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Apple's millennial leap from fading Golden Age icon to flexible, flashy plastic fashion
By Daniel Eran Dilger | 1 year ago
Apple's deft transition in the late 90s from an aging icon into a fresh, modern brand with the ability to capture the attention of buyers is now virtually ancient history. But it provides some perspective on Apple's current position, which is frequently characterized as being one mistake away from doom. There are also lessons for Apple's competitors.
How Apple's Golden Age lost its luster
Apple's Golden Age of the late 80s and early 90s was a period marked with high priced, highly regarded professional products from the Mac SE/30 to the wicked fast Mac IIfx.
Yet by 1994 serious problems were brewing, most notably the rise of a "good enough" Windows alternative that Microsoft was offering to commodity PC makers. Apple couldn't just rest on its Golden Age status because the profits that had once established it were now waning away.
Apple's Golden Age began to lose its luster as iconic product models expanded into mess of dull SKUs
Pundits of the day recommended that Apple license its software, make its own hardware cheaper, and maybe just sell itself to a larger company to stay afloat — IBM, Sun and Oracle were all once candidates. In hindsight, all of that advice turned out to be disastrous.
Early 90s initiatives to license Apple's Mac software — as well as its new Newton platform — were largely a distraction that complicated the already problematic OS development plans of the company. Once it lined up cloners, it had to support their products as well as its own when charting the future of Mac OS.
It might seem easy to draw correlations between Apple's long ago expensive Macintoshes and today's increasingly expensive iPhones, particularly if you equate Windows with Android as the outside competitor. However, Apple's OS licensing programs of the mid 90s really had a lot more in common with Google's Android and Chrome OS initiatives that occurred two decades later: both ended up being a lot of work with very little real payoff.
After setting up a series of Mac cloners, Apple found that none of its new partners were really creating any valuable new markets for Macs. Instead, they were mostly all just trying to sell small batches of the most lucrative models: fast premium Mac clones that cannibalized Apple's profitability while forcing it to sell low profit models on the low end.
What had seemed like a simple and obvious solution turned out to be a really complex problem with unforeseen consequences. Neither licensing nor the new "low cost" Mac LC or Performa models did much of anything to expand Apple's installed base of users. Being cheaper just watered down the attractiveness of Apple's platform and reduced any differentiation from the "good enough" Windows PC alternatives, which were pioneering faster processors and new markets in areas like PC gaming.
By 1996, it was growing difficult for most consumers to see any reason to pay a premium for a Mac, particularly given that there was incrementally more exclusive Windows software appearing. Even Microsoft was producing a version of Office that was now better on Windows than its Mac version. And the key software that had been driving Mac sales, including PageMaker, QuarkXPress, illustrator, and other other creative tools, was increasingly available for Windows PCs as well.
Android's fading glory today
Today, Apple no longer has these problems. It isn't materially struggling to keep its iOS up to par with leading alternatives that attract more exclusive software. Instead, it's Google that is struggling to match the advances of iOS, while Microsoft's Windows Mobile has dropped out of the race entirely. Most commercially significant app developers are not working to support Android first as Google's executives once predicted would happen. Instead, apps routinely launch on iOS and developers often only provide a "good enough" version tied to ads on Android, because buyers attracted to Android largely don't want to pay anything for software.
And rather than Apple seeing its profits bleed away to cloners today, it's Google that is struggling both to sell its own Pixel hardware and to promote partners' "real" Android devices bundling its Google Play services in a world where most of Android's growth is occurring in the "cloned" flavors of Android forks based in China that Google gets nothing from and has no control over.
Additionally, Google's largest Android licensee is actively seeking ways to use its own Tizen platform instead, and the fastest-growing Android maker in China is also threatening to use its own Linux fork. Herding the cats of Android's licensees are a bigger mess for Google than Apple's once were for the classic Mac OS.
In mobile devices, Google is today's Beleaguered Apple, suffering from not just a hardware cloner problem, but also from key software partners threatening to bail and go the commodity route the same way that Adobe once tried to abandon Apple for Windows out of commercial self-interest. Android really isn't today's Windows. iOS — and to an extent Android forks — are closer to playing the role of today's Windows, while today's "beleaguered Mac" is Google's "pure" Android, which struggles to promote new APIs and attract the same kind of attention that iOS gets, while also a few steps behind the new iOS releases Apple cranks out every year in key features and in distribution.
It's not clear how Google can turn things around and regain control over its increasingly factionalized cloners and the forked software platforms that call themselves Android, not to mention pull back the territory lost to Tizen and other proprietary OSs now powering TVs, wearables and other devices. Just like Apple's 1990's Performa, Googles' cheap Nexus hardware also didn't move the needle. And the market potential for Google's higher end Pixel brand is eaten up by Android licensees' own flagships desperately seeking profitable sales in the finite market for premium Androids.
Google's various competing plans for its modern OS of the future, whether Chrome OS, some new version of Android, a hybrid, Fuchsia, or something else, have a lot in common with the constantly shifting OS strategies at the old mid-90s Apple. Perhaps there are lessons for Google in Apple's late 90's history of turning things around.
Steve Jobs big shift at Apple
After the third party advice recommending Mac software licensing and cheaper, commodity-like Mac hardware both failed to fix things for Apple, there was no obvious advice left to give, so the media began dumping on the company as a beleaguered failure with no way out.
