Do the Georgia mountains harbor Mayan ruins?

Found this curious lil' article by one Richard Thornton at Examiner.com, as it was cited a number of times throughout this past day. If there's anything of merit to this thesis, there exists the possibility that the Maya civilization once stretched from the Yucatan as far north as Blairsville, Georgia!

From the article...

Archaeological zone 9UN367 at Track Rock Gap, near Georgia’s highest mountain, Brasstown Bald, is a half mile (800 m) square and rises 700 feet (213 m) in elevation up a steep mountainside. Visible are at least 154 stone masonry walls for agricultural terraces, plus evidence of a sophisticated irrigation system and ruins of several other stone structures. Much more may be hidden underground. It is possibly the site of the fabled city of Yupaha, which Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto failed to find in 1540, and certainly one of the most important archaeological discoveries in recent times.

According to the theory presented here, the age of these structures discovered in the Georgia wilderness corresponds to the sharp drop in the Mayan population of Mexico and Central America. Given how the Georgia sites bear striking similarities to Mayan irrigation canals and other constructs, along with some cultural and lingual evidence, it is the belief of some that there could have been a migration of Maya to the southern Appalachian region.

Wow!! VERY interesting, if there's any substance at all to this. It would go neatly hand-in-hand with a lot of the other stories that pervade this part of the country, like the massive Stonehenge-like megalith circle that once sat atop Stone Mountain (the Ku Klux Klan got ride of 'em about a hundred years ago when the likenesses of the Confederate generals were being carved into the rock face) and the local Native Americans said they had no idea who erected those boulders to begin with. Then there are the odd mounds and carvings here and there from South Carolina on up to the Ohio Valley.

Gonna be keeping a keen eye on this one. Stuff like this, it's practically like porn to me! :-P

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First trailer for Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS

Did you know that next year will be thirty years since Blade Runner: the last time that Ridley Scott gave us a science-fiction movie?

Based on this much-awaited first trailer for Prometheus, I'm praying that it won't be another thirty years before Scott delves into the genre again!

So if you don't know already, Prometheus is sort-of a prequel to Ridley's 1979 Alien (and by extension also a prequel to James Cameron's Aliens from 1986). It just won't have those chest-bursting xenomorphs, allegedly. Ummmm confused by that? Yeah me too, a bit. Still gonna see this on opening day though :-)

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Time for some classic Christmas music

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Looks at the first THE HOBBIT trailer, my Precious!

It was ten years ago this week that The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came out and last night on the way out of town for the evening I had that movie's score soundtrack playin' good and epicly loud from my car's stereo... and I found myself thinking then "I wonder when we'll see that first trailer for The Hobbit?".

Lookee what was already several hours online when I got home a few hours ago!

Ohmigoshohmigoshohmigosh...!!!!!!!!!!!!

That. Is. One. Hell. Of. A. Toad-strangler. Of. A. Trailer.

Heck, it is insanely better looking than anything I had expected of The Hobbit movie, now a decade after Peter Jackson and his crew delivered The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yeah I didn't know if The Hobbit was gonna work at all...

Color me persuaded with extra portions of giddy!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey comes out next Christmas season, with Part 2 of the story following in 2013.

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Iraq: Well, THAT didn't take long...

I hate to say "I told you so" buuuuuuut...

For quite a long time now and most recently five days ago, I have argued that going to war in Iraq would have disastrous long-term consequences and chief among those is that without a "strongman" to hold that country together, Iraq will tear itself apart into sectarian strife. The classic model for my thesis is Yugoslavia: a "nation" that much like Iraq was cobbled together from leftover realms in the aftermath of World War I. And just as Marshal Tito kept the various factions like the Croats, the Bosnians, the Serbs etc. from killing each other, so did Saddam Hussein put a lid on the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds and everyone else from destroying Iraq from within.

