Safehouse: Back a friend's invention on Kickstarter

Hey gang, got something really special for you.  How often is it that you have the chance to get in on the ground floor of a new piece of technology?  Okay, maybe because of the Internet that chance happens on a routine basis now.  But even so, here's a utility that so far as I know is pretty unique.

I've known Matt LaCoe for quite awhile now.  He and I worked together at an on-campus computer store when we were students at Elon.  I saw his technical prowess then and he's only gotten better.  And now he's presenting us with a new mobile app: Safehouse.

It would be better if Matt explained it to y'all:

Have you ever found yourself lost, tired, unsure of where you are, where to go or what to do? Have you ever felt fear that you might be harmed by persons who have taken an great interest in you for one reason or another? Do you remember how these feeling felt? Do you recall the desire to feel safe in those moments?

What if you had a mobile application that would just that for you? What if you could simply hit a button and be guided to a place that would be a "Safehouse" for you? Would you use it?

As as disabled combat veteran I decided that I would try to change this. The objective is to create an application that will allow users who are both travelling and those who can offer a safe place when needed. Whether it be to avoid a bad situation or simply find a safe spot to park your car for the night and having someone near willing to look for your safety. I can easily highlight different use cases for this application but, it the ones I can't imagine that might make this app the difference in someone's life. Whether you are an adventurous person seeing the world or simply a college student trying to make their way home to visit family for the holidays wouldn't it be nice to have an application on your phone designed to look out for your safety?

Safehouse addresses that need, for a wide spectrum of people in our communities.  If you're requiring the assistance of others, help is available with a finger stroke on the phone screen.  It's a really neat concept and I can't think of anyone better to bring this to market than Matt.

And now the project is on Kickstarter, where interested people can back it.  Matt has a lot more information about Safespace on its page there, including  information regarding the protocols in place to ensure that the app is not used by people of malicious intent.

So I ask you to visit Matt's page, and consider backing it.  I've all the confidence in the world that Matt is going to launch something very wonderful with this.

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Another op-ed piece from my time at Elon's newspaper

Last month I stumbled on an online archive that has tons of issues of various newspapers going back many, many years.  Including The Pendulum: the student newspaper of Elon University.  Or at least it used to be.  I've been scrounging around Elon's website and it seems that The Pendulum has gone defunct: a casualty of instant news, social media and streaming video.  I hate to see that happen to any newspaper, because there is a priceless value to be had on printed information chronicling a place and its people.  It is also a magnificent snapshot of the thoughts and ideas and values of those people.  I looked and I looked, but I didn't see any opinion/editorial writing recently on Elon's servers.  Having those gone is an immeasurable loss.

Well anyway, I previously found the first op-ed piece I wrote for The Pendulum, about abortion.  I hadn't gone searching for any more essays until this afternoon.  I came across several more articles.  This one aroused some appreciation but also a fair amount of anger, about what I wrote regarding abortion and homosexuality.  I was only sharing Mother Teresa's perspective on such matters.  It wasn't anything that she herself was not unaccustomed to during her lifetime of service.

So, from the September 25, 1997 edition of The Pendulum, here is my column.  Click to enlargen...

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Product Review: Zevo Flying Insect Trap

In keeping with this blogger's enjoyment of finding and sharing good stuff, I'm going to do a review of something that I came across lately.  And so far I'm mighty impressed with it.

I don't know where they came from, maybe on some vegetation that I got from the grocery store, but this summer has been absolutely wretched from gnats and fruit flies.  They've been getting all over the house, and I've had to swat them away from my computer screen Lord only knows how often.  Just a real nuisance.

So I was watching television a few weeks ago and caught some commercials for the Zevo flying insect trap.  According to the ads it uses ultraviolet and infrared light to draw in bugs and making them fall prey to the adhesive cartridge within.  You just slap a cartridge into the unit and plug it into a wall outlet, in your kitchen or wherever.

I decided it was worth a gamble.  Off to Walmart I went, and got a starter set with 2 traps and 4 cartridges.  When I got home I read the directions and within two minutes had a trap set up in the kitchen and the other in my living room.

The results?

The Zevo traps began catching gnats and fruit flies almost immediately.  A few hours later I checked the traps and was astounded at how many tiny bugs each of them had dispatched to the nether regions.  That was six days ago.  I looked into the traps again in the past little while and the traps have caught even more.  There is a drastic and very obvious reduction of tiny critters zooming around the place.  I think my dog Tammy has even noticed.

I am very much convinced about the effectiveness of Zevo's little gadget.  It is definitely working as advertised.  I'll heartily recommend it to this blog's readers.  In fact, you might want to consider getting an extra starter set, and provide more coverage for your home. It is also, I have discovered, a very helpful nightlight that nicely illuminates your path to the kitchen if you're ever wanting to raid the fridge at 1 in the morning.

The Zevo flying insect trap is sold at Walmart and I'm sure at other retail stores, and it's on Amazon also.  You've got some options about which traps to get.  Which ever one you choose, I will attest that it is well worth the cost.

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And the Fifteenth Doctor will bear the face of... Ncuti Gatwa!

