Guilty as charged

What had been a terrific and fun-filled Saturday night with my girlfriend and two close friends ended up crashing hard with an e-mail I received shortly after returning home...

Chris, just wanted to let you know that I am de-friending you because basically you are not a friend. Like most other "christians" I know, you seem to be two-faced and unreliable... my "christian" friends seem to be about the most worthless and unreliable of any that I have. I have atheist and agnostic friends who I trust implicitly. At least you've shown me that "christians" truly are a lying, two-face bunch of hypocrits.

That was written by someone who I have known for over thirty years. I cannot be responsible for the choice that this person has made in severing our relationship.

But it is true: I am a hypocrite.

So is every other Christian. Every Christian who sincerely lives and strives to put God first and foremost in his or her life will admit to it, at least. And I would dare say that every Christian who ever lived has been a hypocrite in one way or another. Sometimes in plenty of ways... and I'll admit to being more guilty than most on that charge, too.

Yes, Christians are hypocrites. We are sometimes two-faced and we can be especially unreliable! We even lie sometimes. In short: we are every bit as stupid, scurillous and scoundrelous as any other human being. That we dare to be so ridden with faults while yet claiming to follow One who lived perfectly makes us out in the eyes of many as being the worst of low-life scum.

I know that I am a hypocrite. In more ways than I want to share here.

But neither am I afraid to admit that I am a hypocrite. And so long as I find myself convicted of hypocrisy... which will be until the final breath leaves my lungs in this fallen world... I will continue to confess that flaw in my character.

I am a hypocrite. But it is not what I want to be. And the only hope I have of being sanctified is to continually surrender that frailty to God.

Yes, those who seek mercy from God will be granted mercy. I have no reason to doubt that those who are secured in Him will remain secure forevermore. But rather than being reason to rest from our nature, to orient one's heart toward Christ entails the life-long process of sanctification... and as I have discovered during my own faith journey, that becomes the most difficult and painful part of all in this path we have chosen.

Why must it be so? I have thought about that much over the years. And nothing else makes as much sense as this:

That knowing how frail and fallen we are, we as Christians are not to persuade others to become Christians. We are however meant to persuade others of Christ. And there is no greater way than to show His work - that which is finished and that which He is still accomplishing - in our lives.

If evidence is demanded for conviction, then I will gladly plead guilty every time.

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Last night we watched HUGO

I cannot remember the last time that a movie has so captivated me, that the next day I am still overwhelmingly enchanted by its beauty, its grandeur, and its sense of humanity.

 Hugo came out late last year, but until last night I knew precious little about it save for some of its cast and that it was directed by Martin Scorsese. And that it was based on a book. And that it was in 3-D. Maybe that was one reason why I didn't see it in theaters earlier, because truth be told I have become exhausted with the 3-D fad. Too much use of it in places where it shouldn't be used at all.

After watching Hugo for the first time however, I am kicking myself for not catching it during its theatrical run. I would pay good money just to watch that very first shot of the train station in 3-D, because even on a 2-D high-def television screen it was jaw-droppingly gorgeous!

So neither Kristen or I had ever seen this movie before. A friend of ours let her borrow it, so yesterday evening we settled in for a Sunday evening's enjoyment of some cinema. By the time the film's title is shown to us, several minutes had gone by but so entranced were we by the story and the visuals that we hadn't even noticed it was missing until it finally turned up. And it just kept getting better from there...

Good readers, I'm gonna choose to not go into a terrible amount of detail about Hugo. This really is a movie that you owe it to yourself to go into as unaware as possible. I mean, there are so darned few surprises in this world these days. Especially, it sadly seems, in the movies. And if you genuinely want to experience the movie the way they once were and could still be again, then you can not possibly go wrong with Hugo. Boasting the finest-assembled cast in recent memory - with Ben Kingsley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee, and Asa Butterfield turning in a wondrous performance as Hugo - this movie is an epic triumph in every sense.

Hugo gets this blogger's absolutely highest possible recommendation! I'll be getting the Blu-ray of this for my library for sure... and Lord willing I ever have children, this is one movie that I'm exceedingly looking forward to watching with them.

Now if that ain't praise for a movie, I don't know what is :-)

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Musing on mere religion

I will not make being a Christian more important than being in Christ.

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Burger King hassles customers at McDonald's in Rome, Georgia

Police in Rome, Georgia (a town that I have some firsthand knowledge of) are on the lookout for none other than the Burger King himself, who allegedly stood outside the McDonald's restaurant there and commenced to handing out free hamburgers.

From the CBS News story...

Police were called to a local McDonald’s in relation to a disturbance caused by a man dressed as the Burger King.

In a police report provided to the Rome News-Tribune, officers indicated that they were summoned to the fast-food restaurant around 1 p.m. on Monday, in response to a call about a suspicious person on the premises.

