Surfing on YouTube, I found this video of an outdoor concert I went to, on Earth Day, in a kiosk in Monterrey’s Macroplaza. There were barely some 80 people there, but the dancing was absolutely wild as you can see from the second minute of the video onward.

This is “La Siniestra” one of the bands I enjoyed the most, singing their song Wepa. The guy singing this song has a lot of charisma, and exuded fun. But there were two bands that inflicted us with the kind of sonic torture that makes me ponder on how excruciating hell would be.

A group of percussion students from a music school opened the evening playing on African instruments. People jumping, neo-hippies, and punk rockers could be seen in the crowd. Nearly everyone was in their twenties, or at least looked it. A young man waved a green flag, dancing barefoot. A young lady swayed slowly and gracefully side to side to the beat of the drums. The few office workers who wandered in look alien in business attire, and wear confused expressions. Preppy “fresas” wearing Abercrombie & Fitch or American Eagle mingled with people wearing psychedelic clothes that looked old enough to have survived the 60s.

A young lady handed out pamphlets and brightly asked for our emails and cell numbers, happily giving me a sheet of earth-friendly, non-bleached paper to write this entry on. I had my laptop, but didn’t dare call attention to myself by opening a macbook at night in the middle of a city of millions.

Afterward, an eco-punk band provided some unintentional comic relief by tearing the night with screaming lyrics. This sent the dancers into a convulsive frenzy with dances that might have outdone the Garifuna. Thankfully, the sound technician lowered the volume on the lead singer’s mike before she could do much damage.

Next, “La Verbena Popular” gave us a mix of old-style rock and roll, a heavy dose of Mexican pop-rock, and even a slice of Caribbean Reggae. They closed with a hippie-rock song that wouldn’t have been out of place at Woodstock, which set the crowd dancing exuberantly, ignoring the sarcastic grins of the non-dancers.

Then, “La Siniestra” exploded onstage, with an even more Caribbean rhythms, a dash of rap, a pinch of cumbia, positive, slightly leftist earthy lyrics, and contagious rhythms. A spicy-sweet musical feast.

But what came next could only be described as the soundtrack of Hades. I’ll spare you the piercing, horrific, mind numbing, shrieks of the last two bands. When they ended, the place was deserted, except for musicians, sound techs, and the odd ex-dancers lying on the ground.

When I read the headline “Obama’s inaugural choice sparks outrage”, I expected to find that Obama had made a controversial left-leaning political statement. But surprisingly, the outrage is because he chose Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his innaugural address. Rick Warren is outspokenly pro-life, and against same-sex marriage. He and James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, are lightning rods for the Christian community, and were labeled “radical” in the article.

But Obama’s choice is hardly unprecedented. Billy Graham, for instance, has been unofficial spiritual advisor to many presidents, Republican or Democrat, despite his conservative views. Why should the choice of Rick Warren be controversial, or even “radical”? The article bemoans that Obama didn’t choose someone who represented “mainstream American values” Mainstream American values! Had Obama chosen Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, that would be radical.

Obama has shown the grace to include people he doesn’t agree with in his inner circle. This is a very wise policy. Surrounding himself with sycophants, or even with people with similar views, would create an atmosphere similar to that which led to Bush’s many blunders.

I applaud Obama’s centrist choice. Sadly, CNN is frustrated that he isn’t more liberal. To me, that’s a very good sign.

Image of JFK Inauguration courtesy of the LIFE Photo Archive.

Youtube has increasingly become a favorite place to listen to music, and as such, a thorn in the flesh of greedy RIAA henchpersons. Gotta be PC you know (henchmen, hench-women, hench-children?, etc …). A few days after anyone uploads anything worth watching or listening to—that isn’t a commercial, of course—it will be taken down.

In response to this, MTV recently launched a video streaming site, mtvmusic.com, with thousands of music videos which can’t be seen (legally) anywhere else in the internet.

Funnily or eerily, take your pick, MTV decided to censor out the words “Morpheus”, “Grokster”, “Limewire” and “KaZaA” from their video of Wierd Al Yancovic’s ridiculous anthem “Don’t Download This Song”. What were they thinking!? Scorching and flattening irony!

Speaking of iron and magnetism, Lars Ulrich, Metallica’s drummer, is specifically mentioned in the lyrics because of his outspoken opposition to music piracy, and his subsequent lampooning on the utterly distasteful cartoon cesspool, South Park. Note the smiling sharks at the end of Yankovic’s video, and this explanation of why they’re there.

My favorite part of the song, barely audible at the very end, is when Yankovic says “You cheap b*****d”! Al, you’re my hero.

Source, this Techdirt article

I quipped a few months ago that I was converting to the Mac religion. Neuroscience seems to have something interesting to say about it, according to this study.

