Have you ever been waiting at a counter or restaurant, wondering why they haven’t taken your order or seated you for a few minutes? They look busy, so there must be other customers, but you’re the first one in line. Now the mobile-payment company, Square, is rolling out an coffee-buying app to allow more people to jump ahead of you in line without actually standing at the counter. Partnering with Blue Bottle Coffee, the Square app will allow coffee drinkers to place their order from their phone or tablet and pick it up within twenty-four hours. The store will receive the order and be warned when we approach the store so they can have your beverage ready when you walk in. No wait. No payment. No tip possibly. No personal interaction. All of that is handled online. So you could be standing at the counter for fifteen minutes while other customers walk in to pick up their orders.
Bach’s Metaphors of Instrumentation in St. Matthew Passion
Barrymore Laurence Scherer writes about the beautiful oratorio, St. Matthew Passon by J.S. Bach:
For more tender contemplations Bach employs the softer veiled tone of the oboe d’amore, pitched a third below the oboe. In the soprano aria “I will give Thee my heart,” a soothing pair of oboes d’amore help suggest Christ’s loving relationship with mankind.
But Bach scores one of his most telling effects by eliminating certain instrumentation: Whenever Jesus sings his portions of the narrative, his bass voice is enveloped in a gleaming tissue of sustained triads played by two violins and viola, known as a “halo of strings.”
(via Prufrock)
From Tolkien’s Masterpiece, the Danger of Words
Adam Roberts notes about The Lord of the Rings, “The repeated theme is the danger of words; their slipperiness but also the ease with which they can move us directly into the malign world of the text. One ring to bind us all. Books are bound, too.”
A Presbyterian Walks Into a Baptist Chuch
Mark Jones writes about the differences between open and closed communion, meaning whether people in your church are allowed to take the Lord’s Supper with you regardless of the mode or theology of baptism.
During a conference last year at SBTS, I was treated to an excellent paper by a young Canadian scholar (Ian Clary) on Andrew Fuller’s communion practice. In the Q. and A. I asked (ipsissima vox):
“If you aren’t baptized by immersion, then you can’t be a called a Christian (in any meaningful ecclesiastical sense). And if you can’t be called a Christian, then you can’t take the Lord’s Supper. Is that the implication of the closed communion view of Fuller?”
The room was silent: here a Presbyterian was asking a Baptist (in a room full of Baptists) to admit they can’t call me a Christian.
My friend admitted that he believed/felt I was a Christian. But I countered: “Fuller’s theology of communion and baptism doesn’t allow you to call me a Christian in any official (ecclesiastical) sense. It is merely a private judgment.” My friend, had to (uncomfortably) concede my point.
This, friends, is one of the ways good doctrine matters. Are Presbyterians actual followers of Christ? Is closed communion a good way to govern your local church?
Authors Union Seeks Investigation into Amazon.com
The Authors Guild met with the Justice Department in August to request a federal investigation into Amazon.com’s actions against Hachette Book Group in their ongoing dispute over ebook prices and service fees. They say the earth’s largest bookdealer is using anti-trust tactics against publishers like Hachette. Authors United is also preparing to ask the DOJ to get involved. Does this make you want to find other bookseller options, or is this all so inside baseball you don’t care?
Writing as Product Development
Barnabas Piper reminds writers that their ideas are their products, so they should work through product development before launching them. “It means that you are probably the worst judge of whether your idea works.”
Aaron Armstrong also has a bit of encouragement on writing better.
Self-Publishing: Too Many Little Fish in a Huge Sea
Ron Charles, editor of The Washington Post’s Book World, asked Roger Sutton, editor in chief of Horn Book magazine, about reviewing self-published books.
Charles asked, “What do you say to the indie writer who reminds you that Walt Whitman was self-published?”
“You are not Walt Whitman,” Sutton said. “The 21st century is different in so many ways from the 19th that the comparison is meaningless. No one is forbidding you from self-publishing, but neither is anyone required to pay attention.”
Charles reviewed Sutton’s recently expressed concerns over the glut of self-published books vying for place in our hands. Are there bound to be some great books out there? Yes, but there are too many bad one that look like it from a professional reviewer’s outpost. The school of the self-published will only grow, and perhaps a new system of reviewing and judging will be organized to help readers find good books. Sutton isn’t convinced it will matter. “People are more interested in writing self-published books than in reading them.”
Ouch.
The Green Ember by S.D. Smith
Sam Smith answers a few questions about himself and his upcoming book, The Green Ember.
I love what C.S. Lewis called “dressed animal” stories. He loved them and kids usually do too, if they haven’t been talked out of them. One thinks of Lewis’s well-known statement about children getting “too mature” for fairy tales. “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
He’s using Kickstarter to presell the book and generate buzz. Watch for it this Friday.
Ask a Southerner to Pray for You
Because God answers more prayer in the southern United States than in other states, according to a new Lifeway Research survey. Wealthy people are far more likely to pray that bad things will happen to bad people than are those who have low income. Nearly half of respondents said they pray for those who mistreat them or their enemies.
D.G. Myers, the Lion
Tributes to D.G. Myers from Friends & Colleagues
John Wilson wrote, “Like Samuel Johnson, David Myers was not a clubbable man, but he was the best of friends. Our friendship took place almost entirely under the umbrella of Twitter (where Doctor Johnson also would have flourished), yet in a lifetime blessed with friendship his was among the most precious to me.”