Tim Tebow, Abortion and the Superbowl

By now, you've undoubtedly heard about the controversy that is the Focus on the Family commercial featuring Tim Tebow and his mother.

If not, quickly, FotF is paying 2.5 million for a commercial during the Superbowl featuring Tim Tebow's mother. Apparently she was advised to abort because of various complications with her pregnancy. She didn't, gave birth to Tim, who since has become one of the best college quarterbacks in the nation (note, as a football fan myself, I qualify that he is very good in the college game, but probably not so in the professional).

Here's a fantastic take on the situation from a Christian blog, The Gospel-Driven Church:

The furor over the proposed Tim Tebow pro-life Super Bowl commercial is interesting. Free speech would seem to apply, especially since it's not obscene material. But in general, I think the sort of approach the Tebow ad is said to take is problematic. Abortion's potential to deprive us of a Beethoven (or a great college quarterback), I think, is a losing argument anyway, following the logic. How many aborted babies would have grown up to be deadbeat dads, child abusers, drunk drivers, or even serial killers? The point of the pro-life movement shouldn't be protecting potential VIP's and superpeople, but protecting lives because lives are precious.

Compendium O' Links

Cool links from the last few weeks:

A video recreation of that US Air flight that crash landed into the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey. Very cool.

A Christian show princed, i.e. punked, on live TV.

Neil Peart, of the band Rush, added percussion (and a lot of it) to the Hockey Night in Canada theme song. I love it. Compare the original with the new version. A couple related asides. Did you know that "Peart" is pronounced PEER-T? Neither did I. Also, apparently CBC sold the rights of the song to CTV/TSN sometime over the last few years. What were they thinking?

Another cool link from DQ: A video conception of what the Earth would look like if it had rings like Saturn.

Finally, for the day at least, a very cool story about a guy who maintained a blog and twitter account letting the world know where to find leaked albums early. Completely anonymous, the world knew him as DidItLeak. Together, he and his 11,000+ followers seemed to be a pariah for the RIAA and the music industry. So when his feed went suddenly blank a few weeks ago, people thought that the RIAA shut him down. But it turns out that he passed away from Cancer on January 16. This was his side hobby while enduring this dreadful disease.

Enjoy. That's all for now.

Mini Compendium o' Links

A few cool links today:

Some nature videos:

Sucker Footed bat
Venus Fly Trap

A nutty video:
William Tapley, aka the 3rd Eagle of the Apocalypse, aka The Co-Prophet of the end times. Unfortunately, I think he's serious.

And finally, Crayon sculptures


That's all for now.

How to Know You won't lay down your life

Reblogged from The Gospel Driven Church, which retweeted from Steve Timmis, co-author of Total Church.

* “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus Christ

* If I’m not prepared to jeopardise a friendship so that I can tell others about Christ, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life.

* If I’m not prepared to miss out on promotion so I can stay & help plant churches, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life…

* If I’m not willing to pursue people who are different from me in order to bless them, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life…

* If I refuse to give up a holiday abroad so I can support someone in gospel ministry. I can be fairly confident I won’t give up my life…

* If I’m not prepared to give up my bed to go and serve someone, I can be fairly confident I won’t give up my life…

* Can’t ultimately be sure until I’m called on to do so. But there are indicators in what I am reluctant to give up…

* How can I be sure I would lay down my life for sake of Jesus & the gospel? Perhaps I’ll be like Peter in his bravado and subsequent denial?

Compendium o' Links

Haven't done this in a while; and since my RSS feeder was overflowing with goodies, here goes:

Hillbilly Music gone mainstream? That balloon bass is very cool.

I think this is some dude's PhD thesis. Whatever it is, I want one.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, OH YEAH!!

None of my friends growing up had tree houses or play houses. These kids have something else altogether.

Have you ever had a hankerin' for some candy, but couldn't decide what? Well, wonder no more.

Who says we Canadians aren't crazy?

Can my ipod really make this airplane explode?

