indie

"Volkswagen’s 2000 Cabrio commercial, featuring Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon,” is often cited as a watershed moment for underground music in advertising."

--Paste Magazine, "Is Indie Dead?"

I remember this commercial clearly. I liked the dreamy song a lot and looked up the lyrics and downloaded the song on Napster (the year 2000 was my golden year on Napster...I made 'Marta's Mix' #1-#24 that summer on my CD burner). I had the CD playing with the Nick Drake song on it and my brother, 10 years older, was impressed. "I didn't get into Nick Drake until college!"

the waggle dance!!!

I heard about this on the podcast for To The Best of Our Knowledge, episode "Hive Mind." Get this, so...bees tell other bees where good flowers are by doing a dance. The dance gives the other bees directions to the flowers. The bees also use this dance to communicate the location of other resources as well.

As the graph says, if the bee waggles for one second in a certain direction, it means that the flowers are one kilometer in that direction! Two seconds = two kilometers, etc. AMAZING!

TTBOOK: "Hive Mind"

Wikipedia: "Waggle Dance"

love.

from Kanye's new blog (here)

beautiful harlem.

stolen from ailsa

(justsafaris)

I don't know where this is or how I could do it without feeling like a white colonialist or Hemingway...but that is beautiful.

Vampire Weekend: "Giving Up The Gun"

stolen from clur

asexuality: the movement

MTV News on Asexuality:

I saw this on a friend's facebook profile recently: 'Asexuality: The Making of a Movement' is a documentary about those in the world who experience no desire to have sex.

According to the larger website AVEN: the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, "An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Unlike celibacy, which is a personal choice, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who asexuals are. It is their identity. "

It seems as though Asexuals are perfectly content exploring all other aspects of relationships besides the sexual realm.

I hesitate to declare an opinion after only looking at the website and not personally knowing an asexual (unless my fbook friend was posting this as a way to subtly declare her sexual identity). But I think this is perfectly fine. I believe the Bible shows us how to live as whole human beings and it talks about the goodness of singleness, if we can resist our sexual desire or are not tempted in that way at all. More power to you, asexuals, to use that energy in other great places.

What worries me is the "It is their identity" part. Why must it be? That statement seems to say that their sexual status makes all other personal characteristics less important. Why?

book report: the feminine mystique

(link)

well, not a book report because I have no time to read recreational (yet life-changing) books. I read a section last night and it has been stuck in my head until now. The section is titled, "Housewifery expands to fill the time available." I've made jokes (mostly to myself) before about how I find that homework expands to fill the time available. Who knew that it's an actual theory!

"The double deception of the feminine mystique:

1. The more a woman is deprived of function in society at the level of her own ability the more her housework, mother-work, wife-work, will expand - and the more she will resist finishing her housework or mother-work, and be without any function at all. (Evidently human nature also abhors a vacuum, even in women.)

2. The time required to do the housework for any given woman varies inversely with the challenge of the other work to which she is committed. Without any outside interests, a woman is virtually forced to devote her every moment to the trivia of keeping house.

The simple principle that 'Work Expands to Fill the Time Available' was first formulated by the Englishman C. Northcote Parkinson on the basis of his experience with administrative bureaucracy in World War II. Parkinson's Law can easily be reformulated for the American housewife: Housewifery Expands to Fill the Time Available, or Motherhood Expands to Fill the Time Available, or even Sex Expands to Fill the Time Available. This is, without question, the true explanation for the fact that even with all the new labor-saving appliances, the modern American housewife probably spends more time on housework than her grandmother. It is also part of the explanation for our national preoccupation with sex and love, and for the continued baby boom." (p.239-240)

Okay, I'm not so sure about her theory on sex expanding to fill the time available, and that contributing to the baby boom.

But, the other stuff is interesting, and it seems like the theme of the book is that women should be free to be whole human beings and not have all of their energy poured toward their family forever. In the same way, men should be whole human beings and not have all of their energy directed toward work. There should be a balance.

I have witnessed intelligent women who are consumed with the upkeep of their house. The energy that could be afforded toward ministry or hobbies or work is taken up with "the trivia of keeping house." It's sad. I think that our energies should be put toward worthy causes.

some of my friends captured by the google maps car in columbia, mo. amazing.

me too

(from chelseymathewstumblr via oneinamillion)

treating good media like cod-liver oil

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds" - attributed to Mark Twain, but actually spoken by Edgar Wilson Nye, a fellow humorist. (snopes.com)

Die Walküre/Ride of the Valkyr...

basically: don't be arrogant, you're not as smart as you think you are

(amazon)

nt wright and women

I met a Canadian seminarian at the Urbana conference in December who recommended that I read NT Wright's take on women in ministry. You can find the article (here), his website (which might be a fan site, which is adorably nerdy).

