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Comments and opinions expressed on THE KNIGHT SHIFT are those of Christopher Knight and not necessarily those of subjects discussed in this blog, of advertisers appearing on it or of any reasonable human being. Any correspondence/irate letters/lawsuit threats/Nigerian e-mail scams can be sent to theknightshift@gmail.com.
Here's a screenshot I just made of the Amazon product page for the new video game Spore, which came out yesterday for Windows and Mac computers...
How does a video game simultaneously occupy #1 on Amazon's sales rank, and get hundreds of one-star reviews?
In three words: "Digital Rights Management". People who purchase Spore can only install it on three computers. And apparently the DRM that is installed is continuously running in the system's background even when the game isn't being played, sucking up resources that could be used for other processes. I don't think that BioShock's DRM last year was that bad (incidentally, 2K eventually removed the DRM from BioShock altogether).
Can't say that I blame the players. Spore doesn't look too much like my cup of tea (although it was created by Will Wright, the mastermind behind SimCity) but this kind of DRM for what is an online multiplayer game, however innovative, is ridiculous. Games like Guild Wars and World of Warcraft have never needed such draconian measures before, and they have remained profitable by a substantial margin. Why then is Electronic Arts doing this?
They need to strip this out, and fast. If only because at least in the blogosphere, there is still a working semblance of a free market and a free press. Electronic Arts has honked off both with this move.
How terrible? According to this person, who saw an advance screening in Chicago over the weekend, the funeral scene is not in the film (yeah there were two funerals in the book but if you've read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince you know which one I'm talking about). It also has the Death Eaters attacking the Weasley house at Christmas (?!?) and apparently makes several other significant deviations from the novel.
Not jazzed at all about this movie now. I'm tempted to say that the Hogwarts Express has jumped the track on this one.
Maybe Warners should just wait a few years and "reboot" the film franchise with a clean start, now that we know where the story is going and how it ends, instead of mucking it up with the current series.
During the past few days American Rights Counsel LLC has forced YouTube to pull more than four thousand videos that are critical of the Church of Scientology. At this time it's unclear whether American Rights Counsel are representing the cult and did so at the behest of Scientologists. What is known is that a butt-load of Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices went out from the firm over a period of twelve hours this past Thursday and Friday, and YouTube had no legal alternative but to immediately yank the contested clips.
The affected YouTube users have already begun responding with DMCA counter-claims (which might explain why this blog has been registering a ton of visits to how I filed my own counter-claim a year ago against Viacom). That is indeed a wise step to take in fighting back.
But YouTube users shouldn't be forced to deal with this anyway. I've said many times since my own dealings with Viacom: the DMCA has turned out to be horrible legislation, rife for all kinds of abuse. Think about it: if anyone currently running for office wanted to, he or she could simply deluge YouTube with fraudulent DMCA infringement notices, and YouTube would be obligated to remove every video that's critical of that candidate... and maybe even official campaign ads from the opposition. And YouTube would have to do it without consideration or oversight.
Isn't that what's happening now with the Church of Scientology?
It was ten years ago today, on September 7th, 1998, that Sergey Brin and Larry Page took some investment capital and a database algorithm and from it spawned Google: the search engine that more than anything else transformed the Internet from a technological novelty into an indispensable application.
I used Google on the first day it was announced, in one of the computer labs at Elon. Even then I thought this was the most superior search engine of the lot that I'd been using up 'til then. In a few months Google supplanted those. And there hasn't been a day that's gone by whenever I've had to use the Internet (which is most) that I haven't employed Google.
Back then it ran on four computers. Today Google has a vast campus in California and data centers all over the place. The company has developed its own operating system, is about to roll out a cell phone, and has just applied for a patent on what many are calling the "Google Navy". All that innovation might make Google, on the basis of a ratio between ideas attempted and ideas that are profitable, the most successful company in American history.
This is, by an order of some magnitude, a much more important story than McCain versus Obama right now.
It's also one of the reasons why I don't believe it really matters which candidate or party wins in the November elections. If Obama wins, he's going to immediately face a ruined economy the likes of which have not been seen since the Depression and if he stays true to the policies he's running on, he'll likely make the situation that much worse. If McCain wins, the state of America's finances is going to be an automatic indictment against not just him and Palin but on the previous eight years of the Bush Administration.
Oh yeah, and another bank - this time it's Silver State in Nevada, with $2 billion in assets - failed today. That's the 11th big bank this year to go under. And so far as I know they've always been announced on Friday evenings.
If there's going to be a bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I cannot recall that there will have been a bigger measure taken in United States history. This is going to hurt the taxpayers like all get out.
I'm just now hearing about Fuel for the first time. Created by British game studio Codemasters and due for release in 2009, Fuel is an open-world racing game featuring five thousand square miles of navigable terrain: if you can see it in the game, you can drive right up to it. Fuel takes place in a near future where the environment has run amok and global supplies of oil are running out: sorta like Mad Max meets Grand Theft Auto.
Here's the image that made me take notice and decide that I might have to add Fuel to my library...
In addition to tornadoes, players will also have to deal with snowstorms, driving rain and a realistic day/night cycle.
Variety is reporting that Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky - the producers and writers of NBC's The Office - have been tapped by Columbia to write the script for Ghostbusters III. And the aim is to bring back the original cast of Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson.
Presumably this means that we could expect to see the movie coming out for the summer of 2010: twenty-six years after the original Ghostbusters premiered in 1984 and over twenty since 1989's Ghostbusters II.
Incidentally, Ghostbusters: The Video Game was supposed to be out in time for the 2008 holiday season, but corporate takeover politics has pushed it back to possibly 2009 and the quarter-century anniversary of the first movie. The Ghostbusters game features a script written by Ackroyd and Ramis, and features all four of the core Ghostbusters actors lending their voices (in addition to William Atherton and Annie Potts coming back).
