Life’s Paradox

We recently begun singing the Lord’s Prayer in our liturgy at church. This video captures the hilarity of our finitude as I think only 1 in 50 people actually has the vocal range to sing this song without straining!

Wait, Socrates was white?!

Well, obviously, I wasn’t able to make it to the theological symposium on the Analogia Entis.  In being buried underneath thesis work, I kind of forgot about it, which is probably for the best.  It’s starting today and goes to Sunday.  Anyway, aside from Joel Garver, did anybody else go?  I’d love to hear a report.

For those that actually hop over to my blog to read (and not just RSS), I’ve updated a few things.  I had to tweak the current theme to put the ‘pages’ back into the header (about me, papers, thesis reading books, etc.).  I also added a few feeds in the sidebar: one to my dorky Facebook status updates, and one to my Tumblr blog of things I’ve been reading/watching lately.

Music-wise, I’ve been dipping back into my CD collection and listening to things that I haven’t listened to in quite some time to help keep me stimulated during the writing process:

• Squarepusher - Big Loada
• Alice in Chains - Unplugged (probably one of my favorite albums of all time, actually.  where were you?!)
• VNV Nation - Matter + Form (hands-down my favorite VNVN album but for some reason it fell out of my usual rotation.)
• Mayfairgrin - Equine Noir: The Ambient Selections (probably my favorite moody ambient album ever.  you can hop over to my last.fm page and see how many times I’ve listened to this gem in the past few years.)
• 30 Seconds to Mars - A Beautiful Lie (now, I understand why a lot of people don’t like this band as it is one of the quintessential emo rock bands, but I absolutely love this album and really think Jared Leto’s voice is awesome.  I usually play this on repeat after 11pm when things start to drag for me during paper writing.)
• Nirvana - Nevermind and In Utero (just classic 90’s fun)
• Apoptygma Berzerk - Welcome to Earth and Harmonizer (still not a fan of their stuff post-Harmonizer though… )

Of all the April Fool’s gags I saw online, this one was probably my favorite: World of Warcraft: Molten Core.

I recently got new glasses.  The last time I got a pair of  corrective lenses was my freshman year of highschool.  I had contacts for a while after that and used them for a while but got lazy.  I can now see road signs!

Minimal update: I fixed a grip of typos in this post… I was up till 4am last night so I am a bit out of it.

I am no stranger to book covers. Having designed the covers in two book series, this has sparked some fun discussions with my friend Kaz over the evolution of cover design, especially in theology and philosophy books.

Most book covers until recent times have been about careful text placement on usually a single-color background. To illustrate just a few examples, see, for instance, the bright red cover to the Krell-edited Basic Writings of Heidegger; the simple large text upon white of Charles Taylor’s Hegel and Modern Society; the original cover to Hauerwas’ The Peaceable Kingdom, which ups the ante a bit by applying a radial orange-yellow gradient; the highly recognizeable two-tone covers of Princeton’s Kierkegaard Writings series with SK’s portrait at the two-tone intersection. And from here, more multi-tone and pictures are introduced so that there really does not seem to be much of a limit in design any longer, outside of the usual printing costs.

Enter Continuum Press, namely, their Continuum Impacts series. These are reprints of well-known philosophical texts that have already established themselves in the history of philosophy, most of them being within the wider contintental tradition, with plenty of exceptions, theological and otherwise (Erasmus and Luther on Free Will, Barth, Schillebeeckx, Gandhi, et. al.). To see a slapdash view of all of the covers in this series, click here (after quickly extracting all the ISBN’s, I whipped up a short PHP script to display all the books in the series).

I’m curious, what do you think about the covers in this series? What say you?!

Update: Anthony has alerted me to a post he wrote three years ago on the same subject, with funny and appropriate commentary worth checking out.

This is the upcoming Centre of Theology and Philosophy conference called The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and Universalism. I’ve put in a lot of work into making this conference page so let me know what you think! (special nod to Mootools for creating such a nice javascript framework!)

Also, if you’re interested in attending, we are now accepting reservations for the conference as well as paper abstracts for panels. All the information you need is on the site.

