Plastic wrapped food might satisfy craving
When your hunger is on autopilot
In the middle of the night post-feasting
You’ve completely forgotten your diet

Turkey legs drying out, on the first shelf
A third of apple pie, no longer hot
Brussel Sprout Salad, added for your health
Picked up boxed stuffing, on sale with red dot

Four days out, we must understand how
Leftovers, a mixed vegetable blessing
Accepting delicious indulgence now
Suddenly nothing fits when you’re dressing

Choose a condiment lighter than gravy
Or be Jabba-the-Hut level lazy

I'd like to apply for the Jabba job, please.

http://www.manofest.com/Galleries/Girls/The-101-Hottest-Slave-Princess-Leia-Photos/

Amazing. California Raisin man. Honestly it looks more like a semi-gay version of a locust in Gears Of War. Haha. But it’s incredible nonetheless. Hit the jump to see another amazing work of art in the form of Jabba The Hut.

September 25, 2009

Barack makin’ stuff up

The President seems stuck in perpetual campaign mode, leaving the White House in favor of giving speeches to heavily partisan crowds who already support his plan. Which makes it doubly worse that he feels the need to make things up while on the quasi campaign trail — like he did with a hard luck healthcare story meant to highlight the evils of our current system. Obama appears to be attempting to outdo Al Gore, who complained during a Presidential debate in 2000 that schools were so overcrowded people had to stand in class. The real reason people were standing at the school Gore mentioned was because they had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of brand new lab equipment that was yet to be unpacked, taking up space in the classroom. Could Obama’s fib be worse? You decide — Glenn tells the story in the latest Beck Talks video blog. WATCH

Would McCain have been worse? Glenn is taking heat over those comments (from the GOP) and just wanted to show you THIS clip of McCain on the campaign trail. Still think he’d be any different?

Glenn Beck gets another ’scalp’

The Communications Director of the NEA resigned, and the fringe media is referring to this as another Glenn Beck scalp. Glenn has no interest in ’scalps’ — and only in the truth. The fact of the matter is the NEA debacle goes far higher than the Communications Director who quit — and Glenn won’t quit until he gets actual answers on what the real agenda is. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)

Channeling Saul Alinsky

Glenn plays a series of audio clips — starting with the Chavez clip where he makes fun of Fox News and ending with the clip of him being incessantly referred to by Dick Durbin on the floor of the United States Senate. All of these clips demonstrate one thing — the left can’t win the argument, so they are being forced to refer to the strategy championed by Saul Alinsky. Identify the target, then mock and ridicule. Chavez couldn’t answer the question Fox asks, so he mocked. Durbin can’t answer the charge – so he redirects the attention towards the ‘guru’ Glenn Beck. Glenn explains more. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)

September 24, 2009

September 23, 2009

September 22, 2009

Arguing with Idiots is OUT TODAY!

Indoctrinate – U

Actually, the progressives are starting much younger these days…there is a video being played in schools all across America that lays out the ’story of stuff’ a loving, anti-capitalist tale that unfortunately has virtually no facts correct. Watch the video here (if you can stomach the entire thing) — when you are done, check out this thorough debunking of the video, in which the commentator investigates the footnotes used in the ’story of stuff’ video. Glenn reacts. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)

Population control…again?

Remember when science Czar John Holdren said that he no longer agreed with his old views on population control? Because that was crazy. No one is worried about controlling the population now — like the UN — there’s no way they think there are too many humans on Earth and that’s causing problems with the environment. Good thing we have Holdren as our Science Czar, because he knows how to keep that population low! Learn all about him in today’s Beck Talks Video Blog.

Check out even more crazy talk, but this time from our Diversity Czar. VIDEO

September 21, 2009

Fighting the tactics of the left

During his media blitz Barack Obama said the media is ‘rude’ and he didn’t want to provide any ‘catnip’ by commenting on issues like ACORN, which isn’t a big issue according to the President. A group eligible for over $8 billion in taxpayer money giving advice on tax evasion, prostitution, and running a brothel for underage illegal immigrants from El Salvador isn’t an important story? Glenn talks with David Horowitz about Obama’s tactics and how to combat them. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)

Arlen Specter is…Jabba the Hut?