That's NOT any justification for Saddam Hussein, mind you. The man was an evil bastard. It's just the peculiar dynamic of any artificial nation like Iraq that it has to have a powerful central figure wielding exorbitant military force to keep the peace among the various ethnic and religious factions. That central figure was Saddam but when the United States deposed him, we took responsibility for Iraq!

(Okay, not the American people per se, but our government certainly did... and for the moment I'll let it remain an exercise for the reader as to whether our government is beholden to We the People anymore. But I digress...)

So with the United States military not even 24 hours departed from Iraq, that country's Shiite-controlled government has put out an arrest warrant for Iraq's vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, who is a Sunni.

Expect this sort of thing to continue to happen.

Incidentally, it was former president George W. Bush who had the "genius" idea of putting the Shiites in charge of Iraq. Some will try to blame Barack Obama for that, but there's no basis for it. And I ain't an Obama supporter by any means either. I'm just an American citizen who expects better of his elected representatives. Including a greater than basic grasp of history and culture of the places we muck ourselves up in.

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THE DARK KNIGHT RISES first real trailer is out right now!!

"When Gotham is ashes, you have my permission to die."

Click here to visit the official site for The Dark Knight Rises and watch Bane unleash unholy terror on Gotham City.

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North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-Il has died

Breaking news right now...

And in related news...

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco is STILL dead!"

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Vaclav Havel, a true leader among men, has passed away

Vaclav Havel, who was born poor, became a pundit, then turned playwright, wound up a political prisoner, and ended up president of the newly-free Czech Republic following the Velvet Revolution that precipitated the fall of the Soviet Empire, has passed away at the age of 75.

Havel lived the kind of life that would have been hard to believe, had it not really happened. Yet for all of it he maintained an intense sense of humility. I've heard stories about how when he was president (a job he did not want at all) that he would often show up unescorted at pubs to discuss matters with his fellow Czechs, as well as popping up unannounced at historic sites to serve coffee to tourists.

Havel did not like being a politician. And I'll dare not sully his memory by referring to him as such. He was, instead, a sincere statesman in every possible sense of the word.

Thoughts and prayers going out to the family of one of the greatest leaders of the past half century.

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A response to a challenge on baptism

A few days ago the following e-mail arrived...

"Chris you are WRONG. Baptism is required for salvation! Acts 2:38 has Peter commanding that we be baptized FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS. Mark 16:16 commands baptism and without it we are damned."

There was more to it but that's the heartmeat of this individual's contention. I don't know what precipitated this correspondence. Maybe it was the "Meditation on Baptism" post nearly three years ago. Maybe it was one of the numerous posts I've had to make about a certain cult operating in this area: a group that has among other things harassed others who have met to worship in peace.

Okay, fine. I'll respond to it.

Here is Acts 2:38, as translated in the 1611 Authorized Version (AKA the King James Bible):

Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

For all the beauty of the King James Version, it is rife with problems. Those stem from two primary factors: that the Authorized Version was a project that King James used to placate the Puritan faction of the Church of England (i.e. it was a political stunt, plain and simple) and the fact that the primary source material of Greek manuscript for the Authorized Version was apparently the Textus Receptus of Desiderius Erasmus. Now, Erasmus was otherwise a brilliant scholar, no doubt about it. But the Textus Receptus was hands-down his sloppiest piece of work ever (he was rushing to win a contest... and he didn't have that many manuscripts to draw from to begin with). Combined with the aforementioned purpose of affirming in approved canon the doctrines and ordinances of the Church of England over all others and you get the idea of what is wrong with the King James Version (though I still love the overall beauty of its language).

But anyhoo, let's look at the passage that this reader (and others) have attempted to use to insist that water baptism is necessary for salvation: "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins..." I emphasized the word "for" because in the Greek the original word is "eis". And "eis" does NOT easily translate into "in order to receive..." Rather, the more accurate rendition is "because of".

So let's translate Peter's statement again, this time with "eis" correctly translated...

"Then Peter said unto them: Repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ because your sins have been remitted."

