Johnny Robertson sez: "We are here to DESTROY you" (plus: why this blog can't take this loon seriously anymore)

The Lord works in mysterious ways...

I'm content to believe that the strange drama of what has gone on between Yours Truly and Johnny Robertson of "Martinsville Church of Christ" - part of what I call the "Church Of Christ In Name Only" - has finally drawn to a close. It came with this brazen admission by Robertson on the Answering the Church of Christ blog...

"we are here to defeat destroy you and uplift truth"

- Johnny Robertson, June 11, 2008

Johnny Robertson, supposed preacher and "Church of Christ" television broadcaster, has said that it is the mission of he and his followers "to defeat (and) destroy you".

I don't have to say anything else or make another video, folks. Robertson has shot himself not in the foot but straight in the chest with this statement.

No doubt that the effort I went through in order to ask Robertson a simple question, about "How is what you are doing showing the love of Christ?", has been wasted. Or maybe not. Because this is how Johnny Robertson of the Martinsville Church of Christ shows love of Christ for others: by actively trying to "destroy" them.

Didn't Charles Manson preach the same thing to his "Family"?

And now, I must apologize to the readers of The Knight Shift, that I spent even one moment concerned with this loon. Because so far as I'm concerned, Johnny Robertson had already demonstrated his lack of credibility even before he said that it was his Christ-ordained mandate to "destroy" his enemies. It happened here, when he referenced someone who is apparently a member of a legitimate Church of Christ...

"Corey does not represent the church of Christ ya'll he is a liberal"

Longtime readers of this blog will know what that means and just how bad Robertson has screwed-up here.

And now I cannot believe that I made such a business out of this guy. Because now I have to wonder if he is really an "evil" person after all.

Instead, Johnny Robertson is just... a blithering idiot!

And sad to say, I'm not sorry for having to observe that, either.

"He is a liberal"? Is that the best you can come up with?!

PPPPHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Folks, seriously, I am now regretting that I spent any time at all countering this, God forgive me for saying it, poor lost soul.

"Liberal"? That word, along with "conservative", has been used so bloody often that it's completely lost all meaning!

If you've ever read my blog, you already know that this is a long-standing belief of mine. A person can have "conservative" or "liberal" leanings on issues. But to blanketly damn a person as a "liberal" or a "conservative" is symptomatic of a very petty, shallow, spiteful mind.

And thats all Robertson really has, isn't it?

Oh yeah, he knows the words of the Bible. But he doesn't know the meaning and spirit of the Bible and now I have to wonder if he possibly can know that at all!

I'm sorry folks. You see, Johnny Robertson, he puts on a good show of it. But he's not really evil. He just can't see the world with anything other than the mentality of professional wrestling.

The moment he described someone as a "liberal", I knew: Johnny Robertson was not an important man at all. Certainly not worth having a theological battle with.

This is too good. This makes my day! This is, very much, a gift from God.

(And yes, I do admit that the lesser angels of my nature are rather mirthful at the moment. But I like to think that God has sufficient grace to forgive me for that :-P)

Oh well, at least I got to make good on my promise to the cast and crew to show Schrodinger's Bedroom on broadcast television. And word has reached me that at least one other well-known person is "furious" that I didn't provide the show that had been expected on Sunday night.

Johnny Robertson, you're not worth another moment of my time. With one word, you demonstrated that.

I would even say that it's a waste of time for anyone to be concerned about Robertson and James Oldfield and Norm Fields any more. It really is the spiritual equivalent of wrestling with a pig: you only get dirty and the pig likes it.

And that's all Robertson, Oldfield and Fields really are, aren't they? They are spiritual pigs.

Johnny Robertson, ladies and gentlemen: All hat and no cattle. On a mission from God to "defeat destroy you".

I'm wondering what kind of Photoshop fun I can work with this...

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Hide behind the sofa: Davros IS coming!

This has got to be the worst-kept secret in the history of television. But with three weeks left before the two-part finale begins for this season's Doctor Who, the BBC is still refusing to confirm that the big baddie this year is Davros. How could it not be? Season 1 of the revived series ended with a plot by the Dalek Emperor. The following year gave us the first-ever clash between the Daleks and the Cybermen. 2007 hailed the return of The Master (who last menaced The Doctor in the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie). The show will be on hiatus for one season so that David Tennant can fulfill stage obligations in London, and for that reason alone I doubt Russell T Davies is going to leave us hanging with The Rani or The Valeyard.

