Maybe if you rack up a high enough score, it'll unlock Hooded Justice and Mothman as playable characters :-P
So to the Tarheels: congratulations!
(I just don't want to have to make a habit of saying that :-P)
And "This Place Is Death", tonight's episode, was one of the richest of the series to date.
I thought it was also one of the strongest of the Sun and Jin-centric episodes, and doesn't it say something about Lost that Sun could be in 2008 and Jin could be back on the Island in 1988, and this show still make sense? After how powerful the reunion between Desmond and Penny was, I'm of the mind that the setup is happening before our eyes for something much, much more intense when Jin and Sun find their way back to each other. They'd better get back: I know hordes of people who will be honked-off enraged if that doesn't happen.
The scenes in 1988 with Danielle and her team explored a lot of ground in a surprisingly short amount of time. I've wondered what "the sickness" was that 2004 Danielle was talking about... might it have something to do with "Smokey"?
Daniel and Charlotte: seemed handled a bit clunky, but I'm willing to see how this plays out. Jeremy Davies proves once more why he was the perfect choice to play Daniel: nobody does off-kilter lovable nerds better than he :-)
Ben's emotional blow-up in the van was an excellent scene. Michael Emerson shows again that he is one of the best actors working in the medium right now. More and more it's becoming easier to take Ben at his word, and I don't think he was being deceitful at all when he talked about what he and others had done to protect the Oceanic 6.
So... Locke has done it. He has turned the wheel and is on his way. Can't wait to see the story of "Jeremy Bentham" unfold once he gets to the outside world.
The final scene, where the gang meets Eloise inside the church: can't help but think that portends some amazing stuff next week. Eloise speaking in the teaser about how "this is how the Island was found" while showing the weird pendulum is painfully tantalizing. Can't wait 'til next Wednesday to get here to find out more.
Okay so... thought? :-)
At least 600 pieces of spaceborne shrapnel are now plaguing the sky, no thanks to an unprecedented collision between two satellites in low-Earth orbit.Early yesterday, 790 kilometers (490 miles) above Siberia, an inoperative Russian satellite called Cosmos 2251 smashed into Iridium33, a communications satellite. Ground radar is now tracking the hundreds of resulting bits of debris, hoping that none of it will smash into any other satellites or the International Space Station.
When asked which satellite was at fault, NASA scientist Nicholas Johnson said, "they ran into each other. Nothing has the right of way up there. We don't have an air traffic controller in space. There is no universal way of knowing what's coming in your direction."
The good news, if there is any, is that Iridium Satellite LLC still has 64 satellites in unusually low orbit, relaying calls between special satellite phones (the U.S. Department of Defense is one of its biggest customers).
I wonder if one of them was trying to speed through an intersection...
This is a sad day for the very many of us who have faithfully followed the "scurrilous commentary" of Fred Reed. The renaissance man behind Fred On Everything announced yesterday that he is ending his regular columns, owing to upcoming surgery for a corneal transplant (as Reed puts it "this being the belated result of a largely forgotten foray by the US into military adventurism").Reed shared his reasons for beginning his web-based column, and he speaks for many of us in conveying the biggest reason why a lot of us do this, in whatever way we can. He also admits some inevitable frustration with it all...
"My reasons for inditing the sucker were, first, to see whether a web column could work and, second, to get away from the strangling grasp of political correctness. A third reason, common I suppose to most columnists, was the hope that, however minor my voice might be, in combination with thousands of others it might engender pressure for slowing the rush into the high-tech medieval twilight that the culture has undertaken.As with everything else he has written that I've read over the years, it's a great essay. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him, and here's hoping that the Internet's best curmudgeon and best-known expatriate will be back in the saddle sooner than later :-)"This by now is clearly quixotic. The civilizational changes we now see are both irremediable and beyond control. The peasantrification and empty glitter of society, pervasive hostility to careful thought, onrushing authoritarianism, and distaste for cultivation are now endemic. I do not know where these lead, but we are assuredly going to get there. Fuming buys nothing."
