A quote:
Never argue with a fool. They will lower you to their level and then beat you with experience.
If you are going to walk on thin ice you might as well dance
This is the personal website of Matthew Dellinger. I use it speak my mind on the continuing work of God in my life, our culture, the the church, and anything else that comes to mind.
I'm currently trying to move into a more serious realm. I want to use this space primarily to address the second and third topics I mentioned: culture and the church. I'm always looking for something to write about, so if ya'll think of anything, just ask and I'll talk about it.
Enjoy, or at least think about what I post.
As McCready perches on a stool in a Manhattan Starbucks sipping fruit juice, his breezy manner belies the scope of his ambition. As chief executive of Platinum Blue Music Intelligence, he claims he has invented a far more reliable tool for predicting hits. On computer servers in Barcelona, where McCready lives with his family, Platinum Blue stores vast amounts of data gleaned from every song that has ever made it into the Top 40 in Britain or the Billboard Hot 100 in America since the 1960s, along with millions that did less well. Using a method McCready calls "spectral deconvolution," the company's software can "listen" to a song and, within 20 seconds, extract 40 pieces of information about its deep structure - its "fullness of sound", the instruments it uses, its chord progressions, the cadences of its melodies and more. Armed with data for every hit song since the days when Herman's Hermits and Sandie Shaw bestrode the Top 10, McCready was then able to plot them all visually, in a three-dimensional "music universe".
Each hit is represented by a point of light, so travelling through the music universe on a computer screen feels like playing a video game set in outer space, with every star a song. "And that was when they discovered the clusters," McCready's colleague Adam Silverman says.
Logging on to the Barcelona servers from his laptop in another Manhattan coffee shop, Silverman explained the crucial revelation hidden in all these numbers: when the non-hits were removed from the picture, about four-fifths of the songs in the music universe were clumped together in 50 clusters of stars, leaving vast patches of black space between them. In other words, 80% of all pop songs that had ever been hits shared a relatively small number of underlying structures. There was, then, something about a successful song that was non-random, and measurable.
[The Guardian]
[LAUNCHER]
Does this quantitative measurement of music cheapen your view of it's artistic merit, or enhance it's value? Let me know.
(11/29/06)
This is a book I found on amazon while looking for some stuff. Sibling Love and Incest in Jane Austen's Fiction. I REALLY hate it when people mess with a good book like this.
However anyone like me is tempted to figure out where the heck they got their daft ideas, so I read it. The reasons are as follows:
1. In Jane Austen's world, the religious leaders of the day harshly supposed that all men are evil.
2. Because of this belief, cruel parents tried to "break their children's will" though "subjecting them to corporal and psychological hardships."
3. This similar mistreatment gave siblings a deep bond.
4. Because children were also mistreated by forcing them to sleep in the same bed as their same-sex siblings, they began having sex with each other as a means of expressing their companionship in mistreatment.
She even goes on to comment on how this is all Jane Austen's way of expressing her relationship with her sister, Cassandra. She then comments on how good of a writer Austen is because she did such a good job of hiding the incestuous and lesbian themes she was writing about.
(11/27/06)
Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors. Below is a quote from Northanger Abbey. I haven't even finished the book, and I already like Mr. Tilney.
Tilney says, speaking to Catherine, "What are you thinking of so earnestly? Not of your partner, I hope, for, by that shake of your head, your meditations are not satisfactory."
Catherine colored, and said "I was not thinking of anything."
"That is artful and deep, to be sure, but I had rather be told at once that you will not tell me."
"Well then, I will not."
"Thank you, for we shall now be well acquainted, as I am authorized to tease you on this subject whenever we meet, and nothing in the world advances intimacy so much."
(11/23/06)
This won't be one of those often-heard rants on how no one in the US knows the true meaning of thanksgiving anymore. Nor will it be me ranting about how people don't really see Thanksgiving as a day for giving thanks anymore (football, anyone?). What I want to do is ask a question. Why the heck do we have non-religious holy days?
See back when the word first meant something, it meant a day that was set aside for your religion, think one of the Hebrew feasts, or a day for sacrifices. These days were the sort of thing were you didn't go to work because you were more concerned about the eternal state of your soul than about raking in the dough.
