Devendra Banhart - Carmensita
N.T. Wright and Evangelical Theology
Here is a wonderful essay outlining Wright’s general biblical approach and why it makes biblical theologians, both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ nervous:
Wright is serious about historical inquiry into the origins of Christianity. He is both a committed Christian and a committed historian. Wearing both hats at the same time, however, leaves him vulnerable to the criticisms of both his academic colleagues and fellow believers. His counterparts in academia accuse him of a believer’s bias, alleging that he colors the evidence in order to defend traditional Christianity, or what Crossan labels “an elegant fundamentalism.” Wright disputes his critics’ claims to unbiased objectivity and argues that there is no such thing as a “view from nowhere.” Every person thinks, writes and reads from “somewhere”. Such a confession does not mean that we are confined to a hermeneutical morass of radical subjectivity. But neither are we to think that noncommittal, unbelieving secularism is the only legitimate place from which seriously to read the New Testament. At this point, Wright offers a very strong challenge to the methodological assumptions of the scholarly guild.
Evangelical readers will have their own uneasiness with Wright’s historical study. Despite the fact that Christianity is a faith deeply rooted in history, evangelicals have been more than a bit nervous about searching for the historical Jesus. For starters, the church is still living in reaction to the Enlightenment project, which concluded its historical investigation of the New Testament by scrapping the miracles, destroying the integrity of the source documents and distorting Jesus beyond either recognition or worship. In our own day, the project is continued by the Jesus Seminar, a pseudo think-tank that leaves us with a whole lot of seminar and not much Jesus. Partly in reaction to this academic approach, and as a precaution against eroding a vital faith, Christians have ended up with Jesus’ portraits radically divorced from history. It should be noted that Wright is favorable to many of the Enlightenment’s questions, while remaining sharply critical of the movement’s presuppositions and conclusions.
Built to Spill - Twin Falls
obamatron
You know that Obama picture? What am I talking about? Of course you do. Well, Lem has been doing a series over at bunny called obamatron where he riffs off the idea. I kinda dig it.
iPhone 3g Pwnage on Windows
Windows users (like me) who have been searching for a Mac to jailbreak there iPhone can finally stop hassling their friends. We’ll do it on our own machines, thank you.
The McCains
Hat tip to jimr.ay for pointing out the article.
We had our own presidential campaign cover in the works, which explored a different facet of the Politics of Fear, but we shelved it when The New Yorker’s became the “It Girl” of the blogosphere. Now, however, in a selfless act of solidarity with our downstairs neighbors here at the Condé Nast building, we’d like to share it with you. Confidentially, of course.
A True Public Intellectual
John McWhorter, a man who I often disagree with as much as I respect, critiques the Academy’s standard perspective on Hip Hop:
McWhorter argues. Far from being truth-tellers, he says, so-called “conscious” rappers recycle endless clichés and conspiracy theories about inner-city blight, the drugs trade and Aids. Instead of generating a desire to change the system, rappers and their acolytes in the media and academia simply encourage a sense of passivity. “Insisting that things are still so simple that black people need to get together and rise in fury against an evil oppressor makes for entertaining hiphop,” he writes. “It sounds good uttered fiercely and set to a driving beat. But this way of parsing things does not correspond to what black America really needs today, as opposed to what it needed 50 years ago.”
I also highly recommend his book Doing Your Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music. The book does not argue what you think it does.
Public Domain Slide Rule
The PD Slide Rule, thankfully, is protected by Creative Commons not Copyright. (via Austin Kleon)
Critic Proofing
In an effort to make films “review proof” it is becoming increasingly common to forgo the press screening:
Recent movies released unseen by reviewers include The Oxford Murders, a crime story starring John Hurt, the spoof Epic Movie and The Invasion, a zombie remake starring Nicole Kidman. In these cases, critics’ organisations were advised that these films would not be screened at one of the traditional taster mornings and afternoons, known as “national press shows” when critics see new releases in central London cinemas between coffee and gossip. With even more secrecy, Solomons reports, the company handling Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay omitted even to tell the Film Distributors Association (FDA) that it was coming out at all. Critics first noticed it on London Underground posters.