That makes much more sense. It also reconciles that bit of scripture with the story of Cornelius, the first Gentile to become a Christian (recorded in Acts 10) who along with his household had already believed in Christ. That Peter baptized them was outward affirmation that Christ came for all nations, and not merely the Jewish people (per the vision that he received as recorded earlier in the chapter). Here also, we find that baptism is not for salvation, but is rather for all of those who are already in Christ and His church.

That might seem a small matter today, but in those heated days of the early church the issue of non-Jewish converts to the Way (as Christianity was called in the beginning) was a serious controversy. Peter baptizing Cornelius and his family was a threshold moment for Christianity. They were baptized because they had faith in Christ and because of that faith, their sins were already forgiven. Hence, they were fully entitled to baptism, without any regard whatsoever for their nationality.

So that takes care of Acts 2:38. But what about Mark 16:16? Here is what that passage has Jesus telling His followers...

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Y'all want the "nice" reason first why this verse doesn't mean that baptism is a requisite for salvation, or do you want the "nasty" reason?

Fine. I'll start off polite. Here it is: this verse does not say at all that the absence of baptism equals damnation. It only states that "whoever does not believe will be condemned". Downright obvious, actually.

But here's the biggest reason why Mark 16:16 can not be used to claim that baptism is a requirement for salvation...

Mark 16:16 doesn't belong in the Bible to begin with.

Feel free to read that again after you've come down from the initial shock.

The Gospel of Mark is apparently the oldest of the four gospels, perhaps composed only about 35 years or so after General Titus and his boys laid waste to Jerusalem and the Temple there. But of all the oldest manuscripts that we have for Mark's book, none of them contain verses 9 through 20 of Chapter 16! The last thing that can credibly be ascribed to the Gospel of Mark is that "...the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid." And if you only have the King James Version to go on, it jumps from there to a sudden re-introduction of Jesus and an ending that is wildly different from the context of the rest of Mark's writing.

Long story short: Mark 16:16 and everything else from 16:9 onward is a later addition. Much later. Perhaps by a century or so. I've tried to find anything that demands why these verses do belong in Mark but as of yet, such justification has eluded me. If anyone has something that I might have missed, leave a comment here or shoot me an e-mail at theknightshift@gmail.com.

Does that mean that your friend and humble blogger is committing sacrilege by ignoring part of the Bible? Nope, not at all. Indeed it is quite the opposite: I am striving for nothing more and nothing less than to understand what the Word of God does teach, in spite of all that man has inevitably attempted to do with it during these two millenia out of either well-meaning or malicious intent.

And however one chooses to adhere to the matter of baptism, it must be acknowledged by all that the endurance of the Word of God - the Truth of God, of which the verbiage of scripture can be but a rough covering - is in and of itself nothing short of a miracle.

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MAD TV presents: TERMINATOR 3: THE GREATEST ACTION STORY EVER TOLD

Y'know, the sad thing is: this sketch from Fox's MAD TV is soooooo much better than the actual Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator: Salvation, combined!

I think this was first broadcast before Christmas 1998. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Terminator is sent back in time to protect Jesus of Nazareth in... The Greatest Action Story Ever Told!

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Christopher Hitchens has passed away. And some words for more than a few fellow Christians...

The sad news broke early this morning that Christopher Hitchens, the celebrated, provocative and brilliant journalist/essayist, has passed away at the age of 62 following a battle for the past year and a half with cancer of the esophagus.

Even when I disagreed with Hitchens - and those times were numerous - I had to have grudging respect for the man, because it can't be said that he lacked consistency. He was one of the rare writers in this day and age who strove in his craft not for sake of political or ideological favor, but instead for nothing more or less than understanding of the human condition and its derivative culture.

Here is Hitchens' final essay for Vanity Fair, appearing in next month's issue. In it he wrestles with thoughts of his own mortality and determination of spirit.

And now, there is something that I feel led to say to too many of those who, like myself, profess to follow Jesus Christ...

