Monday Music - Classical... banjo?

Yep!

Monday Music - "She Blinded Me with Science" live

One of the 80s hits was a fun little toe-tapper by Alton Brown lookalike Thomas Dolby.

Here's a live version, apparently performed in the great sovereign state of Texas. (Note: brief skirt-hitching from the original video.)

But then again, I doubt you'll readily forgive me for:

(Because I can. Turk will like it)

What you may not know is that the voice of the scientist in the song is that of an actual British Scientist named Magnus Pike. Listen to the start of this performance, and Dolby apparently tells about getting the sound clips from Pike.

Mother's Day reflection from Proverbs

Proverbs 23:24–25 (ESV)

24 The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice;

he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him.

25 Let your father and mother be glad;

let her who bore you rejoice.  

From God's Wisdom in Proverbs, 258:

We must not miss that Solomon turns it around and makes this an imperative to the son: you must give joy to your father and mother; you must give your mother reason to rejoice. This is nothing but an application of the imperative in Exodus 20:12, which morally and spiritually obliges children not merely not to dishonor their father and mother, but positively to seek ways to honor them. In that same way, a child is obliged, not only not to bring sorrow and grief to his parents, but positively to seek ways to bring joy and gladness to them.

Monday Music - "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," Eva Cassidy

Is it possible to have anything new to "say" about this old song? Turns out: yes.

It was a Facebook note from Candy Webb that led me to this, as I'd never heard of Cassidy. The story of her death is one of those that feeds my ever-burning "worry" fire.

Repost from 2009: National Day of Prayer: in which I disagree with Shirley Dobson and everyone

[Originally posted here; reposted by request. Nothing fundamental has improved, to say the least.]

Perhaps you've heard by now that The Obama will not attend the National Day of Prayer service and breakfast. I think that's good. He should not attend, and he should not pray — unless it is a prayer of broken repentance, calling on the Lord to save him through and because of Jesus Christ alone.


Shirley Dobson differs. She is James Dobson's wife, and also is chairwoman of the National Day of Prayer Committee. She says her group is "disappointed in the lack of participation by the Obama administration," and further: "At this time in our country's history, we would hope our president would recognize more fully the importance of prayer."

Yeah, well, about that:

I disagree with most of what she's saying. First, the Obama administration should not be involved in prayer at all. Second, Obama himself should not pray.

Why? Well, I believe the Bible, in short. In long:

If one turns away his ear from hearing the law,
even his prayer is an abomination
(Proverbs 28:9)
"Abomination," it says. Something that — so far from pleasing God and bringing His blessing — repels, disgusts and offends God. Has Obama (and thus his administration) turned away his ear from  hearing the law?  Well, duh. Let's see:

enthusiastic advocate of torture-killing (of babies), check

denier of the exclusivity of Christ, check

promoter of greed and covetousness, check

rewarder of evil, check

punisher of good, check

Enough, for starters?

But I'll go further. I oppose the National Day of Prayer, when it comes right down to it. Oh, I understand the argument: we should acknowledge God, and so forth. Okay, but — acknowledge "God," as a proper noun, generic? Like acknowledging "beer," but not naming a label?

Well, what use is that? Is it pleasing to God? Certainly not. When God says "God," He certainly never means "However you define that word." He always means "However I define that word."

Is prayer about making ourselves feel pious? Or is prayer about God?

And should our nation, as a nation, pray? No. Remember, Obama did not take office by coup. He was freely-elected. Abortion could be as easy to access as a Snickers bar, but that wouldn't make anyone have one. Professing Christians' knowledge of (and thus reverent obedience for) God is famously pathetic.

For us as a nation to pray, lifting up our bloody hands and asking God to pile yet more material blessings and protections on our openly defiant heads, is an atrocious insult to God.

So I'd say it's very clear that we, as a nation, have turned our ear away from listening to the law of God.

Now, if anyone wants to propose a National Day of Repentance, featuring coast-to-coast, red-hot Biblical Gospel preaching —

I'm there.

Profiles in cowardice

This may be an occasional series.

We're in a day where heroes have never been more needed, nor more in short supply. Who can blame them? I daresay they'd be pilloried and left hanging, even by the very people on whose shoulders they should be borne. In fact, there may be a thousand, a hundred-thousand heroes now, toiling in anonymity. More's the loss for us.

So today I think of the situation of the sexually perverted basketball player and the sports commentator.

