Breaking everywhere right now.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Ark of the Covenant to be revealed tomorrow, sez Ethiopian patriarch
Abuna Pauolos, patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, has announced that tomorrow will finally see the revealing of the biblical Ark of the Covenant, which his church is said to have guarded for centuries.
According to those who adhere to the legend, King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba had a son named Menelik I, who eventually came to Jerusalem as a young man and spirited the real Ark of the Covenant away (with Solomon's blessing).
It is there, in that land which in ancient times has been called Aksum and is today known as Ethiopia, where the very Ark of the Covenant which contains the Ten Commandments that G-d gave to Moses is said to be kept in this chapel, with a lone guardian tending to it night and day for as long as he lives...
(According to some reports, the Ark guardians don't live anywhere near a full span of life and have a tendency to developing cataracts, supposedly a testament of the Ark's awesome power.)
The patriarch has said that a museum is being built in Ethiopia where the Ark will be displayed for all to see.
If it is the real Ark of the Covenant, let us hope that these guys know what they are doing, and have read the instruction manual (namely the Old Testament) really meticulously.
Or else, who knows what might happen...
UPDATE 06/26/2009 9:20 p.m. EST: As many have noted, the announced time of today's "revealing" of the Ark of the Covenant has more than come and gone, with nothing to show for it. There are some allegations coming out of Ethiopia that Abuna Pauolos has a shady background. Here's WorldNetDaily's report on the failure of the patriarch to produce the goods.
Death by Twitter
A seventeen-year old girl is dead after being electrocuted in her bathroom in a freak accident while plugging in a laptop computer that she was using to Twitter.
Maria Barbu of Brasov, Romania was found by her parents laying next to the laptop, and police think she "may have tried to plug in the computer's mains power lead with wet hands after the battery ran down during a long Twitter session".
Here's what I have to ask in case no one else has: why was this girl Twitter-ing from a bathroom to begin with?
Iranian government using THE LORD OF THE RINGS to stifle protests
In one of the more bizarre stories to come out of Iran in the past week or so, it's being reported that the country's state-run Channel Two is running a marathon of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, intending to keep protesters off of Tehran's streets and watching the adventures of Frodo and Sam instead. The average citizens of Iran are quite fond of movies from the United States and Europe, but usually only get to watch them once or twice a week on television. Since the protests began, Iran's ruling regime has increased it to two or three movies per day.Methinks that this might not be a good move on the part of the Iranian government, especially since one of the bigger messages of The Lord of the Rings is that "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future" :-)
Farrah Fawcett has passed away
This is, sadly, the only occasion I will likely ever have for posting this classic image...
Farrah Fawcett has died at age 62, succumbing to a cancer which she had valiantly fought against for so very long.
First it was Ed McMahon who was taken from us earlier this week, now Farrah Fawcett. Once again, we seem to be losing our legends at a harsh rate.
"What the heck am I gonna do with this?!"
That was the question I was asking everyone late on Tuesday night at the Palladium in High Point when we were there to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The crew from 107.5 WKZL FM was there giving out prizes during a Transformers trivia contest. Phillip and Matt and I were sitting up around the top rows of the theater and one of the 107.5 guys asked "What does Barricade transform into?"
I raised my hand and shouted "Police car!" Which was the right answer. So I ran down to collect my reward.
Which turned out to be this...
A copy of Britney Spears' new CD Circus!
And I thought I was gonna get a Transformers t-shirt, or somethin'...
Review of TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
I'm going to say that I immensely enjoyed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen despite a lot of problems possessed by this movie.
I saw it at midnight on Wednesday night (meaning the wee hours of yesterday morning) along with fellow bloggers Phillip Arthur and Matthew Federico. And I am compelled to echo the sentiments that just about every reviewer on the planet is saying about this movie: that it's far too long, it's much too juvenile and there's way too much to expect a viewer to take in.
I anticipate that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is going to become a textbook example of how a movie demands good editing, because there's a ton of material that could have been left on the cutting room floor that would not only not be missed, but would have made for a much tighter and more enthralling film. Some of this stuff was just plain embarrassing to watch: Sam's mom hopped-up on marijuana-laced brownies is but one of them. Other elements should have never progressed beyond the conceptual stage... and I'm thinking mostly of Skids and Mudflap (or as many are calling them, "Car Car Binks"). Seriously: Skids and Mudflap are the very worst thing to happen to the Transformers franchise in the history of anything. A lot of people are wondering aloud if these two Autobidiots are meant to be stereotypically racist. Whether they are or not, Skids and Mudflap should have never been given such an obscene amount of screen time. Regardless of anything else, these two characters offend good taste in ways that Mel Brooks barely did with Blazing Saddles. What the hell were screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (along with Ehren Kruger) thinking?! Hard to believe that these two 'Bots sprang from the same brilliant minds that gave us Star Trek last month.