Now us, on the other hand. We take off work because some old black dude died 50 years ago, or because some old white guy, who most of us believe was a bumbling fool because he was a Christian, was born. And what do we do on these days? We go home, relax, and drench ourselves in the ways and teachings of that sequin-spangled whore, the TV. Productivity grinds to a standstill, and all that we as a culture hold dear is cast away for moments of "relaxation." We say that we just need to "get away from it all," or "just need a break," and you know what? We do. The human being is not a machine, and so it can't just plug away at the same routine; it must have breaks. So we find ways to take them. One of the unifying themes in every religion ever practiced by man is that man must every now and then quit his own life and do things for his god. However when American culture accepted Atheism, it rejected any idea of needing time with god, and so we no longer hold national holy days. This is why we celebrate the birthday of great humans, rather than anything to do with god. It is why we call the break in the fall "fall break" rather than "thanksgiving break," and you know what? It makes me happy. Based on the presupposition that humans need breaks, and based on my belief that life has purpose, I can say that these breaks were not an accidental thing that just sort of happened to mankind, but were an intentional to force men to worship. When we as a culture reject god, but keep his system of holy days, we are acknowledging his existence through our own pathetic replacements.
(11/21/06)
I've decided that, instead of adding commenting functions to my page, I'm going to do interactive posts my own way. Here's how this will work. When I put a [Launcher] tag at the bottom of a post, that mean that you, if you want to, should write your response to whatever question the [Launcher] asks, and then send it to me over email. If I like your [Response] enough, or if no one else responds, or if I just like you, then I post your [Response] as the next post. Capice?
(11/18/06)
October's posts have been moved into the Archives section. This leaves me with very few posts on the main page. Bugger.
(11/18/06)
Alright, Anna doesn't really look like a fish. Please don't stone me.
(11/17/06)
More photos have arrived... Anna looks like a fish.
(11/12/06)
Alright now, before you all jump on me for being a dirty heathen, or actually let's say a barbarous pagan, since I became a dirty heathen the moment I walked on the pews, let me explain what I do and don't mean.
What I don't mean is that it is a story told that was simply the product of someones imagination, meaning nothing for us in real life.
What I do mean is this. When you hear the word "tantalize," regardless of whether you know the myth of Tantulus, you understand the idea behind the word. Is this because you "know" the meaning of the word as a fact, such as the fact that 2+2=4? No, it's because you understand the concept, you have a mental picture which gives you the reality found in the myth of Tantulus. Similarly, the myth of the god who died is something that is understood by every culture, and was, even before it became fact. Why? Because the myth gives us something that the truth cannot. Facts tell us about truth, but myth tells about reality, that is, what the truth is about. This tells me that to truly understand Christian doctrine, one must look beyond the facts, to the myths from which they came. Christianity is a string of myths, telling us that we can know truths about a creator God, or about his creation, or about his plans to redeem his creation. However this is common to all religions, what separates us from others is that our myths became fact, in the person of Jesus Christ, who is at the same time the perfect fact and the perfect myth.
That's sort of a poor description of the idea, for more, see Lewis's essay "Myth Becomes Fact"
(11/12/06)
We are gathered here, my friends and relations, to proclaim together the facts of life. Not quite sure where that came from, but moving on...
It's been a while since I posted, and as I have exactly 6 minutes right now, I figured that I should resolve that. Instead of ranting and/or raving on something, I shall simply declare some things. A) In communicating with me, it is advisable to SAY what you mean. As has been recently demonstrated, my capacity for reading body language is between nil and less-than-nil. If you want me to understand something, tell me verbally. B) There should be just as much (if not more) music after the message as before. The Biblical model is that we learn, and then based on that new understanding and the joy it gives us, we want to sing about it. This brings up another point. There are different kinds of songs, some which should be sung before the message and some that should be sung after it. Those sung before should not be the deeper songs, but should be songs that prepare us to think about God; their purpose is to help us get our minds off of the things of the world by focusing on God. The songs sung after the message are to help us appriciate and worship God for the things we've learned.
That's all I have time for, folks
(11/3/06)