate. Find yourself a largeish mirror, stand in front of it, hold up your camera at arms length so that it conceals half of your face in the reflection and then take your photo. You won't be able to get enough of your face into the photo this way, and you'll lose some of the angle style, but at least you'll have a photo of you. Doing it this way also means you can show off your spangly belt that's buckled to one side.

Can't my friend take the photo of me?

No. If you have a real life friend you need to get them into the photograph too to prove that you have one. Though they don't increase your friend count on myspace real life friends can still be used to give you the appearance of popularity and therefore indirectly boost your popularity. Also, they can come in handy when you're computer fails and you have to borrow someone else's.

Can't my mum take the photo of me?

No! You hate your mum remember? She just doesn't understand you! Remember the time you came home from that night and she asked you how things were and you yelled at her face because she was so in your face and then you stormed off to your room and spent literally AGES on livejournal writing about how much she hated you and all that time she didn't come see how you were? That's what it'd be like if she took your photo. Only worse.

Can't my brother or sister take the photo of me?

No, if your brother or sister is cute then pretend they are a friend and use them to boost your popularity. If they aren't then you should be writing long blogs about how much you hate them and how much they annoy you and so getting them to take a photo of you would be a tad hypocritical wouldn't it? And myspace isn't the place for hypocrisy of any sort.

Can't I use the self-timer?

What are you? Some kind of emo-cry-baby wuss? GROW UP.

Two Humorous Things

a: "I like the Queen and everything but I don't like Prince Charles and whatshername"
b: "Camilla Poker-Bowels?"
a: "You can't poke her bowels, that'd be treason!"

Impressionable Young Person: "Oh, can I tell you this story? You'll like it"
Me: "Okay"
IYP: "In class we had to write about two people we'd pick as our heroes, one people would know and one people wouldn't."
Me: "uh-huh."
IYP: "And for the person that people wouldn't know."
Me: "uh-huh..."
IYP: "I mean, for the person people would know I picked uhh... uhhh..."
Me: "uh?"
IYP: "David Beckham!"
Me: "Oh okay"
IYP: "Yeah..."
IYP: "..."
IYP: "..."
Me: "And what about the person no-one knew?"
IYP: "Oh yeah that was the point!"
Me: "So who did you pick?"
IYP: "uh so this is why I wanted to tell you the story"
Me: "yeah?"
IYP: "I picked my dad!"
Me: "Oh. Oh okay. Well that's cool."
IYP: "Yeah I know!"

These quotes are true enough

How To Take A Myspace Photo Part II

So having looked at what's required to take a good myspace photo we're now going to spend some time looking at the composition of the photo.

Good composition is all about drawing attention to the focal point of the photograph, in this case that'll be your face. I know that drawing attention to yourself and being egocentric comes hard to most myspace users, but stick with it and you'll make it.

In photography composition there is something called 'the rule of thirds'. This is a rule to help you take interesting photos. When composing a photo mentally divide up the picture into three rows and three columns so that you have nine boxes. Then try and get your face to fill as many of these boxes as possible.

For the best possible composition you should follow these five points.

1. Hold the camera directly in front of you pointing at your face.
2. Move the camera upwards so it's making between a 30 and a 45 degree angle with the floor.
3. Move the camera left of right exactly 72 degrees, at this point you should only be able to see the camera out of one eye.
4. Tilt your head away from the camera.
5. Press the 'take photo button.

This will give you a perfect myspace photo. For extra effects have your fringe cover a third of your visible face and pout slightly.

RESULT

Friday the 21st

• Today I hand in my dissertation. 9643 words on young people and the doctrine of sin. If you're in this following list of acknowledgements then you're cool
  Steve Griffiths, Phil Green, Gareth Verow, Hayley Cornwell, Paul Armstrong, Kevin Hartwell, Crug Harper, Alison Walley, Celia Walley, everyone who took me out for coffee when I was bored with the writing, all the young people who expressed their ideas and opinions for the research. Christian Youth Ministries, Cambridge Centre for Youth Ministry, The Black Horse, The Royal George, Starbucks Coffee House, Apple Computers. Radiohead, Death Cab For Cutie, 65daysofstatic, Idlewild, Sufjan Stevens.
  I have one more 3000 word essay to do and a minor project and then I'm done for my degree forever. Seriously, if someone wants to find me a job that'd be awesome.
• John Gruber at Daring Fireball packed in his job to go work on his weblog full time. It's very good and you should support him. If you don't understand it, you should buy a mac, then support him. Or buy a new mac for me and I'll give you my old one, it's a year and a half old and still works wonderfully which is very irritating if you want an excuse to get a new computer, well it would be if having a perfectly working computer could be irritating. I can't stay mad at you dear iBook. Also, I'd like to point out that I didn't steal the 10th design for this site from Daring Fireball. I stole it from The Postal Service's album. (This resets the design to random.)
• Starbucks needs to open earlier when you have lots of work to do. If you need to be at work by 7:00 you need your coffee shop to be open at 6:50. PROMPT. Also, a grande (medium) from Starbucks fits my big yellow mug exactly.

