"We Are the Dollars and Cents and the Pounds and Pence and the Mark and the Yen, and Yeah, We're Gonna Crack Your Little Soul"

I dislike Rolling Stone magazine, but this bit was funny in its sarcasm:

As the January 3rd release date of the compact-disc version of Radiohead’s In Rainbows draws nearer, several artists have finally elected to open up about Rainbows‘ creative marketing strategy. (Or rather, how Radiohead pissed them off by thinking outside the box.) First up, the immutable Lily Allen, who tells Rolling Stone Radiohead are “arrogant.” “They’ve got millions of pounds. It sends a weird message to younger bands who haven’t done as well,” Allen reasoned. “You don’t choose how to pay for eggs. Why should it be different for music?” Little does Allen know, you do choose how to pay for eggs. You can use cash or credit, or checks if you have photo ID. We could discuss supply and demand and how bands make money off live shows and merch sales, but until Lily Allen can find us an egg that wrote “Paranoid Android,” we’re not even starting that fight.

A Musing

Yann Tiersen live....

O'er in Aswan Yonder

Here's a unique book. C H Kang and (Dr) Ethel Nelson examine the oldest Chinese ideograms and find corrolations with the Genesis account of man's beginnings. Here is the basic timeline at the beginning of Genesis:

Creation
Man and Woman in the Garden of Eden
Deceived by a serpent and cast out of the garden

The wickedness of man and Noah's flood

The Tower of Babel and the Dispersion of man accross the world

"The Discovery of Genesis" uncovers how these stories formed the ideograms of the more abstract concepts in the Chinese writing system. For instance, "boat" depicts the symbols for "vessel" and "eight" and "persons" combined (confer, eight people on the ark). The first collection and study on Chinese etymology was around 400 BC, when Taoism was the leading philosophy. The words were inevitably interpreted with Taoist meanings, but they existed over a millenium before Taoism came about. Its fun if you like etymology and unfamiliar history.

Evidently, China used to be a monotheistic nation before the introduction of Taoism in the 7th Century (i think?) BC. They worshiped a god named Shang-Ti (or ShangDi, meaning "Emporer of Heaven"). One thing I find particularly interesting is that one of the ideograms of Shang-Ti depicts Him with three mouths, implying three persons. From about 2200 BC to 1911 AD, with a few interruptions, the Chinese performed annual Border Sacrifices to Shang-Ti.

Anyhow, the book is quite interesting and convincing - if you don't have a skeptical inclination to every new idea you hear. Dr Nelson later released a second book entitled "Genesis and the Mystery Confucious Couldn't Solve". I've read most of this one. Though it does spend a good amount of time on etymology, its main focus is on the Border Sacrifices, and the prayers in the ceremonies (these sacrifices being the mystery that Confucious didn't understand). I believe she has released at least one more book in the series.

Check it out. Tell me what you think.

747 Comin' Outta the Sky!

If we made a soundtrack of our tour, this song would be track number one. Here it is live...

Not Exactly the World Cup

Thanks, Kevin!

Killing Hitler and Following Jesus

I first started reading this book in Winter 2006. I never finished it, and its been so long that I've decided to start from the beginning again.

It was written in the mid-to-late '30s by the German, Lutheran scholar Dietrich Bonhoeffer. During WWII he was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. I may be wrong, but because of his disregard to the Fuhrer's laws on holding church meetings he was imprisoned and eventually hung.

In the first chapter he says that Christianity has ruined the grace of the Almighty. With wit and sarcasm, he highlights the flaws of the church's assumptions. Here are some clippings:

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace....

"Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principal, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure the remission of sins."

Here is where it gets good:

"Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.... Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world's standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin.... Let him not attempt to erect a new religion of the letter by endeavouring to live a life of obedience to the commandments of Jesus Christ!"

"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.... the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

"Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has."