]]>Each of Malick’s films is in some sense about the specter of Paradise Lost and the felt breach of communion between God and man (on account of sin). Each film evokes that longing for an eschatological recovery of that wholeness, that Rev. 21 moment when God will once again dwell in physical presence with his people. But before that day comes, in between the Gen. 1 and Rev. 22 “trees of life,” God’s presence is also made available to us, by grace, in the form of the Holy Spirit. Because of what happened on another tree (the cross of Christ), God’s presence is given to us through the Holy Spirit: a guide, a helper, an advocate, a spirit of resurrection within our own feeble frames.
It’s a Spirit that Malick’s Life makes explicit through an embodied character, but also implicit as an unseen divine presence, calling characters to faith, to worship, to humility and to love. It’s a Spirit that is with us throughout our journeys (“guide us to the end of time…”) if we are open to being led.
]]>I perceive a direct link between the fact that a lot of evangelicals take the Word primarily at face value and the fact that a lot of evangelicals cannot conceive of genre fiction (especially SF) in terms other than a series of plot points and expressed character traits. If a protagonist in a science fiction tale says that he’s an atheist and that everything in the universe has a rational explanation, you could take that as the viewpoint of the author. You could also take it as the viewpoint of that character. And even if the structure of the story aligns itself more closely with that viewpoint, there may still exist other interpretive possibilities within the paradigm of the story. What a literalist Christian might get out of the story is that the main character is an atheist and therefore the story is atheist claptrap, which means it’s bad, period. Is this wrong? Probably. Ignorant? Almost definitely. But it’s not simply that this understanding and interpretation of a science fiction story is shallow and unimaginative. Its lack of imagination is a key part of the training that many Christians receive as they’re taught how to understand the most important book in their lives: the Bible.
To clarify: I’m not arguing here that literalist interpretations of Scripture are shallow and unimaginative. What I’m arguing is that what may be a theologically valid approach to Scripture is not an intellectually valid approach to literature. It seems to me, though, that the way a lot of Christian readers understand the “Truth” of a fictional narrative is consonant with how they understand the “Truth” of the Scriptures.
My friend Rebecca recently posted an entry titled “The Death of the Blog” that, at first, had me worried that she was shutting down her blog. Thankfully, that’s not the case. Rather, she was responding to a post that another friend of hers wrote that called into question the state of blogging in this post-Facebook era. Her friend writes:
I admit it. I probably interact on Facebook with friends - writing and otherwise - more than I do on my blog. Why? It's an easier way to communicate. I haven't hit Twitter yet, as I'm not sure I like the format, and I also haven't tried out Tumblr (mostly because I don't understand this micro-blogging phenomenon).
But it got me to wondering: are personal blogs dying? I've posted less and less as the years go by, and that's a far cry from where I started out. I used to post every day. Now I'm lucky to get one a week.
There's no doubt that it’s never been easier to post content online. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, et al. make it very easy to share articles, photos, videos, and other content that, up until a few years ago, you had to have a blog — and some nerd skills — to share.
However, that doesn’t mean blogs, personal or otherwise, are in any danger of dying. True, they require a greater time commitment to manage, but that actually points to one of their primary benefits. When you post something to Facebook or any other service out there, you’re posting it according to the type and format that they allow. What’s more, once you've posted it, that content is really out of your hands. Sure, you might be able to modify or delete it, but once your beautiful photo or witty comment goes into Facebook’s database, it’s never leaving and its destiny is no longer yours to control.
For me, that raises all manner of questions regarding ownership. The thing that I like best about running Opus is that it’s mine. I determine how it looks and works, what kind of content I can post and how it’s presented and structured, etc. When I post something to Facebook, they determine how it’s presented. Or, to put it another way, they determine its value. With Opus, I determine my content’s value.
