Truth in love is virtuous, but truth without love is vanity and worse.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Creepiest doll commercial of all time
It's Baby Laugh A-Lot!
I don't know what's scarier: this ad's production values, or that once upon a time children and at least one too many adults found this toy even mildly amusing...
Sunday, October 18, 2009
FDIC without adequate funds until 2012 (at least)
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is in the red, and it's going to stay that way for another two years.
Meanwhile the ninety-ninth federally-insured bank this year has gone under.
Looks like I'm gonna have to begin stockpiling some more "breadlines" photos to use...
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Video game console war building out, not reaching up
Gamasutra's Kris Graft has written an interesting piece about the changing face of the multi-billion dollar video game console industry... and why it's no longer about building "the next big thing" and rushing it into production. Blame Nintendo's Wii for the revolution: motion control has become the biggest innovation for video gaming, and now Microsoft and Sony are working on entering the foray with Project Natal and Sony's planned motion-based controller. But rather than waiting for the next generation of consoles, these features are being implemented into the already-existing Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. And that's a good thing for everyone concerned...
...for Sony and Microsoft, motion controllers are their next-gen consoles. And it's a damn sight easier than launching Xbox 720 or PS4. They can debut these peripherals without needing to engineer completely new boxes for consumers, potentially bundle them over time, and they have a much better chance at getting exclusive games, thanks to the specificity of the hardware (something that's happened a lot for the Wii). Thus, both hardware manufacturers and publishers like EA see these controllers sparking new interest in Xbox 360 and PS3, which will delay the next dreaded console transition for another few years.It also means that we won't have to be dreading the adoption of a next-gen console anytime soon... so that'll save some coin in the short term :-)
Friday, October 16, 2009
30-second promo for AMC's remake of THE PRISONER looks VERY promising!
My mind is still trying to wrap itself around the concept of remaking The Prisoner. Heck, my mind is still trying to wrap itself around everything associated with the original television series. But this promo for the new miniseries starring Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellan... has absolutely put The Prisoner on my must-watch list.
Does it look like Rover got a massive upgrade, or what?
The Prisoner beckons us back to The Village on November 15th.
The art of Matt vanLieshout
Sand-based battery lasts THOUSANDS of hours
Sounds like a winner to me. We could soon see the day when these things are powering our cars... and we can then tell OPEC, literally, to go pound sand :-P
Here's a song dedication going out to Falcon Heene
Yeah, the kid from Colorado who was thought to have taken a ride in that balloon yesterday and then cryptically said on national television "We did this for a show".
Here is "Up, Up and Away" by The Fifth Dimension...
Now, let us never speak of this again.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Japanese TV show fakes sniper attack (and it's pretty funny)
Ahhh, Japan. A country of good-natured people who seem to take everything to the extreme! Where else in the world can you find $150 plates of potentially lethal fish so readily available?
I've already shared with y'all some Japanese prank videos. But this next one is definitely over-the-edge darkly hilarious: a Japanese hidden camera "reality" television show fakes a sniper attack on an unsuspecting contestant. Panic Face King is kinda like Candid Camera meets Scare Tactics.
Watch the mayhem! And this is the sort of thing that, for once, you don't need to worry about a translation :-)
The 24 countdown timer sound effect is a particularly nice touch :-P
Is the LHC's own future sabotaging itself?
According to two physicists, the LHC's mission to produce the hypothesized and long-sought Higgs boson is damned to failure by its own future. The reason? Because the Higgs boson "might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather". And according to Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, this "predestination" from the Higgs particle goes far beyond screwing up a laboratory experiment: the failure of the United States government to finish building the Superconducting Supercollider is cited as possible evidence that the Higgs boson is wrecking havoc across spacetime from the future.
Here's that link again, if you still dare to look further into the abyss.
DEATH TROOPERS: Gory good horror in the Star Wars galaxy!
Death Troopers however, is the first-ever stab at blood-curdling horror in that galaxy far, far away.
So... did author Joe Schreiber pull it off?
Death Troopers is the kind of Star Wars story that I've been wanting to enjoy for a long time but didn't realize until I'd finished reading it: a good, solid stand-alone tale rife with action and without the baggage of moral dilemma or political metaphor. As a horror novel, however...
I've no doubt it's probably just personal taste. The perfect kind of horror in literature, in my mind, is the kind evoked by writers like H.P. Lovecraft, or Richard Matheson. The sort of gnawing uncertainty about being cast alone and adrift with no idea what the hell is making that god-awful sound behind the walls.
On that note, Death Troopers almost satisfies completely as a horror story in its own right. Not quite all the way though.... but enough that I have to note that I am very much looking forward to Schreiber's next Star Wars horror novel (which he is already writing). Death Troopers is certainly the most visceral Star Wars story in a great many moon. Some of the stuff that Schreiber came up with is maximum gross-out: nightmarish in our "real" world but put it in the Star Wars universe and the effect is particularly disconcerting. I liked that!
Death Troopers isn't that totally perfect horror entry for the saga, and it doesn't have to be either. This was the first time anything like this has been tried... and with Death Troopers Schreiber has definitely proven that there is a very rich potential of horror genre for Star Wars that has until now not been tapped into.
