There's a new website called ConcealedCampus.com. It's advocating the right of college students to carry concealed firearms as a means of self-defense. Needless to say, I am 100% in agreement with their position.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The "Garter Incident" from Chris and Lisa's wedding
Our wedding was almost five years ago and people we know still giggle whenever the crazy stuff that happened during it comes up in conversation. I've started ripping some video clips from our DVD of it and here's the first: the now-infamous "Garter Incident". Keep in mind that this is a stunt that I had been waiting for fourteen years to pull off...
Harsh but true insight from the Virginia Tech tragedy
You'll have to read Kathy Shaidle's commentary about the Virginia Tech thing for her complete thoughts on the subject: I'm not going to summarize it here. But I do believe she is making a good but sadly seldom-considered point.
Thanks to Jenna Olwin for the find.
This blog's policy on presidential campaign banner ads
See those ads for John McCain that pops up every now and then? I didn't put them there. Didn't want them and don't ever want them. In a few hours they should hopefully go away for good.
This blog will not be used to promote any presidential candidates. Unless there is one that really, really impresses me with sincerity, humbleness and ability. But that will not be John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or just about any of the other "front-runners" we're supposed to buy into.
Up 'til now, the ads that have appeared on this blog, I really didn't give much thought to them. That's changing starting now. If there is an ad for something that I don't approve of that's appearing on here, it's going to get zapped off the site.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Change is in the air
If you're a regular reader you've no doubt noticed the new title graphic. I thought I'd shamelessly capitalize on getting recognized by The New York Times a few months ago for my school board campaign, and on what more people are telling me that I might have a pretty strong case for being the first known blogger with proof of it. This site gets tons of visitors each day, mostly because of only a handful of articles that have been here for awhile. So yeah, I'm trying to increase my regular readership :-)
Anyway, that won't be the only thing changing around here. The next few days are going to be spent playing around with the layout and other elements on this blog. That new title might not even last for very long. Since the last time this blog got a new look over a year ago, so much has happened in my life that I really don't feel like "that Chris" at all. So the blog's new look is going to reflect more on who I am now: still enjoying life, but a lot more serious too about things. You might have noticed that coming out in the posts of the past few days, especially.
So if this place seems messed-up at times, that's just me working behind the scenes. This place will be fixed-up good pretty soon. Just mind the holes in the meantime :-)
Ham sandwiches are now a hate crime
Be careful when putting your Quizno's sub on a table: it might be investigated as a hate crime. Here's the story from Boston.com:
Police investigate ham incident at schoolThis past week I've gotten the sense that this country has completely come unhinged from the locomotive. When the location of a ham sandwich is found to be "offensive" by some people and turned into an issue for law enforcement, you know we've gone over the edge.April 19, 2007
LEWISTON, Maine --Police are investigating as a possible hate crime an incident in which a ham steak was placed in a bag on a lunch table where a group of Somali students were sitting.
Such an incident would be offensive to Somalis, who are Muslims and consider pork unclean.
A Lewiston Middle School student was suspended after the incident, which happened April 11.
Superintendent Leon Levesque said the incident is being treated seriously and police are investigating. The center for the Prevention of Hate Violence is working with the school to devise a response plan.
The incident is the second of its kind in Lewiston in recent months. Last summer, a man rolled a pig's head into a mosque in Lewiston, which has a large Somali population. A court later ordered the man to stay away from the mosque.
I'm thinking of starting my own religion. It's called Knightiology. And one of the tenets of Knightiology is that mayonnaise is an affront to my faith. If anyone brings a sandwich with mayonnaise near me, I'm going to scream about how insensitive I'm being treated and have the police investigate it as a hate crime.
Now, wouldn't that be the stupidest thing, if I really did that?
Isn't it the stupidest thing that we have to be careful with our ham sandwiches now for fear of "offending" someone?
I wonder what would happen if I had some pork rinds shipped to the local mosque...
Digital filmmaking's fight against entropy
A sobering read from Variety, especially for folks like me who are into digital filmmaking: the problem of archiving digital footage. Think that tape and recordable DVDs can store the products of our work forever? Nah-uh! The problem is two-fold: life expectancy of storage media, and current methods of storage being unable to be read by future technology. The current best solution is to "migrate" older material to new media every so often, but for the time being there is no reliable long-term storage.
What this is going to inevitably mean is that the work of a lot of people is going to be lost forever, eventually. Especially for the "indie" filmmakers and other artists. Which is especially horrifying to me because I've always thought that every person's creative work has merit. Whether we actually like it or not is a whole 'nother thing, but we should at least be appreciative of others for following through on a vision from their own unique perspective. But now, unless adequate and economical solutions to the storage problem are found, it will be as if a lot of those people's work never existed at all.
So far as filmmaking goes, the other alternative is to work with real film... but that's hideously expensive. And film can fade over time, just as tape will.
Isn't thermodynamics a wonderful thing? /sarcasm
Friday, April 20, 2007
The "ARMED STUDENT" t-shirt
Shortly after posting about Bradford Wiles, who called on Virginia Tech officials this past summer to allow students to be able to defend themselves, I had an idea. Police wear badges and carry guns as a visible detterent against committing a crime. Maybe it's time for civilians to start boldly doing the same...
The "ARMED STUDENT" t-shirt. Whether you actually choose to carry a firearm while wearing this shirt is entirely up to you. Imagine just a few dozen students walking around campus wearing these shirts and the effect it would have on someone contemplating another shootout. Now available for $8.99 at CafePress. Firearm not included.
Virginia Tech student pleaded for school to allow guns
Virginia Tech grad student Bradford Wiles pleaded with school officials to allow students to be able to defend themselves by having guns on campus. To say that Wiles has considerable frustration with the Virginia Tech administrators would be putting it mildly...
Would my wife and family, knowing how much I have written and spoken about allowing me my most basic right of self-defense on campus, feel any comfort in the policy that supposedly protects me?Very powerful essay that's definitely recommended reading. Thanks to Chaplain Geoff Gentry for finding this article and sending it this way.Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations, in response to a column I wrote in August asking that the university change its policy forbidding law-abiding concealed handgun permit (CHP) holders from carrying on campus, wrote the following in The Roanoke Times: "Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same."
Do you still feel the same way about your policy now, Mr. Hincker? Will your faith in that policy provide comfort to any of the victims' families?
On honor
Too many people in this country believe they're honor-bound to follow the orders of other people... who never gave a damn about honor in the first place.
Fred Reed - master of the fine art of curmudgeonry - has a surgically precise piece about the concept of honor. I dare not excerpt anything from it here: it really is best to take this one in whole. Suffice it to say, I think it's one of Reed's better pieces... and they all tend to be good.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Pornography of the Real
Paul Harrill talks about the media circus at Virginia Tech this week, before NBC did or did not do a wise thing in releasing the video and photo material so soon after the shootings. What makes Harrill's voice one to pay heed to is that he is not only an independent filmmaker, but a teacher at Virginia Tech. Thanks to Shane Thacker for finding this.
Town with mandatory gun ownership celebrates 25 years without a murder
A couple of days ago, I wrote here that the Virginia Tech massacre proves that gun laws don't work. And that a civilized society needs more decent people with guns.
Now comes an article proving my point: WorldNetDaily has a story about Kennesaw, Georgia: a town where there are not only no anti-gun laws, but it's mandatory for every home owner to have a gun. And in the quarter-century since enacting this law in 1982, there has not been one murder in Kennesaw. Also worth bearing in mind that in 1982 the population of Kennesaw was 5,242: at last count, the present population is 28,189... but the crime rate has dropped significantly since passage of the law.
Sounds like a nice place to live.
Finally some justification for an 80 GB iPod
Russia wants to build the world's longest tunnel under the Bering Strait, connecting Siberia to Alaska.
I suppose that when this is finished, and if a highway can be built across the Darien Gap, it will theoretically be possible to alternately drive and take the train from Tierra Del Fuego all the way to London. Which may be enough time to listen to all the songs on a fully-loaded current-edition iPod at least once.
Now if only those things had easily replaceable batteries like spares for a cellphone...
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Standard Wednesday night reaction to LOST
Fairly good episode this week. Not as heavy or revelatory as the previous several episodes. It had a pretty heart-pounding opening though. And a very strong ending that already has me impatient for next week.
I thought that Desmond's time as a monk was rather interesting. And that priest said something that I really liked, something about "you've been so busy running away that you haven't realized what you're running toward", and how God had something bigger in mind for Desmond than being a monk.
Was that the weird jewelry woman who told Desmond all that stuff about the universe from "Flashes Before Your Eyes" in that photo on the priest's desk?! It sure looked like her. Won't know for sure until I go back and watch "Flashes Before Your Eyes" again (which is still on our DVR). But I immediately caught that little detail tonight.
Loved Sawyer's comment about how they have to play ping-pong.
Okay so... she fell from the sky. Who is she? I'm intrigued more about this parachutist than I was about "Patchy".
Any other Lost fans get the sense that we're seeing the pieces being put on the board right before our eyes, but we still have no idea what kind of game it is that is being played?
This has been one of the most amazing seasons of a television show I've ever seen. Definitely some of the most compelling storytelling in any medium I've had the pleasure of enjoying. Let's hope the showrunners can keep this up.
EDIT 11:27 PM EST: Where did the helicopter come from? I don't think even the best of them could carry enough fuel to cross over a large expanse of ocean like that. It must have come from a ship or another island in the vicinity. Who knows, maybe Penny is rich enough to have an aircraft carrier out there looking for Desmond...
