James Oldfield is FULL of crap tonight!

How long has it been since I've posted about those lunatics from the local "Church of Christ" cult? Awhile, at least.

Time to have some fun with them again...

Earlier tonight it was Micah Robertson talking about satanic sex (bear in mind that this is the same young man who recently went on a weeks-long spate obsessing about Abraham's libido) and Mark McMinnis, who for once didn't do his whiny act about "...those Baptists made me lose my job in Danville schools!"

But it was the 9 p.m. show with James Oldfield that was so rife with hypocrisy that I literally laughed out loud too many times to count.

James Oldfield - the second banana and second cousin of cult leader Johnny Robertson - ranted for the entire hour about... some caller last week, apparently... who was insisting that Jesus had to be referred to by a specific name in order to be saved. Oldfield actually condemned this man's insistence upon ritualistic salvation demanding the following "right" methods as being "twisted" and perverted.

For James Oldfield or anyone from this cult to damn anyone for believing in doing a certain thing to be saved... is like King Kong condemning Curious George for being a monkey.

James Oldfield, Johnny Robertson, Mark McMinnis, and Robertson the Lesser don't do anything BUT damn EVERYONE ELSE for not following Christ as "they" think is proper. Funny thing: for all the airtime they have on WGSR, they have never done anything to show that they follow Christ. They can't even prove that they're in a real church anyway: they spend all their time knocking others.

Oldfield and his droogs don't want salvation by grace. They want salvation by religion: their religion. They are enslaved to their own works and their fallen nature demands that they enslave others even more cruelly.

It was almost hilarious to behold. But I was also reminded of what another James - namely James, the brother of our Lord - would have to say about James Oldfield of the Eden Church of Christ...

"...he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does."

-- James 1:8

'Course, that could be said of everyone in the evil cult that is Johnny Robertson's "Church of Christ".

(And why is Johnny condemning Martinsville cable channel BTW when he himself is doing business with a s***** d******? B******* perhaps?)

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The Supreme Court overturned parts of McCain-Feingold today

Read about it here.

Y'know, I've always thought that McCain-Feingold was horrible, horrible legislation...

...but I'm also rather troubled by the idea that corporations, labor unions etc. as artificial organisms en masse should have the same rights as actual, living citizens.

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TSA screener plants white powder on passenger as a "joke"

My loathing for the Transportation Security Administration just soared to new depths.

The story from Philly.com...

In the tense new world of air travel, we're stripped of shoes, told not to take too much shampoo on board, frowned on if we crack a smile.

The last thing we expect is a joke from a Transportation Security Administration screener - particularly one this stupid.

Rebecca Solomon is 22 and a student at the University of Michigan, and on Jan. 5 she was flying back to school after holiday break. She made sure she arrived at Philadelphia International Airport 90 minutes before takeoff, given the new regulations.

She would be flying into Detroit on Northwest Airlines, the same city and carrier involved in the attempted bombing on Christmas, just 10 days before. She was tense.

What happened to her lasted only 20 seconds, but she says they were the longest 20 seconds of her life.

After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.

A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.

Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on - the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.

She remembers his words: "Where did you get it?"

Two thoughts came to her in a jumble: A terrorist was using her to sneak bomb-detonating materials on the plane. Or a drug dealer had made her an unwitting mule, planting coke or some other trouble in her bag while she wasn't looking.

She'd left her carry-on by her feet as she handed her license and boarding pass to a security agent at the beginning of the line.

Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.

Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.

Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn't.

Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile.

Just kidding, he said. He waved the baggie. It was his.

And so she collected her things, stunned, and the tears began to fall.

Plenty more of the article at the link above.

This TSA screener is a total bastard. I cannot put it any plainer than that. And there are far too many of them in the TSA's employ.

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"Chuck Norris" was Facebook master password

And that's just for starters, dear readers! The Rumpus.net has an interview with a Facebook employee (whose identity is withheld to safeguard continued employment) about the real state of privacy on the popular social site. Bottom line: if you write something on Facebook, it's always gonna be there for Facebook employees to find (and even though the company has a policy about intruding on users' accounts, it's apparently rarely followed). And at one time the password that let any Facebook staffer log into any account was "Chuck Norris".

(Feel free to post the inevitable Chuck Norris jokes in the comments.)

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Aurochs: It's what's for dinner! (Maybe...)

The aurochs - a species of wild cattle a little less than the size of an elephant and the ancestor of modern breeding cattle - has been extinct since 1624.

And now a group of Italian scientists are planning to "breed back" the aurochs.

