America does not need a "religious rebirth". America and her people do need to experience genuine contrition before God. And the two are absolutely NOT the same.
Honor is good. But humility is far better.
sincerely,
Chris Knight
Katrina started out life on August 23rd, 2005 as a tropical system in the southeastern Bahamas. It did substantial damage and caused a number of deaths as it went across the Florida peninsula. And then Katrina entered the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico... where it became the monster that would ultimately cause the worst natural disaster in American history.
Five years later and Katrina is being debated as hotly as ever. I thought at the time that the situation became one of the worst clusterf-cks ever for government at all levels (and both major parties, mind ya).
But there were also quite a lot of stories about the positive aspects of human nature as well that came out of Katrina. The tale of Jabbar Gibson - the 20-year old who stole a schoolbus to evacuate fellow New Orleans residents to the Houston Astrodome - was one of my favorites. So too was the bar in the French Quarter that never closed. And then there was the photograph of Nita LaGarde, 105 years old and in a wheelchair, holding hands with Tanisha Blevin, the 5-year old granddaughter of her nurse. LaGarde and Blevin had spent two days trapped in the attic of a house as the flood waters rose before being rescued.
(I still think that the Interdictor blog is going to make for one helluva movie someday, with the right screenplay and director behind it.)
There is something dreadfully fascinating about hurricanes. And if you were reading The Knight Shift at the time you'll remember well how, ummm... nuts I went in writing about Katrina.
Let us hope and pray that another such opportunity will be a long, long time in returning.
That is absolutely insanely AWESOME!! And if you want more, GeekTyrant has this and another version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man scene from Ghostbusters recreated in LEGO.
The title pretty much says it all: Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll who allegedly died in 1977, was witnessed at the Sheetz in Eden just a few short hours ago.
Sightings of Elvis are not unheard of in Rockingham County but this is the first time in more than a decade and a half that Elvis has been verified as being in the area. Previously Elvis had been riding around in a white stretch limo, including one visit to a convenience store in Ridgeway, Virginia in 1993 that was authenticated by the News & Record out of Greensboro.
If anyone else spots Elvis in the vicinity, send your report to theknightshift@gmail.com. 'Course it goes without saying that photos will be especially welcome!
All of them are coming in through the "front door" (the blog's main URL at theknightshift.blogspot.com), not at any one particular post. And it's not just been legal firms in North Carolina. If anything visits from law firms in my own home state are being vastly outnumbered by visits from across the country: places like Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Washington state, Texas, Alaska...
I am totally clueless as to what is going on that is leading so many lawyers to visit this site.
Dunno if this means that my activities as a blogger will be propelling me to a lawyer's office but at this point, after going through that twice already, I'm starting to get used to it :-P
So his physician took some x-rays of Chojecki's head... and found a bullet nestled between his skin and his skull.
It had been there for five years. At the time Chojecki, now 35, thought that he had either bumped his head or been hit by a firecracker during a New Years celebration. But apparently the 22-caliber bullet came from a bullet that had been fired during the same festivities (note to self: stop firing guns at parties).
Read more about the heady case of Robert Chojecki here, including video depicting the x-rays and the bullet!
Welcome to the future.
Toshiba is set to be the first manufacturer to roll out glasses-free 3D television, according to news site Breitbart citing a Japanese newspaper. The electronics and entertainment giant "has developed a new system that emits a number of rays of light with various angles from the screen so that viewers can see stereoscopic images without glasses". It's added that "People can enjoy images in three dimensions from various positions and suffer less stress."
If true, this will be the big breakthrough that leads to large-scale adoption of 3D television. The first of these sets are reported to be going on sale before Christmas and retailing for several thousands of dollars. Give it a few years' time and this kind of stuff will likely be more standard than not.
