Soldier, prisoner, writer, and philosopher Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died Sunday evening, August 3rd, 2008. Growing up in the Soviet Union, he served as a decorated commander for the Red Army, yet he was arrested for an anti-Soviet comment made in a personal letter in early 1945. He was promptly placed in a labor camp called Ekibastuz, which gave him the foundational experiences to write One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a complete account of a real life day under Stalinist repression. Throughout the rest of his life, Alexandr continued to write, despite Soviet/Russian efforts to censor his works. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but had to wait to accept the award because he was unsure if the Soviet Union would allow him to return at that time. By 1974, he had been deported, and accepted the award at that time.

If you would like to learn more about his life and struggles, you can learn more about him, or read a speech he gave to Harvard classes in 1970.

Alexandr lived a full life, experiencing the depravity that exists, and the atrocities that are committed every day. He rightly states the reason for all of this, our rejection of God most high:

Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.

Solzhenitsyn had a good head on his shoulders. He seems to have understood the essence of human nature, and how it can drive mad people to do heart wrenching things. He also understood that it wasn’t just certain people, like Stalin, or Hitler, or the Red Army soldiers who rape a Polish woman just because she looked German. No, he says it best in one of my favorite quotes:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? -Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

You will be missed, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Thank you for your legacy, your compassion, and your hard words courageously expressed amidst a fallen world.

I have been listening to the new record by The Classic Crime, The Silver Chord (you can find my review here), lately. I noticed at the beginning of their hit Abracadavers, that there is the whispering that you cannot really make out just before he screams, “It’s like I never had time!”

I was thinking about it, and the thought occured to me that it sounded like words were being spoken backwards. So I fired up Audacity and reversed the beginning of the track. Sure enough, I was right:

Everyone must dance the dance of death…everyone must dance the dance of death…

Which seems to go right along with the song itself. If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself, or have a listen here.

• Abracadavers Intro

Microsoft just decided to pull off a ridiculous PR stunt with their “Mojave Experiment” this past week.

Apparently the word-of-mouth campaign that us techie people have initiated without any real organization has informed all of our non-geek friends of our innate dislike of Vista. Yeah, everyone knows that Vista is crappy, from the media, from us IT people, from actual users.

Microsoft decided that our friends needed a second opinion.

Their answer was the “Mojave Experiment” where they talked to 140 non-Vista users about their thoughts on Vista, and then had them “test-drive” the “newest” version of Windows, Windows Mojave. I’m guessing that Microsoft hacked their own system to replace all occurrences of “Vista” with “Mojave” for these purposes.

After watching the intro video, click on some of the other faces to get different *select* reactions. Also, be sure to check out the “facts” where Microsoft propagates what a truly awesome product Vista is, and tells us *some* of the stats and methods used in this experiment.

According to the site, they used an HP Pavillion DV2000, with 2GB of RAM…that is all the info given about the computer used. Let it be known that base model specs only come with 1GB of RAM, and use integrated graphics card, but I would bet that they upgraded to the Nvidia GeForce Go 7200 for this model, if not a higher end card. But you don’t get the kind of hardware you need to run Vista on a brand new computer. You know they probably maxed out the notebook as much as possible, installed the O/S without all the extra junk you get on a new computer these days, ensure that all the correct drivers were working before allowing the users to test spin it.

Tell me, do you really think they would let the test users experience awful tasks such as hooking up external devices to the computer for the first time, trying to configure a network, installing new software (thank you UAC!), or try to run multiple high performance programs (i.e. Firefox…or, ahem, I mean, IE7 and Adobe Photoshop and AIM, er, I mean, Windows Messenger, and Outlook, etc) all at the same time. See if there is no slow down there.

According to the site, which you can verify for yourself, most of the users were completely surprised that what they were being showed was actually Vista. I am guessing that like I said, these users were probably allowed to do simple tasks one at a time like play a card game of Spider Solitaire, check their Hotmail email, and type up a simple document, without any heavy duty testing that might happen in a real world environment.

But this guy, though the site calls him a skeptic, probably shows these true colors of this PR stunt.

Claim: “Windows Mojave really is Windows Vista.”

Response: “But why is it faster?”

He saw through these phonies. Obviously, these experimenters weren’t playing quite fair as I have stated.

UPDATE:
A couple of other thoughts I had: Why is the site created in Adobe Flash? Why not use their own Silverlight? I’ll tell you why. Because they want people to actually see the videos and people don’t want to have to download another plugin to view the website. I don’t have Silverlight.
Also, which version of Vista did they actually show users? I guarantee you it wasn’t Vista Basic, even though that is the prime operating system that comes on new computers now.