Gotta admire the BBC though for keeping a tight ship. Until possibly yesterday, when RichardWho.com snagged the following...

Real deal? My gut says yes.

Davros, possibly the single greatest villain in all of fiction, is returning.

And if that pic is legit, he looks great! We just gotta see if he can still scream and rave like the Davros of old :-)

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Answering Johnny Robertson: "What Does the Bible REALLY Say?" (The DVD that didn't air)

In the wake of my "extending the opportunity" to "Martinsville Church of Christ" cultist Johnny Robertson on June 1st, WGSR general manager Charles Roark offered me 25 minutes of free airtime on Sunday night in response to Robertson. I took up the offer, even though 25 minutes is not nearly long enough to counter everything that Robertson, James Oldfield and Norm Fields spend thousands of dollars to broadcast for about a dozen and a half hours a week.

And I already knew that it would have been futile to have even tried to counter everything they preach, too. But I never believed that I had to try to, either.

"Christianity is not a competition", as I said on Sunday night. And I was never out to "beat" Johnny Robertson at anything. All of this began with a simple question...

"Johnny, how is what you are doing showing devotion to Christ, and demonstrating His love for others?"

That was almost three months ago. To this date, Johnny Robertson has not provided an answer. He has only dodged and run away.

I spent some time this past week putting together a presentation on DVD that would run on Sunday night. And up 'til the last half-hour or so, this was going to be what people would have seen on Sunday night. A friend came over and we prayed about it and in the end, I felt led to just "be me" and let the chips fall where they may.

If you watched WGSR on Sunday night, you know that I did not run this presentation. That instead I got on live television for about 13 minutes, and just... spoke from the heart about what God had been showing me from scripture this past week.

A lot of it had to do with what we are told in Galatians 5 is the "Fruit of the Spirit". Those being...

- love
- joy
- peace
- patience
- kindness
- goodness
- faithfulness
- gentleness
- self control

Robertson, Olfield and Fields cannot show that they have produced the Fruit of the Spirit with what they preach. They only present "...hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy."

Can it be said that Robertson, Oldfield and Fields can demonstrate to us that they do produce the Fruit of the Spirit in the least bit with what they are doing?

Does that alone indicate that they preach "another Christ", are perhaps even of the "spirit of Antichrist" as the Apostle John wrote?

I won't speculate. But I will certainly observe that their evidence demands a verdict.

A number of people have passed along similar thoughts, after watching Robertson for the first time on Sunday night: that Johnny Robertson is "demon possessed", "evil", and "ungodly". As much as I would like to offer a defense on behalf of Robertson, I'm hard-pressed to find any rationale for one, parse that as you will.

And as I said on Sunday night, this is partly why I'm not going to pursue the matter any further. Because I do want my own life to produce the Fruit of the Spirit. Because I do not want to be like Johnny Robertson and his bunch. What they preach isn't the freedom and joy that comes with a life in Christ. And as I said on camera the other night: "I pity Johnny Robertson." He probably will never know what it means to be free by the grace of God.

After I finished in front of the camera, I had a DVD of Schrodinger's Bedroom which ran. That was included in the DVD that I'd prepared too. Again, because I knew that 25 minutes wasn't long enough to fully counter all the harm these men have done and continue to do... and also because I'd promised the cast and crew of the film that I'd get it broadcast on television somehow. Lo and behold, God let me uphold that promise. So on that note alone, I'll consider Sunday night a success.

I didn't watch Robertson's show, which came on after mine. I do understand that he said something about how I wouldn't speak to him as he was entering the building. Which is a lie: I didn't even see Robertson at all. I saw his car, but did not happen to notice him. And he was nowhere in the WGSR studio as my friend and I were leaving, either. So he was either invisible to the naked eye, or he broadcast an outright falsehood.

I did happen to catch him on the "warm up show" yesterday afternoon. The gist of what he was saying was: "Chris was an idiot to think he could take us on. He can't do it. We won! He threw in the towel! Yay for us! We are better than he is! We are better than ANYONE!"