(I'm not even gonna go anywhere near Devastator's testicles...)
But mostly, I think that much like Spider-Man 3 a few years ago, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen suffers from an excess of plot and character.
Imagine the sequels of the Pirate of the Caribbean series - Dead Man's Chest and At World's End - smooshed together into a single motion picture. That is what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is: one movie that should have been divided into two. It starts off well enough, with Optimus Prime (again voiced by Peter Cullen) describing the events of the past two years and how the Autobots have formed a covert team with the United States military to hunt down Decepticons that have come to Earth. And right off the bat, director Michael Bay is pouring on crazy helpings of his trademark "Bay-hem" style: lots of dizzying 'splosive action that should have utterly broken Industrial Light and Magic's CGI render farm. The opening fight between the Autobots and the huuuuge Decepticon Demolishor is a sequence of well-orchestrated carnage indicative of how this movie is solidly better than Terminator: Salvation, the most recent blockbuster that I had seen in past weeks. There is quite a bit of thoughtful "building off" of the mythology that the first film began, and I liked that. One thing that I appreciated in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is how this movie finally addresses some questions that have been around since the Transformers first hit the scene a quarter-century ago... like how Transformers are born, hatched, whatever. And I think that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is wildly successful at showing us a world-wide conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons (several people in the audience cheered when they saw that the Autobots were driving through North Carolina on the military's map).
But about an hour into the movie and it's glaringly certain that there's too much mythology being hurled at us to take in for one film. The most obvious aspect of this is the sheer number of Autobots and Decepticons overwhelming each other. The original Autobot characters from the first movie? They are barely in this one. We finally get to see Arcee, but she and other female Autobots are hardly noticeable. Soundwave (voiced by Frank Welker!) has a fairly important presence, but I thought we should have seen him take a more active role among his fellow Decepticons. Concepts from the earliest canon like the Pretenders and the Matrix of Leadership and the Space Bridge and more assault the viewer's mind and if you haven't been indoctrinated in Transformers terminology, I can see how it's gonna be very easy to be lost in it all.
This is a movie that should have been split in two, with a Transformers movie for this summer and one for the next. And I know right where the divide should have been at, but won't talk about it here for fear of spoiling it for those who haven't seen it yet. Let's just say that something of a Transformers "tradition" takes place that would have made for an excellent cliffhanger to be resolved in another installment.
There were too many Transformers in this movie. The effects in this movie are nothing short of jaw-dropping. I just wish that there had been fewer Transformers to spread more of the visuals around. Devastator - the combined form of the Constructicons - is the most complex digital model that Industrial Light and Magic has ever made. Too bad we don't get to see the individual Constructicons in action: they're pretty much just sitting vehicles that merge into one colossal robot... without ever getting to see their individual 'bot forms! The final battle at the pyramids between the Autobots and Decepticons has so many Transformers that hardly anybody will be able to pick out who's who.
So far as the humans go, I thought the carbon-based characters were pretty good, but again: a lot of their scenes should have been cleanly excised away from this film. Sam and his wacky family carry over well from the first movie (apart from Judy Witwicky's reefer-crazed rampage) and if you liked John Turturro's character of Simmons in the first movie, you'll be glad to know that he's back and with a bit more to do in this one.
Overall however... I'll have to say that I liked Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen enough that I'll probably want to see it at least once more in the theaters, even though I definitely recognize that it could have been a better movie had it received more editing and fewer robots. The lesson of this movie could be that "special effects do not a character make". Let's hope that the next Transformers movie will bear that in mind.
And what says me about Steve Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? Loved it! Jablonsky really built upon and explored further the themes that he did for the first movie. I gladly bought his score from iTunes yesterday and have been listening to it ever since.
Anyway, in the end: I'm not going to jump on the "Bash Revenge Bandwagon" that this movie is having to endure across the media. I won't say that it's a "great" movie either like The Shawshank Redemption or even Star Trek. But I will say that warts and all, I sincerely came out of seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen much as I did from seeing Transformers two years ago: thoroughly entertained.
What more could one ask of a summer blockbuster? :-)
"Weird Al" Yankovic channels Jim Morrison in "Craigslist"!