How To Take A Myspace Photo Part I

The Camera: Either use your 1.1 megapixel camera phone that doesn't really focus indoors or use the really expensive digital SLR daddy got you for Christmas. Don't worry about not knowing what any of the buttons are, like always you only need to press the big 'take photo' button.

The Backdrop: When people professionally pose for photos the backdrop is very important. Consider using something simple like a plain white wall or against a blue sky, or just take it in your room where everyone can see your cool Napoleon Dynamite poster. Also indoors you'll have access to a mirror which could come in handy (see next post).

Dress: Don't go for something low cut, that's just for people who use myspace to get attention from boys through their looks. It's far easier to get a boy's attention through listing exactly the same favourite bands as him and complaining about how hard your life is now your mum found out you smoked a joint last weekend. Anyway, wear hip band tops or t-shirts that say witty comments from movies. Ideally the quotes should be relatively obscure to give you that clever art house look. Don't make them too obscure though or everyone will be wondering why you have "Stop Calling Me Warren" written on your t-shirt. A good question to ask is "will the person who I like understand it and think that it's obscure?" Quotes from pre-Mulan Disney cartoons generally work well.

Next, we look at how to get the perfect angle of the photo, how to best use mirrors for effect, and which eye to best stare out of at the camera

Lomography

Monday was a beautifully sunny day and so as we were all going to the beach I dug out my supersampler from the back of my closet. The camera is odd, as you can see from the photos. It exposes four time delayed photos on one frame of the film. Because of the fixed nature of the aperture and shutter speed the photos frequently slightly under-develop, or better yet variably develop so one part of the frame ends up brighter than the other. I shot through a roll of 24 over Monday and got the photos back from Jessops today. Interestingly the photos on paper look fairly average, but the hi-res ones on film all have a really nice 70's type grain. Next time I should probably shoot with either better light or a much higher ISO film, and I should probably not get them developed from Jessops, but even so, I'm still happy with the photos.

Teh R0B07

So it's Sarah Rules birthday today. In honour of this, I let her put on the robot costume and pull myspace poses.

Also, because Sarah beat me to posting that photo here's a link to a whole load more of them. Also, in this directory is her birthday present that I'm letting everyone else get in on.

Yes, this website is better than you.

The Nativity Part II

According to ancient made up myth and yore the Magi (Wise Men) all came from three different places and met en-route to Bethlehem. Supposedly they all got different announcements telling them to get a move on and visit Jesus. Caspar (for that his name, doubtfully) got the best sign, an Ostrich of his gave birth to two eggs, one containing a lion, and a lamb. I bet the question that bugged him for years afterwards was "What would lamb omelette have tasted like?".

In another story, the Magi came from a tribe with a tradition of watching for a certain star every year until it appeared, they'd be doing this for centuries with no luck, but this is exactly the sort of the thing that you don't do one year and that's the year it turns up, so they carried on with it. When finally it did appear they followed it till it disappeared down a well in Bethlehem. The well in question is the well in front of the Greek church of St. Elijah and, excitingly, the star is still in it! Unfortunately for most of the world, it's only viewable by virgins, so go while you can!

The final story from the period of the Nativity worth telling is the most disgusting. When Jesus was circumcised someone took the umbilical cord and made perfume out of it. The very perfume that Mary Magdalen then poured on Jesus' feet. Good huh?

General E-mail Yadda Yadda

Hey everyone, I'm updating my e-mail address. You can now contact me on mark at this website .com. If you e-mail to sparticus at this website it'll still get there, but it might get to me late. Or be marked as spam. Or killed and used to stoke the fires that run this website. Whatever. So kids, from today:

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday. This is the day that Christian's celebrate the death of their God and Saviour. Perverse huh? If you're looking for an explanation, here's what Paul, a man who wrote a sizeable amount of the bible and might be considered, has to say on it:

"When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's judgment. For since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by his life. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God--all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God." Romans 5 - The Bible

The Nativity Part I

(this is a series if you're confused)

When Mary lay Jesus down in the manager she used hay to cushion him. When the Ox, Cow and Horse came back from wherever they were (avoiding a woman going through labour probably), the Ox and Cow ate some of the spare hay and went to sleep. The Horse though, ate all the spare hay and then started eating Jesus' cushion'o'hay. Mary, not best pleased by this, cursed the Horse condemning it to future centuries of heavy burden carrying duty, while the Cow and Ox just eat grass in fields all day.

