Vinyl Now Makes More Money Than Ad-Supported Streaming
People will always prefer the tangible. After all, Christianity is based on incarnation, and that makes a great deal of difference to its adherents.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Europe [Purple] vs. USA [Green/Blue] Hurricane Models
[Hint: the European model is usually the more accurate as it isn't used to hype a television weather report that exists to sell cars and electronics. No computer model is perfect, though.]
His Parents Probably Said He Wasn't in Church Because He Had Sports
Mounties in Saskatchewan town were called out because a stubborn kid was refusing to leave the coffee shop early Sunday morning
Actually, in this case, the "kid" is a young goat.
Actually, in this case, the "kid" is a young goat.
The Expanding Definition of "Sympathy" and "Concern"
Looks like plain, old condescending hostility to me. But, what do I know? I don't live in Portland, Oregon.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Monday, September 28, 2015
Historically, Weird Things Happen Around the Bishop of Rome, But This Has a Certain Splendor to It
Congressman swipes Pope Francis’ drinking glass
Brady took the glass back to his office, where he drank out of it, and held it up for his wife, Debra, and staff members so they could drink from it as well. “How many people do you know that drank out of the same glass as the pope?” he boasted to the Philadelphia Daily News. He then poured the water into a bottle so he can sprinkle later it on his four grandchildren and one great-grandchild, he told the Washington Post.
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Can’t make this up: On FOX in NYC. Anchor hears that popes tied in line to Peter. Response: “And Peter knew Jesus. Right?” @GetReligion
— Terry Mattingly (@tweetmattingly) September 25, 2015
Friday, September 25, 2015
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter
"We thought turntables were for playing records until rappers began to use them as instruments, and we thought airplanes were for carrying passengers until terrorists realized they could be used as missiles. My big thing is to look at existing technologies and try to see other ways they can be used, which happens in music all the time and happens to be what terrorists are incredibly good at."
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Baxter was born in 1948 and is a graduate of the Taft School and Boston University with a degree in Journalism. While he was still trying to "find himself", he took work as a clerk and occasional guitar repairman at the lamented Manny's Music Shop on the once-famous "Guitar Alley" of W. 48th St.
[An aside: Manny's, Rudy's Music, and the Sam Ash's guitar and instrument store were located between 7th and 8th Avenues, in the shadow of the Brill Building. Manny's closed six years ago, Sam Ash moved to 34th a couple of years back, and Rudy's, the last holdout, moved to SoHo just a few weeks ago. Honestly, to see guitar alley cease to exist within the last few years has been like losing an old friend.]
One day, in 1966, a struggling musician named Hendrix stopped by and, after some conversation about guitars, amps, pickups, and the other things that guitarists like to talk about, invited Baxter to play with his group, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Suddenly, Baxter found himself...um...found.
He played with the Blue Flames for awhile and some other groups of local notoriety, switching from the bass to the guitar with ease. He then moved from New York to Los Angeles as the musical opportunities were greater and became a founding member of Steely Dan, one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed bands of the era. His musicianship developed, too, and became rather legendary. A perfect example can be found below in his solo beginning around the 2:30 mark:
Musicians of Baxter's era tended to divide between those who performed and toured before live audiences and those who mostly worked in recording studios [such as the legendary Carol Kaye, whom we profiled in November]. Baxter was unique in that he enjoyed great renown as a session-man but also deeply enjoyed performing before audiences. So much so that, when most of Steely Dan decided to quit touring and record only in studios from that point forward, Baxter left the band in 1974 and searched for another. It didn't take too long.
The Doobie Brothers had been around for awhile and had enjoyed some hits on top 40 radio but, with Baxter now added to the roster, their music became less simple and much more jazzy. Suddenly not only were their sales enriched, but critics suddenly began to say favorable things about them, too. A sample of what Baxter brought can be heard in the guitar solo [at 2 minutes and 20 seconds] that favors this DB hit:
By the 1980's, Baxter had outgrown wanting to play for just one band and, as a session musician, now could be heard playing bass, guitar, and slide guitar and composing for other bands, movies, television shows, and tinkering about in the studio with the recording equipment. Having already lived an envious life, his interest in common electronics would lead him to his next, and very different, career.
Borrowing from some military electronics schematics, Baxter began to experiment with the algorithms used to compress sound waves so that greater aural range could be encoded onto storage devices and decoded through common MP3 and 4 formats to produce a far deeper tone in what would eventually be known as digital music. It was inevitable that he would be drawn deeper into military technology [this is not unusual; for example, field archaeologists make use of a great deal of formerly proprietary military equipment, from ground penetrating radar to spy satellites] and discover a way to improve missile defense systems. Eventually, a paper he wrote on the subject [yes, a guitarist who can write sentences] made its way to his congressman's office and, from there, to the Pentagon.
By the mid-1990's, Skunk Baxter, legendary rock and roll guitarist, was now a civilian defense contractor armed with an impressive collection of top secret clearances from an alphabet soup of federal agencies. So frequently did he rub elbows with the powers-that-be that at some point he was asked to run for a seat in Congress. Given that he would have had to shave off his legendary "walrus" mustache in order to appeal to the greater public, he declined.
Since 2001, Baxter has been deployed to counter-intelligence activities where his work is classified at the highest levels. He has been described, with no hyperbole, as a "secret weapon" in the War on Terror, as his asymmetrical problem-solving abilities and concepts seem to bedevil both the enemies of the United States and the entrenched leadership of the Department of Defense.
Still, at the end of the day, in the recording studio in his home, Baxter takes out the six-string and plays original compositions into the equipment that he has designed, built, and calibrated, putting together yet another album or aiding a remarkable collection of musicians, both novice and famous, in plumbing the depths of their talent.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
The Bishop of Rome Quoted Thomas Merton Earlier Today
A lot of people don't know who Merton was, so we link to his bio that appeared in our series of Friday features in The Coracle back in 2012.
The Traditional Protestant View of the Papacy
A Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, Compiled by the Theologians Assembled at Smalcald in 1537
1] The Roman Pontiff claims for himself [in the first place] that by divine right he is [supreme] above all bishops and pastors [in all Christendom].
2] Secondly, he adds also that by divine right he has both swords, i.e., the authority also of bestowing kingdoms [enthroning and deposing kings, regulating secular dominions etc.].
3] And thirdly, he says that to believe this is necessary for salvation. And for these reasons the Roman bishop calls himself [and boasts that he is] the vicar of Christ on earth.
4] These three articles we hold to be false, godless, tyrannical, and [quite] pernicious to the Church.
This is Said Tongue in Cheek, but a Number of Folks are Expressing the Same Sentiment without Irony
Anyway, I hope we can all put our disagreements aside and agree that the bits of the speech I liked were important; the rest was awful.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 24, 2015
Of course, this is what happens when political journalists report on a religious figure who is speaking in front of politicians.Also, a surprising number of journalists are suddenly experts on Catholicism and historical Christian theology.
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