Gangsta rapper values

"Gangsta rappers pretty much share the values of their Republican detractors: the emphasis on making money, the righteousness of bearing arms, the wonderfulness of consumption, respect for hierarchy and loyalty to one's own as overriding principles..."
-Musician magazine

Hip hop poetics

"Rappers create, observes music critic Kelefa Sanneh, 'an outsized hero that has more sex than you're really having, that does more violence than you're really doing, that sells more drugs than you've ever sold.'LL Cool J as lover... Pac as thug poet. Biggie as lovable gangsta. 'The persona overshadows the person and the person can be crushed by the persona,' Nelson George remarks." -Adam Bradley, from Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop

Concealed Carry

"[Concealed carriers] see their guns as emblems of a whole spectrum of virtuous lifestyle choices - rural over urban, self-reliance over dependence on the collective, vigorous outdoorsiness over pallid intellectualism, patriotism over internationalism, action over inaction - and they hear attacks on guns as attacks on them, personally... From the point of view of gun enthusiasts, it's not gun violence these groups want to end, but gun ownership." -Dan Baum, from Harper's

Rebirth

"In some evangelical traditions, 'you must be born again' is regard virtually as the equivalent of a command to believe in Christ. It is something we must do. But in the New Testament new birth is something God gives. The point of the metaphor lies in the fact that the new birth is not something we can do... There is a paradox in the gospel at this point. For we discover that the one thing needful is almost the only thing outside our power to perform."
-Sinclair Ferguson, The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction

Justice & law

"Justice itself does not exist but it is something we demand and something that is demanded of us...justice aerates the law, turns its soil, keeping it just... [it is] a solicitation that everywhere exceeds the condition that reality itself has attained... laws are real but justice is like a 'ghost,' a specter, that haunts the laws, a good ghost, a caring spirit or guardian angel, whispering words of justice in the law, incessantly calling for what is yet to be."
-John D. Caputo from "What Would Jesus Deconstruct"

Creationism & Darwinism

"The Creationist position has long been owned by the Religious Right, and the Darwinist position by the Irreligious Right. The differences between these camps are intractable because they are meaningless. People who insist that the sacredness of Scripture depends on belief in creation in a literal six days seem never to insist on a literal reading of 'to him who asks, give,' or 'sell what you have and give the money to the poor.' In fact, their politics and economics align themselves quite precisely with those of their adversaries, who yearn to disburden themselves of the weak, and to unshackle the great creative forces of competition. The defenders of 'religion' have made religion seem foolish while rendering it mute in the face of a prolonged and highly effective assault on the poor. The defenders of 'science' have imputed objectivity and rigor to an account of reality whose origins and consequences are indisputably economic, social, and political."
-Marilynne Robinson, from The Death of Adam

Recycling

Last week's issue of "The Plainsman," Auburn's student newspaper, included a man on the street interview about recycling. When asked whether they recycled, each of the students responded affirmatively. I suppose this means that public pressure to recycle has become successful enough that no one is willing to publicly admit that they don't recycle.

Tea Baggers

The emerging Tea Party movement consists of conservative hippies: they're anti-political, anti-establishment, and doggedly opposed to anything that hints of pragmatism.

Musings

As a society, we don't just admire physical beauty, we admire people who are physically beautiful. We confer our love of beauty to an entire person. The entertainment and fashion industries perpetuate this mindset. Pity the person who doesn't fit the standards of conventional beauty.

If you're reading this and you happen to be beautiful, don't take offense, but it is a sad value system that places a person's entire worth in their physical appearance. Beauty is vain, say the Scriptures.


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From the gifted mind of Noam Chomsky: when we talk about “national defense,” what we really mean is “national offense.” When was the last time the United States waged a defensive war?

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Why do we love the change of seasons so much?

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A well-written hip hop song requires much more songwriting dexterity than a conventional rock or pop song. If you don't believe me, check out Tupac's "My Block" or Blackstar's "Thieves in the Night." Have you ever heard such deft rhyming from, say, John Mayer or Green Day?

Thoughts

The music of Au Revoir Simone has a rare quality: although it mostly synthetic, it somehow feels completely down-home and organic, like something you could perform at a low-key coffee shop. It's great fireplace listening.

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Regarding the cold snap: we're currently experiencing Winter's Last Stand.

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Suicide has a dark paradox: although it is an enormously self-consumed act, it is antithetical to a self-interested self-preservation instict.

Hustlers

Last Sunday after church, I saw one of the boys from my 1st-2nd grade Sunday School class. I said to him "What's up hustler?" His reply was full of 6 year-old sincerity: "I don't really know what hustler means."

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Speaking of hustlers, I've talked to some of you about how much I love "The Wire." It is a breathtaking epic of the American city and its institutions. The characters are fascinatingly flawed and the storylines are uncompromisingly complex. It is a ruthlessly grim picture of urban life, but somehow it is unfailingly entertaining. More on why I love this show later.

Technology

Technology traps us just as much as it protects us. To the extent that it makes our lives more comfortable, it makes them more dangerous.

Cars = car crashes
Credit cards = identity theft
Cyberspace = cyber bullying

And so on.

Random thoughts & quotes

Thoughts on poetry

"A poem always runs the risk of being meaningless, and would be nothing without this." -Jacques Derrida

"Poetry, unlike lawyers, guns, and money doesn't make anything (or supply its own interpretation" -Auden, paraphrased

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Other random thoughts:

Pop music, one essayist writes, always tells us that our emotions are real. Perhaps this is why we identify with it so much.

T.S. Eliot's fear of a state-run church: that "a national church might become a nationalistic church." Robert Nisbet argues that in this country "Christ the redeemer and America the Redeemer Nation have existed side by side."