From Shalina’s blog:

Here’s my debut short film. For the final project in my Digital Video class I made a music video to the song Things I Don’t Remember by Ugly Casanova. I’m very new to this but it’s proving to be the latest addition to my “I <3 hobbies” list.

Awesome!!! I’m really impressed.

Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare movement, died last night in her home at age 88.  The official Focolare website article reads:

Today, 14 March 2008, at 2 o’clock, Chiara Lubich at 88 years of age, has concluded her earthly journey in a serene and sacred atmosphere. She passed away in her home at Rocca di Papa (Rome), where she had returned after having been discharged from the Gemelli hospital the night before. This had been her desire during the last days of hospitalization.

All day long, in the concluding hours of her life, hundreds of people - relatives, close collaborators and her spiritual sons and daughters – paid their last farewell in her room, and then stopped for a moment of meditation in the adjacent chapel. It was a constant and spontaneous prayerful procession. Afterwards, they lingered on around her house in recollection. Some of these people Chiara was able to recognize despite her extreme weakness.

There is now an incoming flow of messages from all over the world expressing participation and sharing on behalf of religious, political, academic and civil leaders. These messages of love and unity are coming especially from her many spiritual children present in all continents.

It seems like the Focolare website is probably getting hammered with visits right now so traffic might be hit and miss, but the Catholic news agencies have been reporting on this and have included a message from the Pope:

With deep emotion I learned the news of the pious death of Ms Chiara Lubich, which came at the end of a long and fruitful life marked by her tireless love for the abandoned Jesus. At this moment of painful separation I remain affectionately and spiritually close to her relatives and to the entire Work of Mary - the Focolari Movement which began with her - and to those who appreciated her constant commitment for communion in the Church, for ecumenical dialogue and for fraternity among all peoples. I thank the Lord for the witness of her life, spent in listening to the needs of modern man in complete faithfulness to the Church and to the Pope. And, as I commend her soul to divine goodness that she may be welcomed in the bosom of the Father, I hope that those who knew and met her, admiring the wonders that God achieved through her missionary ardour, may follow her footsteps and keep her charism alive. With such sentiments, I invoke the maternal intercession of Mary and willingly impart my apostolic blessing to everyone

This Catholic World News article says:

Suffering from declining health for the past year, Lubich was hospitalized this past weekend when she had difficulty breathing. When she did not respond to medical treatment she chose to return home for her final hours of life.

The funeral for Chiara Lubich will be held at the Roman basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls on March 18. The Focolare movement will now face the choice of a new leader– who, according to the movement’s charter, must be a woman.

Additionally, this Lenten meditation from Chiara a couple years ago is quite appropriate.

I had the blessing of meeting many of the members of the Focolare, having been asked to present at last year’s Mariapolis in San Diego with my wife Tiana on alternative economic practices.  I had the pleasure of meeting many wonderful people who are passionate about the unity of the Church. Chiara’s witness to Christ was a clear inspiration for the people I met in their own witness to Christ and Christ’s prayer for the unity of his people in John 17.  Moreover, a very good friend of ours named Ester has been in the movement for a while now and has been profoundly affected by Chiara’s life.  Ester is a constant saintly presence in our lives for whom we are extremely thankful.

[Also, perhaps not everybody knows this, but the official Focolare publishing house is New City Press, which in addition to publishing Chiara's writings, also publishes the definitive English translations of Augustine's works]

Chiara will be missed, but the spirit of her Focolare and her witness will definitely live on.  R.I.P., Chiara.

This is from Zenit:

Pope Encourages Hospitalized Focolare Founder
Chiara Lubich Admitted for Breathing Difficulties

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 12, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI sent a message of encouragement to Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare movement, who has been hospitalized in the Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic.

According to a press statement released today by the Focolare movement, Lubich, 88, arrived to the hospital in February for a scheduled checkup, but stayed due to breathing difficulties.

According to professor Salvatore Valente, chair of the Division of Respiratory Physiology at the clinic, the founder’s breathing is insufficient and she has been put on an artificial respirator. “For the moment,” he said, “a tendency to recuperate breathing on her own has not appeared.”

Benedict XVI sent “a special blessing” in his letter to Lubich, said the press release.