I made friends with a drunkard yesterday, not that I had much choice. What would you do if you sat next to a guy in a bus, and he leaned over to your ear and whispered: “I just got out of jail today”? I almost jumped out of my skin!

He looked pretty normal when I sat next to him, but I was tired, it was 10pm, raining, and the bus was packed. People were lining up in a double line in the center aisle. I couldn’t just go find another seat. So I tried to ignore him.

After talking about jail reeking with foul smells, he asked me if I thought he smelled bad, because the lady who hat sat near him earlier had complained. I didn’t think he was particularly smelly, but I just nodded and pretended I was sleepy.

My philosophy with drunks is to be polite to them, believe what they say, and try to avoid them. But here I was stuck next to one, a very talkative drunk (aren’t they all), and I really didn’t want to lose my seat. He might have been a pickpocket, or a rapist, or a murderer, who knows how he ended up in jail? So for safety, humoring him seemed best.

He then started talking about what he had done the moment he got out of jail: go ask a friend for 500 pesos (50 dollars). That’s enough money to survive for a week, but what did he spend it on? Prostitutes and beer. He even invited me to go with him sometime.

That was the turning point of the conversation.

Don’t ask me how, but I was able to suggest to him that he ought to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I told him about several friends of mine who almost drunk themselves to death, literally. He listened pretty attentively, considering his state. He told me he had once been in rehab for months, how he had lost his wife, his job, his money. He was depressed about losing everything, and the death of his parents, and his hopeless situation. He didn’t ask for money.

I suggested he get help, that he wouldn’t be able to get out of his alcoholism alone. Also, that his situation was only hopeless because he believed it was hopeless. Thus, his belief became the truth.

I’ve had several alcoholic friends, and am not foolish enough to think that our conversation made a difference. He was certainly feeling much better at the end of it, smiling and saying he would go back to rehab. The grim truth is that he probably won’t. But hey, maybe he will, who knows?

What struck me most about the whole thing is to see myself reflected in his predicament, my struggles with depression and controlling my own addictions. It would be hard to find a person more repulsive than a drunk ex-con. But I could relate with him in a way most people wouldn’t. He helped me to see my mission here in Monterrey, not to be a savior, but a sinner who knows the way.

Image by Nikki L., used with a Creative Commons license

El grito is a traditional independence day celebration in Mexico, where crowds of thousands gather in the plazas of every town and city across the country to reenact the announcement of independence from Spain, followed by a late-night street party.

Because the Macro Plaza in Monterrey is usually crammed with people, my friends invited me to go to the nearby town of Santiago instead. A quaint colonial village with cobblestone streets, antique houses and an ancient colonial church, Santiago is a “magical” place. It would be more magical if the municipality hadn’t chosen “el pueblo mágico” as the town’s slogan!

The night started out badly. Dripping with rain, and cold, we huddled over hot chocolate in a local cafe. And, I forgot my camera!

After 10pm, the rain stopped, and the festivities began. A singer belted out the Mexican national anthem, unfortunately out of tune; nobody could sing along. The mayor read out the declaration of independence and led a chorus of shivering revelers in cries of “Viva Mexico!”, culminating with a very Mexican fireworks display. A fiery frame of lighted letters, pinwheels and cascades lit the night, with a larger more modern fireworks overhead. Some of them malfunctioned, but fortunately the night was too moist for fire, and the fire department were part of the crowd.

After the fireworks, the atmosphere transformed into a magical realist Mexican fiesta, with bizarre elements, plenty of greasy food, tex-mex music, and food, performers, and did I mention the food? I had never seen tortillas stay floppy even after being fried, completely soaked with cooking oil. I opted for a “caldo Tlalpeño” instead.

Sadly, in Morelia, Michoacán, in another part of the country, a terrorist attack left 8 dead and 100 wounded when somebody threw 2 fragmentation grenades into the celebrating crowd, precisely at the moment when the mayor had finished leading the crowd in “el grito.” After the explosion and a few seconds of confused silence, the crowd began screaming for a very different reason.

Corruption in the military and police stemming from narco violence is threatening to bring Mexico to its knees. The grenades were military-grade, probably obtained in the black market. This cowardly attack killed innocent children and maimed others for life, limbs amputated.

Image by Esparta Palma, used with a Creative Commons license.

Aquas de Março (Waters of March) is the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard. I still have goosebumps from it. The words are surreal, apparently unconnected, a stream of consciousness that evokes running water and splashing rain in Rio de Janeiro.