In another similar story, the mule is cursed because when Mary puts baby Jesus between a mow and a mule to keep him warm the mule keeps stealing the hay under baby Jesus. I like this story a lot less than the last one, because it seems rather unfair on the poor mule who's just carried the pregnant Mary all the way from Nazareth (I'm not sure the story says it was the same donkey / mule, but I'm assuming it is). Also it doesn't really ring true as Mary, tired and worn out as she is, still doesn't seem like the sort of person to put the Son of God between two large, heavy animals that in all probability don't grasp the concept of not rolling over and killing baby Jesus.

Mediaeval Legends Of Christ

So while not doing any research in our college library earlier this year my eyes fell upon what would be in any other library a very old book. As it's a theological library of a Cambridge college though it was merely slightly older than average. The book in question was "The Mediaeval Legends of Christ" and containing a supposedly exhaustive list of stories about Christ's life that had slipped into folklore. The stories vary from the 'believable after having a hearty meal and a glass of wine' to the 'believable after having a three week old kebab and vast amounts of acid'. Generally the latter make for the best reading, and so, the best cheap way of getting amusing content on a website. The series starts tomorrow.

Iraq Pull Out Advice

Advice for America; if and when you decide to pull out of Iraq, here's how you can go about doing it with the minimum of death, animosity and effort. Wait till it's night and then while most everyone is in bed asleep break Saddam Hussein out of jail. Give him a shave and a change of clothes, put him in the largest palace in Baghdad and then remove all of your troops from the country. Then when morning comes make sure all the TV's are broadcasting live from the square below the palace, at 9am get Ashton Kutcher to step out on the balcony and yell out loudly, "IRAQ, y'all got punk'd!"

Leave the country to it's own devices and pretend like nothing ever happened. Also, leave Ashton Kutcher.

San Francisco Questions

I can't actually remember what the questions people asked me about America were, and I found a bug in the code for the voting script that meant it didn't save them. Oops. Whatever, if I forgot to answer your question tell me and I'd make up something clever.

Q1) What famous landmarks do new homeland security laws prevent you from taking photos of? (asked by me)

None! Really disappointingly I managed to get photographs of pretty much everything I wanted too, including police officers, SFO airport and best of all a Homeland Security Sign Out Station.

Q2) Can you persuade an American that you know the Queen? (asked by someone)

I completely forgot to do this if I'm perfectly honest. I managed to persuade someone I knew Chris Martin though, which, let's face it, is a lot better. They started to catch on when I mentioned that I went to school with them, but when I told them that school years were different over here they seemed to accept it.

Q3) How annoying is it when you ask people if their lives are exactly like the OC (or something similar, asked by Sarah)

Fascinating American Fact: In California, know one seems to watch the OC. When I asked people about it they either declared it awful or said they'd never watched it. I think this is because there is a law in California banning people from watching shows that portray them as the rest of the world imagines because otherwise everyone would get really jealous that their lives weren't actually like that and rise up and try to take over and only Arnold Schwarzenegger could stop them. Which is quite handy really.

Q4) What's the most British thing you can find in San Francisco (asked by Gareth)

The Golden Gate Bridge

Is spectacularly impressive up close. I say up close, but really you're never up close to it, it's always hundreds of metres above you, or a mile ahead of you. The structure gives you vertigo like no other.

What's especially special about the Golden Gate Bridge is this wonderful plaque that can be found at the bottom of a statue of the creator of the bridge on the San Francisco side of things.

1870 Joseph B. Strauss 1938 "THE MAN WHO BUILT THE BRIDGE" Here at the golden gate is the eternal rainbow that he conceived and set to form a promise indeed that the race of man shall endure to the ages

Chief Engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge
1929 - 1937

Now, not wanting to be hyperbolic here, but isn't that the most blasphemous sign you've ever read in your whole life? For those not in the know, the promise that man would never being wiped out by a catastrophic natural disaster was a promise given by God to Noah and as a sign of the promise He put a rainbow in the sky. Mr Joseph B. Strauss however, doesn't think God's promise is good enough anymore and so has made his own promise to everyone; rainbows be damned, we have steel and concrete. Good news everyone! We don't need promises from God anymore, we've got promises from Joseph B. Strauss instead!