The announcement already came a year ago, that the Fifteenth Doctor on the British television series Doctor Who is going to be portrayed by Rwandan-Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa.  Now as things begin really ramping up for the show's sixtieth anniversary in November, the BBC is showing its cards a bit.

Here is Gatwa giving us a glimpse of what's to come:

Number Fifteen's attire reminds me a bit of Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor.  The way he's got his hand gesturing brings to mind the early photos of the Twelfth Doctor played by Peter Capaldi, or maybe Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor.  Gatwa's Doctor looks like he means business, as if he's saying "Okay, fun and games are over, let's get down to brass tacks."

Be mad at me if you will, but I'm very glad the Doctor is a man again.  No offense to Jodie Whittaker, but there is a dynamic between the Doctor and his companions and you just don't mess with that.  My personal favorites to be the Doctor after Thirteen's regeneration were Idris Elba, and Tilda Swinton playing against gender and portraying a male Doctor.  But I think Gatwa will be fine.

Now, if new/previous showrunner Russell T. Davies can just fix that STOOPID "Timeless Child" nonsense...

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All that I will likely say about former President Donald Trump being indicted

 

Kindly allow me to boil down certain recent events into something that can be readily grasped. And I say this as someone who has never voted for Trump and likely never will.

The people applauding former President Donald Trump's indictments don't know what the (BLEEP) they are cheering for.

 

The United States is entering a dark place. We have already been poised to cross that line for a very long time. Now it is barreling headlong into the cave.

 

America is headed for grief.

 

And idiots are clapping and howling in delight as we do.

 

This is about larger matters than "we gotta get Trump". But the ones screaming loudest probably don't want to be bothered to be concerned for that.  What is befalling the former president right now is not the disease itself, but a symptom.  And I would be saying that regardless of who is being targeted.

 

I'm writing this, as I often do write, because I want nothing to do with what's to come. I've done my part and am still doing my part to encourage people to turn aside from their foolishness.  I saw what's coming even as a teenager and for more than thirty years, I've tried to get people to think about the disaster that will befall us.  Many of them haven't thought about it at all.

 

What is to transpire is not on my hands, but theirs.

 

Just my .02

 

 

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AMERICAN GRAFFITI turns fifty years old this week

George Lucas's movie - the first for his own company Lucasfilm - American Graffiti was released fifty years ago tomorrow.  It premiered at a film festival and was followed with wide release soon after.  If you've never seen American Graffiti you really should do yourself a favor and watch it.  It's a film spanning the course of a single night, in the lives of a group of friends who are spending the final hours of summer break in 1962.  I don't know if "plot" is the right word to describe this movie as having.  But it's a mighty monument to a way of youth that isn't there anymore.  American Graffiti has a solid cast and a soundtrack that is just as much part of the film as those appearing in it.

Well, I thought that for the occasion we would go WAY back into The Knight Shift's archives, to when it was less than a year old in 2004.  At the time my friends and I were working on our very first film together Forcery.  The final scene takes place at Mel's Drive-In, from American Graffiti.  Short Sugar's Barbecue in Reidsville, North Carolina played the part of Mel's.  We shot the scene at the drive-in part of the restaurant, and then... this idea hit for something we could do as a homage to George Lucas's classic movie.  I told Chad Austin, who was playing Lucas in Forcery, about it and he was game for it.  He was already wearing the costume and makeup for the part anyway.

So here is Chad Austin as George Lucas in September 2004, in a recreation of the famous behind-the-scenes still from American Graffiti showing Lucas crouched beneath the counter while directing Ron Howard:

Wow.  That was September of 2004 when we made that photo.  So much has happened since then but it seems like just yesterday.

Of course George Lucas - the real one - got a lot of respect and admiration for American Graffiti and would use that goodwill when he was shopping Star Wars around to the studios.  I'm glad that he did, but part of me also wonders what it would have been had he made more films like American Graffiti.  The Star Wars franchise arguably stymied a lifetime of potential movies from this talented filmmaker.  But I like to think that Lucas still hasn't forgotten his greatest career passion.  Maybe someday we'll see him return to what makes him happiest in life after his family.

 I hope that he will.

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We The People Bible: One of the most terrible products I've seen lately

This post is going to honk a lot of people off, probably.  Whether it cuts one way or another.  I know and accept that.

First of all, the older I've gotten the more I have come to understand something.  Mainly, that the republican form of government that the Founders gave us in the Constitution of the United States is ideal only for a people who believe in something higher than man.  Whether you call that something God, or Yahweh, or the Universe, or whatever, the Constitution is best suited for those who hold themselves accountable to that greater entity.  I believe that the past several decades have proven that in the hands of they who believe that man is the be-all/end-all of law and life, that weak attempt at imitating democratically-elected republican government has led to disaster on multiple fronts.

So yes: I do believe that the American government is intended for people who believe in greater authority than their own.  It is where all true law comes from.  It has been ever since Moses came down that mountain with those stone slabs.

I believe in the Constitution.  I also believe that the Declaration of Independence was the work of a magnificent assemblage of some of the greatest minds from throughout the colonies.  I think that the Bill of Rights is not taught about nearly enough in the majority of our schools.  The Pledge of Allegiance... ehhhh, I elaborated on that subject ten years ago, about why I cannot in good conscience say it (but I have absolutely no problem when others choose to recite it).