I'll be keeping my eye on this new film project, 'cuz in over ten years of speculation this is the closest I've seen it becoming a reality. There was a third Ghostbusters movie being planned as far back as 1996, which would have had the Ghostbusters dealing with Hell itself and have Chris Farley playing a new team member. The first movie has held up amazingly well over the years (and Ghostbusters II seems to be more appreciated today than it was on its first release). If done right, Ghostbusters III will make for a terrifically fun transition for the franchise into the modern era.
(I just hope that Rick Moranis is up for returning...)
And there is no way, no how, that I would now feel comfortable voting for her as part of any ticket.
Palin's address at the Republican National Convention was, in my opinion, whiny and shallow. There was nothing of substance or vision that I found in her words. All I really got was that she's a mom, her kids play hockey, and she doesn't like her "opponents".
And that's it.
I've heard speeches with more passion at the... nah, nevermind. Don't want to go too far this morning (and I might be already anyway).
What happened to the great political speeches that we've come up reading about in the history books? The two last truly great ones that I can remember being given by a leader of this country were from the day of the Challenger disaster and then the 1987 "Tear down this wall!" speech in Berlin, both made by President Ronald Reagan.
When was the last time that a political convention speech was made about ideas and conviction, instead of being vindictive rhetoric? Or is it simply too much to hope for another William Jennings Bryan to come with a "Cross of Gold"?
Something terrible has happened to this country over the past few decades. American intellect has become anemic of ideas. And I cannot avoid the suspicion that there will be a terrible price to pay for our retreat from enlightenment.
This is the third death that I've had to report in the past day or so. Hope this is not about to become a trend...
Bill Melendez has passed away at the age of 91. He was an animator who began work at Disney, and then moved on to Warner Bros. But it was a 1959 meeting with cartoonist Charles M. Schulz that would propel Melendez to everlasting fame. The two became fast friends after Melendez was hired to work on a series of commercials featuring Schulz's Peanuts characters. And after that, Melendez was the only person that Schulz gave permission to animate Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts gang. A few years later Melendez collaborated with Schulz to produce A Charlie Brown Christmas: forty years later it remains a seminal classic of the holiday season.
In addition to the various Peanuts movies and television specials, Melendez also was involved with commercials using the characters (like this terrific spot for Regina vacuum cleaners featuring Pigpen: the only time he was ever depicted as clean!) and Melendez even contributed his voice for that of Snoopy.
Apart from his Peanuts work, Melendez was involved with animated versions of the comic strip characters Garfield and Cathy. And he also was part of the production of the 1979 animated The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: to this day one of the most enchanting things that I ever saw on television.
Melendez earned 19 Emmy nominations for his work, and won six awards.
In case anyone's wondering: currently I'm registered as a Republican. I helped a friend run for statewide office this election season as his treasurer, running on a platform of parental choice in education. Prior to that I ran for office myself, partly regarding issues of fiscal conservatism. In my opinion Ronald Reagan was the last real President that America has had and I'm very thankful that I got to drive to Washington D.C. a few years ago to pay my respects as his casket lay in state at the Capitol.
I never vote for the party though. I've voted for Republicans and Democrats and Libertarians and independents and a lot of people in between since I first registered to vote several years ago (the day after my eighteenth birthday).
I would never vote for Barack Obama. The man's social spending ideas are a catastrophe waiting to happen. Neither can I ever vote for John McCain: this is a man bankrupt of any principle and I absolutely cannot believe that so many professed "conservatives" are now lining up to support him. This was the Senator who pushed through McCain-Feingold, fercryingoutloud. And as I've said before: any man who dumps his wife just so he can have a younger woman, does not have the moral fiber to be given the responsibility of the most powerful office on Earth.
Now y'all know where I'm coming from. Which brings us to the matter of Sarah Palin. A woman who I have had great admiration for.
Until now.
And trust me: this has nothing to do with what is going on with her family at this moment.
When McCain announced that Palin would be his running mate, I didn't know what to make of it. That Palin, who had previously expressed support for Ron Paul (a candidate as unlike McCain as there's apt to be) would now hitch her wagon to McCain didn't make any sense to me. And after considering it at length, my first assumption was that Palin is a very good governor, who has no idea what she is being drawn into and is perhaps not ready for this at all.
Let me put it another way: I thought that Palin was being used as a tool by the McCain campaign. As one friend put it, Palin as a running mate was analogous to putting lipstick on a pig. She's got a tremendous reputation and is by widespread acclaim "easy on the eyes", but she does nothing to change the fact that John McCain himself has a horrible record on so-called "conservative" issues. Palin, many have told me over the past few days, is only meant to be a distraction from the real John McCain.
Then I started, for the first time, to take a seriously hard look at Sarah Palin's record as mayor of Wasilla, and then governor of Alaska.
And you know what?
There's no way that I could support Sarah Palin now, even if she were to run for President herself (which I earlier had suggested I wouldn't mind happening).
In fact, the notion about Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world, is now downright scary.
It was her record as mayor of Wasilla that sent the first red flag popping up in my mind. When she was sworn in after being elected in 1996, the town of Wasilla, Alaska had no debt. When she left, the town was twenty-two million dollars in the hole. We're talking a town with a population of about five thousand souls. My own hometown has about three times that amount, and I don't think it's ever been that much in the red.
Where did all that money go on Palin's watch? Much of it went to a new sports and entertainment complex. A bit went to a new park. None of it apparently went to actually improving the infrastructure of Wasilla or toward urban planning. I'm now hearing plenty of horror stories about how the town is a cacaphonic sprawl of bad streets, run-down buildings and big-box retailers like Wal-Mart.
But think about it: Wasilla went from owing no money, to owing $22 million during Palin's tenure. Does that sound like sound economic conservatism to anyone?