To be blunt: I am very disappointed with a lot of you.

Yes, Christopher Hitchens was an avowed atheist. But even so: I'm not going to judge the man. And neither should anyone else. Yeah that means YOU too!

What is it about Christianity that seems to bring out the smugness and arrogance in some people? Especially when the choice to follow Christ at all is supposed to stem from an acknowledgement that we ourselves are not worthy of being in His kingdom... nay, of being anywhere within His sight, even!

Yet God loves us so and through Christ has adopted us into His realm. That should be cause enough for joy unceasing. And yet there are far too many Christians for whom that is not enough. For them, Heaven isn't sweet unless they know with absolute certainty that there is at least one poor miserable soul roasting in Hell for eternity. Based on what I've been seeing around the Intertubes since this morning, that particular soul of the day is Christopher Hitchens.

I honestly don't know who to feel more sorry for: a man who wrote that he did not believe in God, or a person who claims belief in God while literally gloating that someone else chose to be separated from that very God for all time.

I am in no position to judge the soul of Christopher Hitchens. But I can assert that based on what I have read of him and found in his writings, that he was an individual who not only struggled with the idea of God, but perhaps had more reasons than most to endure that struggle at all. That he chose to be open and even brazen about it does not befit one who is necessarily comfortable with the notion of there being no God. Rather it seems more that Hitchens was searching for a rationale for God's existence. And indeed, in recent months he had even begun to question his atheism within his essays.

I can't believe that God can't honor that. As our Lord Himself declared...

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

-- Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 7

And we should be thankful that the matter of our own salvation is not dependent upon the understanding of other men!

Because in the end, Christopher Hitchens was a frail man who did not possess fulness of wisdom and understanding. He was a person who was imperfect and had fallen short of the glory of God.

Aren't we all?

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New poster for THE HUNGER GAMES movie adaptation

I know practically nothing about The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, apart from this book being everywhere when I go into any of the local bookstores. In fact, the synopsis for the upcoming film adaptation - which I just read a short while ago - is all that I know about it at all...

Every year in the ruins of what was once North America, the evil Capitol of the nation of Panem forces each of its twelve districts to send a teenage boy and girl to compete in the Hunger Games. A twisted punishment for a past uprising and an ongoing government intimidation tactic, The Hunger Games are a nationally televised event in which "Tributes" must fight with one another until one survivor remains. Pitted against highly-trained Tributes who have prepared for these Games their entire lives, Katniss is forced to rely upon her sharp instincts as well as the mentorship of drunken former victor Haymitch Abernathy. If she's ever to return home to District 12, Katniss must make impossible choices in the arena that weigh survival against humanity and life against love. THE HUNGER GAMES is directed by Gary Ross, and produced by Nina Jacobson's Color Force in tandem with producer Jon Kilik. Suzanne Collins' best-selling novel, the first in a trilogy published by Scholastic that has over 16 million copies in print in the United States alone, has developed a massive global following.

What sayeth y'all who might have read this book: any good?

Here's the just-released poster for it, which has officially colored me intrigued...

Okay, I just found that there's also this trailer for it too...

Looks pretty solid. I may have to make time to read this book before the movie comes out :-)

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The Iraq War is officially over

On this day, the Iraq War has officially drawn to a close. It began in March of 2003, lasting nearly nine years (more than twice as long as the United States took to fight and win World War II across both the Pacific and European theaters).

The Iraq war cost our own country nearly one trillion dollars. It also cost the lives of more than 4,500 American military personnel and more than 100,000 Iraqis (many of whom were innocent civilians not attached to Saddam Hussein's army).

Now... can anyone finally tell me why it is that we went to war in Iraq in the first place? "Enforcing sanctions" won't cut it. We lost too many lives and wasted way too much money on this fiasco. What has come of it? An Iraq which will sooner than later tear itself apart across ethnic and religious lines (specifically Sunni, Shiite and Kurd) and a wide-open corridor from its western border for Iran to get pokey with Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

In short: we took an already unstable world region and primed the fuse for even worse potential for globe-rattling mayhem.