The person was allegedly resplendent in full Burger King regalia.

Police stated that, upon his arrival, the Burger King mascot reportedly began to hand out free hamburgers to customers, and stopped to take pictures with several children.

Officers were additionally told that one child ran away from the man in fear, the paper learned.

Only ONE child ran away?! I'm a grown dude and the King wigs even me out.

Might as well have some fun with these pics that I collected last year when Burger King retired their creepy mascot, but haven't used yet...

And even though it's not about King Creepy, this is still too good not to share...

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Trailer for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

And high-def Quicktime versions of the trailer are up at trailers.apple.com. We wants it my Precious, yesssss...

I made Kristen promise me something late last year: that we will see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey together at its midnight premiere, Lord willing, no matter what. Seeing this trailer has stoked my longing for this movie that much more. December 14th cannot get here fast enough! Okay yeah it can, but you know what I mean...

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Obama Administration brings back Bush-era "free speech zones"

Students at Wright State University who were protesting against Joseph Biden when he visited the campus last week were quarantined a quarter-mile away from the Vice President by the Secret Service. This happened not once, but twice. The rationale given by the Secret Service: they "didn't want the protesters to be too close to the motorcade."

Before any Republicans or Romney supporters cry "foul" about this, it would be well to remember that this exact same thing was routine policy during the presidency of George W. Bush! But that fact hasn't deterred a number of people on "conservative" websites from claiming that the Secret Service is violating the First Amendment, that Obama is violating the Constitution ad nauseum... when Obama's predecessor, a Republican president, was also insulating himself from public dissent with the very same methods, and on a much more chronic basis. Very many of Bush's following at the time had no problem whatsoever with the First Amendment rights of protestors being quashed. But now that the shoe's on the other foot...

"Free speech for me, but not for thee." I guess depending on who has the power, more animals really are more equal than others.

I don't want to hear any whining about Obama or Biden's use of "free speech zones" from past or present supporters of George W. Bush. As far as I'm concerned, come January we'll have had at least twelve years of regime by successive egomaniacs with narcissistic disorder. And I don't give a flying rat's butt which party either one belongs to.

So people: what's it going to take for us to quit supporting this sham?

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This is the greatest Star Wars thing I've seen in YEARS

A seriously talented dude on YouTube with the username "otaking77077" has created what is by every possible measure the most astounding work of Star Wars art that has been produced in a very, very long time. Fellow YouTuber "JPL4185" added some music and sound effects from pre-existing sources. But it's the animation that will drop your jaw and have you begging for more...

Mr. George Lucas, THIS is the Star Wars that we the fans desperately want to see!! No more of that CGI stuff. otaking7077 has taken Star Wars and animated it in the style of Robotech and it is in this blogger's opinion the purest Star Wars sequence that I have seen since... dare I say it... the original trilogy. I especially loved the details inside the TIE Fighters that were liberally taken from the LucasArts X-Wing computer game series.

You know what watching this makes me feel like? What it was to be a Star Wars fan in the early to mid Nineties. That magical, mystical time after Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire reignited our love for the saga. That near-decade before the prequel trilogy when all we had were the novels and the comics and each other across the Internet. It was the Golden Age of Star Wars fandom and this animated work by otaking77077 took me totally back to that.

THIS is what Star Wars once was, and what Star Wars could be again.

And in a sane world, this dude will get hired by Lucasfilm immediately so he can give us a traditional animated Star Wars epic. Make this a television series, and the ratings would shatter the roof.

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"A Town Called Mercy": Spaghetti western, DOCTOR WHO style!

Before getting into the review, I wanna say from the getgo that I thought this week's episode further demonstrates a theory I've had for the past few years: that the Doctor is an unconscious agent of God. Last year's "The Doctor's Wife" might have supported that notion, but I mean, c'mon: how is it that the TARDIS is always landing in a time and place that the Doctor is needed? How else... unless there is a Higher Power guiding the Doctor, whether he is aware of it or not?

Anyway...

In spite of the beautiful special effects work (along with the reunion of Harry Potter alums Mark Williams and David Bradley, each of whom turned in fine work) I found last week's "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" to be somewhat lacking. Maybe that's because it came on the heels of this season's Doctor Who premiere "Asylum of the Daleks", which was a hard episode for any chapter to follow.

But I was thoroughly pleased with this week's episode, "A Town Called Mercy"...

It's 1870, somewhere in the American west. In the years following the Civil War, the town of Mercy welcomes any and all who are looking for a second chance from their past. Including those who may not be from Earth at all. But the quality of Mercy is threatened: a cyborg gunslinger stalks the outskirts of town. Anyone passing (or who gets exiled) beyond the wooden plank-defined border finds himself prey for a high-tech kill.

Of course, the Doctor (with Amy and Rory in tow) finds himself in the midst of it all.