Wright gives a huge introduction on what he thinks was going on culturally when Paul wrote about womens roles in the church and then translates 1 Timothy 2 as follows:

So this is what I want: the men should pray in every place, lifting up holy hands, with no anger or disputing. 9In the same way the women, too, should clothe themselves in an appropriate manner, modestly and sensibly. They should not go in for elaborate hair-styles, or gold, or pearls, or expensive clothes; 10instead, as is appropriate for women who profess to be godly, they should adorn themselves with good works. 11They must be allowed to study undisturbed, in full submission to God. 12I’m not saying that women should teach men, or try to dictate to them; they should be left undisturbed. 13Adam was created first, you see, and then Eve; 14and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and fell into trespass. 15She will, however, be kept safe through the process of childbirth, if she continues in faith, love and holiness with prudence.

This is how the ESV translates it:

8 I desire then that j in every place the men should pray, k lifting l holy hands without anger or quarreling; 9 likewise also m that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 n but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. 11 Let a woman learn quietly o with all submissiveness. 12 p I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 q For Adam was formed first, r then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but s the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through t childbearing—if they continue in u faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

this almost made me cry

i almost always tear up when people at church lay hands on other people in prayer. for some reason that image really gets me.

From Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster

Talking about him praying with a nurse in the mornings at church..."Then we would often discuss issues of theology , of faith, of life. And whatever we talked about Beth tested out at the hospital. If we discussed the Bible's teaching on 'the laying on of hands,' at work Beth would put her hands into the rubber gloves of an incubator and place them on a premature infant, praying silently and lovingly, and watch that little one increase in health and well-being. These were the kinds of things Beth would do, not just now and again, but repeatedly. Through Beth I learned the necessity of bringing spiritual realities into the press of raw humanity." (p.xvi)

nerd-dom...

i love my seminary professors. [insert nerdy expression of glee here] like, I wrote a ten page paper last semester and my prof sent me back two pages of insight on the paper. wtf. wonderful. so i was thinking and writing about generational sin a lot last semester and included some thoughts in my paper. in his response, my prof included this section from a commentator, Douglas K. Stuart, from his commentary on Exodus (p.454). (forgive the typos, i'm transcribing it)

"This explanatory section of the second commandment, with its assertion that God is 'jealous...punishing the children for the sins of the father,' has been widely misunderstood. [what a relief that can be!] It does not represent an assertion that God actually punishes an innocent generation for the sins of a predecessor generation, contrary to Deut 24:16 ('Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin'; cf. 2 Kgs 14:6). Rather, this oft-repeated theme speaks of God's determination to punish successive generations for committing the same sins they learned form their parents. In other words, God will not say, 'I won't punish this generation for what they are doing to break my covenant because, after all, they merely learned it from their parents who did it too.' Instead, God will indeed punish generation after generation ('to the third and fourth generation') if they keep doing the same sorts of sins that prior generations did. If the children continue to do the sins their parents did, they will receive the same punishments as their parents.

But to this is contrasted his real wish: to show 'covenant loyalty' [NIV 'love'] to 'a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.' By the greatest numerical contrast in the Bible (three/four to thousands), God identified eloquently his real desire: to have his people remain loyal forever so that he might in turn show them the rich blessings of his resulting loyalty to them."

Wonderful!

i wish someone had told me this in high school...

...it would have saved me a lot of confusion and self-loathing.

"First we need to remember that as their identities are being formed during adolescence, most young people live out of 'multiple selves.' Kids will have one 'self' they live out of at school (actually several, because in each class and activity they need to live out of the 'self' that's safest for them at the time), another 'self' at home, and still another 'self' at your ministry. They also feel the need to express these selves differently in the various roles they assume in their lives - such as with sports, in different classes, at church, and at home. This in turn causes them to stay on guard constantly to determine which role is the most appropriate to 'put on' in any given setting."

Deep Ministry in a Shallow World - "Deep Communication: Why Doesn't our teaching change kids' lives?" by Chap Clark

There's more of this in his book Hurt.

The youth worker's openness to the adolescent must be balanced with closedness. As Bonhoeffer says, 'The "openness" of the person demands "closedness" as a correlative, or one could not speak of openness at all.' WE must be able to say, 'Sorry, I am on vacation. I will get back to you.' 'Please don't stop over at dinner time, my family and I are eating.' 'It's late. Call me in the morning.' Or simply, 'I am not available, I need some time away.'

to be closed to the adolescent is to be for the adolescent. In being closed, we allow the adolescent to recognize us as other, not as a personal possession but a distinct human being who is complicated and beautiful in our won right. Being able to say no to young people communicates that ministry is a person to person and not producer to consumer."

- Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry