theo|digital

We’ll be taking down the Christmas lights shortly, given that it’s almost the New Year. But before we did, I wanted to show you how me and the boys intellectually terrorized the neighborhood this year. Sigh: that’s genius. (And festive!)

I’ve always been that kid: playing the piano since I was three (really), but never owning a piano. I still have to borrow a guitar to lead worship. And I’ve been a regular photographer in I-Life for years (example): but always on a borrowed SLR. No more! Combined Christmas money enabled me to get the Olympus Evolt E500 (newest inexpensive digital DLR on the market) as a Christmas gift. sigh. so good.

In a not-cheesy way: can I just be super grateful to God for tool-based creativity? The way they melt into my hands, extending my ear, my eyes, my tone, my words, my center…

The Christian life doesn’t begin until we see that the disease of self-centeredness (and its assumption of self-sufficiency) is fatal to our souls and so advanced that efforts at self-cure are useless. Self-centeredness is as morally wrong for an image-bearer as cancer is physically abnormal in the human body.
…
Is our self-awareness so limited that forgiveness seems more like an historical foundation than a currently needed reality?

~ Larry Crabb from Men & Women (pp53-4; italics his)

This is an example of Larry Crabb’s consistent influence in my life thinking, and why I often say that “forgiveness wins the day” – because it is the only true antidote to self-centeredness: the practical and awful identity of sin.

My sister is in Prague for Christmas. Her boyfriend‘s family lives there, and they’ve spent the days before Christmas touring the old city, through its Christmas villages, painted churches, and castles. And this past evening, she received a gift from her boyfriend in the form of a diamond ring.

She called across the Atlantic to report the news. And as odd as it is for me to imagine this whole new phase of life, I’m quite happy for her. So congrats, my dear sis. I love you. And I think I’ll stop pretending to begrudge her relationship, and enjoy getting to know my future brother-in-law as well.

For the Lord God is our light and protector
He gives us grace and glory
No good thing will the Lord withhold
from those who do what is right.
O Lord Almighty
happy are those who trust in you.
[psalm 84.10-12 NLT]

Grace is glory, begun. [Matthew Henry]

A friend of mine has asked me for a “Top 10″ list of things to do in the city while visiting. I’m so mired in my own shades-of-gray indecision, that I’ve obliged with a list of ten things, but can’t provide actual “ranks” without emotional damage. So here they are, distinctly un-ordered:

• Enjoy live jazz at the Green Mill. (don’t talk during the music – it’s not allowed).

• Dodge yelling grill cooks at the Billy Goat tavern, home of “Cheezborger! Cheezborger!”

• Study the reflection on wet cobblestones in Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day at the Art Institute of Chicago.

• Ride the Brown Line train – the ‘L’ – over the Chicago river and around the “Loop“

• Read this year’s fairytale in the Marshall Field’s (now Macy’s) Christmas-time windows on State St.

• Roll the dice at “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind” to find out how much you pay for the show.

• Dance to the live polka band between the liver soup and brautwurst at the Chicago Brauhaus. German beer helps.

• Chomp a Chicago dog in the bleachers at Chicago Cub’s Wrigley Field on Clark. Don’t worry about missing a half-inning: they’re losing anyway.

• Stroll down North Avenue beach with friends, enjoying the view of the Hancock Building.

• Warm up with lapsang souchong smoked tea (and a book) at the Bourgeois Pig in Lincoln Park.

I’m disappointed. As much as I want to roll my eyes when the flight attendant requires me to shut off my Treo, it turns out that reputable sources are actually viewing cell phones on planes as dangerous. This article, from earlier this year, was published by the IEEE Spectrum (read: “eye-triple-eee”), the same respected electronics journal that arrives at my house monthly for my roommate working as an electrical engineer.

While they remain reserved on saying your iPod or DVD player could actually cause a crash, they used hidden on-board testing equipment to discover that 1 to 4 people a flight are ignoring the rules and making live cell phone calls while airborne – and it’s the phones they say can cause real trouble:

In March 2004, acting on a number of reports from general aviation pilots that Samsung SPH-N300 cellphones had caused their GPS receivers to lose satellite lock, NASA issued a technical memorandum that described emissions from this popular phone. It reported that there were emissions in the GPS band capable of causing interference. Disturbingly, though, they were low enough to comply with FCC emissions standards.

Our data and the NASA studies suggest to us that there is a clear and present danger: cellphones can render GPS instrument useless for landings.

read the whole article: “Unsafe At Any Airspeed?” By Bill Strauss, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, and Daniel D. Stancil

I’ve added a simple new box on my blog on the left side. It’s a list of posts that I read in my Google Reader and mark to share, because I found them interesting.