I've always thought that the best Doctor Who stories were those which examined and tested the Doctor's morality and ethics. "A Town Called Mercy" is one of those stories. Some might even be reminded of "Genesis of the Daleks", which had Tom Baker's Doctor weighing whether he had the right to commit genocide on the Dalek race before it had a chance to become a threat.

"A Town Called Mercy" is a far smaller, more intimate setting, but just as powerful nonetheless. The strength of Matt Smith's performance as the Doctor has consistently been when he's compelled toward the last Time Lord's darker, more guilt-ridden nature, and we see that in spades here. Indeed, the scenes of the Doctor wielding an honest-to-goodness pistol are sincerely striking. Disturbing, even.

Look for Farscape's Ben Browder as Isaac, the sheriff of Mercy. And Murray Gold composes a score that truly recollects the westerns of decades gone by. All in all, a very satisfying episode.

"A Town Called Mercy" gets 3 and 1/2 Sonic Screwdrivers. And dang nearly 4.

Next week: "The Power of Three".

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Unintentionally hilarious children's test answers

WARNING: This might be the most gut-bustingly funny link that I have ever directed this blog's readers to! Kristen and I enjoyed looking at these last night and we literally could not stop laughing! One of them in particular (feel free to guess which one) had me so hysterical that I was nearly keeled-over on the floor. If you are sitting at a desk with a drink, it is HIGHLY advised that you set the beverage safely down before clicking on to this page at HappyPlace featuring inadvertently hilarious test answers from children. And if you're a teacher or otherwise involved in education you'll especially get a giggle out of these :-)

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At #5 on Cracked.com's list of The 6 Most Baffling Political Ads Ever Aired...

...it's... me!

That was almost six years ago. I really am never gonna live this down, am I?

Well, it was a lot of fun running for school board. The entire experience, I mean! One that I would never trade for anything. I learned a great deal more about election laws and running for office than I had ever known before. I didn't win a seat but that's okay: it was a great run, I campaigned my own way and kept it positive, upbeat, and I wanted to present my beliefs in an enlightening and entertaining fashion. I wanted just ten people to vote for me, and wound up getting nearly forty-seven hundred.

But I didn't for once believe that this commercial was going to grab any attention beyond Rockingham County... and much less still be going strong more than half a decade later!

Well anyhoo, Cracked.com has my Star Wars-ish school board campaign ad at #5 on their list of The 6 Most Baffling Political Ads Ever Aired.

And if you haven't seen it for yourself yet, here's the link to "Christopher Knight for School Board TV Commercial #1".

Now, it would be really nice if the video that I spent most of the afternoon shooting got even a tiny amount of that kind of attention...

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Warhammer 40K wildly popular among U.S. military personnel

Warhammer 40,000 Sixth Edition came out over two months ago and I still haven't gotten to play with the new rules! Just been busy on multiple fronts. Which makes me look positivalutely pathetic compared to what these dedicated players go through...

Slate Magazine has a terrific article about how the futuristic tabletop war game is incredibly popular among the men and women (okay, mostly men) of the United States armed forces, and especially with many who are serving overseas in places like Afghanistan (including players such as Army Sgt. Steffan McBee, pictured). Warhammer 40K's publisher Games Workshop estimates that perhaps 25 percent of its very large American player base are active-duty personnel: some of whom go to great lengths to have their stockpiles of miniatures shipped safely to their duty posts around the globe.

What's the appeal of a war game played on tabletops with plastic and metal models? Members of the armed forces enjoy the tactical thinking and execution critical to carrying out a 40K battle. But there is also the more hobby-ish aspect of assembling, painting and oftentimes customizing the models. One Marine comments that the strenuous regimented lifestyle of the Corps obligates an attention to detail that carries over well into the grim darkness of the far future that is Warhammer 40K.

It's a most excellent write-up by Alan Siegel, and one that'll have you appreciating anew what our armed service folks do to keep themselves entertained far from home. And hey, as a devout Ork player it makes me proud to be in good company with United States Marines who also enjoy a fine WAAAGH! :-)

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A-maize-ing: World's biggest QR code

On the fertile green plains of Alberta, Canada, the Kraay Family has engineered the world's largest QR code into a cornfield.

And yes, the code works! Hold your smartphone outside the window of a hovering helicopter and when you point it at the code you'll be directed straight to the Kraay Family Farm website.

The QR code takes up about 1.1 square miles of land and has just been verified by Guinness as being officially the world's largest functioning QR code. It's just the latest in a tradition going back more than a decade for the Kraay family: every year they do a "maize maze" featuring wildly intricate designs in their cornfield.

Mash on over to Engadget for more about the Kraay family's techno-agricultural art!

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Behold the world's oldest known color motion picture!