Then the tales came out Palin's dictatorial style: how she set down a policy that no city employee could talk with the press without her permission, and how she fired the town's respected librarian and lost a police chief (in addition to several others who she tossed out) because she believed they weren't "loyal" enough to her. So forget financial discipline: now we're dealing with matters of personal discipline and humbleness as a public servant. Palin apparently thought that since she was now mayor, she could be "the decider" of Wasilla. She quickly filled the vacant positions with people that she had previous relationships with. It began a pattern of cronyism that continued into her time as Governor of Alaska and is now come back to haunt her in the form of a state trooper firing scandal.
Maybe some of this could be attributed to being "young" and "fresh" on the job. Some eagerness to over-excel. Kinda like how Barney on The Andy Griffith Show is always getting in trouble because he wants Mayberry to be like a big city rife with organized crime. That's a heap of fun if we're watching a Sixties-era television comedy... but in real life, when the pattern persists from small-town mayor to state governor, it stops being funny or excusable.
It was how Palin became mayor of Wasilla in the first place that finally convicted me to no longer be able to give her any credence as someone I would ever want to be within a hair's breadth of so much power. In what is usually a non-partisan, friendly election in small town America, Palin injected her mayoral race with "wedge issues" like abortion. She received heavy backing from the Alaskan state Republican Party. At one point she was apparently making it out that she was going to be Wasilla's "first Christian mayor".
How is abortion possibly an issue for a sleepy burg of five thousand people tucked away in a valley in Alaska? That's like trying to teach A.P. history in what's supposed to be a high school woodshop class.
Palin's campaign for mayor of Wasilla had little to do with actual issues, and too much to do with exploiting people's emotions. That's how she came to elected office to begin with: not by appealing to intellect, but by playing off of base psychology.
Which brings me to the final reason that I will share for now about why I cannot ever support Sarah Palin being in the Executive Branch of the United States Government...
...namely, that the Book of Revelation is not a foreign policy manual.
Understand this about me too: I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. I've been a Christian for going on a dozen years now. And even before then I saw how having a faith in God is not something that is supposed to be used as a weapon against other people or other countries. In my opinion, God has not blessed America because America doesn't care about God anyway. Too many self-proclaimed Christians in this land think nothing of exploiting God for their own temporal motives, however. That's something that I not only cannot stand, it scares the hell out of me.
So now witness Sarah Palin, as Governor of Alaska, speaking before a church service and telling the congregants that the war in Iraq is a "task that is from God"...
Anyone else see that movie Jesus Camp? Anyone else think that Sarah Palin seems way too much of that same mindset?
As Christians, we are supposed to represent the Kingdom of God to those that we come in contact with. We are meant to do so by loving them, in spite of their beliefs or what their opinion is of us. We are called to love even our enemies. That doesn't mean that we don't defend ourselves when we must, because I believe that is a moral right for individuals and families and nations. But we were never given an ordained duty to seek out and destroy our enemies in the name of Christ! That's just more of the world's way, and not God's at all. And it is the absolute height of arrogance to assume that God's plan is our own plan enough that we have a license to believe He will grant a blanket blessing on all of our endeavors.
The more that I read of Sarah Palin, the more that I cannot but believe that the woman is an adherent of Dominion Theology. As a theology professor of mine put it ten years ago, that's something that "will beat a path straight to Auschwitz". And as I've studied it since then, the less that I've been able to deny that he was right.
If for no other reason, this alone is why I cannot trust Sarah Palin. God Only can judge her heart, but in my mind the woman is way too infatuated with the power of God and not nearly enough with the love of God.
That won't deter a lot of the so-called "evangelicals" from adoring her, from supporting her without question however. I've even heard a few of them quite seriously declare that Palin is a modern-day "Deborah for America". They're the ones who still believe that America has a special place in God's divine plan for the world. They're also the ones who tend to hold that God allowed George W. Bush to be elected so that it would "help" to eventually trigger Armageddon.
Don't think that I don't know what I'm talking about here. I used to attend a school that was eventually taken over by such apostles of the Apocalypse. And Sarah Palin, now that I've examined her, is precisely the kind of politician that they have been hoping and praying for. Maybe... maybe... even more than George W. Bush turned out to have really been.
These people have forgotten that what makes America special is her virtue. And in the name of God, these people - who should have been the most virtuous - gave up their virtue for sake of a little power in the fleeting span of their lifetime.
And now it is a question of whether there is any virtue left for their children, and their children's children.
And it looks like they're ramping-up to sacrifice even more.
Suddenly, the idea of a John McCain presidency, which I've always felt would be a disastrous continuation of the policies of Bush, threatens to become something much worse than most of us have yet imagined.
There is nothing "conservative" about Sarah Palin, I must sadly conclude. If anything, she seems cut from the neoconservative cloth that espouses bigger government and glorious empire. To her credit, Sarah Palin seems very much to be an all-American wife and "action mom". I certainly respect her strong stance for the Second Amendment. But her track record as an elected official indicates that if given far more power, she would continue the precedent that the current White House administration has set for detaching the American government from the American people.
There is nothing about that which is the least bit conservative.
That's still not enough to prompt me to vote for Obama, however. Nothing could possibly entice me to do that. So this election year I'm either casting a write-in vote for Ron Paul, or writing in what is rapidly becoming the most sensible alternative to the mess that this country is hellbent on becoming...
Anyway, I posted the short clip of my commercial on Web Junk 2.0 on YouTube, 'cuz I was so proud of it and that Rockingham County, North Carolina got such a shout-out. A month and a half later YouTube yanked the clip at the demand of Viacom 'cuz... get this... Viacom claimed that I was violating their copyright! Well, I filed a protest and the whole thing got some notice, and two weeks later Viacom acquiesced and the clip was restored. Here's the clip that caused so much trouble, including very many less-than-polite comments aimed at Viacom made by other YouTube users, which for reasons that shall be left to myself, I am not choosing to delete.
