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Josh Allan Dykstra
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LegacyMay 1, 2008

A New Way To Get Music?

The article I'm going to talk about is over a month old, but I just read it for the first time the other day, so 'round these parts (read: my blog) we get to treat it like news. ;-) Now, there are a lot of ways to get music. Some folks buy it from iTunes or some other digital equivalent. Some enjoy the "free-dom" of Limewire or a torrent. Some import CD's they bought way "back in the day" (like, circa 1999). Some listen to radio (AM/FM/XM/WWW). Some frequent the MySpace. "Piracy" has been a music industry buzzword since the days of Napster. It's also been the Industry's blatant and somewhat pathetic scapegoat for the fact that they simply didn't see the "digital age of music" coming. Well, almost a decade has now past since the lovable Shawn Fanning helped incite the music revolution, and the music biz has finally come up with an idea that just might work. If it flies, the thought is that it will preserve the Suit's high-paying executive job, pay the artists, and -- GASP -- maybe even create a workable solution for consumers. The idea, in a nutshell, is to provide consumers with an unlimited supply of music downloads for a monthly fee that will be bundled into their internet service charges. Here's the article that explains it more fully:
Fee For All Warner's New Web Guru
As always, critics already have their guns drawn, but I, for one, am having a hard time coming up with a downside to this agreement. I would GLADLY pay $5/month to get all the music I want, especially knowing that the artists I love would get paid! (Now, if we could only pay the artists fairly, that would really be something, eh?) But, existing within the current system, it's frankly the best idea I've heard in a long time. Am I missing something? //
LegacyFebruary 5, 2008

Jim Wallis: American Gangster

I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jim Wallis speak at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena last night. He just released a new book called "The Great Awakening," and has just started a book tour to promote it. (I haven't read it yet, but I will soon!) I'm a regular reader of Jim's work, and almost always love what he has to say. But I gotta admit: he's even cooler in person. Or as my friend Jon said, "He's pretty badass." We sat in the second row, about five feet in front of Brother Jim, amongst probably 150 grad students, and listened intently as he brought hope to an otherwise rather dismal Super Tuesday. As of right now, 7am "the morning after," we don't yet know what will shake out from yesterday's primaries, but priliminary reports are saying that Mr. Hundred Years in Iraq McCain is leading the GOP (seriously, do we have to still call it that? It ain't so Grand anymore, folks!), and Obama and Hillary are tied on the other side (does anyone else hate that we have sides?). But Mr. Wallis gave us some hope last night. Hope that despite whatever madness may occur between now and November, the real winner this year is CHANGE. We hear it everywhere, from the mouths of every candidate, from Democrats and Republicans, from reporters and journalists. And the reason they're saying it is because they heard it from us, the American people, first. There's a social movement going on, and no matter what happens on Capitol Hill, it is US, the true grassroots force for change, that will make the difference. Jim said that he started his book tour last week at the Bagdad Theater in Portland, and they were showing a movie after his talk. Up on the marquee it said:

J I M _ W A L L I S A M E R I C A N _ G A N G S T E R

Ah yes, I believe so. //
LegacyFebruary 4, 2008

What’s 3 Trillion?

  • Written out, a trillion is a one followed by 12 zeros, or 1,000,000,000,000. That's a million times one million, or a thousand times one billion. Multiply that times three and you have 3 trillion.
  • Counting to 3 trillion at a rate of one number a second would take almost 95,000 years.
  • One would have to circumvent the globe 120 million times to travel 3 trillion miles. Similarly, that would be some 17,000 round trips to the sun. The universe, 15 billion years old at the outside, would need another 200 such lifetimes to reach 3 trillion years.
  • A trillion is a figure more commonly used when talking about outer space. A light year, the distance that light travels in a vacuum in a year, is about 6 trillion miles.
  • There are about 6.8 billion people in the world, meaning that every living person would get $441 if $3 trillion was divided up. If the money was split among the 300 million Americans, everyone would take home $10,000.
  • A person given $1 million a year to spend would need 3 million years to blow $3 trillion.
But mostly...
  • Three trillion dollars is about what the federal government will spend this coming year for domestic and defense programs and benefit entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, according to President Bush's latest federal budget proposal Monday. ($3.1 trillion, actually).
Source: Associated Press UPDATE: Want to see what a trillion dollars LOOKS like? Click here. UPDATE #2: Just heard this fact: 1 trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years. //