Have a nice day, eh?
|
|
| alchu Have a nice day, eh? |
|
|
Saturday, May 31, 2003 Xavier's photos from the trip. Check out the 'favorites' section! posted by Allan | 5/31/2003 10:47:00 AM | 0 comments Friday, May 30, 2003 More reasons to hate Kenny G. I don't know a lot of things, but I KNOW that's not why Charlie Parker was called Bird. I found this off google: Charlie Parker was given the nicknames "Bird" and "Yardbird". Since a chicken is a "yard bird" and Parker was quite fond of chicken, Parker was given the nickname Charlie "Yardbird" Parker. He was also nicknamed "Bird" for his tendency to "live free as a bird." "Live in slavery to heroin" is probably more accurate of a statement about Parker, but I guess Charlie "Slave to H" Parker wouldn't sound as good :) posted by Allan | 5/30/2003 04:54:00 PM | 1 comment And here it starts. Latest news is that our intel was wrong concerning WMD usage in Iraq. Will they be found? Were they destroyed? Time will tell - we'll see what kind of backlash this creates in the world community. posted by Allan | 5/30/2003 12:50:00 PM | 0 comments Thursday, May 29, 2003 Here are some really rough, dirty scans of some of the better slides. Notice how they're all from monument valley. :) That place was awesome. Check MV02 for the tin can... and Bryce01 for the ugly tree. :( Any suggestions for which of them to print? Antelope01 is definitely one of them - the slide is wonderful. Too bad the scan doesn't really show it all. Here's nel's picture of me taking MV05 :) posted by Allan | 5/29/2003 10:29:00 PM | 0 comments Ever want a ghost in a jar? Well here's your chance! posted by Allan | 5/29/2003 02:16:00 PM | 1 comment If I only print the two, I think I'm going to go 13x19.5. :) posted by Allan | 5/29/2003 11:15:00 AM | 0 comments It's taken me some time to go through all of the slides that I took on my trip to UT/AZ, but I've done it. 19 rolls of film. 36 exposures each, so that's just under 700 slides that I had to sort through. It's generally pretty easy to see which ones need to be thrown out right away (completely black, ghosts of people who walk through the frame during a 15 or 30 second exposure, etc). It took time, but I threw out over half of the images, keeping on average probably 15 photos per roll. That leaves 285 pictures. I haven't gone through each and every one of them with a fine tooth comb, but it's generally fairly easy to pick out the ones that aren't printable. Not all of the 'keepers' are really all that printable - but they are a record of my travels there. I think a slideshow is in order at some point :) One thing that I wanted to accomplish is to get a few good photographs to be printed at a large-ish size. 9" by 13.5". If I had a large amount of living space, with big tall ceilings and such, I'd go for 13x19.5. But I don't. There's a lab in california that scans your slides into 100mb TIFFs with a $40,000 tango drum scanner, and then prints them on an awesome digital photo printer called a lightjet. They're not exactly cheap, so any photos you send them had better be good :) So how many of these 285 keepers are printable? Time for tier 2 sorting - taking out those that I think might have potential. of the 285, I identified maybe 10 photos. Of the 10, there are clearly 2 photos that I want to have a big version of. The others I'll have to think about more. Either there's something bugging me about the composition, or there's some aspect of photo which I'm not sure about. (one is a good shot of Monument valley with some blue wildflowers in the foreground...and a tin can. Or a great sunrise in Bryce with this ugly, trimmed and bare tree in the left hand corner. Argh!) Anyhow, I started with 19 rolls of film, 8 or 9 days of photography, and I yielded 2 great photographs. Great enough for me to print, anyway. I'll be sorting through the big list to see if any more can be added to the tier 2 group... and I'll probably end up printing maybe 4 or 5 of them in the end. when they're scanned for printing I'll post them here. posted by Allan | 5/29/2003 11:01:00 AM | 0 comments Wednesday, May 28, 2003 Can I just say how much fabric softener kicks butt? It's awesome. Especially on sheets. I never used to use the stuff, because, well, it's expensive, and not really necessary. Those static cling bounce sheets that you stick into the dryer are supposed to work, but man... Downy kicks. posted by Allan | 5/28/2003 08:38:00 AM | 0 comments Tuesday, May 27, 2003 and I'm back and I'm tired ugh. posted by Allan | 5/27/2003 09:38:00 PM | 0 comments Saturday, May 24, 2003 and I'm off.... to Miami. Have a