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A friend of mine needed some help tonight on a website for a course. It’s been almost a year since I did any serious web development, and it felt great to be able to do something productive in the realm of web development again. However, it didn’t take long for all of the minor annoyances to jump out and become major problems, as I found in trying to debug some things. Thanks to the diversity of browser interpretation, and of some ambiguity in HTML and CSS, I had to do an awful lot of work to solve what I believe shouldn’t be a problem in the first place.

Spacing Issues

When I tell a cell in a table to be a certain size, I expect it to be that size. When I tell the table itself to have no padding or margins, I don’t want to see padding and margins around embedded flash videos. Unfortunately, Firefox’s interpretation of CSS and HTML disagrees with my preference. Internet Explorer and Chrome had no issues, but for some reason Firefox displayed a giant gap underneath an embedded flash banner. I spent a while searching for some sort of explanation or solution, to no avail. I finally found one. It seems that you can solve the problem with really strange work-around. I don’t know the side-effects of adding this code, but it worked to alleviate the problem at hand at the very least.

Two modifications were required. First, somewhere encoded in CSS (I chose the <style> tag at the beginning of the html file as one was already present), one has to add:

In addition, I had to add the following around the embedded object:

After bringing in these two additions, everything lined up beautifully. However, I still don’t have any idea why they are needed to do something as simple as correctly space a table cell with a Flash video embedded into it.

On a Completely Random Note

There’s a game I’ve been playing for years now, and its recently really had my attention. This is probably from the fact that I have exams this week, and my body has a natural inclination to make me fail at things like exams. Nonetheless, I’m addicted to playing it at this point. Oh… you probably want to know what the game is. It’s called Mordor. The game play is reminiscent of earlier RPG’s on the computer (or so I’m told… at 22 I’m not quite old enough to have experienced those games). There is an excellent community dedicated to the game. You basically create a character, join guilds (allowing your character to partake in multiple RPG “classes”), and rampage through a dungeon. It takes a while, but once you get into it, you’ll have a hard time putting it down.

A Brief Summary of the Impact of Electricity on Music

What we perceive as music is simply our mind’s interpretation of sound waves as they resonate our ears. The waves themselves are nothing more than changes in pressure in the medium between our ears and the source of the vibration. Throughout human history, we have used a multitude of different sources to generate these vibrations, resulting in a massive number of different instruments, each producing their own distinct sounds. Each individual instrument and each individual musician together produce something unique to themselves, as even the most minor changes in playing style, or the smallest difference in the manufacturing of an instrument, cause the wave that is produced from a performance to change in subtle, and yet in many cases, distinguishable ways.

This long, rich history of music continues to this day, but a fundamental change has been in the works for a couple of centuries now. With the discovery of electricity, the older methods of creating music are being complimented by more modern approaches. Whereas a long time ago, composers were required to write down every note by hand in a painstaking process, modern composers are capable of writing out their music into notation software on computers, and even using virtual or sampled instruments to perform them immediately without the need for a symphony. One very interesting development in particular is the advent of synthesizer instruments. That is, instruments that are created from electrical circuitry (hardware synthesizers) or computer programs (software synthesizers) to either imitate traditional instruments, or to create new sounds altogether. In looking at the effects of electricity on the progression of the history of music, it is important to discuss synthesizers themselves, the mathematics that allows one to develop such synthesizers, and the development of software based synthesizers.

The synthesizer is one of the greatest testaments to the connection between mathematics, electronics, and music. At the heart of any synthesizer is an oscillator. Waves are produced by vibrations, and an oscillator is the component in an electric circuit that provides this sort of functionality (Parker). A simple example of this sort of oscillation is the feedback loop created by resting a microphone up against the speaker to which it is attached. The sound is amplified to produce an extremely harsh, loud, and irritating tone. However, if such a process is well controlled, it can produce sounds that are actually pleasing to the ear. Within a circuit, a microchip (a series of transistors) is used to amplify itself, thus producing oscillation. However, the chip alone is not enough. While it provides this basic functionality, it is uncontrollable and far too high pitched to be heard.