For saying these things, some are going to declare that I am a "Christian nationalist", a "Christian reconstructionist", that I have a colonial mind, that I'm a "right-wing fanatic" or... good HEAVENS... a "MAGA Republican" (whatever that is supposed to be).

Well, that's one audience that I will have worked up in a frothing frenzy.  Now it's time for the other...

A couple of weeks ago an advertisement began popping up on Facebook.  Usually this sort of thing just breezes past me.  But this particular item severely caught my attention.  Because it's the dire opposite of a lot of things that have shaped and molded my personal theology almost since the beginning of my Christian faith.

It's called the We The People Bible.  You can find it in a Google search easily enough, I'm not posting a link to it here.  As you can see it's got an embossed leather cover.  Said cover, in the words of the website, "was designed with the patriot in mind and features a vertical reversed American flag design that represents a country in distress."  Toward the back of the book there is to be found the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its amendments, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Oh bruddah.  How many ways can we talk about how wrong this thing is?

The We The People Bible is the very worst elements of what I've seen from most of a lifetime of exposure to Christian Reconstructionism: a body of tenets orbiting the notion that God has ordained Christians to seize power, so as to remake the United States into a theocracy based solely on the Holy Bible.

The problem with that is, that this theocracy is going to be forced upon people, whether they like it or not.  And when that is the driving influence of such a movement, the entire thing becomes antithetical to the concept that God gave us this country to govern ourselves.  America is supposed to be the land of a people who choose to seek God's guidance, as best he or she might understand that.  It's not meant to be a land controlled by those who believe their interpretation is to be imposed under penalty of punishment.  America is not like places in the Mid-East where "blasphemers" are beheaded and homosexuals are throw from the top of tall buildings.  But, I could spend all day writing about what I've seen over the years regarding this.

The heart-meat of the matter is this: I definitely have no problem with people reading the Constitution, the Bill of Right, the Declaration of Independence, or any other document pertaining to the founding and organizing of our government.  In fact, I want people to read those.  But to include even those hallowed parchments within a volume of scripture along with the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian theology, is tantamount to making them equivalent to those sacred writings.  They are not.  And I can't but think that the Founders and many others, including the scholars who compiled the King James Version (the translation that the We The People Bible uses), would be horrified that documents of this temporal realm are now on the same level as inspired writings.  This is the worst grief that I have with this product.

I said that's the worst grief.  Not necessarily the one that sticks out as being either the most tacky or visibly sacrilegious.  The upside-down flag on the cover of this abomination is ridiculous.  Those who study scripture will absolutely know that the Bible teaches us that those who give God their highest priority are not to be a people living in fear and anxiety.  Isaiah 41:10 tells us "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you.  I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

So it is that the reversed flag - which is supposed to be reserved only for the most dire emergencies - comes across as a product of the politics of the era of this book's publication.

But consider: the publishers of the We The People Bible have literally wrapped scripture up in the American flag.  In doing so they claim custody of the Bible.  They want it to be known that the Bible is theirs to interpret and to decree from.  Instead of letting holy scripture work in their lives to affect and change their hearts, they seek to change scripture instead, according to the powers and politics of this frail and brittle mortal realm.

I might have just glossed right over the ads I've seen for the We The People Bible, had it not been for an intensive study I participated in college with others about modern religious thinkers.  The most influential person we studied the works of was Stanley Hauerwas.  And one of his books that we read was his 1993 tome Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America.  The cover of which depicts a Bible literally wrapped up in an American flag.  Unleashing the Scripture became one of the most influential books during those early days of my Christian life.  I still feel it resonating whenever I'm tackling the subject of Christianity and its relationship with culture, and especially with politics.  And I got to say, that the We The People Bible comes across as a dark parody of Unleashing the Scripture, or maybe a Bizarro-World incarnation of Hauerwas's work.

It comes down to this: the Bible, I have no doubt about this, was the principle guide for the Founders when they set about liberating America and then crafting her principles into codified law.  I believe that the Bible has influenced history as no other book has.  But the Bible is supposed to define men.  Men are not meant to define the Bible.  If we are to believe that the Bible is perfect and inerrant (regardless of which respectable version one chooses to draw from) then we should be prepared to accept how it will apply to our lives.  To mold us and conform us to its image.  The Bible is not to be shaped and drawn out according to the fashions of the time.

And that is what the We The People Bible is an attempt to do.  Whether its publishers intended or not, it is become a weapon against those who are in disagreement with them.  Yes, the Bible is as a mighty sword, that divides between truth and false.  It can absolutely be trusted.  But when its publication is intended to be a tangible symbol of political power, well... it has gone too far and become something that is anything but in adherence to scripture.

Let us look not to carnal weaponry for our deliverance and salvation.  There is a greater Kingdom for us to build up and preach a citizenship of.  It is those edifices we are meant for, not the pale shadows of this fallen land.  God will be the judge of our efforts: Were they for His glory, or for our own?

I pray that what we do, will be done and has been done for Him alone.

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