great weekend everyone! posted by Allan | 5/24/2003 12:07:00 AM | 1 comment Friday, May 23, 2003 I don't know if any of you have ever been to www.ready.gov. it's a website that tells us what to do in emergencies. If you have, you've noticed these weird looking signs that are pretty ambiguous. Finally, here's a list of explanations. posted by Allan | 5/23/2003 01:57:00 PM | 0 comments Thursday, May 22, 2003 A quick forward from Jo - the Homefront Society of Calgary filmed two commercials on spousal abuse. They've not been approved by the Television Bureau of Canada. A pretty interesting argument... Check them out. Be warned, they're VERY graphic and disturbing. You'll notice language that you don't hear on normal US TV, too.... posted by Allan | 5/22/2003 04:25:00 PM | 1 comment Here's a good photo of us at Antelope Canyon :) Nelson, Xavier, me, Adrienne posted by Allan | 5/22/2003 11:50:00 AM | 1 comment Okay. I give up on my digi camera shots. They all pretty much suck. So here are photos from the trip from Nelson's camera. They're very, very good. All of my 'serious' stuff is on slide, so no web portfolio :( but if you visit me in a month or two maybe I'll have a print or two on the walls :) posted by Allan | 5/22/2003 12:41:00 AM | 4 comments Wednesday, May 21, 2003 Larknews: this is like the Onion for christians. :) posted by Allan | 5/21/2003 10:25:00 AM | 0 comments Monday, May 19, 2003 I didn't have much time to fool with the photos just yet, but here are a few of the better shots from my digital camera. Hopefully the slides that come back will look even better :) posted by Allan | 5/19/2003 09:24:00 PM | 4 comments Sunday, May 18, 2003 He's baaaaccckkk ;) Back from vacation. Wow, was it ever incredible. I'll have photos up and I'll tell you all about it soon. for now.. unpacking and sleep are high on the list. posted by Allan | 5/18/2003 11:47:00 PM | 1 comment Thursday, May 08, 2003 And we're off! To Zion, Bryce, Antelope Canyons, the North Rim, and Monument Valley. I'm so excited :) I'll share photos when I get back Have a great week! posted by Allan | 5/08/2003 10:46:00 PM | 1 comment Wednesday, May 07, 2003 Another interesting article forwarded from Grace... It talks about the "Cultural Conversion" in that most Christian groups on campus are comprised of a lot of Asians, whereas the Buddhist groups are largely white... posted by Allan | 5/07/2003 10:11:00 AM | 6 comments Tuesday, May 06, 2003 Last week, I blogged a short essay by John Piper that Grace forwarded me. That generated some pretty interesting comments. Here are they are: Yes and amen to the last statement! But the question still remains: Shall we live our lives for Jesus "now" looking for more than to glorify Him? In other words, we need to be careful not to live out of that selfish part of the human spirit, that aspect of the human spirit that never seems to be motivated out of "other" love, but instead motivated out of a need for more--even if that need/desire is the desire of a deeper, richer more glorious experience in heaven. Or, another way to ask the question is simply to ask: What motivates us? Matthew Paul Buccheri • 05/02/03 04:18pm i hear that...the desire to do "great things for God" is sometimes just our desire to do "great things" period. the distinction is crucial... grrrace • 05/05/03 11:53am I think Piper claims that it is not a bad thing to want to serve and do great things for God. "Desiring God" is pretty clear on that point - he even goes to say that to be self-serving in terms of wanting to serve God is right and just! He's big on the idea that the answer of Question 1 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, "What is the chief end of man?" should have been: "The chief end of man is to glorify God _by_ enjoying him forever." That is to say, if enjoying God is our chief end, so what if it's self serving as well; so what if we get our pleasure out of it; so what if it is our motivation. Me, I'm not sure. :) Allan • 05/05/03 02:55pm That is why Christianity is more attractive to me than, for example, Western moral philosophy. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant espoused the idea that morality is an extention of duty. That moral actions should have no self-serving bias whatsoever or you degrade the morality of it. This idea is still prevalent in today's general society. The sad part is that I believe this idea still exists in the general Christian community as well. From acts of celibacy to self-imposed exile from society, these are all modern forms of the ancient act of self-flagellation. And like Grace said, these come from misconceived ideas that we are doing "great things," but are not necessarily "great things for God." I don't know why I'm typing this out. Guess I'm preaching to the choir. I guess my point is that I agree with the above, and Christians should put more energy into real serving and enjoying rather than self-imposed self-serving suffering. Tim • 05/06/03 09:42am