A basketball player named Jason Collins decided to tell everyone that he was subject to unnatural, corrupting sexual desires — and that, so far from seeking help or freedom from them, he yielded to and pursued their indulgence.

But Collins, didn't stop there; he had to add that he was a "Christian."

ESPN reporter Chris Broussard was asked his thoughts and, as a Christian, Huffington Post reports his response thus (bolding added):

"Personally, I don’t believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly ... like premarital sex between heterosexuals. If you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, then the Bible says 'you know them by their fruits.' It says that, you know, that’s a sin," Broussard said during a segment that also included gay ESPN columnist LZ Granderson. "And if you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality -- adultery, fornication, premarital sex between heterosexuals -- whatever it may be, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. So I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I don’t think the Bible would characterize them as a Christian."

(More here.)

That's not at all a bad statement. But of course, Broussard had committed today's unpardonable sin: being a Christian out loud in public.

So Broussard added this:

Today on OTL, as part of a larger, wide-ranging discussion on today's news, I offered my personal opinion as it relates to Christianity, a point of view that I have expressed publicly before. I realize that some people disagree with my opinion and I accept and respect that. As has been the case in the past, my beliefs have not and will not impact my ability to report on the NBA. I believe Jason Collins displayed bravery with his announcement today and I have no objection to him or anyone else playing in the NBA.

To that, ESPN felt compelled to add:

“We regret that a respectful discussion of personal viewpoints became a distraction from today’s news. ESPN is fully committed to diversity and welcomes Jason Collins’ announcement.”

Ah me, so much to comment on.

Who was brave? Of course, only Chris Broussard was to any degree brave, by to any degree indicating that he might agree with God's view of sin. He did it rather timidly, but to do it at all today is potentially to commit career hari-kiri.

Who was cowardly?

Well, I have to say Chris Broussard again, for saying that "Jason Collins displayed bravery with his announcement today." How? In what universe? Surely not in America. In America, this instantly guarantees Broussard protected-martyr status (see below). Further, how is it brave to say "I'm giving in to base desires"? I guess in a perverted way, it's a kind of bravery to dare to associate yourself with a God who so totally condemns such behavior while insisting that you intend to rebel against Him and still count on His approval... but still, I'd chose words like gall and arrogance and lunatic hubris. Not "bravery."

And of course ESPN are cowards. They have to apologize for a Christian answering a question like a Christian. They have to say that "ESPN ...welcomes Jason Collins’ announcement." Why do they? What business of theirs is it to do so?

But worse, in so doing, they throw their own employee under the bus. They welcome Jason Collins' announcement — but do they welcome their employee's enjoyment of his First Amendment rights, and his conscientious practice of his own religious faith, which they have to know will surely expose him (not Collins) to excoriation and abuse?

Monday Music - James Bond theme, by Robot Quadrotorsmond

Our coming robot overlords play a well-known tune.

Logos vs. BibleWorks

I have loved BibleWorks for years; I've grown to love Logos increasingly over the years.

I've finally hit on a near-perfect way of briefly comparing and contrasting them.

Having Logos is like having a potentially massive library in my computer, the volumes linked to each other, with all the contents of all the volumes available at my fingertips almost instantaneously and ready to transfer to any target document.

Having BibleWorks is like having in my computer a Bible with instantly-available original-language texts, multiple translations, language tools, instant concordance, and an almost infinitely wide margin in which I can write an ever-expanding database of notes, all of which can be linked in turn to other sources.

That's it.

Monday Music - "Mission Impossible" theme a cappella

Lessons in bias: classic example from the NY Times

Thankfully, the Senate barely rejected another attempted gun-rights grabfest. The margin was not comforting (54 to 46), but it will do for now.

So how does the NY Times begin the story on this vote? Thusly: "A wrenching national search for solutions to the violence that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Conn., in December looked close to collapse..."

Oh, is that what that is? See, here's how I'd write that same lead: "Another transparent attempt to exploit a tragedy as an opportunity to curtail yet more Constitutionally-guaranteed liberties was narrowly defeated when..."

This was no search for solutions to that violence. Well, not from the Democrats, anyway. But:

Senators also turned back Republican proposals to promote concealed weapons permits nationally and focus law enforcement on prosecuting gun crimes.

If this were "A wrenching national search for solutions to" this violence, legislation relaxing current gun controls and enabling law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and others would have been passed.