For a Star Wars novel, I enjoyed Death Troopers immensely and would recommend it to all of my fellow saga geeks out there. And I'm not gonna let this review go without saying that I for one would love to see LucasArts consider a Star Wars horror video game inspired by Death Troopers! There's a real BioShock/Dead Space kinda vibe that Schreiber evokes in this book, and it would translate brilliantly into a first-person shooter :-)
Boy Scouts under assault from insane zero-tolerance policies
Matthew Whalen is an Eagle Scout from upstate New York. He got suspended for a month from school for having a pocketknife in his car while it was parked on his school's campus.
Zachary Christie is a six-year old Cub Scout from Delaware who was sentenced to 45 days in reform school. His "crime"? Bringing a spork (combination spoon and fork) to school so that he could use it to eat his pudding.
Fortunately however, the ensuing public uproar embarrassed administrators enough to bring Christie back to his regular school. And Whalen has been assured by West Point Military Academy that his situation will not be a mark against him when he applies for admission (something he has dreamed of since first grade).
It's "zero tolerance" craziness like this that has contributed a lot to a loss of faith in America's public education system. What the hell is going on when we as a people are getting indoctrinated from an early age to fear things like plastic knives?!
But at least Matthew Whalen has nothing to be worried about. Before too long, he'll be strutting proudly across campus... carrying a machine gun!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Baptist church will burn Bibles on Halloween
Here's Grizzard's press release...
Halloween Book BurningWell, at least they'll also be serving fried chicken...
Burning Perversions of God’s Word
October 31, 20097:00 PM – Till
Great Preaching and Singing
Come to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.
We will also be burning Satan’s music such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contempory Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.
We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham , Rick Warren , Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll , John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn , Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa , The Pope , Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.
We are not burning Bibles written in other languages that are based on the TR. We are not burning the Wycliffe, Tyndale, Geneva or other translations that are based on the TR.
We will be serving Bar-b-Que Chicken, fried chicken, and all the sides.
If you have any books or music to donate, please call us for pick-up. If you like you can drop them off at our church door anytime. Thanks.
Seriously though folks, I thought there was something way familiar with Grizzard's litany of hate. So I went looking and sure enough: Marc Grizzard's church comes highly recommended by David Cloud. Anyone with even passing knowledge of "King James Only-ism" will be familiar with that name. David Cloud, through his Way of Life Literature website, has been a longtime worshiper of the King James Bible. Yeah, I said "worshiper" because these people have put their interpretation of the Bible in a place above that of Christ Himself. And King James-onlyists adore David Cloud: they have itching ears for whatever vile vitriol he cranks out against... well, everything that's not "Bible-believing Baptist".
Grizzard, Cloud and their kind have literally made an idol out of the King James Bible.
Ironically, as much as they claim to follow the King James Bible, they seem awfully ignorant of the words of the 1611 Authorized Edition's own translators in their preface to the book...
"Now to the latter we answer, that we do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the Word of God, nay, is the Word of God."Grizzard should be rejoicing that the Bible is so available to everyone. As it is, Grizzard and people like him trust in their own feeble understanding more than they trust God to draw people unto Him.
And in the end, what Grizzard is doing will only repel people from Christ, unfortunately.
Neato meteorological special effect: Halo over Moscow
Fear not! The aliens aren't coming (yet anyway) but this luminous halo over western Moscow a few days ago has sparked worldwide curiosity. Many are saying it looks a lot like the arrival of the giant ships from the movie Independence Day. But meteorologists on the scene are reporting that it's merely a very peculiar effect of sunlight shining through the clouds during a convergence of an Arctic air front over the city.
Celebrating a century of copyright paranoia
Putting it into perspective, Nate Anderson has composed a very good piece over at Ars Technica titled "100 years of Big Content fearing technology-in its own words". In it Anderson documents a century of hysteria on the part of copyright holders that in retrospect is absolutely laughable: everything from fears of the photocopier after World War II and how some dreaded the coming of the VCR, on back to John Philip Sousa's screed against player pianos and gramophones (pictured). It's only too interesting to note that in spite of all of the "warnings", that there has been no evidence at all that technology has stifled creativity... or that the copyright industry has done anything to encourage creativity, for that matter. Quite a rollickin' good read no matter where you're coming from.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Spotted: Bald Eagle in Rockingham County!
Of all the times that I didn't have my camera with me, it had to be on the way back from a bookstore in Greensboro today... sigh.
But I've no doubt what it was that I saw here in Rockingham County, North Carolina a short while ago. At a national conference for the Boy Scouts of America's Order of the Arrow in Colorado years ago I got to see a Bald Eagle way up close: those birds are positivalutely HUGE!
I spotted the Bald Eagle from my car at about 3 p.m. this afternoon, just off U.S. 158. Soaring at not too great a height over a field off to my right. I've never seen a beak that brilliantly yellow in these parts and that's what caught my eye. That and the wingspan. It soon glided off west into the woods and I lost sight of it. But I'm not gonna soon forget seeing it :-)
