How Great

Undoubtedly the highlight of the Academy of Country Music "Girls' Night Out" concert: Vince Gill and Carrie Underwood. Matching what may be the purest voice in country music with a guitar virtuoso and singer like Vince Gill is quite a combination.

(My old computer wouldn't have been able to keep up, but if you have one that can . . . choose 1080p in the resolution selector in the lower right, and full screen for a knock-out version of this song.)

And purely in the interest of passionate performing, I'm adding this duet by Ronnie Dunn and Jennifer Nettles—I don't think there are two singers anywhere that make you believe they are singing something that's painfully true more than these two. Until I checked, I didn't realize this song was written by the amazing Patty Griffin -- on her A Kiss in Time album.

Scary

Does this guy remind you of somebody you know? Not likely. He's (it's) a robot created at National Taiwan University. I wonder if, one day, it will be hard to tell the living from the non-living.

Uh, I Have to Be Going Now

Hmmm—Vine Ripe Tomatoes

I snagged this picture from an Atlantic article on migrant workers unions in Florida, etc. (Lost the link to the article and couldn't find it searching Atlantic's site.) I'm only posting it because it's a great illustration of modern commercial agriculture: picking tomatoes when they're green and rock hard, then gassing them, etc., to bring them to maturity when it's time to sell them. If you look on some of the leaves, you can see white residue from some sort of spray. Toxic? Non-toxic? I don't know. But the whole picture is very unappealing. Compare that picture with a bright red organic tomato at a farmer's market picked red off the vine the day before. Or better yet, one pulled five minutes before you slice it, picked from a tomato plant in your own yard.

How Is This Different from a Laptop?

I'm on record as saying that the laptop's days are numbered; that the "pad" computer will replace the ubiquitous lapper. (Not soon, obviously, but eventually.)

And maybe not as soon as anybody thinks given this iPad ad. It's for a device that does three things: provides a keyboard for the iPad; holds the iPad upright for typing; provides a protective cover for the iPad. Hey -- how is that different from a laptop?!

Okay -- I get how the iPad is different. I just found it amusing that folks are buying iPads and also devices that turn their iPads back into the laptop they used to use.

Meaning Through Music

Paul Simon's new album, So Beautiful or So What? received a 5-of-5 stars review from Christianity Today. In fact, there are so many references to God and spirituality in the songs that, in a video about the album, Simon says Paul McCartney came backstage after hearing the songs at a concert and asked Simon, "Aren't you Jewish?" There have always been a lot of references to God in Simon's songs, as well as Sting's. In neither case do I know what that means to them personally.

Moby has always been identified as a "Christian" of some sort, and this song ("The Day") from his new album (Destroyed) supports that contention—about the victory of good over evil.

The music video:

Moby explaining more about the making and meaning of the song: