Who else is watching JOHN ADAMS on HBO???

DAMN if this ain't one of the best things done for television in a long time!I've been watching it since the first part a few weeks ago and have become absolutely hooked! John Adams is based on David McCullough's biography of the second President of the United States, played in the series by Paul Giamatti. Part 1 began the story on the night of the Boston Massacre in 1763,...

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Pregnant man story: "Meh..."

"Hey Chris, did you hear about the pregnant...""Yes I have!"So it's gone for the past several days, ever since the story came out about Thomas Beatie, the Oregon man who is now pregnant and showed his ultrasound images on Oprah Winfrey's show to prove that it's no hoax.Yeah well, I don't see what the big deal about this is.The thing is, Beatie may be pregnant but I'm not convinced that he's a "man" in any sense at all. Born Tracy Lagondino, "Thomas...

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Kansas/UNC: The Aftermath

A longtime friend was banned for life from a sports restaurant last night after breaking-bad on UNC-Chapel Hill, which lost bigtime against Kansas in the semifinal of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The Jayhawks won 84 to 66. Not once did Carolina take the lead, and at one time they were down by 28 points. Apparently my friend could not contain his relish at the Tarheels going down so hard.Another friend is reportedly going to burn his "lucky...

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MEETING DAVID WILSON: Local man figures big in documentary about slavery's legacy

This coming Friday night, on April 11th, MSNBC will be premiering the new documentary Meeting David Wilson. It was written and directed by David A. Wilson, a black journalist from New Jersey who took time off from his career to research his family's history. His quest eventually led him to the plantation in Caswell County, North Carolina where his great-great grandfather...

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Charlton Heston has passed away

When they were filming The Ten Commandments, it came time to shoot the scene where God speaks to Moses through the burning bush. Remember how God told Moses to remove his sandals, because the ground he was standing on was holy? When they were about to film Moses returning back from the encounter, Charlton Heston told director Cecil B. De Mille "You know, if someone was told...

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Live reaction to UNC versus Kansas

9:31 p.m. EST: One of the announcers has just said that this game "is over" already, with 7 and a half minutes left in just the first half! Kansas 38 and UNC 12.Someone who shall remain anonymous has told me that Davidson did better against Kansas than the Tarheels are doing tonight.9:44 p.m. EST: 40-19, Jayhawks still in the lead with just over 3 and a half minutes in the first half. Carolina is starting to show some pepper here.9:51 p.m. EST:...

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Death by blogging in the digital sweatshop

The New York Times has published an interesting piece about blog-related stress. The drive to constantly publish new material for lucrative gain has been enough to already cause serious medical problems and even death among some bloggers.That just ain't healthy, by any measure.Many years ago (like when I was a teenager) I had a friend who told me something that's become so prophetic, it's absolutely frightening in its accuracy: the "information...

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Internet running out of IP addresses

Abby Prince of WebProNews has filed a fascinating story, albeit one with significant ramifications, about the fast-evaporating pool of available Internet Protocol (IP) numbers. Ever since the Internet's inception the computers connected to it have been given addresses under the original IP4 scheme. But with the increase of devices that use the Internet combined with the number of developing countries that are beginning to build up their information...

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25 years after his greatest triumph, a visit to Jimmy V's final rest

"Trees will tap dance, elephants will ride in the Indianapolis 500, and Orson Wells will skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner before State finds a way to beat Houston."-- Dave Kindredwriter for The Washington PostApril 4th, 1983It became, and remains to this day, the defining sports moment of the modern era.It was twenty-five years ago tonight, on April 4th, 1983, that North...

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Spike drives home the complete Star Wars saga starting tonight

Basic cable television network Spike - formerly known as "Spike TV", formerly known as "The New TNN", formerly known as "The National Network", formerly known as "TNN", formerly known as "The Nashville Network" a Gaylord Production from Opryland USA, "That's all!" (five hundred points to whoever can tell what that's a reference to) - starts running ALL SIX MOVIES of the Star Wars saga, in their proper chronological order, beginning tonight at 8 p.m....

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Baptist preacher on WPIP "conservative Christian" radio claims Obama is "Antichrist" and going to Hell

I've a nasty suspicion that this is only a taste of what's barreling toward us...So I was headed west down I-40 from a day trip to Raleigh (which I'll be posting about tomorrow) this afternoon and around Burlington, I started flicking through radio stations.And as I was going across the AM dial just after 5 p.m. I happened to catch some pastor preaching with all due exuberance and conviction that Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama is "the...

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Moonshine legend Popcorn Sutton pleads guilty, could get hit with 15-year sentence by evil revenuers

World-renowned moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton (shown here with an "outlaw" of another sort, country legend Willie Nelson) is facing a possible 15-year prison sentence and a fine of a half-million dollars after pleading guilty in federal court in Tennessee today for practicing the fine art of "makin' likker".A few weeks ago the revenuers busted Popcorn's "white lightning"...

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Teacher-produced "Star Wars" movies helping students prepare for testing

WGAL in Lancaster, Pennsylvania has a great story about teachers there who have made a series of Star Wars-inspired short films designed to help local students prepare for their state standardized tests. The PSSA Wars videos, offering tips on how to handle the critical exams, feature such characters as "Duke Skywriter" and "Math Solo" and even include the classic Star Wars...

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Parachute is NOT Cooper's, says FBI

Remember that parachute that was found in the state of Washington last week, that many were speculating might have belonged to notorious skyjacker Dan Cooper (more often known as D.B. Cooper, but I've always called him by the name he used for his ticket)? The discovery aroused a lot of memories about the guy and spawned even more theories about what might have happened to him. Now the FBI is saying that the parachute is NOT Cooper's. It's not...

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Ric Flair retires

"To be the man, you've got to beat the man, and I'm the Man!""Hey baby! Do you want to ride Space Mountain?""WHOOOOOO!!!"Regardless of what you think of pro wrestling, he did survive a plane crash with a broken back and was told he'd never wrestle again. That was in 1974. He proved the doctors wrong and not only stayed active in one of the most physically demanding of spectator...

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'Fess-up time for today's April Fools prank

Just to be clear on some things...1. There is no such thing as the U.S. Department of Public Health.2. Reidsville does not have a deputy mayor.3. Irving "Bud" Wombler is a fictitious character that I made up this morning.4. Rockingham Regional Medical Center only exists in my mind, and will likely never be built in the Midway area.5. Fritz Hippler was a real-life filmmaker who ran the Film Department of the Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels...

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EXCLUSIVE: Rockingham County, per federal mandate, to ban ALL tobacco farming and products

EDIT 9:50 p.m. EST 04/01/2008: Click here for a MAJOR BREAKING UPDATE regarding this news story!Details about this will soon be released to the press via regular channels, but here is what The Knight Shift has learned...Rockingham County, North Carolina - the #1 tobacco-producing region in the entire country - will soon become the first 100% tobacco-free area in the United...

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