Perhaps another company could pull simply buy it and turn it around? That too was bad but popular advice, as would later be clear from the results of some larger company buying out a struggling hardware maker like Be or Palm. Had IBM or Sun bought Apple, it most certainly would have just flubbed everything and turned Apple into another once-notable icon in the graveyard of tech history, the same way Google's acquisition of Motorola resulted in simply destroying what was left of the once great brand and selling off the logo to Lenovo.
Instead, Apple was effectively taken over by Steve Jobs' team at NeXT. Apple acquired the much smaller company in the final days of 1996 in a Hail Mary play that expected to use NeXT's operating system software to replace the increasingly outdated underpinnings of the Mac. But in addition to acquiring software, Apple ended up getting a disciplined executive structure and a product visionary with the ambition to return Apple to its once-former glory.
Steve Jobs dramatically simplified Apple's offerings in 1997
Rather than dialing Apple back to its late 80s Golden Age, Jobs turned Apple's clock back even further to its early 80s "Insanely Great" era, one that could excite customers with new technology in a fresh package that stood out in a sea of boring sheet metal boxes. Instead of trying to convert Apple into a copy of Microsoft or Dell, Jobs aimed to return Apple back to what it was once really good at being: fashionable and premium.
Apple's 2000s Era of Plastic Fashion
After Jobs had originally left Apple in 1986, he pursued the goal of building his future vision of desktop computing at NeXT, which shipped its first product in an attention-arresting black magnesium cube in 1988. A decade later after returning in 1997, Jobs turned to Apple's existing design team to create something entirely fresh and new.
That team had already been experimenting with translucent plastics, most evident on the dark green Newton eBook 300. But to make a big splash, the new iMac would need to be more boldly styled.
After assuming control of the beleaguered Apple Computer in 1997 as its "interim CEO," Jobs concentrated on Apple's valuable technologies, capitalized on the strongest of its remaining business audiences (notably education and consumers buying products for themselves), and presided over the invention of a new style of technology. That helped to forge a new identity for the company, allowing it to more readily shed its problematic associations of being "cheaper but still expensive," and selling relatively unexciting "beige box" computers.
Rather than releasing a techy PC box intended to be locked down by a central team of IT administrators while supporting every available legacy port, Apple positioned the 1998 iMac as a curvey, translucent, colorful appliance that regular people could plug in to begin using immediately. Apple cleverly made the new iMac's appearance a prominent subject on its website. At a time when animated autoplay graphics on the web were novel, Apple's main page displayed a bright Bondi blue iMac rotating into view to introduce itself.
20 years ago today, Steve introduced the world to iMac. It set Apple on a new course and forever changed the way people look at computers. pic.twitter.com/GbKno7YBHl
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 6, 2018
iMac launched Apple's new era of plastic fashion. The use of plastic as a material certainly wasn't new to Apple. In fact, it was the early Apple of the late 1970s that popularized the use of ABS moulded plastic as the casing for its Apple II at a time when most home computers were formed from cheap, simple sheet metal. Designing and moulding a styled case took additional time and effort, but resulted in a more distinctive product. When the first Macintosh shipped in 1984, its all-in-one plastic enclosure was iconic and modern looking.
But more than a decade later, the use of common ABS plastics to form a computer case was not novel at all. And as Windows began offering a cheaper alternative to the Mac desktop, the appearance and styling of the PC box had largely fallen out of focus. After all, most PCs were just thrown under a desk anyway, so it was fine to have a cheap sheet metal box with just a styled plastic front, commonly with convenient legacy ports across the back and perhaps even more on the front. The only thing that mattered at the time was how fast a PC could run Windows.
A technical, fashionable break with legacy
Instead of trying to beat PC makers at their own game, Jobs' Apple built something distinctive. iMac, powered by a PowerPC processor, wasn't intended to run Windows at all. Instead, Apple focused on the tasks people wanted to accomplish, including email and web browsing, neither of which required Windows.
In another break with the status quo, iMac also had no legacy ports. It exclusively provided one expansion method: Intel's USB, a new style of port designed to make it much easier to connect a number of both fast and slow peripherals without any manual configuration or settings.
The tradeoffs of abandoning legacy were howled about by the media trying to cater to populist outrage over users being forced to change rather than being coddled as customers who knew best. But users and the media were wrong about USB.
The original iMac only supported USB for peripheral expansion
In fact, Apple's big exclusive bet on USB not only created a new era of simplified Mac connectivity— no more ADB keyboards, old serial peripherals, GeoPort, and SCSI complicating the market and making Mac versions of peripherals more expensive— but also trail blazed for USB at at time when many PCs had included the new ports but either didn't support them or dangled them off the side while prioritizing the old PS/2, Centronics, RS-232 and other old connections that were slightly cheaper.
The success of the new iMac, its translucent plastic appearance and simplified USB allowed Apple to stand out in a crowded market, and capitalized on style over pure cheapness. The new iMac didn't sit under your desk out of sight; it was a showpiece. Apple's distinctive look was immediately copied by PC makers — some of whom Apple successfully stopped on trade dress grounds — but also by makers of USB peripheral makers seeking to sell them to both Macs and PCs.