Another key component is a capacitor. A capacitor in electronics can be thought of as a storage tank for electricity. Upon filling up, this storage tank releases its charge down the circuit. By combining this capacitor to the microchip, there is a delay in the frequency, extended the wavelength, and causing a sound wave within the range of human hearing if the right capacitor is used. To further increase the functionality of the device, a resistor can be used to help control the current through the capacitor. The resistor acts to change the current across multiple devices in a parallel circuit, and the change in current provides a change in frequency. A potentiometer is a resistor that can be connected to a dial, allowing for a user to change the resistance in real-time. This allows the frequency to be changed simply by turning a dial, and the combination of all of these devices, along with a speaker to output the sound, results in a simple square wave tone generator (Parker). The square shape of the wave is the result of the capacitor. Instead of allowing through a constant current, it functions as an on/off switch (off as long as it is increasing in charge, and on when it discharges). Oscillations heard by a listener are those of a series of “on” and “off” signals (or crests and troughs if one views the wave on a graph), with very little smoothness to the curve that connects the two extremes.

While simple shapes such as the square wave are certainly the basis for synthesizers, it would be difficult to classify such a tone generator as an instrument. At the very best, the sound of simple tone generators is boring to the human ear, and at worst it can be piercing and unpleasant. The world of non-synthesized musical instruments provides some direction to anyone seeking to create a pleasant synthesizer. Beholding a clarinet, for instance, allows us to see that the fundamental frequency is dominant, just as it is in a tone generator. However, the clarinet’s shape causes additional harmonics, or additional sympathetic frequencies laid over top of the fundamental frequency. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier was instrumental in the development of what would eventually become Fourier analysis, or harmonic analysis (Kessler, 2), and this branch of mathematics enables one to develop mathematical estimates of complex waves, providing a basis for the development of more audibly pleasing synthesizers. By using the results of Fourier analysis, a circuit can be designed to generate waveforms that are very similar in structure to those created by the instruments meant to be imitated.

To take a step back, a note performed on an instrument is more than just the fundamental frequency (a single sinusoidal wave). There are many other harmonics sounding simultaneously, and their various intensities are what determines the timbre of an instrument, or the specific “color” or quality of sound that the instrument has. “Suppose you play a middle C on a cello, then play middle C on a trombone. Both are playing the same musical note, but you can easily tell them apart. Most people can detect even less distinctive differences in timbre … What the listener hears from an instrument as a single musical note actually consists of many different tones” (Fantel, 49). These “different tones” are the various harmonics that resonate with the fundamental tone, and together form the unique sound of the instrument.

Because of these distinctive elements, harmonic analysis is needed to mathematically calculate an estimate of a curve using simple trigonometric functions (sine and cosine), including the curve that an instrument produces when it sounds it’s fundamental frequency and all of its laden harmonic frequencies. Using calculus, one can take the sum of an infinite series of these simple trigonometric functions, and come infinitely close to estimating a sound wave. Fourier transforms further develop this method of thought as they move away from something continuous into something discrete, which can be used in the development of synthesizers that imitate other instruments.

Fourier transforms work by finding the Fourier series coefficients, or a_n and b_n in:

As Bruce Kessler points out, ” For a fixed value n, the a_n and b_n measure the amplitude of the waves at frequency n needed to build the data set. It is customary to bind the two coefficients together and merely consider the magnitude of the nth frequency to be

The process of finding the Fourier series coefficients in (2) and (3) is called the (discrete) Fourier transform, and the graph of the c_n’s is called the spectrum of the signal” (Kessler, 3). This is useful when trying to obtain what is called the “spectrum” of a signal, and the difference between the continuous Fourier series and discrete Fourier series is very much like analog and digital circuits (Kessler, 3). One of the uses of this discrete series is to assist in the understanding of a curve generated by a non-electric instrument, so that it can be synthesized.