Things in the world are only properly understood when viewed through an understanding of the kingdom. We only understand a thing if we realize: 1) it was created originally good in itself, 2) it is fallen and marred by sin, 3) it can eventually be redeemed under Christ the healing king. This simple statement is more radical and has far more implications than you may at first think! Some have defined culture as 'naming the good' What differentiates one culture, philosophy, or world-view from another in its identification of 'what is the ultimate good? What is the non-negotiable? what is the most important thing of all? One culture designates family as the ultimate good, the other individual freedom, and so on. Automatically, something else (the opposite or the most direct nemesis of 'the good') is demonized. This cannot be avoided --every world-view glorifies something, and therefore demonizes something. Compared to Christianity, other views of reality (and thus cultures) identify some created thing as being 'the problem' with the world and some created thing as 'our hope, our trust' to get us through. But Christianity says that the answer to the first question is 'sin' and the answer to the second question is 'Jesus only.' Without the gospel, you have to make something besides the Lord into a 'savior' and thus something else into the demonic 'other' or 'enemy.' Christianity is ultimately the most positive view of human life and culture, refusing to 'demonize' any part of creation - yet it is fiercely anti-utopian, un-idealistic. So we see that: Every cultral activity has both creationaly good elements in it. Yet.. Every cultural artifact that is not produced from a very solid Christian perspective (and often even those that are) will lay out some kind of world-view that makes an idol and a demonic 'other' out of some finite aspect of creation. Christians should thus be the most 'nuanced' of cultural observers, not 'trashing' many things, not dividing the world into 'good, OK, safe' and the 'bad, off-limits, prohibited'. Note: Notice that because non-Christian world-views demonize some part of the good created order (or idolize some part of the fallen created order) they will tend to create a 'good guys' and 'bad guys' way to divide up the human race. Thus Marxism assumes all our problems come from the powerful, greedy capitalists who won't share the means of economic production with the people. The solution is a totalitarian state. Freud on the other hand believed all our problems comes from repression of deep desires for pleasure. The solution is the unrepressed freedom of the individual - thus the villains become repressive moral 'gate-keepers' in society like the church. Plenty of people have a "traditional values" world view (which is the very opposite of Freud's). They think the problem with the world lies in bad, undisciplined, seslfish people who won't submit to traditional moral values and family responsibilities. The solution is a moral 'revival' in society of religion and morality and virtue. Only the Christian world-view locates the problem with the world NOT in any one part of the world or in any one group of people but in Sin itself. And it locates the solution in God's grace and the coming of the kingdom. Sin infects us all, and so we cannot simply divide the world into the 'good guys' and the bad. Without an understanding of the nature of the kingdom (that it is intrinsically made good, that it is fallen, and that it will be eventually redeemed through Christ), we will be either naively utopian or cynical and disillusioned. We will be demonizing something that isn't all that bad, and we will be idolizing something that isn't all that good. In every psychological, cultural, or communal entity something besides the Lord serves as functional savior and master. In an individual life, it means pssychological disintegration happens by making a 'god' of human approval. In corporate life, it means that cultrual and community disintegration happens by making a 'god' of profit, or individual freedom. That means that we can bring redemption into even the 'secular' aspects of life by thinking out and practicing work and cultural production that is a 'sign of the kingdom.'
