Hollywood is officially bankrupt. Free of all new ideas. Worthless recyclers without an imagination. Why?
They’re remaking The Day the Earth Stood Still, one of the best science fiction movies of all time.
And just to make it that much worse, who is the star? Keanu F. Reeves.
Fortunately, I still have my precious DVD of the original.
Oh, no…not Easterbrook. Haven’t I dealt with him sufficiently in the past? He’s got a
long-winded column in which, while quantifying the nudity in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, he also whines about those godless authors that have offended him so much.
Regarding the “Golden Compass” volumes, in them God is a central character — but is actively evil, obsessed with causing people to suffer. The plotline of the books is that Christianity is a complete fraud and the source of all that is wrong with society; the final “Golden Compass” volume concerns a desperate attempt by the heroic children to kill God and obliterate every trace of Christianity from several universes. I found Pullman’s arguments against Christianity puerile — like recent anti-Christian books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, the “Golden Compass” volumes resort to the cheap subterfuge of cataloging everything bad about religion while pretending belief has no positive qualities. Pullman, Dawkins and Harris are anti-faith jihadis: they don’t just want to argue against the many faults of Christianity, they want faith forbidden. But however flawed the “Golden Compass” books might be, to advance anti-Christian views is Pullman’s prerogative, and his art should be transferred authentically to the screen. Now that the Golden Compass volumes are becoming big-budget flicks, will Hollywood accurately depict their loathing of Christianity or turn the books into a mere adventure story?
There ought to be a law that Gregg Easterbrook can call no one else puerile.
I’ve often wondered what these “positive qualities” of belief might be. They’re always assumed to be there, so no one bothers to iterate them — but seriously, I see no virtue in unfounded faith in weird old superstitions. I guess that makes me anti-faith, too. But forbidding faith? Being a jihadi? Easterbrook goes too far, and is reduced to lying to support his claims. He’s just a kooky sportswriter possessed by the inanity of religion.
As for the Golden Compass — I’m hoping the movie portrays a solid loathing of religion too, although I also suspect the producers will chicken out. Fairy tales and children’s stories that put religion in a bleak light are what we need more of — I want children to grow up as doubters and skeptics, rather than gullible marks and credulous dullards.
Why, this must be the smartest dog in the universe.
Her husband decided to ask their 4-year-old dog another question, the square root of 25. Micah tapped his paw five times.
To prove this wasn’t a fluke, the couple and a friend tossed out more math than teachers during exam time. Micah consistently pawed the correct answers, appearing to solve such problems as square root division, finding the numerators and denominators of fractions, multiplying and dividing, even basic algebra.
“He can calculate problems given in English, Spanish, French and German,” Cindy Tuten said.
The situation isn’t at all funny—a female volleyball coach was made miserable and discriminated against because of her sexual preferences, and there seems to have been (and probably still is) a nasty culture of male privilege in Fresno State athletics—but this piece of testimony against the associate AD, Randy Welniak, was just icing on the cake.
The one that sticks out was when Randy took me behind closed doors and said he had just learned of a situation where he just found out why Lindy was such a bitch. That he just learned she not only was a lesbian. She was an atheist.
Uh-oh. Multiple societal norms are being violated! Clearly, not believing in an invisible man in the sky and having no desire to be penetrated by a penis makes her not only incapable of showing people how to hit a ball over a net, but evil, a corrupting influence that must be purged from the athletic department. How can a women’s team hope to win if they don’t pray for victory and if their vaginas have not been bathed in blessed semen?
(via Monkey Trials)
Another major paper has a story on Conservapædia. I’m sure Andy is proud of his accomplishment — the truly stupid would be proud of promoting stupidity.
Schlafly, 46, started small, urging his students to post brief — often one-sentence — entries on ancient history. He went live with the site in November. In the last six months, it’s grown explosively, offering what Schlafly describes as fair, scholarly articles. Many have a distinctly religious-right perspective.
There’s some complaining at the end—there’s a rival wiki, RationalWiki, that comments on Conservapædia silliness, and some of its members also edit Conservapædia, prompting much outrage at those liberals who want to “destroy” them. I don’t think we can blame liberal mockery for these entries, though:
I’m about to set off for the Minneapolis airport — a 3 hour drive, aaargh — and I’m informed that the Vatican has some suggestions for us drivers. There’s a set of commandments (but of course, it’s not religion if they aren’t ordering you about). First on the list: “You shall not kill.”
Yeah, I’m already thrown off by that. I usually set out with the intent to run down anyone I see walking along the road.
Others are similarly trite. Obey the traffic laws, don’t use your cars to sin, support accident victims, etc., and they suggest “periodic celebration of liturgies at major road hubs, motorway restaurants and lorry parks.”