The only reason we honestly went into Iraq to begin with is because we had, at the time, a small-minded narcissist in the Oval Office. A man who only got there because of his friendships and his family connections. A control freak who was too used to getting his own way. A simpleton who had no grasp of history and yet wanted to be remembered as a "war president". An individual detached from sympathy, empathy and sincerity. A man who thought himself and was allowed to think of himself as "favored of God" and that all others as such were expendable according to the whims of his divine right to rule.

Yes, George W. Bush and all of his kind... by all means, "Take a Bow".

Future generations will look upon this conflict - and what it will eventually spawn - and accordingly rank our own era as being among the most foolish in American history.

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Time for... THE LOBO PARAMILITARY CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!

This was posted on the blog a number of years ago, minus an embeddable video. That's since been fixed and hey, it is too good not to share once again!

It's The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special! Adapted from the eponymous one-shot special published in the early Nineties, DC Comics' resident badass and intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo (one of Superman's more colorful enemies) is hired by the Easter Bunny to kill Santa Claus. A bit of warning: there's some pretty harsh language in this film... but it's oh so very funny!

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Newt Gingrich: The GOP's John Kerry in waiting

I once met Newt Gingrich. He's a strong writer and speaker. I think he's got a very good mind for history. I also happen to share many of the views that he holds.

Nonetheless, I've got to say it...

Newt Gingrich is poised to become for the Republican Party in 2012 what John Kerry was for the Democrat Party in 2004.

Meaning that if Gingrich is the GOP's nominee for President, that will most likely assure that Obama will be re-elected.

Part of me is wondering if that might have been the plan from the start, although by whom and for what purpose, I could only speculate.

Can anybody provide evidence strong enough to compel me that there is any significant difference between the "two major parties" running the show in the United States? And that's all this really is: a show. Albeit one that has cost us billionstrillions of dollars, a wasted economy, individual liberty and even more than a few lives.

We, the American citizenry, will never be free until we make the conscious and conscientious choice to turn away from these petty illusions of political grandeur and at long last accept the responsibilities that God has entrusted with we the people.

(Just my .02 that I felt led to share after reading this morning's news...)

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17-year old creates cancer-destroying nanoparticle (and wins lots of $$$ to boot!)

Angela Zhang (left) is probably like the vast majority of other teenagers in most respects. But how many other teens out there are also developing radical new therapies for cancer that might very well lead to a veritable cure?

That's what Zhang has been doing for the past two years, spending over a thousand hours researching and creating a microscopic means of destroying tumors. And for her efforts she has just been awarded the $100,000 Grand Prize in the Individual category of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology!

The title of Zhang's project is "Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells". In layman's terms, it means that she developed a nanoparticle that, when delivered to the tumor site via the drug salinomycin, destroys the cancerous stem cells. Not only that but she smartly utilized gold and iron-oxide so that the particles could also be picked up on MRI and photoacoustics. Meaning that Zhang's method can overcome cancer resistance and be monitored in real time without any extra special equipment.

Clever lass, this one is!

Geek.com has more about Angela Zhang and her very cool work. Wouldn't surprise me if this product of her ingenuity sees routine use within the next ten years (if not sooner).

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One reader's tale of incompetence at the Internal Revenue Service

Way, waaaaay back when this blog was just getting started, I posted an essay titled "People who should be shot when the revolution comes". It was a tongue-in-cheek (kinda) piece about who in our society should be the first ones to be thrown against the wall if and when the citizens of this country finally get their fill and overthrow those who have gotten too uppity for anyone's good.

That this particular post should come to mind more than seven years after writing it, might clue y'all in on the kind of rage that I feel when I read the e-mail that one of The Knight Shift's viewers sent me recently.