If you aren’t using Google Reader, I’d check it out. It’s an RSS reader and they’re referring to it as your “inbox for the web” – a perfect way to keep up with the 45 blogs I try to keep up with.

Possibly my favorite form of media is my podcasts (snottier way to say it: “new audio”). Here is what I’m currently listening to (in iTunes alphabetical order), including links to each! (click the pic):

Garrison’s Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac
Garrison Keillor recounts the literary highlights of this day in history and reads a short poem or two. Perfect — as expected from the master of vocal inflection.

Aristotle’s Philosophy of Friendship
“What is Friendship?” by Mark Vernon. Aristotle’s lecture notes on friendship are in Books VIII and IX of his Nichomachean Ethics, and dull-voiced Mark Vernon is about to explain. He begins with the “perils and promise” of friendship, starting with a thoughtful definition, and builds quickly. Don’t let the awkward choral interludes distract you: this content is worlds better than the production quality.

Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
“Grammar Girl here.” Grammar, punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a “better and more successful writer,” if not simply envious of her dry (and insane) example sentences. Occasional staid voicing is instantly forgiven by her humble segment conclusions, where she admits imperfection, and practically invites you to google for her number.

NPR: Religion
Explores the intersection between religion and society, with stories from Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other award-winning NPR programs. Worth it.

NPR: Story of the Day
Funny, moving, exceptional, or just offbeat — the NPR story people will be talking about tomorrow. The best of Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other award-winning NPR programs.

NPR: Technology
Perspectives on digital culture, research news, the tech industry and more. The best of Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other award-winning NPR programs. Not all nerdy.

Pandora Podcast Series
A new one: The Music Genome Project starts explaining the methods behind it’s popular free music online player. Each episode will explore (they’ve done only one so far) a musical concept in an engaging, educational and digestible way.

The Onion Radio News
Doyle Redland reporting. “A daily podcast featuring a short news clip from The Onion’s award-winning 24-hour radio news network”. Always amusing, but hits a home-run only about once a week. Probably with illegal medical assistance.

The RELEVANT Podcast
Features the editors of RELEVANT magazine talking about the latest news, issues and entertainment that matters to your life- an extension of RELEVANT magazine covering covering “God, life and progressive culture”. Good topic selection, but the editor’s banter can make you switch windows and forget you were listening. Worth a shot.

This American Life Podcast
Official free, weekly podcast of the award-winning radio show “This American Life.” First-person stories and short fiction pieces that are touching, funny and surprising. Hosted by Ira Glass, from WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. This free version is new to me: I’m a massive fan of the full one-hour show, broadcast on NPR weekends, and available in storable audio only when purchased. Perhaps this version chooses only 1/3 of the show’s segments?

This morning I woke up, grabbed my coffee, and tried to stare out the window and wake up. Instead, I thought of things I want to look up. Look up. Like, research. Internet style.

This happens to me every day. The scary part is, I’ll actually look them up. And remember.

• Why doesn’t the fan in the microwave ever seem to get going until 5 seconds into the cooking time (you can hear it), and does that initial time do any good? Would doing just five seconds of cooking time make anything warmer? Maybe the fan has no related effect to the magnetron. I dunno.

• Is there a way to learn snowboarding that doesn’t make the first day as hard as everyone says it is? Or maybe I can just learn it via internet diagrams? Like with a pivot foot or something?

• How true-to-fact were the news clips I watched last night in Good Night, and Good Luck?

• Does rain and lightning inherently move with a kind of weather front that raises the temperature? It’s probably not just a matter of randomly the temperature choosing not to drop below freezing and give us pretty snow instead of pouring rain…

• Who gets paid if you purchase Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas off iTunes? If he’s dead (heart attack in the 70s), does a portion of the earnings go to a family member? Did they fight over which one? Does the payment amount to anything?

• What cash value does CVS place on the coupons that print out on the back of the receipt when you buy something, giving you money back on the next generic CVS brand beauty product you purchase? What percentage of coupons are actually used (very low?)? What GAAP principles apply?

Yesterday Ash teased me for researching the taco bell disease-food thing. People at her apartment were convinced I shouldn’t go: reports of e coli, salmonella (really?), and probably breast cancer worldwide. Turns out it was only in 4 northeastern states (NY, PA, NJ, DE) states, and 64 people felt sick, but nobody got hurt, and the last case was on Dec 2nd, from a produce supplier that Taco Bell immediately dumped.

Good to know.