Say What?

Beauty? Yes.
Brains? Well--did I mention the beauty thing?

Let's blame it on the nerves, not the hair color.

Ex-Korn Guitarist Writes About Choosing Jesus Over Sex, Drugs, and R&R

I don't know much about Korn, but now I have a new interest. Click on "read more" below to read this interesting article that is actually a review of a book written by Brian Welch. A couple of excerpts from the article:

"Save Me From Myself" is a primer on the miserable rock star existence he led before he turned to Jesus, seemingly out of the blue, in 2005...The decision to seek God followed an email from a concerned friend. The Bible verse contained in the email made Welch recall a memory from childhood about how moved he'd been when he tried to talk to Jesus. His transformation wasn't instant -- Welch brooded over it and kept snorting meth even as he called to the Lord for help -- but it has been permanent so far.

and

One refreshing piece of Welch's tale is that he doesn't claim life became perfect when he was saved. He has still drifted, trying to determine his path as he sought spiritual mentors, donated to charity, sued his band over money before making peace with them, battled another crippling depression and had a crisis of faith. He will also perk ears with his belief that "All of the man-made religion crap in this world has to die . . . All that prideful, controlling religious crap is what drives young people away from churches." That message might convince the rebel crowd that he's not a holy roller out to shove doctrines down their throat.

Things that interest me about these quotes: 1) The turning point seemed to originate from a concerned friend. 2) Never underestimate the power of scripture! I wonder what the verse was--maybe his book says. 3) Could your/my church have ever reached a guy like this?

read more | digg story

"Armageddon is here" - Jim Cramer

Meltdown:

312 keys vs 88 keys

The future of music is here. What a crazy idea! I'm gonna be obsolete.

I am an Autodidact

I recently stumbled upon this Wikipedia entry and began to feel good about myself. What a weird thing to say. I read an entry that I think describes most of us, but I want it to describe me continually through out my life.

The entry, on Autodidacticism, describes a person who is self-educated or self-directed in learning. An autodidact, also known as an automath, is a mostly self-taught person.

Yes, I have a formal education. Yes, I is a high school and college graduit, and I even have a Master of Arts degree thrown in for good measure. But it was during that graduate time when I learned what it meant to have depth--or maybe that I learned that there is so much depth. Every discipline has it's own basic level of understanding, but one can always keep diving into levels below the "vocabulary" level where you begin to discover that there is a great deal of interconnectivity in the area you are exploring and many other disciplines.

From the article:

A person may become an autodidact at nearly any point in his or her life. While some may have been educated in a conventional manner in a particular field, they may choose to educate themselves in other, often unrelated areas.

That's me. I love exploring various interests in music, church history, American history, baseball history, baseball current, how the internet works, websites, how computers work, networking, how the mind works, social connectivity, streamlining, efficiency, lateral thinking, philosophy, art analysis, movie making, Bible study, word study, Christian apologetics, weight training, pedagogical issues in many fields. I love to dig into something but frustratingly come to a place where I don't know what to do with what I've learned. Still, the fun for me is in the learning!

Sober Truth from David Walker

This is truly alarming. If you have ten minutes, this is worth watching. What do we do about it?

Except for Me, of course!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Cool of the Day

I know it's hot everywhere, but this does not look promising...
These are the dog days, I guess, with a capital "D" (Dog or Days, take your pick). I know it's hot everywhere, but this is ridiculous. And 87% humidity? Sheesh! I went out for a little jog this morning, around 6:30, and couldn't breathe! I know, come January, we'll all be hoping for a slice of this...maybe.

Oh, and how can the wind have a direction if it's clocked at "O mpg?"

9 Reasons why An Apple a Day Really Keeps the Doctor away

I try to eat an apple almost every day. We've been partial to Gala apples but we've lately tried other kinds and enjoyed them as well. I bet I eat at least four in a week. How many do you eat?

read more | digg story

Breathe Man, Breathe!!

First in the A.L to 14 wins. I guess he can look any way he wants if he keeps pitching the way he has.

I Make Comments

I found this little Digg app--oddly enough posted on Digg-- and began playing around with it. I guess it's not an app, it is a web page that does some digging for you about yourself. It searches through the stories you've left comments on and displays them all in a list, as well as how they were rated by the readers. One of the funny things in the early version of this web site was that it showed only the comments, not the stories, so it was kind of funny to look through some of the comments over the last few years and try to extrapolate the story. Here are some comments I left on various stories:

No one [Janet Reno] is more eminently qualified [Janet Reno] to cast judgment [Janet Reno] on our current attorney general [Janet Reno] than Bill Clinton.

That one was dugg down quite a bit.

I guess this one had something to do with the recent exchange-your-video-in-the-store story:

This was interesting to me from the article: "The biggest variable cost is the two-way postage. And so the best customers are the ones that don't return movies that often. For the business to work, the average has to be less than five movies per customer per month. If customers return movies too quickly, your only real choice is to slow down their shipments." I was thinking through this a bit--this means that if 30 people go to a blockbuster brick and mortar in one day, all rent a new movie by returning a mail-in envelope, Blockbuster benefits in the following ways: 1) they get 30 more people into their store than would otherwise have come 2) this gives them a better chance to sell crap (previously viewed movies, candy, popcorn, magazines) 3) once people are in the store, they may be enticed to rent a movie they otherwise weren't planning on renting (and paying for it) and 4) I think this is huge for Blockbuster: they can consolidate the return shipping. So now instead of 30 individual envelopes and postal changes, they can put it all in one big envelope, send it back to the mother ship from the store and save a few bucks. that's gotta add up.

And this post was about "the devil's interval," something of which I know a thing or two:

The notion that the tritone is a "bad" interval stemmed from the early music theorists attempting to justify it's usage through ratios. To the Greeks, perfection existed in fours. (The four temperaments is an example). So the Pythagorean ratios of intervals were a further way to understand and catalog intervals as useful or not useful. This is why (to this day) we call some intervals "perfect" such as the unison (1:1) octave (2:1) fifth (3:2) and fourth (4:3). The ratios have to do with the mathematical relationship of string length and the tones/intervals produced. The "tritone," has a ratio of 45:32 in the Pythagorean tuning system, which is by far the most dissonant interval (mathematically speaking) of the octave. It should also be pointed out that the tritone splits the octave exactly. Starting on C, a tritone up is F#. From F# a tritone up is C. This article does a lousy job of differentiating between the melodic tritone as opposed to the harmonic tritone. The tritone exists in modern day music as a complete consonance to our ears. (Jazz, blues and pop sometimes END songs on these chords--this would have been unheard of 100-150 years ago). At the time of the Renaissance, we began to see composers using this interval harmonically as passing notes. Eventually the interval appeared in harmonic situations and as modal music became less-used in place of tonal music, the rise of the dominant chord led to composers employing the "passing 7th" as part of the dominant sonority. Composers used the tritone interval for centuries, but typically avoided the interval melodically except for effect. (as was mentioned in the article) It is only because of medieval mysticism and lack of historical context that the "feared" tritone became known as the devil's interval.

And every once in a while I feel compelled to set people straight, quoting a previous post:

"And by the way, to the submitters of this crap...the dfefiition of stupidity ois repeateing hte same thing over and over again and expecting differnet results." I'll ignore the irony oozing from the statement above, and just point out that this was originally coined by Albert Einstein as he gave a tongue-in-cheek definition of insanity.

I know my US geography!

The hard part was spelling them all correctly...

Click here to try the quiz.