Patrick

Did you guys know there's a new New Order album out? I'm pretty certain I would have heard about this earlier if it weren't for the fact that the music is not being released as New Order, but under the new band name "Bad Lieutenant". As some of you may know, the legendary bassist Peter Hook left the band on bad terms a few years ago. The remaining members swore to keep the band going, but have apparently decided to not use the name New Order. I don't know if this is for legal reasons or not, but without Peter Hook it really isn't New Order. I've listened to some of the samples, and it sounds good, but without his unique prominent style of bass playing, it's just not the same at all. I believe he was also a major influence in the song writing as well. This music reminds me a lot more of Bernard Sumner's (the lead singer and guitarist) other band, "Electronic".

Speaking of new New Order, if you're interested in hearing New Order perform some great new versions of some of their classic songs, check out their "iTunes Originals" release on iTunes. They have some great new versions of Love Will Tear Us Apart, Love Vigilantes and Transmission. Also available now is new special editions of their classic original albums that include rare B-sides, 7" versions and other songs not easily available before including the original versions of Temptation and the 7" of Ceremony, which are both excellent and fairly different from the versions most people know of those songs.

This Christmas seems to have been the Year of the Books. I got so many great books this year from various family and friends. I'm pretty excited to read them all too. I haven't decided yet whether or not to keep an ongoing LJ series about the books I read this next year like I have this past. (I'm not completely certain I want to even keep my LiveJournal at all, actually!)

What do you guys think? Do you enjoy reading my brief reviews of the books I've been reading this year? Are you planning on staying with LJ, or moving someplace else?

I actually finished my 25th book of the year a little while ago, but have been too busy to write about it. The book I just finished was Dogmatics in Outline by Karl Barth*. Despite the title of the book, it's really not a summary per se of his ginormous multi-volume Church Dogmatics. Instead it's a fairly short book taken from some talks he gave about christian theology, using the Apostle's Creed as a framework for it. (Each chapter is based around each line of the creed).

I've read one other book by Barth before (The Humanity of God), and read a fair number of things that have mentioned his various beliefs, but until reading this I don't think I really had a good grasp on his basic theological ideas. One thing about Barth is that he can be really hard to pin down. In fact, it can be really hard to figure out just what it is he's thinking at times. He'll seem to be really concerned about a particular doctrinal issue, and end up taking a really strange view of it, and as someone who's grown up in traditional orthodoxy, it's hard for me to see why it's such a big deal for him to come up with his new way of looking at it. I ended up concluding that a lot of it probably has to do with the time and place. Barth was coming out of European liberal Protestantism, which had its own set of convictions and problems, and in coming up with his new theology (often called neo-orthodoxy), things that to us may not seem like big deals were very much on his mind.

That strangeness in his theology can be a good thing, sometimes, even when I don't agree with his views or approach at all, in that it can help me try to think more clearly about what it is I believe exactly, and why I do believe that way. As frustrating as he can be to read at times, I'll have to say he really does make me think a lot when I read him. This book in particular is nice in that it seems to cover a lot of his views in a pretty short amount of space, without having to try to read some the enormous volumes of the Church Dogmatics. It also reminds me why, despite is humongous influence in academic circles, he's not somebody your typical lay-christian reads a lot, or is even that familiar with. I can also start to see why he did write such huge volumes, because it's not easy to figure out why he says the things he does in this book. It's just too short for him to give a lot of substantial support for a lot of it.

Still, none the less, a fascinating little book and worth checking out if you've ever been interested in learning more about Barth or neo-orthodoxy. There's a lot there to make you think, whether you agree with him or not!

*Barth is pronounced "bart", like in Bart Simpson.

Slate.com has a nice article on the joys of Fruitcake -- quite possibly the most underrated dessert of all time (in my opinion). If you've never tried a good fruitcake before, you're really missing out!

Poll #1499841
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

What do you think of fruitcake?