It came out last week and I haven't been able to post about it 'cuz I've been out of town since then (maybe it's time to finally get a laptop?) but "Weird Al" Yankovic has done it again. His latest release "Craigslist" is about the (in)famous classified ads website, done in the style of Jim Morrison and The Doors. It is hilarious and Al even got Ray Manzarek to do the keyboards for the song!Click here for the "Craigslist" music video on Al's YouTube channel, which also includes links where you can buy the song from iTunes and other online outlets.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Twitter making Internet news finally come into its own right now in Iran
Twenty years ago this month, the broadcast of the crackdown on the pro-democracy protesters in Beijing by the Chinese government was widely hailed as the moment that international television news coverage like that of CNN became a serious factor at long last.
That was CNN in 1989.
In 2009 it is Twitter, of all things, that is marking the end of television's dominance of the news.
Here's the Twitter feed for most of the "tweets" about what's going down in Iran. At this hour there's a massive rally in Tehran by anti-Ahmedinejad protesters. The police have opened fire and killed at least one person. Just about everything we know about all this is coming from regular people who are sending live reports via Twitter.
Remember this well, folks. June 2009 is when people in Iran took hold of the power of "you media" and played it to the hilt. This is real revolution in more ways than one happening at this moment.
I hope this kind of exuberance spreads to more countries. Including my own :-)
EDIT 2:12 p.m. EST: I made a link to this blog post on the same Twitter feed (#iranelection) and right now, The Knight Shift is getting SLAMMED with more international visits than I have ever seen in the five-plus years of this blog's operation (along with quite a few folks from across the United States).
So a hearty hello to everyone who's finding their way here this afternoon, and here's raising up some thoughts and prayers for our friends in Iran who are taking their destiny into their own hands. May they be an inspiration for us all!
Radioactive wasp nests plague dump site
Sounds like a Fifties B-movie, or maybe the genesis of a new Spider-Man villain: the country's most contaminated nuclear waste site has provided building material for swarms of wasps building their nests and now the nests themselves are loaded with radioactive isotopes of cesium and cobalt. The Hanford nuclear reservation near Yakima, Washington is currently being cleaned up and workers are having to deal with the nests, which fortunately have already been abandoned by the wasps.
I must admit: 'twould have been a pretty awesome sight to see the skies of Yakima filled with giant glowing wasps :-P
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Army mecha-nic builds real exoskeleton
Carlos Owens is a mechanic in the United States Army living in Wasilla, Alaska. Five years ago and working without any blueprints, he started laboring on a real-life mechanical exoskeleton much like what we've seen in Aliens, BattleTech and a lot of other science fiction. Four years and $25,000 later, you can see his finished product on the right. It can raise its arms, move its lets and even do a sit-up. Owens is working on two more prototypes and hopes to soon see the day when real mecha will go at it against each other like demolition derby.Mash down here for more of Carlos Owens and his awesome mecha at the Popular Science website.
I'm pretty sure ABC/Disney won't like this
At this moment, Johnny Robertson of the local cult calling itself the "Church of Christ" (which has nothing to do with the real Churches of Christ) is broadcasting an entire story from ABC's Nightline about real estate scamming in Martinsville, Virginia as part of his What Does The Bible Say? (or as I call it The Martinsville Taliban Show) on WGSR Star 47.
So let's look at the first part of the Walt Disney Internet Group's Terms of Use, with emphasis mine in red font...
1. INTRODUCTIONSo... did Johnny Robertson, the Martinsville Church of Christ, WGSR Star 47 and its general manager Charles Roark acquire express permission from Disney and ABC to use their copyrighted material wholesale?Welcome to the Internet sites of the Walt Disney Internet Group ("WDIG"). "WDIG Sites" include Disney.com, ABCNEWS.com, ABC.com, ESPN.com, DisneyShopping.com, Go.com, Movies.com, FamilyFun.com, and other Internet sites on which these terms of use are posted. WDIG and any and all entities that control, are controlled by, or are affiliated or under common control with, WDIG are collectively referred to herein as "we," "us" or "our".
PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF USE CAREFULLY BEFORE USING ANY WDIG SITE. By using any WDIG Site or by clicking a box that states that you accept or agree to these terms, you signify your agreement to these terms of use. If you do not agree to these terms of use, you may not use the WDIG Sites.
Note that special terms apply to some services offered on certain WDIG Sites, like subscription-based services, rules for particular contests or sweepstakes or other features or activities. These terms are posted in connection with the applicable service. Any such terms are in addition to these terms of use, and in the event of a conflict, prevail over these terms of use.
You acknowledge that these terms of use are supported by reasonable and valuable consideration, the receipt and adequacy of which are hereby acknowledged. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you acknowledge that such consideration includes your use of the WDIG Sites and receipt of data, materials and information available at or through the WDIG Sites, the possibility of our use or display of your Solicited Submissions (as defined below in Section 3, entitled "SUBMISSIONS") and the possibility of the publicity and promotion from our use or display of your Solicited Submissions.
