Isaac Hayes has passed away

Word is breaking right now that singer/songwriter/actor Isaac Hayes has passed away.

That's how I'm always going to remember him as. The very first time that I heard of him: when he played the Duke in Escape from New York.

Hayes also wrote and performed the theme song from Shaft. And of course he was Chef on South Park, before that very odd dispute with the producers.

Adding him to the list of people for whom to keep their families in our thoughts and prayers.

EDIT 3:49 p.m. EST: Here's the first real news story that I've found about Hayes's death.

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RED DAWN? Google reports Russians attacking Savannah, Georgia

"WOLVERINES!"

(Look, somebody had to say it... :-)

In a very wonky case of mistaken identity, Google News has been reporting that the Russian Army is invading Georgia... as in, Georgia in the southeastern United States! The mix-up stems from the trouble going on with Russia and Georgia, the country in the Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian.

Don't worry folks. Even if the Russians take Savannah, there'll be hell to pay when they get to Athens. GO DAWGS!

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The hope of new life, the promises of a new life together

A number of things are "clicking" perfectly this weekend. Not just for me personally but for a number of people that God is also showering His blessings upon...

First there's Jenna Olwin, who over the past few years has not only become a very dear friend to Lisa and I but also a wonderful sister in the Lord, who will tie the knot with her boyfriend and soul-mate Lou tomorrow. Here's her blog post about getting engaged from back in March. There might be pictures that I can post soon afterward of the wonderful event.

And then in the wee hours of this morning my friend Chris Rash and his wife celebrated the birth of Reagan, their first child and a beautiful baby girl!

Congratulations to Jenna and Lou, and to Chris and Ashley and Reagan! Y'all are definitely in our prayers this weekend :-)

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Bernie Mac has passed away

Comedian and actor Bernie Mac has passed away from pneumonia complications at age 50.

That's one bit of news that I sure wasn't anticipating.

A very funny and talented person. And seemed like way too nice a guy to leave us at a pretty young age.

I thought his television show was pretty good and always had a good moral at the end. His work in Ocean's Eleven and its sequels was terrific. And there was Transformers of course: his portrayal of used-car dealer Bobby Bolivia was uproariosly funny!

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family today.

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The brewing war between Russia and Georgia

In case anyone's paying attention, this is why the United States should exercise a hella lotta caution before getting involved in anyone else's business.

I'm hearing mixed word on what started this: the Georgians claim the Russians invaded and the Russians are stating that missiles from Georgia attacked their military positions. It's almost like a repeat of Fort Sumter.

The U.S. aligned itself with Georgia awhile back. A lot of people are saying that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was counting on that support when he tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Which pretty much means that because of this damnable Gordian Knot of entangling alliances, that the United States might soon find itself at extreme odds with Russia and Cold War II will have officially begun.

Oh yeah, I'm hearing that there are currently about twelve hundred American military personnel - ironically, many from our own state of Georgia (and lots from around Atlanta) - that are in Georgia (the country in the Caucasus in Europe) for joint exercises with the Georgian army.

Meanwhile, most Americans are either (a) watching the Olympics, (b) listening to John Edwards confess his dalliances, or (c) seriously considering that Paris Hilton should run for Congress. Oblivious to the fact that for all intents and purpose, this is darn nearly an identical scenario to that which began World War I.

Pat Buchanan was right: "We are an unserious people in a serious time."

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Video of alleged ghost at Asheville High School

Asheville High School is not just a great school, it's a beautiful building. I know 'cuz some years ago I did a lot of substitute teaching there. So I'm pretty familiar with the layout of the place and the kind of people there. Which makes this story all the more interesting for me personally...

A video surveillance camera at Asheville High has purportedly captured the moving image of a ghost. Some are saying that it looks to be the size and shape of a child as it darts around the atrium in the early morning hours of August 1st.

Could it be? When I heard about a "haunted" high school in Asheville, the first thing that popped into my mind was Erwin High School, which you would expect to be haunted since they build the place on top of Buncombe County's old "potter's field" (you can still see pits in the ground from where they removed the coffins, and sometimes bits of bone and nail wind up on the surface after a heavy rain). I heard plenty of ghost stories about Erwin, but this is the first that I'm hearing about Asheville High being spooked. It is rather old for a school building: dating back to 1929. Doubtless a building with such a long history has seen its share of haunting experiences, spectral or no.