I've got friends in Mexico City who tell me they can't believe us Yanks aren't talking about this "enough". Juarez, straight across the border from El Paso, has seen more than fifteen hundred murders already in the past year. Many of them have been of the "send a message" variety... particularly the bodies that the police are finding sans heads.
So maybe this'll open some eyes: the government of the state of Texas is bracing for a likely collapse of Mexico's authority and the millions of refugees that would no doubt be streaming north to escape the chaos.
Should this happen, the services infrastructure of the United States... well, it ain't in such hot shape either, is it?
Whatever happens, it will assuredly not be anything like this great clip from the Latino Comedy Project...
And guess what else ACTOYS has snagged? I hate hate hate that Michael Bay wasted the name "Devastator" on a mere army tank in Transformers, so I'm betting they'll stick another name on the Constructicon combiner.
Whatever it's gonna be called, the Constructicons gestalt is one pure angry design that looks hella kewl!
Seibertron.com has a lively discussion going on now about the Fallen and, ahem..., "Devastator".
I just hope it won't require a Masters degree in engineering to put the toy of that thing together.
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind..."-- Hosea 8:7
ABC's hit show Dancing with the Stars returns for a new season on March 9th. And it's been confirmed that joining singers Jewel and Belinda Carlisle, gymnast Shawn Johnson and rapper Lil' Kim will be none other than Steve Wozniak, AKA "The Woz" and co-founder of Apple Computers.I might have to check this out. Steve Wozniak has always seemed to be a pretty cool guy. He's currently active with a Segway Polo team (though that might not help his footwork much on the dance floor).
Too bad Circus of the Stars is no longer on television: we could have probably seen Steve Ballmer throwing chairs on the high wire.
I could easily see this trend continuing, and into some potentially very interesting new territory over the next several years. Like, f'rinstance: a group of video bloggers, armed with inexpensive equipment and bleeding-edge Internet bandwidth, setting up a live operation on par with anything Fox News and CNN is doing.
Don't think it can't happen.
According to a story on Bloomberg.com, the total cost of all the bailouts that the U.S. House and Senate are pursuing with this "stimulus" package, is going to come out to, at least, $9.7 trillion.
Here it is for people who like to look at lots of zeroes...
It's said to be enough to pay off 90% of all the homeowner mortgages in this country.
I'm going to paraphrase a line that I heard from a movie several years ago...
"The country is headed for trouble. The country is headed for grief."
It's sort of my friend Kevin Bussey's fault (even though he's a totally great guy :-). His blog, Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee, is one of my favorites: not just because he offers up a lot of terrific insight as a brother in Christ, but also for his fondness of posting about the more whimsical news of the world. And he especially enjoys sharing the occasional stories about "apparitions" of Jesus or Mary materializing in loafs of bread, lava lamps etc.
So yesterday Kevin had this item about what is supposedly a picture of Jesus in a car dealership's door. It reminded me of something that I'd promised to do for Kevin over the past few months. And seeing that picture well... I couldn't help but think "Hey, my Jesus is more Jesusy than their Jesus!"
So I might as well get this over with...
Here it goes: my old closet door has a very curious wood grain pattern in it, that many people over the years have said looks exactly like Jesus Christ holding out His hands.
On the right (click to magnify) is the best photo that I was able to take of it, over at my parents' house last night. But trust me: this looks much better in real life than it does in the picture. Even in subdued light, the visual signature is readily discernible. Several people who have visited my old room have said that they can make out the hair, brow, eyes, nose, and mouth of a male figure who seems to be standing. Most of the folks who have seen it swear that they can see the figure is wearing a robe or similar garment.
The most interesting feature of the pattern is that it seems as though, if indeed people are seeing a man (or Son of Man) here, that it/he/He is holding two hands out in front of him, in apparently perfect proportion to the rest of the figure.
So... what do y'all think: is this just a regular wooden pattern, or is it a bona fide photographic anomaly?
I'll have it be known here and now though: I do not want flocks of pilgrims lining up to see this! So far as I'm concerned, there's nothing supernatural about it at all. And it wouldn't be proper to come oggle this anyway: if the Bible teaches us that not even the angels are to be worshiped, then I can't begin to imagine how much worse it is to pay homage to an inanimate hunk of wood.