A very simple example of this is the creation of a synthesized chord. A chord is a combination of frequencies (three or more) that work together to form interconnected harmonies:

f (t) = cos(146.8 * 2 t) + cos(220 * 2 t) + cos(293.7 * 2 t) + cos(370 * 2 t)

The above function is the addition of several frequencies, which together create a D chord, with each coefficient in the trigonometric function corresponding to the frequency of a different note (from left to right, D3, A3, D4, F#) (Kessler, 4-5) (Something interesting to note is the fact that the jump of an octave (from D3 to D4 for example), is the result of a doubling of the frequency of the lower octave. While irrelevant to the topic at hand, it provides another glimpse into the mathematical beauty of music). The wave form that results from the addition of the functions is much more complex than the tonic of the key, D. This example provides some insight into how mathematics can be used to simulate naturally occurring waveforms of musical instruments. If created successfully, a synthesizer can produce sounds that mimic natural instruments by creating curves based on harmonic analysis. The Fourier transform of the synthesized chord and the chord performed on a guitar, for example, shows that both are extremely similar, and will indeed be recognizably similar to a listener (Figures 4 and 5, Kessler, 5). To truly imitate the sound of the guitar, however, more work would be necessary to further tune the harmonics that are used in the synthesizer to more accurately represent the guitar (including adding in additional harmonics and adjusting the intensities of each harmonic).

Interpreting the instrument alone is not enough to imitate the sounds of a performance. In order to create a truly beautiful sound (in most cases), the human performer needs to be accounted for. “Two musicians may elicit different sounds from [the same instrument] because of their individual playing techniques.” (Fantel, 49). Even more drastic is when a human being’s performance is compared to that of an artificial performance. This is made no clearer than when one considers the sound of instruments performed by mechanical devices, like those built in the last century.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, engineers were able to produce mechanically-driven instruments. From violins to keyboards, these machines were capable of reproducing music based on nothing more than punch card instructions. The performance of a machine playing a piano resulted in fairly accurate interpretations of performance, as one can hear from the punch card-driven pianos that many people owned over the last century, but when one listens to an instrument that requires vibrato or other ornamentation, such as a violin, it becomes clear that simple instructions alone cannot create a realistic performance. Although the harmonics of the instrument’s design are present in such a performance, the machine neglects the human side of music; the harmonic structure that is contributed by the musician is just as important as the instrument’s shape it seems (Electromechanical Violin Player). These additional features need to be taken into account when building a truly faithful synthesizer, if the aim is to artificially create the sounds of other instruments.

As was mentioned previously, hardware synthesizers rely on oscillators and capacitors to generate frequencies, but other elements can be added. Filters, adders, multipliers, random number generators, and envelope generators can also be added. “Basic signal processing and synthesis modules could be interconnected to create interesting synthetic sounds. The techniques of additive, subtractive, and nonlinear synthesis (such as frequency modulation, or FM) could be implemented naturally with these modules” (Smith, 2). Connecting these various components together within a circuit is what allows an electrical engineer to use the Fourier analysis of an instrument and create an artificial form of it, or to create an altogether new sound that could only result from something electronic.

Synthesizers in the form of hardware have been in existence for many years, and these synthesizers can be complex and difficult to create, especially considering that human interpretation of music and the construction of instruments both contribute to the complexity in significant ways. However, a new type of software-based synthesizer, the sampler, is only a few decades old. Sampling works by having pre-recorded sounds or generated tones for each note an instrument can perform (whether real, recorded sounds, or artificial tones generated from mathematical equations). Often, MIDI sequences are used to give the sampler instructions about which notes to play, as well as tempo and volume. MIDI is like a digital version of a physical punch card, and the analogy is fairly accurate in another way. “A major problem with sampling synthesizers, which try so hard to imitate existing instruments, is their lack of what we might call “prosodic rules” for musical phrasing. Individual notes may sound like realistic reproductions of traditional instrument tones. But when these tones are played in sequence, all of the note-to-note transitions—so important in instruments such as saxophones and the human voice—are missing.” (Smith, 6). This information is slightly outdated, but provides a definite issue in the realm of samplers: it is difficult to truly imitate the waveform of an actual performance because articulation of notes is unfaithful to a real musician.