Glenn spends some valuable air time uncovering the flaws in Pat Gray’s impressions. When cornered, Gray backpedals and says he merely does ‘characterizations’ not impressions. Glenn finally lures Pat into doing the Arlen Specter impression AND the Jabba the Hut impression back to back. They sounded suspiciously alike – Insiders listen to the audio here and decide for yourself. But in fairness to Pat, it is easy to confuse the many striking characteristics Specter and Hut have in common.

Mucho se puede especular acerca del papel de Fernando Gómez Mont como secretario de gobernación, pero el punto de hacerlo no está dado en este post, sino de reirnos un poco de estas cosas tan triviales como los parecidos razonables, en esta ocasión, que él tiene con el actor John Goodman (o con Pedro Picapiedra que básicamente es lo mismo) y, sobre todo, con Jabba the Hut, veamos:

Is someone pulling my leg? Or in this case my toe? Yes, the doctor did…

Have you ever wondered why the door jam doesn’t move out of the way when you are in a hurry? It insists on staying there, planted right in your direction of moving and by the law of physics, your limb stops dead in its’ tracks. That’s what happened to me last night…

I hurried to answer the phone and BHAM! All I saw was stars, unfortunately not the famous ones, only the ones dancing around my heads like kosacks in a circle. I look down and to my horror, my little toe is pointing in a completely different direction than nature intended. At first I wasn’t sure if the pain was nauseating or the sight of the weird looking chubby chunker running off sideways.

I jumped in the car and headed to the ER, since even this was to much to fix for the G.I Jane in me. And of course it was my right foot, what else?! And those of you who drive an automatic knows that it is the ONLY foot you use. Sad!

Once inside, I went through x-rays and then the doctor came over, coughed a little and looked at me: “Well miss, I am afraid it’s dislocated with a chip fracture, so we have to pull it to put it back into place, right now.” Excuse me? Pull that once high heel supportive friend of mine that was hanging on for dear life, similar to the edge of a cliff? He assured me that they would use a nerve blocker. How comforting! Needles! My biggest fear, arrrgghhh…

I must have looked like Jabba The Hut as I pulled my t-shirt over my head and sank deep into the chair as he started to jab this needle between my toes and into the bone part of the dislocated miserable creature. I squirmed like a worm and then, plopp-it was back in place. He taped the last two toes together as it’s impossible to place a splint on the end. Hideous, I tell you.

I licked my wounds and limped out of the ER after exchanging my lovely heels for a wonderful oh so sexy orthopedic shoe. CRY! The fact that it can take 6 weeks for the ligaments to heel and out of four of those, the toes will be taped. If I know myself, I will not last that long without sexy shoes. Anybody knows of a rehab center for Shoeaholics Anonymous?

From the Distributor
Become one of the richest gangsters of a Galaxy Far, Far Away with the Jabba the Hutt Supreme Edition Costume! This full-body costume will transform you into the famous Hutt with a body piece (complete with tail), headpiece, and a battery-operated fan to keep you cool.

NCS Product Description
When NCS started accepting preorders for the Hutt costume, we assumed there’d be apathy from the marketplace. Wrong. It sold like gangbusters and we’re thinking there’s going to be a bunch of Jabbas roaming around the streets when Halloween 2009 rolls around.

The manufacturer Rubie’s Costume Company doesn’t state what the costume is made of on the product packaging but we originally assumed highly flammable plastic. It’s actually made of a mix of cloth and polyester based on our touching and feeling of the costume that we’re keeping for our private collection. An orange fan with on-off attachment is included with each costume to inflate the Jabba suit to its full girth. NCS will probably hire someone to wear the Jabba outfit and a sandwich board whenever the Playstation 4 is announced so we can get some local pre-sales. We’re just hoping the cops won’t arrest whomever we hire for causing a spectacle and possibly a public nuisance by way of Jabba. All preorders ship today.