Of course, Opus is hosted on a server that I don’t own in a hosting facility that I don’t control or have easy access to, so my immediate ownership isn’t complete: theoretically, the people who run the hosting facility could decide to close its doors tomorrow, take all of my data, and run away to a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty. But even so, I have a business arrangement with my hosting provider, so if something goes awry, I could have some legal recourse. (Plus, it’s always a good idea to do regular backups, just in case.) If Facebook were to do something to my content, I’m not sure what recourse I’d have. Truth be told, I could write a really angry blog entry and… that’s probably about it.
But such ownership comes with a price. If something goes awry with Opus, I don’t have a battery of programmers and techs at my disposal to fix it — that’s all on me. If I don’t like the way a certain post looks, or how some piece of content is displayed on the site, I have to fix it. And of course, that’s in addition to all of the time spent on posting actual, honest-to-goodness content for people to read. But it’s worth it to me to have my own creation. But for some people, the trade-off isn’t worth it, and so Facebook et al., with their built-in conveniences, are simply better options.
But really, asking if blogging is dying, and if personal blogs are dying, is really asking two subtly different questions. Blogging is a wonderfully amorphous activity, and I’m not so elitist to say that if you’re posting quality content on Facebook or Google+, you’re not blogging in some fashion. When you look at it that way, it’s difficult to think of blogging ever dying, because blogging is really just making content available online for an audience. And so long as that content is high quality, relevant, worth reading, etc., then blogging — or whatever you want to call it — will keep living on in ever more interesting forms and permutations. Which is a beautiful thing.
]]>Thus, for folks who are unorthodox but aren’t atheists, who care about metaphysics but who aren’t mystics, perhaps the good old-fashioned term “heretic” will satisfy. The kind of heresy I’m talking about here is what Thomas Aquinas defined as “restricting belief to certain points of Christ’s doctrine [as determined by the Roman Catholic hierarchy] selected and fashioned at pleasure.” (I would question only the implication that heretics are unique in “selecting and fashioning” their beliefs “at pleasure.”)
I find this name appealing for multiple reasons, not least of which is that it allows me to claim some connection to Christianity. The more I’ve learned about the history of Christianity, the more I’ve come to accept its ongoing diversity. The earliest Christians, as evidenced by both the New Testament and ancient theological writings, did not agree on the nature of Jesus or his work. In the fourth and later centuries, Christians made valiant (if misguided) attempts to unify their beliefs and practices by stamping out what they saw as errors; but Jesus people haven’t agreed since then either, despite centuries of the religious elite claiming otherwise.
A very interesting perspective, and it’s certainly good and well that Blanchard hasn’t thrown the baby out with the bathwater with regards to religion. However, I must admit that it’s difficult to not see this as a semantics game that is as much driven by emotion and experience as the “spiritual but not religious” descriptor that she rejects.
Related: Rachel Ozanne has written a response of sorts, in which she agrees with Blanchard in theory but questions whether “heretic” is the best term or not, and wonders whether atheism needs self-professed heretics to serve as moderates within the movement.
]]>In my life after orthodox Christianity, it is unsurprising that I have found myself associating with nonbelievers and nontraditional believers of many stripes—including many self-avowed atheists. Do these individuals fall into Blanchard’s description of atheists as intellectual elitists? Sometimes. However, more often than not, they are people like Blanchard and me who can recognize both the good and the bad in various religious traditions.
Yet they insist that I, and others like me, who doubt the existence of God or gods, am in fact an atheist by definition. Thus, they argue that, while atheism and heresy may refer to two different things — lack of belief in god and an outsider-insider relationship to the Christian tradition, respectively — heretics should be more willing to own up to their de facto atheism.
Promising to make you look wired and magically promote your content in social networks, the Like, Retweet, and +1 buttons occupy a good spot on pretty much every page of the World Wide Web. Because of this, almost every major site and world brand is providing free advertising for Twitter and Facebook. But do these buttons work? It’s hard to say. What we know for sure is that these magic buttons promote their own brands — and that they tend to make you look a little desperate. Not too desperate, just a little bit.
Also, this: “If readers are too lazy to copy and paste the URL, and write a few words about your content, then it is not because you lack these magical buttons.”
