Full-sized Lancer from Gears Of War made of LEGO... and it works too!

A clever dude calling himself PLUM B has pulled off one of the most incredible creations with LEGO that I have ever seen. It's a life-sized Lancer assault rifle, the signature weapon of the Gears of War video games, made entirely out of LEGO bricks and pieces.

And not only that, but it's fully functional too! PLUM B's LEGO Lancer shoots rubber bands. And yes, the chainsaw bayonet even revs-up to make mincemeat out of those pesky Locust grubs and Lambent mutants!

Now if only we could have this sitting on the shelves at Toys R Us in time for Christmas...

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Johnny Cash singing "Ghost Riders in the Sky" on THE MUPPET SHOW

The Man in Black himself performs "Ghost Riders in the Sky" on The Muppet Show. It doesn't get much more awesome than this!

Y'know, Johnny Cash really was the only person in history who could say the word "Hell" on The Muppet Show and get away with it.

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John Travolta and Kurt Russell are also time travelers!

Remember two weeks ago when startling photographic evidence came forward via eBay about Nicolas Cage being a time traveler?

Well folks, two other well-known actors have also been spotted traipsing around the Civil War era! First up we have John Travolta...

From the photo's eBay listing (which has mysteriously gone defunct)...

I've had this interesting photograph for years and i've been unable to part with it. When you look at it and into the eyes of the sitter you will see what I mean!

I believe this is the photograph of a very young John Travolta taken around 1860 and I mean ..in the year 1860. This is a ruby glass ambrotype photograph and it is one of a kind. It hasn't been changed, tampered with or altered in anyway. It is clear and is as nice as the day it was taken roughly 151 years ago. I know..you are saying..John Travolta is alive today in 2011 and he doesn't look 151 years old.

For those of you who don't know, John Travolta is a Scientologist and many Scientologists believe in a type of reincarnation. Of course Time travel can't be ruled out as well. This photograph is from approx 1860 and the young man looks to be around 18 to 20 years old. Unfortunately the youngest photos available to the public for comparison of John himself are about 5-8 year older than he is in this photo.

The photograph is a 1\6th plate ambrotype that is housed in a full case. The repaired case has again come apart and could use some tape.

The thing that I always found striking about this photograph and I'm sure that you will too is the amazing identical EYES, HAIRLINE and most importantly John's very unique trademark CHIN. Remember that the antique photograph that you are looking at was taken in 1860 and the sitter is wearing a period hairstyle as well as clothing. I also found it very difficult to photograph. It looks much better in person. Everyone who looks at it tells me that the more they look at it ..the more it 'freaks them out'.

Meanwhile, Kurt Russell has also been located running amok the time-space continuum...

I don't know whether to make a Stargate joke or wisecrack about "Hey Snake, you should be dead!" As of this writing you can still bid for this photograph, a tintype from the 1860-1870 era.

Incidentally, if anyone finds a photograph from the 1940s era that looks a lot like me in Great Britain hanging around SHAEF, just ignore it. It's only a coincidence.

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10 warning signs of spiritual abuse (and cult leadership)

Found a very intriguing and insightful post on Mary DeMuth's blog. Titled "Spiritual Abuse: 10 Ways to Spot It", DeMuth writes about her experiences with "churches and ministries that bully".

Here are some of the indicators of spiritual abuse, in whatever form it might take...

- Have a distorted view of respect. They forget the simple adage that respect is earned, not granted. Abusive leaders demand respect without having earned it by good, honest living.

- Demand allegiance as proof of the follower’s allegiance to Christ. It’s either his/her way or no way. And if a follower deviates, he is guilty of deviating from Jesus.

- Use exclusive language. “We’re the only ministry really following Jesus.” “We have all the right theology.” Believe their way of doing things, thinking theologically, or handling ministry and church is the only correct way. Everyone else is wrong, misguided, or stupidly naive.

- Buffer him/herself from criticism by placing people around themselves whose only allegiance is to the leader. Views those who bring up issues as enemies. Those who were once friends/allies swiftly become enemies once a concern is raised. Sometimes these folks are banished, told to be silent, or shamed into submission.

- Hold to outward performance but rejects authentic spirituality. Places burdens on followers to act a certain way, dress an acceptable way, and have an acceptable lifestyle.

- Use exclusivity for allegiance. Followers close to the leader or leaders feel like insiders. Everyone else is on the outside, though they long to be in that inner circle.

I can unfortunately think of any number of people who fit these descriptions plenty. Who fit all of them, even.