See? This blog just saved y'all several hundreds if not thousands of bucks!! :-)
Watching Season 6 at the moment. Am pleased to report that picture and sound quality is amazing. But the absolutely first thing that I had to watch was "The New Man in Charge": the 12 minutes-long "mini episode" that follows up on the events of the series finale. And in twelve minutes we get to see darn nearly and maybe all of the still-lingering questions get answered! Wondering about the food drops, the "Hurley-bird", Room 23 and Walt? Well those and many more matters get addressed to satisfaction.
If you're thinking about getting this set soon, you might wanna drop by your nearest friendly neighborhood big box store and get it this afternoon or evening: they were going fast at the nearest Best Buy (in fact mine was the last copy they had and the nice lady at the register said people had lined up outside the store this morning to buy the Complete Collection and the regular Season 6 set that also came out today). If you're anything at all a nut for Lost, this is definitely a must-have :-)
(And I learned yesterday that the Lost Season 6 soundtrack CD will be out next month! Followed in October by the 400-some pages Lost Encyclopedia.)
EDIT 7:35 p.m. EST: I just found the hidden disc. Yup, there is another disc in this set and you have to look for it: it's not anywhere that you can readily spot. And this is a huge box set. I'm beginning to wonder if it might be booby-trapped...
So I honestly haven't given the issue much thought until someone over the weekend - and a devout Christian, incidentally - remarked that he hadn't seen one rational argument as to why there shouldn't be a mosque built at that location.
After spending the past few days ruminating on it, I have to conclude... that my friend has observed accurately. And that there even might be more good reasons to allow the mosque to be constructed than raw emotion might have us believe.
My gray matter can tick off three of 'em quite readily...
1. It will be built on private property - As someone who believes that there is a fundamental right to do with property as one sees fit unless it interferes with the rights of others, I am obligated on principle to defend the right for those planning the project to build the so-called "mosque".
2. People have an absolute right to worship God as best as they understand Him - Regardless of whether or not I agree with how they worship God, I must respect the right of others to seek Him, in the good faith that their doing so is as sincere as I would appreciate their respecting my own seeking after Him to the best of my ability and understanding. Put simply: we each have the right to worship God in our own way... but that right ends where the right of others to enjoy the same begins.
3. It will demonstrate that Americans are SERIOUS about the freedom of religion - Some will no doubt claim that I've "gone liberal". I think it's more in line with what the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans (namely, Romans 12:20): that if one opposed to us is hungry or thirsty then provide for his needs, as this "will heap burning coals on his head". And if Islam is the intolerant ideology that some contend that it is, I can think of few things better to counter it than to prove without exception that we of the Judeo-Christian ethic dare to love all others... which includes those who might be lusting for our destruction.
So yeah. I don't see why the mosque shouldn't be built. As one who holds to the rights of the individual and as a follower of Christ, I can't see where others should be deprived of the liberties that I am also thankful to have.
'Course, if the mosque is built and it does wind up used for nefarious purpose, I also can't but believe that the mosque should be razed to the ground and the site desecrated with pig fat (along with the corpses of any adherents responsible for such acts of violence). Parse that as you will...
Here's a snippet...
As a rule, the greener the home, the uglier it will be. I went into the process thinking that green homes were ugly because hippies have bad taste. That turns out to be nothing but a coincidence. The problem is deeper. For example, the greenest sort of roof in a warm climate would be white to reflect the sun. If you want a beautiful home, a white roof won't get you there. Sure, you could put a lovely garden on your roof, because you heard someone did that. But don't try telling me a garden roof wouldn't be a maintenance nightmare. And where do you find the expert who knows how to do that sort of thing?There's plenty more at the link above. Or just click here if you're lazy. Hey, it's Monday morning...Second, the greenest sort of home would have few windows because windows bleed heat. In particular, if your lot has a view to the west, forget putting windows on that side because your family members will heat up like ants under a magnifying glass. Try telling your architect that you don't want a lot of windows on the view side. He'll quit.
Remember to skip the water-wasting lawn. White pebbles are the way to go if you want to save the Earth. I was born with almost no sense of style whatsoever, and even I hate looking at pebble lawns, although I do respect the choice.
