Messages

David - I've heard a lot of good things about what Fender is doing in their Mexican production facilities (Charvel, Jacksons, and EVH have guitars made there too).
If you decide to go the Floyd route, be sure to read up on some setup scenarios, or the Floyd can quickly become a hated enemy. Once you're used to the string changes, leveling the bridge (or blocking it of you don't want it to float), etc...they're great.

I started in 1989 with a Conn classical that's about the same vintage as me (mid-70s). My first electric was a Lotus strat copy. Since then, I've owned...well, quite a few guitars. My current prides and joys are the aforementioned Conn, a 1979 Les Paul, my Jackson RR5, and the "Green Manalishi", the building of which mysteriously corresponds with my inactivity on ALPB. I'm planning a couple of Flying V builds this summer.

Here's me acting like an idiot demonstrating the green guitar: http://youtu.be/O5jzfceNgl8

Here's the build thread for those interested: http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/luthiers-corner/177708-longest-build-thread-ever-probably.html

So Mr. Teigen, I ask again, when does life begin?

That's too general a question. The egg and sperm are living cells even if they don't connect. Cattle, chicken, pigs, are living beings. The blades of grass in our yard are living as the vegetables in our gardens and fruit on the living trees.

Courtesy of biology-online.org:  Life:  (1) A distinctive characteristic of a living organism from dead organism or non-living thing, as specifically distinguished by the capacity to grow, metabolize, respond (to stimuli), adapt, and reproduce

Sperm and eggs don't grow, reproduce, etc...  All of the other living things you mentioned do.

Living sperm and eggs have the capacity to grow and reproduce. Dead ones do not. In addition, they have grown to become the living sperm and eggs.

*high school biology facepalm*

So Mr. Teigen, I ask again, when does life begin?

That's too general a question. The egg and sperm are living cells even if they don't connect. Cattle, chicken, pigs, are living beings. The blades of grass in our yard are living as the vegetables in our gardens and fruit on the living trees.

Courtesy of biology-online.org:  Life:  (1) A distinctive characteristic of a living organism from dead organism or non-living thing, as specifically distinguished by the capacity to grow, metabolize, respond (to stimuli), adapt, and reproduce

Sperm and eggs don't grow, reproduce, etc...  All of the other living things you mentioned do.

genetic and other birth defects create something less than human? Brian do you care to rephrase that? It sounds heartless. Do you like the taste of foot?

I struggled with what to call those who were different than normal. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes; but some people are born with three rather than two at chromosome 21.

Is this online statement about Down's Syndrom any better: Down syndrome is the most common chromosome abnormality in humans? Would you prefer "abnormal humans," which is an accurate description -- those who are different from normal. If we say that humans have two copies of chromosome 21; what do we call someone with three copies of chromosome 21 and all the differences from the norm it produces?

There are defects that produce people who are shorter than the normal range - or taller.


A friend was born with a defect that is sometimes referred to as "frog legs". (Doesn't that designation sound like "less than human"?) His legs were not properly attached. They would never work. They were amputated. He walks on his hands. I recently read that he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Sometimes cases like that are called "differently abled" and he certainly is.


I was trying to point out three potential outcomes for a human fertilized egg: it can grow into a normal human being. Something can happen and it becomes dead cells, e.g., never attaches to the uterus; or defects from normalcy may happen as the human person develops and is born. ("Defective human" is also a problematic phrase.) Yes, what I said could seem heartless. Please offer better terms.

I'm not going to jump on the terminology bandwagon here, since others have obviously mentioned that. The potential outcomes for a fertilized egg are:

1. It dies

In some cases, it dies straight away. In others, it grows a bit but fails to thrive and dies. In others, it takes a few years and it dies. In some, it retires, and dies after a solid century. Every single combination of human genetic material assembled via sexual reproduction in the entirety of human history has died or will die (aside from situations in which there was external intervention). 

The question then isn't whether zygotes die - they do, and they eventually will. It's not whether those with genetic anomalies die - they do, and they will. It's not even whether fully developed, allegedly healthy adults die - they do.

Once you strip the notion of "Human-ness" from the remarkably clear notion of biology, it's a constant muddle. A zygote is alive - it has a metabolic process, it has distinct DNA, and it grows. Once we step away from that, we have to look at some point where that which is biologically human becomes an "actual" human in some remarkably undefinable way.

