Ramblin' on my mind

Progress has a way of making sense

2008-04-01T16:03:00.002-04:00

Four years ago in Humanities 303 I had to read My Philosophy of Industry by Henry Ford, originally published in 1929, which had grand chapter titles like "Machinery, the new Messiah," "Success", and "Why I believe in progress". In "Machinery the new Messiah" Ford predicts that one day people will repair their bodies like they do their boilers.

Apparently such things are in the works and Barbara Walters is going to tell us all about it.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Longevity/story?id=4520397&page=1

Propaganda?

2007-09-27T19:05:00.000-04:00

I've decided to start using this place again. It looks like blogger has made it a little bit easier to use, and I should evaluate my world and write more.

Maybe it's just me, but these videos put out by Freedomwatch.org seem like pure propaganda. They upset me everytime I see them. Is it ever appropriate to exploit a soldier's death or loss to try and sway public opinion? The line of reasoning seems to go something like, "this person's crying and they still want to support an unjust war, why don't you? If we don't invest another $200 billion and 100,000 more soldiers into making Iraq a secular democracy just like us, those who have died won't be honored and all the terrorists will come after us again!" I'm not saying we need to pull out now and not look back, but I think "victory" as they speak of it is a little unrealistic.

Maybe I'm reading into them too much, but it seems like they make some far-fetched statements and use fear to support their political motives. I guess it's nothing new, but like I said, this version really bugs me. Feel free to share your thoughts.

You can find more commercials at www.freedomswatch.org

I was named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year"...

2006-12-18T17:25:00.000-05:00

Hey! Guess what? I was named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year"...... (you were too).

Each year, Time devotes some ink to the person who has had the greatest influence on the world in the past year. Apparently it was us. Using a phrase that sounds like something borrowed from the likes of Thomas Friedman, internet users and their importance in what they call the digital democracy is the reason that we were all named "person of the year".
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

It certainly is an interesting idea.

Over the Rhine

2006-12-10T00:48:00.000-05:00

"When they blow Gabriel’s horn
Rip fiction from fact
I want to get caught
In some radical act

Of love and redemption
The sound of warm laughter
Some true conversation
With a friend or my lover

Somewhere down the road
We’ll lift up our glass
And toast the moment
And moments past

The heartbreak and laughter
The joy and the tears
The scary beauty
Of what’s right here"
Here It Is - Over the Rhine (Snow Angels)

I went to an Over the Rhine Christmas Concert tonight, and it was absolutely amazing. It was the fourth time I've seen them since three years ago when they stopped at Geneva on their Christmas tour. They are my favorite band. Their new Christmas album is really amazing. It's full of warm, jazz inspired americana. I think it was written to be played late at night, and meant to be accompanied by a hot beverage or a glass of wine. Almost the whole album is original music. Some of the tracks remind me of the Christmas classics from the 40's and 50's jazz/big band era (Darlin' (Christmas is Coming), Snowed In With You), Goodbye Charles, the album's only instrumental track, is a tribute to Vince Guaraldi and his Charlie Brown Christmas album. All the tracks, in typical Over the Rhine fashion, provide beautiful reflection on life and love, and call us to be ready for the coming of God. It is a wonderful album, and you should own it. After tonight, it has easily become a holiday essential.

Consumerism's Holy Day (a series of slightly connected thoughts)

2006-11-25T18:48:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I presently work in a FYE store in Delaware. Overall, it's not a bad job. I like working with people and I like music and movies (we also sell video games, but I neither know anything about them nor care). Today is (I wrote this yesterday) the most insane day of the year for those of us in retail. My store doesn't do any of those really ridiculous deals like Best Buy or Target, but people absolutely flooded our store as soon as it opened. In our first two hours, we made as much money as we would on a good Saturday any other time of the year.

I find it terribly bizarre that people will get up at 4 A.M. to stand in lines and be the first ones to enter a store where they will have top choice at massive amounts of crap. Sure, I like stuff, probably more than I should, but I don't like it enough to get up that early to spend money on it.

At one point, the A.I. DuPont High School marching band even paraded around the mall (making it impossible to hear anything anyone said to you).

