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September 30, 2006
Talk about...pop music
Rambling, late-night post alert. I think I'm going somewhere useful, stay with me.
Let's start with Mark Batterson, from about a week ago (and yes, all of the emphasis is his - Batterson writes like that):
Listen. We shouldn't be different for difference sake. We shouldn't try to make news to make news. We better do the right things for the right reasons or they will implode and backfire. But we need to buzz.In the words of Jesus: "Compel them to come in so my house will be full."
Churches that are serious about incarnation need to leverage culture. How do we use the emotional response to music? How do we use redemptive themes in movies?...
Using pop culture isn't pop gospel. Let's call it what it is: incarnation. One of our core values is: irrelevance is irreverence! Jesus used agrarian metaphors. We need to use news, songs, movies, TV shows, etc.
We think of langauge in terms of English, Greek, and Hebrew. But the language of today is pop culture. The language of today is felt need.
I'm up late tonight listening to music with my daughter. It's strange how our musical tastes dovetail. She has no problem with U2. I have no problem with Switchfoot. We're listening to Evanescence right now. Yeah, there are things that one likes that the other doesn't, but there's far more common ground than you'd expect to find in the standard father/daughter musical relationship.
And the fact that we found a lot of this common ground while listening to Trinity United Methodist's "The Power of Love" musical really makes it a powerful tool for us to talk about life. Most musicals that Trinity does takes a good number of popular songs - eight to ten, say - and puts theological context to them. "The Power of Love" would, obviously, be songs about love - how we hear love in the pop culture, how love ought to be, how love can truly change the world. And Amelia has a whole list of new favorite songs from that musical.
I tell you honestly, if you had told me ten years ago that my daughter and I would be having theological conversations over Dishwalla's "Counting Blue Cars", I would have told you that you were nuts.
My pastor is blogging now. You'll find him over there at the right, under the "BlogKid" heading. (I think this is fair, since I'm Jeff Eaton's blog-kid.) (There is actually a very good reason he considers himself "Chill Pastor".)
After a couple of weeks of testing the waters, he's issued what I think is a very clear statement of intent. I'm right there with him - I grew up on MTV (back when MTV played videos) the same way he did. And I will mock his taste in music, and he will mock mine right back, but he and I are both looking at pop culture and seeing that "felt need" that Batterson was talking about up there. There are so many hearts that, in so many ways, are looking for something deeper from life.
Sometimes the artist knows exactly what they're going for, and understands why they're putting the theology in the song that they are. Sometimes the artist doesn't have a clue how they're getting used by God - all they know is that they feel something passionately, and that passion has to come out in the music. But music - all music, even the cheesiest popular music imaginable - is ultimately God's creation, not ours. And he has all the music we hear in place for a purpose, a purpose in our lives and a purpose in the lives of people around us. If we don't listen and look for God in it, we miss the point.
When I was in high school, one of the first bands I went completely bonkers over was Mr. Mister. And although Welcome To The Real World was the big smash hit album and "Kyrie" and "Broken Wings" were all over the radio, I didn't really connect with that album until later. But when I heard a song called "Something Real" played on my favorite pop radio station, I had to have that album. Absolutely had to have it.
The album is called Go On.... I wore out the tape completely. I found the CD a few years ago. It's on my desk at school. I still cherish that album as much now as I did in 1988. I really have a hard time imagining that it's nearly 20 years old - other music I have from that era sounds completely dated, but that album does not.
(Even if the video effects from "Something Real" are, well, horribly dated. Trust me, in 1988, my brain was breaking at how cutting-edge that video was.)
I didn't love the album because it was the most popular - compared to Welcome To The Real World, Go On... crashed and burned. I didn't love the album because the music was tight - although it was. I didn't even love that album because Richard Page turned out to be a Christian - in 1988, I wasn't sure how good of a thing that was.
I loved that album because it let me know that I was not the only person searching.
Nearly 20 years on, I see so many others searching for the same things.
