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Thursday, February 25, 2010

Not a trap: Ole Miss might make Admiral Ackbar its new sports mascot

The University of Mississipi, better known as Ole Miss, retired its previous mascot Colonel Reb a few years ago. The school has put it up to the student body to select the next standard bearer of athletic pride.

Looks like Ole Miss is going to replace a colonel with an admiral. Namely, Admiral Ackbar from the Star Wars movies. Ackbar has emerged as the front-runner among the possible candidates for the mascot job.

"It's a trap!"? No, and it's not a joke either. Assuming the lawyers at Lucasfilm (who I have a more than cursory knowledge about, and that's as much as I dare say about that) lets Ole Miss do it, the Mon Calamari tactical genius who orchestrated the assault on the second Death Star could very well be leading the cheers at the football and basketball games!

I like what one person has said about Admiral Ackbar at Ole Miss: "Well it does rebrand the Confederate cause in far more positive way -- I say they run with it. In fact, Ackbar's leadership as a symbol of the diversity of the Rebel Alliance against the human supremacist Empire reverses the whole image problem! Remember, the Rebel Alliance was fighting Palpatine's 'Grand Army of the Republic.'"

Yeah, I guess that's one way of looking at it. But still, even being a die-hard Star Wars geek (and proud of it!), if I were at Ole Miss and had some say in who the new sports mascot should be, and if it had to be an aquatic alien, I wouldn't have considered Admiral Ackbar at all (no offense Acky).

Instead I would have suggested Cthulhu from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft...

Can you imagine the sheer terror that would be evoked by such a thing? And hey, Ole Miss could rename their team to be the "Ole Miss Old Ones"!!

Color me officially intrigued by Bloom Energy

Heaven only knows how many alternative energy schemes have been proposed over the years, only to watch all of 'em that come to mind fail to deliver the promised goods of cheap, clean power.

But having read about it for the past few weeks, and now seeing what was unveiled yesterday by the company, I think there's a LOT of potential in what Bloom Energy has come up with.

Imagine ten years from now, having a brick-sized energy server supplying all of the electricity to your house. No power lines or anything. A few weeks ago my house went 22 hours without power during a severe winter storm, along with 43,000 other people in this county. That would be a thing of the past, along with monthly bills from the power company.

Well, possibly. PCWorld's website has ten questions about the Bloom Energy Server that lots of folks will probably be asking.

Can't wait to see how this unfolds :-)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Had an interesting day

Edited a bunch of video, worked on a writing project, fixed a nasty computer problem, got sent on an impromptu medical mission of mercy of sorts, and tonight I found something that I've been searching for the past, oh, twenty-two years.

And thank the Lord, it didn't snow!

Now let's see what the morrow brings with it...

Not interchangeable

Power can come from enlightenment, but enlightenment can never come from power.

To ALL those good people in Jamaica who are visiting this blog right now...

Greetings! :-)

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

"Lighthouse": Post-episode reaction to tonight's LOST

Did that one get called, or what?

So 108 and 23 played a huge part of "Lighthouse" toward the end of the episode. But what's Jacob game here?

I'm starting to get a bit impatient about the flashsideways-es. This episode was in my opinion the best single-character centric look at the other timeline, and in spite of himself Jack is a terrific father. But what is the purpose of this other reality... and why are we seeing it at all? Questions abound and the clock is ticking down on opportunities to explain that and the bajillion other mysteries left on Lost.

I'm beginning to think that "Christian Shepherd" on the island was the Man in Black all along, and Claire sided with his camp as long ago as "Cabin Fever". Sure seems that way, the way Claire introduced Jin to "my friend".

So is that the explanation for the numbers?! Probably more to it than that but if not, that's still a heckuva neat purpose for them.

The teaser for next week promises answers. We'll see.

I'll give "Lighthouse" an 8.5 out of 10.

Is the Joker on the loose in Mayberry?

Over the weekend somebody vandalized the statue of Sheriff Andy Taylor that sits outside the Surry Arts Council building in Mount Airy, North Carolina. The statue depicts Mount Airy's most famous son, actor Andy Griffith, alongside his son Opie from The Andy Griffith Show.

Sheriff Andy now has green hair and a red smile painted on his face. His sheriff's badge is also now colored red. Opie was unharmed.