The Pope said, “I am keeping informed of the trials you are going through and I hope to assure you in this difficult moment that I am remembering you in my prayers so that the Lord gives you physical relief, spiritual consolation, and shows you signs of his benevolence, allowing you to experience the redemptive value of the suffering lived in profound communion with him.”

The communiqué reported that Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople visited Lubich, living with her a moment “rich in spirituality and of profound communion.”

The patriarch was in Rome last week to visit Benedict XVI and to mark to mark the 90th anniversary of the Pontifical Oriental Institute.

The patriarch said after visiting Lubich: “I wanted to come to deliver my personal greeting, and that of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, to the beloved Chiara Lubich, who has given and continues to give to the whole Church. I also imparted to her my blessing. I am happy that I was able to visit her.”

Lubich was also visited by Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, archbishop of Prague, and Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Catholic lay Community of Sant’Egidio.

A good friend of ours informs us that the worldwide Focolare community is in prayer for her. I would encourage the same.

I’ve been incredibly busy, but thought I should throw up an update on some goings-on.  First, I’ve been accepted into the University of Nottingham’s PhD theology program to study under Conor Cunningham.  I’m currently waiting to hear on my funding applications, which everybody tells me is a really competitive “crap shoot” of sorts, and we should hear by mid-May or so about the status of that. I am also trying to figure out other funding options that do not involve loans (Tiana and I already have too many from our undergrad years still).  There is also a really cool Centre of Theology and Philosophy conference that is about to be announced so stay tuned for more on that.

In the meantime I have also applied to Marquette University just in case things at Nottingham don’t pan out.  Unfortunately, my GRE scores weren’t the greatest (did even worse the second time I took it–standardized tests seriously f- with my brain), so I have absolutely no idea if they will accept me or not.  We will see.  They are supposed to inform me sometime around the Ides of March.

Meanwhile I have been working on my Master’s Thesis.  I began the writing process this past week and from here on out it is full steam ahead.   At this point I am not going to say too much what it is about (e-mail me if you want, but it’s probably not super interesting to most) but as I think I have mentioned before, here is a list of my thesis reading books if you care to browse.

We’ve had some visitors lately and will have some more soon this next weekend.  Last week my brother and his family were in town on their first family vacation since LaRae had Phaedra in June.  See here for some extremely cute pics of their daughter Phaedra.  And this past weekend Tiana’s friend Jaclyn was in town with her boyfriend and we went out to The Mission for some delicious brunch.  And this weekend our friends Johnny & Alyssa and David Overholt will be in town.

Now it is lunchtime for me!

Aside from the Friday Electronic Music Blogging (that I’m not sure if anybody cares about!), I would prefer to keep this blog theme-oriented around theology/philosophy, life-updates, and more sustained reflections on stuff.  So, it is with this sentiment that I have started a Tumblr blog to just post links and videos of other things that I read, watch, and generally find interesting but don’t care to provide too much (or any) comment upon.  The bland title says it.

Piggy-backing on my NIN (and related) posts from earlier this week, here is a video of one of the members of NIN (I’m not fan enough to know all their names) configuring a monome two fifty six in conjunction with the Jazz Mutant Lemur to control an upright piano.

You may remember that Daft Punk used four Lemurs to perform the back-up music to Kanye West’s “Stronger” at this year’s Grammy’s. Seems like a device that is based on Star Trek: The Next Generation-visuals…which I like.

There is a good discussion going on between Dan and Dr. Craig Carter on Carter’s blog (although it seems to have stopped by now).  It concerns Jonah Goldberg’s book called Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.  Be sure to read the whole discussion.

Like Dan, I was a bit baffled that Carter, in light of the fact that he has written rather approvingly on John Howard Yoder, would find so much to affirm in Goldberg, especially considering that Goldberg has been an apologetic neo-conservative and a shill for the Republican party for some time now.  He is able to be ‘Augustinian’ enough to discover Goldberg’s own Augustinian distrust of humanity as well as being able to plunder the good amongst the ridiculous in Goldberg, but is seemingly unable to do the same when it comes to the Marxist critique, which Dan very helpfully points out.