Is the Whig Party making a come back? An interesting article on Slate.com talks about the new resurgence in the Whig Party. It actually sounds pretty interesting.

Judging by the results of my sushi poll, the most popular sushi roll here should have avocado, cucumber, real crab and smoked salmon on it. That actually sounds quite good, now that I think about it!

Speaking of sushi, our sushi party went well the other night. One pound of raw tuna is far more than enough for four people. In fact, I would guess we could have easily fed eight with that amount, especially if we made up more rice and had more nori. Next time I'll definitely look for a smaller size of raw fish if I can get it. Either that, or see if it's OK to cut it in half and keep part of it frozen. It was really good though! I'm excited to try more kinds of fish at the Northwest Seafood Market.

Tomorrow, Helen and I and a couple of our friends are going to have a sushi party, and make some of our own sushi! If you've never done this before, it's something you ought to try some time. (Assuming you like sushi that is!) We actually found a place that sells sushi grade raw fish in town, so I'm pretty excited to see how that tastes. :-)

Poll #1497675
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

How often do you eat sushi?

What kinds of things do you like to eat in your sushi?

I just found out there's a place I can buy sushi grade fish, smoked eel, and other seafood delicacies that's practically walking distance from my house. I <3 Richland.

I feel like I need some new Christmas music to listen to this year. What are some of your favorite Christmas albums? Do you know of any lesser known albums that are worth checking out?

While on my Thanksgiving break I finished my 24th book of the year. Midsummer Century by James Blish. It's a short novel, very much in the style of A.E. van Vogt. Like Van Vogt's works, it's short, fast paced, very bizarre and surreal, and chocked full of pseudo-philosophical references and ideas. It's apparently really quite obscure, and hasn't been printed in ages. I would say it was an OK read. I rather liked the fast paced nature of it. But the actually plot, dialog, and writing style could have better. Although I've certainly read worse before. The basic premise was intriguing though. A modern day earth person is suddenly transported into a distant future in which highly evolved birds are starting to rule the world. Only he's transported without his body, and has to constantly try and find a different host (be it person or computer) to reside in. It's one of those way out there stories that I thought only A.E. van Vogt wrote, but apparently I was wrong. :-)

Oddly enough, despite the fact that the back cover only described the main story, the book also included two other shorter novellas/short-stories in it. Probably because the main one was only about 90 pages long. Both of these other stories were completely un-related, but in somewhat of a similar style. The second took place in modern times, and was arguably the better of the two. The third one was so crazy it made the first one seem quite traditional in comparison. It was one of those stories in which every few words was a completely made up word, with no real help from the author of fully understanding what he was talking about. It was the kind of story that made A.E. van Vogt works seem like normal fiction in comparison. Even after reading it I only had a vague notion of what in the world actually happened. Although like the other two stories, it kind of made up for it to some extent by being so incredibly fast paced. Still, I generally prefer to have some idea what in the world is going on in the books I read. :-)

I'll have to admit, despite the fact that these stories weren't quite as good as I was hoping for, the crazy style in which they were written kind of has me interested in seeking out some more of his books to see if they're the same or not. One thing I forgot to mention was the sort of pseudo-religious aspect to his writing. I had heard this mentioned before, and noticed it in one of his short stories I had heard previously (in an old time radio science fiction program). Use of religious themes is fairly rare in a lot of science fiction, so I'm curious to see how he might use it in other works, and what his own religious beliefs actually were (if any).

The following is a fascinating essay on the literature and logic of Choose Your Own Adventure books: http://samizdat.cc/cyoa/

The writer goes into detail about the mathematical nature of the stories, and how graph analysis can help us peer into the writing process that might have been used. He also makes some interesting observations about the literary nature of these books, and also explains why I could never get to an ending in Inside UFO 54-40!

Thanks goes to Geoff (aka, thetsuruchi) for the link!

