PAUL: And there will be a realignment and there is a struggle going on with us who believe that we should have national sovereignty, we should be out of the U.N., out of the World Bank, out of the IMF, in no world government. But that is the movement that we're going in, that's the direction we're going in.
But others are planning to go one step further. They weren't satisfied with the Bretton Woods; they weren't satisfied with the dollar standard. Now, they want to probably modify the special drawing rights of the IMF which they tried and then failed, but they want to control capital and they want to control the natural resources of the world.
So — and they're not — they're not nationalistic at all. They believe in world government...
"The real test of the saint is not preaching the gospel, but washing disciples' feet, that is, doing the things that do not count in the actual estimate of men but count everything in the estimate of God."
~ Oswald Chambers
"The real test of the saint is not preaching the gospel, but washing disciples' feet, that is, doing the things that do not count in the actual estimate of men but count everything in the estimate of God."
~ Oswald Chambers
This is a little feature in Dusted Magazine, a rundown of 10 personal favourite records, thought you might enjoy reading it.. Thanks to Otis Hart for this.
"I recently moved to the U.S., and with my vinyl collection being far too big to ship over in its entirety, I’ve had to put myself to the daunting task of selecting some of my personal favorite records and ship them in 50 lb. boxes. Box No. 1, the first box with my ultimate selection, is all taped up and ready to be sent, so I decided to theme this Listed with 10 records that, I pray, will arrive in one piece on our apartment’s doorstep soon:
1. Talking Heads - Fear of Music (Sire Records)
One of my all-time favorite bands, and my favorite album, this was the first record I remembered being in Box No. 1. Fear of Music sees the Talking Heads in ultimate punk rock / new wave form, before they started to incorporate all sorts of other influences into their sound (world music). "Air," "Heaven,” "Mind” - it’s really just filled with great, great songs.
2. Pharoah Sanders - The Best of Pharoah Sanders (Impulse)
One of my top three biggest jazz artists. Pharoah Sanders is such an emotional player, his sax sounds like a rusty old whiskey drinking grandpa at times, but he switches it up just as easily to very light-hearted notes (sheets of sound) or just play plain texture. This album has some of his best tracks: "Thembi,” "Hum-Allah" and "Creator has a Master Plan.” Not for the faint hearted, but once you get into it, there’s no turning back!
3. V/A - Underground Anthems Vol. 1 (Sistrum)
Contains Patrice Scott – “Do You Feel Me,” one of my favorite house tracks of the last good few years – it’s slow, it’s pumping, it breathes, it’s got a rainy sadness to it, similar to some of Moodymann’s and Theo Parrish’s music. This track put Patrice Scott on the map for me, and he hasn’t disappointed since.
4. Deepchord - Electromagnetic Dowsing (the final step) (S Y N T H)
Proud owner of this powerful exercise in how dub techno should be done! Played this track out at clubs so many times and just never get tired of it. “The Final Step” version has that energy that I miss in a lot of dub techno nowadays, where it just gets a bit too ambient - I don’t think that’s what Maurizio (Moritz von Oswald & Mark Ernestus) meant it to be back in the day. Well, what do I know anyway, this is just a great record.
5. Slum Village - Trinity (Past, Present & Future) (Capitol)
I have the feeling this album gets overlooked a lot, but for me it’s one of Detroit hip hop’s greatest moments. Absolutely serious, innovative production by Waajeed on the beautiful "Star" with Dwele and T3, but it really all comes together with Jaydee on the super-deep "Hoes" and my favorite "One,” where Baatin takes the track to a whole different dimension at the end. I miss Baatin!
6. K. Alexi Shelby - All for Lee-Sah (Transmat)
Have looked for this 12" for years and eventually just shelled out a lot of money for it because I was sick of not owning it! In a dark acid sort of way, "All for Lee-Sah" is possibly among the most sexy club tunes I have ever heard.