Everyone's looking for something real
Everyone's taking all they can steal
Brother to sister, look at each other face-to-face
There's something missing here in this human race...
Brother to sister, hold on to each other with all we've got
Our time is coming if you're ready or not, if you're ready or not
(YouTube permalink for "Something Real".)
Posted by Chuck at 12:41 AM | TrackBack
September 28, 2006
A reason to like Facebook
If you're reading this on Facebook, you see my reason.
These big-blog posts are now, by RSS feed, appearing on my Facebook profile page as "notes". There's also a comment mechanism on the Facebook page; hence, I have my long-awaited comment solution. (Feel free to comment on Facebook in exultation.)
As social-networking tools go, I vastly prefer Facebook to MySpace. The current negative publicity aside, I think Facebook is infinitely better coded, with better interaction tools, than the corresponding tools on MySpace, and Facebook doesn't have the lowest-common-denominator feel that MySpace has. (The only killer app MySpace has working right now are all the bands with MySpace pages, and y'know, honestly, PureVolume is getting about as much use lately, and is overall better.) The fact that Facebook got is start as a college networking site rings true to my academic heart, as well.
And Facebook is in the process of opening up to the non-academic world. I can give out invites to people to join the network now. (Those of you who know me, if you want an invite, send me an e-mail and ask. I'll even let you be my friend. How L33T is that?)
I wonder if I can start a Rome, GA network...
Posted by Chuck at 08:53 PM | TrackBack
September 26, 2006
Wondering about the source of the meme
First off, I genuinely want to make sure Ashley receives her credit for pointing this out to me, for I had never seen this before:
Dilbert's "Salary Theorem" states that "Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives, sales people, accountants and especially liberal arts majors." This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two well known postulates:Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power. Postulate 2: Time is Money. As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time.
Since: Knowledge = Power, then Knowledge = Work / Time, and Time = Money, then Knowledge = Work / Money.
Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work / Knowledge.
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.
This is certifiably TRUE. Anybody who has spent any length of time in an underfunded laboratory at a major research university can attest to this, and further, they can attest to this with no small measure of bitterness.
Of course, I can't leave well enough alone. It was quite clearly a quote, but unattributed. I started wondering where the heck this came from.
Because it refers to Dilbert's Salary Theorem, I had to hit up Scott Adams' blog to see if he'd written that recently. No dice.
Well, who HAS used that phrase? The list is HUGE. Darn near every instance of the derivation that I can see is uncited in any way, shape, or form - it seems like it's something that's been sent to inboxes for years, and appeared on blogs, without anybody ever thinking about who wrote it first. Click and Clack credit it to a Mike Yost, but I've not seen any other evidence around the web for his name attached to that proof, so I don't know where they got it from.
Because I am stubborn (especially when I have plenty of other work to do), I click through SEVERAL search pages and wind up finding a hit to a quick-hit article in from The Motley Fool dated July, 1997, attributed to some Robert Sheard. It (re?)states the proof, not from a scientist or engineer's viewpoint, but from an investor's viewpoint. Which also makes sense if you're a Wall Street investor, and again an embittered Wall Street investor at that. So maybe that's the original author.
I believe that until I see the .sig of this confocal microscopy listserv post - from 1996.
Blast.
Well, it's at least a 10-year-old proof, but I'm no closer to knowing who originally wrote it, and I just trashed a perfectly good academic hour looking. Yay me. If you have any clue, feel free to drop me an e-mail.
(And if you don't know what replaces "stuff" in my e-mail address, you're a bot who doesn't need to be e-mailing me anyway.)
Posted by Chuck at 09:29 AM | TrackBack
September 24, 2006
Clarity, George Orwell, and torture
There are two things that are bothering me every time I turn on this computer.
One is the load of work that I haven't gotten done and the load of people I need to talk to and haven't.
The second is this George Orwell essay entitled "Politics and the English Language".