Can anyone imagine Peter, or Paul, or the Apostle John, or any other follower of Christ of the first century, carrying on like this?

As I said on Sunday night, Christianity is not a competition. I wasn't out to "beat" Robertson anyway. That's never what this has been all about. It's Robertson and his bunch that insists on framing this as an "us versus them" situation. As if there is some tangible prize that is up for grabs.

All of this started with a question that I asked Johnny Robertson. Almost 3 months later, he still cannot answer it.

I'm going to assume at this point that for all the power and authority that he claims, that he cannot do so simple a thing as give us an answer.

If Robertson insists that this be a contest, and if he cannot even attempt to tell us how what he is doing is giving the glory to God and showing Christ's love to others...

...if Johnny Robertson can only run and hide behind Shirley Phelps Roper's skirt...

...then I suppose that I've beaten Johnny Robertson by default.

There is nothing that Robertson can do about that. And for years to come, the permanent record that people will be able to find on their own is going to reflect that: that in the arena of ideas, Chris Knight did beat Johnny Robertson.

I would rather have the long-term victory than be able to "brag" like Robertson did yesterday.

As I said on Sunday night, I'm not going to spend any more time on Johnny Robertson. I asked him a question, he can't answer it. It can't ever be said that I didn't try. The real reason I came to him with my question to begin with is to give him a choice. Who am I to think that I would succeed where so many others have failed? But he had to be given a choice all the same. That's done. I can't do anything else.

Here it is: What Does the Bible REALLY Say?, the presentation that I had made, but did not run, on Sunday night...

If certain technical issues can be resolved, I will post the live broadcast here also.

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Dr. Jim Austin passes away

A friend let me know a short while ago that Dr. Jim Austin of Eden, one of the at-large members of the Rockingham County Board of Education, passed away yesterday morning at his home. He leaves a wife and two daughters.

The photo on the right is when he was sworn in on December 11, 2006.

And right now, on top of everything else that's happened over the past few days, my heart's a wreck after hearing this news.

From the moment Jim and I met during the election in 2006, I liked him immediately. We had a long conversation following a school board meeting a few months before election day, and I thought then that he was going to be a fine addition to the board. It came as no surprise that he not only won a seat, but came in first place.

And when he began his term of office, Jim brought the same warm demeanor and affirming logic to his post. Whether you agreed with him on everything or not (and admittedly there were times when we disagreed) no one ever doubted that wherever Jim stood on a position, it was only because he sincerely believed in it for the good of the people he was serving.

Personally, I think that Jim's definitive hour on the board happened last July, during the meeting about the school uniforms in the Reidsville schools. Austin had voted for the uniforms a few months prior to the meeting. But then he wound up as one of those who voted to rescind the original vote. "People change their minds," he observed. So simple and yet something so far beyond the ken of too many elected officials these days. Jim not only voted to rescind, but he was the one who made the motion to vote on the matter. If he didn't have it already, Jim gained a lot of respect across the county for how he handled the issue that night.

There wasn't a meeting that I attended where Jim and I didn't get a chance to talk. And we wound up talking about an awful lot. I'm going to miss those moments.

J. Brian Ewing has written a story for the News & Record with more information about the life of Dr. Jim Austin.

EDIT 11:12 p.m. EST: Heather Smith has written a VERY good article about Dr. Austin for the Media General newspapers.

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To whom it may concern ...

"... something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told."

-- Habakuk 1:5

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"Silence in the Library": Chris finally reviews last week's DOCTOR WHO!

What, you think that helping with a musical production, coining a new phrase and even an encounter with evil incarnate would keep me from doing a review of "Silence in the Library", this past week's new episode of Doctor Who?! The action never stops on this blog, bay-bee!

"We're near the equator... so this must be BIOGRAPHIES!"

"Without death they would be only comedies."

"A million million lifeforms... and silence in the library."

"Message follows: Run. For God's sake run."

"It's the Fifty-First Century. That's like donating a park bench."

"It's moved."

"I'm a time-traveler. I point and laugh at archaeologists."

"Almost every species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark. But they're wrong. Because it's not irrational."

"Doctor. Please tell me you know who I am."

"Hello. Are you in my television?"

"My grandfather lasted a day. He kept talking about his shoelaces."

"Yeah. You gave it to me."