The issue transcends music though, and includes the human voice itself. This is important to note, because speech works much like music, and problems in simulating one parallel the other. “Speech is not merely a medium for the communication of facts. It also communicates emotion. This it does through vocal modulation, through the timbre of the voice, as well as many other factors, such as speed of delivery and facial expressions” (Hughes, 67). Both music and speech synthesizers have developed greatly in recent years in software, and musical articulations, timbre, and many of the “other factors” have been solved to a great degree, as samplers today have multiple articulation samples that are intelligently used based on preceding MIDI information.

In the exploration of hardware synthesizers, software synthesizers, and the mathematics used to develop both, it is important not to lose sight of the forest when looking at the trees. The whole goal of these various techniques is to enhance the enjoyment of music, as the different eras of music throughout the years have done, each trying to improve on the previous one. The ultimate goal is to create that single wave that brings enjoyment to a listener: the physical vibrations in air pressure, resonating from the instrument, whether real or artificial, to the human ear.

Bibliography

“Electromechanical Violin Player.” Nov 11, 2008. Music In Code. Podcast. “Music in Code”. Open University. 2009-11-20. <http://podcast.open.ac.uk/oulearn/arts-and-humanities/podcast-ta212-music-in-code#>

Fantel, Hans. _The True Sound of Music - A Practical Guide to Sound Equipment for the Home_. First Edition. Canada: Clarke, 1973.

Hughes, Charles. _The Human Side of Music_. Frederick Freedman. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.

Kessler, Bruce. “A “Sound” Approach to Fourier Transforms.” Ogden College Dean’s Office. 2009-11-27. <http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=bruce_kessler>.

Parker, Lorin. “Understand How an Oscillator Functions.” How to Build a Synthesizer. 2009-11-29. <http://www.ehow.com/video_2385794_learn-frequency-knobs-homemade-synthesizers.html>.

Smith, J.O. “Viewpoints on the History of Digital Synthesis,” Proc. Int. Computer Music Conf. (ICMC-91), Montreal, pp. 1-10, Oct. 1991.

I went to church today, but missed Sunday School because I overslept. We are discussing church history, and I really wanted to go. After forcing myself into the shower as fast as I could, and driving on a near-empty tank of gas to church, I proceeded to wait in the narthex until an opportune moment to walk in arose. First, I hit an empty row, said hello to Travis who sat in a full row behind me, and then as singing began I made my way to the a group of people I normally end up with, who had space for me.

As I sat down, there was music playing for the next few minutes, and my mind wanders as it often does to things of God. I suppose that’s an easy transition, considering I’m in church and moments before the sermon, but usually my thoughts are limited and don’t have anywhere to expand. This time was a little different.

It began something like this: Balance is key to living a Christian life. Balance is important because of issues like judgement and tongues being argued about by Christians. Judgement in particular, yeilds such differeing results from people that you’d hardly consider them ‘in the same group’. Some will say that judgement is for God alone (even judging one’s actions), and that to judge or look down on anything anyone does is against Christ Himself. Others suggest with their actions that judgement should be made on anyone who sins publically, and the punishment should be extremely severe. These attitudes come close to those of the Pharisees when they attempted to stone a woman guilty of adultery (which required witnesses, meaning these men were doing things they should not have been doing either in all likelihood).

The problem is that people don’t see the balance in the center: acknowledging that judgement, when done to build up others, weed out sin, and raise up the person commiting it to a closer relationship with God is necessary, proper, and demanded. In fact, it would be a sin never to point out judgement. But to do it to tear others down, that is sin in all cases.