I have loved Bossa Nova for a few year now. It’s the essence of jazz, Africa, and Latin America. This song is an experience I wouldn’t want you to miss. This other version, although with poorer quality, is an unforgettable duo between Tom Jobim, who composed the song, and Elis Regina

Bach’s comic “Coffee Cantata” tells the terrible tale of an addicted young lady who would rather forgo fashionable clothes, her social life, gold, silver, and even marriage than be denied her pleasure in drinking coffee! A kindred spirit!

My favorite line:

“Father, don’t be so severe! If I can’t drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat.”

The Washington Post published an article today about the troubling decline in the Japanese population. Like many developed countries, the birth rate has been declining; it has been for the past 26 years. The cost of educating and raising children in Japan is high, and young, independent mothers are growing averse to marriage and motherhood. Even more prickly is the Japanese distrust of immigrants. Immigrants are seen as a source of “crime, impolite behavior and untidiness.”

Every year there are fewer workers to support an aging population. The article cites experts who predict a collapse in the Japanese pension system in as little as 25 or 50 years.Meanwhile, industrial giants like Toyota are working hard to produce robots who can feed the elderly, give them preliminary medical supervision. The government susbsidizes them to do so, because robots have “no political downside”. Robots are seen as safer and more friendly. The Japanese would rather let robots into the home than strangers.

The solution, acording to some experts, is to let immigrants in. Among developed nations, Japan ranks very low in immigration. In the US, more than 1 out of ten people were born somewhere else. In Japan, it is less than 1 out of 50. But this is a solution no one wants. The government would rather spend billions on robotic technology.

Is this the genesis of a robotic revolution, albeit a less violent than the one seen in I Robot? Will the chasm between the rich developed nations and the poor, exploited ones become a literal one, sustained by robotic labor?

Image by Don Solo, used with a Creative Commons license

I remember the dismay of my high school ethics teacher when he asked his teen-aged class whether any action was “always right” or “always wrong” or whether it depended on circumstance. Almost all the class concluded that circumstance determined whether an action was right. We grappled whether stealing was justified by the need to survival, and other juicy philosophic questions.

A Victorian perception of ethics has been exposed as ethnocentric and fraudulent by a generation of existential philosophers. What we are left now is a deceptively unified agreement to disagree. Any one who claims to know universal truth is immediately beaten down as closed minded, intolerant and offensive.

This moral framework leaves agnosticism as the only logical option for thinkers and scientists, TV presenters, and any public leader. The proclamation “God is Dead” resounds through our seats of government, colleges, and even some churches, although their clergy try to camouflage it. To share one’s religious beliefs is an act of insult. To be a missionary is to be a religious extremist, a cultural terrorist.

These questions gnaw at me, ever since I decided I would be a part of a mission team. I certainly don’t feel like a missionary! I find it difficult to have zeal. I do, however recognize the hand of God in many small things that happen to me. I can defend orthodox theology skillfully, but how do I fight the framework of relativism? What use is theology to the postmodern unbeliever? I can very skillfully share the gospel, I believe it fully. Yet I find it difficult to evade the label of “closed minded religious nut”.

Moral relativism is in fact a very shrewd observation. It’s basic tenet is that there are no objective observers. No one is impartial. Everyone is tainted, contaminated by culture, and cannot think outside it. Only an outside observer can judge accurately. But, there are no human outside observers. Who can we trust? No one.

What follows next is the source of the chasm. Since no one is an objective observer, some have concluded that everyone’s beliefs are valid, even though they are contradictory and mutually exclusive. Many people of faith conclude differently, however. We conclude that if all humans are invalid observers, we need someone who is not human, the true God, to illuminate our minds with objective truth.

The great error of atheists (not agnostics) it that they think only the believers are biased. They do not see that they are just as contaminated with culture as the believers. They have subscribed to an atheistic culture, and believe it as blindly as many religious people. They think they are the only ones with objective truth. In that they subscribe to the very same error they denounce. Atheism is their god, their religion.

The question that divides us is whether a source of objective truth exists. In my case I believe that the Bible is the best source. At first glance, the Bible fails as a source of objective truth, because we did not receive it intact, dictated from the mouth of God. It was inspired by God, but written by mortal, fallible men, more than 70 of them. Many of them lived millennia apart. Their language and culture span ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Palestine and Arabia. Even between those of them that lived relatively close together, there are apparent contradictions, as in the doctrines of James and Paul, for instance. Upon closer scrutiny, though, I find that it contains much timeless wisdom, unity of teaching, and accurate archaeological information. It is undoubtedly a genuine document, in the sense that it is ancient, and very well preserved.

Does it contain objective truth from God? Could these truths survive being channeled through culturally biased people? Should these truths govern our behavior now, several millennia after the ink dried on the last manuscript? I believe that the answer to these questions is “yes”.