I wonder how well-done aurochs tastes with A1 Steak Sauce.

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Senate election in Massachusetts cries out for 17th Amendment repeal

I don't live in Massachusetts so yesterday's special election that saw Scott Brown win the seat vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy didn't hold any interest for me. But I'd be deaf and blind not to know about the ridiculous amount of passion that's built up over this election in the past few weeks and months.

Some are saying that Brown won because "the independents are angry". Which in my mind begs the question: was Ted Kennedy only winning those unconscionably numerous terms of office because he benefited from straight-ticket voting: something that, to the best of my knowledge, wasn't an option in yesterday's election? Seems to me that's an insult to ol' Teddy's memory: as if openly admitting that he couldn't win election on his own merit but rather had to ride the coattails of the Democrat Party.

I've never been in favor of allowing straight-ticket voting anyway. If you're going to the polls to cast a ballot, you should be compelled to think long and hard about who exactly you're voting for. Voting is a right, but it's one bought with too much precious blood to be an overly convenient one.

Anyhoo, the real reason why I'm not really feelin' anything one way or the other about this election is because in the saner world of another time, this election wouldn't have happened and Ted Kennedy likely would never have gotten close to a Senate seat anyway. Because before the Seventeenth Amendment was passed, senators were elected by the state legislatures! The Founders meant for the House to represent the people and for the Senate to represent the states. It's the way it was until 1912 when the Seventeenth was ratified and senators were elected by popular vote.

Sure, there were problems with the previous method of electing senators. But you tell me: could it possibly have been any worse than the dirty, corrupt slugfest that modern Senate campaigns have become?

Consider this also: would something like "health care reform" stand even a remote chance of becoming an inssue in a Senate made up of members who were sent their by their respective states, rather than be installed (for lack of a better word) by political parties?

The Seventeenth Amendment has proven to be a failure more spectacular than Prohibition. It should be repealed and the election of senators returned to the individual state legislatures.

I wish Scott Brown all the best as he begins serving the people of Massachusetts in the United States Senate. But the fact of the matter remains: those of his caliber deserve a more dignified way of coming to the Senate.

And we the people deserve that as well.

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Has the Poe Toaster gone "Nevermore"?

Very unusual and perplexing news coming out of Baltimore this morning: the Poe Toaster did NOT show up to make his/her annual tribute to Edgar Allan Poe! For the first time since the ritual has been recorded - at least since 1949 - it simply didn't happen.

Every year on Poe's birthday of January 19th, in the very early morning hours, a mysterious figure has come out of the darkness to visit the original burial site of Poe. The Poe Toaster leaves roses and a bottle of cognac, and then disappears just as quickly as he (or she) arrived? Nobody knows who this person is. And thankfullly the Poe Toaster has been left un-harassed during the course of the tradition: there should be some mystery still left in this world, yes?

But this year, for the first time ever, the Poe Toaster failed to come.

Jeff Jerome, the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House, said this morning that he'll give the Poe Toaster two more years to come again before declaring that the tradition has apparently been concluded.

Here's hoping that the Poe Toaster, wherever he or she is, is well and that the commemoration of Edgar Allan Poe will continue for years still to come.

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The latest of Dad's knife handiwork

Damascus steel blade for a commission job. And yes, Dad even made the sheath...

Lord willing, I'll wind up even half as good as Dad is at this craft :-)

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Alternate ending for DOCTOR WHO "The End of Time"

Apparently, in case David Tennant had a last-moment change of mind and decided that he wanted to keep playing the Doctor on Doctor Who, Russell T Davies filmed another ending for "The End of Time".

Here it is!

Poor Wilfred :-P

(And thanks to Lee Shelton for passing this along!)

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AVATAR tech could let Clint Eastwood play 70s-era Dirty Harry again

With Avatar still breaking box office records (it was #1 in theaters for the fifth straight weekend) and now starting to garner prizes (like at last night's Golden Globes) James Cameron is talking about the practical application of the technology that he and his team came up with for the movie...

Sure, it's terrific for turning human actors into big blue alien Na'vis. But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected for Avatar could easily be used for other, even more mind-blowing purposes—like, say, bringing Humphrey Bogart back to life, or making Clint Eastwood look 35 again. "How about another Dirty Harry movie where Clint looks the way he looked in 1975?" Cameron suggests. "Or a James Bond movie where Sean Connery looks the way he did in Doctor No? How cool would that be?"