That meant that even commodity PC boxes were commonly attached to bright, translucent plastic boxes serving as a USB hub, a mouse, a keyboard or other device, effectively seeding the notion that the look of the future in the late 90s had shifted from the opaque "boring beige" that had once looked modern in the early 80s, to a new material design language that showed off the latest technology in producing translucent injected mold casings with a more precision fit and a closer attention to detail and styling.
To PC nerds who only cared about processor speed, Apple's new translucent plastic styling was often regarded as silly. But mainstream users, particularly those new to computing who just wanted to get online and didn't want to dedicate their lives to maintaining a peak performance computing machine, the "there is no step three" iMac was both an easy decision and a fashionable one that felt fresh and modern.
The Dotcom Plastic Bubble
Apple rapidly spread the iMac's distinctive styling across its product line, starting with its wildly colorful new iBook in 1998 and moving across the pro line of Power Mac G3s the next year. In 2000 Apple released the G4 Cube — a pure showpiece of plastic innovation that effectively eclipsed its value as a computer. Apple had retained an edge with creative users, so its injection of colorful, translucent plastics grew prominently visible in markets where it could grab attention and stand out as the modern, fresh look of the new Millennium.
Apple's early 2000s product lineup was fresh and unique
Beyond hardware, Apple's fresh "plastic fashion" was also reflected in the company's release of Mac OS X, which was given a new Aqua interface that not only looked new, but was grounded in entirely new Quartz technology. Rather than being just a bitmapped graphical display of simple 2D geometry that the original Mac had introduced in the 80s (and which Windows had copied verbatim), the new Mac OS X introduced a scalable, compositing graphics system that leveraged the 3D graphics power that video games had popularized.
This enabled Macs to present graphics elements with real translucency along with fluid, animated effects — most notably the Dock — that paired perfectly with the clear plastic hardware Apple was selling, differentiating Mac OS from Windows the same way that Apple had been contrasting flashy Mac hardware from basic PC boxes.
Mac OS X reflected Apple's new translucent plastic hardware
Because Apple was launching a new platform, it had fewer legacy issues to manage than Microsoft's Windows. Legacy complicated Microsoft's ability to copy Apple's modern vector graphics, delaying its own response with Windows Vista until the end of 2006. Apple enjoyed years of exclusivity of its own "plastic" innovations for a long enough period to strongly differentiate itself and its products from the status quo. By the time Vista did ship, it simply looked imitative rather than like a parallel development.
A flexible entry into mobility
In 2001, Apple also made a bold move into consumer electronics with iPod, using its advanced core technologies to enhance the simplicity and functionality of the device rather than exposing unlimited complications, settings, and configurations that would require a "Book for Dummies" just to use it.
In parallel, Apple was also capitalizing on mobility in personal computing, focusing more of its efforts into notebooks than desktop Macs because the market was clearly shifting toward mobility and away from the stationary 1990s home PC stuck under a desk.
Apple's plastic mobility strategy was not just exceptionally successful, but it also leveraged cross-pollination between its mobile music devices and its advanced desktop operating system to deliver iPhone— the largest, most commercially successful product to ever be released.
iPhone similarly launched with a glossy, liquid look with even greater use of fluid animation in its graphical user interface, making it wildly fresh in a world where existing "smartphones" were mostly just basic button devices that reflected the simple user interface patterns of PC screens from the 1990s. And in its second and third versions, iPhone even shipped with a rounded plastic case that improved reception and lowered production costs, making it easier to produce in high volume. That was important because iPhones were helping to shift Apple from being the maker of a few million Macs into the producer of tens of millions of mobile computing devices.
A flexible demand for more space
As the company's fortunes— and need for expansion— grew dramatically over the early 2000s, Apple ran out of room at its original 1 Infinite Loop headquarters and expanded incrementally across a series of available office spaces.
Apple's offices were too big in 1996 but too small in 2006
In 2006, just as it prepared to launch iPhone, Apple acquired a series of adjacent properties straddling the freeway just a few blocks east of 1 Infinite Loop, with the intent to build a major expansion of office space. Jobs explained the company's voracious need for new space in a large, centralized building site at the time in saying, "we've rented every scrap of building we could find in Cupertino."
As it drew up plans for a Campus 2, its own expansion was being matched by a decline at neighboring PC maker Hewlett Packard. Fortuitously, in 2010 HP decided to pull out of its Pruneridge Campus adjacent to the land that Apple had already pieced together, creating the opportunity for Apple to acquire HP's old facility and build a very large new development across the combined area— an extremely rare opportunity to arise in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Real artists ship
While the company was working to expand its available space, it continued to keep its focus narrowed on the attainable. In stark contrast to the cloud of ideas billowing out of Apple in the 1990s, most of which were ultimately largely monetized by others, Jobs' Apple of the early 2000s imposed a stark austerity in governing the company's engineering goals.
Apple didn't attempt to support or pursue any concept that users might think up— as Google more recently did with its Project ARA component smartphone or the idea of a round smartwatch.
Apple's iPods didn't try to master playback of every dreamed-up file format, no matter how noble the philosophy supporting a codec— another divergence from today's Google. iPhone also didn't attempt to open up its platform to every developer to empower them to do anything they might conceive— the basic premise of Android.
In part, that's because much of what developers can think up is actually awful, as Facebook and other malware have since demonstrated. In an era of emerging social networks and surveillance advertising, Apple didn't race to own and target its customers as a commodity it could resell. It remained focused upon designing high quality hardware powered by regularly enhanced software releases.
