Author: josh

My Voice Late at Night

If you know what I normally sound like, this will be especially fun for you. I’m not altering my voice at all in this recording, I’m just relaxing it and speaking normally. Last night I thought it was Barry White. Today, it seems more Shohreh Aghdashloo. Check it out:

Leopard’s Mosaic Screensaver

Lately I’ve been entranced by Leopard’s built-in “Mosaic” screensaver. In case you’ve never seen it, I figured I should share it. (And in 490 x 306 glory, no less. Wow!) And if no one cares, at least we’ve got it archived here (edit: the movie file has sadly disappeared in the sands of time) as an example of a screensaver that was cool back in 2008.

What screensaver do you use?

Update 11/17/08: the thing that fascinates me most about this is that the original picture being constructed at the moment doesn’t need to be used to construct the final mosaic image. It’s as though all the pictures I will take in the future of friends and family I haven’t even met yet could be reproduced reasonably with the photos I already have. That kinda blows my mind until I realize it’s really just painting. All we see is color. Our memories are only arranged color and sound.

The Abortion Argument

I would be more than happy to discuss the issues within this post at any length with you over email, but I have preemptively closed the public comments on this entry because I know how volatile the subject is. There is perhaps no more painful wound felt by so many on both sides in all of the world. Please understand I desire to tread lightly here and I desire to be respectful in every possible way. One of the main reasons that I have not broached this subject in the entire history of this blog until now is that I am concerned that voicing my opinions will cause some who don’t agree with me to write me off me entirely, perhaps even permanently. I treasure your friendships and your ideas so much that the thought of losing you kinda petrifies me. But to remain silent on this subject now would be selfish cowardice. I hope you’ll be gracious, and that you’ll choose to give me the benefit of the doubt, even if I make you angry.

Also understand that I begin with the assumption that an unborn, developing fetus ought to have all the rights of a newborn human. To believe otherwise and be wrong is a greater risk than I am willing to accept. If you do not or cannot believe that a fetus has inalienable rights, ask yourself why. Justify it. I’ll try to do the same. What’s the crucial, highly-significant difference between a baby inside the womb and one that has traveled 10 inches to be outside its mother’s body? A newborn still needs someone else to feed it and take care of it or it’ll die. A newborn still has the same potential to live if not mistreated that it had from the moment of conception. I assert that the potential and strong tendency to become fully human after the moment of conception is the key to this entire debate. An egg and sperm, if left alone, tend to die. But put together, they tend to live. Conception is when things change, not at some more arbitrary point afterwards. Therefore, that is when the child’s rights should begin.

I have many good friends whom I love and respect deeply who have told me that while they personally believe abortion is immoral, they can no longer allow the issue to affect their vote. We have lost, they say. Hope is gone, they say. Nothing can be done, they say. If we have any victory on this issue, it will be far smaller, maybe person-by-person, and it will happen outside the voting booth and outside of politics in general.

I encourage those friends to read Albert Mohler’s article, “Is the Abortion Argument Changing?” from beginning to end. The comparison of this struggle to that of the struggle towards the abolition of slavery seems apropos to me. I am not suggesting that we ought to start a war. I am suggesting that we have given up far too soon, far too early considering the horror of the practice we desire to end. Moreover, I am suggesting that the horrific reality of abortion ought to motivate us strongly both politically and personally, and take a backseat to very few issues, if any.

I appreciate any calmness and level-headedness you can muster for me when carefully considering what you’ve read here.

War of the Worlds 2.0 on Halloween – A Retrospective

I already wrote about the War of the Worlds 2.0 plan made by Kris Kowal (with some minor help from me) and encouraged you all to try it out. I was really happy to see that some of you did! Hundreds of people participated (including @biz, one of the co-founders of Twitter, who participated with one tweet). Most created their own stories, staging their own photos and videos, tying events together logically. Kris wrote up a super-linky post-mortem. My friend Kevin wrote about the event. So did Wired, and they even quoted one of my darkest tweets. But I think I’m most proud of this particular quote from the Wired article: “It appears this is the first time (Twitter) has been used for mass fiction.” We made history!

I resonate a lot with a sentiment in Kevin’s aforelinked entry. He said “fictional posts about the potential death of your friend and their family are kind of disturbing.” Too true! I think all the participants were as fair as they could’ve been on Twitter making certain all tweets that were part of this fictional storyline were tagged with “#wotw2.” Some people don’t yet understand what tagging on Twitter is and what it implies, but that’s because this is a new medium. We’re giving birth to it right now. For the folks who, like Kevin, knew it wasn’t real, I consider it an exercise in stretching one’s mind into new areas of fiction. Fiction has never come quite this close to home before, and that’s one of the things that makes this effort so innovative and gives it power.

To be clear, I would never condone purposefully fooling people or regularly dwelling on dark things, but one could argue that Halloween is perhaps the one day on which such things are mostly permissible. I personally found it very revealing, and perhaps edifying, to discover first hand how unprepared I would be in the event of a terrorist attack or other cataclysmic event. Writing those tweets forced me to think through it. I was actually slightly shaken on the afternoon of Halloween, between 3pm and 4pm, writing that series of graphic tweets.