Monday, May 05, 2003 A sad weekend for NH natives. The Old Man of the Mountain fell over the weekend. it'd been held up by cables and epoxy. guess it was time. I remember seeing it as a child when my parents took us sightseeing. posted by Allan | 5/05/2003 01:01:00 PM | 0 comments Wouldn't want... ... to be caught in a dark alley with this dude. posted by Allan | 5/05/2003 08:59:00 AM | 3 comments Sunday, May 04, 2003 At service today I sat in the middle section, maybe 5 rows back from Tim Keller. Sitting right at the center of the auditorium has a lot of drawbacks. The speakers send the sound way off to the sides of you. You hear everything in stereo, reverberating around the auditorium, so in the end you basically can't hear a thing. Never again. Irene probably knows all about this - she likes to sit up front and close - but off to the side, most likely. After service I headed over to B&H to buy film for our photo trip to Utah/AZ. So expensive! I bought 60 rolls of slide film, 30 for me, 30 for Xavier. at $4.20 a roll.. well, you do the math. I know what you're thinking. Will I actually take over 1000 exposures in 8 days of photo taking? (roughly 4 rolls of film a day) I have no clue. I'm also bringing my digital - the G2 so I can share some photos with you guys. That thing is good for another 250 odd photos. Whether I take that many photos or not, it should be a lot of fun. Who would have thought that kids that met back in '94 for one month at geek camp would still be friends 9 years later, on a trip to the southwest to take photographs? Not I. :) But we're pretty blessed, no? posted by Allan | 5/04/2003 01:42:00 PM | 0 comments Friday, May 02, 2003 Ever try to visualize what a billion of something would be? This is pretty neat. posted by Allan | 5/02/2003 11:25:00 PM | 0 comments Stealing some more stuff from X's blog... With a pocketknife!?!? posted by Allan | 5/02/2003 04:43:00 PM | 1 comment April 30, 2003 Suffering, Mercy, and Heavenly Regret by John Piper When I think of the atrocities in the world, like the genocides of the 20th century, it makes me want to live my short life on earth with as few regrets as possible. Germans killing Jews during World War II (6 million); Turks killing Armenians, 1914-1915 (1.5 million); the Khmer Rouge killing Cambodians, 1975-1979 (2 million); Saddam Hussein’s troops killing Iraqi Kurds, 1987-1988 (100,000); Serbs killing Bosnian Muslims, 1992-1995 (200,000); Hutus killing Tutsis, 1994 (800,000); Americans killing unborn children, 1973-present (40 million). Not to mention the 60 million people killed by the Communist regime mainly under Stalin. There were others. Add to this the suffering owing to natural disasters like the tropical storm in November, 1970 that killed about 400,000 people in Bangladesh, or the earthquake of Gujarat, India in January, 2001 that killed 15,000, or the AIDS epidemic in Africa that has taken the lives of 2.5 million people. Then add the sadness and pain and eventual death of your own family. When I think on these things, it makes me tremble at the prospect of living a trivial, self-serving, comfortable, middle-class, ordinary, untroubled American life. I can’t keep eternity out of my mind. Life is short and eternity is long. Very long. It is a long time to regret a wasted life. Which raises the question: Is there regret in heaven? Can regret be part of the ever-increasing, unspeakable joy of the age to come, purchased by Jesus Christ (Romans 8:32)? My answer is yes. I am aware of promises like Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” But I don’t think this rules out “tears of joy,” and it may not rule out “regretful joy”. Why do I think this? I do not see how we will be able to worship Christ and sing the song of the Lamb without clear memory of the glorious, saving work of Jesus Christ and all that it involved. According to Revelation 5:9, the saints will sing “a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’” Ransomed from what? Will we have forgotten? This song and this memory will make no sense without the memory of sin. And the memory of sin will be hypocritical without the confession that it was our sin that Jesus died for. It is inconceivable to me that we will remember our sin for what it really was, and the suffering of Christ for what it really was, and not feel “regretful joy.” The intensity of our joy in grace will be fed by the remembrance of our unworthiness. He who is forgiven much, loves much (Luke 7:47). But this does not mean we should sin so that grace may abound (Romans 6:1). The holiest will be the happiest. But it does mean that regret will not ruin heaven. There will be kinds of joys, and complexities of happiness, and combinations of emotions in heaven of which we have never dreamed. But all this leaves me trembling that I not throw away the one short life that I will look back on for all eternity. Just think of it. You have one life. One very short life. Then an eternity to remember. Does not the suffering in this world seem inexplicable to you? Is not this great global (and intensely personal) suffering a call to magnify the mercy of Christ by how we respond? Is not suffering a seamless fabric stretching into eternity for unbelievers? And therefore, are not Christians the only people who can respond with relief to the totality of misery? Shall we not then live our lives – and prepare for heaven – by strategizing in all our vocations and with all our talents and all our money to relieve suffering (now and forever) for the glory of Jesus? posted by Allan | 5/02/2003 11:05:00 AM | 10 comments Thursday, May 01, 2003 Just found out my friend Erika has a blog. check it out :) She writes well... posted by Allan | 5/01/2003 02:43:00 PM | 2 comments I didn't get a chance to stop at grand central. =( But when we're at LGA for our flight to Vegas on Friday, I'll pick up a couple. coffee crisp. mmmm. posted by Allan | 5/01/2003 09:38:00 AM | 0 comments |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||
|
|||||