7. Bobby Hutcherson - Happenings (Blue Note)
There are many classic jazz albums in my boxes, but this is one of my most coveted. Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson was in with a lot of the cool "cats" in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, but this solo album is mostly his own compositions, bar a version of "Maiden Voyage" by Herbie Hancock – who appears on all the tracks, as well as drummer Joe Chambers. While the album is quite a relaxed jazz album, it’s "The Omen" all the way at the end which leaves you with a real uneasy feeling – very dark, very sinister. Oh and the sleeve art on the album is worth whatever you need to pay for it.
8. Anthony Shake Shakir - Assimilated (Natural Electronics)
Shake is probably THE most underrated Detroit-based producer. He has done some genius music that was far ahead of his time, combining hip hop style sampling with techno compositions. With an honorable mention for "Fact of the Matter" on Seventh City, "Assimilated" is Shake at his best. The way the track builds from many tiny little samples into a great symphony of off-key techno has been a major source of inspiration for me.
9. Kode 9 & Daddi Gee - Sine of the Dub (Hyperdub)
Just wanted to include at least one defining moment in music that is somewhat recent. "Sine of the Dub" was not only a major introduction for me to "dubstep" (altho it’s nothing like anything else that has been named “dubstep”) but (I later found out) also a cleverly done ode/reference to Prince. "Stalker" on the other side is just a cold-hearted, bass-heavy killer of a track. An essential record, this one!
10. Johan Cruyff - En un momento dado (dvd)
Not a record, but packed in my box – a little football treasure. (Almost) every Dutchman has football (soccer) embedded in his consciousness, and this movie is a must-watch. It’s an interview with Holland’s greatest player/coach/TV-pundit/businessman/philosopher Johan Cruyff, with many highlights of his career on and off the pitch. I would not know how to describe how much of an icon Cruyff is in the Netherlands to an American, but think a ‘70s football version of Miles Davis? http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8kgoJTB6cds
By Dusted Magazine
I've always thought that this drawing would make a good Father's Day card. Or, a card, in general, for dads. Doesn't have to be a specific occasion. I just think it's an appropriate image. Which I'm sure many of us can relate to.
A few days later we found ourselves in Berlin at club Arena for part 2: Lovely club with a good dancefloor and lots of little corners and niches for people to chill out at, and a good system. Adam Marshall opened the dance and Scuba brought a good hour of his new material mixed up with some 2step classics. By this time the club was nice and full, a good 400 happy people for a wednesday evening! Kode and I played back2back, again a mix of all sorts of styles, and to top it all off Berlin's main man Marcel Dettmann held it down with a wicked house/techno set, with fellow Berghain resident Ben Klock joining him until the very early hours. Once again thanks to everyone who made this happen: Nils, Paul&Paul, Marcel, Adam and Ben, Philipp and all the crew that represented.Book publishers, I think your business model is expiring! If you don't update it now, you will suffer the same fate as the music industry: "cluelessness" of what to do to fight steeply declining revenues!
I am by no means an expert of the book publishing industry. My only qualification is being a huge buyer of books and being an aspiring author with a business model innovation book I am working on. The innovation behind the book: I am not alone in writing this book, but my co-author and I are working with another 250+ co-authors who paid to be part of the book writing. Oh, I almost forgot, we not working with a publisher... I never even submitted a manuscript to a publisher...
Here four substantial trends off the top of my head that will rock the book publishing industry and their business models (trends which you probably know, but are not taking seriously):
Distribution is a commodity and attention is scarce
Publishers and retailers used to controlled distribution. That gave them the power to promote authors and their books. With Amazon.com, self-publishing sites such as Lulu.com and the rise of e-books that power is gone because anybody can (print and) distribute a book. The name of the game is now capturing attention in a world of abundance and the absence of distribution scarcity. The publisher’s role of the gatekeeper is soon gone. We are entering the ultimate meritocracy. Books will be successful without a major publisher if they can capture the attention of potential readers through the mastery of the tools of the attention economy: blogs, communities, search engine optimization (SEO) and viral marketing. Readers will catapult a book to success if their attention can be captured. We have already seen this happen sporadically in the music industry.