A few months ago Jim Ernstmeyer wrote me. He's at Harvard Law School and is involved with the Citizen Media Law Project. It aims to be a very extensive database of law pertaining to ordinary folks who - willingly or no - find themselves on the front lines of copyright litigation. The centerpiece of the project is the Legal Threats Database. Ernstmeyer asked for some information about what happened between me and Viacom, which I was more than happy to oblige him with.
And now, Viacom v. Knight is an entry at the Citizen Media Law Project! Which kinda officially makes it legal history. The entire site is well worth checking out for anyone with an academic interest in digital copyright or (like me, unfortunately) comes under the gun of bigtime corporate legal action.
April 4th, 1984, Big Brother on the telescreen at the Ministry of Truth in London, Airstrip One, from the film Nineteen Eighty-Four (the 1984 adaptation of the George Orwell novel)...
September 2nd, 2008, George W. Bush on the telescreen at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, in real life...
Singer/songwriter and actor Jerry Reed, who had a string of successful hits in the 70s and 80s but will perhaps be best remembered for "East Bound and Down" from the movie Smokey and the Bandit (which he also appeared in), has passed away at age 71.
Reed was a beast on the guitar! Check out this clip of him from about thirty years ago...
Think I'll pop in Smokey and the Bandit on the DVD player tonight in his memory.
Don LaFontaine, whose work made his one of the most-recognized voices on the planet, especially for all the movie trailers that he contributed to, has passed away at the age of 68 from complications stemming from a collapsed lung.
Here's a bit of a documentary showing LaFontaine at work and others discussing his prolific vocal talent...
As of tonight, this man has no more excuse for not updating his blog.
Back in May I wrote about my quarter-century long friendship with Chad Austin. Two friends see a lot of things in that time. Lots of good times, and bad. You can't avoid the heartbreak... but then there are the moments when you get to rejoice, too. Those rich, beautiful slivers of time that make you glad to be alive and remind you that there is a God who rewards virtue and patience.
Chad Austin is one of the most virtuous people that I have ever known. He has also been one of the most patient. He's always known what it means for him to be happy, and I always knew that he would never settle for second best.
Tonight, he's been rewarded in spades.
As not only his friend but also a brother, it is my supreme honor to be the first to break the news to the world that this evening we get to toast one of those happy moments.
A very short while ago, in Virginia Beach where they ran in the 2008 Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon earlier today, Chad proposed to his girlfriend Koren Borchers.
And Koren said "Of course!"
(I've been in the loop for a few days now, so I already had this graphic ready to roll :-)
Word has reached The Knight Shift that Chad popped the question in real style. He took Koren out to dinner, then they went on a romantic walk along the beach. And that's where Chad, on Koren's birthday, dropped to one knee and asked her to be his bride, and she agreed to his suggestion that maybe it's time they start running as one instead of merely as two.
Y'all have no idea how long I've been waiting to make this post. On the list of things that I've wanted to most write about on this blog, Chad and Koren getting engaged easily comes in at #2 (and #1 hasn't happened... yet). And I've been hoping and praying for much longer than that, for literally years, that I'd get to see this day happen for a friend I've known for almost my entire life.
Chad and Koren, you guys have already been a beautiful couple. And you are going to make a wonderful team of husband and wife. May God bless you today, and all the days that are yet to come.
Dunno how else to close this 'cept to say except, again: CONGRATULATIONS! :-)
Norm Fields, who has hosted one of the three weekly live television broadcasts of the self-professed "Church of Christ" cult in the Reidsville, Martinsville and Danville area of north-central North Carolina and southern Virginia, has been kicked off the air by cult leader Johnny Robertson, The Knight Shift has learned.
Fields, who came to this area from Georgia in 2007 and has been working at the Danville Church of Christ, has been doing the Bible Q&A broadcast every Thursday night at 10 p.m. on WGSR Star 39, broadcasting from Reidsville, North Carolina. For the past several weeks Fields has been conspicuously absent. This past week there was a two-hour broadcast of A Word from the Lord at 9 p.m. to fill in the hour that Fields has usually hosted. That broadcast featured a "debate" between James Oldfield of the Reidsville Church of Christ and Larry Surber of Stoneville in regard to science versus religion.
The Knight Shift can now report that Fields "won't be coming back" and that Johnny Robertson has made this clear to WGSR general manager Charles Roark. The reason? Fields wasn't "working out", which was explained that Fields was not combative and aggressive enough for Robertson and Oldfield. Indeed, of the three "Church of Christ preachers" broadcasting on WGSR it should be noted that so far as is known, Norm Fields was the only one who did not ambush any other area churches or pastors with a hidden camera during worship services or at any other time. Many people have regarded Fields as the "more sensible" of the three preachers. A number of sources have been reporting to me in the past few months that there was some friction between Robertson and Fields and that Robertson "did not like Fields at all", that Robertson thought of Fields as a "wimp" for not "taking on the denominations hard enough".
The "Church of Christ" cult - which is not associated in any way with the mainstream Churches of Christ - prides itself on "unity" and maintains that being one church is something that Jesus not only taught but demanded. Robertson and Oldfield are known throughout the area for broadcasting their message that unless a person is a member of their "Church of Christ" that a person is damned to go to Hell, with zero tolerance allowed for dissent. It now looks at this hour that Fields, the preacher of the Danville Church of Christ, is indeed dissident enough for Johnny DeVere Robertson - widely known as the leader of the cult - to have him drummed from the airwaves.
There is no word yet on how Fields's position with the Danville Church of Christ is affected.
More information as it becomes available.
(Actually I'm sitting on a whole mountain of more information about Johnny Robertson and his cult, that I haven't divulged yet. If he's going to declare during his Sunday morning "church service" and on broadcast television that I'm his "worst enemy", I might as well act the part, yes?)
I'll admit, it's so ironic you have to wonder if there's some karma at work here.
