December 2008
44 posts
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-12-21) →
Bon Iver (59)
Matt Haeck (32)
Hammock (30)
Ray LaMontagne (17)
Beirut (15)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“Icarus! The Angels Sing”. Magical...
8-Bit Jesus: Full Album Release | Doctor Octoroc →
“Just in time for Christmas, it’s the full version of 8-Bit Jesus: Classic Christmas Songs in the Style of Classic NES Games.” Free download, fully awesome.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-12-21) →
Bon Iver (54)
Matt Haeck (32)
Ray LaMontagne (17)
Hammock (15)
Beirut (15)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Winter Solstice, 2008
“Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of...
WatchAnd in a restaurant kitchen, no less.
Efterklang - “Echo Wave” - LA BLOGOTHEQUE
Truth is the Issue
“What always fascinates me about these arguments is that, in their focus on how proponents of different religions can get along, they invariably forget to raise the issue that for most religious believers is the central one: truth. If “intolerance” of other religions means denying that they are equally valid means of accessing the divine, that’s only a bad thing if all religions are equally...
Keep It Secret?
Christopher complains anyway, and he does so in the year of our Lord, 2008. He does so on the threshold of the next year of our Lord.
‘If the totalitarians cannot bear to abandon their adoration of their various Dear Leaders, can they not at least arrange to hold their ceremonies in private?’
Now I fully understand the request. Can you not arrange to take your faith indoors, and make...
Does your living follow from your thinking?
“We have already seen the extent to which Nietzsche’s later thought is driven by fear, but above all else he fears being deceived in faith, hope, and love—after all, all three states of mind open one to deception—and would rather suffer anything than the humiliation of being fooled. This may be said to be the very origin of the hermeneutics of suspicion, the adolescent fear of being...
The Local Flavor of Helsinki’s Food Revival -... →
Couldn’t ever afford to eat at any of these places, but it’s a decent story nonetheless.
The Life of a Christian Academic
“That brings me to the second point: perseverance. Nobody ever claimed that engaging one’s mind and applying it to the deepest things of the faith was ever going to be easy. in fact, it adds just one more dimension to the numerous temptations to idolatry and infidelity: the worship of the mind, or the supervisor, or the scholarly consensus, or even of a particular idea or set of ideas for...
Apple Announces Last Year of Christmas →
(via Gruber)
For the Individualists in Us All
Not the songs themselves, but just the fact that their respective albums (or lack thereof) didn’t make it onto the Big List. Each of these tracks is one of my big favorites from the past 12 months, and for good reason: they’re each stellar.
Derek Webb: “This Too Shall Be Made Right”. While the album is pretty loud, this is vintage Webb in sound and lyric, and if...
What a Dirtyminded World
“Second, the use of David and Jonathan’s friendship as paradigm (or potential paradigm) for homosexual relations is indicative of the deeply sexualised nature of our society, where the language of ‘love’ and ‘sex’ have so coalesced as to be virtually inseparable. It is also ironic that, in a piece which attacks conservative Christians for reading themselves...
What is the Image of God in Us?
“Human beings, left to themselves, have imagined God in all sorts of shapes; but – although there were one or two instances, in Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt, of gods being pictured as boys – it took Christianity to introduce the world to the idea of God in the form of a baby: in the form of complete dependence and fragility, without power or control. If you stop to think about it, it is still...
In the Season of Giving Gifts
“From these two convictions—that the happy person is self-sufficient and that virtue is the product of struggle—almost everything in Nietzsche’s later thought derives, by an iron and implacable logic. … Solitude is a key virtue [for Nietzsche], then, because it preserves the integrity of the omnicompetent self: It serves as a prophylactic against the ‘loss of the personal core of...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-12-14) →
New Song (41)
Matt Haeck (32)
Ray LaMontagne (27)
Sigur Rós (20)
Waterdeep (19)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
2008 Albums of the (my) Year
It’s now time to put out the end-of-year lists that everybody does, so here goes. As with all previous years, I caveat this with: I don’t buy a ton of new stuff every year, so these lists (albums, books) are assembled from stuff I read or heard for the first time this calendar year. Otherwise, I’d have about one item on each list. Onward.
Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago. I...
Jellyfish gone wild ruin tourist spots, report... →
SEE, I TOLD YOU ALL THIS WOULD HAPPEN. THE CLOWNS ARE NEXT.
WatchPre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life (“Going east, to toil!” via RSC @ the Heidelblog)
Being a theologian of glory, naturally
“It’s the Icarus inside of me that wants a God’s-eye view to fly to heaven just to see You standing in the nude and Plato on my shoulder sits denying flesh and blood to scheme and form You with my wit to treat You as a what…”
[Matt Haeck, “Icarus” from Pair of Sirens]
“The real theme [of LOTR] for me is about something much more permanent and...”
– » J. R. R. Tolkien, “From a letter to Joanna de Bortadano,” in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 246.
The Reformer's Nightmare
viz:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this;...
So, umm... yeah.
Anybody know how to correct months of Last.fm data?
It was brought to my attention this morning that my piped-in weekly top 5 playlist had “NewSong” at the top. I wouldn’t have a problem with this if it meant, as I believed it did, that I was listening to this a lot. However, it appears that Last.fm caught my iTunes data for all those plays and thought I meant these guys.
...
Words associated with Christianity and British... →
It’s as if the British have stopped reading every book they ever wrote before 1970. How can you expect kids to get along without a definition of “bacon”?
“Watching ‘The Sound of Music’ is like being beaten to death by a Hallmark card.”
– Douglas McLure, as quoted by Christopher Plummer (Captain Von Trapp) in his new memoir. (via portraitoftheartistasayoungman)
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-12-7) →
NewSong (58)
Charles McBurney & Choir (18)
Waterdeep (15)
Ray LaMontagne (9)
Derek Webb (6)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“No, Frodo ‘failed.’ It is possible that once the ring was destroyed...”
– » J. R. R. Tolkien, “From a Letter to Miss J. Burn (draft),” in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 252. (Emphasis original)
After 500 years, still calling good what is evil →
A great post by Scott Clark on the Pope’s latest words on justification and the theology of the cross. I wonder though, if Benedict would still say the same about Luther’s idea (“Luther’s ‘faith alone’ is true if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love”) if he had read the following (I’m guessing he has, though):
“22. For faith alone receives...
“But many of those devoted to the Arts privately desire nothing more than a...”
– » J. R. R. Tolkien, “From a letter to Michael George Tolkien, 28 October 1966,” in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 370.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-11-30) →
NewSong
Amiina
Matt Haeck
Ray LaMontagne
Waterdeep
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
"You did not come down..."
“This revolution [Modern thought] disembeds us from the cosmic sacred; altogether, and not just partially and for certain people as in earlier post-Axial moves. … notions of flourishing remain under surveillance in our modern moral view: they have to fit with the demands of the moral order itself, of justice, equality, non-domination, if they are to escape condemnation. Our notions of...
Till The Sun Turns Black
“Can you see the young and pretty Confident as cops Blooming laughing in the shops Till the sun turns black Can you see the old and lonely Walking through the park Pushing grocery carts Till the sun turns black Can you see the corporate man He’s winning on the telephone His possessions are his throne Till the sun turns black Can you see him in his lounger Watching tv in the dark ...