Throughout college I read a lot of good books about worldview and present-day culture. Many of them discussed the fact that consumerism was really influential and was redifining the way we did everything. Some even said that we have a religious devotion to consuming (after today I can definitely see that, people getting up extra early to get to the cathedral, special music performing during prime hours). Perhaps I just see things as I want to, but over the past year or so, I've become more and more convinced that to consume and be consumed really is how our culture defines the meaning of human life. It kinda scares me.

I've been trying to think about what it means to give and to receive, partly because of Thanksgiving, partly because I have realized I'm not great at doing either, and most definitely because I've been reading this book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Mirolslav Volf).

So, what does it mean to give good gifts? What makes a gift meaningful? How do we give and receive gifts well? How do we keep from getting wrapped up in the consumerism that's defining everything around us? This is a discussion I think we need to have.

Time's Best Inventions

2006-11-10T11:37:00.000-05:00

I was checking out Time magazine today and they had this crazy section on best inventions of 2006. Some of them are cool, but others just weird. Youtube was given top spot in the section. While it's a cool website, shouldn't it really be attributed to Al Gore? He's like "Father of the Internet" or something right? Here were some personal highlights from the list.

This "car" is impressive with its 108 mpg fuel efficiency, but I don't know how it would fair in a crash test.

For those who's car batteries die often and are afraid of electrocuting themselves everytime they see jumper cables, Black & Decker has the perfect solution.

This is is seriously straight out of a movie. "Steve Zissou, where are you?" We all live in my dolphin mobile.

Robo-nurse.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, which of the seven dwarves just pulled into my driveway?

For the Don Quixote in all of us. It's good for the environment too.

"Really officer, I only had one drink..." Son, you're drunk as an albino!"Forget breathalizers, apparently your skin's sensitivity to light can be used to determine your blood alcohol level.

Funny, we determined it cruel for the state to electrocute people, but for the right price, anyone can electrocute a lobster in their home.

Finally, perhaps the strangest invention I came across. The hug shirt. That's right, a shirt that simulates a loved one's hug via bluetooth connection with your cell phone. Can you imagine walking down the street when all of the sudden you feel someone's arms wrap around you and the warmth of another body. You may think "oh, Aunt Maude, it's so nice to see you, it's been so long" or "crap, I'm being mugged or kidnapped in a very friendly way". After a few seconds of excitement or anxiety, you would hopefully remember that you were wearing that special shirt, and that Aunt Maude had only actually text messaged you. Bizarre. I better publish my thoughts on consumerism, technology, knowledge, and intimacy soon. I hope they don't go too far with this bluetooth-human-simulation technology. Plus, what if people you don't like have your phone number and start virtually hugging you all the time. Does that count as sexual harassment? Can a restraining hold off the power of bluetooth technology?

Here's the article's main page. Other highlights include the levitating bed, solar powered everything, and the super special vegetable cleaner.

Happy Reformation Day!

2006-10-31T23:11:00.000-05:00

"When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, "Repent" (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance."

It is with the words above that Martin Luther began his protest against the Roman Catholic Church. 489 years ago, today, Luther posted his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenburg (What!?! He nailed 95 pieces of crap to the church door? - I was actually asked this question once.) While Luther didn't intend on starting a new church, his 95 theses were quickly printed and distributed and became quite popular in Germany, where the Pope and his Italian friends weren't as well respected. Go check a church history book out of the Library and read some more, I reccomend Church History in Plain Language, by Bruce Shelley. And go celebrate by protesting something or drinking an age appropriate German beverage.

In other news... today we mourn the 489th anniversary of what many consider the biggest split in church history. Historically, it's second only to the Schism of 1054 when the Cardinal Humbert delivered the bull to the Hagia Sophia, thus splitting the Eastern Orthodox church from the Roman Catholic. Today we've split so much that most American Evangelicals have neither an understanding of the word "catholic" or any sense of church history.

Twin Dragons

2006-10-25T23:00:00.000-04:00

Because you probably don't watch enough Korean film, I posted this for everyone.

I won Best Actor for my work in this film.