A few weeks ago one of James Dobson's cronies made a video and posted it on the Focus on the Family website. In the clip Stuart Shepard, who does a lot of multimedia production for the "ministry", asks Christians to pray for "abundant rain, torrential rain... flood-advisory rain" in the Denver area on the night of Barack Obama's open-air acceptance speech at the Democrat National Convention.
Here's Shepard's video, which he claimed was done for humor (but I can't find anything funny about it at all)...
As anyone who caught his speech will know, Obama enjoyed terrific weather for his address, which aired to what some are saying is one of the record highs for political speeches before a televised audience.
But if Shepard's cry to Heaven was echoed by his fellow evangelicals, they're about to get an answer. Maybe not just the way they'd wanted. With Hurricane Gustav now threatening to wreck more havoc on New Orleans than Katrina did (if that's even conceivable) in 2005, the Republicans are being ominously overshadowed for their own convention by the forces of nature. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have canceled plans to speak there (one Republican friend has told me that a lot in his party are considering this to be a good thing) and now there's mention that John McCain himself may not show up, instead delivering his acceptance via satellite.
(Incidentally, McCain and Sarah Palin have already announced that they're going to be visiting the area that's being threatened by Gustav. Obama is supposedly going there too. I wish they would all steer clear of the place. Those people have enough to worry about right now than to also have some politicians coming in for a photo op, with all the logistics of personnel and security that it entails.)
I've no doubt that many professing evangelicals took Shepard at his word and prayed for rain on the Democrats: a few even told me that they did. What then do we make of Gustav and now Hanna, which one Democrat official and filmmaker Michael Moore are now gloating are proof that God favors the Democrats?
They're wrong. All of them. "Conservative Christians" like Stuart Shepard and "liberal Democrats" like Michael Moore, they are equally in grave error so far as God and politics goes.
God is no more a Republican than He is a Democrat. Things like temporal politics don't interest Him. Yes, we are told many times in scripture that He causes nations to rise and then collapse, and that He brings up rulers and brings them down again. But nowhere are we told that He ever has grace for one political faction and contempt for another concerning their vying for control of a country.
Here's how it is, folks: God doesn't answer our prayers for "divine intervention" against our political enemies. Especially not here in America. And it does no good to pray regarding the outcome of an election, either. Praying about an election violates everything that we know about how God grants us free will in whether or not we choose to follow Him. He can't make us want to seek after Him: we have to want that on our own. So how can He ever make someone else's mind be swayed to our own political proclivity?
Or maybe He does answer those prayers, just as He's now apparently answering the one that many Christians had for rain during a political convention. I am now hearing many among the evangelicals declare that Sarah Palin is a "gift from God". But if that is the case, then the same people had better be prepared to accept that all the damage that George W. Bush has done to this country is also God's will, since they were just as quick to claim that Bush was "anointed", and they darned well were praying for him to get a second term.
Perhaps these same Christians would do better to heed the words of Proverbs 3:5, where we are taught to "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." Our ways are not His ways, and we tempt disaster to suggest that they are.
And so far as the weather is concerned...
"...for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
-- Matthew 5:45
America is in a lot of trouble, and it's time for the Christians of this land to own up to their responsibility in the mess. We have assumed wisdom, when we should have come to God broken and willing to admit that we don't have wisdom at all on our own. We have sinned in our pride, and if Gustav and now Hanna might be the result of appealing to Heaven, I cannot but now believe that it is because God is trying to humble this nation. If we are smart, we will recognize that now is not the time to turn that opportunity into an occasion for arrogance.
You guys are definitely in this blogger's thoughts and prayers this weekend.
I'm now hearing that Hurricane Gustav has gone from a tropical storm all the way to a Category 4 within the space of the past 12 hours. That in the past 3 hours alone the central pressure has dropped 9 millibars and Gustav still hasn't hit the warmer Gulf waters yet.
The projected tracks also have the storm going west of New Orleans. If the east side of the storm gets too close, the town which is still cleaning up after Katrina three years ago will likely get hit even worse this time around.
Lord willing, this thing will fizzle-out into a relatively weak system (it's happened before). Three years ago I went nuts chronicling Katrina on this blog, and truth be known I'm still a bit burned-out by the experience. It's not something that I want to have to do again. But if it does hit, hopefully there will have been much that was learned from the mistakes of Katrina that will make Gustav a much less traumatic event.
Speaking of Katrina, here's a photo that I found a few days ago...
This is the storm surge itself of Hurricane Katrina, as it came ashore near New Orleans. I can't recall anyone else photographing the surge of any hurricane in such up-close detail. That is pretty much a mountain of water dozens of feet high as it's crashing down onto the shore. For this and other pictures in the series click here.
Two months after the passing of Uga VI, the world today got its first look at his son Uga VII (official name "Loran's Best"), who tomorrow will make his public debut as the latest in the University of Georgia's proud line of mascots as the school hosts its season opener against Georgia Southern.
EDIT 11:27 p.m. EST: So what happens when Sonny Seiler and his family are faced with the task of producing a new mascot? The Fayette Daily News asked the man himself about what it takes to breed the most famous college sports mascot in the world. I'm still laughing about his comment on sending up red and black smoke to signal Georgia fans that they have a new Uga :-P
I watched some of Barack Obama's speech last night. I'm not voting for him. But I could see where a lot of people would vote for him based on charisma and presence.
(Parse that as you will...)
I'm not voting for John McCain either. And so far I haven't found anyone jazzed about him enough to cast their ballot in his favor. Any man who by all accounts left his wife just so he could have a younger woman, is not a man that I can trust to be President of the United States under any circumstance.
In a sane world, Sarah Palin would be running for President, and I would vote for her regardless of what party she's coming from. That's still not enough to entice me to ever vote for McCain though, now that she's set to be his running mate. But I've been following her for awhile now and she seems to be the kind of lady who's on my wavelength so far as good clean outrageous behavior goes: the gal shoots moose and makes burgers out of 'em... that's awesome!