New business and revenue models will dominate the landscape
Traditional revenue streams from selling books are prone to die. Learn from the music industry: Apple is now the dominant force in digital music and has replaced the incumbent players with a completely different business and revenue model. They sell music online, but they earn most from selling their iPod hardware. Or look towards the artist that give away their music and earn their revenues from increased concert sales or special edition albums. They use “free” as a way to capture attention and earn from new revenue streams.
Authors want to be liberated from the handcuffs of publishers
Very few authors get lucrative royalties or a substantial advance from their publishers. Royalties usually run around 5-10% of the book price. You have to sell VERY many books to live from it decently. In addition publishers don’t allow you to do most of the interesting stuff: experiment with new formats, revenue models and online communities. Hence, new authors have little interest to work with publishers and many of the most lucrative successful authors will run as soon as they have the courage: Paulo Coelho is famous for his stance against the publishing industry and their traditional methods.
New experimental formats will emerge
Books will be written by communities, they will come in versions (like software: cf. the unbook movement by my friend Dave Gray), they will have innovative intellectual copyrights (e.g. creative commons) and novels will have multiple endings. They will take advantage of multimedia by integrating online content and they will be delivered to digital readers like the Kindle. There are absolutely no limits to imagination of how the “books of the future” will look like. Sadly, publishers (with notable exceptions) lack the required imagination to exploit the new opportunity space.
UPDATE: Richard Baraniuk's talk at TED on textbooks: Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html
"Abortion can produce troubling emotions. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
"Many women...men...grandparents...siblings...family members...friends...
are seeking to make sense of their own or their loved one's abortion.
"This Website is a safe place to begin.
"This confidential space is for those who are touched by abortion, whether the experience happened recently or years ago.
"Abortion Changes You is a refuge for those who wish to tell their story and begin the process of healing."
"Abortion can produce troubling emotions. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
"Many women...men...grandparents...siblings...family members...friends...
are seeking to make sense of their own or their loved one's abortion.
"This Website is a safe place to begin.
"This confidential space is for those who are touched by abortion, whether the experience happened recently or years ago.
"Abortion Changes You is a refuge for those who wish to tell their story and begin the process of healing."
Click on image to view.Extra extra extra (XXX) Large (L) cupcake for
Catherine and Eric's engagement!
Made with the Wilton Giant Cupcake Pan from Target!
Cupcake Queen received a beautiful cupcake necklace from her friends in the Women's Studies Dept. at the University of Maryland for Valentine's Day! You are all so sweet...
Since the inauguration, the mainstream media outlets have run numerous stories about children offering political opinions and helpful advice to the new president. It’s unlikely, however, that this 12 year old girl’s words will reach his ears...
Since the inauguration, the mainstream media outlets have run numerous stories about children offering political opinions and helpful advice to the new president. It’s unlikely, however, that this 12 year old girl’s words will reach his ears...
"If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal [an inanimate object] never to be depressed. A human being is capable of depression, otherwise there would be no capacity for exaltation."
~ Oswald Chambers
"If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal [an inanimate object] never to be depressed. A human being is capable of depression, otherwise there would be no capacity for exaltation."
~ Oswald Chambers
We all have any number of visions and ideals when we are young, but sooner or later we find that we have no power to make them real. We cannot do the things we long to do, and we are apt to settle down to the visions and ideals as dead, and God has to come and say - "Arise from the dead." When the inspiration of God does come, it comes with such miraculous power that we are able to arise from the dead and do the impossible thing. The remarkable thing about spiritual initiative is that the life comes after we do the "bucking up." God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome. When the inspiration of God comes, and He says - "Arise from the dead," we have to get up; God does not lift us up. Our Lord said to the man with the withered hand - "Stretch forth thy hand," and as soon as the man did so, his hand was healed, but he [the man] had to take the initiative. If we will do the overcoming, we shall find we are inspired of God because He gives life immediately.