Your analogy does not quite match up.  In the one case (abortion) you talk about laws  banning an activity.  In the other case (guns) you are talking about laws banning a tool.  If we were to parallel your position re laws concerning abortion to laws concerning guns, the apples to apples analogy would be that even though people at times missuse guns and use them to unjustifiable kill people that does not mean that there should be any laws prohibiting any use of guns.

You are right. I'll make the second activity killing a human being. We do not make laws that prohibit the killing of all other human beings. That is, we allow soliders in combat to kill others (even permit some collateral damage of the killing of non-combatants). We allow killing another human when one believes their own life or a that of a loved one is threatened, e.g., the "stand your ground" law. Oregon, my home state, permits physician assisted suicide ("death with dignity") under some stringent requirements.


I could even make the more general activity of taking a life. Only under certain circumstances do we prohibit the taking of life. Few people feel badly about taking the life of a mosquito. Many of my friends in Wyoming take the lives of moose, elk, deer, and antelope. There are limits on the killing of such game, but it is not completely prohibited.

It's generally illegal for me to stab somebody in my living room. If, in fact, I stab somebody in my living room in a manner that seems justifiable, that's an exception to the general law against murder. If I'm unable to demonstrate that my family or I were at the risk of death at the hands of the person I stabbed, I'm up for murder. The police can't shoot people higgledy-piggledy; they must provide substantial justifications for their having killed somebody. Even soldiers in a warzone are operating under a legal sanction when they kill enemy combatants - they have to operate under the general rules of war.  From a legal standpoint, the prohibition on killing is general, with allowable exceptions. 

Here's a video of Forum Online sage, Bishop David Benke, is a surprising role.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUP-Si4-BY&feature=share&noredirect=1

Word.

I think we can all agree that the State of California has no right to tell parents how to teach their children about the spectrum of atmospheric colors observable to the average human eye.

Are the Lutheran Brethren considered more "Haugean" than other Lutheran groups.  My wife's family is real big on the Lutheran Brethren and I know that family (all Norwegian immigrants from the Nordfjord area) was wooed into the Lutheran Brethren by some itinerant pastors in about 1920.

Brian J. Bergs.
Minneapolis, MN

Yes, there's a whole lot more Haugean influence in the LB than in most other Lutheran denominations.  There's some in the Free Lutherans too, but not to quite the same extent.  The most overtly "Haugean" synod remaining in the USA is the Eielsen Synod.  Well, "remaining" -  I think there's one Eielsen congregation left.

If I'm not mistaken, I think the last Eielsen Synod congregation closed in 1997, though I think that there are still a couple of families that identify with it, if that counts as a "congregation."

"Where 2 or 3 are gathered" being what it is, I'd count it as a congregation.

Are the Lutheran Brethren considered more "Haugean" than other Lutheran groups.  My wife's family is real big on the Lutheran Brethren and I know that family (all Norwegian immigrants from the Nordfjord area) was wooed into the Lutheran Brethren by some itinerant pastors in about 1920.

Brian J. Bergs.
Minneapolis, MN

Yes, there's a whole lot more Haugean influence in the LB than in most other Lutheran denominations.  There's some in the Free Lutherans too, but not to quite the same extent.  The most overtly "Haugean" synod remaining in the USA is the Eielsen Synod.  Well, "remaining" -  I think there's one Eielsen congregation left. 

Indeed.  Two unrelated languages, two religions, etc...

To address an earlier mention of what a Hauge service was like, I don't have any copies of orders of service.  What I do have is fuzzy recollections of what my grandparents and great-grandparents discussed.  My grandfather wasn't impressed by the Haugeans (he was 7 when the merger took place).  His parents had been raised in the Norwegian Synod, and that was what he was used to (he wasn't a big fan of things he wasn't used to).  He described the Hauge hymns as being too silly and cheerful, and the most devoted adherents as being a bit "too holy", to the extent of walking into church with their hands together under their chins as a display of piety. 

My great-grandfather was raised in a Hauge church, and he was perfectly happy to switch to a non-Hauge congregation when he moved.  I guess the piety part rubbed him the wrong way, too.  Kind of funny, because toward the end of his life, he always listened to Carl Olaf Rosenius Norheim's radio show - and it didn't get much more pietistic than Rosenius Norheim. 

Anyway, differences between the Synod congregations and Hauge congregations were very noticeable for some decades after the 1917 merger.  Looking through church yearbooks, you can see early "Synod" years where the pastor wore full vestments, often with a ruff.  Some years later, you see the vestments get simpler and simpler until it got to a point where many pastors were simply wearing suits.  The "low church" mentality was part of the Haugean DNA spreading even into formerly non-Haugean congregations. 