"Donna Noble has been saved."

"Hey, who turned out the lights?"

Steven Moffat has already written three of my favorite episodes of the revived Doctor Who series: the two-parter consisting of "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" for Christopher Eccleston's season as the Doctor, and 2006's stunning "The Girl in the Fireplace" (and I haven't seen it yet but I've heard his "Blink" last year was absolutely amazing). He's also set to take over production of the show beginning in the 2010 season (after the hiatus next season so that David Tennant can fulfill a commitment to star in Hamlet for the London stage) and if "Silence in the Library" is any indication, we can expect great things from Moffat in the future.

The episode begins with a cerebral scene involving a little girl (Eve Newton) floating across a very Coruscant-ish city landscape, before she opens her eyes and finds herself facing her father and a psychiatrist. The next moment, the Doctor (Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate) are bursting through the doors on The Library: the largest library in existence and so large, it covers an entire planet and needs no other proper name. All well and good, except that the Library is quiet... too quiet. Other than the Doctor and Donna, there's not a single living being in sight, though the Library's computer declares that there is a vast number of lifeforms on the planet. Then a team of archaeologists arrives, led by Professor River Song (Alex Kingston): a woman who hints very strongly throughout the episode that she and the Doctor have met before.

"Silence in the Library" is a downright spooky and jarring episode: something that Moffat has demonstrated he can pull off extremely well. The one negative critique that I would have about the episode is that there's a bit too much re-use of the "catchphrase cacophony" to elicit fright: Moffat did it with "The Empty Child" and he does it again here. But after everything else that is strong about this episode, this is a very minor thing. I thought that the Nodes were a chilling concept, but even those pale next to the idea of the Data Ghosts. Something about that is sincerely unnerving to think about, almost as if it might someday become a very real phenomenon. I mean, when you think about it, the Data Ghosts are just an after-effect of neurologically-enhanced blogging. Scary stuff...

The story concludes in "Forest of the Dead", which should be airing on the BBC for our British friends any moment now, and will no doubt be made available for download later this evening. I'll try to do a review of that one soon, too!

"Silence in the Library" gets 4 and 1/2 Sonic Screwdrivers out of 5.

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Two people I know are getting married today

First there's Roger Weber, who I've known for literally all my life. He ties the knot today here in Reidsville, North Carolina.

And then there's the lovely and effervescent Abby Prince of WebProNews, who I came to know this past year. According to our sources she's getting hitched somewhere in Kentucky.

Congratulations to Roger and to Abby and their respective spouses-to-be! May God bless you today, and it is our prayer that you and your loved ones have a long and happy life together :-)

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CHILDREN OF EDEN Update: 14 Days to Opening Night

Two weeks from tonight, we will all be in makeup and costume, and about to take to the stage with the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Children of Eden.

We have come a very long way in a short time. But there's still plenty more to do.

The past few nights have been spent on cleaning up the choreography for the bigger numbers. Last night it was work on "In The Beginning" and "The Naming", and that one was especially fun to watch. The two that I'm working on most in my spare time have been the dances for "Generations" and "Ain't It Good". I've written about it before here and I have to admit again: "Ain't It Good" might be the most difficult song of the show... but I absolutely think it's going to rock the house when we get to perform it. It might get easier to practice when we get everything so far as the stage floor put in place.

In case anyone's wondering why there aren't pictures to go along with these reports: I've been taking some, but have been asked not to post them here. I might be able to post a pic of me in costume sometime next week though. And I'll be getting a scan of the production's poster up soon too :-)

Best part of doing this has been getting to know a lot of new and interesting people. I don't think it's possible to work on a show like Children of Eden and put your heart into it, without bonding with each other somehow. Everything about Children of Eden contributes to a camaraderie that I think is going to go with us for the rest of our lives.

Just one more reason why I'm very thankful for the opportunity to be in this production.

Oh yeah, last night I wore one of the t-shirts that I made for Forcery. Most other people have been wearing shirts from productions they've been in. I didn't have one of those, so I thought "Okay, I'll just wear a shirt from the movie that I made!" Got a lot of people asking about it, 'specially the kids. I'm already thinking that I've wound up with a huge pool of talent that I could ask to help me out with my projects down the road.

Another update sometime next week!

