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At some kind of pretentious pow-wow called TED, Bill Gates spoke to the audience about the efforts his foundation is undertaking to wipe out malaria. But being not content to deliver a simple speech, Gates engaged in some rather disturbing performance art... and unleashed a swarm of mosquitoes on the assembly of technocrats. "Not only poor people should experience this!", Gates declared, as he released his airborne vector of blood-sucking insects at the crowd.
Doesn't this come awfully close to being an act of biological terrorism? I mean, it's not too far a stretch from this stupid stunt by Gates, to purposefully introducing mosquitoes laden with weapon-grade pathogens into a major metropolitan area.
And then again, some people will say that Bill Gates has been disseminating bugs all his career, so why should this be any different...
That sound and probable accompanying seismic activity you might have sensed in the past ten minutes was millions of Lost fans bellowing out a collective "Whoa!!!"
Four episodes into Season 5, and if anything Lost is gaining momentum, not losing it. I thought "The Little Prince" was even better than last week's "Jughead". It seemed perfectly balanced with everything that makes this show, perhaps the best on television right now. It had action, it had humor, it had the depth of character (I especially liked Locke's line about how he didn't want to undo the pain in his life, that the pain is what made him who he was). And it had an abundance of new mystery.
And yeah: he's back and he's alive!
"The Little Prince" might be the best episode of the new season so far. Up next week: "This Place is Death".
High-tech practical jokers in three states have declared war on those electronic road signs that DMVs put out to relay information to drivers. Here's what one sign in Austin, Texas alerted motorists to...
But these weren't ordinary zombies, mind you. They were "Nazi zombies", from which people were urged to flee toward cooler climates. While Texas and Illinois got plagued with zombies, Indiana roadways suddenly became flooded with raptors from Jurassic Park.
I must say: this is really starting to intrigue me a lot.
AMC's website has posted a video with the first sneak peak of The Prisoner: its six-hour miniseries starring Jim Caviezel (aka Jesus from The Passion of the Christ) and Sir Ian McKellan (aka Gandalf and Magneto). It's a re-imagining of the classic British television series from the late Sixties created by and starring Patrick McGoohan. I've heard that before he passed away a few weeks ago, McGoohan had given his enthusiastic approval for whatever direction AMC has planned to take his concept. Just going by this video: it looks like there's a lot of respect for the original material being given here.
The Prisoner will broadcast on AMC later this year.
It's the old joke: "The inmates have take over the asylum". But when the inmates are the rogues gallery of the Caped Crusader, turned loose inside the non-Euclidean former manse of Amadeus Arkham, and the only thing their sickened minds can fixate on is Batcave-ing in your Batskull, in a game being likened to BioShock well... that's the kind of maniacal mayhem that Batman: Arkham Asylum promises to deliver. The game's story is written by Paul Dini and will feature Kevin Conroy returning as the voice of Batman and Mark Hamill reprising that of the Joker...
Batman: Arkham Asylum is due out May 1st from Rocksteady Studios and Eidos Interactive, and is being built with the Unreal Engine 3.
And speaking of all things Batman...
A lot of people have still been wondering why I didn't write a review of The Dark Knight.
Well folks, in the end... it was just too big a movie, and something so gosh-darned perfect, that there really wasn't anything left that I could possibly have said about it that hadn't been said already. But for what it's worth: I definitely consider The Dark Knight to be the finest comic book movie that has been produced to date. Christopher Nolan and his team delved into the heart and substance of Batman and his world better than any other production has done in the now seventy-year history of the character.
I thought that The Dark Knight was not only a tremendous and flawless follow-up to Batman Begins, but it built up and further explored the themes that the first movie had introduced. I think that Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker might be one of the most - if not the most - insidious and powerful portrayals of a villain in motion picture history, and in my mind he certainly deserves to posthumously win that Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars in a few weeks. The Dark Knight was my favorite movie from this past year, and I am very eager to see how the story of Nolan's Batman continues to play out (and I can definitely think of a few ways that it can, not just for one movie but for several more to come).
But while we're waiting for that third Batman flick, at least we'll have plenty of good times with what is already looking to be the best Batman-inspired video game made so far. Hey, "Batman meets BioShock in Arkham Asylum"?! I'm sooo there :-)
Just six months after initial tests of the delivery vehicle, Iran has launched its first satellite into space. Early this morning a Safir-2 rocket lifted off from a launch facility somewhere in Iran, and shortly afterward successfully inserted the Omid satellite into low-Earth orbit.
Naturally, some folks on this side of the pond are worrying about Iran using its newfound spaceborne capability to rain nuclear fire down on Washington D.C. or Tel Aviv. But I don't see too much to fret about... yet, anyway. What Iran did today is much more in the league of what the Soviets did with Sputnik. It's a few magnitudes order of greater sophistication to build a working ICBM.
That said, as someone with a life-long interest in aerospace efforts - no matter who it is who's doing the effortin' - I shall be keeping an interested eye on Iran in the near future.
In the first place, no one knows when Christ will return, no matter how many books or tapes they have produced to say they do. In Acts chapter 1, Jesus was asked by His disciples if He would, at that time, set up His kingdom. The first words out of His mouth were, "It is not for you to know." Oh, we can speculate, surmise, and make educated guesses, but that's the best we can do. It's time we were honest enough to admit it: only God knows when Christ will return. In fact, Jesus said, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36).