To understand Norwegian Lutheranism, you kind of have to understand the political dynamics between Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.  You also have to understand Norwegian farm culture (bondekultur).   Norway was in a royal union with Denmark from about 1400 to 1814.  There were various degrees of Danish rule during that time, as Denmark was the major power of the Scandinavian states due to its continental location.  Cutting to the chase, at the time of the Reformation, Norway was pretty well dominated by Denmark.  Lutheranism was foisted upon the Norwegians as a matter of law rather than conversion.  The last Catholic Bishop of Nidaros, Olaf Engelbrektsson, was eventually run into exile even as he attempted to use the Reformation as the means to inspire some sense of Norwegian nationalism and be rid of Danish rule.  This, of course, wasn't entirely altruistic as there was a whole lot of land in Norway owned by the Roman Catholic Church, and Engelbrektsson had such a standing as to be able to build a castle and raise a small army.  Engelbrektsson tried to get Swedish allies, since Gustaf I Vasa was waging war against Denmark already.  However, he wasn't fully aware of Swedish Lutheran leanings, and received no support. 

The consequence of this was that Norway was forcibly converted to Lutheranism, and after Engelbrektsson was exiled to Holland, it came to the Danes to provide new, Lutheran clergy to Norway.  Consequently, there was immediately a divide between the Norwegians and their own clergy, as Danish and Norwegian languages were significantly different at that point - Danish had absorbed a lot of German and Frisian influence, while Norwegian was approximately similar to modern Faeroese.  So, there was a divide between Norwegians and Danes, even linguistically, for the next few centuries.  Danish massively influenced the language of educated Norwegians to the point that, even today, Norway has two official written languages.  Away from population centers, the Norwegian dialects are considerably older.

So, the Norwegians were tied to the Danes politically and religiously.  Roman Catholic tendencies died out in Norway centuries after the Reformation, despite Danish clergy rigorously rooting out "papistry" and the like.  Towards the end of the 18th century, Norway finally got a University of Theology of its own.

Pietism made its way to Norway via Danish clergy, but it took Hans Nielsen Hauge to drive the point home.  Haugean pietism has taken some really strange twists and turns in the past 200 years, but it was the Haugean revival that ultimately made Lutheranism "Norwegian".  Even for those who disagreed with Hauge on many things, such as H.A. Preus and most of the State Church, it's hard to deny that the Haugean revival completely transformed Norwegian Lutheranism in Norway and in the United States.  He also had a large hand in kick-starting a transformation in the Norwegian economy before the Industrial Revolution arrived some 25 years after his death.

Alongside all of this, it's important to remember that the Norwegian population was mostly rural, quite isolated, and had developed it's own "Bondekultur" (farm-culture).  "Bondekultur" was very old in many ways, reaching back to the age of the Vikings.  Norwegian farm culture emphasized the freedom of the farmer, the strength of the farm community, and viewed the Danish kingdom as an overseer rather than an overlord.  Isolated communities couldn't possibly be contained by Danish military might, and there was little reason for the Danes to attempt such a thing.  They put their sheriffs and magistrates in place.  The sheriffs enforced laws and collected taxes.  If the population thought the laws and taxes were bad, the sheriff disappeared and another had to be appointed.  Since the Norwegian nobility had been largely ended in the Black Death or subsumed by the Danish nobility, there weren't even really any regional nobles to enforce these things such as in Denmark and Sweden.  Certainly, Danish nobles inherited land in Norway, but they tended to sell or rent it as they had little desire to actually live there.  Consequently, sheriffs, clergy, and judges wound up being the primary Danish influence for most Norwegians.  It sounds more or less like freedom, but it's important to remember that these same communities were rife with alcoholism, blood feuds, and adultery.  Even as late as the mid-19th century, regionalism was pervasive in Norway, and the notion of a pan-Norwegian identity was still lacking.  A lot of this changed with the Eidsvoll constitution of 1814, which made Norway a "nation" even though under the Swedish crown. 

Post-Napoleonic Norway became considerably different than Norway under Danish rule.  The Swedes had agreed to most of the terms of the Eidsvoll constitution with their King as ruler rather than go to war against Norway.  So, Norway and Sweden shared a crown for about 90 years, although Norway was largely internally ruled over this time - the King ruled mostly when it came to foreign policy. 