But as I've often observed, liberals only know two ways to address any crisis:

1. Confiscate more money from the productive, to the enabling of the unproductive
2. Confiscate more liberties from the moral, to the enabling of the immoral

Monday music - a Capella "Thriller"

Monday Music - We Just Disagree, by Dave Mason

Dedicated to Doug and Thabiti:

(...except not really. I just like the song.)

Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

My day won't start the same as every previous Friday for many years.

For as long as it's been online, I've gone to www.rogerebert.com every Friday to see what movies Roger Ebert is reviewing. I wouldn't read every review, just the ones that interested me, and always the reviews of movies I was considering taking Valerie to see. Garth Franklin is right to call Ebert "America's most famous film critic, probably the most famed film critic in the world over the past few decades."

It wasn't that I always agreed with Ebert; often, I didn't. His review of Fellowship of the Rings is an example of the worst kind of review (second only to the L. A. Times' review of Cujo, which unintentionally revealed that the reviewer had not seen the complete movie). Though he gave FOTR three of four stars, Ebert criticized it for not being the movie he'd have made from the book — which shouldn't be the point of a review.

Nonetheless that review, like all of Ebert's reviews, was written with style and vigor. That's why I read him. Ebert was frequently funny, always opinionated, often informative. When he liked a movie, I often could tell from his reasons that I would hate it; and often when he disliked a movie, the reverse dynamic would obtain. He tended to love sensitive, positive portrayals of immoral people and behavior; and tended to hate patriotic, moral movies — but only "tended." He wasn't utterly predictable. Nonetheless, Ebert would usually give me enough to make an informed decisions: try it out, or avoid like the plague.

I've known of him for decades, since watching him with Gene Siskel in their Sneak Previews / At the Movies shows. Their banter was lively and fun, and not always completely friendly. But they took the occasional moral stand against exploitive movies, such as no critic takes today.

I was sad to learn of Ebert's death to cancer yesterday. It's always sad to read of the death of someone who gave no evidence of being prepared to die. Just a few weeks ago Ebert wrote of his Roman Catholic faith... if you can call it that. His conclusion:

I consider myself Catholic, lock, stock and barrel, with this technical loophole: I cannot believe in God. I refuse to call myself a atheist however, because that indicates too great a certainty about the unknowable. 

There it is: Roman Catholic, except for all the specifics. That has never failed to boggle my mind. Why would anyone choose to identify himself with a religion whose main advertised selling-point is that it is infallible in its official teachings, alone in its claim to be the true church, completely unified thanks to the Magisterium, and thus invested with the right to totalitarian authority over the lives and thoughts of its members — only to disagree with just about everything that church teaches?

Yet that's what autonomy does, and Ebert was proudly and loudly autonomous in his thinking to his last public statements. Of two things concerning which he did not have an atom of actual grounded or empirical knowledge, Ebert made this dogmatic assertion: "I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state."

He was foolishly betting, not merely absent data, but in the face of it. We just celebrated the grand counter to Ebert's tragic miscalculation: the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the climax of a complex of events fraught with meaning and significance. That Ebert chose to ignore Christ's significance says nothing about Christ, and many sad things about Roger Ebert.

Nor did Ebert heed the Lord's half-brother's warning (James 5:13-16). On April 2, Ebert said "I am not going away," and announced confident plans for the future.

Then on April 4, Roger Ebert died.

As I always do, I will cherish the hope that Ebert thought better before God's generosity reached its end (Rom. 2:4), that God awoke Ebert to his need and God's provision in Jesus Christ.

But for me in the meanwhile, I'll likely think sadly of Roger Ebert every Friday, as I'll want to turn to his witty, insightful reviews. I don't have a sixth-favorite reviewer, much less a second-favorite. There just wasn't anybody like Roger Ebert. And now he's gone.

Would that his many admirers would reflect on the inevitability of death, find the fear of God, and make the preparations which Roger Ebert never shared that he had made.

Briefly: on homosexual "marriage" and fat people

Citing the benefits of marriage to explain why two homosexuals should be able to force others to call what they do "marriage" is like citing the benefits of physical fitness to explain why fat people should be able to force others to call them "thin."

You're welcome.

Monday Music - "Mission Impossible" with ThePianoGuys and Lindsey Stirling

We enjoyed ThePianoGuys an earlier video, and now Andrea Lyn Newell reminded me of them. Enjoy!