awesome duuuuuuude

Chris Knight's avatar

Today is the REAL “Juneteenth”.

Behold the wild celebration outside the United States Supreme Court a few hours ago, as pro-life activists uncorked the champagne and raised a toast to the overturning of Roe v Wade:

This gentleman is Scott Stewart.  He is the Solicitor General for the state of Mississippi.  He is the attorney who argued before the Supreme Court that Roe should be overturned in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health:

Well done, counselor!

 

This is Nancy Pelosi.  She claims to be a good Catholic but she’s not really.  Why?  Because she believes unborn children can be killed in the womb.  Here you see her weeping bitter tears after the Dobbs decision was handed down:

 

 

I’m not going to bother posting a picture of President Biden.  He’s not a real president anyway.

This is the man who sent ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Disclaimer: Adam Smith is a friend of mine.  He’s not paying to advertise his product on The Knight Shift and I didn’t ask for any compensation whatsoever either.  I’m only sharing this because… well, because it’s kewl!  And sharing cool stuff is just how I roll on this blog.

Inspired by the hit Disney+ series Star Wars: The Mandalorian, Adam has forged the “New Beskar Steel” iPhone Case and Cover.  Imitating the much-coveted metal sought by the tribe and just about everybody else, the New Beskar Steel case looks like a real ingot of Mandalorian alloy.  And it will probably do just as well in protecting your iPhone from anything shy of an E-Web blaster cannon.  Complete with rich lustrous sheen and stamp indicating its previous imperialish possessor.  Admittedly it won’t make for much of a full-metal pauldron but if you need a real pauldron anyway, you’ve got ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Last month marked the fortieth anniversary of one of my most favorite films: Ridley Scott’s Alien.  It’s one of the most perfect science-fiction and/or horror movies in the history of anything.  It’s one that often there is some detail that I missed during all the dozens of previous viewings.  Like, it was a mistake for Dallas to let the Nostromo lift off from LV-426 without its systems fully working on the lower decks: they could have detected the creature that much faster and without any further loss of life!  Patience is a virtue, kiddies.

A few months ago in March, Alien may have been given its greatest tribute ever.  A group of students and their instructors at North Bergen High School in New Jersey premiered their production of Alien The Play.

And these young men and women… yowza!!  They pulled off the impossible.  And with a dire minimum

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It takes something TRULY impressive to make me subscribe to a YouTube channel.  But there’s a dude calling himself kiwami japan out of… ummm, Japan I guess, who has earned the ultra-rare golden buzzer.  As the son of an accomplished knife maker I have been totally jaw-dropped by kiwami’s work.  Because he is demonstrating that real and extremely sharp and perfectly usable blades can be made from practically anything.

So far kiwami has made knives from an Amazon cardboard box (seen in photo), from chocolate candy, from epoxy, from rice, from ice (bet you’ll never watch Game of Thrones the same again), from Jello, and now in his latest video kiwami japan has made a deadly blade out of men’s underwear.  kiwami japan is working with so many unorthodox mediums that your mind will barely stop reeling and your mouth might never stop watering. ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Don’t you wish YOU had a teacher like Ethan Schoonover when you were in middle school?  This is the kind of innovation and creativity that educators should aspire to have in their own classrooms.  Heck, it’s enough to tempt me to consider teaching full-time.  Several years ago I taught an elective about making and managing websites at an Episcopal day school.  It was just one class three days a week, but it was so much fun and I still think often of those kids and the imaginations they were putting to use.  The girls that Schoonover teaches are indeed blessed to have a mentor like “Mr. E” because they are cultivating skills that will take them very far in life.

What are we discussing here?  After pestering Mr. Schoonover with the idea for an official after-school group at Lake Washington Girls Middle School located in Seattle, the ladies began a ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

This may be the most amazing tribute to David Bowie that has been done in the past few days: Dom Tower, the tallest church tower in the Netherlands, built in 1382 and with bells dating back to 1505, tolling out “Space Oddity”.




I’ve grown ever more fascinated with Bowie since it was announced that he had passed. Having listened to his final album and watched the last two videos he made (“Blackstar” and especially “Lazarus”), one most certainly gets the sense that Bowie was not only fully aware of his mortality, but that he was accepting it with a mighty grace.  I can’t help but think that there is also a sublime acknowledgement toward God in some of the lyrics and images, and that Bowie was surrendering to that.

When I posted about his passing a few days ago, I wrote that perhaps the most amazing thing of ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

The greatest president of the past half-century – at least – and he kept a sidearm during his time in the Oval Office.

I don’t care what your political persuasion, you gotta admit: that is severely hardcore.

The New York Daily News has an eye-opening story revealing something that until now only members of the Secret Service were aware of: that Ronald Reagan not only believed in the Second Amendment, he actively practiced it.  Specifically, he had a .38 pistol nearby as a personal firearm during his time as President of the United States.  He especially hid it in a briefcase as he traveled on Air Force One.

The article by Brad Meltzer goes into detail about what other presidents have carried with them.  George H.W. Bush toted his driver’s license around, and Clinton had a photo of Hillary and Chelsea (no comment).  Obama carries a Blackberry but no wallet ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Using the paddles from Pong to shuttle Pac-Man back and forth through his maze while dodging the aliens of Space Invaders.  All while Donkey Kong showers the screen with barrels.  This wonderfully schizoid mash-up of four of the most classic video games of all time is called Pacapong and it comes courtesy of a clever lad named Dick Poelen as his contribution to the Ludum Dare 58 video game jam.

I look at this screen and visions of my childhood erupt across my inner retina.  This is the kind of thing that we used to dream up as kids: crossovers between video games.  I think one idea was to have Pac-Man gobbling dots as he moved up Donkey Kong’s girders.  Kinda weird to see something like that actually come to pass.

Kotaku has more about Pacapong, including where you can play it (bear in mind that it’s a two-player ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

If Disney was really smart, they would hire this guy to make a bunch of traditional-animated films like this!

There was a shorter version that Paul Johnson released a few years ago, but this is the full-fledged vision: Star Wars: TIE Fighter.  And it is breathtaking.  I dare say that I speak for a lot of fans out there when I say that this… THIS… is what we want to see.  And see more of.

Here it is:



For all the wonder of CGI-animation, the traditional 2D style has more… I dunno… “character”? “Emotion”? How about “heart”? And that’s what this video has in spades. This is as much of a Star Wars story as the live-action films, in my opinion. And it’s one that I would gladly pay to see more of at the box office....

Read more