Redeeming creation one byte at a time
Archive for January, 2006
P.O.D. Testify
02311 days
by Pete
in Music/Music Reviews
One word: yawn.
This week P.O.D. released their new CD ‘Testify’. I’d already checked on Revolver as I was in Barnes and Noble for their take on the disc and I knew it was going to be an interesting take when the darlings of the metal world’s review started with ‘If nu-metal is dead, someone forgot to tell P.O.D.’.
No joke. From a Christian angle, the disc is largely devoid of any of the challenging lyrics of Snuff the Punk through The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. Satelite was nice and strangely prophetic for the day it came out (9/11/01), but even it had its weak areas.
Testify really has two problems: too many guests and sonny singing. At my last time at Cornerstone Music Festival, he commented from the stage that he couldn’t sing…why is he doing it on this disc? There are also just too many guests on this disc ranging from rap to reggae all of which water down P.O.D.’s signature sound.
ehh…I’ll pass on this one and keep the warriors e.p. instead. Somebody wake me up when they do a ‘we’re Christians and we’re going to knock yer heads in if you mess with us’ disc.
Sunday mornings before 8 a.m.
0…are the quietest time of the week. In the IT world, it’s the official ‘backup hour’ or ‘outage hour’ depending upon your preference. I remember even as a student in Watterson towers getting up to go to church that hardly anyone, if anyone, was awake at this time of the day (except for any other people out going to church). Amazingly enough, this time tomorrow, I can listen out my door and hear cars driving there way to work, but not today. Veterans Parkway (the big road in Bloomington-Normal) is deserted except for a few cars; a 3 lane road is super fun to drive on when no one else is on it.
For the most part the world before 8 a.m. is sleep. It’s sitting with your two year old watching big bird. Reading the paper, doing a quiet time, etc. For computers, it’s the busiest hour of the week; somewhere thousands of computers are backing up the little 1s and 0s on their hard drives, they are updating themselves and getting ready for another week.
Catagorized firmly in the ‘Random?’ catagory…
Random Aidan cuteness
0With a two year old, Aidan’s world revolves around motion. You can spy the gallery for some candid, fun photos – I wanted to add in a bit more in terms of video. Here’s some random cutness:
Video 1 - 48 MB
Video 2 - 8 MB
Video 3 - 13 MB
Video 4 - 17 MB
Video 5 - 9 MB
Video 6 - 51 MB
Video 7 - 20 MB
Video 8 - 21 MB
The Day google became evil
3http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1541147
This week marks the start of google doing business in China – with a censored version of their search engine. While this has been argued back and forth on sites like slashdot and digg, and heavies like Gates have chimed in with their support of google I still am dissapointed with google’s stance on this issue.
The argument in their favor goes like this: google comes in (witih a censored version of their web browser), brings ‘information’ to the chinese people, the chinese people overthrow their regime and viola, democracy, freedom of religion, and buttflies and puppy dogs come into china.
The problem, and I’m no Bill Gates, as I see it is that continued investment in a wicked, horrible government bolsters their ability to opress their people. We as a country are so quick to sanction others and to boycott and the like – only when it’s economically necessary.
What’s more troubling I find is that IT companies are far to quick in aiding the government in doing their business. It’s not an issue of getting a foot in the door, but helping the government build a better lock so that democracy just can’t get in.
My angle, obviously, is that technology not only insures the government’s control over their people, but also in opressing the freedom of religion the rest of the world so freely enjoys. It seems that for the open Christian witness in the world when it comes to China people enter the country under different reasons other than as missionaries; people must be careful.
Christians within the country are subject to torture, long terms of prision, and seperation from their families and the money that google throws into the country helps support the government in doing such things. It’s easy for those who support google’s decision to forget that. What I find more disturbing is that China now represents almost a sixth of the world’s population and their government’s ability to opress Christians in the country only continues to grow.
A great quote…
1I promise my last ‘political’ post for a while. I just couldn’t help myself with this one. The ability for one to read this quote many different ways is great, at least. It’s another good example of why our president really shouldn’t freestyle when it comes to speeches; there are few politicians that really can pull off an ad-lib speech (and 43 really isn’t in that crowd).
“If I was going to do something illegal, do you think I’d tell Congress about it?”
- George Bush 1/23/06 in a speech to Kansas State University
What is implicit in this statement is trust; he assumes trust that he won’t do something illegal and you don’t have to worry because he’s a upstanding guy. I read it as ‘the illegal stuff that I believe is right to do I’m not telling anyone about. I’m only giving this speech, really, because of bad press that has come out in the papers’. Is it really such a logical leap to distrust politicians? Is it a leap to believe that fallen, sinful individuals given a large amount of power aren’t ever prone to corruption?
Given our president’s recent power grabs, his co-workers and his people he’s nominating for Supreme Court Justices, it’s not unreasonable to question, to doubt, but most importantly, to pray for God continuing to speak into his heart and for God’s power to come through.
Political hat is now off. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog….