A photoblog

• Choose the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition and Apple will give $10 of its purchase price to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. 10/13/2006
• I won a free copy of the book Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God by Jim Palmer. Adam from Pomomusings had a contest and because I responded within 1.5 hours of the post being up, I won the book. 10/12/2006
• A Chevy Corsica, tendonitis, and Mean Gene’s Pizza are in the pan. Apparently, so is Jesus. Notice that the “P” of “Pan” doubles as a Chi Rho cross. 10/12/2006

How (Not) to Speak of God

Fall break is coming up soon and it marks the one year anniversary of when I read A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren. It is an incredible, eye-opening book that I have since loaned to several people. Shortly before I read that book I became intrigued by the emergent church conversation and read that ANKOC was a good starting point, so I read it.

My goal this fall break is to read Peter Rollins’ How (Not) to Speak of God (back cover). Adele Sakler has written a great article, which is the first in a four-part series, about the book for Church and Postmodern Culture: Conversation (here’s a .pdf if you prefer). The article has several tantalizing quotes from Rollins’ book, and I am very excited to dig in when I finally have some free time during break. I’ll be sure to write a review shortly after I am finished with it.

In an interview with Leif Hansen, Brian McLaren says:

One of the things that I love about [How (Not) to Speak of God]… is that I think it correctly identifies so much of the problem as [to] the way we speak of God… The God who would really exist has to always be greater than the language that we use in speaking about God. It gives us permission to doubt the way we speak about God as an act of faith in saying that the real God would have to be better than the way we speak about God.

Relevant Magazine recently published a concise and balanced review of the book. Also, I did some poking around and it looks like the author has a blog (who doesn’t?).

• There are lots of myths about the emerging church out there, and this post responds to most of them. 10/11/2006
• Here’s a fascinating flash animation of the imperial history of the Middle East. In 90 seconds, you can see 5,000 years of empires rising and falling, but the most intersting thing is at the very end when Jerusalem and Baghdad are shown with all of the various empires layered underneath. 10/11/2006

Popped collars

A friend of mine tipped me off to a picture of mine appearing on poppedcallarsarelame.com (halfway down). This is interesting for several reasons.

First, the webmaster is breaking copyright law by using the image on his website without my persmission. You can see on the right-hand side of the flickr page that the image has “All rights reserved”. Apparently all poppedcollarsarelame.com’s webmaster did was a search on flickr for “popped collars”. That search reveals several of the pictures features on poppedcollarsarelame.com such as this one, this one (apparently these two guys are friends; look at the comments) and this one. The first two are protected under a Creative Commons License, but the last one, like mine, is “All rights reserved.”

Second, it is a bit ironic that this particular photo made it to the poppedcollarsarelame.com (I am getting sick of typing that) gallery because our dodgeball team was making fun of popped collars in the first place. This explains why we are all sporting layered polos and why Tom and I have particularly ridiculous hairdos/facial expressions.

Maybe he just really despises popped collars, or maybe he’s just trying to make a few bucks. That would certainly explain the Popped Collars Are Lame.com Store. Regardless, I sent him a message via the contact form on his website with a link to this post. I don’t mind the picture being on the website, but I would appreciate a little more effort put into contacting the photos’ owners.

It’s official: Dying Stars on iTunes

After months of anticipation, my very own seven-song EP entitled Dying Stars is available for download on the iTunes Store(!).

The idea of the album was hatched on a car ride home last November, at which point only three of the eventual seven tracks were completed (Stuck In My Heart, Last Time, and A Nail). Soon after, I set up a donation system to help cover the costs of recording, etc.

With the help of Eric Thorsen of Thorsen Music Productions, I began recording the album in January 2006, naïvely thinking it would be finished by February. I was wrong, and it took until early June to finish, but in that time I wrote two new songs which made it on the album (98 Miles and If You Return).

Thanks to Eric for recording and educating me in the world of sound production and to all of the musicians who make my music sound better than it actually is. I will get around to printing nice hard copies of the album sometime (they are designed, and they look nice), but for now you’ll just have to scrounge up $6.93 and buy it on iTunes.

Click “play” below for a full-length preview of track 1, Stuck In My Heart:

• I worked at Burger King for five years and I still remember watching the training videos on my first day. Although they were outdated, they weren’t as ridiculous as this training video for Wendy’s from the 1980’s. 10/03/2006
• There is an “astonishing art installation” in London right now called Bridge by Michael Cross. It’s basically an old church that’s been flooded and outfitted with rising stones that let you walk on the water. 09/29/2006
• In geology, a Bouma Sequence is a distinct pattern of sedimentary beds laid down by a waning turbidite current in the deep sea, named after geologist Arnold H. Bouma. It’s nice to see a Bouma “rocking” (sorry) the world of acedemia. 09/27/2006
• Check out the video for Nothing’s Gonna Change Your Mind, the new single from Badly Drawn Boy’s upcoming album Born in the UK. Great song and wonderful concept for the music video. 09/26/2006

I am a television junkie

Not only am I watching season 13 of Survivor (go Yul!), I just finished watching the first episode of NBC’s Heroes, a drama about everyday people who wake up with extraordinary powers (e.g., flying, teleportation, etc.). It might sound silly, but I got pulled right in. It has received generally favorable reviews, and since I really have no commitments on Monday nights, I’ll probably be watching the rest of the season.

Also, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip immediately follows Heroes, so I’m watching that, too. I am a horrible human.

The Chi Rho cross

I have long been fascinated with the Chi Rho symbol. Besides having one tattooed on my back, anyone that knows me knows that I have been wearing a Chi Rho necklace for the last two years or so. The necklace comes from Canterbury Pewter (it’s the “miniature” one), and is the only necklace of the kind I have ever seen.

I recently had to order my third necklace because the last one broke and I gave the first one to a good friend of mine. The necklace comes with a cool wallet-sized description of the symbol. Here’s what it says:

Since early centuries, Christian symbolism has made use of certain letter symbols… secrecy, frequently, being paramount. Chief among these was Chi Rho… first two letters in Greek for “Christ” (XPIΣTOΣ). Constantine made great use of the Chi Rho on coins and shields and standards of his Roman legions. This was at the time when Christianity became the religion of the State.

That’s not a bad summary of the symbol, but there is an interesting story about how the symbol (also called a ‘Labarum’) came into being on Wikipedia:

Constantine had dreamed of this emblem and a voice saying “In this sign you shall conquer” (In hoc signo vinces). On waking he ordered his soldiers to put the emblem on their shields; that very day they fought the forces of Maxentius and won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312), outside Rome.

So now you know the story of the symbol I have made my own.

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