In a way, Cameron has already pulled off this trick: Sigourney Weaver appears to drop 20 years whenever she slips her consciousness into an alien body in Avatar. But Cameron's facial scanning process is so precise—zeroing in to the very pores of an actor's skin—that virtually any manipulation is possible. You may not be able to totally replace an actor—"There’s no way to scan what's underneath the surface to what the actor is feeling," the director notes—but it is now theoretically possible to extend careers by digitally keeping stars young pretty much forever.

In the article at EW.com Cameron also talks about the ethical line that has to be respected in regards to this sort of thing, like how it can't be billed as the real Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart if they were put into a movie together with the advanced CGI.

But hey: a 1970s-era Dirty Harry movie with Clint Eastwood back as Harry Callahan and looking exactly as he did in his thirties/forties? Or... how about an Indiana Jones movie where Harrison Ford really does get to fight during the World War II years against the Nazis (bet Lucas and Spielberg are already thinking about it)? Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro can now have Ian Holm play a younger Bilbo Baggins for their upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit...

...and I guess Johnny Depp really can get his chance to play Captain Jack Sparrow for the rest of his life :-)

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Happy LeePoeKing Day Weekend from The Knight Shift!

This is the weekend here in the United States where we have an extra day off to commemorate the lives and contributions of three great Americans...

First, born on January 19th in 1807, there is Robert E. Lee: to this day one of the most revered and beloved generals in American history. And in this blogger's mind, also one of the greatest examples of Christian virtue and service. Eventually Lee had to make the hardest choice of his career: to lead the Union army or to throw his lot in with the Confederacy. As we all know Lee became the general of the Army of Northern Virginia. But what choice did he have? Lee was morally unable to take up arms against what he considered to be his countrymen. His role in the war and even his personal character have been debated for years... but in my mind there is no grounds for debate. Robert E. Lee simply sought out to do what God would have him do, as best he could understand Him. How many of us say the same about ourselves?

Born on the same day two years later was Edgar Allan Poe: the father of the detective story and the one most credited for developing what became the modern horror genre. Poe's influence is still considerable today, especially in literature and film. Unfortunately his later literary success did not reflect his life: Poe's years were wracked with personal tragedy, including the early death of his young wife. He died in Balimore, Maryland at the age of forty, leaving behind such works as "The Raven", "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Masque of the Red Death".

And on January 15th, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia was born Martin Luther King, Jr.. Interesting historical note: King was originally born "Michael King Jr." until his family visited Germany in 1934. So inspired by the life of Martin Luther was the elder King that he legally changed both his name and that of his son. Martin Luther King Jr. was in the church choir that sang at the Atlanta premiere of Gone With The Wind in 1939. He entered college at the age of 15, became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church when he was 25, and earned his doctorate the following year. The rest of his life, of course, was devoted to the civil rights movement and the dream of a nation whose people "...will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

So wherever you are, and whoever you might be, HAPPY LEEPOEKING DAY!

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Would YOU notice a clown on a unicycle?

The New York Times has an eye-opening article about how merely walking with a cellphone can become a huge distraction from one's surrounding environment. Cited in the write-up is a rather hilarious study at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington involving a unicycling student and a psychology professor who owns a clown suit, researching what is being called "inattentional blindness"...

"I was trying to think about what kind of distraction we could put out there, and I talked to this student who had a unicycle," said Ira E. Hyman Jr., a professor in the university's psychology department. "He said, 'What's more, I own a clown suit.' You don’t have a student who unicycles in a clown suit every day, so you have to take advantage of these things."

The result is a fascinating study that suggests pedestrians who talk on cellphones are oblivious to the events around them.

In two studies, Dr. Hyman and his students monitored pedestrian traffic across a popular campus square. They tracked a total of 347 pedestrians, noting whether they were walking without distraction, listening to music, talking with a friend or talking on the phone. In the first study, they noticed that people talking on the cellphone walked more slowly, changed directions more frequently and were often weaving off course. They were also less likely to acknowledge other people with a head nod or a wave.

Now, enter the unicycling clown. The student, Dustin Randall, donned a purple-and-yellow clown costume with polka dot sleeves, red shoes and bulbous red nose. And then Mr. Randall hopped on a unicycle and began pedaling around the square for an hour.

After pedestrians crossed the square, the researchers stopped the walkers and asked, "Did you see anything unusual?"

Among pedestrians who were listening to music or walking alone, one in three mentioned that they had just seen a clown on a unicycle. Nearly 60 percent of people who were walking with a friend mentioned the clown. But among people who had been talking on the cellphone, only 8 percent spontaneously remembered the clown.