There's a whole heap o' amateur astronomers and no doubt quite a few professionals as well who can say that Jack Horkheimer, with his exuberant style and enthusiastic love of astronomy, was one of the biggest reasons why they took up naked eye stargazing. Every week since 1976 we'd see Horkheimer sitting on one of Saturn's rings (gotta love cheapo chromakey done clever) as he effervescently described the heavenly spectacles for the coming week.
A very cool guy, who I am told was just as nice and energetic in real life as he was on his television shows. He will be missed.
Yes, there are pictures. And if y'all behave nice I might post them...
Kids watching Sesame Street these days are used to seeing Mr. Snuffleupagus mixing it up with his best friend Big Bird and all the other characters. But once upon a time the situation was very different. "Snuffy" was introduced to the show during Sesame Street's third season in 1971. He and Big Bird instantly became best friends. And Big Bird was eager to introduce Snuffy to all his other friends on Sesame Street, including the adults. Especially the adults!
But every time Big Bird hatched a plan that would introduce Snuffy to the grown-ups, something would always happen that would keep it from happening. Usually Snuffy would wind up splitting the scene right before the adults arrived. Other times, the adults would have their heads turned looking at something in the dire opposite direction of Snuffy, dashing Big Bird's plot once more.
This went on for... get this... FOURTEEN YEARS! It came to the point where hardly anybody believed Big Bird at all: to them, Snuffy was Big Bird's "imaginary friend".
But at long last, for Sesame Street's seventeenth season premiere on November 18th, 1985, Big Bird's scheme to reveal Snuffy to the world finally succeeded.
Reasons have varied for why Snuffy was outed. Many of the show's staff have said that by the mid-1980s there had been a lot of cases of child abuse and exploitation and the fear was that children wouldn't be believed if they had to tell their parents about "important things".
But it could also be argued that after fourteen years of "just barely missing" Snuffy, that Sesame Street's writers had completely run out of ways for the adults to keep from seeing him. Rather than stringing it out any longer, Sesame Street producers finally gave up and let Big Bird win his long battle for credibility.
I'd heard about this scene but until a few days ago had never actually witnessed it. This is... a HUGE thing for a guy like me, who did grow up watching Sesame Street and wondering if the adults would ever see Snuffy. My life is a little more complete now for getting to see this :-)
So without further ado, here is Big Bird - with a plan involving an early appearance by Elmo - revealing Mr. Snuffleupagus to the shocked and stunned adult cast of Sesame Street!
Why is Roger Clemens in trouble for lying to Congress... when Congress lies to us ALL the time and always gets away with it?
Anyhoo, since I'd committed to only playing through the Dark Knight's exploits during the evening hours, my nighttime gaming needed a new cerebral experience... and Limbo is it! And even though I haven't reached the end of the game, I absolutely must pass along word of it to this blog's readers. Why?
'Cuz Limbo is like Super Mario Bros. had it been envisioned by David Lynch! Yeah, imagine Mario from the same mind that brought us Eraserhead, and that will be Limbo. It's a side-scrolling platform game (something we don't see much of anymore), totally rendered in a Gothic black and white palette and with a bare minimum of background noise. The nameless protagonist - a silhouetted little boy - is bereft of any features save two points of light depicting his eyes. You control him as he sets off to find his lost sister.
And between he and his goal are some of the nastiest, most brutal deaths that I've EVER seen in a video game. So far I've watched our hero be drowned, impaled, decapitated, and numerous other grisly bad ends. The first time he stepped into a steel-jawed trap that took off his head, my mouth couldn't contain the prolonged scream of abject shock that came from my lungs. And Limbo contains many such moments...
Limbo is a testament to how an excellent game (or even a movie or television series) doesn't need a ridiculously exorbitant budget and high-end production values. All it takes is a little creativity and a daring imagination to pull off a memorable experience that will engage, entrance and enchant the player. Limbo is available for 1200 points on the Marketplace for Xbox Live Arcade. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