Reading over DeMuth's article, I felt led to consider again what it means to be a follower of Christ and what sincere Christian leadership entails. I really have to credit a lot of good people that God put into my life over the years (especially during those first crazy few when I began my walk with Christ) from whom I came to understand a notion that is completely at odds with the ways of the world: namely, that to serve Christ first and to serve others best means to put self last. In fact, the ideal of Christian leadership is that person who not only recognizes that he or she is imperfect, but indeed readily acknowledges that reality. To follow Christ and serve others is to crucify self, as opposed to aggrandizing self.

That is the reason, I have to believe, why the most respected and admired servants of Christ that most come to mind, are also the most humble and selfless. Those are the men and women who daily strive to let self die, so that Christ within them might radiate forth ever more brilliantly. It is the ones who take pains to point to themselves most who in turn point away from Christ.

Anyhoo, it's a great essay by Mary DeMuth, and I felt led to turn y'all's attention to it :-)

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An open letter to CNN

Look CNN...

Those are not eight "troops" that have been killed in Afghanistan. A "troop" is a GROUP of soldiers. You do not call one soldier a "troop". One soldier is a "trooper".

And in my opinion it's mighty disrespectful to not say what they really are: those were eight SOLDIERS who were killed. INDIVIDUALS who had hopes and dreams and for whatever their various reasons chose to put those dreams aside so they could serve in the armed forces.

Those who sent them to Afghanistan and other places of meaningless war might be a bunch of asshat bastards but that doesn't mean we have any right or reason to disrespect these individuals, each one as unique and precious a creation of God as any of us are, who made a choice to be a SOLDIER.

In the future please refrain from referring to soldiers as "troops", unless you mean to convey the sense of troops plural, as in groups of groups of soldiers.

Thank you.

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Recipe for Chocolate Fondue

It's been way too many moons since I posted a recipe on this blog. Here's one for a chocolate fondue that I made last night for my girlfriend Kristen: a notorious choco-holic! It passed with flying colors with her so I'm gonna assume it's safe for public dissemination :-)

Chocolate Fondue

- 1 and 1/4 cups whole milk
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 4 ounces Ghiradelli 70% Cacao Extra Bittersweet Chocolate baking bar (broken up into pieces)
- 4 ounces Ghiradelli Milk Chocolate Baking Bar (also broken up into pieces)

Pour the milk, vanilla extract and butter into a saucepan. Heat the saucepan on medium and mix well. When it has begun to slightly boil from the heat, remove from the burner and pour in the bittersweet and milk chocolate bar pieces. Keep stirring until the bars are completely melted and the fondue is uniformly brown and smooth (the saucepan can be brought back to heat to facilitate this). Pour the fondue from the saucepan into a fondue pot and keep it warm, not hot (an electrical fondue pot with precise temperature control is excellent for this).

Serve with marshmallows, strawberries, slices of banana, or whatever else strikes your fancy!

Serves 2-4 people.

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Dear Governor Perdue: What the hell were you thinking?

Bev Perdue should do the right thing and resign as governor of North Carolina. And I am absolutely serious.

If she intended this as a joke, I don't see how it could possibly have been funny at all. It's too scary enough that Perdue conceived of such an unconstitutional and morally wrong idea, let alone verbally articulated it.

Here's what North Carolina's Worst Governor Ever said yesterday at a meeting of the Rotary Club in nearby Cary...

"I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. You want people who don't worry about the next election."

So Perdue wants to suspend democracy and elections in the name of reigning-in the economy. She said "I really hope that someone can agree with me on that."

Dear Lord, I hope not.

After having listened to the actual audio of Governor Perdue's comments, I'm finding it ever more difficult to believe that this was a suggestion that she was making in jest.

Let's ignore the obvious for a moment: that what Perdue is advocating is nothing short of treason and circumvention of the Constitution by an elected executive in high office and if someone else has a more accurate terminology, I would like to be told of it.

Governor Perdue, the United States is experiencing a very difficult time financially because, in large part, the government has "helped" too much already.

And now you not only want that same government to do more, but be made unaccountable to the voting public as well?

I don't see how anyone who would suggest such a thing should be trusted at all with delegated authority. George W. Bush demonstrated to us that he wasn't fit to be President when he said that he wished he could be "dictator" and just so, Bev Perdue is now demonstrating that she is not fit to be governor of this state.

If she steps aside now, I would have inestimably more respect for the lady. Gauging by what I've been reading so far today, a lot of other people would too.