In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became President after the assassination of William McKinley. The Wright Brothers were still experimenting with gliders and motorized propellers. Tsar Nicholas II reigned in Russia and the British Empire mourned the passing of Queen Victoria. A child named Walt Disney was born in Chicago. Guglielmo Marconi used his newly-invented radio to send the first trans-Atlantic signal.

Meanwhile in England, a photographer named Edward Turner was experimenting with color negatives and the recent advent of motion pictures. Among other things Turner recorded footage of his three children, Hyde Park, and traffic in London.

More than a century later and after exhaustive research, it is now being reported that Edward Turner's film is the oldest color motion picture that has ever been found.

Wanna see it? Of course ya do!

The palette of the macaw is particularly striking. But after watching the soldiers marching and the Union Jack flittering, I can't help but wonder what might have been had Turner's process and Kinemacolor later on become more widely available. I mean, just imagine the color footage that could have been made of World War I a few years later.

Edward Turner himself passed away at the much-too-young age of 29 in 1903. But it's great to see him and his work getting appreciated today.

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Federal Reserve begins QE3

This can't end well...

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In-vitro adoptions rising among evangelical Christians

Krista Kapralos writes a most fascinating piece in The Washington Post this week: about how evangelical Christians are coming to the forefront of adopting frozen embryos that have been fertilized in-vitro. The article cites that there could be approximately 600,000 embryos being stored in liquid nitrogen around the United States. And that in keeping with their pro-life values, many who identify themselves as conservative Christians are choosing to legally adopt children... and then carrying them to term on their own.

From the article...

The embryo was frozen in liquid nitrogen when Gabriel and Callie Fluhrer found it. They didn’t know whether that embryo would grow to be a boy or a girl, or whether it would even grow at all.

But to the Fluhrers, it was worth the risk. That tiny collection of cells was a baby, they believed. And if they didn’t pluck it from the warehouse where it had been stored since its biological parents decided they didn’t need or want it any longer, it was likely to die.

“If we’re going to stand against abortion, it’s not simply picketing a clinic,” said Gabriel Fluhrer, a public relations and publishing coordinator for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. “It’s doing the hard work of adopting the orphans around the world, whether embryos or orphans living in China.”

Anna Fluhrer was born in December 2010: from a frozen embryo to a healthy baby girl.

For some reason or another, I found myself studying human embryology last week, particularly the first few days and weeks of the zygote. Something that keeps fascinating me: how the heck does a little ball of cells like that know how and where to achieve bilateral symmetry? That seems like such a tiny detail but for the life of me, I can't figure it out.

Pondering about that reinforced something that I was told years ago by someone in the medical profession: that a baby truly is a miracle. There are a thousand things that could go wrong in a pregnancy, but more often than not a healthy human being is born. We don't appreciate that nearly enough.

So back to this story: as a person who strongly believes that human life begins at conception, I have to applaud that there are many people who are willing to demonstrate their ethics in this fashion. I'm also of the mind that medical knowledge is a wonderful gift from God and that it absolutely can be a blessing for those who need it, including for those who on their own cannot conceive a child.

But I'm also now seeing how my friends among the Catholic persuasion are onto something as well with their church's position that in-vitro fertilization is wrong. Because of all those hundreds of thousands of lab-fertilized embryos, many of them won't be implanted at all. Quite a number of them are fertilized but otherwise not viable for coming to full term. And therein is the ethical problem: that the in-vitro procedure, in an effort to bring about new human life, must also acknowledge that human lives will be lost as an unavoidable consequence.

I'm not coming down one way or another about this. Just wondering aloud if, perhaps, in some ways the miracle of medical technology exceeds our moral grasp.

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Two sequels to INDEPENDENCE DAY being produced

"Welcome to Urf"... again.

(Hah-hah-hah, did you see what I did there? Did you?!)

Word breaking this afternoon is that TWO sequels to the 1996 sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day are in the works. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich are trying to get everyone from the original back on board. Right now the follow-ups are titled ID Forever Part One and ID Forever Part Two. How clever...

I have extremely mixed feelings about this. Yeah, even considering how much of a fan I was - and always will be - of the original. 1996's Independence Day was a unique product of its era. It should remain as much. At the same time it was such a great concept now tied down to being so dated a film that it's one of the few movies that I could see a reboot/remake being in order. Just as long as those eyeball-goggling practical effects make a return.

Oh yeah, it's also been announced that the sequels will be filmed in 2-D and then converted to 3-D in post-production...

"AWWW HELL NAW!!!"

A tip o' the hat to this blog's good friend Drew McOmber for passing along news of this... thing.

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Why the hell do we even have embassies in Egypt and Libya?

Civility is a chosen virtue. It cannot be imposed or expected from those who refuse to accept it and its responsibilities.

Time to get out of the Mid-East until "countries" like Egypt and Libya learn to behave. Pull EVERYTHING out, including all those billions of dollars of aid they get from us one way or another.

If they want to return to barbarism that bad enough, who are we to stop them?

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