In the meantime, millions of Christians across America are trying to play God. They talk as if they know when Christ will come. It's actually worse than that. They have the attitude that they have no personal responsibility to defend freedom and resist despotism. They seem to look at God as some kind of glorified fireman, who is obligated to rush in at the last minute to rescue them from a burning fire--a fire that they helped ignite, or at least, refused to put out themselves when they had the opportunity to do so. It's the old, "God would not let that happen in America" syndrome...
And later on Baldwin adds this...
I believe the real reason why so many professing Christians are so apathetic and indifferent to what is happening has nothing to do with the teachings of Scripture, Bible doctrine, eschatology, or anything of the like. It has everything to do with old-fashioned laziness. Today's average Christian just flat does not want to be bothered. He has a comfortable house, an easy chair, television, and a set of golf clubs in the closet. He takes two or three weeks' vacation every year, goes to church on Sunday (a church that does not intrude on his comfort zone, of course), pays taxes, and votes for his favorite "pro-life" Republican candidate every two years, and assumes that he is a "good" Christian and "patriotic" American. He is neither!
It was on this date in 1959, just after 1 a.m., that the small plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, along with their pilot Roger Peterson, crashed into a field near Clear Lake, Iowa.
The only reason I'm really posting this is to illustrate something that I and many others have screamed ourselves hoarse about during the past several years: that there is no damned difference at all between the Republican and the Democrat parties in the United States.
In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, new Republican National Committee chairman Micheal Steele said that it was "important" for the Republican Party to "reach out" and embrace candidates who are pro-abortion and pro-"gay marriage".
(Incidentally, I have my own thoughts about that and I might articulate them someday in the near future, suffice it to say it's a perspective that's neither "conservative" or "liberal"... and a lot of my fellow Christians might find it a bit surprising.)
I think that this elicits a lot of questions. Obviously, how is what Steele suggesting for his own party, any different at all from the Democrat party? Why should anyone who is, say, very much pro-life believe that his or her stance is going to be represented by the Republican Party anymore, if it is willing to compromise itself on this issue? How does this demonstrate that the Republicans are out for anything other than political capital?
And I for one would like to pose a question to certain "conservative Christians" who I know are reading this blog (yeah I'm looking at you Ron Baity, Jeff Baity and the others from Berean Baptist in Winston-Salem): how in the world, in light of this, do you still maintain that you have to owe loyalty to the Republican Party, when it clearly no longer cares at all about you and other "evangelicals" or what values you hold to?
Maybe the United States owes the old Soviet Union an apology. At least communist Russia was honest about being run by a single political party. In America, most rubes are convinced that there are two parties and that somehow, they're "making a difference" by belonging to one or the other.
If you've read the book, you know what the above image is about. Looks like instead of toning down the brutality - and let's face it, two decades later Watchmen is still one of the most brutal graphic novels ever - Zack Snyder is gonna ratchet it up even worse.
(I'm warning y'all who aren't "in the know" here and now: if Snyder is at all consistent with the book, during the part of the movie when Rorschach starts talking about what made him stop "pretending", I hope and pray that you have a strong stomach.)
Click here for more new pics from Watchmen, including the one on the left depicting a certain "prophet of doom" who spends his days walking the streets of New York. And if you mash down here you can read an article from a 1973 issue of the Wall Street Post reporting on the deaths of journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
So... does the world really exist? Do you exist? Do I exist for that matter? Believe it or not, according to bleeding-edge quantum physics our reality may be a massive illusion. Physicists have discovered that the entire cosmos is structured like a hologram at its most basic level.
Then again, to those who are students of the Bible, this probably comes as no surprise anyway...
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
-- Genesis 1:3
Einstein established a long time ago that matter was frozen energy (i.e. light). So I could see how that would perfectly jibe with the "universe as hologram" theory.
I can imagine all kinds of fun that will be had with this. From the comfort of home users will now be able to search for Atlantis, zoom in on Rapture, and even take a peek at R'lyeh without having to disturb great Cthulhu's slumber.
Even though he has pledged to end outright torture (no matter what its supporters have tried to brand it as), is closing the CIA secret prisons and has vowed to empty the camp at Guantanamo Bay, President Barack Obama is going to continue the policy of "foreign renditions" started by his predecessor George W. Bush.
Rendition means that the United States can secretly abduct a "suspect", and have him or her covertly transferred to another country that doesn't have the same official policies against torture. But it's not the United States that will be doing the torture or whatever, see? Officially, our government gets to keep its hands clean.
Some will call that "plausible deniability". I call it "using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law" at its most grandiose.
Still waiting for that "change" that I was hearing so much about...
A Cody, Wyoming man has been cited for "drunk driving" of sorts. Benjamin Daniels was stopped by police for "public intoxication" while riding a white horse on a busy thoroughfare during a blinding snowstorm last week. Apparently the color of his horse, combined with Daniels' lack of sobriety, the heavy traffic and the harsh weather conditions made for a potentially hazardous combination.
At some kind of pretentious pow-wow called TED, Bill Gates spoke to the audience about the efforts his foundation is undertaking to wipe out malaria. But being not content to deliver a simple speech, Gates engaged in some rather disturbing performance art... and unleashed a swarm of mosquitoes on the assembly of technocrats. "Not only poor people should experience this!", Gates declared, as he released his airborne vector of blood-sucking insects at the crowd.
