Jean Restout’s Pentecost

Jean Restout’s Pentecost

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1 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all assembled together in one place. 2 Suddenly, there came from heaven a sound similar to that of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were sitting. 3 Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which separated and came to rest on each one of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages,[c] as the Spirit enabled them to do so.

5 Now staying in Jerusalem there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 At this sound, a large crowd of them gathered, and they were bewildered because each one heard them speaking in his own language.

7 They were astounded and asked in amazement, “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8 How is it then that each of us hears them in his own native language? 

So many things happen around the octave of Easter that it’s easy to be overwhelmed and miss the important and deeply rich events.

Pentecost (Hebrew Shavuot, Greek pentekoste fiftieth) was an annual Jewish festival marking the end of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat. It is also called “the day of the first ripe fruits” (Numbers 28:26), and in the Greek Scriptures is the name used for the Feast of Harvest (Exodus 11:16) or Feast of Weeks (Exodus 34:22). Shavuot unfolded ‘seven full weeks after Passover from 16 Nisan, the day when they offered a sheaf of barley (Leviticus 11:15).

According to Jewish tradition, the day of Pentecost correspond to when the law was given to Moses at Sinai and Israel became a people apart. The apostle Paul draws a comparison of this event by saying that the Christians are a ‘holy nation’ (1 Peter 2: 9) a kind of first fruits to God (John 1:18), met on a heavenly Mount Zion as part of a new covenant (Hebrews 12: 18-24; Luke 22:20).

Jean Restout II’s Pentecost is currently housed in the Louvre (room 924, Sully Wing, Level 2), but was originally painted for the Abbey of Saint-Denis which is outside of Paris and is definitely a painting you should see if you get a chance. Click below for a bigger image.

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The Thing infection order

The Thing infection order

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The 1982 movie The Thing is one of my favorite sci-fi/horror movies – right up there with Aliens. It a paranoia fueled mystery of a alien organism that can assimilate and imitate both human or animal hosts. 

Based on the 1938 story Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr, The Thing takes us along into the fear and paranoia of an isolated Antarctic research station with the characters trying to ascertain whether everyone is who they say they are.

What makes it so re-watchable is that the timeline when certain characters are assimilated is unclear. Filmmaker John Carpenter even used stand-ins so that the shadows were not easily identifiable. This has lead to years of speculation and fan theories (Clothing continuity theory, Molotov whiskey theory, No breath theory, Who sabotaged the blood bank) about what happened when.

Of all of them, I think the Den of Geek does the best breakdown of the most likely order that each of the characters succumbs to the thing.

Halloween Organ Concert

Halloween Organ Concert

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The Old Church downtown is a concert hall and has a number of cool things. One of the fun things is their free lunchtime concerts. They have started live casting them on YouTube, which is even more convenient.

The October concert for the last 2 years has usually an organ concert by Michael Barnes in which he plays classic spooky organ music like the ones below. Plus a guest performer with some more folk classics.

  • Funeral March of a Marionette (Charles Gounod)
  • Toccata and Fuge in D Minor (Bach)
  • Scherzo from Grand Sonata in E Flat (Dudley Buck)
  • March of the Dwarves
  • Have you seen the Ghost of John?
  • Addams Family Theme
  • Rondo Alla Turca (Mozart)
More live AI generated content – Star Trek

More live AI generated content – Star Trek

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Twitch now has a whole channel now dedicated to AI generated content. These are channels that have completely auto-generated content. They started with simple, and very rough shows about nothing, proceeded on to Spongebob, and finally an AI Jesus.

These are programs that autogenerate EVERYTHING you see and here. They generate the dialog they say, they generate the actors voices, they generate the actors, movements, visuals, and scenes. Everything is automatically generated by AI.

One of the more interesting and new ones I’ve seen is Interactive AI Generated Star Trek. Created by just 4 people, this is one of the highest quality AI generated episodic content I’ve seen so far. It runs 24/7. There’s a more or less consistent story based on user submissions, moving (but fixed location) camera angles, autogenerated characters with movement, auto-generated voice audio, and good scene transitions between some fixed scene locations. Not only that, it’s interactive and you can help direct the action via chat commands like:

  • !topic [text]: Scenes on the bridge.
  • !awaymission [text]: Scenes on the desert planet.
  • !transmission [text]: Transmission scenes with Winglons.
  • !messhall [text]: Subs only! Scenes in the USS Archimedes Mess Hall
  • !iceplanet [text]: Subs only! Scenes on the tundra planet

Is this the future of TV shows? The end of actors?

There is also a Youtube channel from Ray Creations.