In the end it will not matter who is elected President, I hate to say. There is simply too much rot at work in the timbers and one man - or one woman - can not stave off what history has demonstrated is the inevitable consequence of too much bureaucracy, too much extension, too much empire, and too little enlightenment.
I've known Dave Lowe for a number of years now, ever since he used to submit his wicked funny cartoons to TheForce.net Humor. Dave passed along his latest handiwork...
Lord only knows how many Star Wars fans will be enjoying that one :-)
And after going to his site I couldn't resist drawing y'all's attention to this one as well...
Mash down here to enjoy more of Dave's hilarious vision!
A major American bank is not just teetering perilously close to failing, "it's unavoidable", a source has told The Knight Shift.
Details about the possible imminent failure first came this way a little over two weeks ago, and I've been doing a lot of calling and checking around since then. The individual who first told me has been a longtime (over ten years) source whose information has previously turned out to be exceptionally reliable. And all the evidence that I've been gathering over the past few weeks jibes bigtime bad with what the source has been saying.
For various reasons I'm not able to divulge the name of the bank. But this blog can report the following details:
- The bank in question is one of the top five financial institutions in the United States.
- The bank has posted a high profit loss but this is "not even close" to how much money it has actually lost, according to others in addition to the original source.
- The biggest contributing factor to the bank's dwindling financial security has been "fast credit for every Tom Dick and Harry demanding a mortgage". This has been especially severe in the southwestern portion of the United States, where this bank has apparently loaned too much to people with little or even no collateral at all. And apparently this bank has thrived on business with people who weren't even supposed to be doing business in this country at all: parse that as you will.
- Some branches of this bank have already told customers that it might be days or even months before they can access their funds. You read that right. I've spoken with enough customers and one branch manager who confirmed this to be able report it as factual information.
- FDIC "could never" fully compensate depositors if/when this bank goes down. Source says that it will be like IndyMac but "much worse".
I debated long and hard about whether or not to post even this much information. In the end I decided that it would be better to publish what I can talk about now, so that there'd never be the nagging in my brain that I didn't do something about this.
There's not much else to say at the moment other than this: it seems a trend lately that bank failures are only reported on late Friday afternoons or early evenings, after the markets have closed for the weekend. I'd wager a dollar (however much that's actually worth these days) that if/when the institution under discussion takes a dive, that'll be when you first hear solid word about it.
I'll try to write more about this as it becomes available.
Something I came up with after the idea hit me on the drive back from Atlanta last week.
It could also be argued that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without really firing a single shot, or inflicting any fatalities. He defeated the Soviet Union in the only way that it could be beaten: by forcing it to bankrupt itself to death.
Not even twenty years later, his legacy is becoming undone before our very eyes. And millions of people who have never had to know such things may soon be hearing quite a bit about bomb shelters and air raid sirens.
I used to have fun customizing LEGO minifigs. Most of them didn't turn out so well (especially the lineup of Cenobites from the Hellraiser movies that I attempted). I still have the Darth Sidious one that I made not long after Star Wars Episode I came out: it's in storage somewhere but it looks pretty cool, right down to that scowl on the part of his face that's visible.
None of my customs were anything as good as this guy's work, which includes minifigs based on historical figures such as the Beatles, Fidel Castro and Christa McAuliffe (shown at left). Those with a religious inclination should check out The Brick Testament: Brendan Powell Smith's popular effort at rendering the entire Bible in LEGO (I can't wait to see how he depicts the Book of Revelation). People who prefer their LEGO creations to be more action-oriented need to stop by BrickArms: a fella who makes highly detailed weaponry for LEGO minifigs, including AK-47s and Uzi submachine guns.
And as if LEGO minifigs were not versatile enough, there are the amazing short films (and not a few longer ones) that employ them, such as this now-classic version of the "Camelot" scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail...
What more can be said but: Happy Birthday, LEGO Minifig! May you see many more years of being cannibalized for parts and stopping up vacuum cleaners :-P
Older women, I have long thought, are potentially much more beautiful than younger women. As proof, I offer this recent photograph of Eartha Kitt (who for many years I have harbored a very deep admiration for):
What an amazing performer. She was the best girl to ever play Catwoman in any medium. And Miss Kitt is not only beautiful and a talented singer and actress, she's smart, too. I'll never forget hearing her give the most articulate reason that anyone made for why Bill Clinton should have been impeached: because the White House belongs to the American people, not to the President who's temporarily living there.
So now you know one of my more peculiar secrets: I think Eartha Kitt, now 81 years young, ranks high among the hottest and loveliest women in recorded history.
Now look at this photo that was taken over the weekend of Madonna, who turned 50 last week and just kicked-off her new "Sticky and Sweet" concert tour...
That is not hot. That is not beautiful. That is not sexy. Not at any age, for what it's worth.
That is just... what the Hell was Madonna thinking?!?
You know, getting older isn't a bad thing at all, even for a performance artist. The ones who have enjoyed consistently successful careers over time, they've learned how to grow and re-define themselves. David Bowie readily comes to mind. So does Bob Dylan. And Jon Bon Jovi. Trying to stay in one place in an attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle doesn't work. And it's not really fair to the fans either, who should expect new and fresh material from a talented artist, whenever that artist produces something.
Madonna has had a great career for well over twenty years now. But she needs to learn to adapt and grow, and move away from whatever it is that she was in the Eighties. She can do it. She has to do it, if she expects to sell her music to a new generation of fans.
It was reported earlier this week that officials here in Rockingham County, North Carolina have begun looking at the county landfill off N.C. 704 as a rich source of high-quality methane. The plan is to harvest the gas and use it for artistic uses - such as blacksmithing - and even for commercial purposes... such as "creating electricity". All of this is supposed to help boost the local economy.
Maybe we should turn control of Rockingham County over to this guy. He seems experienced...
