Because there aren't enough movies based on board games getting made lately...

Sony Pictures has now bought up the rights to develop Parker Brothers' classic strategy game Risk into a feature film.Read all about it here.Unlike other properties like Monopoly (being adapted by Ridley Scott) and Candyland and Battleship, I can envision Risk being a kick-butt motion picture. It'll basically be World War III.And every country on Earth fighting to control...

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It's 5 o'clock in the morning

So what is your intrepid blogger doing at this wee hour?Already working on a long-term project... while the TV is tuned to Encore.And what's playing? Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.This is gonna be one screwed-up day, I can tell alrea...

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Off-year post-election ponderance

Reflecting on something that I wrote the other day, in light of yesterday's elections in a number of places...I can understand being happy that an individual candidate has won election.I cannot understand being happy about a political party winning several elections.Maybe it's just my cynical nature about such matters. Or that I've seen "control" flip back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans for many years now and there being no discernible...

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Johnny Robertson: "God" by any other name...

Hasn't been much to report about local cult leader Johnny Robertson lately. In recent weeks he's been obsessed with attacking BTW, a competitor television station to WGSR in the Martinsville, Virginia market. Among other things Robertson has been blasting them for promoting shag dancing and "R-rated movies".(I for one would like to know where in the Bible does Robertson find a proscription against R-rated movies. 'Tis a silly thing to fixate upon...

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ABC's revamp of V premiered tonight

Giant alien spacecraft arrive over dozens of major cities around the world and their leader - a sexy brunette in a revealing skirt and high heels - broadcasts a greeting in perfect English and all these other languages in 100,800,000 progressive high-def television, says her name is "Anna" and that humanity is the first sentient life they have ever encountered... and nobody...

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Anvil shooting: Firing anvils 200 feet into the air

Being into knifemaking I'd read about this before: how back in the old days blacksmiths would have "anvil shootings". There are conflicting stories about why the practice originated. Some say that it began when Union soldiers invading the South during the Civil War would try to destroy every anvil they found so as to break the Confederacy's ability to make weapons and other tools. Others hold, with some evidence backing them up, that there was...

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Birth of an ocean

It's long been speculated that the Great Rift Valley in Africa will someday split entirely and create a new ocean, but now we have hard scientific evidence that it's not just theoretical... it is happening now! In 2005 a massive, 35-mile long new rift opened up in Ethiopia (part of it pictured at top). According to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, it's...

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Come strolling with Ashley on McHale's Random Walks!

Ashley McHale, who is like the most smartest-est person that I have ever met, has just launched her blog! McHale's Random Walks promises to be "A collection of thoughts, usually math-themed, that are or are not my own". But folks seriously: I've known Ashley for a way long time and she is no doubt going to be sharing some tremendously deep wisdom and insight that God has blessed her with, in addition to all that mathematical stuff she does... which...

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And this is why I don't proclaim myself Republican

Awright, a disclaimer is in order: at the present time I am still registered as a Republican. That came about two years ago during my flirtation with running for House of Representatives in my district ('cuz some people were suggesting I take a stab at it, and we all know how much of a sucker I am for that sort of thing given how my Board of Education campaign began). So as of this writing I'm a Republican on paper and haven't bothered to change...

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Think Switzerland is the world's most secretive place for banking?

According to the Tax Justice Network based out of Great Britain, the most secretive financial jurisdiction on Earth is actually... the state of Delaware.Yeah, that Delaware: on the eastern seaboard of these United States! $2.6 trillion was deposited in this country by non-resident citizens and corporations in 2007, with Delaware leading the way...The survey of laws, practices and size of inflows in 60 jurisdictions found Delaware coming in first,...

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Review of THE ESSENTIAL "WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC

For more than thirty years (I'm counting his earliest submissions to The Dr. Demento Show too) "Weird Al" Yankovic has influenced culture just as much as he's parodied it. Sometime next year will come his thirteenth studio album. And while we're waiting for it, I have to recommend that you run out and buy (but don't illegally download, you hooligan!) The Essential "Weird...

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Asimov estate authorizing trilogy of sequels to I, ROBOT

Isaac Asimov - perhaps the most prolific writer of the Twentieth Century and especially regarded for his contributions to science fiction - passed away in 1992. It's now being announced that Asimov's estate has given the official go-ahead for a trilogy of sequel novels to his acclaimed I, Robot series. The books will be written by Mickey Zucker Reichert, an author whose works have primarily been of the fantasy genre.(With all due respect to Mrs....

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The world's TINIEST working model train set

Check out what David Smith of New Jersey has made: a scale model of a scale model train set (for his real model train set's layout). And the thing actually runs too!Behold...It's 35,200 times smaller than an actual train.Now that is some practical nanotechnology! ...

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Star Wars costumes of Halloweens past

Since last night I've been getting my Jedi Knight costume (yah the very one that I wore to the Board of Education meeting two years ago) ready for this evening. Mostly 'cuz I promised some friends that I'd come by and let their own younglings see it. And I thought it'd be fun to wear it around throughout the rest of the night so I've been ironing the kimono, brushing the...

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House "health care" bill: Death panels and trial-lawyer protection

The guys at Flopping Aces have gone through the 1,990 page abomination that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has introduced as the House of Representatives(?) version of the health scare "reform" bill.Yah you read that right: one thousand, nine hundred and ninety pages.It's calculated to cost $1.28 trillion.So what's in this... thing?Abortion funding.The so-called "death panels" that we have been told repeatedly were just a figment of some people's imagination.And......

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Stimulus jobs are $160,000 each?!?

That's what Jake Tapper at ABC News has reckoned. Figuring that the Obama administration is boating of anywhere between 640,000 and 1 million jobs saved or created because of the "stimulus" package, and that $159 billion was allocated by Congress and President Obama for such purpose, then the most conservative estimate has each rescued job worth $160,000.The White House economists are calling these figures "calculator abuse". Wish I'd have thought...

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It's Chris Knight's Jack-O-Lantern 2009 Edition

Two years ago it was pumpkins carved in the likenesses of the honorable Dr. Ron Paul and a certain local school board member. Then last year it was a Big Daddy from the BioShock video games series.So what did I do for this year's Halloween?It's ME!THAT'll make the neighborhood kids think twice before knocking on the door for candy! ...

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