This thought of balance got me thinking about something else though: Balance seems to be a chiefly eastern philosophy. As in, in the west, it is extremes that are often sought after, and in the east it is a balance between extremes that people pursue. Hinduism and Buddhism are like this for instance, as is Confucisism. But these philosophies, while having a hint of Truth, lack when it comes down to the most important: who is man, why is he here, who is God, and what is God doing?

So, if Eastern religions and philosophies are focused on balance, that means we can learn something from them right? That was the point Rob Bell made in his first book after all. To paraphrase, “There is truth in everything”. He mentioned Islam, Judaism, and other religions all containing truth, and that we should point to that truth and say “That’s from God!”.

Well, yes and no. You see, we have the whole Truth altogether in one volume, the Scripture. It is -all- of God’s truth, without the translation errors. Its not out of context, it gives the right priority to things, and it contains the most important facts: God made man, who fell into sin, and He sent His one and only Son to redeem us from our sins. Jesus Christ is the point. Period.

I think the problem with Rob’s view, and many other view for that matter, is that they are so desperately looking for truth in other things that they miss that all the truth is found in Scripture. Perhaps, for some, its that the Bible has gotten old, or that they see people in other cultures living better in certain ways. Its entirely possible for an entire nation to be getting along better than individuals, but on the things that really matter (ie Christ), why is that a big deal?

The bonus I see to understanding other cultures, relating to them, and pointing to their truth is in one task: Evangalism. Missionary work should be one of the top priorities of -all- Christians, without exception, without hesitation, and with reckless abandon. God commands it, and there is little else God directly commands of us. In reaching out to others, it helps if we can relate to what they believe. This isn’t to feel knowledgable. Its not even because learning can be rewarding. Its entire point is that it helps us reach those who don’t understand. I think of Paul talking to the Greeks, and knowing their religion wel lenough to point to the temple of the unknown god, and saying “This is Him!”. The side-effects of this knowledge may be great, but they pale in comparison with the point, which is the expansion of the Kingdom of God.

When people go out and try to find truth in things because they’re bored with their own beliefs, its not the beliefs that are the problem. Men and women died for these beliefs, cultures were shaped and transformed from them. Wars were fought to keep those believing them safe. So the beliefs of a Christian are nothing to scoff at. If anything, this boredom is a result of living in a culture where, in essence, we need constant change or we get bored. Things like balance, which are key concepts in Christian life, are true not because people across the world claim it as truth; its true because God says they are! So whenever you find truth in other places, remember that these glimpses can help you reach those people, but they are not an end to themselves. God is the end, always. What He has allowed people to see is supposed to draw us to Him. If the people in these cultures and belief systems had the whole Truth, they would know Him, but they do not. Its our responsiblity to take what they -do- know, add what we know, and show them what they’re missing.

I’ve touched on the idea in my Philosophy class, but perhaps the greatest problem we have today is something that you cannot see unless you’ve already cured part of it, or heard it from someone else. Its the problem of masks.

When I first meet someone, I put on a mask of shyness. Being shy is a part of who I am, but I take it a step further. Instead of being who I am, I allow the mask of shyness to take my place for the encounter. Sometimes, later on, I remove the mask and put on another, though I rarely take off all the masks. The problem from this is something I think you’ll be able to relate to.

When you are yourself, the person God made you (this requires acknowledgement of God and who He is), every situation that hits you causes you to grow, and every facet of your personality is developed. You are able to shed the things you don’t like about yourself that perhaps don’t line up with the God you seek to emulate in spirit, and you put yourself into situations that grow the other parts. The goal of your life becomes one that transcends mere human friendships, mere good times, mere memories. You’re goal transcends time itself.

But when you aren’t yourself (and I’ve found I am normally not), when you put on a mask, most of the energy and effort you expend, and most of the experience you recieve goes straight to the mask. When you put on a mask of fear before you speak in public or before you have to confront someone about something, you only grow more fearful, and the mask gains power. You yourself never see the experience, and its almost as if later you wake up, beating yourself up because you weren’t there to stop it. All of the events have been wasted on something temporary and abstract: a shield you put up over who God made you to absorb the blow because you weren’t concious you were doing it.