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STAR WARS BLUEPRINTS: THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION coming in August

This has to be the gnarliest cover for a printed Star Wars product that I've ever seen. Behold the box for Star Wars Blueprints: The Ultimate Collection...

That pic alone reinforces something that's taken me awhile to really grasp: that for all his dreaded reputation, Darth Vader is a pretty pitiful character. Imagine being a scorched torso with no arms or legs, not even able to breathe on your own, being surrounded by all of that intrusive technology just to keep you alive. Never mind about also having to use it to enforce the will of your dark master. Last week I was able to finally score - after months of looking - the Battle Damaged Darth Vader action figure from The Force Unleashed line. The girl at the checkout counter saw what she was ringing up and said "Oh God that's sick!" And then she said that she could no longer hate Vader as a character either, that it was "so sad" what happened to him.

Funny how our perception of things changes over time, eh?

Anyhoo, Star Wars Blueprints: The Ultimate Collection is scheduled to come out August 4th with a list price of $19.99, and will also include details plans of the Millennium Falcon (the current accepted version of the layout anyway), the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, the Death Star, and lightsabers and blasters.

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YouTube adds Video Annotations feature

Yesterday YouTube rolled out a new feature called Video Annotations. It's a way to add interactive content to YouTube videos and after playing around with it some, I think this might be one of the best things that YouTube has done yet for its users. You can include commentary, add dialogue balloons, even link to other YouTube videos. Lots of possibilities here. During a break this morning I gave The Baritones the "Pop-Up Video" treatment...

I'm thinking, whenever I get the time, to include annotations for Forcery and Schrodinger's Bedroom as well. By the way, right now Video Annotations is a beta feature and doesn't support embedded videos (so you'll have to click on The Baritones link above to check it out). It's also automatically on by default, but you can toggle the feature with a new button that's to the right of the "full screen" one (it's the button that's pointing upward in the lower-right of the above pic).

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LOST: Deleted fence scene from "The Economist"

Hey gang: still reeling from the events of "There's No Place Like Home", the season finale of Lost that aired last week? Not looking forward to eight months of withdrawal from one of the greatest television shows ever? Well, here's something that maybe will help ease the suffering. Notorious Lost blogger DocArzt and his bunch have scored the video of a deleted scene from the episode "The Economist". It depicts Kate, Sayid and Miles arriving at the security fence surrounding the Barracks. A bit of revelation here about Miles, who of all the new characters this season was among the most intriguing and we still don't know much about him. Anyhoo, he has a great scene here. Enjoy!

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WARGAMES and the Great Hacking Scare of 1983

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the release of WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. AMC was running it last night and I wound up watching a good part of it.

In case you've never seen it before, WarGames is about David Lightman, a high school student who's an unmotivated slacker in class but a first-rate computer hacker at home. David's real talent is running automated searches for systems that can be dialed into via phone modem, and then cracking their security. While trying to locate a new video game company's system so he can do his own brand of beta-testing, David unknowingly winds up accessing a computer at NORAD and nearly starts World War III from his bedroom.

A quarter-century later, WarGames still holds up extremely well. Practically all of the technology depicted is now horribly dated (look at the size of those floppies that David is using!) but in spite of that, and perhaps even because of it, WarGames has become a curiously good snapshot of both Cold War bunker mentality and the introduction of computers into civilian life. It is also, I believe, one of the more successful morality tales about the fear of nuclear war: WarGames is not a "political" film as many of the time were. And neither does it make anyone out to be "the good guys" and "the bad guys". The genius of WarGames's longevity is that it wisely adheres to its own lesson: that to win the game, sometimes you have to choose not to play the game at all.

I thought that WarGames also merited mentioning (in addition to it being a terrific film) because of the reaction that it engendered upon its release. With its depiction of teens hacking into school systems to change their own grades, and then breaking into military-grade mainframes and coming a hair's-breadth from nuking the whole planet, WarGames initiated unusual paranoia in the mainstream press about the power of computers. I remember one CBS Evening News report at the time that seriously questioned whether parents should allow their children to access the outside world via their personal computers at home. A magazine article suggested that computer modems be "locked up" just like firearms, to keep them out of the reach of teenagers. I even heard one pundit proclaim that there was no need for regular people to be able to log in to a remote system: that if you need to access your bank account, a friendly teller was just a short drive away.

