A thought on culture.

SOOOOOO It's summer and the job search continues, even though it could be argued that I have one. With the economy being in such a silly place people are either hiring like mad or they won't hire anyone. That isn't what I wanted to talk about today though.

A few Sundays back the pastor at the church my parents attend gave a few interesting stats on population growth and culture spread. Essentially what he was trying to point out is that in roughly 40 years Europe will be a Muslim continent. This is due to the fact that the ratio between Muslim and non Muslim children born, is 8 to 1.

The pastor wasn't trying to scare the congregation with these stats. He was merely trying to point out that this world will be very different in the next little while and our children with have to live in that world etc...

The way that he described it was specifically in terms of a loss of western culture in our country and Europe. Again it wasn't intended to strike fear but by the reactions of many in the congregation would be what I consider to be fearful ones. This made me think: Is the loss of western culture such a bad thing? I will admit that the portrayal of history in Europe may change which I think is sad that they may loose their heritage but that happens for example: any of the great conqueror races of the past.

Really, do we want to be holding onto this terribly materialistic and anti religious society? Most Muslims are more accepting of Christians than most westerners are. I am talking about the non-extremist ones; most of them share values that are similar to a Christian style of value system. The Muslim culture is suffering the same problem that the Christian culture is, many are in name only. In Turkey the giant mosques that used to be full all the time are nearly empty.

I do not think this spread of culture is necessarily a bad thing. It may in fact open even more avenues for the Christian message to be spread.

Anyways that was just something I have been pondering over a week or two. Here is a link to the stats I was talking about.

Muslim Demographics

I guess instead of saying have a good day it will soon be safety and peace be with you.

Grrrrr.

I can't believe this little piece of advertising I saw yesterday that my school just put out. It's terrible! I was appalled when I saw it. The lighting is so-so and the camera movement! The camera movement its terrible has the maker of this clip not heard of cutting? Those are just some of the issues I have, an advertisement should not be more than 2 minutes in length. This feels more like unsolved mysteries than an ad for the school. OH AND LETS NOT FORGET THE COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENTS! The song at the end is on a CD that has not even been released yet. I doubt they asked the artist for the use of the song. DENNIS! You like your reading the whole time, DO A VOICE OVER!

I'm not going to go into what I think the Sociology course at this school does to the students enrolled in it but from the ones that I have witnessed I don't believe there will be any 'better helping' coming from them. These systems that they want to be fixed generally can't be fix by us 'western folk' unless we go and invade the country, and well we all know what happens then. Honestly it saddens me to know that the guy who made this thing is one of the senior film buffs in the communications program here. But that's what we get for not specializing I guess.

Famous people geez. (WARNING RANDOM)

Now it has been said by a few that I enjoy Tool every now and then. This would include Maynard Keenan's solo work Puscifer. It just came to my attention a few days ago that one of his back up singers would include the likes of model/actress and now singer Milla Jovovich. Now I don't claim to know much about the Hollywood circle but why do actors/actresses seem to think that, because they are in one form of media they then are compatible with all forms? This is by no means a new trend as actors of the past were almost required to be able to dance and sing and do a plethora of things. But we are in a different time when the political views of the uninformed seem to to be what is most important to us. Should we keep to the same standards of the past when training and brains seem to be rather lacking? I am not in anyway trying to insult Ms. Jovovich's intelligence, I'm just using her as an example for the industry as a whole.

Videogames in the Mainstream Media

Interesting Take on The Internet

"We have a perfect example of hatred of the good for being good with the internet. Anyone familiar with it knows that the internet is infested with those consumed by a burning hatred of anything good. Instead of finding what they enjoy in life and enjoying it, they haunt the internet, devoting their lives to hate. Hiding under their cloak of anonymity, these cowards rant against anything and everything. What they hate most are values because values promote life. If you choose to think for yourself rather than submit to their dogmatic beliefs and dictatorial vents, they invariably turn to insults, abusive language, and threats. The style of a writer, even a writer on the internet, reveals that writer's soul. Their own words betray their inner corruption. They seek not to discover and enjoy the good in life, but to make your life miserable. They hate that you enjoy anything in life. They hate the good for being good. When you come across the venom from these zeros, I hope you will remember this quote and know them for what they are." - Terry Goodkind

Is this true? Though it is well known that the internet has a large group of uninformed individuals rampaging through its spaces but are the majority of them down right evil to the core? What does this say of our generation?

Don't sit on cathedral spires...

Michael Bull has a lot to say about the current IPod craze. He even goes as far to compare them to the sacred spaces of the Catholic Church. IPods are places where we can worship, find solitude, safety and connect with society? The main function of the church in the days of Cathedrals was to meet up with the people in the town and connect with people. IPods are not allowing this in our "global community". They are doing exactly the opposite, turning man into his own island. Or her own island if you want me to be gender specific.