But all the same, I will confess a curiosity as to what others might be seeing in this picture.
Comments?
And then, the audience at New York Comic Con got to behold something that I know for darn near certain that every Watchmen fan has been hoping and praying would make it into the movie...
Two words: "Prison Cafeteria".
And yes: Rorschach says it. We are finally going to get to hear him say the line, on the big screen.
I've a lot to do tomorrow, but I plan on spending a little time seeing if there's a theater in Greensboro that's gonna have a midnight premiere of Watchmen. It'll be worth staying up late, just to see that scene along with a few hundred other rabid Watchmen fans, and watch everyone go crazy when he says it.
Then Robertson went on a vicious rant, boasting about how his "church is the most authoritarian!" among other things, and then devoted much of the rest of the "sermon" to evolution and Charles Darwin, mostly in order to attack that same museum in Danville that he has some kind of beef with.
And then the recorded service ended and the program went to this...
That's it. For the next half-hour, it was a DVD menu that went out on live television. People who happened to tune in to WGSR between 9:30 and 10 got to see waves rolling on a beach as earthy "New Age" music played in the background of the DVD main menu, and nothing else.
So unless I'm mistaken, Johnny Robertson paid between $500 and $1000 to broadcast a DVD menu on television tonight.
Parse this as you will.
Teleportation of matter has been achieved over a distance of one meter, scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland along with colleagues at the University of Michigan have announced. 'Course, the matter in question was a single atom, but to transmit the information of its quantum state from one location to another - via that spooky "entangling" thingy - is still a huge milestone to have achieved. And if you read the Fox News story, it does sound suspiciously like the "beaming" used in the Star Trek franchise, right down to the "Heisenberg Compensators".
But if I were an editor on the Fox News website, I would have chosen a better picture to accompany this story...
...they actually used a still of the "transporter malfunction" scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture - the most violent teleportation accident ever depicted on screen - to go with the article.
That is not a particularly encouraging juxtaposition :-P
Betsy Ramsdale of Wisconsin apparently likes guns. Nothing wrong with that. And she likes them so much that she posted a picture of herself aiming a rifle on her Facebook page. Nothing wrong with that either: it's her own account, she gets to do with it on her own time whatever she likes and if Facebook doesn't think it violates the terms of service, nobody else should hassle her about it.Except that Betsy Ramsdale is also a teacher employed by what is all too often the modern monstrosity of public education. And when officials at Beaver Dam Middle School were "alerted" to the photo, they immediately placed Ramsdale on administrative leave.
So what it all comes down to is that Betsy Ramsdale is being punished for practicing her freedom of speech and right to privacy, by her implied advocacy of the Second Amendment. That's a heckuva civics lesson to be teaching the kiddies, ain't it?
Some of the comments in the linked article are downright hysterical. One parent says that "With the way things are going these days, with the kids bringing guns to school and bomb threats, (photograph) is something to be concerned about."
Funny thing: I used to go to a private school and the head of its board of education once put a picture of himself with a shotgun in our yearbook 'cuz he was an avid hunter. To the best of my recollection, nobody from that school ever killed anyone with a shotgun. And I'm also kinda reminded of what Dick Cavett once remarked: there's more comedy on television than there is crime... so how come comedy isn't breaking out in the streets?
This kind of harassment of teachers, parents and students for asserting their Constitutional rights, on the part of public school administrators, has got to stop! All it's doing is breeding more - I'm not sorry for saying this - cowards who are now intimidated by even the suggestion of a thing!
This past week Barrett fled police who were already trying to ticket him for one traffic violation. He led authorities on a high-speed chase that had him running through red lights, crashing into another car and then a fence. When he was finally caught, he was also found in possession of a quantity of crack cocaine.
When the final tally came in, Barrett had racked up more than FIFTY traffic citations in a single day, including one for not wearing a seat belt. He was also driving with a suspended license.
I wonder if the cops missed any. I mean, after thirty or forty citations it's hard to keep up...
