becoming

This short by Neill Blomkamp depicts a fictional world where extraterrestrials have become refugees in South Africa. Producers: Neill Blomkamp, Simon Hansen, Sharlto Copley, Shannon Worley.

What if one day there is no media as we know it, and you get news only from bloggers around the world, and you come across this?

「懶惰人哪！你去看看螞蟻，察看牠們所行的，就可得著智慧。
螞蟻沒有元帥，沒有官長，也沒有統治者，
尚且在夏天預備食物，在收割的時候積聚糧食。
懶惰人哪，你要睡到幾時呢？你甚麼時候才睡醒呢？
再睡片時，打盹片時，抱著手躺臥片時，
你的貧窮就必像強盜來到，你的缺乏就必像拿兵器的人來到。」

箴言 6:6-11

Jocelyn says: 

See my beautiful chinese coat! It is actually a 30+ year-old antique and was first worn by Auntie May when she was a baby….

View Photos | Slide Show

Jan 29 2006 課堂錄音:

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Via metropolismag.com:

It’s often hard to convince people that Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs are real. They look uncannily like hyperdetailed models, absent the imperfections of reality. Streets are strangely clean, trees look plastic, and odd distortions of scale create the opposite effect of what we expect from aerial photography–a complete overview, like military surveillance. "I was a little bit tired of the idea of photography allowing you to see everything," Barbieri says. "After 9/11 the world had become a little bit blurred because things that seemed impossible happened. My desire was to look at the city again."

For those of you who observe the Chinese calendar, I wish you a happy new year and a year that will be filled with God’s abundance grace and peace.

And to those of you (Chinese or not) who think we are very materialistic and only cares about prosperity and wealth (by saying "Kung Hei Fat Choi" or "Gong Xi Fa Cai" — same words, different dialects) when greeting one another, please remind yourself the fact that you only know 1 Chinese new year greeting phrase does not necessary mean that only this 1 phrase exists for greeting purposes.

I, for one, seldom use that phrase when greeting my friends and relatives. 

By the way, this is the year of the Dog. 

Tracy Early, noted religion journalist, dies at 71.

When I was reading the report about his life, the following section really captured me:

[My] own religious orientation seems to have more affinity for Tillich’s approach of living on the boundary between church and world, rather than Barth’s explicit evangelical commitment. But somehow I’ve wound up admiring Barth as a person much more. Barth at the end of his life was visiting prisoners and preaching the Gospel to them, while Tillich was shining with the Harvard intellectuals and taking pride in not going to church. I cannot quite see how a Christian theologian can say meeting with fellow Christians for prayer and praise and celebration of communion is optional.

And I think he is absolutely right. Just how many "intellectual" Christians who are so fond of criticizing the C/church and are so anti-institutional, understand this?

Today marks the 250th birthday of 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Jim has been blogging on Mozart for a while, I think he should be voted as the #1 "living" [see Jim's comment] fan of Mozart in blogdom.

As for me, I will be listening to his K.626 throughout the day to remember this great composer. By the way, Requiem is the second piece of music which I own most recordings on. The first remains to be J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

So which recording of K.626 am I listening right now? It is the 1977′s recording performed by ASMF with N. Marriner conudcting. In my opinion, this is the best (Beyer’s edition) among them all. ASMF & Marriner are perfect! 

And no matter how historically inaccurate is Amadeus, it is still one of my favorite movies of all times! 

And how could I end this post without a quote from Barth:

"….because [Mozart] had heard, and causes those who have ears to hear, even today, what we shall not see until the end of time—the whole context of Providence." — Karl Barth