I can't put it any more plain than this: the income tax is a means of economic and personal slavery. Think about how much time and energy gets wasted by millions of honest people in this country every year. Seriously folks: ever think about about what could be done productively, if all those billions of aggregate man-hours that we spend preparing tax returns were done away with?

Then there is how decent people do their best to adhere to a mountain of burdensome legislation that not even the finest tax attorneys in the land can agree on what it's supposed to mean. It's just not possible. I guarantee that if the government wanted, that it could find grounds for criminal indictment against every single taxpayer in America... only because it's impossible to meet each and every single condition of a tax code that is ridiculously volumnious!

And then there are the heartless bastitches of the Internal Revenue Service. Heck, let's name some names here: like Robert W. Nordlander, the IRS "special agent" who prosecuted a cold and cruel vendetta against ultra-marathoner Charlie Engle. Click on that link and just see if that story doesn't get your blood boiling.

I bet what I'm about to share will resonate with too many good people as well. It's what one individual submitted and asked me to pass along to this site's readers...

Waiting for me when I arrived home this evening was an "important" message from the I.R.S., saying it was "important" that I return their call by close of business today (which surprisingly to me was 8 p.m.). I was also asked to reference a "case number" when I returned the call.

After confirming the number appeared to be legitimate from the IRS web site I returned the call, despite my concerns (who wants to get harassed by the IRS?) and suspicions (that this was a scam.)

I decided in advance that I WAS NOT going to give out any personal information, so I bypassed the prompt asking me to enter my Social Security Number. After a 10-minute wait, a "Mrs. C***, ID# [deleted]" answered the phone. She asks for my SSN, and I inform her I'm not giving out any personal information. "Well, we're not going to get very far," she replied. I told her the message I received instructed me to give a case number and that I would give that, which I did.

Little good giving the case number did though, as "Mrs. C***" said she couldn't give me any information unless I gave her my name and "verified" that she was talking to the right person. I told her why not give me the name of the person your trying to reach, and I'll verify if I'm that person or not. No good.

I then mention that I find it peculiar that the IRS would try to contact me by phone rather than mail about a tax issue. (Let me say here that I've been contacted about errors on my federal tax returns before, and each of those few occasions, I was contacted by mail.)

Her explanation was that the IRS does try to make initial contact with individuals by mail based on the address that's on file with their tax return. Only afterwards, do they try to contact an individual by phone.

So I mention that the address they have for me is good because I haven't moved since I filed my taxes. And since since I haven't received a letter prior to this phone call, I must not be the person they're trying to reach. She says, "No! What did I say?"

I responded, "You said that the IRS tries to first contact individuals by mail based on the address filed with their tax return if there are issues. Then you try to contact them by phone." She says that's correct.

So, I ask again, since I HAVE NOT received anything in the mail from the IRS, may I deduce I'm not the individual this case number involves?

"Mrs C***" tells me no, that she can't give me any information unless I give her my personal info, accuses me of arguing with her, says she has other calls she needs to take and that I need to go my local tax office for information.

I could see this wasn't getting anywhere (and wasn't going to) so I ended the call. This drives me crazy and makes me mad on so many levels I gave them the case number they referenced on the message. That's all they asked me to give, and that's all I was going to give. I've "rendered unto Caesar" and filed my taxes on time every year.

Perhaps what made me the most angry was "Mrs. C***'s" comment that she "had other calls to take." Last time I checked, the federal taxes I pay (and we all pay) pay "Mrs. C***'s" salary. The least she could do was do the job I help pay her to do and be a little more helpful.

This is the kind of bureaucratic crap that was symptomatic of the Soviet Union. And the late Roman Empire.

I defy anyone to tell me that the above example is something that should be tolerated by a free people who enjoy the liberty that God has given us and that so many fought... and died... so that we might continue to have.

And I was woefully shortsighted when I came up with that list in 2004. Perhaps we should make room for soulless cretins like Mrs. C*** and Robert Nordlander. I can hear it now...

"But we were only following orders! We were ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS!!"

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