What follows is a chronological listing of all of my #wotw2 tweets, so you can see my own entire story if you’re interested, and so they’re preserved here when they inevitably become hard to find on Twitter months/years from now. My personal favorite spots in my own storyline were 1) the fun video that Eddie and I recorded and put up on YouTube,  2) giving the moment of the alien’s uprising (on Halloween at 2pm) a darkly-ironic soundtrack, and 3) the final moments after midnight when I “saw” a tripod standing in the bog behind my house, my final tweet leaving my and my family’s fate uncertain. Chilling!

October 30th

  • Weird, I just saw some kind of shooting star, and it’s not even dark out. Anybody else see that? 6:07pm
  • Reports of weird comets are freaking me out. I’m gonna go buy some extra water. And bread. Couple guns… generator… ammo… searchlight… 11:28pm

October 31st

  • NPR is going on about some kinda metallic cylinders that fell from the sky last night. I’m not aware of any near my house. Hoax? 8:09am
  • Missed my bus and had to drive in. City-bound roads are strangely clear. Rockstar parking, too. I think people are staying home. 8:56am
  • People are saying last night’s “sky cylinders” have some sort of *machines* in them?!? I wish I watched more news. Why’d I come in? 9:28am
  • I’m hearing sirens screaming through the streets and heading away from the city. Better than stopping here, I guess. 10:19am
  • On the phone with a friend of mine named Eddie. Neither of us has seen these metallic sphere things yet, but we hear a lot online. 1:04pm
  • I wish I knew how @stephlewis was doing, but I can’t reach her on the phone. Man, it’s hard to concentrate amidst all this. 1:47pm
  • ♫ Everything in its right place / Everything in its right place ♫ 2:01pm
  • Getting SMSes from friends that the spheres are rising on legs & some heading this way! Hitting the street w/ Eddie and a camcorder. 2:08pm
  • EDDIE AND I BARELY SURVIVED! http://tinyurl.com/5kgs6z Had to run through the alleyways to avoid the giant tripods! 2:30pm
  • Smoking, smoldering hunks of buildings, cars, and people lay strewn about. The tripods have left the Warehouse District in ruins. 3:16pm
  • The light rail train lays on its side, its doors opening and closing in spasms. People are comforting each other. Many are on phones. 3:19pm
  • This song seems to be appropriate to capture the moment. Listen and contemplate. http://is.gd/5mUf 3:23pm
  • It is time for us come together as one people, consecrated to the preservation of human supremacy on this earth. 3:27pm
  • Finally got @stephlewis on the phone! We’re heading to Maplewood to be with family. Luckily I drove, MetroTransit isn’t operating… 4:07pm
  • My family is OK. Found them in the basement. Going to try to get home via 35E. Not sure what the conditions are. Praying. 8:20pm
  • Sections of 35 are so torn up I have to go off road. Passed two Tripods near Hugo, burning down houses. Is mine next? 8:38pm
  • Well, @RhythmHippy has had a harder night than I have. Exhibit A: http://twitpic.com/j92s Exhibit B: http://twitpic.com/ja8o. 8:57pm
  • My house is still standing. Some south of me were not so lucky. Just saw a Tripod wading through Forest Lake like a kiddy pool. 9:02pm
  • Steph, Caleb and I are in the basement with the pets. All the lights are off. We’re hoping the Tripods pass by. 10:38pm

November 1st

  • Oh. Crap. http://twitpic.com/jbxz 12:04am.
  • OK, don’t panic. Don’t panic. The tripod is just standing there, not moving. It didn’t see me. Sorry, @hidama, I had to look. 12:10am
  • The tripod is *still* just standing there. I’m not going to tempt fate, but as long as it’s not hurting anyone else, I’ll let it be. 12:37am
  • Can’t sit here and stare at this thing all night (& I’m fresh out of mucus). Gonna to try to fall asleep. I hope this isn’t goodbye. 12:49am

The Hope That We Confess

I’m not a very political person. I lean Republican, but not always very strongly. I tend to be apolitical. If you’ve been reading this blog or known me for very long, you’ll know that’s true.  I mention these things to back up the fact that I’ve never been too bothered by anything Obama has said in the sense that I understand what he’s thinking and why he thinks that, even though I don’t usually agree with it. But tonight I heard something that made me nearly fall out of my chair, or shout, or I don’t know what.

This commercial was released by the Obama campaign recently in which they lift some audio from the end of Obama’s recent speech at the DNC. In case you don’t have time to watch the ad, this is the end of the section of the speech they use in the ad, and to which I’d like to draw your attention (emphasis mine):

At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future.  Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

When I heard it, I had to stop and rewind. Here, Obama is quoting Hebrews 10:23. You might like to take a look at the surrounding passage or the whole chapter to get a little context. It’s worth it, go ahead and read. If you’re not really into reading the Bible, try this version.

With that verse in its proper context, the hope is the promise of God to save us from our sin through the sacrifice Jesus made. The hope we have is based on God’s faithfulness in keeping His promises.

I know Obama is a Christian and not a Muslim. But a person who takes his faith and his scripture seriously, no matter what religion he is and what his holy book is, would never leave the ambiguity that Obama did when lifting that reference to Jesus, the single most important character in the Bible, and his God as a Christian, out of scripture and putting it into his speech. Why? Because in the context of his speech, our hope becomes something else altogether. Hmm… what could that hope be in, I wonder?

I suppose we’ll just have to fill in the blanks ourselves.

I would sooner die than distort scripture like this. Dude is not a Muslim. He’s not a Christian either. He’s an opportunist.