I don’t think so.
And then…
And it suggested prayer might come in handy — performing the sign of the cross before starting off and saying the Rosary along the way. The Rosary was particularly well suited to recitation by all in the car since its “rhythm and gentle repetition does not distract the driver’s attention.”
Handy — how?
Somebody, please explain to me how religion hasn’t already collapsed under the weight of its utterly useless inanity. The Vatican can’t put together a rational policy on contraception, a far more serious problem for the world and to which their beliefs contribute, but they can send out these trivial and irritatingly idiotic suggestions for drivers?
I don’t normally mind people their hobbies and obsessions, even when I don’t share any interest in their object of desire at all, but I did feel some intense schadenfreude at this story about people smashing their over-priced, over-powered sports cars. There is just something excessive about spending $1.5 million on a car. The other troubling part of the article, though, is the mention that more and more people are buying these extravagant luxuries — the number has tripled since 2003 — which is why we’re seeing more of them involved in accidents. It’s another example of how the rich-poor divide is widening in this country. So, yeah, rich pampered scumbags, wreck those cars.
And then you read stories like this one: expensive sports car goes out of control at a charity event, bodies are flying through the air, and 6 spectators end up dead and a score are in the hospital. The driver, of course, is mostly uninjured.
(via Hillary Rettig)
E-cards are annoying. Now what if you had e-cards that looked like they’d been drawn by a first-grader, that contain extraordinarily cheesy tinky-boop music that sounds like it came off a first generation Nintendo, and that recited hokey lies at you? You’d have Christian evolution e-cards. These are guaranteed to turn your brain to mush with prolonged exposure. The lack of talent and stupidity on display will make you sorrow for your impoverished Christian brethren, as well.
Don’t miss the marriage e-cards, especially the one about how wives must submit!
(If you are thinking about sending any of these e-cards to me, don’t bother: the source is already in my junk mail filter.)
(Blame Narciblog)
The Power Team is one of many evangelical circus shows—they specialize in doing energetic school assemblies where they rip telephone books in half and breaking bricks, all with the intent of getting people to attend their tent revival shows where they somehow argue that all the machismo makes them better Christians. In a beautiful example of fighting meat with mind, though, John Foust has an excellent page of information on their evangelical intent that he has successfully used to shut down their shows in public schools. If your local schools start advertising one of these meathead shows, that’s a resource you’ll find useful.
The PowerTeam web page is just sad. For instance, their senior member has been doing this act for 20 years:
John has blown up over 2,000 hot water bottles, and has literally crushed countless tons of ice and concrete with his fist, forearm, and head.
Put that on his epitaph someday. I was also dazzled with the background of the “smart one” of the group:
Jonathan can also bench press over 400 pounds and has a strong mind, holding two degrees in Sports Medicine and Christian Education.
Sure, they can bend rebar with their bare hands, but I get the impression that if their combined IQ were a temperature, it would scarcely suffice to make a tepid soup.
(via Austin Atheist
Arrrr, curse ye, jpf. How dare you reveal this abomination to me? What’s this crazy born-again doing reviewing a pirate movie as a justification for his dogma?
But back to Jack for a second — sorry, Captain Jack. I was thinking about one of the central themes of this movie which involves the principal characters, one that you’ve most likely picked up on it as well:
Resurrection from the dead
As it turns out, getting swallowed by a nasty beastie called the Kraken is a bad thing, so one of the key story lines in this film is a desperate need for Captain Jack to come back from the dead so the forces of evil can be defeated.
And also as it turns out, we all have a Kraken of sorts on our tail as well … and unfortunately being on shore doesn’t keep us safe. Our nasty beastie is called death, and one day it will find us. We need someone to rescue us when that happens — to resurrect us so we can live out our eternity that way God intended it — which is in heaven with Him.
Jesus Christ defeated the Kraken called death. Like Jack Sparrow, he willingly jumped into its jaws to save others. But here’s the most amazing part … Jesus didn’t stay there. He came back so that we too could come back from the dead as well!
Look, Pirates of the Caribbean is fiction. That characters in a cartoon-quality story pop back and forth from the living to the dead and back again does not say anything to support your quaint superstitions about Jesus. Quite the contrary, it says that resurrection is a familiar (and lazy!) trope in fantasy stories, and if there’s any conclusion to be drawn, it ought to be that, gee, this bible story sure does sound as silly and improbable as a tale about a pirate getting eaten by giant cephalopods and getting rescued from Davy Jones’ locker by people with a magic compass. In fact, it ought to tell you that the bible is inferior. No pirates. No cephalopods. No swashbuckling. No undead monkeys. No men with tentacles.
Go ahead. Compare the bible to a fairy tale. I’m one up on you—I can recognize a fairy tale when I see one.