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"Weird Al" Yankovic makes music history with "Polka Face" video!

Here's the just-released music video for "Polka Face", the medley from "Weird Al" Yankovic's latest album Alpocalypse! And with it, Al has achieved something that to the best of my knowledge has never been done before by any musical performance artist: producing a music video for EVERY track from a single album!

Congrats Al! And the "Polka Face" video is hilarious!! :-)

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WING COMMANDER III: HEART OF THE TIGER now being sold on GOG.com!

This is a game that I've been waiting since the autumn of 1994 to play! Seriously. I didn't have a rig powerful enough at the time to justify getting it. And during the past decade and a half the only way to get it was to pay ridiculously high prices on eBay for the Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga box set that put the first three games into one package for post-DOS PCs.

It's taken seventeen years. But at long last, I'm gonna see how the Earth-Kilrathi war ends...

Online classic games vendor GOG.com has made Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger available for purchase! For $5.99 you get the game as a 1.6 gigabyte download. And if you've never played a Wing Commander game before you can also get Wing Commander I and Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi as one package, also for $5.99. And GOG.com also has "sidequel" Wing Commander: Privateer available as well.

But it's Wing Commander III that has me slobbering like mad tonight. This game was practically an entire full-length motion picture that gave players the chance to determine how the plot played out. The cutscenes used greenscreens and CGI art to create completely virtual sets to tell its galaxy-spanning epic. And then there was the acting talent that was brought aboard for the project: Tom Wilson (aka Biff from the Back To The Future trilogy), John-Rhys Davies (Gimli from The Lord of the Rings trilogy among many other roles), Malcolm McDowell (Alex from A Clockwork Orange) and as main character Christopher Blair, Mark Hamill (who was in a series of art-house movies back in the day, "Star Wars" something or other...).

Probably won't get around to playing it anytime in the foreseeable future: I'm still coming down from Gears of War 3, and there's a bunch of stuff on my plate right now. But I'm thinking as the fall progresses, I'm going to dig out my joystick and finally give Wing Commander III a go. I've waited seventeen years. I can wait a little while longer :-)

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Testing a theory

This afternoon, September 26th 2011, I am stating that there is a strong possibility of a moderate to severe earthquake occurring during the next few weeks.

Don't know where. The theory I've been developing ain't that refined yet.

However, I will note that during this past year I have made such "predictions" (though I'd rather find a better word for it) among friends, and every time there has been some significant seismic activity: from the Tokyo quake to the recent one that rattled us here on the East Coast.

We'll see what happens in the next month or so. And if something occurs geologically, I'll elaborate at greater length on this theory (which does seems to have some merit to it...)

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Over-the-counter asthma inhalers banned after December 31st

Did Armstrong Pharmaceutical not pay enough kickback to President Obama's campaign?

Well, I had to wonder that, given that the federal government is BANNING Primatene Mist from being sold after this coming December 31st! If you're an asthma sufferer, you're gonna have to get a doctor's prescription in order to purchase an inhaler that doesn't use a CFC agent as its propellant.

Yeah you're inferring correctly, Dear Reader: the Environmental Protection Agency, in collusion with the Food and Drug Administration, have decreed that those little asthma inhalers are dangerous to the ozone layer. I suppose that while you're gasping for breath on the way to your physician, that you can take heart knowing that the Obama Administration is sacrificing your good health for sake of a polar bear or spotted owl.

But seriously: What. The. F-CK?!?

It was twenty years ago this summer that Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted. That one volcanic event spewed more toxic chemicals into the atmosphere than all of human activity in the past century (to say nothing of other eruptions, like Mount St. Helens and similar incidents). The Earth's atmosphere has suffered far greater detriment because of geological activity than anything we could possibly do on our own... and yet the ozone layer has not only survived but it has also repaired itself.

And now Obama's government expects us to believe that those tiny asthma inhalers... which are needed by millions of people... are a dire environmental threat?!

What the hell has happened to my country? More to the point: what has happened to us? The citizens of America didn't use to put up with bullshit like this.

(Yeah I said "bullshit". A word that I use extremely rarely. I honestly can't find a better word to express my incredulity at this situation.)

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Lightspeed limit broken by neutrinos, reports CERN

Those clever boffins (as our British brethren love to call such technical folk) at CERN in Switzerland have really made a mess of things this time: they've recorded neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light.

If their determinations hold up, then a whole lotta physics is gonna have to be overhauled. Einstein held that the speed of light in a vacuum was an immutable, impassable barrier, and for most of the past century a lot of our understanding and technology has been based on that. And now... Einstein's model of relativity stands to be revisited, revised, and possibly amended considerably.