This is the Norway that exported hundreds of thousands of its citizens to the United States.  The State Church hadn't been behind Hauge, but it benefited from the Haugean revival.  The Haugean church became its own sect in the United States, even though it was ultimately just a movement in Norwegian Lutheranism.  Similar movements in Sweden gave rise to large Baptist or Baptist-type movements, which were separate from the State Church in Sweden.

So, as to the question of why Norwegians and Swedes didn't get along, hundreds of years of cross-border warfare will tend to do that.  The last crisis was in 1905, when the Norwegians had enough of the Swedish Crown.  As to the bizarre nature of Norwegian Lutheranism, it has a lot to do with applying Lutheran Pietism to a lapsed pseudo-Catho-Lutheric population.

It's entirely likely that Grace Lutheran never changed their constitution to conform to the ELCA's model constitution.  Many congregations haven't.  So, I guess if nobody has a copy of their constitution, we're pretty much tossing "could-be's" around. 

First, to address Megadeth lyrics:  there were a couple of black magic-derived songs on the first two Megadeth records, although more along the lines of a horror movie for the most part.  "The Skull Beneath the Skin", which is the quoted tune, is about the origin of their mascot, Vic Rattlehead.  Much to the chagrin of some fans, these few tunes haven't been played live for decades, because the writer (Dave Mustaine) hasn't been comfortable playing them.  For the vast majority of their career, Megadeth lyrics have been more along the lines of socio-political commentary than witches and devils.  But, I guess it's fair game to judge people for something they did for 10 minutes when they were 21.

Okay, let's talk current lyrics, off of their most recent album, in which Ellefson was involved.

"You won't believe the things I've done, And the killing is just for fun."

So this is no longer talking about "something they did for 10 minutes when they were 21."  He is studying to become a pastor while performing about the joys of killing people.

The song's about Capone.  Would it be better if he had been singing "Folsom Prison Blues" instead of playing bass on this tune?  Or, if he were an actor, to portray a Capone henchman?  Is it unacceptable for a seminarian to do any of these things?  Further, is this actually your best construction on his actions?  If you have to proof text heavy metal lyrics to prove your point about seminary training, your case must not be very strong. 

Ellefson has mentioned his involvement with online seminary training in interviews for several months prior to this article coming out.  It hit the music news long before it hit religious circles.  I'll tell you this much; every time he (or Mustaine, for that matter) mentions God, Jesus, or the church; their stock drops a little bit in the heavy metal world.  In the past 15 years, outright atheism has become pervasive amongst metal bands and fans.  As far as I'm aware, the "MegaLife" ministry is meant to address that in some ways.  So, you may deride his "heavy metal Christmas pageant", but at least he and his church are doing something to engage that bunch in an outreach program.   Hardly anybody else is, aside from a tiny smattering of Evangelicals and Pentecostals. 

Metallica wishes they could play in time.   

I'm not an expert on LCMS seminaries or seminary programs.  However, I probably know more about David Ellefson's career in Megadeth than the rest of this board combined and doubled. 

First, to address Megadeth lyrics:  there were a couple of black magic-derived songs on the first two Megadeth records, although more along the lines of a horror movie for the most part.  "The Skull Beneath the Skin", which is the quoted tune, is about the origin of their mascot, Vic Rattlehead.  Much to the chagrin of some fans, these few tunes haven't been played live for decades, because the writer (Dave Mustaine) hasn't been comfortable playing them.  For the vast majority of their career, Megadeth lyrics have been more along the lines of socio-political commentary than witches and devils.  But, I guess it's fair game to judge people for something they did for 10 minutes when they were 21. 

Second, to address the question of "He could just pay the money and go to seminary"...how do you know this?  David Ellefson wasn't in Megadeth from about 2003 until 2010.  During that time, he played in several music projects and worked for Peavey Musical Instruments as an artist rep.  It was under these circumstances that I met him about 5 years ago.  Now, being an artist rep is a good job, but it's not going to make you a Rockefeller.  He rejoined Megadeth about 2 years ago now, recorded one album, and has toured quite a bit.  Can he afford to completely put that band on ice in order to attend a brick-and-mortar seminary?  That's hard to say, I'm not his accountant.  Platinum success doesn't necessarily equal major residual income 20 years later.   

You all can debate whether or not the SMP is a good program, or whether this fits into the scope of what it was designed for.  I don't have a dog in that fight.  But you can probably do it without hacking on Ellefson.  He gets more than enough crap about this from heavy metal fans, he probably doesn't need it from his church body.