Another way Bull likes to compare IPods to church buildings is by saying that they are the epitome of architecture in the 21st century. Bull obviously hasn't been in the tower 101. IPods are large brick like objects that take up more pocket space than a good sized hip flask and cause far more frustration. They tend to be dust magnets so when ever you pull them out of your pocket an asthma attack ensues. Though there are smaller sizes these tend to break easily when sat on the wrong way. Churches don't break when sat upon.

As people go about their daily routine, avoiding all human contact and interaction with the outside world, they begin to notice things: "My ears are hurting, oh well." Bull seems to think that allowing people to listen to music wherever they go gives them back power over their lives. I don't understand how this empowers people in anyway. The traffic will still take as long as it always does. Why not look for an alternate route instead of zoning out and ignoring potential traffic hazards. Having your senses completely closed off while walking through the city is in no way empowering, not only that you will miss the music that is the world around you.

You might get mugged to.

Evangelical Porn for Girls....

Evangelical Romance novels have become vastly popular over recent years. This is because they are considered to be much more "tame" than their Harlequin Romance counterparts. Many claim to have a "Christian" message and focus on the main character's relationship with their god. But being that it is a romance novel what are the characters doing after they pray? The main characters might not be running out to bed the nearest shirtless muscle master, or scantily clad damsel in distress. These books usually show the main couple in ways that could not be described in any words other than "lusty". Christian romance novels do what all other romance novels do: give a false view of human love and intimacy.

This brings me to my main question, what makes a novel "Christian"? In Schultze's book Micheal A. Longinow points out that books written by gay Christians, books with swearing, or books that may be a bit edgier than normal, don't get published. Yet one of the authors of Left Behind isn't even a Christian and his books can be published and sold in all Christian avenues. Does the fact that a non-Christian author can write one of the biggest selling evangelical series not worry anyone? Might I add that many people think that what this story talks about is exactly the way future events are going to take place.

Then there are books like, Saint by Tedd Dekker, where there are but minor mentions of little biblical stories. Hood by Stephen Lawhead is another example the only Christian references in these books are the fact that the characters believe in God and Friar Tuck prays. Yet these are praised as being great Christian fantasy novels. It would seem that this aspect of Evangelical media is focused too much on delighting the reader more than sending a message. Is this even something that Evangelical books can do? Considering the minimal Christian content of these books, could they not be considered secular with Christian influences? They have as much Christian content as some lyrics from Limp Bizkit, but you don't see him being signed to Dove Records.

Buy my frickin prayer cloth or no healing for you!!

As I was reading through the third article in Schultze's collection I got caught on a sentence about a certain television evangelist. "The late TV preacher Jerry Falwell said that 'there's no need for the church of Jesus Christ to be wasting its time gullibly falling for all of this global warming hocus-pocus.'"

First off I would like to point out that "gullibly" is not a word. Secondly I would like to state that I think that global warming is a natural cycle of the earth due to changes in the planet's orbit and axis. But when did it occur to Christians, that just because we might have some conspiracy theory that the world is going to end soon so we don't have to take care of it. Are we not told to be good stewards of everything we have been given? Even if global warming may be a hoax it does not mean that we shouldn't care about the amount of pollution that is being poured into the atmosphere.

The amount of politics that is in Christian media today frustrates me to no end. Not only does it lead to the conclusion that most Evangelicals are as crazy as other religious extremists, but it just seems to be not very Christ-like. Whether a person votes conservative or for those "crazy hippies" from the NDP, this should not have any say on if a person can stay in their church or get ostracized over it. I was under the impression that we were past the days of killing each other over who should lead the church, let alone our "democratic nation".

In closing I will remind you to go out and vote on the 14th of next month.

Greetings and Salutations

Welcome to my new little corner of the internet. For my first post on this very limited website, I'm going to share an article I discovered on the web comic Apple Geeks. The article is called, How I Learned to Love Game Pirates. It is written by a game Dev. who actually used his brain for once and asked, "Why do people pirate and share video games?"

Now that you have had a chance to read the article, I will explain why it excites and angers me. I'm glad that someone has finally taken their head out of the sand and realized that gamers are tired of wasting their money on poorly made games. Now why haven't other gaming companies realized this fact before? It seems that they value their profit margins and their "artistic license" more than their customers. What is the point of trying to protect your "art", when it is so poorly put together that people don't want to spend money on it in the first place? It's like Anne Rice expecting to make money off of her Sleeping Beauty trilogy. Just because you think you have a good marketable idea it doesn't mean your target audience will share that sentiment.

Though John Keats may say, "Don't be discouraged by a failure" I believe that the gaming industry needs to step back and take a look at what they are doing wrong. If they don't their Canadian gamers will be jailed for not being able to pay off their fines. Five hundred dollars a download will build up quickly for your average pirate.