A little playlisting

2006-10-23T00:56:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about music lately. I like music a lot, and I work with it everyday, which is fun and frustrating. So, here's my fall playlist. It contains a little old and a little new. I hope you find it interesting or inspiring or something. I'll probably have a little more to say about music later this week (you know, after the new Jibbs album comes out).

Nobody Number One - Over the Rhine
Jacksonville - Sufjan Stevens
Eli, the Barrow Boy - the Decemberists
Fewer Broken Pieces - David Bazan
Trouble - Ray LaMontagne
Hurt - Johnny Cash
Baby I - Amy Millan
Not California - Hem
My Good Gal - Old Crow Medicine Show
Little Flowers - Denison Witmer
Out Loud - Mindy Smith
In My Life - Johnny Cash
Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! - Sufjan Stevens
Chinese Translation - M.Ward
A New Law - Derek Webb
Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
Jesus Are You Real - Mason Jennings
We're All In This Together - Old Crow Medicine Show
Pittsfield - Sufjan Stevens
Light Up Ya Lighter - Michael Franti & Spearhead
Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show
Seven Swans - Sufjan Stevens
Cruel and Pretty - Over the Rhine

There are a couple songs that need to be added, "Sundress" by Ben Kweller, and "The Crane Wife 3" and "Sons & Daughters" by the Decemberists.

Mommy, where do lightning bolts come from?

2006-10-17T16:06:00.000-04:00

Jo told me about this story. It's pretty bizarre, and raises so many questions, like "does she still spark when she 'drops the kids off at the pool'?"
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20548077-13762,00.html

2006-10-13T00:08:00.000-04:00

I wrote this last week sometime after coming home from Geneva. I think it will work as a good first post.

Sometimes I have wondered if college was really just a dream. In reality, it’s only been about five months since I graduated, but being almost completely removed from the place and people that made up my college experience have caused it to lose its immediacy. These past few months I’ve been trying to think about what it was that changed me during my college years; and whether or not that something is stuck in Beaver Falls. So I suppose going into this past weekend at Geneva I had some ideas about this, but really needed to climb back into it. I really wanted to be in the place I was and with the people I love to try and see anew the life I have been living.

And in the midst of this, in the midst of the lives of friends and the Geneva campus and the city of Beaver Falls, I was reminded of brokenness. I saw and felt brokenness. And I was reminded of Christ who enters into my brokenness, as well as that of my friends, and that of the campus, and that of the city of Beaver Falls, and that of the whole universe. I was reminded of the Christ who made me new, is making me new, and will make me new. And I found that the thing which most fundamentally shaped me in my college years was the same truth, that Jesus Christ is Lord, which shaped me before college, and which is shaping me now.

My understanding of what it means to be a Christian, what it looks like to follow Jesus in all areas of life fundamentally changed during my college years. I suppose it could be said that I more fully understand the gospel now as opposed to when I began college. In my college years I read the Bible and began to find myself in the midst of a story much larger than I could imagine, and made more sense of life than anything else I’d ever understood. And thankfully, I found myself in the midst of a community in which I began to understand what it means to break bread and praise God and serve. In those times, Jesus became very real.

Now. I’m clearly not in that same place and living in those same situations. But my brokenness is still real, and so is the Jesus who meets me in the midst of it. I really miss those people and those places. There’s a part of me that never wants my college experience to recess into the fuzzy images of time long ago in my mind. However, while being at Geneva last weekend, I definitely felt as though it was no longer where I belonged. It is a good place, and I am so grateful for what God has done through it. But I’m somewhere else now, and words like community will hopefully take new form. I don’t know what it will look like or where it will happen, but God’s doing something and I’ve got to learn to be ready for it.

I hope that though distance separates us, my friends and I will be able to fellowship, hold each other accountable, and share in the joy and challenge of life. We’re part of one body and that will never change, though it may look different. And I move forward with some confidence because it is foolish of me to think that college was the best thing God could ever have for me. And I look forward to the day when we will all be together again, and all our brokenness will be wiped away and our fellowship will be more real than ever.

So those are my rainy afternoon musings on Geneva and change. I’m sure I’ll have more to say further on down the road. Peace.