I don’t think anybody here fits this description

If you’re a fan of kitsch and Christianity, don’t read
this article. You’ll think it starts out OK…

Thomas Kinkade is famous for his luminous landscapes and street scenes, those dreamy, deliberately inspirational images he says have brought “God’s light” into people’s lives, even as they have made him one of America’s most collected artists.

A devout Christian who calls himself the “Painter of Light,” Kinkade trades heavily on his beliefs and says God has guided his brush—and his life—for the last 20 years.

…but then you’ll get stories of corruption, drunkenness, lewdness and groping, and most horrifying of all, peeing on Winnie the Pooh!

Adomancy

In case you were wondering, GrrlScientist has a link to Billboard’s list of number one songs, so you can find out what people were listening to on important dates in recent history.

For instance, in the month when I was conceived, the number one song in the US was “Teddy Bear” by Elvis Presley, and on the day I was born it was “Young Love” by Tab Hunter. Mom does like Elvis, and those songs are so appropriate that this might beat astrology as a signifier of prospective character.

Unfortunately, the number one song on the day I was married was “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. Never mind.

Shiny

Unlike Orac, I’m happy with the ship I’ve been assigned; I suspect Chris wouldn’t mind ending up on the good ship Serenity, either, although Chad might have some gripes (oddly, I’m less bothered by the wacky physics of the Firefly universe than I am by the abominable biology of Trek).

We science bloggers really are a bunch of geeks, aren’t we?

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You scored as Serenity (Firefly). You like to live your own way and don’t enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.

Serenity (Firefly)
88%

Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)
81%

Moya (Farscape)
75%

Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)
69%

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)
69%

Enterprise D (Star Trek)
69%

Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)
63%

Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)
63%

SG-1 (Stargate)
44%

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)
38%

Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)
31%

FBI’s X-Files Division (The X-Files)
19%

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

Underworld: Evolution

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Dr Beckinsale visits the Discovery Institute

I saw the movie Underworld: Evolution last night. Stop looking at me like that—it was research. It has the word “evolution” in the title, doesn’t it? Besides, I have this idea to improve the promotion of science by having all of our spokespeople be dangerously nubile armed women with good cheekbones, full lips, and very sharp teeth. I figure the two things we’ve been lacking in our presentations to the public are lust and fear, and if we can just bring those into play, we’ll have an unbeatable combination.

As I learned at this movie, too, if you’ve got gorgeous women and slimy, ravening beasts confronting each other with big guns, nothing in the story has to make any sense at all. There was no plot: instead, there are a series of set-pieces strung together in which Our Heroine is placed in someplace dark, wet, and seedy with a supply of weapons and hapless allies/fang fodder to confront a suitably snouty or batty SFX playtoy. They aren’t even consistent in how these conflicts are resolved. Big bad immortal vampires get shot multiple times at point blank range with a shotgun, and shake it off with a snarl; but when Sir Derek Jacobi, following in the fine British tradition of slumming in some well-paying American trash, finds the movie so embarrassingly bad that he has to get out, the movie makers decide that the way to have his immortal character die is to poke him with something pointy, followed by a languorous death scene in which Jacobi completely turns off his ability to act. It was impressively flat, a cinematic vampire death scene that ranks right up there with Pee Wee Herman’s in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, yet utterly different.

Somehow this murky, muddled mess of a movie got made, and got people (like, say, me!) to attend. There’s a lesson here.

I’m going to have to get a skin-tight vinyl body suit for my next presentation.

I’ll let you guess whether I’m trying to inspire lust or fear.