Saturday, June 18, 2005

Make your own Bond story

bond-toplevel.gif (GIF Image, 1815x554 pixels)

What's missing is the scene where he beds the Bad Bond Girl about halfway through, but otherwise...

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Bob Woodward on Deep Throat

How Mark Felt Became 'Deep Throat'

Interesting article on how Bob Woodward met and worked with Mark Felt, recently self-outed as Deep Throat.

For me, the most interesting thing is that Bob Woodward, half of the team who more or less brought down Nixon, had no journalism experience before applying for a job at the Washington Post. Clearly he had a lot of the skills a journalist needs, but he'd never even worked on a school or college paper before he wrote to the Post and asked for a job. And four years later Nixon was gone. Amazing.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Music in Church

Wesley Blog: Church Music & Your Soul

Good post about music in church, and the need to move away from lreying entirely on the organ. The simple summary is that younger people respond best to music that matches what they think of as good music.

For a lot of older churches, the organ represents both tradition and a major investment (of both money, and the time needed to gain the skills to play the thing.) As such, its easy to see why it is hard to move the music away from it. Also, it is vital not to let the needs of younger worshippers create an environment that older people don't enjoy.

But getting the music right is a key part of any service, and one that too many churches fail at. We have gained hugely at St. Marks from the arrival of Ben the drummer. He has boosted the whole music group, and freed me on bass to be more inventive as I no longer have to carry the beat (not that I'm sure I ever did that very well.)

It matters a lot to me because the bass is one of the ways I praise God. I don't talk well to crowds, and I'm not very reliable for other church matters. But I can play bass pretty well within my chosen style, and when it all comes together I know that I am praising God on my four strings, as well as helping others to praise him.