You can read all about it here.

I don't think that whoever did this has any idea of the trouble they're in. This being North Carolina, and Mount Airy (the inspiration for Mayberry on the show) of all places, an attack on Sheriff Taylor is downright sacrilege.

Sounds like the Joker is afoot in Mayberry. Time to load up your bullet Barney!

Speed of light slowed to 38 miles per hour

Light in a vacuum travels at about 186,000 miles per second. Now a group of scientists has slowed down a beam of light so that it only goes 38 miles per hour.

They did it by sending the light through super-cooled sodium atoms, which worked "like molasses" on the photons.

Read all about it here.

38 miles per hour? That's about half as fast as I usually drive :-P

Jessica Watson is 3/4ths of the way home

So you might be asking "Who is Jessica Watson?"

I've been following Jessica Watson's journey with great interest since it began this past October. At 16, this young lass from Sydney, Australia is endeavouring to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe in a sailboat, alone and unaided. She left the harbor in Sydney on October 17th 2009, headed on an easterly track that went north and back across the Equator. On January 14th Jessica rounded Cape Horn (her first sighting of land since taking off) at the southernmost tip of South America and began the Atlantic Ocean leg of her 23,000 nautical mile journey.

Sometime today - if she hasn't already - Jessica Watson should be conquering Cape Agulhas on the southern tip of Africa and enter the Indian Ocean. Then once she gets to Australia she merely has to sail around Down Under and get back to Sydney.

Visit Jessica Watson's official website for more information about her amazing odyssey, including a blog that she's maintaining on the trip and a page that uses Google Earth with GPS tracking that shows her present location and the track of her voyage thus far.

And Jessica: You go girl!! :-)

Two reasons why tonight's LOST episode could be more important than most

Reason #1: it's airing on February 23rd.

Reason #2: this will be the 108th hour of Lost since the show first began airing in fall of 2004.

With 23 being one of "the numbers" and 108 being the sum of the numbers, good money is on tonight's episode - titled "Lighthouse" - will wind up being rather monumental. Many keen Lost fans noted that last week's "The Substitute" aired on the eve of Ash Wednesday.

Lost at 9 tonight. Expect the usual post-episode reaction and thoughts afterward on this space :-)

Have you ever noticed...

...that everyone in the Bible who found "favor with God", without a single exception, encountered severe trials and troubles?

(Credit goes to friend and fellow blogger Kevin Bussey for that observation. One that I have been led to meditate much upon in the past several days.)

Monday, February 22, 2010

Keynes and Hayek rap "Fear the Boom and Bust"

If all lessons about economics were this entertaining, I might not have slept through most of those classes years ago...

From creative director John Papola and creative economist Russ Roberts comes "Fear the Boom and Bust", a rap song in which legendary economists John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek come back to life and attend a modern-day conference on the economic crisis, but first have a night of wild party.

Here 'tis! And I was laughing pretty hard at this...

Incidentally, that video was passed along this way by good friend and fellow blogger Danny de Garcia II from the Big Island of Hawaii. And he asked me to reprint an e-mail that he sent to all of his state's legislators...

Greetings Hawaii State Legislators,

As one of the major issues facing the Legislature this session is the question of economic recovery and how to connect the dots on falling revenues, I would like to submit for your review a video which explains in a rather simple to understand and humorous fashion two different schools of economic theory, Keynes; which supports big government and big spending to "stimulate" the economy and F.A. Hayek who won the 1974 Nobel Prize for his discussion on how government manipulation/intervention affects the economy. Please take a look at this 7-minute video, I think it will be very educational as well as self explanatory ......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

Very Respectfully,

Danny de Gracia

Okay Danny, done! And as you noted: "Now they have absolutely NO EXCUSE to say 'I didn't know that we impact the market' :D"

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Time for my weekly dose of ARE YOU BEING SERVED? on PBS

Just for fun, let's count how many times Mrs. Slocombe talks about her pussy!!!

EDIT 12:59 a.m. 02/22/2009: I am very disappointed! In two episodes tonight, Mrs. Slocombe mentioned her pussy only once! But Mr. Humphries more than made up for it :-)

REAL Church of Christ member discusses Johnny Robertson

First things first: Earlier this week somebody suggested that we should begin referring to local cult leader Johnny Robertson as "He Who Stalks Behind the Pews".

