If you don't understand Dutch

If you don't understand Dutch, this shouldn't be funny. But somehow it is:

Magical funk

Expialidocious. Strangely haunting. Reminds me of Philip Glass.

Thanks to that master of cool, David Ould.

The Silence of the Blog

Things will be quiet on blog for a bit more than a month. I've got a staff conference next week and then off to Sweden for my sister's wedding celebration! Computer access will be restricted.

Sorry about that faithful readers, and see you towards the end of July.

Your news photos retouched

A top ten of digitally doctored photos.

Thanks Roughth.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness' sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work, and card and ward,
And font and front, and word and sword,
And do and go, and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

Keep praying!

So, persevering in prayer is an essential characteristic of prayer. It shows, not only that we really desire what we are asking for, but that we also believe that God will answer.

Broughton Knox makes the point, with examples, in today's Sola Panel post.

OFFENDETH

If this counted as a word in the game Lexulous (the facebook ripoff of Scrabble) I would have scored 266 points just now.

If thy lexulous game offendeth thee, pluck it out.

That'th what I saith,anyway.

Thuffering thuccotash!

Farewelling the cat

We've owned Grover, the daughter of Rover since 1991. She moved with us from Brunswick to Carlton, back to Brunswick, and then in 1999 made the big trip north to Sydney.

This morning we came out and our cat, who was once medium sized and quick witted but in the last few years has become as skinny as a skinny thing, and arthritic. This morning she was breathing heavily and had suddenly lost the use of her back legs.

The girls and I gathered to say goodbye on the veranda and Fiona has just driven off to the vet with her.

Goodbye Grover.

Psalm 68:1

God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered; and those who hate him shall flee before him.

If that is so, then it makes sense to make peace with him.

The swine has no clothes

Took Ruby to see Dr Big Trev yesterday. He hasn't seen any patients with swine flu. Well he wouldn't, would he, seeing as how this is NSW.

But it's pretty clear that this is not a major pandemic of the sort that kills people. In fact, it's been pretty clear for quite a while now, when you look at the figures for Mexico where it all started.

This is good, but has involved incredible amounts of expense in the process. Imagine if that effort had gone into helping fight some of the third world diseases that actually kill people.

Bonhoeffer on psychologists (and the like)

Found a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on theologica which happens to express some of the problem with getting worked up about sociological distinctions like Gen X/Gen Y and the like. I already linked it on the Sola Panel but I'm rescuing it from comment oblivion by reproducing it here:

The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus.

The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is.

Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this.

-Bonhoeffer. Click on the Theologica link for the extended quote and the reference.

Got two tickets to ACDC

So Fi and me
We get to see
ACDC
but not for free.