Apple's restraint, its ability to say no, kept it focused on what it could do well and how it could improve on what it was already doing. That enabled the company to rapidly ditch its reputation for beleaguerment among consumers and third party developers. It would eventually even shift the less malleable mindset of the conservative enterprise, leveraging those same converted consumers via the Bring Your Own Device trend.
Ten years of no tablet
One notable example of Apple's extreme restraint: despite its corporate experience in shipping the first mainstream tablet device with Newton MessagePads across the 90s, Apple spent the full decade of the 2000s actively resisting calls to ship another tablet. Internally, it instead worked in secret on lining up the necessary building blocks needed to successfully deliver such a product: a new Safari browser, new mobile hardware technologies, and an efficient new iOS foundation.
Rather than dumping out an unfinished prototype for bragging rights, Apple patiently waited over a decade to refine its tablet strategy before shipping iPad
However, until it got to the point where it felt it could ship something that really made sense— iPad, in 2010— Apple focused on its conventional business notebooks and consumer laptops suitable for education. It even resisted the idea of shipping a mini tablet, instead branding its phoneless iPhone as "iPod touch," and positioning it as a media device in the model of earlier iPods rather than a small general-purpose tablet computer, as other similar devices did at the time.
This allowed the company to perfect iOS and refine its slim, mobile device hardware for three full years without any direct comparisons to the bulky, "fully featured" tablet PC machines that repeatedly flopped in the market throughout the 2000s — despite their me-too claims of support for a stylus, handwritten recognition, and other ideas pioneered by Newton — as they attempted to deliver a 1990s desktop OS in an only incrementally newer form factor, or as a "hybrid" bridge anchored in the past.
After shifting Apple from its faded Golden Age to a new era of flexible, mobile, candy colored plastics, Apple just as rapidly started over with a new design language that would last through the next decade, one that would also be reflected across its hardware, software and even its new campus and other construction projects, as the next segment will examine.
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avon b7 Said:
"... and the fastest-growing Android maker in China is also threatening to use its own Linux fork"
Huawei isn't 'threatening' anything of the sort.
The linked article even makes that crystal clear. They have NO plans to move from Android. They have a backup plan in case the US government tries to impede its use of Android. That's it. No threats in sight.
Folio Said:
Your mention of Steve veering Apple back to premium. Isnt it a more accessible premium now? When you consider life cycle, ease, ecosystem, etc many Apple purchases seem a better deal than daily Starbucks (another example of popular premium). Also interesting that Google (pixel phone) and Amazon (whole foods) striving to lure premium consumers. Looks like the secret is out. I think its easier for Apple to broaden access if it choses than for its rivals to poach premium.
apple ][ Said:
I miss the plastic, candy colored products of the 2000's. I still have some of those machines, and they still look great and they still function great too, though I obviously do not use them anymore for my day to day computing.
Apple should bring back some more color into some of their products.
Can we get something else besides boring white Air Pods? Is that asking too much? I think not.
Please release the next gen Air Pods in a whole slew of colors, including black of course. Give me the whole damn rainbow to choose from, and let me choose whichever color I prefer. Hell, give me some special edition psychedelic Air Pods to choose from, similar to the psychedelic iMac models released.
Just give me a choice besides the sterile, clean, boring and hospital looking white. Concentrate less on worrying about workplace diversity and other SJW nonsense and worry more about product color diversity, such as on the Air Pods, which would be a prime candidate for a product that should be available in multiple colors, like some of the iPod models or the iPhone XR line.
guscat Said:
Sort of like how Apple isn't developing its own chip that could power the Mac line or its own modems.
Huawei may be developing its own version of Android out of fears of a trade war, but if they come up with something that's better or just as good why wouldn't they release their own OS? It's not like the threat of a trade war won't end when Trump leaves office.
jdw Said:
It's truly unfortunate so many deem the G4 Cube a failure. I honestly don't care what other people think. The Cube was a great machine that gave me adequate bang for the buck. I own two Cubes which are still in use today. They look as stunning today as they did when purchased 19 years ago. Just looking at them inspires my own creativity. No other Apple desktop really comes close to touching its design aesthetic, not even the 2012 Mac Pro. The Cube is the ultimate in "flashy plastic fashion."
Apple has started early development work on a foldable iPhone and is planning incremental changes for its 2021 iPhone lineup, though one major upgrade could see the inclusion of an in-screen fingerprint sensor.


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If you're not aware, Al Gore is back with an update to his Oscar winning Powerpoint presentation, An Inconvenient Truth. This time we've been sent a clip form the film where Al is in Miami finding out how the city is coping with the rise in sea level.
If you have missed the trailer, head over to this page to watch how much things have changed in the ten years since the first time Al Gore told an Inconvenient Truth.
In AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER Vice President Al Gore continues his tireless fight traveling around the world training an army of climate champions and influencing international climate policy. Cameras follow him behind the scenes – in moments both private and public, funny and poignant — as he pursues the inspirational idea that while the stakes have never been higher, the perils of climate change can be overcome with human ingenuity and passion.


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Dirty Tudor singers? Tallis Squalors.
If you are going to talk like you are gay, then Ann Coulter is going to call you gay.
A unknown Moravian composer extends an unexpectedly long reach.