"Who run Bartertown?"
"MASTER BLASTER RUNS BARTERTOWN!"
Come to think of it, the way things are going lately it might not be a bad time to pop those Mad Max movies in the DVD player. Might be a good brush-up for how lousy things are getting.
I still can't believe they're doing this with the landfill though. I mean, with all the cows in Rockingham County, that seems to be a more cost-effective source of retrievable methane, if they're hellbent on using the stuff.
Through a series of events that I don't care to discuss, it has come to my attention that this week has the dubious distinction of being the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of Yor: The Hunter from the Future, claimed by many to be the most schizo and ridiculous movie ever made...
Release on August 19th, 1983 and starring Reb Brown as Yor ("My what?" is what everyone around him must ask when they hear his name), Yor: The Hunter from the Future is about a big(?) blond guy who runs around a seemingly prehistoric landscape, killing things (mostly dinosaurs). He hooks up with this chick named Kala and her "protector" Pag. Yor and Pag have to go rescue Kala from some blue-skinned cavemen. Then they wind up at a beach village that is blown up real good courtesy of a "damn talking box". And then Yor and crew wind up on a remote island run by the Overlord and his Darth Vader-looking robots. Overlord is glad that Yor has come because he needs Yor's sperm to create a better breed of androids. The movie ends with a spaceship flying away.
"Drinking the blood of our enemies gives us strength!"
"Urgh... I prefer to stay weak then!"
"We will need a lot more hemp before we're through.""I am the Overlord, ruler of my people and yours too. You are completely in my power."
And then there are the special effects. It's hard to miss the action figures used in the scene where Yor and Kala are swinging over the atomic pile. But that's nothing compared to this, possibly the greatest scene in a hundred years of movie history. It's the part where Yor kills a giant bat, then uses its carcass as a hang-glider to rescue the girl...
Don't you wish you had your own theme song that played whenever you did something, like driving out of your garage or using the bathroom?
While on the road in Georgia yesterday during a bit of a business trip, I found this little guy...
Lisa spotted it in the University of Georgia catalog the other day and fell in love with it immediately. So I was able to surprise her with it when I got back last night :-)
It's actually from the "Sports Spuds" lineup, meaning it's about half the size of a standard Mr. Potato Head. But in that classic red and big "G" logo, this is sure to please any fan of Bulldogs football! Should be able to find it in a lot of places around Athens and Atlanta but if you're a Georgia alum (or just crazy about UGA) living elsewhere, you can order it from the current school catalog and if you don't have that, here's where you can buy it from Amazon!
Y'all wouldn't believe how crazy the past few days have been. And it's gonna get crazier still! Lord willing, I'll be able to report on it soon.
YES I KNOW! I still haven't done that The Dark Knight review! But it hasn't been for lack of trying. If I'm having this much trouble putting my thoughts together about this movie, I hate to think about what's gonna happen when Watchmen comes out in about six months.
Last night at Rockingham Community College the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County held its season-ending banquet, followed by the 2007-2008 Golden Guild Awards. That's the annual ceremony that honors those who volunteered during the previous season. The various award winners are chosen based on votes cast by the cast and crew of the shows.
In addition to the Best Actor and Best Actress categories, Best Production etc., there is what is called the Spirit Award. There's one given for each show during a season's run. I was told that it goes to the person who "best exemplifies enthusiasm for a show".
The last Spirit Award for the 2007-2008 Golden Guild Awards was the one for Children of Eden.
And I'm still reeling in shock after the envelope was opened and hearing "Chris Knight" announced as the winner!
I barely remember staggering on stage, and the first words out of my mouth at the podium were "Holy cow!" I quickly stammered how I'd first seen Children of Eden performed at Elon in 1998, and how I fell in love with the show and for almost ten years wanted to be part of it. How I told the producers at the audition that I knew that I couldn't sing and that I get booed off stage every time that I play Karaoke Revolution. That I just wanted to be part of this even if it meant working backstage and how thankful I was that they let me have this opportunity. I thanked my wife Lisa for supporting me, thanked God for letting me do this, thanked Mom and Dad and that I was glad that they got to come see me perform. And I said that even though he was no longer with us, I knew he was there in spirit and I thanked Gene Saunders, my drama teacher in high school and the founder of the Theatre Guild, 'cuz I definitely wanted to give this my best shot to honor his memory. And I vaguely remember getting a standing ovation 'cuz by that point, folks, I was seriously holding back the tears.
Getting to be in Children of Eden was not only the fulfillment of a dream, it became one of the greatest experiences of my life. And the best part of that was getting to know so many wonderful people. Making not just new friends, but becoming part of a terrific family: people who know and love and stand beside each other through thick and thin. To receive the Spirit Award for Children of Eden from these people... well, that has to rank right up there with Eagle Scout and marrying Lisa for lifetime achievement in my book :-)
Here I am with the Spirit Award for Children of Eden...
Seth and Seth's Wife reunited! Me and Tish Owens, who also racked-up Golden Guild Awards for Children of Eden and Steel Magnolias...
And here's most of the people who received an award at this year's ceremony (including Pete Barr, the director of Children of Eden which won for Best Production)...
I'll throw up the complete list of who won what as soon as I can get hold of the official roster of recipients.
Thanks to Tish Owens for providing a lot of these pics.
And thanks to the cast and crew of Children of Eden for giving me this honor. 'Twould be an understatement to say that I've been immensely humbled by this.
By the way, after the Golden Guild Awards last night, Lisa and I were driving back and we decided to stop by Mom and Dad's first to show the Spirit Award to them. I couldn't think of a better song to celebrate with than to crank up "Ain't It Good?" from the Children of Eden soundtrack on my iPod over the car stereo system.
1/100th of a second ahead of Croatia's Milorad Cavic.
If there's a single moment that will be remembered from the Beijing Olympics, that will be it. We've been re-watching it at least a half-dozen times in slow-mo the past few minutes, and... just amazing, man!