But as with all such announcements, a measure of temperance and consideration is warranted. Jon Butterworth has posted an excellent essay on The Guardian's website about the ramifications of CERN's findings, including how it's possible that neutrinos might not have broken the speed of light.

But if CERN's measurements hold up, this is gonna play all kinds of wacky havoc with causality. Hey, in the future I might even be able to post an entry on this blog before I even begin to type it! Neat, aye? :-P

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In the wee hours of this morning, I finished GEARS OF WAR 3

It's taken me twelve hours to mull things over about it.

So here's what I'm gonna say about it...

Darn you Cliff Bleszinski!! Because of you and your team at Epic Games, you made this grown dude cry harder than I have because of any work of art in... maybe ever.

That... was effective. The entire whole heapin' thing. I mean the complete Gears Of War experience: from Dom breaking Marcus out of prison in the very first scene of the first game, through to that touching final shot at the end of Gears Of War 3. Along with everything in between.

Not everything was answered. In fact, I can think of quite a lot of outstanding questions that remain. But you know what? After finishing this final chapter of the story of Marcus Fenix and Delta Squad, it doesn't bother me at all that those mysteries haven't been adequately addressed (yet).

Because in the final analysis, this is a story about true brotherhood. It's a story about family, and what we find ourselves doing for that family. Making this game focused on answering lingering questions would have taken us out of that sense of family. Gears Of War is a saga about very realistic characters, with all of the strengths and weaknesses that any of us have.

And I can't think of any other video game series that has compelled us to experience the human condition in all it's fulness. Or elicited this sense of catharsis.

A solid and wildly satisfying end to a genuinely epic tale. Easily the single best experience that I've ever had playing a video game.

Nothing else to say, except... bring on Gears Of War 4!

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A theological thought or two this evening

God is not a bureaucrat.

Salvation does not derive from procedure.

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Been playing GEARS OF WAR 3

I got it at the local GameStop at midnight yesterday morning/late Monday night. Got an hour or two in before going to bed and didn't play it at all throughout the day yesterday (had other stuff going on) but I was able to play it for three hours this afternoon.

Cliff Bleszinski and the crew at Epic Games have done it. Again. I don't know if "video game" is even applicable to Gears of War 3. There is plot and pacing and dialogue here that trumps that of most Oscar-winning motion pictures.

This is a whole new character-driven visceral form of narrative art. One scene in particular stands out in my mind: early in the game, you play as Cole leading a squad in search of supplies around his old hometown of Hanover. Cole and the squad enter a grocery store and come across a life-sized cardboard stand-up of Cole, looking as he did 17 years earlier, in his thrashball uniform advertising Thrashies cereal. Cole looks at himself from so long ago and says something about "Ever feel like you're dead, but nobody told you?"

It's a very simple and quiet moment but... it says so much more than any hail of gunfire or highly complicated scripted moment of cutscene.

It's gonna be a rainy evening, and I'm ahead on some stuff. Gonna crank up the Xbox 360 and head back to the front lines :-)

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A prayer for all people, in all times

Confederate Soldier's Prayer

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve,
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked God for health, that I might do greater things,
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy,
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men,
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life,
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing I that I asked for but got everything I hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among men, most richly blessed.

-- Found on the body of a Confederate Soldier, 1861-1865

Good friend, fellow historian and Civil War buff Taryn Farmer shared this with her friends earlier today. I thought it would be well worth sharing with this blog's readers.

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As of two hours ago...

...at the behest of President Obama, the armed forces of the United States have officially ended the "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding homosexuals in the military.

Bad, bad move by the Obama administration. And I am only saying that with it being borne in mind that military life is by definition radically different from civilian life. It is not a situation that allows for attempts at social engineering. Those who enlist by and large know this. They accept it. When you sign up to serve in the armed forces you give up a significant portion of what freedoms you would have had outside the military. This is necessary for the cohesion and morale of the forces as much as it is for optimizing the individual to serve to the utmost of his or her ability. If this is not a tolerable situation for a person for whatever reason, that person does not have to enlist. There is no such thing as a draft in the modern United States and hopefully there never will be need of one ever again.

Those who think that ending "don't ask, don't tell" is some progressive step forward, fail to understand that armed forces life revolves around the needs of others and not the "needs" of self.

Expect to see fewer young people choosing to sign up to serve, if this kind of playing games with the military goes on...

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