Hilarious video in which John Hodgman interviews the president to see if he is really a true nerd or not:

Since I always like to think about all sides of an issue, I realized there's a possible reason to the incongruity between Pitchfork's original review of Daft Punk's Discovery and their later claim that it was the 3rd best album of the decade. It comes back to something Geoff brought up. He suggested that it's possible that if it wasn't for them there wouldn't be a lot of the new electronic dance bands that exist now.

Unfortunately, I'm apparently not very familiar with the current state of electronic dance music, but if that is true it actually can explain the discrepancy between the two reviews of Discovery. If the album did start a whole knew trend in music, it might be a bit like the reaction of music reviewers to The Ramones in the 1970's. When their first album came out, many reviewers gave it really harsh reviews. After all, the music was simple, and they weren't exactly the greatest musicians in the world. But several years later, looking back at the whole new generation of music that spawned from their music, most reviewers looked back at the first album as a hugely important album, and one of the most important of the decade. Perhaps Discovery is in the same situation, and I'm just too old to realize how much it means to some people.

This idea scares me. O_o Especially because it's probably true. o_O

Although if that's true, I think we should demand that The Prodigy's Experience be on their top list for the 90's! (Since it certainly helped bring about the rise in 90's electronic dance music.)

Oh Pitchfork, how you amuse me.

Remember how I just said how baffled I was about Daft Punk's album Discovery being listed as the 3rd best album of the 2000's? Well, apparently my bafflement was quite warranted. The actual rating Pitchfork gave of the album was a 6.4 out of 10. So even the original reviewer had similar feelings to me about the album. How this some how developed into it being the third best album of the decade is beyond me. I wonder how they explain that?

It just goes to show how positively ridiculous these "best" type of lists are, and how completely arbitrary they can be!

Do any of you guys know what it is about the band Daft Punk that makes them so popular? In particular I'm thinking of their album, Discovery, which I've been noticing has been making it near the top of a lot of people's "Best of the 2000's" album lists. This includes Pitchfork which placed it at #3, above Radiohead's In Rainbows, Sufjan Steven's Illinoise and just about every other great album to come out of this decade.

Now don't get me wrong. I own Discovery, and I'm actually a rather big fan of electronic music. And that's part of what baffles me about all of this. I think the album is for the most part rather boring and not very impressive. With the exception of a couple of songs I would say it's downright mediocre. Certainly not better or more important than The Strokes' Is This It, or Coldplay's Parachutes, or The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. And yet, there it sits near the top of many people's lists for the decade.

So just what is it about this album that makes some people so attached to it? All I can guess is maybe it's the people who don't normally listen to a lot of electronic dance music. It's the people who were part of the whole "we don't need no stinkin' synthesizers or drum machines" fad of the 90's, and perhaps with this album they were first able to gain appreciation for completely electronic music. Perhaps this is electronic dance music for people who don't like electronic dance music.

So what about you guys? Do you know what the appeal of Discovery is to people? Do you own it? Do you like it? What do you think makes it stand out as so much better than most other electronic albums (or non-electronic albums for that matter)?

I was surprised to discover that Timothy Keller was one of the authors at the Authors@Google series last year. He spoke with Google employees about why it makes sense to believe in God. Apparently it was one of the most well attended Authors@Google talks!

Click here to watch it.

This American Life has an interesting program on the history of our health insurance system, and all of it's strange quirks, including the development of pet health insurance. They do a lot of interviews with economists explaining how having an insurance system to pay for services (any services, really) can make prices get so out of whack.

I can't believe that actually show stuff like this on the History Channel of all things. It should be a good reminder to us of how we shouldn't really trust anything they show on cable TV!

So, I just finished my 23rd book of the year, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I have to say, this is one of the most unusual books I have ever read. It's a science fiction novel of sorts... or possibly not, depending on how you interpret it. It's very dark, although also laugh out loud funny at times, and yet also very disturbing, and artsy/literary... and yet also easy to read. It has to be one of the strangest books I've ever read. I'm definitely going to have to try reading another of his books now, and see how it compares. Warning: it is not a book for the faint of heart, or the easily offended!