~ Oswald Chambers
We all have any number of visions and ideals when we are young, but sooner or later we find that we have no power to make them real. We cannot do the things we long to do, and we are apt to settle down to the visions and ideals as dead, and God has to come and say - "Arise from the dead." When the inspiration of God does come, it comes with such miraculous power that we are able to arise from the dead and do the impossible thing. The remarkable thing about spiritual initiative is that the life comes after we do the "bucking up." God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome. When the inspiration of God comes, and He says - "Arise from the dead," we have to get up; God does not lift us up. Our Lord said to the man with the withered hand - "Stretch forth thy hand," and as soon as the man did so, his hand was healed, but he [the man] had to take the initiative. If we will do the overcoming, we shall find we are inspired of God because He gives life immediately.
~ Oswald Chambers
The Raving TheistThat first link above, in the title of this post, begins the explanation. I will excerpt some of his post at the bottom of this one.
Dedicated to Jesus Christ, Now and Forever
Oh yes, I saw you Annie, and some of your friends. You love life so much you allowed people with signs praising jim kopp for killing bernard slepian to march along with you. You regret your abortion or you regret the fact that more abortionists with families of their own aren't murdered? I would have taken you a lot more seriously if you werent there with people praising murderers.(I addressed those accusations in the updated post)
...Of course you aren't interested in setting up shelters for these poor and abused women [made pregnant by husbands who force them into sex and pregnancy] but at least think of them when trying to take away the choices of others...
Jay | Email | 04.27.04 - 3:00 pm | #
Jay - As the blackest, darkest, nastiest atheist you will ever meet, I can guarantee you that the people on this site are the kindest and most caring I have ever encountered.
The Raving Atheist | Email | Homepage | 04.28.04 - 6:12 pm
ATHEIST'S SITE IS ALL THE RAVE,TRA began guest-blogging at her blog, Dawn Patrol, shortly after that.
BY DAWN EDEN, Sunday, September 18th 2005
Make no bones about it, Raving Atheist's credentials as a skeptic are impeccable. A Manhattan attorney (he declines to give his real name), he's famous for using his well-tooled debating skills to skewer believers' arguments. He gleefully labels inarticulate theists "Godidiots" and other terms that can't be printed in a family newspaper.
But lately, that hasn't been enough.
Slowly, RA has been inviting believers to enter his blog's dialogue, with comments and even guest posts - and a few are taking the bait.
The result is one of the blog world's most unlikely and intriguing public discussions of faith - or the lack thereof.
Theism first invaded RA's site last year, after readers in the blog's comments section savaged Annie Banno, a Christian anti-abortion blogger (afterabortion.blogspot.com) who had posted her thoughts there. RA, who is himself anti-abortion, invited her to guest-blog in response.
In introducing Banno's post, RA - with the mixture of the black humor and deadly seriousness that marks his writing - outlined why he believes in engaging opponents in dialogue.
"I admire Annie," he wrote, "because she represents a certain type of tolerance that I respect . . .
"Many people equate tolerance with the attitude that every belief is equally true," he went on, "and that we should all simply accept this fact and go our separate ways.
"But I view tolerance as the willingness to come together, to face one another in the same room and hack at each other with claw hammers until the truth finally trickles out from the blood and the tears."
A Few Thoughts and ExplanationsHere's a recent sample of how scathing the Raving Theist can be, now.
December 31, 2008 | 213 Comments
I had planned to shutter this blog shortly after the end of this year. The day after the election, with so many of my friends depressed by the outcome, I announced that I would be publicly declaring my conversion to Christianity. Like me, many of them could barely drag themselves out of bed, read the newspaper or turn on the television. I hoped that it would cheer them to see The Raving Atheist go out on a faith-filled note, and encourage them to rise to the challenges posed by the incoming administration. I anticipating closing the blog with a few wrap-up posts, and then returning full-steam to the pro-life efforts that eventually brought me to this good place in my life.