It's an interesting concept, and we're still thinking a lot about it and applying it to other stuff.
Maybe this year was the best so far, but we at Sinden.org are confident that the best is yet to come.
Although figured bass - how to realize was definitely one of our favorites.
Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States has died. He was an Episcopalian.
We at Sinden.org are looking forward to his televised funeral and plan to watch it Reagan style: with the Book of Common Prayer in hand a few cold ones nearby. It should be good!
You know, because the choirs at the National Cathedral just haven't had a whole lot to do lately.
American composer Daniel Pinkham (1923-2006) died yesterday.
Pinkham's music has a fresh, youthful, and distinctly American spirit.
Pinkham retained his youthfulness, refreshing generosity and love of teaching throughout his life.
In the Gospel reading today, Jesus is talking in cryptic terms about John the Baptist. He's comparing him to Elija, and eventually the disciples get it.
But on Wednesday this week, Jesus asks "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind?" (Matthew 11:7). The answer from the crowd is apparently "no", because Jesus goes on to ask, "What then did you go out to see?" (11:8).
But wait a minute. We organists are precisely interested in reeds shaken by the wind.
And prophets too, I guess.
There's no author mentioned in conjunction with "Sounds of the Season from Churches and Halls" in today's New York Times.
There's no Rutter mentioned in the article either.
Both times he is listed as "Rütter".
I'm sorry, but misspelling an English composer's name does not give your Christmas program more international panache.
Okay, so don't follow the way of the wicked (Psalm). Check.
The LORD teaches us for our own good (Isaiah). Check.
We played the flute for you, but you did not dance (Matthew). Come again?
On 29 March 1909, Englishman Arthur Scott Brook filed a patent for an organ pipe open at both ends.
That's right. Both ends of the pipe are open and unobstructed.
This means that the wind needs to enter the pipe in a different way (i.e., not from the toe), hence the "blow aperture".
Why have I never heard about this before? Have any of these pipes been built?
More to explore: Google's Patent Search returns 701 results for "organ pipe"
Well, Second Isaiah gets a little crazy today. No more of this "Comfort, comfort" business. All of a sudden Jacob is a worm; Israel, an insect!
And what's more, they are to be made into "a threshing-sledge / sharp, new, and having teeth."
Does a worm have teeth? What insects have teeth? (Incidentally, these teeth can bring down mountains and reduce hills to rubble). What imagery for Advent!
God's greatness us unsearchable, the psalm reminds us.
Let anyone with ears listen, Jesus implores.
Sometimes I wince when I play the piano. I can't help myself. It's such an ugly, terrible instrument. This is compounded by the fact that I am a poor piano player.
The piano is a violent instrument; it thrives on attack. The organ is peaceful; it responds to release.
When playing the piano, notes must be played with awful decision and striking force. When playing the organ, sounds can be caressed out of the instrument as the finger's motion corresponds to air entering the pipes.
When a pianist makes an errant decision or motion, the note has been struck and sounds just as forcefully as do correct pitches.
When an organist makes an errant decision or motion, there is often time to remove the finger from the key without the mistake sounding fully.
In this way, the organ is "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (Ps. 103:8).
Who would dream of putting a heathen piano in a church, the realm of the holy organ?
To what can we compare the organ, the King of Instruments?
The organ's love and superiority, however, come at a cost: weight.
Organs weigh a lot, sure, but organists have to deal with the weight of sustaining pitch. Whether this is tenuously achieved through electric means, or geniunely achieved through the heaviness of a mechanical relationship, the organist is keenly aware of this responsibility: the duty of duration.
The readings for today lend themselves to an anachronistic reading regarding automobiles and entropy.
First, the whole "highway for our God" thing no longer conjures up images of well-trod footpaths, but rather oil-stained roadways.
Second, "every valley shall be lifted up,/and every mountain and hill be made low" brings to mind erosion caused my glacial movement in the previous ice ages. Surely at some time on this earth, every valley has been lifted up -- well, except maybe Death Valley.
This "geologic time" perspective probably wasn't available to the author of Second Isaiah, but human mortality certainly was: "all people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field".
And it's not just people. We are surrounded by things that have a constancy even more fragile than the metaphorical "flower of the field". Cromornes, computers, cars.
And it's those metaphorical cars, the ones that fade, that travel on the highway for our God, that is the earth seen in its geologic perspective, unaffected by human hands (though God cares for his whole creation, especially human hands).
Maybe none of this makes sense, but neither does the fact that as I was sitting at a stoplight last night two young adult males in an over-large Dodge Ram attracted my attention by yelling and gunning the engine to tell me that I had a flat tire.
If I had a flat tire, then I had four flat tires, because all looked fine to me.
A closer inspection revealed that all my tires were underinflated by 4 psi, likely due to cooler temperatures.
The flat tire prophets were preaching repentance. However misguided they were (a quick Google search shows that it's not really possible to observe a difference of 10 psi without the aid of a pressure gauge) these Hoosier hooligans did get me worried about the state of my soul tires.
Flat Tire Prophets: a good name for a band?
And, in an alternative take on the gospel, if one of your tires is flat, do you not leave the three tires at correct pressure in search of a the free air pump at that gas station near the mall? And if you get that tire back at the correct pressure, do you not rejoice in it more than the other three that never went astray?