2. USE OF CONTENT
All information, materials, functions and other content (including Submissions, as defined in Section 3, entitled "SUBMISSIONS") ("Content") contained on WDIG Sites are our copyrighted property or the copyrighted property of our licensors or licensees. All trademarks, service marks, trade names, and trade dress are proprietary to us and/or our licensors or licensees. We may change the WDIG Sites or delete Content or features at any time, in any way, for any or no reason.
Except as we specifically agree in writing, no Content from any WDIG Site may be used, reproduced, transmitted, distributed or otherwise exploited in any way other than as part of the WDIG Site, except that where a WDIG Site is configured to enable the download of particular Content, you may download one copy of such Content to a single computer for your personal, noncommercial home use only, provided that you (a) keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices, (b) make no modifications to the Content, and (c) do not use the Content in a manner that suggests an association with any of our products, services or brands. Any business use, "re-mailing" or high-volume or automated use of WDIG Sites is prohibited.
In the event that we offer downloads of software on a WDIG Site and you download such software, the software, including any files, images incorporated in or generated by the software, and data accompanying the software (collectively, the "Software") are licensed to you by us or third-party licensors for your personal, noncommercial home use only. We do not transfer title to the Software to you. You may not distribute or otherwise exploit the Software or decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise reduce the Software to a human-readable form.
Probably not. They are clearly committing an act of blatant copyright infringement. But hey: we're talking about people who haven't cared about things like laws, ethics and personal responsibility before. Why expect it now?!
(And now Robertson is repeating his year-old lie that one area church is engaging in child pornography, sans any evidence supporting his wild claim.)
First pics of Chad and Koren's wedding!
Ashton Hobbs is posting a wazoo-load of photos on Flickr of Chad and Koren's wedding yesterday. Click here for the "Chad Austin Wedding" set.Great work Ashton :-)
Iranian irony
I find it a sad commentary that many Americans are watching the people of Iran rejecting the farce of that country's elections a few days ago......when we ourselves for the most part are all too accepting of how managed and controlled our own nation's elections are.
Could we ever take to the streets and demand real freedom to choose a destiny apart from that which the two-party kleptocracy and its willing associates have determined for us?
Few things would make me happier than to see the American people wake up and demand that.
14-year old lady discovers supernova
A few days ago this blog wrote about the fairly nearby star Betelgeuse and how it might be approaching supernova. Want to know how honkin' powerful that blast could become?
On the right is a recent photo of the galaxy UGC 12682. It's 70 million light years away from the Earth. And prominently labeled (as if it even needed it) is the newly-found supernova SN 2008ha.
It was found by 14-year old Caroline Moore of Warwick, New York and a member of the Puckett Observatory Supernova Search team. Despite its vast distance, Supernova SN 2008ha is still 25 million times brighter than our own Sun.
So try to imagine something that bright, only a mere 600 light years away. And it's thought that the progenitor star of SN 2008ha wasn't even all that massive to begin with: many astronomers are saying that dear Miss Moore has discovered one of the most peculiar supernovae to have ever detected.
Hit here for much more information about Carolina Moore and SN 2008ha.
And if you wanna see how dedicated this young lady is to her field of interest, take a looksee at Caroline sitting amidst her astronomy gear...
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Back from Chad and Koren's wedding
Man, what a day...
I want to say first of all that Chad is the man for running a 5 kilometer race at 7 a.m. on the morning of his wedding day. He finished at a pretty good time too (the race not the wedding day... nevermind :-P)
Anyhoo, just got in and I'm frazzled, but there will prolly be pics and some YouTube video (if I can get the consent forms signed :-) up on the blog soon. In the meantime, know that it was a wonderful ceremony and celebration afterward, and all involved definitely feel like not only some new friendships were made, but new family across the board. And let it also be known that New Hampshire is certainly a place that knows how to produce some interesting characters :-)
More later. 'Til then: Congrats Chad and Koren!
A few hours from now...
...my lifelong best friend Chad Austin officially goes off the market, when he takes the vows and weds his lovely lady Koren Borchers.
I got conned into being videographer (something about payback for what we put Chad through in his portrayal of George Lucas a few years ago) so there'll be plenty of pictures later, and maybe some YouTube video.
The rehearsal last night went great! Lots of new friendships being made along with family. We are all excited about Chad and Koren getting to have their special day.
More later! In the meantime, y'all please keep the happy couple in yer thoughts and prayers :-)
