Evangelicalism is the New Liberalism?
My fellow theo-blogger and colleague, Travis McMaken, succinctly puts his finger on something I've been mulling over concerning Evangelicalism:
The really strange thing about this quote is that the things Barth identifies as present-day (in terms of 1920's Germany) tendencies emanating from Schleiermacher — “church life, experiential piety, historicism, psychologism, and ethicism” — are precisely the things that seem to me to be holding the field within contemporary American evangelicalism, in many ways. It is a well-worn trope of comic books and action movies that one is always in danger of becoming what one fights against. Have evangelicals started becoming liberals, in the classic European sense of the term?
I think he is on to something — read in a vacuum, Schleiermacher sounds remarkably “Evangelical” or Evangelicals can sound remarkably Schleiermachean. That Barth was identifying the same problematic tendencies in the Church of his day highlights the strength with which these sirens of theology sing.
Travis continues with a challenging question worth considering:
If so, how advanced are the symptoms, what is the prognosis, and what can be done to combat this malady?
Steve Jobs
John Gruber sums up what I think everyone was thinking:
So it goes. So it goes.
Damn it. I thought the “That day has come” line in his resignation letter implied the end was near, but, truth be told, I never gave up hope that Steve would beat this again.
What a life.
On a personal note, October 5 has long been marked as a day “in infamy” for me — my grandfather died ten years ago today.
War
Apple's decision to keep the 3GS available is huge. Previously, Apple has only kept two generations of iPhones on the market at any given time. But, keeping the 3GS out there shows that the company wants to compete at every level of the smartphone market, not just the high end. With the iPhone now on three out of four US carriers and available in low-end, middle and high-end configurations, Apple has “finally” declared all out war on Android.
Time will tell a lot: much of Android's growth has been due to its multi-carrier availability and wide range of pricing. Now what will be its shtick?
LTE Dreams
Tomorrow is the big day — the iPhone 4S or 5 or whatever-it-will-be-called will finally be unveiled. Reliable rumor reports seem to suggest that Sprint will be receiving the phone. That could be interesting, especially if Apple offers a WiMax enabled version. While AT&T will likely semi-justifiably label its new iPhone as “4G” since it will use HSPA+, a WiMax enabled phone would be a “true 4G” variant.
Still, the real dream remains LTE. I think it is almost certain that Apple will not release an LTE-based phone tomorrow. But, after spending a few weeks using a Verizon 4G Galaxy Tab 10.1”, I can't help but think about how nice an iPhone with LTE would be.
That dream may still be a bit off in the distance, sadly.
Go Cards!
Yes, the Cardinals are in the post-season and you know what that means: I will start gabbing about baseball on here again. It was good to see the Cards beat the Phillies tonight. I have a good feeling about their overall momentum right now.
Could a Cardinals-Yankees World Series be in the mix, perhaps? Having the two winningest teams together at the World Series would be fun.
After Apple Picking
A little Robert Frost seems apropos to me tonight.
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
The First Real iPad Competitor
Most tablets have been dead on arrival — they cost as much or more than the iPad and none of them can do everything the iPad can do. Sure, each has its own shtick that it does better than the iPad; the trouble is, none of them present a compelling narrative for how they are going to improve the way people do the things they really want to do.
That will change with the Amazon tablet:
Meanwhile Amazon has summoned the press to an event Wednesday, September 28, in New York City, where many are guessing the company will unveil a new tablet computer based on Google's Android operating system.
I'm not predicting the iPad's doom. But, I think Amazon may be the one company intelligent enough to really compete with Apple for consumers' hearts and minds. (The fact that they've built up a huge pile of digital media perfect for a Kindle tablet won't hurt either.) Given that Amazon is bringing its powerful Kindle franchise into the mix, this tablet may run on a fork of Android, but I'd be surprised to see Android branding anywhere.
A Second Language
The ever interesting Stanley Fish wrote awhile back on students wanting to observe their own “dialects” and “styles” instead of proper English grammar:
And if students infected with the facile egalitarianism of soft multiculturalism declare, “I have a right to my own language,” reply, “Yes, you do, and I am not here to take that language from you; I'm here to teach you another one.” (Who could object to learning a second language?) And then get on with it.
I don't always agree with Fish, but here is one place we are in perfect agreement.
The Human Side of an Icon
Lisen Stromberg writes observations on being a neighbor to Steve Jobs:
While Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal and CNET continue to drone on about the impact of the Steve Jobs era, I won't be pondering the MacBook Air I write on or the iPhone I talk on. I will think of the day I saw him at his son's high school graduation. There Steve stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, his smile wide and proud, as his son received his diploma and walked on into his own bright future leaving behind a good man and a good father who can be sure of the rightness of this, perhaps his most important legacy of all.
Creativity is Critical
Richard Paul writes in Critical Thinking:
When a mind does not systematically and effectively embody intellectual criteria and standards, is not disciplined in reasoning things through, in figuring out the logic of things, in reflectively devising a rational approach to the solution of problems or in the accomplishment of intellectual or practical tasks, that mind is not 'creative.'
An astute comment often overlooked, especially in poesy. The good poet is creative not because he vomits raw emotion onto a page and calls it “art,” but rather because he labors tirelessly on the meaning of each word until a collection of words transcend themselves and becomes something more. A poem.