The blog was essentially moribund due to an abandonment of fourteen months. I expected perhaps a dozen goodbye (or good riddance) comments on the conversion post. I did not bother to remove the Basic Assumptions or other trappings of godlessness because it seemed to me that would be like rearranging the furniture on the Titanic. The accompanying picture was selected by downloading the first suitably-sized result arising from a Google Image search for “Christ + Children.” I did not screen it for historical or political correctness because I assumed that the thought behind it would count enough for the handful of readers who would see it.
The deluge of comments and e-mails has persuaded me that some purpose might be served by an extended run of The Raving Theist. I have also been convinced, particularly by Jennifer of Conversion Diary, that sharing the story of my coming to faith might serve some beneficial purpose. It will be a maudlin, rickety, hole-filled, unconvincing narrative, in that respect not much different from the lives we lead in or out of the faith. For now, however, I will address (as time permits) some of the issues that have arisen more persistently in the comments, supplying additional observations where necessary.
(1) Yes, my conversion is real and sincere and heartfelt. It is not a mean atheist hoax or prank. At first I was offended that anyone could suspect me of such monstrous cruelty, but I realize that most people don’t know me well enough to understand how my character would so absolutely preclude such a charade. And having written my share of skeptical posts about the conversion of other atheists, I understand how impossible it would be for anyone who has perused my archives to conclude that I am anything more than fraud.
...
Various believers have expressed concern over the nastiness and obscenities directed at me. I don’t care. I did the same for years (albeit usually with a point somewhere) and am in no position to complain. And if I wanted to, I could out-nasty and out-swear any of them. I have lost my atheism, not my vocabulary. But I don’t want to.
This smells of bait & switch, devil's advocate type of ploy. I wouldn't place any bets if I were you.I thought about that, replied and though it worth adding to the post here:
The Apostles thought the exact same thing of Paul after he'd converted and changed from the Christian-murdering Saul.
It took about three years of Paul "walking the walk," at least one trusted person to vouch for him, Barnabas, and Paul's living the Christian disciple's life, preaching the gospel, even to the point of surviving not one but two attempts to kill him, before Peter and the Apostles finally, fully accepted his conversion as bona fide.
Folks probably had the same doubts about St. Augustine.
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
That's what I put my trust in, Jeff.
I've been duped before in my life. Several times in fact, but mostly in the personal/romantic department. Yes, I've been fooled, in some cases by the most amazingly, unbelievably elaborate ruse, one that was even fueled by that person's use of the media for many years. It eventually was found out to be just a ruse.
As I believe all ruses eventually are.
If TRT's actions and words are a bait and switch (which as an advertising term isn't wholly apropos here, but I know what you meant), then this ruse is now going on four years, monetary donations to Rachel's Vineyard and possibly elsewhere, actual volunteer time at a CPC, and it has duped not only me, Dawn Eden, Emily Peterson, most of his old readers and all of his new ones, and the folks who run the CPC where TRT has volunteered time for several years, and God knows who else.
But, sure, Jeff, it is still possible. I know that. I suppose anything is possible.
With God, all good things are possible. And perhaps I won't "know" for certain unless I make it to heaven and bump into him, or he bumps into me.
If I'm being duped by a RA in RT's clothing, it wouldn't be the first time I was fooled. And it probably won't be the last!
If he's truly gone to all this trouble, all such expensive, elaborate, lengthy years of effort and gyrations to make fun of us (and it's already been done to me by someone, as I said), then ultimately I say, "There is only one who loses, and it isn't me and it isn't anyone helped in all such allegedly phony monetary donations or volunteer time helping people."
One could well argue that we will have to see in a decade or two where he stands. Or if he is able to withstand some sort of nonliteral, modern-equivalent of Paul's two death threats, which finally convinced the Apostles.
If TRT/TRA (or any troll, since that would be the ultimate Grand Poobah of Trolls) wants to set up an elaborate decade(s)-long ruse of pretending to be someone they're not, just to make us look like idiots, I can save him or her or them a lot of time: a few other guys have already beat ya to that!
What do I care about how I am perceived by anyone capable of such a colossal waste of time or by anyone among the "fanbase" chortling with glee over such a useless little "sting"?
