Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Extortion by Any Other Name
Here is a little piece from the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Sure does ring a bell...
"And yet --- he thought --- through all the generations of political extortion, it was not the looting beaurocrats who had taken the blame, but the chained industrialists, not the men who peddled legal favors, but the men who were forced to buy them; and through all those generations of crusades against corruption, the remedy had always been, not the liberation of the victims, but the granting of wider powers of extortion to the extortionist"Example #1
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Beach
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Merry Festivus?!?!
One of the conversations I had this week...
Me: Have a Merry Christmas.
Confused: Hey now, that's not the most
politically correct thing to say.Me: Would you rather I say Happy
Holidays?Confused: No, I would rather you be yourself.
So, as I sit and write this, I wonder if the person that I was conversing with is antiChristmasestablishmentarianist, or was she just providing insight into her companies policy regarding wishing someone 'Happy Holidays' rather than 'Merry Christmas'. Whatever it was, I was astounded at the answer. 'No, I would rather you be yourself'. So profound. Who are we to sit around telling one another what someone else should say? Is Christmas not an actual day? It may hold significance to some people, but if it holds no significance to others that does not mean it has ceased to exist. You cannot just make it go away. However, the same applies for the other celebration days. Why would I get upset at someone telling me ‘Happy Hanukkah’? If I do not hold that holiday dear to my heart it does not mean it does not exist. I get over it and say ‘Happy Hanukkah’ back. Do I want them to have a bad Hanukkah? If someone holds that day sacred, let it be. Should I get upset if someone tells me have a good Tuesday? Info on Tuesday from Wikipedia…
The name comes from Middle English Tiwesday, from Old English Tiwes dæg, named after the Nordic god Tyr, who was the equivalent of the Roman war god Mars, and
Greek god Ares.In Latin, it is called Martis dies which means "Mars's Day". In
Romance languages except Portuguese, the word for "Tuesday" is similar to the
Latin name: mardi in French, martes in Spanish, martedì in Italian, dimarts in
Catalan, and mar?i in Romanian.The surviving Celtic languages preserve the
Latin names,[1] although none of these languages are descended from Latin.
Tuesday is dé máirt in Irish, Meurzh in Breton,[2] dydd Mawrth in Welsh[3] and
Dimàirt in Scottish Gaelic.[4][5][6]
So, someone wishing me a good Tuesday is really telling me to have a good Nordic god Tyr/Roman war god Mars/Greek god Ares day. Yet I don’t get upset, and I am not the only one.
What I really think this gets down to is that some Christians feel that they should use Christmas activism as a vehicle to spread Christianity. That is fine if effective. But… last time I checked, all this force feeding of Merry Christmas down companies throats has done nothing but make people mad. It makes Christians mad when companies make a ‘happy holidays’ policy and non-Christians mad when a company makes a ‘Merry Christmas’ policy. How about this, don’t make a policy at all. Just let people be who they want to be. Non-Christians are like moths drawn to light, not anger. Christ did not force feed himself on us, he offers himself to us as a gift. We are drawn to His light and all we have to do is ask. We should take his example and try our hardest to emulate it.
Friday, July 25, 2008
The God of Jazz
As I was sitting there listening to the show, I thought about how God reveals himself to others in Music. I thought about it for a few minutes, and then it dawned on me. Now, superficially, MMW may not seem to be the most ideal band to sit and analyze in such a manner; but, in reality, it is a great example of the different ways God deals with the world and with individuals. For example, many of their songs will have one of the trio laying down the backbone of the song while the other two are doing their haphazard free-style jazz thing in the background. God shines even during the storm. Then all of a sudden, the three players will blend together all in harmony with no discord or musical confusion. God brings you through the storm by bending the will of others into His own harmony. But the thing is, it doesn’t stop...the players go in and out from free style to melodic, back and forth, just like our lives. We have times when everything around us is going crazy while God sits there and provides us a beacon to look to, a still small voice to listen to. In the end he is always there, you just have to tune Him in while tuning the distractions out.
You see this isn’t the most perfect example. I have given the impression that the haphazard free-style side shows do not add to the music. But that is what makes MMW so good. While at first the sideshows seem to be disjointed completely from the underlying melody, they are truly adding depth and breadth to the music. They are making the song better, just not in the most conventional of ways. God does the same sometimes. He uses the tough times to make us better people. He uses the discord to bring emphasis to Him, the perfect melody. If only we can see the discord for its real worth, we can then recognize that it's not necessarily a bad thing after all...
Now, if only I could come up with something for acid/experimental jazz