Well, all my tires are back on track, and sure enough, I'm getting better mileage on that "highway of our God".
To travel the way of the Lord, we need Advent as a time of intentional preparation, a time of personal inflation.
Because seasons change, and sometimes our devotion deflates.
Listen to the Pharisees when they say "We have seen strange things today".
Or Listen to Thomas Merton, who makes his regularly scheduled appearance on . . .
That which is oldest is most young and most new. There is nothing so ancient and so dead as human novelty. The "lastest" is always stillborn. It never even manages to arrive. What is really new is what was there all the time. I say, not what has repeated itself all the time; the really "new" is that which, at every moment, springs freshly into new existence. This newness never repeats itself. Yet it is so old it goes back to the earliest beginning. It is the very beginning itself, which speaks to us.
Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 107. New Directions Publishing.
Or put on your High Priest Costume (instructions included)!
Or cut out your Simplicity Patterns for Bible costumes (included)!
Or put on a Crown of Thorns (included)!
Even in your Tabernacle Felt Set (included)!
along with a Kids Discover Magazine on Blood (included)!
be still my beating Life-size Latex Heart Model (included)!
Toward the Cardboard Brazen Altar (included)!
If you purchased the Visual Kit For the School of Evangelism, then you already have this soft, life-like, washable toy lamb. But if not, it's an absolute MUST for the series on the Blood of Jesus. It is needed in multiple lessons. It stands 15 " tall so it is nearly life-size of a new-born lamb. Perfect for carrying under your arm, or around your neck. Fits perfectly on the cardboard Brazen Altar that comes in the Visual Kit.
Sibelius once said: "Never pay any attention to the critics. No one ever made a statue of a critic."
Sibelius's birth and music send us an Advent message of hope and transcendence. Except for the Eighth Symphony, which sends us a message of despair and fiery destruction.
Let me explain. Sibelius wrote seven numbered symphonies and complete his eighth, but it was never performed. Something got the better of him one night (probably alcohol), and he threw it into the fire.
The only scrap of the work that remains is preserved in a little piece he wrote for a friend's funeral in 1931: Surusoitto, Op. 111b.
Sibelius was in the business of redefining what the symphony was. In fact, he was reshaping the logic of music itself. His circular, stream of consciousness kind of writing had an inner logic that was very personal to him. It spoke of the world, and pointed beyond it.
If you are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Eighth through Surusoitto, you are listening to the work of a mature master composer.
I will even go so far as to say you can hear what it sounds like to ache for redemption, for a savior, for love.
There are gates which only the righteous can pass through.
Jesus says that not everyone who calls out is righteous, but only those who do his father's will.
To enter the gates of righteousness (enter into heaven itself?) Jesus says it's not enough just hear his words.
You can eat the grass in the pasture. You know, you can, like, graze. You are a sheep. The Lord is your shepherd. But that's not all.
We focus so much on the miracle of the feeding of the 4000 that we miss the miracle of Jesus' practical consideration. Here's a guy who has just cured the lame and the blind and the mute and he's the one who has to make sure that all the people he's just healed can eat enough to make it home.
God wants to provide us with food for our journey.
Is it any wonder then that his Son comes to us born in a manger? A place of food?
A common thread: giving sight to the blind, and blinding the sighted.
So, this is just a typical power reversal. Or is it?
God's judgments are not of this world.
Luke 10 is a pretty complicated chapter. You got your snake handling treading and the Good Samaritan all in one untidy bunch.
Here in the middle, you have Jesus rejoicing "in the Holy Spirit", but not really crediting it with the opening of eyes. Jesus credits himself with opening our eyes to the Father. But maybe he does that through the Spirit?
When we are given sight by the Son, we see the Father.
I'm not trying to draw any hard and fast conclusions here, because this text has shrouded itself in mystery. It's interesting that doses of the Spirit result in power reversal, but knowledge reversal is also at play here. And there's a lot that has to remain unknown: unreversed.
I Corinthians 1:18-2:16 has some parallels here.
God's knowledge is unknowable for us. And in this way, our Advent waiting is extended until we are united with God.
so as to instruct him?"
I don't think we're supposed to be teaching the Lord. He should be teaching us blind folk.
We can only be given so much sight in our blinded state.
We pray for it in Jerusalem. Well, we may or may not be in Jerusalem when we pray, but certainly the peace of that city is important.
The Capernaum servant is in distress, and the centurion asks that Jesus beat the servant's swords of distress is to ploughshares of repose.
"Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed."
I am sure I don't need to remind you that a centurion traveling a great distance on behalf a single servant is a little unusual (read the text. This guy commands a whole lot of people.) We can infer that the centurion is gay and that the servant is someone whom he loves intimately.
The "I'm not worthy" remark doesn't have anything to do with the centurion, though. None of us is worthy to have Jesus come under our roof. And yet this season of Advent reminds us that before Jesus' stably birth, the world was aching for the heavens to be torn open so that God could break through that strange divide between his kingdom and this world.
But we certainly can't ignore the implications of Jesus' actions on behalf of a gay relationship. Advent might be about waiting, but how long do we have to wait to see gays on equal footing with heterosexual people? When can they get married, share benefits, get tax privilege and all the other benefits heterosexual people enjoy?
We pray for it now. We might or might not be gay, but gays are a part of Jerusalem; they are a part of God's holy kingdom. How can we not pray and work toward their peace here on earth?
On a day when more and more voices are calling the conflict in Iraq a civil war, one remembers that war is never civil.
Humans like to fight each other for oil, power, bigotry, sexual insecurity, racism, fear, ignorance, sin, et cetera.
The scriptures remind us that violent conflict or stubborn oppression are contrary to the way of God.
What is the way of God?
From peace to pieces: My Gmail account now holds 4000 pieces of unread spam.


In recent years scholars have begun to focus on the consequences of individuals' exposure to civil war, including its severe health and psychological consequences. Our innovation is to move beyond the survey methodology that is widespread in this literature to analyze the actual behavior of individuals with varying degrees of exposure to civil war in a common institutional setting. We exploit the presence of thousands of international soccer (football) players with different exposures to civil conflict in the European professional leagues, and find a strong relationship between the extent of civil conflict in a player's home country and his propensity to behave violently on the soccer field, as measured by yellow and red cards. This link is robust to region fixed effects, country characteristics (e.g., rule of law, per capita income), player characteristics (e.g., age, field position, quality), outliers, and team fixed effects. Reinforcing our claim that we isolate the effect of civil war exposure rather than simple rule-breaking or something else entirely, there is no meaningful correlation between our measure of exposure to civil war and soccer performance measures not closely related to violent conduct. The result is also robust to controlling for civil wars before a player's birth, suggesting that it is not driven by factors from the distant historical past.
Rivals Jacqui's find for the week: trade secrecy in Willa Wonka's cholcolate factory.


I draw, illustrate, research, engage in various projects and last but not least explore biology.
I am passionate about STEAM and integrating arts with science. My current prime interest lies in bio-art and intersections of arts, science and technology.


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'Moonlight' Trailer: Barry Jenkins' TIFF-Bound Drama Is a Life in Three Chapters
The film will screen at fall festivals, including TIFF and NYFF, before an October 21 release.
Michael Nordine
@slowbeard
A24 has released more than its fair share of notable films during its brief existence so far. Just this year alone, they've released "The Lobster," "Green Room" and "The Witch, all of which have been widely acclaimed. But their latest film "Moonlight" represents a first for the young studio. Writer/director/producer Barry Jenkins' upcoming drama marks the company's first in-studio production alongside Plan B Productions, with Brad Pitt onboard as executive producer. Check out the first trailer below.
READ MORE: New Classics: Barry Jenkins' 'Medicine for Melancholy'
Based on the play "In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue" by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the film tells the life story of a young man named Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) via three defining chapters of his life. Set in the 1980's Miami during the height of Reagan's War on Drugs, "Moonlight" follows Chiron as he comes of age, falls in love and discovers his own sexuality, all while learning to embrace his own vision of masculinity as characters float in and out of his life. The ensemble cast includes Naomie Harris ("Spectre"), André Holland ("The Knick"), Mahershala Ali ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"), Edson Jean ("War Dogs"), and soul/R&B singer Janelle Monaé in her debut film performance.
READ MORE: 'Morris from America' Exclusive Clip: Watch the Film's Young Star Lay on the Charm
"Moonlight" will have its international premiere at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. It will also screen at the New York Film Festival a month later. A24 will then release the film in theaters on October 21.
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Dictionaries thesauruses pictures and press releases
Modern Movement
Modern Movement. C20 architectural movement (also called Modernism) that sought to sunder all stylistic and historic links with the past. While C19 theorists sought to find a style suitable for the times, the methods attempted to achieve this involved eclecticism and mingling of styles to produce so-called Free or Mixed styles, the optimistic idea being that a new style might emerge from the mélange. There were also some for whom function, honest expression of structure and materials, and a rational approach to design problems from first principles offered the way forward.
Early C20 movements such as Futurism and Constructivism sought answers in machinery, technology, and the expression of industrialized power, while the search for a Machine Aesthetic became at times an end in itself. To some (notably Le Corbusier), grain silos, trans-Atlantic liners of the Mauritania and Titanic vintage, motor-cars, and aeroplanes were paradigms of a desirable new aesthetic, while others held that all art, all aesthetics, and all refinement were bourgeois affectations and therefore should be rejected. The aims of Modernism were radical, concerned with the suppression of all ornament, historical allusions, and styles, counterbalanced by the elevation of Sachlichkeit (objectivity) and the evolution of industrialized methods of building. Some groups within the Modern Movement, such as De Stijl, advocated abstractions and purity of expression, and there were various emphases within the overall Movement, but virtually all were agreed on the need for rational responses to contemporary needs using modern materials, mass-produced building components, and experimental, industrial methods of construction. Whilst idealistic iconoclasm, allied with leftist attitudes, was endemic, the more extreme protagonists advocated violence and revolutions to achieve their objectives, but slogan-making and polemics all too often replaced rational argument. Functionalism was widely held to be ground on which all agreed, but even that faced objections in the search for an architecture freed from the constraints not only of the past and aesthetics, but from use as well. Some elements within the Modern Movement advocated that the purest architecture was that which remained on paper, or even in the mind, uncorrupted by the processes of being built, let alone used by untidy humanity.