The Classic Crime presents their fans with their full length sophomore effort The Silver Chord on Tuesday, July 22^nd. Four days before the release, the band made public the full album in conjunction with Myspace Music. On the heels of their Seattle EP released last fall, The Silver Chord offers fans a harder and darker work, slightly tainted by repeating lyrics.

The silver chord is a term directly taken from the Bible. Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 says just before the well known Meaningless passage,

“Remember [your Creator]-before the silver chord is severed…and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

The silver chord is a representation of life, a life given by the Creator just once to every man. And likewise, The Silver Cord album is a representation of the ups and downs of life, a searching for that one thing, that longing.

Before I talk more in depth about the songs themselves, there is one thing that brings the album as a whole down. This is the fact that certain terms and phrases are repeated over and over and over again in most songs. However, the vocalist does use different pitches and volumes and melodies during the ad naseum that follows the changing of the beat, melody and tempo of the song.

The CD begins with a track called “The End,” and ends with a track called “The Beginning.” “The End” is a sorrowful song about a hard fought battle and leading followers into an ambush. Shame is present, and leads into the next song, “Just A Man”, which deals with regrets. Choices were made because they were the easy thing to do instead of the right thing to do (especially as a leader). (”I’m just a man” ad naseum.)

One of the first singles from this CD, “Gravedigging” is about a man’s struggle with suicide…resorting to digging his own grave because things in life are useless…leading others to follow (the last line exclaims, “We’re digging our own grave!”).

“The Way That You Are” is a song directed towards a guy and a girl in separate verses (makes me think of TFK’s “This Is A Call”). Ultimately they are both discouraged by their life, and the song encourages them not to let what others think become what they really are or could be. (”This is the way that you are” ad naseum.)

The next song, “5805″ begins by reminding me of the music of a modern waltz with vocals. The lyrics are a reminiscence and longing for the good times gone by growing up, spending time with our friends and listening to concerts shouting at the top of our lungs. (”Like that” ad naseum.)

“Salt in the Snow” is a look at where the singer is right now in life, how “like salt in the snow / I’m melted and left on the side of the road.” He is not pleased or happy with where he is, and so he is looking to the hope that “winter’s cold will give way to summer’s warmth.” Powerfully, he cries out to someone bigger than himself (God?), “I took you for granted again….I was wrong again / are you listening?” (”Woah…” ad nauseum.)

The first single released last month, “Abracadavers”, is a rant against vanity and selfishness. “We’re all the same, made of hair and bones and water and blood cells / We’re all to blame for spending way too much time on ourselves.” We’re all human but we think we can make ourselves look better than any other human, but in reality the way we really grow and become a true hero is through suffering.

“R and R” is a regret of choosing to run away and a longing for home. Like the title implies, the seeker is looking for true Rest and Relaxation where he belongs. (”How long, how long?” and “Woah” ad naseum.)

“God and Drugs” acknowledges that God won’t go away, even while we look elsewhere for Him through our own efforts. (”Oh oh oh oh” ad naseum.) Similar to it, “Medisin” is an interesting twist on a common concept. Usually, we take medicine to help our bodies stay alive. But this song acknowledges that we also indulge in sin in the same way, to try and stay alive. However, the singer knows that “there is more to life” than taking the tranquilizing medicine of sin to keep him asleep and in oblivious slavery.

“The Ascent” is a voiceless track 1:54 long, with an upbeat and hopeful feel. This is immediately followed by “Sing,” which is a synthetically accented song calling for the singer himself to sing, to lift spirits, and change things for the better

The next track, “Everything” is a song about the pleasures of intimacy of the singer with his girl, and his love and longing for her.

“Closer Than We Think” reveals that in spite of the downs in life, “I am true and I am living” An attention-grabbing play on a line in the well known 23^rd Psalm says that “We will walk through the valley of the shadow of the boring and we will burn it all. We will not go quietly” But this is all because of the hope that “that despite what we’ve done, we’re closer than we think to home.” (”To home…” ad naseum.)

The last song, called “The Beginning” feels hopeful, as the singer is finally coming home (which could be symbolized as his homeland, his girl, and/or his God, maybe all three) and the revelation hits him that God has taken his life, through the ups and downs, and continues to make him a beautiful thing. (”The sea…” and “I’d let her go” ad naseum.)

Ultimately, The Silver Chord is a stirring account of life’s experiences. The Classic Crime was not afraid to be truthful and honest about these experiences and feelings, which is evident in the various struggles each song exemplifies. Life is a journey, and the only thing you can do is press on through the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, searching and longing for something else. That something else is home. That is The Silver Chord.