But I think in this case, judging by the video I'm seeing here, we need not be alarmed. It seems very much to be nothing more than a moth that alighted on the protective dome covering of the camera. You can even pick out its silhouette against the more well-lit parts of the footage.

So I don't think there's any ghost here. But students at Asheville High need not be disappointed: between Helen's Bridge and Battle Mansion and of course the Pink Lady of Grove Park Inn, there's plenty of supernatural delight to be found around Asheville!

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Ozzy Osbourne to be playable character in GUITAR HERO WORLD TOUR

I've talked about Rock Band a lot on this blog ('cuz Lisa and I play it together all the time) and we're eager for Rock Band 2 next month, but I'm also a big fan of the Guitar Hero games. Lisa got me Guitar Hero III for my birthday a few months ago. Now if only I can get past Slash...

Well, the next few months are going to be pure crazy on the rhythm gaming front, with Rock Band 2 and then Guitar Hero World Tour fighting for the coveted space under the Christmas tree. Today Activision released gobs of new info about Guitar Hero World Tour, including how Ozzy Osbourne will be a playable avatar in the game.

Activision should program an "Easter egg" that lets you bite the head off a live chicken on stage while playing Ozzy. It would triple sales of Guitar Hero World Tour!

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Apple working on Wi-Fi streaming iTunes

Mac Rumors has found a story about a very cool technical innovation that Apple is researching. It involves wireless streaming of the iTunes on your home computer to your iPhone or iPod Touch, wherever you happen to be! So, say you're driving through Colorado and your home is in Atlanta, and you want to dial up a song (maybe even a video) on your Apple appliance that you don't happen to have on the device itself. So long as you're in a Wi-Fi or cellular hotspot, you'll be able to tell the iPhone or iPod Touch to "phone home" and stream the song or other file to wherever you are.

Now, that is some seriously sweet innovation. I'm beginning to see why Apple devotees are so loyal to the House of Jobs :-)

In related news, there's been considerable buzz about a possible "iPhone nano" coming out later this year, said to be a "pay as you go" iPhone. Personally, I think an iPhone shuffle would be more fun: no display, and it dials random numbers whenever you use it :-P

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Kenneth Johnson is making V into a big-screen feature?!

That's what Ain't It Cool News is reporting today. The guys at Latino Film Review seem to have gotten their hands on the proposal script, and it reads like a combo of the two miniseries (minus that "Starchild" crap, well let's hope it's not in it anyway).

Even if this specific project never gets made, I don't care. I'm just glad to hear that there is some movement afoot to bring V back to the screen.

Hopefully as a re-imagined and updated story, but maintaining the same basic premise. With Kenneth Johnson given complete control over it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if NBC had let him run V the way he intended, it would have become something truly monumental. V, the original 1983 miniseries, is still considered one of the most memorable achievements of that decade's television.

And there's been no better time to resurrect V than now. If the new Battlestar Galactica can soar, a new V would practically become a license to print money for whatever studio produces it.

I just have one request to Johnson and the other powers-that-be. If and when V gets relaunched, please, please include an adaptation of the final scene from Part 1 of the original V miniseries. 'Cuz a quarter-century later I still feel a lump in my throat when I see Abraham, the elderly Jewish man wonderfully played by Leonard Cimino, admonishing those kids...

"No! If you're going to do it, do it right. I'll show you."

(Abraham guides the teen's hand as he spray-paints a blood-red "V" on the Visitor poster)

"You understand? For VICTORY! Go tell your friends."

If they include an update for that scene that's just as powerful as the original, I swear that I will see V five times on opening day.

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Medical MacGyver saves baby's life with home-brewed dialysis machine

BBC News has an uplifting story about Dr. Malcolm Coulthard, a British kidney specialist. A few years ago he was given a patient: a baby girl who was born with a life-threatening condition that demanded dialysis treatment. Unfortunately the normal dialysis machines were way too big to be used on someone with such small weight.

So Dr. Coulthard built a dialysis machine that would do the job, using scrounged-up parts and literally working out of his garage.

Hit the link above for the rest of this neat story. Although as at least one smart-alec has remarked on Slashdot, unless Coulthard used chewing gum he's still got nothing on MacGyver :-P

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THE FUGITIVE premiered 15 years ago today

One of my all-time favorite movies, The Fugitive, came out fifteen years ago today, on August 6th, 1993.