And Bill Gates once declared that the average person would never have a need for more than 640 kilobytes of memory in a personal computer, too.

Such news stories were very fashionable in 1983, and looking back I think the corporate media unwittingly demonstrated the moral of WarGames. It was an unfounded fear but the press played on it, and it wound up embedding itself into the popular conscience. I know of one friend whose parents were so horrified at the prospect of "accidentally" breaking into an unauthorized computer system, that they didn't buy a computer at all until 1998! After their fears were allayed, they eventually got on the Internet and found that it was a fine thing.

Now to be fair, WarGames was not the first movie about computers going awry and driving mankind toward nuclear apocalypse. 1970's Colossus: The Forbin Project might have been the first to explore the theme, and of course there as also The Terminator. Many will convincingly argue that Dr. Strangelove had them all beat.

But WarGames was different: it wasn't only a computer glitch in a far-removed system or a demented military officer which we had to fear could doom all mankind. After WarGames, we were told that Jack D. Ripper could be anybody.

I don't know if the paranoia was completely without merit, though, but only because of one funny incident that happened to me. In the fall of 1994 I was using my first real computer to dial into various bulletin board systems, and there was one that had just started up in Eden. I tried to dial into it but instead of a computer I heard a voice telling me that "This number is not in service". I changed one digit in the prefix, thinking that maybe it was just the wrong number that I had been given. This time the modem did connect to another one, but the terminal window filled with gibberish. I changed the modem protocol, tried it again... and found that I had dialed into the computer system for the Eden branch of NationsBank (now Bank of America)! What was the first thing that popped into mind? Yup: WarGames. I hit the disconnect button so fast that I can still remember my heart pounding against my rib cage.

A few months after WarGames came out CBS began airing Whiz Kids, about a group of teenagers who built their own supercomputers and used it to solve crimes, and by that time the Great Hacking Scare of 1983 was in full swing. CBS execs were quick to emphasize that what the Whiz Kids characters did could not easily be pulled off in real life (which might have backfired: Whiz Kids had great potential but it was canceled after one season). The fear had pretty much diminished by 1987 when ABC's Max Headroom (a groundbreaking show that I've long thought has never been fully appreciated) came out, but it would still rear its head in the years to come, particularly with movies like 1992's Sneakers and Hackers in 1995. And then the success of Independence Day in 1996 finally turned the tables on the mistrust of computers as a tool. Suddenly hacking was not something that we worried would destroy the world: it could even save the world if it had to.

But for a long time, beginning in those strange days of 1983, there was a hesitancy to reach out and harness the computer: just as early man no doubt originally feared the flame. WarGames clearly announced that the digital fire, originally the province of the technology gods, was now a boon to mere mortals. And with it came a choice: we could use it to build, or to burn.

I like to believe that we have generally chosen the former.

EDIT 4:42 p.m. EST: This post has been Slashdotted! That's three times since this past August that this blog has been featured on Slashdot...

We're also getting lots of visitors today via the post about the DHARMA Initiative snacks, presumably from countries that are either about to start watching Lost Season 4 or are already at the season finale. Welcome to everyone who's found their way to this blog, however it is ya got here :-)

And it has been brought to my attention that Bill Gates apparently did NOT make the statement famously attributed to him about 640K of memory. Which is news to me 'cuz I was hearing that ever since taking C++ programming in college years ago. So I happily stand corrected.

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Review of INDIANA JONES: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE

Yesterday I bought a copy of Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide. I've long been a fan of DK Publishing's Star Wars books, which have been in the format of visual dictionaries and beautifully illustrated cutaways of locations and vehicles in the Star Wars saga.

Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide continues DK's tradition in providing lush eye candy and detailed information, this time about a certain globe-trotting archaeologist. Written by James Luceno (who has been praised on this blog numerous times for his Star Wars work), the book covers most of the span of what we know about the life and times of Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr, beginning with the birth of his father in Scotland in 1872. Indy himself is born in 1899 and considerable space is devoted to his early exploits (which were documented in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series). The book pics up the pace with the events of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1935, on through Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, while also covering material that was introduced in various novels, comics and video games. And being that this is the season of (finally!) a new Indiana Jones movie, it's only fitting that there is sumptuous information regarding Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, including more about Mac, Mutt, and Spalko. The book concludes with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Indiana Jones movies, and some of the merchandise and marketing that has been done for the franchise over the years.