Masks, you see, are fully natural in fallen mankind. Before man sinned against God, Adam and Eve did not think to hide themselves behind anything. They had perfect communion with God. But then they sinned, and their instinct was to cover themselves, both physically and abstractly. They hid from God, and wore masks of fear. Ever since the fall, its been our instinct to hide behind something like that in the face of reality, even sometimes positive events. We don’t have the guts to just face it full force with the fiber of being that God has sewn into us. And so those fibers aren’t stretched, they aren’t exercised, they aren’t made stronger, and in the end we only have a selection of fake masks to choose from, none of them quite getting the point, and all of them hiding from others the reflection of God that should be so evident in our lives.

We’ve got to take off these masks. Lay them at the feet of Christ along with our dreams, desires, and wealth. We no longer need to wear them. We can be, as Philosophers of old have said, our true inner selves. But Philosophy does not do the concept justice, because its human wisdom attempting to be divine. Instead, its beyond what any of these Philosophers could have imagined. We become reflections of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and nothing stands between our reflective surface and those who see us. The goal of taking off the masks is not so that we can find ourselves, not so we can be happy, and not so people will find us more confident and sincere. The ultimate goal is to bring Honor and Glory to our Father in Heaven! There is no better goal, in all the world, for any man to bring into his keeping.

I was reading things earlier tonight, and it triggered my thought process a little. Essentially, it was a discussion of a seemingly abstract concept: is good and evil defined merely by intent to hurt others?

Well, its not quite so abstract, but it is very important. It all rests on the same question that most important things rest on: Is there God, or is there not God? If there is not God, then evil can be whatever we want it to be, and it is different for every person. Nothing universal exists, because situation, circuimstance, upbringing, and brainwashing can easily make what one person sees as good look like evil to someone else.

For example, if I were to kill a man for no reason, most would consider it evil. But if I were to kill that man for raping my wife (I don’t have a wife, but just assume for the sake of argument), many people would agree with it. If I killed the man for stealing my car, a few people might see it as justified. If the man insulted me, people throughout different time periods in different cultures may see it as justified or not. And, an unjustified killing is evil, as we reasoned at the beginning of this paragraph. So here we see that depending on the environment in which a person lives, good and evil are merely playthings when nothing higher than human thought is consulted.

So, lets assume there is God. Well, evil then is anything that goes against his Character. That’s a lot of stuff, but most of it is concrete and clear, and we don’t have to worry about figuring it out. Its fairly reassuring, except when it causes us to have to do things we don’t want to, like obeying what He says when we want to do the opposite. The difference between to two ways of thinking is this: Do you want good and evil to depend on human beings (who we know from experience are generally and naturally foolish, self-centered, and arrogant), but you get to define th rules, and as long as people agree you are able to know good and evil for the moment? Or do you want to give up rights you don’t really have in the first place, and accept a definition of good and evil that transcends your understanding, and also transcends any value you may have within the context of reality as a human being? I’m gonna pick the latter.

The problem with arguing good and evil with someone who doesn’t believe in Christ is that very problem of the foundational worldview being incompatible. It would be like arguing modern physics with Isaac Newton. You’d have the same words for totally different things, but since you are enlightened, you would be frustrated because they just couldn’t see the truth you had that they were blind to. Perhaps it is best in these cases not to appeal to man’s need to philosophize every aspect of his existance into absurdity, but to appeal to his need for something more to his life than meaninglessness. Though, that’s much easier said than done.

Its become apparent that I don’t particularly fit in in my Philosophy class. Granted, I am told that everyone is unique and ‘brings something different to the equation’, but I find it to be a massive difference that kind of puts me in a different category. Its just the simple fact that I don’t look to Philosophy as a means to make myself ‘complete’. I find it to be extremely arrogant to say that some men, who had an abundance of time for whatever reason, were able to come to conclusions that no one else could come to on their own, and are thus somehow in positions of authority over what we believe. What I find even more arrogant is that we can somehow pick and choose beliefs, which become real to us if they help our ‘inner self’.

