NathanLongMusicBlog

I figured out why economics is so hard to understand. It’s because it’s the study of how everybody is trying to outsmart everybody else.

Good luck explaining it better than that.

Lately, I’ve heard a lot of wisdom in John Piper’s Ask Pastor John podcast. This morning, I emailed in my own question.

My wife and I struggle to see God’s goodness in Old Testament law. For example, Exodus 21:20-21 seems cruel: “If a man beats his male or female servant with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.”
Imagine a slave beaten so badly they he/she cannot get out of bed for two days. How could God fail to condemn this master, who would surely be stoned for sexual sin?
My only refuge is Jesus’s words about divorce in Mark 10:5 - “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law.” But surely the whole law cannot be dismissed this way. How do you understand such difficult passages?

I don’t know whether Piper will get to my question. But if you love Scripture, I’m curious: how do you cope with passages that seem unjust?

Progress is now on NoiseTrade, a site that lets you pay what you want for music or get it free by telling your friends about it.

More interestingly for those of you who already have the album - this means you can embed an album widget into your Facebook page or whatever other social site you use.

Enjoy!

 
 

For those of you who couldn’t be there, Dan Adams, who played drums with me at the CD release concert in November, just posted a video of us playing “Progress” to YouTube.
Notice how he slips in a comment about the drummer. Dan, you sly fellow, you.

From this article:

Pelosi met a storm of criticism from conservative Catholics in August when she told a talk show that the question of exactly when life begins “shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.”

Isn’t that like saying that the question of whether foreign detainees have human rights shouldn’t have an impact on a nation’s right to torture them for security information?

The rights of the baby or the prisoner are the crucial question. They are the only reason for even talking about the issue. Otherwise abortion would be as non-controversial as a having your tonsils out, and torture would be as routine as fingerprinting.

If more people would give specific rationale for when they believe life begins, we could have a more reasonable debate on abortion in this nation.

I got an email yesterday from Mark Linder from the podcast Build the Church. Here’s a snippet:

I have to tell you, I can feel the anointing in this album and was lead to make the entire podcast your music as a small way to help you get the word out.

Wow. Thanks, Mark - I’m honored and grateful.

Progress is now available via iTunes and Amazon MP3. You’ll notice that both stores (currently) sell it for $5.94, which is just the total of all 6 songs at 99 cents each, their standard price.

If you like your music digital, I still recommend you download it here on my site (I throw in the album art as a PDF) and make a donation of whatever amount you like.

If you want a physical CD - full quality audio, a backup copy, and a booklet you can touch are nice things - go with CD Baby, the nicest independent music seller around.

But hey - now you’ve got more options.

Apple is dropping DRM from iTunes! This is a great thing for music fans. Sure, you may love your iPod now, but 10 years from now when all the kids are implanting 500-Terabyte Acme Entertainment Chiclets inside their ear bones, wouldn’t you be sad if you couldn’t listen to the stuff you bought from the iTunes store, which was only compatible with those ancient iPods?

I thought so. And now that Apple is dropping DRM, everyone else will probably have to as well. (Except, as my friend Michael notes, possibly Microsoft. “Not that anybody uses their music store, if they have one.”)

You bought the music - it should be yours to do with as you like. And now it will be.

Update: it appears iTunes hasn’t dropped DRM for audiobooks or video yet.
Update 2: Wow - Microsoft is actually launching a NEW music service with DRM. Here’s the pitch: pay more money for your music than you would on iTunes or Amazon, AND you can only play the music on your phone, AND if you ever change phones, you lose the music. Oooh - does it come with free pokes in the eyes with sharp sticks?

Letter B

You know on Sesame Street how the letter B would sponsor their show, then they would do the whole show about how great the letter B is?

Sellouts.

Months ago when I decided to redesign my web site, I sketched it out on paper, then made a mockup in my ancient copy of Adobe Illustrator, passed down from my ancestors, who brought it over on the Mayflower.

The Illustrator file sat on my desktop, and at first, the icon looked like it should: a miniature version of the hideously-colored, ugly-but-functional site mockup.

But then, over the weeks and months, the icon started changing. It became a Rapid PHP file…

…a Paint.NET file…

…an OpenOffice spreadsheet…

…an old promo poster I once made, a fictional company logo…

…a synchronized Tortoise SVN project, a RealPlayer file…

…and one that I can’t recognize, but kind of looks like those little birds from Peanuts, sticking out of a multicolored modern cube sculpture:

Tonight, though, I saw my favorite of all. I think maybe my computer is telling me that the new design rocks.

Or maybe I should spend less time with my computer. It’s a little crazy, and I think it’s rubbing off on me.