Hi all,
Just a quick apology for the lack of posts recently. It’s been a busy old time and I’m now taking a well deserved break on a Thai beach.
Normal service will resume shortly.
Monthly Archive for October, 2007
Radiohead’s new album In Rainbows was released on download earlier this week to great anticipation from fans. Their first release since 2003, In Rainbows is only available directly from the Radiohead website, but in a ground-breaking move, fans get to choose how much they pay for the music - anything from the 45p processing fee upwards! NME has an interesting article showing how much fans have decided to pay and the average seems to be around £5.
However since the release there’s been a huge backlash around the internet due to the compression of the download files. Each track is encoded in DRM Free 160kbps MP3 which is generally fine for listening to on MP3 players, but pretty poor for decent systems as it loses all the intricacies and detail of the music. It now appears that the low quality download is only a promotion for the full high-quality CD album to be released next year. This has angered a lot of fans who feel duped into buying this inferior version even though they set the price they paid:
First and foremost, all of Radiohead’s previous albums were already available as MP3s encoded at 320 kilobits per second…
Second, most took issue with when Radiohead chose to announce that In Rainbows would be available at 160 kbps — after the majority of their fans had already paid for the download.
I’ve yet to download it myself. The 160MP3 will be fine for my macbook, but not for my home stereo or headphones. I think I’ll probably pay a smaller amount for the download and if I really enjoy the album then I’ll but the full physical copy when released to appreciate the detail.
There seems to be a bit of a debate raging in the US over the use of Halo 3 in Youth Ministry spurred by an article in the New York Times called Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church.
The alliance of popular culture and evangelism is challenging churches much as bingo games did in the 1960s. And the question fits into a rich debate about how far churches should go to reach young people.
Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill†credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men…
Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,†Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.
Various bloggers have highlighted the article and given their own opinions (try here, here, and here for examples). I have to admit, I’d not really given it much thought as we don’t use video games in any of our regular activities but there are compelling arguments for and against the use of these games in ministry. Whatever you views on using the game as a ministry tool, I still would have thought it prudent to stick to the legal age limit (15 in the UK) which the churches in the article were not doing.
I had the privilege of preaching to the church yesterday on the topic of Naaman’s healing in 2 Kings 5. There’s so much in that passage, I had to really condense it to make it suitable for a family service. If you want to have a listen, click here. You can subscribe to the weekly podcast from there too.
Marko pointed out a great new video from the Dove Campaign For Real Beauty which graphically outlines the pressure heaped upon girls from our media driven culture. Watch it first then check out the Dove website for information about the campaign (click through to their site to see it in much better quality).
I loved the original ‘Evolution’ video they came up with too. I’ve used this in many a presentation to young people.
Recent Comments