In fact, most of the class revolves around the ‘inner self’, and trying to ‘get out’ into the world around us. That’s well and good and all but, just like every other topic and notion and idea we’ve come to, something important needs to be noted. No matter how much you get this ‘inner self’ to the surface, you die one day. That’s right, death comes no matter how in tune you are with nature, no matter how much of this ‘inner self’ you’ve brought to the surface, no matter what philosophers you’ve read or which ideas of theirs you embrace. Philosophy cannot save; philosophy cannot raise the dead or extend our lives by a single day.

Now, I understand that having a set of ideas of the world is important, and I’m not criticizing philosophy for increasing in goodness some of the areas of our lives. But Philosophy is a means to an end, and that end, in perspective, is not the most important thing in the world. No matter which belief you hold about the origin and destiny of the universe, you have to understand that, in the grand scope of things, our lives are pretty insignificant if all there is is the material world around us. So, no matter what you do within this bubble of insignificance, you can’t increase its scope. You could refine it, you could even come close to perfecting it I suppose, given enough effort, but you could never pass beyond the walls of your insignificance. So, in the end, philosophy in this way becomes like a religion.

Religion is fully capable of destroying those walls of insignificance, but then you need a bit more than just fanciful ideas or even practical application. You need something more, something beyond yourself. And the problem is that your ‘inner self’ is a part of you. Its not something beyond yourself, and thus is not capable of granting meaning. Who can grant any sort of meaning? Who assigns worth? Can I tell you what the sun is worth? What the moon is worth? How could I possibly put a price on such things, or give them some sort of meaning whatsoever? In a world governed solely by the material and by our thoughts and philosophies, any sort of meaning and worth we construct is merely abstract and imaginary. It has every appearance of reality, but could never be real.

The government prints our money. Thus, they can decide on its worth. There’s a little more to it than that, but fundamentally, if our government declared that our money was no longer worth anything, it would cease to mean much. If God is a Person and not an idea, if He is a reality instead of a preconceived notion or an explanation, He too is capable of assigning worth. He wants something to have value, and it does, because of how much He is willing to pay for it. And no one else can assign worth because no one else has that authority.

You could delve into existentialism if you wanted to and try to construct your own worth, but I’ll only remind you that at the end of your life, you’ll die, and whatever was going on in your brain will no longer be there. Those artificial constructs you built are just that, and they have no permanency. So, perhaps philosophy, while not bad, is certainly not capable of (by itself) being significant in the long run. Perhaps philosophies, when lined up with a God who gives value, are capable of having some meaning.

——–

On an entirely different note (So different I had to separate it with a small line just as intimidating as Edward Cullen), Twilight is the end of good literature. Its not just the end of modern literature; its literally so bad it goes back in time and sucks the life out of good literature of previous ages. It sucks the life out after stalking it for a long time, violating its privacy, sparkling in the sunlight, and being cold for no reason. Then, when its done, it impregnates it, turns it into unorthodox vampire-oriented nonsense, and repeats the process recursively.

Twilight is about a very feminine and cold stalker, who considers himself a vampire even though he shows only about 10% of the symptoms (such as being pale and looking emo). However, there are less redeeming qualities to this stalker (whom we shall call Edward henceforth), than there are in even the father of the vampire, Vlad the Impaler. Edward does have a whole new set of totally non-vampire traits, like not needing to drink blood to survive, sparkling in the sunlight like a pixie, and superhuman strength. While the last one is cool and the first one is certainly a plus, they sort of negate his vampiricism, while sparkling is self-explanitory in its nonsensical stupidity.

I won’t go into the plot, considering I’ve read very little of the book. All I know is that were I Bella’s father, I would have killed Edward by the second time she brought him over, with a stake, a whip from Castlevania, and a machine gun shooting silver bullets dipped in a mixture of holy water and lamb’s blood. I’d then take his lifeless corpse (which would look no different than his ‘living’ one), and throw it into a river down south somewhere. Because you see, vampires are for killing, not for stalking young naive girls.