]]>]]>There’s not one simple explanation for why many Christians find the music of Sigur Rós worshipful. But perhaps the take-home here is that all good things come from God, and Sigur Rós makes music that’s stunningly beautiful. God can reveal something about himself in a Sigur Rós crescendo as much as a cascading waterfall, and the Spirit can quietly work in the heart of a believer during the crackling tranquility of “Ekki múkk” as much as the pops and hisses of a campfire on a crisp night. There’s no reason to believe God can’t lavish his common grace on a band in such a way that believers are built up in their faith when they hear it.
Why did Dan get let go from the show?
We’re not made aware of why staffing changes take place, but I will always be grateful to Dan for his great work on the show and wish him only the best. We’re also excited that we’ll be back on NBC’s schedule in the fall and are looking forward to working on those episodes.
Were you aware that Dan was going to be let go?
No, that’s not something we’re consulted on. I’m sad to see him go, but I am looking forward to starting our next 13 episodes of “Community.”
Can you say “damage control”? One can’t wait to hear the cast’s uncensored thoughts after Community ends, which, given Sony and NBC’s treatment of the show, is bound to happen sooner rather than later.
]]>The boys recently saw me playing Infinity Blade 2 and decided that they needed to take on some bad guys with “swords” of their own. A few things to note:
Some dads teach their sons how to play football. I teach mine how to take down Horned Guardians.
]]>]]>To be sure, if HFR cinema is going to happen, now is the time. The human eye and brain can easily process 48 fps — or even the 60fps James Cameron will use in future Avatar sequels. In fact, there’s no known upper limit since the human eye sees a continuous stream of movement, not individual frames. 60 fps was tried in the 70’s by Douglas Trumbull with his 70mm film process called Showscan… but studios and theaters of the era couldn’t stomach the cost of the celluloid it required and the company went bust. Now cameras like the Red Epic can digitally shoot HFR (up to 120 fps, to be exact) at 5K resolution without blowing budgets, and many cinemas won’t have to pay for fast-frame upgrades, so when Hobbit is released the option should be widely available to audiences.
]]>How much more painful might an experience like Extraction's arm severing be if presented in VR goggles and done in conjunction with devices to simulate puncture pain using concentrated heat (similar to Sharar’s faux-spinal tap contraption), maybe in conjunction with some directed bursts of air to simulate heft and momentum of a blunt object being swung? If senses are 90-percent interpretative, how close to a full experience of pain could we get by manipulating our brain’s function with game design built around physical instead of competitive consequence? Is there an ethical distinction between expressing a grotesque idea and forcing a person to literally act one out?
]]>You may have guessed, but I am not a fan of 3D cinema. I’ve tried. Honestly, I have. I’ve put in the time. I’ve spent the money. I even thought, at one point, there might be a future for us. But no. The main problem, beyond the expense, is that cinema is an immersive medium — one that stands or falls on the suspension of belief and its ability to rip you out of your surroundings. Some berk talking, another eating popcorn too loud, an Adam Sandler film — those are things that snap that suspension to remind you that, yes, you are sitting in a room gawping at a screen. 3D has the same effect: it’s a distraction from what is actually on show; a vandalism of vibrant imagery.
The greatest uses of 3D — Martin Scorsese’s Hugo being a prime example, and the recently released Hara-Kari: Death Of A Samurai being another — have been those with a sense of purpose behind it. Technology has been woven into the film process as an actual story-telling device, rather than just slapped on top for the sake of it. And there lies its biggest problem: a disrespect towards the audience’s intelligence. Did The Avengers (or "Avengers Assemble", if you want to be an arse about it) really need to be converted to 3D? Does Baz Luhrmann’s take on The Great Gatsby, out later this year, really need to be in 3D? People are not stupid. And they know when they’re being ripped off.
]]>It’s still one of the better-kept secrets of family entertainment that the most imaginatively daring and influential animation house in the world isn’t Pixar, but Japan’s Studio Ghibli, best known for co-founder and animation virtuoso Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki is revered in animation circles, but Ghibli films haven’t yet become the phenomenon in the States that they are in Japan and around the globe.
I’m not arguing that we’re purists, because we aren’t in general, but we have trepidations because frankly Watson is the heart and soul of the matter—strip him of everything he stands for, and what’s left of him? You’re not giving us a Sherlock Holmes who’s a dense, plodding Puritan who slowly solves crime by textual procedure, presumably. So, CBS, what are you doing with the most important character from the books?
One makes the assumption that the bond between Sherlock and Joan will begin feisty and steadily grow, which sounds like a fantastic X-Files remake, and I’m glad you’re making it. Truly. And our gross irascibility (for which I am personally sorry) might be erased by our spellbound awe at the sheer purity of beauty that Elementary offers as a series, such that we come to you upon our knees, begging to wash your feet with our hair. That might happen, CBS.
[…]
But don’t hand us a plate consisting of daikon, ox knuckle, and peanut butter and brightly tell us it’s potato salad, CBS. Because we may not be purists, but no one on earth loves their chosen dish better. Fair warning.
You can watch a preview of Elementary here. Truthfully, it doesn’t look awful, but it’s really hard to compete with the BBC series. I just rewatched part of the first episode yesterday, and the first twenty minutes or so are about as enjoyable as TV gets… and the rest of the episode (and series) isn’t bad, either.
]]>Some kind soul has posted footage of The Seventy Sevens, Daniel Amos, and Steve Taylor performing at Cornerstone ‘84 (aka, the very first Cornerstone).
]]>Taking another trip down memory lane before anyone thought of the Lost Dogs, back when Mike Roe wore makeup, [Daniel Amos] was still New Wave and Steve Taylor was just a singer with Some Band.
Look for Tim Chandler playing lead guitar, Steve Taylor breaking his ankle when he jumps off the stage and Mike Roe being uh… Mike Roe. If you were there you may even spot yourself in the crowd.
Chinese Zodiacs is being billed Jackie Chan’s final big action movie. That’s right, Jackie Chan — the world’s greatest action star — is retiring from action cinema. Matt said it well at Catecinem:
For more than four decades, the man has been putting his body on the line for his audience, and nearly lost his life a few times doing it. He is one of the hardest working performers in the world, and there are few professionals I admire as deeply. So if he’s moving on to other things, his reasons are good enough for me. Except they’re not. Because they’re reminders that Jackie Chan is a mortal, just like the rest of us, and even though he’s not riding off into the sunset just yet, it feels like he’s trading in his spurs for a rocking chair. He’s darn well earned it, and I look forward to seeing him continue to push himself as an actor, even if it’s on the relative safety of his metaphorical front porch. I can still feel sad about it, though. He’s a real-life hero to me, and I hate watching heroes fade away.
However, from the looks of the trailer — which evokes shades of the Armour of God movies and The Accidental Spy — Chan clearly wants to go out with a bang. He’s spent the last seven years working on Chinese Zodiacs, including the fight scenes, and if that spin move at the 1:13 mark is any indication, broken, bruised, 58-year-old Jackie Chan can still show all the young pups out there how it’s really done.
]]>YouTube user QuintonSung has chiptuned Radiohead’s OK Computer. You can download the full release here. QuintonSung has also created an 8-bit version of Kid A (which I honestly think works a little better in 8-bit form).
]]>]]>This redesign is a response to ebooks, to web type, to mobile, and to wonderful applications like Instapaper and Readability that address the problem of most websites’ pointlessly cluttered interfaces and content-hostile text layouts by actually removing the designer from the equation. (That’s not all these apps do, but it’s one benefit of using them, and it indicates how pathetic much of our web design is when our visitors increasingly turn to third party applications simply to read our sites’ content. It also suggests that those who don’t design for readers might soon not be designing for anyone.)
[…]
[F]or right now, I don’t think this design is a mistake. I think it is a harbinger. We can’t keep designing as we used to if we want people to engage with our content. We can’t keep charging for ads that our layouts train readers to ignore. We can’t focus so much on technology that we forget the web is often, and quite gloriously, a transaction between reader and writer.