links for 2008-05-17

May 17, 2008 | No comments

Friday is For Quotes: Noam Chomsky

May 16, 2008 | No comments

These are some selected quotes from Noam Chomsky’s, Manufacturing Consent:

“These are not just academic exercises. We’re not analyzing the media on Mars, or in the 18th century, or something like that. We’re dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving, because of policies that we are involved in – we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and responsible for. And what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the interests of suffering people and not the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that’s dripping from their hands because of the way they’re allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system.”

 

“Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of our industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now it’s long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails, as long as it’s possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can….At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, and sympathy and concern for others; or alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control….The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must – namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved, or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.”

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links for 2008-05-16

May 16, 2008 | No comments

iTunes Problems

May 15, 2008 | 2 comments

I need help.  

Because I have an old school notebook, I have to keep all my music on an external hard drive to conserve space.  It makes things a little inconvenient, but I manage.  About 6 months ago my drive crashed and a lost all my music among other things.  So I bought another drive, wiped my iTunes and started the long process of recovering everything.

As of yesterday I had 85.59 GB of music (that’s around 15,000 songs or 88.1 days) and 13.52 GB of podcasts (604 tracks or 15.5 days).  Not quite back to where I was, but I’m getting there.

Anyway, here’s the problem.  Since my drive crashed and I’ve been recovering everything my iTunes has been acting a little weird.  Every now and then I’ll run across some music, music that I know I’ve recovered but music that iTunes can’t seem to “find.”  And when I come across the files I get the dreaded gray exclamation mark just to the left of the track title.  It looks like this:

Then I’ll double-click the track in question just to make sure and I get this message:

And then I’ll click “Yes” and go find the actual file on my external drive.

And what do you know, there is file right where it should be and right where it has been since I copied it back into iTunes.  But for some reason iTunes can’t find it.  So I select the track and click “choose.”  Done!  

The only thing is I have this problem with a lot of my music.  A whole lot of my music.  Just skimming through I’d estimate that around 1/3 of my iTunes library is “unfindable” like this.  

That makes for a lot of find and clicking.  Too much.  Yesterday I thought I’d go through my whole library and manually fix all this.  I spent around 3 hours and didn’t even get completely through the letter “A” in the artists section.

I’ve thought about completely wiping iTunes again and starting from scratch, but that takes some time as well, not to mention the fact that I’d lose most of my ID3 tags, my podcast information, my playlists, and other information (like play count most played etc.).

So here’s my question: is there a way to refresh my iTunes all at once without 1) having to completely wipe it and start back at square one or 2) having to manually find each track that iTunes can’t find and re-selecting it myself?

Any suggestions?

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links for 2008-05-15

May 15, 2008 | No comments

“In the 1970s, around 47 percent of Americans were overweight or obese; now 66 percent of us are. In addition, the number of just obese people has doubled, from 15 percent of our population to 30 percent.”  Why?  We keep eating and drinking more and more.  We’re killing ourselves.  

May 14, 2008 | No comments

Hump Day YouTube: Trucker Frank Webisode III

May 14, 2008 | No comments

Here’s the third installment of Tony Jones’ encounter with trucker Frank.  See the first two here and here. 

 

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Building the Kingdom?

May 13, 2008 | 4 comments

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the buzzwords and catch phrases and all the other “church” language Christians like to use. Words like, evangelism, discipleship, “good news,” faith, mission, and so on. One the most popular and overused of these phrases is “the kingdom of God.”  Now, I’ve already expressed my distaste with this phrase and the need to abandon it elsewhere, I don’t really want to rehash that here. What I do want to reflect on is the way that nomenclature is normally used.   

I hear people say it all the time.  They use the phrase “to build the kingdom of God” or “building the kingdom of God” or something to that effect.  I’ll confess that I’ve used it myself to some extent.  But when I stop and I think about it I wonder about the verb: build.  I wonder if that is the right word to use.  Even further I wonder what the implications are of using words and phrases like “to build” and “building” with our pet phrase “the kingdom of God.”  