It was too good an idea not to go into Photoshop with it...

(click to drastically embiggen)

Heh-heh. Haven't done one of those in awhile :-P

Speaking of video cameras, a number of people have informed me that during his four hours of "Religious Review" this past week that Johnny Robertson put the word out to all(?) of his viewers that he wants them to begin covertly video recording all the churches in this area with video cameras, cellphones, iPhones etc. and to send the footage to him.

Between his obsession with Martinsville-based television station BTW, his constant scheming to destroy Baptists and Pentecostals and Methodists (especially Baptists), his harassing innocent people in their own homes and churches and store parking lots, his monitoring both feeds of WGSR to watch for dissenters, and now trying to amass an army of spies, does Johnny Robertson ever, like... you know, minister to the members of his own church? Doesn't seem right, somehow.

Yet another blog has popped up to counter Johnny Robertson and his so-called "Church of Christ". Whoever is behind it is already asking hard questions about the hyper-legalist doctrine of the cult as well as the lingering enigma regarding Jason Hairston's departure from the cult.

Finally, there is this that was posted on another forum by a mainstream Church of Christ member in the Martinsville, Virginia area. I thought it pertinent enough to repost here...

Word on the street, is supporters of John are starting to see through him, meetings have transpired as to a solution.

Even the Preaching School was created on lies and deceit via pictures, names of attendees. Funds were raised via a list of names and pictures of those who were supposedly enrolled. After some dropped from the program, funds were still being raised as if the program still had the same enrollees. It is quite clear that the purpose of the training school, was not to make “Gospel Preachers” but created solely to make clones – clones of John. John knows he has lost support and also realizes that his negative popularity is hurting his cause, rather than furthering his agenda. In desperation, he has tried to push more air time, as if this will help.

Watching a few shows one can quickly see that the show revolves around his ego. Seldom is Jesus referenced on his shows. He is more interested in picking apart the flaws of others than he is in reaching lost souls. And, NEVER do you hear him discussing the many problems within the Church of Christ. Why not? Well, simply put, it would show him to be like the rest of us – IMPERFECT. He falls short with morality and doctrinally, just as everyone else. But, pride comes before the fall and he dare not acknowledge his short-comings nor will he disclose information regarding the many disagreements within the Church of Christ; and folks these are not just some minor disagreements, they involve doctrine.

The “Doctrine of Christ” becomes whatever each sect within the Church of Christ deems it to be. Also, there is so much disagreement over “the gospel”-- not the Gospel about Jesus, but the gospel of scriptural interpretation. If you teach something like one cup MUST be used during communion, the multiple cuppers are labeled preaching “another gospel.” Many splits have occurred because one group says the other church of Christ sect is preaching “another gospel.” In both cases, Johns teaching on the “Doctrine of Christ” and Paul’s teaching to the Galatians are twisted and ripped from context and then used to divide the Church – a sin that Paul condemned strongly. John is a master at such misapplication of scripture, often ripping a verse from it's context and giving his own private interpretation which we are warned not to do.

Cults are masters of scripture manipulation and this brings me to the million dollar question: Is John Robertson a cult leader? YES!! Is the Church of Christ a cult? NO!! Many conservative Church of Christ are loving people, teaching the truth in love, not wanting to control peoples minds, but lead them to Christ. John wants his cultish ego fed and many afar off are staring to see this.

If you are reading this, and desire to stay in the Church of Christ, there are others in town who know John is a cult leader and they will gladly accept you and will do so in love and not attempt to control your minds.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Last night during my personal Bible study (so far that's all I'm reading this Lenten season, having vowed to give up reading for pleasure :-) I did some study in 2nd Corinthians. Beginning in the eleventh chapter, Paul has a lot to say about as he puts it the "super-apostles" who were puffing themselves up with legalism. They thought that by following "the rules" that this would give them more merit than other Christians. Paul rails against them and not just because they were trying to destroy Paul's ministry either. These people were bringing back the same rule of law that Christ's substitutionary death had put an end to. In effect, these people were undoing the finished work of Christ at Calvary.

