I keep seeing a meme that claims that smart cities, phones, etc stands for “Surveillance, Monitoring, Analysis, etc, etc …”

Smart does not stand for that. It is not an acronym.

Smart cities simply means making resources easier and cheaper to access, and travel, communication and workflow more efficient.

There will be real issues in how this is managed. There are risks to privacy and there may be barriers, as in additional costs, to the freedom of movement we now take for granted. These will be important to recognise and address. But simply making stuff up, as in “SMART stands for…” does not help, and reduces the credibility of those who raise genuine concerns.

This kind of baseless and inevitably incorrect prediction makes some Christian groups look like idiots.

This kind of baseless and inevitably incorrect prediction make another group look like idiots.

From the great Babylon Bee. Why should shoplifters have to bear the increased cost and risks of travelling outside their local areas to steal? Unfair! Break the system!

The primary risk indicators for suicide, accounting for sixty percent of all attempted and completed suicides, are a history of self harm including previous attempts, and intimate partner issues and family breakdown.

This is hardly news. But it is a reminder to be especially aware of increased risk of suicide for friends and family who are going through relationship difficulties or family break-up.

Another, and often under-stated or even forgotten risk, is simply being male. Men and boys make up seventy-five percent of all completed suicides in Australia.

Sellout concerts and four hit singles have fans and critics alike saying Two Times Shy is Australia’s hottest new band. Tearing Up Inside, their third single, is on Youtube as audio only – no video.

I used AI to create this video for Two Times Shy’s Tearing Up Inside. It is not authorised by Two Times Shy or any way official!

Prompts for image creation were: grief, nightmare, dark, betrayal, torn + each line of the lyrics. I wanted something nighmarish and unsettling. It is that, and may be very different from the band’s vision.

For more of Two Times Shy’s music visit www.2xshy.com , or their Youtube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/@twotimesshyband

I was very sorry to hear this evening of the death of Barry Humphries. He died in hospital this morning. He was a rare comic genius.

An interesting story here from a former Presbyterian theologian and historian, whose studies of history and the early Church led him to the Catholic faith. His journey mirrors mine. I attended AOG churches in my teens, was a regular member of ISCF (Inter School Christian Fellowship) and invited my friends. After school and a couple of break (well, manual work) years, I studied theology, history and and biblical studies for four years plus post-grad. Then I was in full-time ministry for twenty-five years.

Ultimately my reading of the early Church fathers, and comparison of the faith of the early Church with that taught by protestant Churches made it clear that the early Church was the Catholic Church, and that the reformation was far from a reformation.

A friend of mine went to court a few days ago to challenge a speeding fine.

He didn’t address the question of whether he had been speeding or not. Rather, he noted that the speed camera which snapped him passing was illegally parked, in an emergency stopping only zone. Police are required to comply with the laws they enforce. This means the speed camera was illegally parked. The evidence obtained by the camera was obtained illegally, and therefore cannot be used in court.

It is not a silly argument. Judgement was reserved. I will let you know the result.

Mainland China (The People’s Republic of China – PRC) insists it owns Taiwan. Taiwan says it is an independent nation. The PRC finds this embarrassing. The PRC does not like to be embarrassed.

Communist China has claimed Taiwan since 1949, when the Kuomintang began governing the island after the fall of Japan in 1945. Nearly ninety years have passed. Why should anything change now?

The answer is fourfold. First, there is considerable and under-reported unrest in China. The PRC’s ongoing mistreatment of the Uighurs and other ethnic and cultural minorities, its mishandling and continuing obfuscation of the COVID crisis, the severe financial fallout of that mishandling, jealousy amongst ordinary citizens of the greater individual wealth and comfort of people in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and ongoing restrictive rules on movement and social interaction, are leading to increasing dissatisfaction with the central government. The PRC needs a distraction, preferably one which will give it a victory and restore confidence in the party and the state.

Secondly, the USA, which is the only country which could help Taiwan withstand an attempted invasion by the PRC, is weaker, both materially and in resolve, than at any time since the Second World War. The US economy has been damaged almost as badly as that of China. It has weak and equivocating executive leadership. US armed forces have been seriously depleted by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the transfer of billions of dollars worth of military hardware to Ukraine, and their own woke agenda-distracted and battle-inexperienced senior officers.

Thirdly, US leadership and the US public have deeply entangled trade ties with the PRC. Far more so than with Russia, for example. For a number of reasons, including its abandonment of energy independence and local manufacturing, the US is dependent on China for a large proportion of its consumer products.

Finally, the US, along with much of the Western world, is worried about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and the severe decline in the relationship between the US and Russia. There is a sense that “We can beat China. We can beat Russia. But we can’t beat both.” Entry into another major conflict in East Asia, even if coming to the aid of a friend, would be deeply unpopular and deeply alarming to large sections of US society.

The PRC leadership knows all this. It has also heard President Biden’s assurances that the US would (probably) come to the aid of Taiwan. And it knows that even if the US were willing to help, by the time US forces got there, the PRC would be in effective control, and that any attempt to remove them would be massively destructive of lives and infrastructure.

Communist China is not worried. We should be.

It may seem a small thing, but what does it say when a shooter or other violent criminal’s race is mentioned every time he or she is white, but never when the perpetrator is of another ethnicity? I am struggling to think of any reason for this, other than to stir up race based resentment, or to hide just how much violent crime is committed by members of some other group. Either mention race every time, or not at all.

This is just the latest example:

You are not your mental illness. You are not your failures, your hurts, your fears or temptations. Who are you? You are loved.

Learn to weld, shoe horses, build a house, make a road…

Over 160,000 tech jobs in the US lost in 2023 as at the 20th of April.

I am twenty-five years older than Cleopatra was when she died. I’m not black either. I don’t care really, if it’s fiction, do what you want, but if you call it history, it should be history, so Netflix can keep their black Anne Boleyn and their black Cleopatra. And yes, I’d object just as much if biographies of Martin Luther King Jnr or Louis Armstrong portrayed them as white men.

Egyptians object too …

I always cringe when I see people write “Doctors can’t explain…”

This just means the writer cannot imagine an explanation and assumes no one can, and hasn’t actually asked any doctors.

Ditto for young earth creationists when they say “Evolutionists can’t explain…”

No, they just haven’t asked any. That is not to say there are no questions or issues with the neo-Darwinian synthesis. But just as with vaccines and health, these are questions that will be answered by real scientists, not people passing on memes on social media.

It is right to want to be as well-informed as possible on key health and science matters. At the same time, we must always acknowledge that we who do not have advanced degrees in a specialist area of science know less than those who do, and refrain from jumping to the conclusion that medical researchers, palaeontologists, geologists, etc, are stupid or being paid off if they say something that does not accord with our previous opinion.

If you completed high school science, and have an interest in the origins and development of life, I recommend Jonathan Wells’s book Zombie Science. It is a sensible, science-based discussion of some of the problems for macro-evolution, in an easy to read lay person friendly style. Click the cover pic for link to buy.

Following four hit singles and a sell-out concert at one of Brisbane’s premier nightclub venues, fans and critics alike are saying Queensland band Two Times Shy could be Australia’s next big thing.

You can stream their singles in high definition on their website 2xshy.com and from there, visit Spotify or Apple Music to download or stream anywhere.