My Rating:

I have finally found a place that I can sit down and access a wi-fi hot spot for free! You see, we (the Townesouth / Kernersville Bible Bowl Team) got into Atlanta yesterday and our hotel (the Mariot Marquis) requires you to pay between $9.95-12.95 per day for internet access. What a rip off. But we just got stettled into our rooms and just chilled. The other guy and I both got our hair chopped at the New Underground Mall (yeah, we realized when we got there that we were the minority, but that’s ok, people were still nice to us).

Today, we decided to go to church at a local congregation in northern Atlanta called Christian Church Buckhead because one of the other female sponsors had a friend who was a member.

First thing, we left an hour early, and it sure is a good thing because we would have been late getting there if we had not (the two females occupied the drivers and navigators seats, and I was relegated to the back, and so naturally, we got lost). We eventually found it just in time for service to start.

This congregation apparently has moved quite a few times, and are currently renting a building that the Christian Scientists originally occupied. We were warmly greeted before we stepped inside to the narrow lobby area. We met up quickly with the friend, and stepped into the sanctuary, tall and dim (most of the windows were covered).

At either entrance, there were paperback Bibles that were offered to guests and visitors who did not have one of their own. This is always a nice gesture, and I did not think anything more about it.

The auditorium (I only call it that because it was definitely tall enough) consisted of three sections of folding chairs, a long permanent stage with band equipment on it, and a makeshift stage jettisoning out in the middle of it (this is where the lead singer of the band was eventually positioned). To the left of the stage was a big makeshift black drop with a screen on it positioned at a 45 degree angle so that the congregation could see it, but it was not blaring at you. I later discovered that it used rear projection to display the content, which I assume was Media Shout based.

As we began to find our seats down front, Lifehouse began to play over the speakers their song Make Me Over from their latest CD. A single picture of two feet on a skateboard with the sides of the road in a motion blur was captioned by the word “SHIFT”. At the end of the song, the worship band began to play.

The band was made up of a drummer, a bass guitarist, a keyboardist (who also did backup vocals and I came to learn was the Worship minister) and a guitarist who also sang lead vocals. We sang the typical contemporary songs Here Is Our King and How Great Is Our God. These were all on a plain black background with white text on the projector. Then, in preparation for communion the band broke out into Blessed Assurance, calmly at first but using the full band in the last two verses.

The service led right into communion, which had the congregation walk forward to one of four stations in the sanctuary to partake of the “ancient meal” (the words used to describe communion on a card detailing information about toadys services and upcoming events). As the group partook, the band played a song I had not heard before. After a bit of looking online here, I found out that this is a song by an upcoming band called Fee (I have heard of them, but never really “heard” any of their songs), and the song is called Lift High. This was a song that I quickly became enthralled in:

Lift up your heads
Oh oh oh lift up your heads

Lift high, your chains undone
All rise, exalt the Son
Jesus Christ, the Holy One

We lift our eyes to You

After the offering, we were told that we were going to hear a sermon from Adam (again apparently, Derek the lead pastor was gone for one more week) on the last part of James chapter 3. One thing that really, really (and I mean really) impressed me is their solution to whether they should use the projector to display the Scripture that is being studied during the service. Most churches either decide:

1. No! There will be NO scripture on the screen! People should be looking at their Bibles to find what is being talked about, and if they didn’t bring one, too bad!
2. Or Yes! All scripture content and references will be on the screen at all times so that all people can see and view the Word of God no matter what!

But this church did something that I have not seen, (remember how I told you they were handing out Bibles to those who did not have one?), they put the verse reference and page number (for the paperback Bibles) of the message’s text and left it up. They encouraged everyone to actually view the reading in the text and did not ostracize those who did not own a Bible themselves. When another text was references, same deal, reference and page number only. Only when a famous quote was referenced in the sermon was there other text on the projector. This really stuck out to me as a great and effective idea.

Adam preached on James 3:13-18, elaborating on how what is inside, what exists in our hearts is what will overflow on the outside. If we want to change our behavior to be more Christ-like and beautiful, we need to change the inside first by attacking the root of the problem (our selfishness and sin) instead of the symptoms (oh, I lie, and do bad things).

After the sermon, the worship pastor (Jamie) came to the front and informed the congregation that a well loved couple was having to transfer to Denver, CO. He asked them to come up front, but they were not in the service. Come to find out, they were volunteering teaching the Middle Schoolers on their last day at the church because the youth pastor and his wife were away as well!

The service ended with prayer and the band playing an ending chorus of Here Is Our King. As we walked out, everyone conglomerated in the thin lobby area. We were welcomed again as vistors and asked to come back.

This was an encouraging visit to a church that seems to be truly striving to live together in community without forsaking the foundation of the Scriptures while reaching out to the community surrounding them.

I would love to come back again and visit if I am in the Atlanta area again.