And the more I think about it, the more reservations I have. It seems to me that it is this “building” mindset that has lead to the perversion of Jesus message in the name of nationalism, empire and colonialism.  I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t come to building another “power over” empire.  In fact, I get the sense from reading the gospels that Jesus actually resisted the building of oppressive empires.  Instead he spoke of an alternative reality, not “power over” but “power under,” not building, but nurturing and participating—participating in a process that already is and continues to be, a reality that is already “within.” 

But for some reason Christians over the course of church history have really latched on to this Constantinian idea of “building.”  We hopped in bed with the empire in hopes that we might spread the good news more effectively and “build” our church more efficiently.  We’ve done some terrible things in the name of “building”: the Crusades, the Inquisition, subjugation of native peoples, slavery, war, colonialism, jingoism, I could go on.  But we rationalized that all of those things helped “build the church” and “build the kingdom.”  And, in turn, as a civil religion we helped build and expand the empire. 

So, I’ve said all that to say I dislike speaking of “building the kingdom of God” just as much as I dislike retaining the archaic image of the kingdom itself.  I’m not sure what to replace that verb with and I don’t necessarily think that is a bad idea.  As I’ve always said, I tend to be apprehensive at global, catch-all phrases.  I think perhaps it is better find ways of reclaiming the original veracity of the Jesus agenda within specific contexts and locales rather than taking the easy way out of constructing some sort of abstract template or stencil that can be thrown about.  

What do you think?

 

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links for 2008-05-13

May 13, 2008 | No comments

Well, the good news is I’ve resolved my computer issues.  The bad news however, is that I am way behind due to said problems.  I wasn’t able to blog over the weekend like I normally do and I have 250+ unread posts in my RSS reader.  So, yeah, I’ve got some catching up to do. But I’ve got school behind me for the summer so hopefully I’ll be back up to speed by tomorrow.  

May 12, 2008 | 1 comment

links for 2008-05-12

May 12, 2008 | No comments

“The Math”

May 8, 2008 | 4 comments

I just don’t get Hillary Clinton.  I really don’t.  Actually, I just don’t get the Clintons.  They seem really, really power hungry and I just a tad narcissistic.  That being said, why in the world is Hillary staying in the race at this point?  I understand the rationale behind getting a few fundraisers in to knock off some of the debt, but all the language the Clinton camp is using leads us to believe she’s still in for the long haul.  I just don’t get it; it’s virtually a mathematical possibility for her to win at this point. 

Let’s look at the numbers.

Despite what Hillary said last week, 2,025 delegates are needed to secure the nomination. 

According to the Associated Press, as it stands now Obama has a total of 1,847 delegates (1,591 pledged, 256 superdelegates) and Clinton has a total of 1,686 (1,423 pledged, 263 superdelegates).  So Obama needs less than 200 and Clinton needs over 300.  Around 270 superdelegates are yet to be decided and 217 delegates will be decided in the next 6 primaries.  Even if the delegates from Florida and Michigan were counted as is and even if most of the superdelegates went Clinton–both of which have been major talking points for her thus far–Obama would still have the lead.  She would need to win at least 66% of the remaining delegates in every contest to overtake his lead.  Neither of them will likely do that. 

I suspect by May 20 Obama will be very close to the magic 2025 number.  I’d like to think Clinton would concede at that point, but everything coming from her campaign lead us to believe she’s in until at least June3 perhaps even the convention.  I just don’t get it.  For what benefit?  The hope that chaos will ensue at the convention and the DNC will overturn the pledged numbers decided by the people?  If you plan on making history Mrs. Clinton that would be your chance.  A candidate with the delegate numbers has never been robbed of the nomination. 

In my mind this is already over.  Barack Obama is the presumptive democratic nominee and will face John McCain in November.  I think that’s most people’s understanding at this point.  Unfortunately, it seems Hillary Clinton may be the last to be apprised. 

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links for 2008-05-08

May 8, 2008 | No comments

I’m having some pretty serious computer issues.  Hopefully they’ll be taken care of within the next few days and I’ll be up and running soon, but we all know how that goes. Blogging may be hit and miss for several days. 

May 8, 2008 | No comments

links for 2008-05-07

May 7, 2008 | No comments

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