Most of these links below are from Dubious Quality. I'm just reproducing.

For any one who grew up in Ontario in the 80s, watching Rick Vaive, this story is very amusing.

Two interesting stories about...traffic lights? Here and Here.

An interactive website of historical scientific progress.

Scared of the real estate market and the stock market, but need a place to invest your money? How about Somali pirates?

No photoshop or camera trickery here; just clever painting. Meet the Ghostman.

Finally the best link of the day: the year in pictures (3 parts)

Top Music of the Decade: Honorable Mentions

So I put together a list of my favorite songs/albums of the decade a couple of days ago. I seem to have forgot a lot. But according to my convoluted logic, since I didn't remember it the first time around, they can't be on my "top list" but on my "honorable mentions" list.

So, here goes:

The band Fun. came out of nowhere this year and put an excellent album together called "Aim & Ignite". Here's "All the Pretty Girls" as a sample: (apologies in advance for the lead singer's pants. )



One of my new favorite Christian bands, Everyday Sunday, put out three albums this decade. I loved them all. Here's a sample, "Stand Up" from their debut:



I've long since lamented that radio in the metropolitan New York City area is abysmal. When I do listen to radio, 90% of the time, I listen to either Pandora Internet Radio or CFNY out of Toronto, cause I really hate NY radio. The two NY stations I do listen to are WRXP and WFUV (an NPR station). I did discover one new band from WFUV: Bell X1, and their song "The Great Defector". It's interesting to note, that it took WRXP 3 months to catch up.



Finally (for now, until I remember more), is the Welcome Wagon, an Asthmatic Kitty special with their song Sold! to the nice Rich man:

My Favorite Songs of "the decade"

So, everyone else seems to be putting together some pretty cool "best of" lists for the decade. Since I aspire to be a music connoisseur, I thought I'd start with my favorite songs.

Let me begin by saying that this is not intended to be a best of list, but a list of songs I enjoyed. I am a late arriver to the "ipod generation", having an ipod for the first time only a 2-3 years ago. So my primary judgement will be how much I listened to it. Consequently my list will be heavily skewed by the last few years.

Anyways, in no particular order:

Regina Spektor - Fidelity (Begin to Hope):



Andrew Bird - Scythian Empire (Armchair Apocrypha)



The National - (Boxer) This entire album is phenomenal. Here's "Fake Empire" as a sample:



Spoon - Underdog (Ga ga ga ga ga)



Editors - Smokers outside the hospital doors (The End Has a Start)



Mika - Grace Kelly (Life in cartoon motion)



The New Pornographers (Twin Cinema) This one I put on for the entire album. And before anyone yells at me for the name of the band, it is taken from a Jimmy Swaggert quote "Music is the new pornography". Here's "The Bleeding Heart Show" as a sample.



Jars of Clay (Good Monsters) Again, an entire album for the list. Here's "Dead Man" as a sample:



Steven Curtis Chapman - Heaven is the Face (Beauty Will Rise). Note, I'm not usually a SCC fan. In fact, historically, I've been an anti-SCC fan. But this song (and others from this album) are incredible.



Arcade Fire had two albums come out this decade: Funeral and Neon Bible. Both are excellent. Intervention is my favorite from both:



And last on this list is William Shatner's version of the Pulp's Common People (Has Been).

Babies, A Movie

The trailier below is from an upcoming documentary by Thomas Balmes, entitled "Babies". It apparently follows the lives of 4 babies from 4 vastly different places around the globe. The first I heard about this is from MPT's blog. It certainly looks very cool:



Background song: Sufjan Stevens, The perpetual self, or "What would Saul Alinsky do"

Tangent: I'm really becoming a fan of Sufjan. I really like all that I've heard of his music: (Just search youtube for more, or Elbows.)

Aerial photos from Dubya Dubya Two

Very cool. History preserved. A couple pictures below. The rest in the article. Remarkable detail. The 1st picture is the same as the 2nd, but zoomed in.