Donne’s Holy Sonnets

Posted on October 1, 2011 by blund

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it t’wards hell doth weigh;
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour my self I can sustain;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.

I Am Not My Own

Posted on September 27, 2011 by blund

For what is a man? What has he got? / If not himself – Then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels / And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows / And did it my way. / Yes, it was my way.

“My Way” Frank Sinatra

It’s my life / And it’s now or never / I ain’t gonna live forever
I just want to live while I’m alive / (It’s my life)
My heart is like an open highway / Like Frankie said I did it my way
I just want to live while I’m alive / ‘Cause it’s my life

“Its My Life” Bon Jovi

Tell my mother, tell my father / I’ve done the best I can
To make them realize this is my life / I hope they understand

“Second Chance” Shinedown

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My only comfort in life and death is that I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

Heidelberg Catechism Q. #1

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

A New Economic Plan for the Recession

Posted on August 25, 2011 by blund

Fire & Ice (…and millions of kilowatts)

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Harmen Steenwijck: Vanitas

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Firefox 5 or Chrome 12

Posted on July 13, 2011 by blund

I just recently upgraded to Firefox 5, but I use Chrome a lot as well. Which is better? Firefox has been touted for its performance, add-ons, etc., for years, but recently many people have been championing turning over to Chrome. Here’s the most recent contest I could find:

Google Chrome 12 performs really well with many JavaScript functions according to benchmarks used in this post. HTML 5 video benchmark and CSS 3D hardware acceleration works incredibly well, also you can check HTML 5 video experiment for shaun the sheep in this post Here. Google chrome uses a separated memory usage for each tab and google extensions but overall after comparing it with firefox it require more memory with running same number to tabs.

Mozilla Firefox 5 benchmark scores looks really low compared to firefox [Ed note: I think he means Chrome?] scores even though it was performing quite good with same benchmark tools specially for compiling JavaScript with taking advantage of your CPU and RAM. Firefox 5 does not require a lot of memory usage.

Find all the details here.

But it has Apps!

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The Book of Eli is a Blind Mad Max

Posted on June 25, 2011 by blund

Eli: Its in the back of the TV
Carnegie: Go check the TV!
Henchman: The what?

The Hughes’ brothers 2010 dystopic Western The Book of Eli attempts to be many things; many more things than I will do here in this little write up. What follows are several completely unrelated. spoiler-ridden, and very loose reactions I had after watching Eli tonight.

Growing up, I briefly got into a Western series entitled Legacy – a Western, teen-fic series baptized with Christian overtones. The Preacher, if I’m remembering this right, was the archetypal “Man in Black” that spoke softly (but when he did he quoted Scripture) and carried a hot six-shooter. Driven to get the girl and bring the order of law to a town being controlled by a greedy tyrant, he… well, you get the idea. Preacher always had a Proverb or (eisegeted) phrase of Christ’s to quote to the bad guy, right before the plot drove the Preacher to resolve the tension by killing the bad guy and galloping away on his trusty steed.

It was the perfect amount of testosterone with a spiritual veneer for me as a young teen. However, even then I reacted to a strong dichotomy between the Preacher’s penchant for quoting the Sermon on the Mount right before turning the other ~~cheek~~ barrel of his shotgun on the baddie. One of the best times was when Preacher brought his Bible and his revolver into the pulpit, extinguishing the baddie by shooting him through(!) the wooden lectern.

That same schizophrenia pervades Eli. Continue reading →

Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories”

Posted on June 23, 2011 by blund

One of the most quoted and celebrated critical pieces of Tolkien’s is his apologia for the fantastical fiction, “On Fairy-Stories.” Here, Tolkien clarifies what it is about Marchen that draws the reader out of their normal reality to “recover” more their own reality than they would have ever dreamed. He explains several of his most important compositional tools – such as eucatastrophe and mythopoiesis – and brings critical scholarly work and discussions of trolls together in a way that can hold the attention of even this reader.

Originally a contribution to a fetschrift for a colleague (which was edited by C.S. Lewis), the article appeared in various formats, including The Tolkien Reader (1966). It is now republished in a (critical) edition by Flieger and Anderson.

On a not wholly related note, but nevertheless still within the Faerie!, is the intriguing article by Jeffrey Mallinson in the Journal Of Religion and Popular Culture: “A Potion too Strong?: Challenges in Translating the Religious Significance of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to Film.” Now that we are somewhat sufficiently chronologically removed from the films, I’ve enjoyed looking back at some of Mallinson’s arguments. You can read his article here.
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