On another totally different note, Resident Evil 5 is awesome, fun, and awesomefun. I found the item system, while not my favorite, to work very well. I also quite enjoyed the co-op. It wasn’t as scary as previous games, but had just as much tension, for which I am quite pleased. I just hope RE6 involves actual zombies again, considering they’ve been on a very long hiatus.

In closing, Twilight sucks.

I fail on a daily basis in a number of areas in my life. One of them has been in this area: not standing up for what I believe in. This philosophy class that I’m in truly requires such standing, and as of yet I have not done so. Instead, I’ve sat there, taking in what I don’t want to hear for its absurdity, and trying to just get through it.

Today, we discussed the various ideologies that culminate in the idea of each culture having a piece of Truth (notice the capital ‘T’), and that bringing all diversity together into unity while keeping things diverse is the goal. But it was a comment towards the end of class that really got me: “We have to avoid this horrible concept of ‘evangalism’…”. I’m not taking it out of context, the idea was that expressing your beliefs as true is absolutely wrong and unproductive.

Now, this makes sense, I suppose, if you don’t have any sort of absolute truth yourself. In fact, in our class, believing in anything absolutely is considered a mistake of ignorance and immaturity. But don’t we all believe that murdering the innocent is an absolute wrong, and loving one another is an absolute good? By absolute, I mean in spite of feelings, cultures, etc. Surely some things are ‘more absolute’ than others. If I like cars that are deep, dark orange, its a preference. If I like dogs more than cats as pets. If I dislike your interpretation of Plato, or your views of taxes as they relate to society and education. Granted, some of these are more important than others, and some positions on them ‘more absolute’, but even these I would not consider to be dire issues 99% of the time.

But what if we shared a place together, and you were allergic to dogs. Wouldn’t my keeping of a dog where you lived be absolutely wrong of me? Context is so vital here, but the main point is that some things are always of absolute importance and are black and white, other things normally aren’t. In this class however, we are told that nothing is of true absolute importance, or at least we are told it to some effect. Relativism is condemned alongside of absolutism, but the problem is that absolutism and relativism sometimes have their place. Its wonderful if you can articulate your views on something knowing you can’t be absolutely right, but what if what you are articulating matters beyond the scope of your life on this planet?

It all comes down to, as I’ve seen in the course, a repugnant and almost overbearing point of view that always places God in a stack with all manner of ideas and concepts of the supernatural. “Whether its God, or the Tao, or Ying and Yang, or…”. To this I say, “And what if that God is not bound to your feeble mind (and mine). What if He lives, He breathes, He is a Person, and He doesn’t like being categorized, let alone categorized with feeble human attempts to explain reality apart from him.” Well, then we are faced with a dilema, both a blessing and a curse: If God exists as a Person instead of ideas in men’s minds, then our lives have purpose, meaning, reason, hope, true love, real eternal futures, and truth, both in theory and in practice. However, the curse (and this is only from the perspective of one not yet believing in these things), is that we must accept some things as true over others, in spite of people’s antagonizing us or having other contrary beliefs, and we have to give up a lot of ourselves. We will now be held accountable for what we do in some manner beyond our control.

Perhaps I’ll speak up. I don’t know… I’d like to but the words have escaped me so far.

What I found that was interesting occurred between these two portions. He says that when charging a price, its price should be set by the one who desires it based on what they felt it was worth -before- the recieved it. This is the basic system for a free market system in general. Buyers set the price by their willingness to buy. Sellers then agree to it if it seems fair to them, and then both parties are satisfied. If, after the purchase, the buyer feels like it is no longer worth what they paid, it is irrelevant, because the price was determined by their feelings from before. But its fair, I believe, if for no other reason that someone could, after the fact of the purchase, feel as though what they have obtained is worth far more than what they paid for it.