It's not by any work of our own, lest we should boast! We are saved by the grace of God, and not by the grace of other men.

I cannot put it any more plain than this: to insist otherwise, is a very evil thing. Perhaps the most evil thing possible in this world. Christ came to free us. Men like Johnny Robertson and his followers lust to enslave others... and in the name of Christ, no less!

And I'm going to keep stating the obvious for however much I have to, regardless of any intimidation or threats from Johnny Robertson and his lackeys.

Some thoughts on Joseph Stack and the IRS

The subject of Joseph Stack - the man who did a kamikaze attack with his private plane on an IRS office in Austin, Texas this past week - came up last night while a friend and I were getting a bite to eat after seeing Shutter Island (an excellent movie, incidentally).

For whatever it's worth ('cuz hey, I'm just a blogger on the Intertubes) I think that Mr. Stack was a very troubled individual, and I would no doubt hold to that assessment even if I had not read his bizarre and rambling screed that he posted on a website before burning down his own house and then flying off the brink of madness.

I also think that it's very, very inappropriate for anyone to ascribe Stack as being typical of a political ideology. In the past few days I've seen self-professed liberals claim that Stack echoed the sentiments of conservatives and the Tea Partiers, and I've seen self-professed conservatives insist that Stack was a liberal.

I saw much the same happen in the days and weeks following the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. That was wrong then and trying to score political points off of a senseless act is just as wrong now.

That said, I am inclined to ponder what it was that drove Mr. Stack to such extreme behavior, and as with everything else I believe such curiosity can be meditated upon without examination in that darklyiest mirror of temporal politics. A better mind than my own for this sort of thing - namely, that of Chuck Baldwin - has articulated some thoughts about Stack and his anger. Baldwin doesn't excuse Joseph Stack or make him out to be "a martyr for the cause"... but he does address the increasingly growing frustration that many Americans are having with a government that they are compelled to believe no longer represents them or derives from our consent.

Finally, in his pre-mortem manifesto Joseph Stack referenced Section 1706 of the 1986 tax act: a bit of legislation that Stack claimed declared him to be a "criminal and non-citizen slave" and drove his programming career into financial ruin. A 1998 article in The New York Times addressed the very same problem that apparently so provoked Stack, and tax attorney Harvey J. Shulman discusses Section 1706 further in light of recent days. Reading it, I must profess that it's hard not to have some sympathy toward Joseph Stack (and I can have that without condoning his actions of this past week) as well as toward anyone else who is trying to make it as an independent computer programmer or technical consultant. The IRS has enforced such an inordinately burdensome tax liability on these people that I cannot but believe that it has led to a stifling not only of personal wealth, but of innovation and creativity in this country.

Kinda makes you wonder if Steve Jobs or Bill Gates would have ever started Apple or Microsoft after 1986... or if they would have just given up their dreams because the government mandated too much money from them to have ever made it worthwhile.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

The Knight Shift celebrates ONE MILLION VISITS!!!

As of tonight, February 20th 2010, The Knight Shift has officially hit seven figures...

...because this evening this blog received its ONE MILLIONTH VISITOR!

WOO-HOO!!!


Took just over six years, nearly 4,000 individual posts about everything from Star Wars to me running for office to restaurant reviews to crazy cult leaders to legal battle with media giants to exploits in filmmaking to travel to religion to cutting-edge science to...

What hasn't this blog and its eclectic proprietor covered in all that time?

Well, it's been a heck of a fun ride. And one million separate visits to what is, admittedly, a personal blog is quite a significant accomplishment. I'm thankful to have had such an audience, and I sincerely mean it when I say that I hope to continue delivering the goods - whatever they happen to be - for a long time to come.

In the meantime, y'all buy a candy bar and pretend I got it for you. And the drinks are on me too :-)

Bumper sticker that I made for my car

My political philosophy
can't fit on a bumper sticker.

Neither should YOURS!

Says what it means. Means what it says.

I came up with the slogan about two weeks ago, designed it in Photoshop and had CafePress print it and ship it to me. It replaces the "Ron Paul for President" sticker that has been on my bumper for almost two years. Which that one wound up striking up lots of good conversation with folks who saw it decorating my car, and hopefully this new one will stir up even more.