By 1927 International Modernism had arrived, and the white rectilinear flatroofed building with strip-windows in metal frames (as in the exhibits at the Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart (1927), and Le Corbusier's designs) became the exemplar of what Modern Movement architecture should aim to be, no matter if the pristine white walls were rendered block-work rather than concrete, or steel for that matter. So the Movement that sought to abolish style had simply created a new image, with its own pressures on members to conform. Devoted to the destruction of academic architecture and institutions, it constructed its own theories, dogmas, and pedagogic establishment: the Bauhaus became the model for education; CIAM (1928) set the agenda and laid down the creeds; and writers (e.g. Giedion and Pevsner) evolved theories of a continuous, logical, and inevitable development of Modernism from C18 and C19 'Functional' buildings by the so-called 'pioneers' of design. Architecture that did not fit neatly into this seamless 'history' was ignored, a chilling parallel to C20 political totalitarianism and its methods. After the 1939–45 war, 'Modernismus', as Reginald Blomfield called it in the 1930s (a reference to its Teutonic origins), became the doctrine of the architectural establishment until new challenges arose from Modernist apostates (such as Philip Johnson), advocates of contrast and contradiction (such as Venturi), the protagonists of Neo-Rationalist architecture (in particular the Ticino School), and the critiques of academics some of whom have identified many strands within a Movement that has not been as coherent, logical, objective, or homogeneous as some of its apologists apparently have believed. What is also clear is that the obsessions of the Modern Movement (which resembled a religion or a cult) with the image of what was perceived to be Modernity, killed craftsmanship, wasted energy to a profligate degree, and necessitated high maintenance costs. The Modern Movement promoted buildings which have not contributed to an environment that has lived up to its protagonists' promises.
Ballantyne (ed.) (2004);
Blake (1977);
Boyd White (1996, 2003);
Brolin (1976, 1985);
A. Cunningham (ed.) (1998);
Curtis (1996);
Drexler (1980);
Frampton (1980, 1982);
Futagawa (1988); Gn (1967);
Henket & Heynen (eds.) (2002);
Hines (2000);
Jencks (1973a, 1980, 1982, 1988, 1990, 1995b, 2000, 2000a, 2002);
Jencks & Kropf (eds.) (1997);
Jervis (1984);
Khan (ed.) (1998);
Lubbock (1995);
Peto & Loveday (eds.) (1999);
Pevsner (ed.) (1960, 1974a);
J. Reynolds (2001);
Riseboro (1983);
Rowland (1973);
Salingaros et al. (2004);
Sharp & Cooke (eds.) (2000);
Snibbe (1999);
Tafuri & and Dal Co (1986);
D. Watkin (1977);
Wilenski (1957);
Wolfe (1993)
A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
"Modern Movement ." A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. . Encyclopedia.com. 12 Jan. 2021 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
"Modern Movement ." A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. . Encyclopedia.com. (January 12, 2021). https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/modern-movement
"Modern Movement ." A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. . Retrieved January 12, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/modern-movement
Modern Architecture , Through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, neoclassical architecture predominated in much of Spanish America. In Europe, mo… Otto Wagner , Otto Wagner Otto Wagner (1841-1918), Austrian architect and teacher, advocated a breakaway from historicist architecture and became a founder of mode… Peter Eisenman , Peter D. Eisenman The American architect Peter D. Eisenman (born 1932) studied and made formal use of concepts from other fields—linguistics, philoso… Sir Nikolaus Pevsner , Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon (1902–83). German-born British art-historian. He was a strong supporter of the Modern Movement, which gave some o… Michael Graves , Michael Graves (born 1934) was a leading American architect and designer, instrumental in the emergence of Post-Modernism in the mid-1970s. His class… Carlos Raul Villanueva , Carlos Raúl Villanueva Venezuelan Carlos Raúl Villaneuva (1900–1975) was the most influential Latin American architect and community designer of the…
Rowe, Colin
Neo-Rationalism
Rational architecture
Late-Modern architecture
Jencks, Charles Alexander
Jencks, Charles (Alexander)
Social architecture
Zevi, Bruno
Modern Maturity
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: Venn
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: The Heritage of Kant and Mill
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: Peirce
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: Keynes
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: Johnson
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: Jevons
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: Hamilton
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: De Morgan
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: Carroll
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period: Boole
Modern Logic: The Boolean Period
Modern Logic: Since Gödel: Turing and Computability Theory
Modern Logic: Since Gödel: The Proliferation of Nonclassical Logics
Modern Logic: Since Gödel: Model Theory
Modern Logic: Since Gödel: Gentzen
Modern Logic: Since Gödel: Friedman and Reverse Mathematics
Modern Logic: Since Gödel: Decidable and Undecidable Theories
Modern Logic: Since Gödel: Church
Modern Logic: Since Gödel
Modern Logic: From Frege to Gödel: Whitehead and Russell
Modern Logic: From Frege to Gödel: Skolem
Modern Logic: From Frege to Gödel: Ramsey
Modern Logic: From Frege to Gödel: Post
Modern Primitives
Modern Probability As Part of Mathematics
Modern Problems
Modern Protest Politics
Modern Recreation and Leisure
Modern Red Schoolhouse
Modern Surgery Developed
Modern Textiles
Modern Thought
Modern Times Group AB
Modern Times, The Socialist Community of
Modern Woodmen of America
Modern World-System Analysis
Modern, Judah
Modernism and Postmodernism
Modernism, Brazil
Modernism, Oath Against
Modernism: Christian Modernism