He's now tied Mark Spitz's record of most gold medals during a single Olympiad. And tomorrow, Phelps might have one more for his collection.
Why? Officially the word is that the writers strike several months ago means that there will be a dearth of "tentpole movies" next summer and Warners wants to make up for it somehow.
It also means that by the time the adaptation of Half-Blood Prince comes out that there will have been two years since its release and the previous movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And it'll be two years still after that before the series finally wraps up with Part Two of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I'd hate to be the poor lady who's answering the phone at Warner Bros. when more people start hearing about this later this morning...
If he goes on winning gold in the rest of his events, Phelps will not only make his own record all the more unreachable but he'll break Mark Spitz's record of having earned seven gold medals in a single Olympiad.
Phelps is now the most-winning Olympic athlete in history: ten gold medals so far in his career, with four in Beijing alone. And he's got a chance to bring home four more.
Mr. Unstable's parents are no doubt proud of him...
The Burger King in Xenia, Ohio is minus a bunch of employees and one manager tonight because this guy decided to cleanse himself with a bubble bath in the restaurant's dish sink! The location's operators have thrown out all the utensils that came in contact with "Mr. Unstable", and have said that the sink has been sanitized twice. I've heard at least one person suggest that perhaps the entire Burger King be razed and burned and the ground sown with salt.
If you must (and you probably must) here's the complete video showing the now-unemployed Mr. Unstable taking his bath in the sink...
Here's one for the "Things We Don't Really Need But Are Lusting For Badly" file...
The Amazon.com exclusive Gears of War 2 Lancer. Full-sized replica of the workhorse weapon used by Marcus Fenix and the Delta Squad, right down to the bloodied chainsaw bayonet. Squeeze the trigger to activate the chainsaw sound effects and vibrating action. It also features a removable clip.
Retail price: $139.99 and that isn't stopping it from currently being the #1 video game item at Amazon.
In a very wonky case of mistaken identity, Google News has been reporting that the Russian Army is invading Georgia... as in, Georgia in the southeastern United States! The mix-up stems from the trouble going on with Russia and Georgia, the country in the Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian.
Don't worry folks. Even if the Russians take Savannah, there'll be hell to pay when they get to Athens. GO DAWGS!
A number of things are "clicking" perfectly this weekend. Not just for me personally but for a number of people that God is also showering His blessings upon...
First there's Jenna Olwin, who over the past few years has not only become a very dear friend to Lisa and I but also a wonderful sister in the Lord, who will tie the knot with her boyfriend and soul-mate Lou tomorrow. Here's her blog post about getting engaged from back in March. There might be pictures that I can post soon afterward of the wonderful event.
And then in the wee hours of this morning my friend Chris Rash and his wife celebrated the birth of Reagan, their first child and a beautiful baby girl!
Congratulations to Jenna and Lou, and to Chris and Ashley and Reagan! Y'all are definitely in our prayers this weekend :-)
That's one bit of news that I sure wasn't anticipating.
A very funny and talented person. And seemed like way too nice a guy to leave us at a pretty young age.
I thought his television show was pretty good and always had a good moral at the end. His work in Ocean's Eleven and its sequels was terrific. And there was Transformers of course: his portrayal of used-car dealer Bobby Bolivia was uproariosly funny!
Thoughts and prayers going out to his family today.
In case anyone's paying attention, this is why the United States should exercise a hella lotta caution before getting involved in anyone else's business.
I'm hearing mixed word on what started this: the Georgians claim the Russians invaded and the Russians are stating that missiles from Georgia attacked their military positions. It's almost like a repeat of Fort Sumter.
The U.S. aligned itself with Georgia awhile back. A lot of people are saying that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was counting on that support when he tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Which pretty much means that because of this damnable Gordian Knot of entangling alliances, that the United States might soon find itself at extreme odds with Russia and Cold War II will have officially begun.
Oh yeah, I'm hearing that there are currently about twelve hundred American military personnel - ironically, many from our own state of Georgia (and lots from around Atlanta) - that are in Georgia (the country in the Caucasus in Europe) for joint exercises with the Georgian army.
Meanwhile, most Americans are either (a) watching the Olympics, (b) listening to John Edwards confess his dalliances, or (c) seriously considering that Paris Hilton should run for Congress. Oblivious to the fact that for all intents and purpose, this is darn nearly an identical scenario to that which began World War I.
Pat Buchanan was right: "We are an unserious people in a serious time."
Asheville High School is not just a great school, it's a beautiful building. I know 'cuz some years ago I did a lot of substitute teaching there. So I'm pretty familiar with the layout of the place and the kind of people there. Which makes this story all the more interesting for me personally...
A video surveillance camera at Asheville High has purportedly captured the moving image of a ghost. Some are saying that it looks to be the size and shape of a child as it darts around the atrium in the early morning hours of August 1st.
Could it be? When I heard about a "haunted" high school in Asheville, the first thing that popped into my mind was Erwin High School, which you would expect to be haunted since they build the place on top of Buncombe County's old "potter's field" (you can still see pits in the ground from where they removed the coffins, and sometimes bits of bone and nail wind up on the surface after a heavy rain). I heard plenty of ghost stories about Erwin, but this is the first that I'm hearing about Asheville High being spooked. It is rather old for a school building: dating back to 1929. Doubtless a building with such a long history has seen its share of haunting experiences, spectral or no.
But I think in this case, judging by the video I'm seeing here, we need not be alarmed. It seems very much to be nothing more than a moth that alighted on the protective dome covering of the camera. You can even pick out its silhouette against the more well-lit parts of the footage.
So I don't think there's any ghost here. But students at Asheville High need not be disappointed: between Helen's Bridge and Battle Mansion and of course the Pink Lady of Grove Park Inn, there's plenty of supernatural delight to be found around Asheville!