(How much is it one of my favorites? Well, it's on my iPod, for one thing...)

Starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive was based on the 1960s television series about Dr. Richard Kimble, a physician who is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, then escapes and goes on a cross-country search for the real killer: a one-armed man. Complicating matters is Phillip Gerard, a law enforcement agent obsessed with recapturing Kimble.

The movie took a number of liberties with the story from the television show. But it also benefited from enormous production values and a very strong cast which also included Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, and Julianne Moore in one of her first film roles. Also among the cast, playing Frederick Sykes (AKA "the one-armed man") was Andreas Katsulas, who soon afterward gained international acclaim for his portrayal of G'Kar on Babylon 5. The Fugitive became one of the biggest hits of 1993 and a defining motion picture for the next decade and beyond.

Wanna know something really cool? I have, in my possession, some pieces of the prison bus that gets hit by the train!

How'd that happen? Not many people know this but The Fugitive, although it takes place in the state of Illinois, had a lot of filming done for it in the mountains of North Carolina. Especially in and around Sylva. Some years ago I was visiting my sister when she was a student at Western Carolina. While I was waiting for her to get off work I went around town and took pictures of the various sites used in The Fugitive. I got to visit Taylor Auto (where Kimble steals the clothes) and found the street that he's walking along when he sees the hospital sign. A short distance away in Dillsboro is the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad. If you know where to look, you can see the train and bus wreckage from the main road. Well, I just asked, and the nice folks said that I could go spend a few minutes getting a close-up peek at the bus and train. There were two buses they used to make that scene, and there was busted-out glass all over. I picked up a few shards and wrapped them in some Kleenex that I happened to have on me. Maybe someday I'll figure out a good way to display 'em...

(Yeah I have pictures to back all this up too, but don't have 'em handy at the moment.)

Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva was used extensively in the movie. That's the place where Kimble treats his wound and shaves off his beard and mustache. I've heard that the hospital made a lot of nice improvements to the place for the dough they got from the producers in exchange for it being used as a filming location. The very famous dam sequence was shot at Cheoah Dam in Graham County (although some internal scenes were filmed back in Chicago in some abandoned freight tunnels).

Think I'll honor the occasion later tonight by watching this awesome movie again. After I finally finish my review of The Dark Knight 'course... :-)

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Gymnastics at Olympics drops "perfect 10" scoring

Remember how legendary Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton became when they each scored a perfect 10 in their Olympic gymnastics competitions? Heck, "Perfect 10" has become a part of our vernacular because of their achievements and those of other gymnasts. Well, we can kiss any hope of seeing some 10s at the Beijing Olympics goodbye 'cuz a new scoring system completely gets rid of the traditional 10.0 grade.

In its place is a convoluted scheme that not only doesn't reward poise and grace, it darn nearly penalizes it: demanding that gymnasts produce "bigger and better"...

Nastia Liukin of the United States team, for example, performs a routine on the uneven bars that has a sky-high difficulty value of 7.7. Her father and coach, Valeri Liukin, crunched numbers last year to invent the complex, high-scoring routine.

He did the calculations on a Post-it before handing it to his daughter at practice one day. She gasped.

"I was like: Wow, you want me to do all of that? Is that possible?" Nastia Liukin said. "But then I realized that I need to do all that with this new scoring, if I even want to think about a gold medal. I said: OK, cool. I'll learn it."

It seems like a minor thing to be upset about. But what bothers me is that this move represents something that has become very widespread in this world: the belief that since there is no real attainable perfection, that we can over-compensate with bulk quantity. I can envision lots of gymnasts now, coming to spend most of their at a computer trying to "calculate the best possible routine" instead of getting out there and throwing themselves at the equipment... which is the only way that anyone grows and gets better. It comes by hard work and firsthand experience, not running it through simulations. And as Retton and Comaneci and others have proved, perfection at something is possible. It just comes from being dedicated to making the most of the talents you've been given.

And is it just me, or does practically everything about these Olympics scream out massive fail?

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So much to write...

...and so little time.

(And yes, that The Dark Knight review is still coming!)

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Sickest YouTube video ever?

