Favorite albums

World of Sven has A musical idea, asking his readers to list our two or three favorite albums of all time and why we like them so much.

My three albums are

• The Mamas and the Papas - 16 Greatest Hits - My husband and I play this one on the car stereo a lot. When we were students, not yet living in California, but in Pennsylvania, we often went to a diner where we heard "California Dreaming" (the Beach Boys version, but the version by the Mamas and the Papas is definitely better). My husband always wanted to live in California and now this dream has come true. In addition, this is a style of music that we both love to listen to, and he doesn't mind when I sing along to some of the songs.
  
• WOW Worship Blue - The first album of contemporary Christian music I ever bought, and the only one I owned for quite a while. It as a lot of the songs that we sang at church at the time, so it's connected to some good memories.
  
• Chris Tomlin - Arriving - I don't even own this album (yet), but we are singing many of these songs with our choir at church. We get samples to practice the songs, so I've listened to most of the tracks. I love to listen to them and to sing the songs myself with the choir.
  

Escaping the Matrix

I've just received Gregory A Boyd and Al Larson's new book "Escaping the Matrix. I will be reviewing it for Mind & Media. Stay tuned for the review.

What kind of American English does Swan speak?

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

15% Dixie

15% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Benedict XVI

A new pope has been elected today. Joseph Ratzinger, the German cardinal is now Pope Benedict XVI.

The news commentator here on ABC set up a false contrast between John Paul II reaching out to other faiths and Ratzinger saying that religions other than Christianity don't have the road to salvation (I'm citing this from memory). The way he put it, there was no contradiction there, but most viewers probably didn't realize that...

Wikipedia - Languages

Another interesting featured article today at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Aramaic language.
I also recommend checking out the List of languages by total speakers, find your native language (or maybe a language you've learned as a second language) and see where it's spoken.

Today's featured article

At Wikipedia, today's featured article is about the names of God in Judaism. The various names of God in Judaism represent God as he is known, as well as the divine aspects which are attributed to him. Interesting stuff.

Funny thing about braces

A funny thing happened today. One of my co-workers, who I usually talk with a couple of times a day, noticed my braces for the first time. It's been 20 days that I've had them! It took her almost three weeks to discover them. The metal in the mouth must fit me well.

It may help that I try to be as natural as possible with them, not hiding my smile or anything. The only time I get self-conscious about my braces is if I've just eaten something and I suspect that some food may be stuck in there.

Can you be rational and be an atheist?

Does the question of God matter?
See the answer at Suspend Your Disbelief's post Let's Think About God.

How to Get Your Husband to Talk to You

My husband and I communicate pretty well, but when I saw this book on the shelf at the library I thought, why not, it's always good to improve communication.

So how do you get your husband to talk to you? Not by reading the book with the above title written by Nancy Cobb and Connie Grigsby.

Many of the authors' suggestions, especially in part 1, just don't apply to my husband. They seem to assume that all husbands or men are like theirs, but mine is different.
Unfortunately, since they cover a large amount of topics, they have to stay on the surface with every topic they cover. Even though they spend three chapters on forgiveness, for example, that only amounts to seven pages which isn't enough to go into any detail.

If you need a checklist and then want do further reading on the issues you need to work on most, the book may be useful, but for that purpose I would have expected a nice reference section, with books and articles for further reading on every topic, much more than is included in the Notes section.

So I'm not renewing the book, but returning it to the library after having read about half of it.

Blog for Books

I think blogging reviews is a wonderful idea. I love to read anyway and it it makes sense to let people know what I think about a book. So I'm becoming a reviewer at Mind & Media. Reviews will be posted here, so stay tuned. Just watch for the Exclusive Reviewer banner at the top of a post.