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Peach trees grew here years ago, when the summer days flowed like a lazy river. They let cool nectar run down their chins, unworried that the garden would yield to muddy March ground, trampled by growing children not yet born. Now the dried out stumps of broken peach trees We will plant something here again. |
This visualization is amazingly cool:
Microsoft, Google and other information technology and electronics companies are lobbying the FCC for access to the expanded “white spaces” between digital television broadcast signals. White spaces are buffer zones that prevent signals for different television channels from interfering with each other. They offer the potential for gigabit-speed Wi-Fi access. Existing Wi-Fi technologies, however, cannot exploit this space without creating interference with television signals. Television broadcasters therefore are resisting the approval of white space Wi-Fi devices.
This presents some interesting questions about the information infrastructure commons. Television broadcasters and equipment manufacturers have invested heavily in what could be considered pre-infrastructure — broadcast equipment, programming, and television sets — for use on the digital broadcast spectrum infrastructure. Does that investment privilege television use of the spectrum infrastructure over Wi-Fi use? Are television and Wi-Fi truly separate uses given the convergence of video with Wi-Fi? Will my neighbor’s video conference call interfere with my sacred right to wach “Lost” in high def?
During exams I got behind in my blogging and failed to mention the latest issue of The Everyday Journal. Among other notable articles is this interview with Brian McLaren by Thom Turner. An excerpt from the interview:
If I want to see change in the world, the change needs to begin in myself. If I want to see the world become more peaceful, for example, I need to become a person of peace. If I want the world to become less consumptive, I need to become more self-disciplined, and so on. So, to be the change we want to see in the world, we need spiritual practices that help us change. If you imagine a bunch of greedy people trying to make the world more generous, or a bunch of bitter people trying to make the world more forgiving, you see the folly of seeking local, national, or global change without paying attention to spiritual formation.
And this reflection by Meagan on finder herself changed forever after missionary work in Alaska: “even today, talking to my friends from SEND of Alaska’s Summer Missionary Program (SMP) sometimes reminds me of what I imagine an AA meeting to be like.”
As well as much other excellent stuff!
The evanglical / sort-of-Baptist church I attend had a “liturgical” service today. It really spoke to me! I think it’s so great to connect with the historic traditions and confessions of the Church — the Apostle’s Creed (or a Baptist version of it?!!) and a eucharist in which everyone comes forward to identify with the body and blood of Christ. This is exactly the kind of service I’ve been looking for — contemporary worship mixed with historic confession and observance of the Lord’s Supper, but still with a Biblical sermon.
In fact, I’d be interested to explore and push a little further how we treat the eucharistic meal in the economy of salvation. Growing up in evangelical / fundamental / pietistic churches, I’ve always heard the communion meal prefaced with some statement about how communion doesn’t have anything to do with salvation. The churches I grew up in were eager to distance themselves from what they (mis)understood to the the Roman Catholic view on the eucharist as sacrament — actually the closed Bretheren church I went to as a little kid was hatefuly anti-Catholic — but even then I felt the “communion merely as rememberance” view was unsatisfying.
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good.”
–Jimmy Carter
Today is graduation day at Seton Hall University Law School, where I’m a professor. This is the first graduation I’ll be attending as a faculty member. What fun! There’s a buzz around the school, everyone is excited — a great day to be involved with an institution I value highly.
In the tradition of movie reviews by busy parents who never get to see adult movies until they come out on DVD, here are some thoughts on Juno.
I enjoyed this film for its quirky characters and neo-indie-folk soundtrack. Ellen Page was brilliant in the title role. And you have to appreciate a contemporary film in which the choice to give birth rather than to abort is celebrated.
But … the whole thing seemed rather contrived to me. Juno MacGuff is just a bit too smart, knowing and world weary to be credible as a sixteen-year-old. She’s in control even when she’s not — from initiating sex with Paulie Bleeker, to the decision to give birth, to carrying out the adoption plan with Vanessa Loring after Mark Loring backs out. Yes, she faces the consequences of her sexual relationship with Paulie by giving birth, but only up to a point. There’s no sense at all of emotional loss or mourning over her innocence, her youth, or the child that she bears and gives away to someone else. I don’t buy it.
We’re supposed to feel that Juno is heroic, that by her wit she deconstructs the artifices of her world and rebuilds it as something authentic and pure. But there’s a sort of emotional distantiation in Juno’s character that is deeply unnerving. Paulie cuddles her tenderly after she gives birth, they remain together, and the film closes on them playing one of those great off-beat folk songs together on acoustic guitars — but will the song go on? Does Juno possess the depth of character required to stick it out in a relationship when things go wrong and she isn’t fully in control? Or will she disconnect from Paulie some day as easily as she gave away her baby to Vanessa? In short, can Juno really love, or does she just want to be loved?
I removed and reinstalled the blog, and I think I’m back in business now.