I'm not going to embed this. In fact, I don't know if it'll work as an embed. This particular video has age verification enabled, so you've got to be a registered YouTube user and click through the agreement that yes, you're old enough and you do want to watch.

No, it's not pornography. But it's not for the squeamish, either. And it is legit. I first heard about this clip two years ago, and if a friend hadn't passed it along I never would have known that it was available for public viewing.

You've probably seen enactments of this in movies and television. But this - a very rare and early film shot in a prison in Hanoi, Vietnam - depicts the real thing.

What is it?

The executions of two prisoners by guillotine... with the camera showing the heads falling into the basket.

Two things that strike me as I watch this. The first is how rapidly each execution is carried out (in consideration of how fast the film is progressing). Various dramatic presentations have it as something of a drawn-out affair of bringing the condemned to the guillotine, then lowered into position and a wait of several moments before the blade drops. Here we see how it usually happened: from the time the prisoner was brought to the machine, execution usually took place less than 30 seconds later. Which I assume was a good thing, and didn't give the prisoner much time to dwell on being placed inside such a contraption... especially one with a razor poised to slice off his or her noggin.

The second thing which surprised me very much is how much of a recoil there is from the blade after it finishes dropping. Every time I've seen the guillotine used in a movie, the blade descends and then stops abruptly as if there were no real inertia. But as we see in this footage, the blade bounces quite a few times before finally coming to rest. Probably indicates some kind of "shock absorbing" mechanism, 'cuz otherwise the guillotine would likely tear itself apart after a small amount of use.

It's not the most gruesome thing that I've seen as a historian (I've looked at stuff from the Nazi era that most people don't even know exists and for their sake I hope they never do) but I'll admit: there's some horrible fascination at seeing such a legendary device carrying out its function.

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Scientists find the hottest water on Earth

Just south of the equator and nearly two miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, researchers have discovered the hottest liquid water ever found on Earth, in a state that has never before been observed in the natural world. Hydrothermal vents are discharging water in a "supercritical" state (I'm thinking it's analogous to plasma as a super-heated gas) that has been recorded to get as hot as 464 degrees Celsius. For us American folks, that's a whopping 867 degrees Fahrenheit for liquid water! The conditions are so adverse surrounding the vents that computer modeling is the only way to study them, since regular equipment would melt from the heat.

Interesting stuff. Great fodder for discussion for any science and physics teachers out there who want to get their students thinking about how things like temperature and pressure affect water's properties.

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This blog has just been notified of an important anniversary

We missed it by three days, but I don't think most people will mind if we "honor" it belatedly!

Yes folks, this past Friday, August 1st, was the thirtieth anniversary of a certain somebody going all nuts in a convenience store in east Texas, pulling out a revolver and threatening to kill the store's owner, then making off with a ridiculously tiny sum of money before being apprehended following a twenty-minute high-speed car chase... in a Ford Pinto.

(Was this same young man suicidal in addition to being an idiot?)

For that little stunt, Our Hero spent two years locked up in the prison at Huntsville (the one used for death sentences) before getting out and spending the next few as a paroled convicted felon.

And that's just the beginning...

More coming soon.

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn has passed away

The sad news is going out at this hour that Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel-winning novelist who spent decades in exile from his homeland in the Soviet Union after describing the evils of its prison system, has died at the age of 89.

Solzhenitsyn served as an officer in the Red Army during World War II (and I don't care what some people might say about it, but the Russian men and women who defended their homeland against the Nazis were among the bravest and most noble of the past century, and I've nothing but the utmost admiration for them, regardless of how nuts Stalin was). After the war, Solzhenitsyn became one of his country's most prominent dissidents, and was quickly relegated to Siberia.

It was his experiences as a prisoner of his own government that Solzhenitsyn would draw from later on, when he wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and then The Gulag Archipelago. While the western world came to admire and love him, the Soviet leadership cast him out. He spent twenty years living abroad before being hailed as a hero when he returned to a now-free Russia in 1994.

You know, we don't have very many writers like that anymore. The kind whose works can get people thinking and rile them up enough to overturn entire corrupt nations. I sure don't know of any of Solzhenitsyn's stature among us today. There's a huge void, a need, for writers like that and with Solzhenitsyn's passing, the need became that much greater.

Don't know what else to say, except...

Бог благословляет, храбрейший ратник. Мы пропустим вас.

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