Revealed: what Galactus will look like in the FANTASTIC FOUR sequel
You're not going to like it.
Philip, I know you're definitely not going to like this one bit, brother.
Want to know what Galactus, the devourer of worlds, is going to look like in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer?
Here's the scoop from Ain't It Cool News...
Wanted to let you know what Galactus is going to look like / be represented as in the FF2 sequel:THAT IS THE DUMBEST PIECE OF %#&$ I HAVE EVER HEARD OF IN THE HISTORY OF COMIC BOOK MOVIES!!! Galactus as a massive storm cloud...?!A storm cloud.
Yep.
That's it. That's the solution from the creatives.
(clears throat).....pretty lame.
Think Superman/Silver Surfer flying through clouds with Galactus / Jorel VO.
We could have gotten a beautifully CGI-rendered Galactus standing amid a ruined landscape like how he's depicted in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance game. THAT is how I envisioned a feature-film version of Galactus.
Instead we are getting... well, V'Ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
This is going to make Malebolgia from the Spawn movie look like inspired art, in comparison.
Fighting the Guild Wars
For the past few weeks I've been playing Guild Wars a lot. If you don't know what it is, Guild Wars is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) with, at last count, about 2 million active players. But it's different from most MMORPGs out there, like World of Warcraft. For one thing, there are no monthly fees you pay in order to play the game: you buy the software and create your account and that's all the money you'll ever have to plunk down. It's not an entirely game-wide "persistent" world though: you can meet other players from around the world in places like cities and outposts, but once you leave those the game is an "instance" created just for you and your party of fellow players (if you want to play alone though you can hire "henchmen" from the cities to follow along and help you). It's also different from most MMORPGs in that there is a considerable amount of backstory and active plot that is at work in the game while you play. The biggest of those is the Searing: the first part of the game is played in an idyllic "fairy-tale" setting that lets you get used to gameplay. But once you choose to participate in a certain mission, an event called the Searing takes place and the kingdom you're in is turned into a desolate landscape. The story then picks up two years later and it's only then that the real game begins.
I first bought the original Guild Wars game - the one now referred to as the Prophecies campaign - almost two years ago: several of my friends had gotten into it and had recommended it. I played with it a bit, thought it was a lot of fun... and then some real-life stuff happened and I totally forgot about it. Since that time I've seen the two new "chapters" - Factions and Nightfall - hit stores, and a few times I wondered what I'd been missing by not fully exploring the original.
Then a few weeks ago I read about the upcoming expansion to Guild Wars called Eye of the North. Then next year will be Guild Wars 2, which is said to be a true MMORPG-style persistent world while keeping the traditional Guild Wars elements (including no monthly fees to play). Reading about them intrigued me enough to start playing the original Guild Wars again, this time creating a new character from scratch so that I could re-acclimate to the game. Real-life circumstances have also led me lately to make myself "relax" a bit more: the past few months I really have been going full-tilt nonstop. It's time to slow down just a bit...
Well, I'm glad that I gave Guild Wars another shot, because I'm enjoying it a lot more this time than I did when I first bought the game. It seems like a lot more people are playing it too, and it's always fun to hook-up with live players when it comes to tackling a mission. I'm probably going to play the original Guild Wars: Prophecies and then move on to Factions, which is the second chapter of the story (Prophecies and Factions and Nightfall are each stand-alone games, but if you have the others then they "interface" with each other so that you have a much larger world in which to run around in).
The original Guild Wars sells for about $25-30 bucks in most stores. Well worth picking up if you ever wanted to experience a MMORPG without having to worry about paying fifteen bucks a month and then feeling committed to play: with Guild Wars you play at your own pace. Maybe this game can be what we eventually use to wean hardcore World of Warcraft players off their addiction... :-)
Supreme Court upholds ban on partial-birth abortion
Some good news out of the high court, for a change.
But the Supremes still insist that there is a "constitutional right" to have an abortion.
Partial-birth abortion is one of the most stomach-turning things you could ever imagine. I'm glad that this ban is being upheld. But abortion is still legal. And I don't know if Roe v. Wade will ever be overturned in the foreseeable future. As I've noted here before, there are too many people on both "sides" of the abortion debate who have too much to lose if abortion simply "went away". The so-called "right to choose" is one of the things keeping "feminists" attached to the Democrat party and opposing abortion is one of the the few things that have the "evangelical Christians" maintaining a tenuous connection to the Republican party.
You know, abortion and the war in Iraq have something in common: in either situation, politicians use it to maneuver themselves in power and bicker pointlessly, while letting innocent people die for no reason.
Maybe that's one of the more long-term affects of abortion: it's made us come to see our fellow man as an expendable commodity, not as a precious soul.