Additionally, I also agree with Dan’s Augustinian emphasis on worship (which I think can also work in conjunction and exchange with desire) over the other ‘fundamental’  causes of history that they mention.  To lean too much toward family as Carter does neglects the words of Jesus that tell us that we may need to forsake parent-child relationships in service of the Kingdom as well as Paul’s words about celibacy.  In other words, Carter seems to implicitly reject monasticism (or at least doesn’t consider it) as a reality that has been with us as a strong witness throughout most of the Christian Church.

Brian Viglione of The Dresden Dolls has a fun story to tell with pictures of how his contributions to the new NIN album went down.  You can read it here on their myspace blog or reprinted here on their livejournal community.

I had the privilege of seeing The Dresden Dolls open up for NIN back in May of 2005 and Brian is truly an amazing drummer; I’m stoked.  Oh yeah, Brian is on tracks 19 & 22 of Ghosts.

This is absolutely amazing:

Check out the different pricing options:

FREE DOWNLOAD
Ghosts I - The first 9 tracks from the Ghosts I-IV collection available as high-quality DRM-free MP3s (320kbps LAME encoded, fully tagged) including complete 40 page PDF. Also includes the digital extras pack - various wallpapers, icons, and graphics tools for your computer, website, profile, etc.

$5 DOWNLOAD
Ghosts I-IV - All 36 tracks in a variety of DRM-free digital formats (320 kbps LAME encoded, fully tagged; FLAC Lossless; Apple Lossless) including a 40 page PDF. Also includes the digital extras pack - various wallpapers, icons, and graphics tools for your computer, website, profile, etc.

This version is also available from the Amazon MP3 store.

$10 2XCD SET
Ghosts I-IV - 2 audio CDs in a gatefold digipak package with a 16-page booklet. To be shipped TBD. Includes immediate DRM-free download of the entire collection in same choice of formats as $5 Download option. Download will include the 40 page PDF and the digital extras pack - various wallpapers, cons, and graphics tools for your computer, website, profile, etc. This configuration will be released to retail in North America (April 8), Australia (April 5), the UK (April 8), Japan (April 5) and most European territories (April 8).

$75 LIMITED EDITION DELUXE PACKAGE
Ghosts I-IV - Hardcover book holding 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD of all 36 tracks in multi-track format (in .wav files readable by Mac and Windows), and Blu-ray disc featuring stereo recordings in high-definition 24 bit 96Khz with exclusive slide show. Includes immediate DRM-free download of the entire collection in all formats and with all extras mentioned above. Also includes 48-page hardcover of photographs by Phillip Graybill and Rob Sheridan. Discs and art book both housed in fabric slipcover.

$300 ULTRA-DELUXE LIMITED EDITION PACKAGE
Ghosts I-IV - Contains all elements from deluxe package, along with exclusive 4XLP 180-gram vinyl set, and two limited edition Giclee prints available exclusively in this package. Disc book, art book, and prints are all housed in a fabric slipcover. 4XLP vinyl set comes in its own fabric slipcover. INCLUDES immediate DRM-free download of the entire collection in all formats and with all extras mentioned above. Limited to 2500 pieces, numbered and personally signed by Trent Reznor.

Listen now if you want: (may not play right away due to large server loads right now)

Update: I wouldn’t recommend downloading/purchasing from the NIN for another day or so. They are having issues with their servers trying to catch up to all the insane traffic. Or, you can purchase it from the Amazon.com site, whose servers are a bit more robust right now. I’m waiting on the FLAC files so I am going to wait it out on the NIN site itself.

Update 2: Everything seems to be back to normal now with the servers. It’s an incredible release. I’ve only had the time to listen to it once but it’s great.

Well, since I don’t really have much time these days to do any kind of interesting posts I might as well not slack on posting some electronic music video! Above is a demonstration of the FantomX series of keyboards with their extremely slick Spanish Guitar patch loaded. When I go to Guitar Center I often tinker around with this keyboard because it is so slick, but as it is quite expensive, that is all I do. If that person’s playing seems to not entirely line up perfectly with the notes heard it is because with that particular patch, when you hit a key really hard it plays a slight trill on the note.

One time I actually almost bought one of these until I was reminded a) I didn’t have the money, and realized b) I could save thousands of dollars by getting a decent plain midi synth and just replicate all this stuff in soft synth.