TechCrunch Web Tablet Project
Tech Crunch is looking for folks to help out creating and producing an open source web tablet. The idea is to create a light weight interface much like the iPhone with WiFi that simply runs Firefox. I hope this works because if it does then it would legitimize blogs and the open source community in way they haven’t been yet.
Font Conference
!$title$!
!$text$!
Syncronized Italian Motorcycles
The people are almost as fun to watch as the motorcycles themselves. (via Coudal)
Twitter News, etc.
A-ha! So this USA today article might be the cause of Jason’s frustration. Puzzle pieces are starting to come together.
Related, it turns out a guy I hang out with at my cafe is one of the co-creators of the site Pick of the Twitter which I first heard of through fellow flocker Patrick Burleson (who, I believe, got picked sometime last month). The idea is simple, they feature a tweet every hour using some secret-sauce algorithm.
Oh, and would somebody please make an iPhone app for Twittermap, a Google maps and Twitter mash-up? If you do, then I’ll give you clusterlove.
How to pwn the iPhone.
Lifehacker has a great how-to on the iPhone pwnage 2.0.1 tool for jailbreaking the new 3g. Jailbreaking, for those not in the know, allows for third party apps not approved by Apple to be used. It does not unlock the phone for other carriers.
iPhone 2.0 software has been jailbroken
Go here to find out more.
“This is all kinds of awesome.”
Erin knows what she is talking about:
An American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles was diverted to Oklahoma City on Friday after a passenger stripped, put his clothes back on and then tried to open an emergency exit door before being subdued by members of a Major League Soccer team on board, the FBI said.
Y’all
Ever since I got my iPhone I keep trying to navigate the web on my laptop by touching the screen.
Typography as Art
Typography as Art allows you to play with the 21 different parts of characters in the Roman alphabet. The idea is use these different parts to create atypical forms.
My little contribution. Don’t worry. I won’t quit my day job:
Tom Waits
25 things you might not know about Tom Waits, like “Waits’ favourite is the Chamberlain Music Master 600; an early analog synthesizer that contains inbuilt samples of everything from galloping horses to owls hooting.”
I couldn’t find much on the Chamberlain Music Master except this modest page. Drop a comment if you find something Music Master related.
Akutag
Akutaq is Eskimo ice cream. It is made with fish, berries, Crisco, Wesson oil, and sugar. You have to boil the fish for 1 hour, with a little bit of salt. After the fish is boiled, take it out of the water, and let it cool. Once it is all the way cooled, take out all of the bones. Once you have taken all the bones out, squeeze the liquid out of the fish, and put the fish in a bowl or container. Then you fluff up the fish.
Kay Ryan: “I so didn’t want to be a poet…”
Thus saith the US’s new Poet Laureate:
“I so didn’t want to be a poet,” Ms. Ryan, 62, said in a phone interview from her home in Fairfax, Calif. “I came from sort of a self-contained people who didn’t believe in public exposure, and public investigation of the heart was rather repugnant to me.”
But in the end “I couldn’t resist,” she said. “It was in a strange way taking over my mind. My mind was on its own finding things and rhyming things. I was getting diseased.”
Word
The rut (thanks, Erin!)
“It’s Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner”
Sean Tevis did a xkcd homage in an effort to raise funds against the Kansas Republican House Representative, Arlen Siegfreid.
I am not posting this in an effort to endorse his campaign (I try to stay out of politics in a public forum and don’t contribute to any campaigns on principle) but only to point out that this is the first politician (if I can call him that) I have ever seen with internet savvy. (via mefi)
Update: Looks like the internet blew up his website. If you want to read it, I would probably check back later.
Y’all
I have been getting about 90mpg on my scoot. Neener-neener.