The irony now of course is that because the declaration on the statue only implicitly refers to the bible and God's promise no-one really gets it. Error.

Places

Grace Cathedral

Thank God for the book of common prayer. I went to the evensong at Grace Cathedral earlier this evening. The Cathedral is hardly the bastion of sound biblical Christianity but the evensong, thanks to the use of the order of service in the book of common prayer (old school edition), was good if a bit too long winded and hard to follow for my still time-confused brain. The man and boy choir was particularly impressive. The cathedral itself is impressive and probably worth a visit if you ever get the time.

The Cable Cars

Are everything you could imagine, only better.

The City Hall

You don't know this building exists and yet it's one of the grandest buildings I've ever seen in one of the most photographed cities in the world. I've no idea who does the PR for San Francisco but concentrating on the Golden Gate Bridge and The Cable Cars will only get you so far. Okay so that far is ridiculously far but still.

Union Square

Union Square, San Fran's equivalent to Trafalgar Square. For all extents and purposes they're the same place, just with cable cars for double deckers, American tourists for Japanese tourists and an inverted tramp to pigeon ratio. Pleasant to sit and write postcards in (yours got lost in the post).

Golden Gate Park

Add this to the pile of places that exist in San Francisco, by all accounts should be really famous and you've never heard of. The best thing about this park though isn't the Japanese Garden with the 180 degree bridge or the botanical garden with obese squirrels and gophers, the best thing is the Weekly Sunday Afternoon Outdoor Roller Disco. It's like the eighties never left. I tried to roller skate for a bit, kindly borrowing Alex's skates and it turns out that I'm as good as skating as I was at ice-skating. I could go forwards, turn slightly and stop. However, when I ice-skated everyone else could only do two out of the three above without falling over. Here everyone could do all three while doing the robot. I had nothing on them.

Lombard Street

The infamous wiggly street of San Francisco. They have all these exciting landmarks and sights and they choose to make Lombard Street the infamous one? It's a wiggly street. Wow.

Fisherman's Wharf

You can tell who the more sensible people are in San Francisco by what they say about Fisherman's Wharf. If they say it's a wonderful and entertaining place that you could spend all day at then they should be shot. Effectively it's Scarborough sea front but without those awesome two penny machines. If you find someone's who is going to San Francisco to see this drug them, steal their ticket and then drop them off in Blackpool for a week so they don't notice anything's wrong

semi-colon dash close parantheses

In an e-mail from me to Caff:

...hilariously witty comment ( ;–) ). Anyway hope that you're well...

What's the convention for putting a smiley face in parentheses? They should really decide on these things before introducing them to the rest of the world. Seriously, why does no-one think of the consequences of introducing new technological gimmicks into common English usage? If you're looking for the first signs of mankinds enslavement to our robot overlords, look no further.

Alcatraz

Slightly overcrowded and a bit lacking on the historical front outside of the museum at the base, it's still worth a visit. The views are immense and the wildlife is fantastic, you can see why it's a national park.

A teenager just next to me said "I thought it would be bigger" and she's right, it is smaller than you imagine from the films. The Rock makes it seem infinitely huge but in reality it's not that big. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 gets the scale much better.

The Flight Back

Was absolutely terrible. I arrived too early and had to sit around for an hour, I got put in the middle of a row with a woman on the left who closed the shutter on the window immediately after take off and didn't open it till we had practically landed and a woman on the right who extended her legs as far as possible under the chair in front and then fell asleep for nine hours. The person in front of me decided they wanted to recline their chair all the way back and put their legs as far as possible under their own chair, while the person behind me decided that they wanted to put their legs as far as possible under my chair. I was in the last row to be served food and the first row to be ignored by the air hostesses. Towards the end of the flight the plane passed over my parents house in Swansea and I couldn't get the shutter open to see or get out to look through another.

It wasn't all bad though, the baby two rows away didn't cry at all, the food was very good and Everyone Loves Raymond wasn't on the TV.

American Miscellany

Christian Youth Rally

There's a Christian Youth Rally in town, with some big shindig going on in an out of town stadium. Just on the news were pictures of people shouting that Christians are all bigotted hate-mongering racist, sexist, gay haters while these poor bemused teenagers from out of town just stared at them wide eyed. Apparently Delirious? are headlining the event tonight. The news anchor couldn't pronouce Delirious? either.

I was going to write something profound on this but Fred Clark beat me too it, which is probably a good thing seeing how well he writes.

Arab Strap

Are playing for free in a record store tomorrow, how good is that?