Review of Steve Jablonsky's GEARS OF WAR 2: THE SOUNDTRACK

Today marks the release of Gears of War 2: The Soundtrack, featuring the score that Steve Jablonsky composed for Epic's already mega-selling game. Last week I won the single-player campaign and a few days later an advance copy of the CD arrived in the mail. I've been listening to it non-stop ever since! It's also now a proud addition to my iPod, and I had it blaring out...

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And to think that I sometimes loose a screwdriver in the kitchen drawer...

A few days ago during a spacewalk at the International Space Station, astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper accidentally lost her bag of tools and it went floating away.But don't worry: Kevin Fetter of Brockville, Ontario found it last night! He was in his backyard with his satellite-observing gear, which was also armed with a good video camera. And Fetter not only spotted Stefanyshyn-Piper's bag as it scooted past the star eta Pisces, he filmed...

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U.S. elected officials flunk test on basic civics and history

On a quiz covering fundamental American history, civics and economics conducted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, United States elected officials crashed and burned. Politicians averaged 44 percent, while average citizens scored better but not by much: 49 percent. The test was given to 2,500 Americans.Want to try it yourself? Here it is.How did I do? Not bad: my score was 90.91%. I missed three questions, but one of them I'm inclined...

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Johnny Robertson: child exploiter (and this blog calls bullcrap on "Religious Review")

Before I get to the meat of this particular post, there's something that I'm gonna share here, that I think is nigh worth passing along...In the past several days, two individuals - each of whom is a highly respected and admired member of the community in this area - have volunteered to me their opinion of WGSR Star 39: the television station "serving" the market around Reidsville, North Carolina.The first person said that WGSR is an "embarrassment"...

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eHarmony to allow homosexual matching following lawsuit

Yeah you read that right: eHarmony, the relationship-matching website that's found especially strong popularity with Christians, is "going gay".From the story in The Wall Street Journal...A settlement Wednesday between eHarmony Inc. and the New Jersey attorney general requires the online heterosexual dating service to also cater to homosexuals, raising questions about whether other services that target a niche clientele could be forced to expand...

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First snow of the season

A photo I took a few minutes ago...The forecast doesn't call for any accumulation this morning. But this far ahead of winter, it's no doubt a good omen. Or maybe a bad one depending on how you look at ...

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Tomb of Copernicus found after 200 year search

It's turning out to be quite a week for the science of genetics. First the DNA of the woolly mammoth has been mostly reconstructed.And now comes word that the final resting place of Nicolas Copernicus has been positively identified.Copernicus was the sixteenth-century astronomer who turned human understanding of the heavens upside-down (and would later on invite the wrath...

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Scientists reconstitute most of woolly mammoth's DNA

Working from balls of hair recovered from Siberia, scientists have reconstructed two-thirds of the woolly mammoth's DNA sequence. The mammoth, a close relative of the modern-day elephant, has been extinct for ten thousand years (although there is some evidence that they lived as late as 1,700 B.C. and possibly survived into even more recent times).There has been discussion...

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LIFE photo archive on Google

Millions of photos from the LIFE Magazine archives going all the way back to the 1750s (they had photography in those days?) are being hosted on Google for easy searching. The complete archive isn't available yet, but Google is promising to have the full range of pictures up within a few months. I've been playing around with it since yesterday, mostly seeing how many photos from the Civil War are already up. And I have to admit that I've been...

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Official poster for LOST Season 5

Kinda reinforces the notion that for the most part, this upcoming season of Lost is going to be practically two different shows. One will be about Locke, Sawyer and the rest who were still on the island when it "moved" to God knows where (and God Himself may not even know if Ben wasn't lying for once). And the other will be about Jack's group that was able to leave, who...

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Just finished GEARS OF WAR 2

WOW!!!Gotta give it up for the crew at Epic Games.This is certainly a remarkable time for the art of video games. And that is exactly what Gears of War 2 is: art of the highest caliber.Everything about it is just darned perfect. And there's one scene in particular in the game... you'll know what I'm talking about if you've played it already... that is absolutely heartbreaking. For that bit of music alone, Steve Jablonsky deserves beaucoups of...

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Dobson should "Focus on the Finances" instead!

Focus on the Family is going broke. The ministry ummm... "organization" is being forced to lay off 202 employees, supposedly after campaigning for Proposition 8 (the "gay marriage" ban) in California cleansed its coffers of over half a million dollars. It still has 950 employees though.(What does any outfit like Focus on the Family need with more than a thousand employees?! I know of a few others who get by with much less overhead.)Maybe if Focus...

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Recession to rob many of fried turkey this Thanksgiving

See the photo on the right? That's me a few years ago on Thanksgiving, holding a golden brown, succulent deep-fried turkey. It's considered the second most dangerous form of cooking known to man (after preparing fugu) and I've done it plenty of times since 2002. And especially for family and friends, who have always enjoyed the exceptionally juicy meat that comes from preparing...

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Fabled "lost" Beatles track may finally see release

Back in 1967, about the same time that the band was working on the "White Album", the Beatles recorded an extremely avant-garde track they dubbed "Carnival of Light". The 14-minute long song was said to consist of the Beatles going completely off the chain, with screams of "Barcelona!", a church organ being played full-tilt, and a bunch of other seemingly random sounds. It was never released because it was deemed too weird and "ahead of its time".In...

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"You'll shoot your eye out!"

A Christmas Story, the classic film of Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) who pines for a Red Ryder BB gun in his stocking in Indiana circa 1940, was released twenty-five years ago today, on November 18th 1983..."How about a nice football?"I saw it twice in theaters when it came out. First Mom and Dad took my sister, my best friend Chad and I to see it, and then two weeks...

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Thirtieth anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre

This is what happens when otherwise normal individuals don't think for themselves with the minds that God gave them...It was thirty years ago today - November 18th, 1978 - that the Jonestown Massacre occurred at the People's Temple Agricultural Project near Kaituma, Guyana. Following an ambush at a nearby airstrip (which took the life of United States Representative Leo Ryan),...

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This is a STAR TREK trailer?!

This is positively unlike anything that I have ever seen done with Star Trek......and I think it's awesome!For this one, I'm gonna direct you to the full glorious Quicktime version (it's Trailer 2). I just took a look at it in 480P and was blown away. Wait 'til you see the first scene in this thing: it's probably the most UN-Star Trek-ish image produced in the entire forty-some...

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