Geeky Birthday to Me!

I suppose I should be doing a Thanksgiving post, but Karen covered that pretty well right here(you REALLY should click there and at least scroll down to the bottom of the post!). So, instead here's a little quiz with some of my fun geeky birthday presents (most of these are pretty easy).

1. What TV show and/or movie is this shirt from?

2. Which character wears it?

3. What movie is this shirt referencing?

4. Which characters is it referencing (their older name)?

5. What movie(s) is this character from?

6. Where does he appear in that/those movie(s)?

BONUS QUESTION (that doesn't really have anything to do with my birthday or geek pop culture): What "pick three" number came up in the Illinois state lotto the day after election day?

I'll post the answers as a comment if no one guesses them by then.

This week I was faced with an interesting dilemma in my "Principles of Church Growth" class. One of the assignments for this week was to, "Write a six-page paper summarizing what God says about outreach and church growth in the New Testament. Organize your material in a manner that would enable you to teach it to a group of laymen in your church." As you may remember from this post, my views on church growth differ significantly from those of my professor. Basically, I think his focus on numbers as the chief indicator of church health is shallow (at best), and he thinks that people who disagree with this approach are just making excuses for being ineffective ministers (at best).

Soooo. . . I was faced with the "fun" decision of either writing my prof's version of what the New Testament says about church growth (based entirely on verses speaking of the growth of the universal church and selected historical accounts from the book of Acts) or writing what I really believe the Bible as a whole teaches on the subject. Writing what he wants to hear probably gets me an "A," and writing what I really believe the Bible teaches pretty much directly contradicts the core assumption of this course (and does who-knows-what to my grade).

Now, no one would really read this except my professor and I could delete it as soon as I got the grade back. Contradicting him is hardly likely to change his mind since he has a whole "consulting ministry" dedicated to making churches grow. But, since I'm bothering to blog about this you can probably guess that I decided to write what I really believe the Bible teaches. After all, if I purposely distort what I believe the Bible says because of something as insignificant as a possible grade reduction what am I going to do if there's ever real pressure to do so? Besides, the mission station where I grew up had the reputation of being the "rebel station" so I guess being contrary is in my blood.

Oh, and if you're interested in reading the paper (about 6 pages double-spaced), you can click here.

"Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi..."

Just a quick blurb today. I haven't had anything science/tech on here for quite a while so I couldn't resist posting a little something about this. Apparently this debuted on CNN on election day . . . communication via hologram as seen on Star Wars! (You can see a clip here) How cool is that?!

I read an article on CNN.com that said that the definition could have been even sharper. The blue glow around her (that makes her look rather like the "blue ghosts" from Star Wars) isn't even necessary. Supposedly, it was added so people would be able to tell she was just a hologram and wouldn't start suspecting real news stories of being faked using holograms. Ummm...doesn't revealing the fact that you have the ability to make a perfectly convincing image (and suggesting the possibility of faked news stories) have the same effect as actually producing one on television? This could spawn a whole new group of entertaining conspiracy theories . . . cool!

Obligatory Post-election Post (Rant)

I'd just like to say how happy I am to live in a country where the chief considerations in choosing our president are: He's young; he's black; he's fairly inexperienced. Seriously, those are the three reasons I heard by far the most often from people who voted for *gag* our next president. Apparently the logic goes something like "no previous president has been young, black, and inexperienced. That's different and different is inherently better!"

Maybe next election the Republicans should field a candidate who's a one-legged Hispanic who's never held any elected office; we've never had anyone like that as president before . . . he'd be unbeatable! Don't get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with a black president or a young president (or a one-legged Hispanic president for that matter) . . . I just think that age, ethnicity, and physical appearance are LOUSY reasons to vote for someone (and ignorance is generally a liability, not an asset). But that's just me . . . I prefer to vote based on the content of a man's character [i.e. morality, ethics, etc.], not the color of his skin [or age].

Obligatory Election Post

Well, it's been a couple months since I posted anything here, but things have been pretty crazy around here (even with a month off from classes). I don't know if I'll go back to posting approximately once a week (things are still pretty crazy), but what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't post at least a little something about the election? So here's my election-related post:

As I may have mentioned before, McCain is probably one of the last people I would have voted for in the primaries . . . he's a bit of a RINO (Republican In Name Only . . . though I guess he prefers the term "maverick"). However, I do think he's preferable to Obama who has voted many times against any limits on abortion (including medical attention for babies who survive attempted abortions), has NO military experience, has very little Washington experience, believes in redistribution of wealth (sounds to me an awful lot like "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need" --Karl Marx), and has associated himself in the past with an unrepentant ex-terrorist and a racist anti-American-rhetoric-spewing "pastor."

I have been rather surprised to hear several Christians I know argue that, because McCain supports stem-cell research, Christians should vote for neither candidate and if you do you are "compromising your beliefs" because it's "sinful" to vote for "the lesser of two evils." Really? Voting for someone who wants to lessen the number of unborn children who are killed every year is sinful, but not doing anything to hinder the election a man who's voted in favor of ramming scissors into the heads of babies and sucking out their brains (aka "late term/partial birth abortion) is "righteous"? Go figure.

What if McCain were running against Hitler and Hitler had a decent chance of winning? Would it still be sinful to vote for "the lesser of two evils"? What if he were running against Satan? I know . . . ridiculous scenarios, but I think they demonstrate the flaw in the "it's sinful to vote for the lesser of two evils" idea.

Anyway, I'm so sick of the whole thing and am going to be glad when it's over. I leave you with this wonderful image from one of the debates:

Yes . . . that's a real, undoctored picture. No . . . McCain's not mocking Obama or doing his Igor impression. Click here if you're interested in the explanation (short version: it's one frame taken from the video when McCain made a self deprecating "d'oh" face when he got confused on which direction he should go to exit the stage) . . . whatever the explanation, the picture's good for a laugh.