Brent Laminack’s Personal Site

4July2009

Fun Video, Have a Happy 4th!

Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.

Have fun with a great musical take-off. This is for those in a narrow age-range: old enough to remember West Side Story and young enough to get the internet jokes.

14June2009

Unusual Website

Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.

Interesting concept for a website: just put up a YouTube channel. See the website of the ad agency Boone Oakley. It’s a very creative YouTube video. Unusual concept, especially for an ad agency.

10June2009

Bandwidth of FedEx

Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.

I’ve written before about the bandwidth of a minivan full of CD-ROMs, or a SUV full of DVDs. Now Pingdom is reporting that Google knows the same thing. They have an article about how FedEx is faster than the Internet. Enjoy.

6June2009

Christian Symbolism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.

A while back a friend of ours said that their pastor told the congregation that “He didn’t see anything Christian in Lord of the Rings” and didn’t encourage anyone to see it. As the Monty Python lads would say “Yes, well, that’s the sort of blinkered, philistine pig-ignorance I’ve come to expect..” I’ll try to spell it out for you slowly and maybe you’ll get it.

There is no one figure of Christ in Lord of the Rings (LOTR) as there is in Lewis’ Narnia tales. In LOTR there are, in fact, three Christ figures. These figures represent three of the offices of the Christ: prophet, priest and king.

The prophet figure is Gandalf. He roams among men, encouraging, exhorting and counceling them. The apex of his story line is where he battles a major force of darkness and returns from the dead as the untimate authority of his order.

The priest figure is Frodo. The priest has to make sacrifice to expurge sin and evil. It’s Frodo’s task to bear the ring of evil up the mountain of darkness to its destruction. He stumbles along the way and has to be helped out. He accomplishes his task at great personal cost: he is wounded and his wounds will never heal.

The king is of course Aragorn. He has to win his kingdom through battle in order to secure his bride. But he and his bride are separated: one is mortal, the other immortal. The immortal must relinquish immortality and be doomed to death in order for the wedding to take place. Aragorn must take up his rightful place as king, the office he was born to hold. This was prophecied from days of old. But he’s not just a warrior because it’s said “the hands of the king are hands of a healer.”

Ok people, does ANY of this sound familiar?!?!

25May2009

If Raising the Minimum Wage is Good….

Posted by Brent under: common sense politics.

A few years back, I heard a political debate among the minor candidates for Governor of Georgia (I believe). The Socialist candidate was running on a platform of “If elected, I’d immediately raise the minimum wage to $100″ After all, if raising the minimum wage is good, why not go whole hog? Raising the minimum wage to $100 would immediately make us all rich, right? Most people see the consequences at once. Either a) we’d all be immediately unemployed as all our jobs flew oversees or b) inflation would immediately make $100 spend like $10.

16May2009

The No. 1 Mayberry Detective Agency

Posted by Brent under: Nothing Special.

A few years ago I picked up one of Alexander McCall Smith’s books in the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series as I was passing through the airport. These are gentle, very human stories of Precious Ramotswe as she runs her detective agency in Botswana. They feature almost no murder or mayhem. The mysteries aren’t convoluted. HBO and the BBC have recently produced a movie and series about them. One day this past week I realized where I’d seen all these characters before: in Mayberry.

Ma Ramotswe is the central figure, solving crimes with common sense and a keen understanding of human nature. She’s very much like sheriff Andrew Jackson Taylor in Mayberry in the old Andy Griffith show. Her secretary and assistant detective is a skinny, wired helper with an inflated sense of self-importance: Grace Makutsi. She sometimes even acts like Barney. Ma Ramotswe’s love interest is the stable, kind Mr. JLB Matekoni, the analog of Helen Crump. Next door to the agency’s office is a hairdresser, the counterpart to Floyd the barber. Mr. JLB Matekoni runs a garage and employs two worthless apprentices. Let’s see, in Mayberry were there idiots who worked on cars? Yes, the apprentices fill the roles of Goober and Gomer. Ma Ramotswe occasionally has to go out into the bush, just as sheriff Taylor has to go into the backwoods.  I’m expecting to see Otis and Howard Sprague show up at any time.

Did Mr. Smith lift the forumla from Andy Griffith? I don’t think so, but he stumbled onto a timeless forumla that still works well.