This book is going to be one that I will certainly appreciate having on my shelf for many years to come. However, it's not absolutely complete in my opinion. There is nothing at all about "Older Indy", the 93-year old version played by George Hall in the bookends for ABC's original run of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. In addition to how those aren't in the DVD sets and haven't been shown in the occasional reruns on television for some time, it's enough to make me wonder if George Lucas now considers those not "canon". Which would be a darn tragedy 'cuz the bookends with George Hall as Indy were awesome! And strangely, the events of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, considered by many to be the finest Indiana Jones video game ever and one of the best of the entire graphic adventure genre, are not mentioned at all (although Sophia Hapgood is referenced, as is the Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine game).

But in light of what else is in this book, Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide is still a must-have for fans of Indy. I particularly enjoy the cut-away illustrations for the buried city of Tanis, Pankot Palace and the Thuggee mines, and the Grail Temple (along with the catacombs beneath Venice: it turns out that St. Mark is buried down there too).

I was expecting nothing but goodness to come from Luceno and DK with their treatment of the Indiana Jones saga, and they have certainly delivered fortune and glory with Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide. Heartily recommended!

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Ballard: Titanic search was cover-up for U.S. Government mission

Robert Ballard has come forward with something very interesting: his successful 1985 search for the Titanic was only a cover story for a mission from the United States Government.

The deal was: Ballard would assist the U.S. Navy in examining the wreckage of two American nuclear submarines - the Thresher and the Scorpion - that were lost at sea in the Atlantic during the 1960s. At the time, there was concern that the Soviet Union might somehow find and exploit the sunken subs. The expedition was funded by the government and upon completion, Ballard would be free to continue his quest for the Titanic. All fine and dandy... except few people expected him to find the thing! Some in the Navy were alarmed that Ballard's discovery might arouse suspicion, but because of all the publicity about the Titanic itself nobody dared question the purpose of Ballard's mission.

Head over to the National Geographic website for more on the story.

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THE KNIGHT SHIFT: In Color! Live on WGSR this Sunday night

Yesterday afternoon WGSR Star 39 General Manager Charles Roark devoted the 4:30 "warm-up show" to what happened on Sunday night on the street in front of the station, when I gave Johnny Robertson of the "Church Of Christ In Name Only" the opportunity to debate me on live television. Since Robertson had already declared he was going to talk about me and this blog on his show anyway, and had strongly stated that I wouldn't debate him, I took him at his word and showed up at the station with my Bible and video camera and gave him the chance to take me on during a live broadcast. He refused, and he couldn't answer the questions I was asking him either.

Long story short: Charles Roark has offered me 25 minutes of free airtime this coming Sunday night at 8 p.m.

I'm taking him up on it.

All I'm prepared to say right now is that it won't be a live debate between myself and Johnny Robertson. He had that chance on Sunday night. Charles Roark is graciously letting me have this valuable time to present another perspective, and I'm going to use it as best that I can. Neither will it be an interview. I've something in mind and I'm sticking to it.

Besides, Robertson will have an hour and a half after I'm on the air all to himself, to do whatever he likes. I'm going to respect the time alloted to him as he will no doubt respect the time alloted to me.

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Man threatened with arrest for wearing TRANSFORMERS t-shirt

Brad Jayokody, pictured below, was threatened by security personnel at London's Heathrow Airport because his t-shirt depicting Optimus Prime from the movie Transformers was considered offensive.

So much for "Freedom is the right of ALL sentient beings!" ...

Read the rest of the story here.

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CONFRONTING JOHNNY ROBERTSON: YouTube videos of encounter with "Church of Christ" preacher

As I reported earlier, last night I gave Johnny Robertson of the Martinsville Church of Christ (which I call the "Church Of Christ In Name Only" because it has NOTHING to do with the traditional Churches of Christ) the opportunity to debate me on live television, since he's apparently been wanting me to mix it up with him over a matter of theology. You can read what I wrote about what happened at the above link.

Here at last is the video of what happened.

Part 1 is up already. I'm working on Part 2 now and it might even go to a Part 3. But in the meantime, have at it...

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