Then the researchers followed up with a second question: "Did you see the unicycling clown?" With prompting, 71 percent of the people walking with a friend remembered the clown. The numbers were also higher for people listening to music (61 percent) and those who were walking alone (51 percent).

But among those who had been talking on a cellphone, the ability to recall seeing the clown still was startlingly low. Only 25 percent of cellphone talkers remembered seeing a clown on a unicycle, according to the report in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology. (emphasis mine)

"It's a huge dropoff of awareness of the environment around them," Dr. Hyman said. "It shows that even during as simple a task as walking, performance drops off when talking on the cellphone. They're slower, less aware of their surroundings and weaving around more. It shows how much worse it would be if they were driving a car, which is a more complex task to manage."

That does it: I'm never taking my cellphone to the circus again! :-)

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Some things aren't meant to be messed with

Today's Blondie comic strip...

Just for fun I went into Photoshop and gave Dagwood a "haircut", removing his trademark cowlicks. Didn't look good at all. I'm not gonna post it here. 'Twould be too sacrilegious.

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Saturday evening theological rumination...

Sharing one's beliefs is fine. One sharing Christ is far better.

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Some guy made a REAL working Star Trek phaser!

Jay Rob took an old-school Star Trek phaser gun toy, cannibalized the innards of a Blu-ray player to get at the laser diode, and pulled off one of the kewlest hardhacks I've ever seen. The result: a phaser that seriously works!

Okay, it doesn't actually disintegrate anything and there's no "stun" setting... but Jay's phaser is powerful enough to pop balloons from across the room.

Watch it in action...

And if you're of the tinkerin' sort, Jay has posted detailed instructions on how you can build your own "phaser".

Great job Jay! Now, can you get to work on constructing a real working lightsaber? :-)

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Want to help those in Haiti? Consider giving to New Directions International

All two of this blog's regular readers know: I never endorse anything here unless I can sincerely trust a person or organization to the utmost. Well, in light of what's going on down in Haiti right now in the aftermath of this week's earthquake, many folks are wondering what they can do to help out the people of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area.

So if your heart is leading you to make a contribution toward the relief efforts there but you may not have known where exactly to lend your resources to, I would like to recommend that you consider giving to New Directions International.

Based in Graham, North Carolina, New Directions is a Christian outreach ministry that, among many other things, sends food and supplies to South America, Africa and plenty of other regions around the world. They are also quite active in helping to construct buildings for local congregations in those same areas. Being familiar with a number of people involved at New Directions International, I can absolutely and completely vouch for their commitment, their integrity and their Christ-like love toward others.

Nobody's asked me to make this post. I'm doing it because the local Fox affiliate this evening aired a story about New Directions and its operations in Haiti. The ministry had planned for two mission trips there in the coming weeks: missions that are obviously now hanging in limbo. Several Haitian colleagues of New Directions are being reported missing or dead. There's also a story in Burlington's Times-News about what's happening at the ministry following the earthquake.

New Directions is currently raising money for food and other aid to the victims of this week's earthquake. You can visit their website at www.newdirections.org. The phone number is 336-227-1273.

If you cannot donate funds, please keep the people at New Directions International in your thoughts and prayers. This blogger, for one, will be very thankful if you do.

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YouTube called: I beat Comcast

Okay, YouTube didn't really call me, but you know...

Last month I reported that Comcast was giving me grief about how I posted a clip from E!'s show The Soup where they used MY commercial from the school board campaign in 2006... without asking me, but I was fine with that. I just expected the same courtesy from E! and its ownership that I have given them. That's not too much to ask, in my mind.

And of course, this whole thing is too much like that crazy situation with Viacom a little over two years ago. And just as I did with Viacom then I filed a counterclaim with YouTube, per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

A short while ago I received the following e-mail from YouTube:

Re: [#561937480] YouTube Support

Copyright Service to me

Hi there,
In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we've completed
processing your counter-notification regarding your video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51FpFrMVWOo

This content has been restored and your account will not be penalized.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

So for the third time now (first Viacom, then NBC which quickly acquiesced and retracted their claim against me for posting a clip of The Jay Leno Show that also used my commercial, and now with Comcast) my filing the DMCA counterclaim has been successful. And that's why I'm compelled again to discuss this. Because if an independent content producer like me can take on three multi-billion dollar corporations over DMCA abuse and win each time, then any small-time content producer can do likewise and come out on top.

None of us are without some pretty potent weapons. We just have to know how to use them... and use them properly.

So here it is again: E! Television's The Soup featuring my school board campaign commercial :-)

Glad that this got resolved. And I hope that it never has to happen again!

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