In my uneducated state, I first heard of this essay on Friday when I was listening to NPR (as I was driving back from Athens). In one of a series of "You Must Read This" essays on All Things Considered, Lawrence Wright argued the importance of the essay, especially in this time where "politics and the English language once again seem to be at odds". And many of the arguments laid out - that the English language has been neutered by, whether carelessly or cynically, a writer using words without regard to their actual meaning - make a great deal of sense.
In regards to the problems with "modern writing" circa 1946, Orwell offers two cases in point:
The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.
I really wonder why I haven't read this before. Sudennly "Orwellian doublespeak" has a whole new meaning to me.
And is this a time where Orwellian doublespeak is finding more and more widespread use? As if Wright's essay didn't resonate with me enough, Andrew Sullivan has spent the past three days absolutely pounding both the Bush administration and the Congress for striking an "agreement" to "clarify" what "alternative interrogation methods" are allowed for terror suspects. Sullivan offers a series of "clarifications" in the Sunday Times today, taking neutral names for these "coercive interrogation techniques" and calling them what they really are, citing other "wimps" and "liberals" on the way...
“There is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands only while being interrogated — because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person down.“It can be set up in another way — so that the prisoner sits down during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations. (A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn’t lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing is enough to deprive a person of all his strength and to force him to testify to anything at all.”
What wimp wrote that? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who documented “long time standing” as a method used by the Soviet Union in the gulag.
I'm nervous about living in this time in history. I feel like just hammering out thoughts on a laptop, or standing in front of people and yammering about physics or chemistry or even theology, isn't doing nearly enough.
I suppose using clear language is a start to changing things. I suppose encouraging people who are influenced by me to use clear language is another.
But I still feel like I can be, should be doing more.
Meanwhile, I still have e-mails to answer.
(You should read the whole essay yourself if you have any interest in English communication. Here is a version in HTML, courtesy of Mt. Holyoke; and here's a very nice printable .pdf, courtesy of Stanford, for you to clip and save.)
Posted by Chuck at 05:22 PM | TrackBack
September 18, 2006
Methodist blogosphere joy and happiness
After a three-month hiatus, as of last Friday, WesleyBlog is back.
(I suppose I ought to add myself to the Methodist blogroll sometime.)
UPDATE: Not only is WesleyBlog back online, but out of the demise of the WesleyDaily collab site, I got a link to this Methodist-blogger that looks like he's going to be well worth the time spent. Not only does he offer a useful Methodist blogosphere roundup, but he also links this update on the (ahem) growth of the Methodist denomination (don't worry, we're still behind the Baptists) and this image o' humor for anybody who has ever had to deal with the Book of Discipline. I laughed, anyway.
Posted by Chuck at 07:06 AM | TrackBack
September 14, 2006
I find it very difficult...
...to deal with this fundamental truth.
(Hat tip to Hal McCleskey.)
Posted by Chuck at 06:58 AM | TrackBack
September 07, 2006
Apropos of absolutely nothing
Ya think when the Washington Post makes a front page story out of the Facebook news feed, Facebook's "great product" might be dealing with just a WEE bit of backlash?
Two words, Facebook coders: Opt out. The "news feed" IS great so long as I get to choose which events go up on it and which events don't, and you don't set my default to "everything's on it". If somebody doesn't like a news feed turning up on their page, they should be able to turn it off. If somebody doesn't like their events turning up on my news feed, they should be able to turn it off. Just. That. Simple.
Of course, the one good thing about this is that suddenly everybody's wondering about what they're doing on Facebook and who can find out about it. And yes, this is a good thing. Just because there is a "news feed" that slams all your Facebook friends and groups and wallposts in front of me now doesn't mean I couldn't find all this out with a couple of clicks before. As a general rule, we ARE too quick to say something or reveal something about ourselves online. All this is doing is making crystal-clear to you, ye Facebook denizen, how easily that something you reveal to one person in the wrong way can be revealed to the world.
I don't like the News Feed, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't find this chaos and angst that Facebook has unleashed positively entertaining.
(UPDATE: Well, at least part of the "opt-out" message has been received.)