Jabba the Cat

How do you know that your cat is too fat?

It gets stuck in the laundry basket. Most 7-year-olds couldn’t get in that predicament.

Also, when it starts capturing princesses in gold bikinis, it might be a good time to suggest cAtkins…

Those sci-fi geeks really do go too far some times. Check out this guy who is selling a “Jabba Fine Art Print” over on Etsy. Apparently, MOMA is missing out on one of the masterpieces of modern art by not displaying this monumental piece of Star Wars inspired genius. Yes that really is a giant slug like alien puking and by all accounts it sells like hotcakes.

Even though I was in a coffee shop full of patrons furiously concentrating on their caffeine and newspapers, I couldn’t keep myself from laughing out loud like that annoying guy who always laughs out loud in coffee shops while IM-ing with friends just so it looks like he has some semblance of a social life.

Hilarious!

An excerpt (to match the image above):

In Episode IV, Admiral Motti, riding high on the whole “Death Star” thing, finally decides he’s going to tell Vader off just like he practiced over the phone with his mother. After bragging that he’s not scared of Vader, he tells him that his “sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels’ hidden fortress…[Choking sounds].” Clearly Motti doesn’t realize that he was only named for the sake of the action figure packaging and will not be returning for any of the sequels.

Why It Was a Bad Call:

Even though Darth Vader is a seven-foot-tall bionic killing machine with a sword that can cut through anything, making a personal attack against the man’s religion is totally uncalled for. Any manager, be it of the Galactic Empire or Dunkin Donuts, is probably going to fire you if you interrupt a board meeting to call him the equivalent of “a f–king Jew.” Even if you were partially responsible for an incredible new product with limitless planet-destroying potential.

Of course Darth Vader, being that seven-foot-tall bionic killing machine, has a definition of “fire” that is more in line with the common definition of “strangle to death”. If Grand Moff Tarkin hadn’t told Vader to stop, he probably would’ve thrown Motti out the goddamn window like Patrick Swayze in Road House. As it stands, we’re pretty sure the Admiral had been promoted to cleaning toilets on the detention level by the time Luke blows the place up at the end.

The point of the scene seems to be that somehow Motti didn’t know Vader had magic telekinetic strangling abilities. But even so, and even if an Imperial officer like Motti somehow also missed the memo on what not to say to a Dark Lord of the Sith, that still means that he thought Vader only had about 37 different ways to instantly kill him instead of 38 (most involving a lightsaber neatly carving through his groin).

What we’re saying is that Motti was hired not for his tactical acumen but purely for his ability to sneer.

Thanks for the tip, Angelo!

via Cracked.com

What’s a nerd to do when faced with a power outage and heaps of very-packable snow?  HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

There are more pictures to this but you’ll have to contact me to get them. They involve ghetto Leia costumes and serious laugh-value. All these were taken back in April? Maybe?

Jabba The Hut?

Peter Harryson?

From the Distributor
Become one of the richest gangsters of a Galaxy Far, Far Away with the Jabba the Hutt Supreme Edition Costume! This full-body costume will transform you into the famous Hutt with a body piece (complete with tail), headpiece, and a battery-operated fan to keep you cool.

NCS Preorder Offer
Preorders are welcome to ship in September 2009 at US$70.90 per Jabba costume. The manufacturer doesn’t state what the costume is made of but we’re assuming highly flammable plastic. It’s also unclear where the built-in fan will located. NCS will probably hire someone to wear the Jabba outfit and a sandwich board whenever the Playstation 4 is announced so we can get some local pre-sales.

“Robert Pattinson ja Kellan Lutz võivad küll olla hea välimusega, aga te ei naudiks nendega toa jagamist,” jutustab Edi Gathegi.

Inspire Magazine küsis Edi’lt, kelle ta oma toakaaslaseks valiks.

Jabba the Hut

Ta vastas: “Selleks ei saaks olla Kellan, sest mõne ajapärast lihtsalt ma unustaks, et ta geneetiline koodeks ja metabolism on teistsugune tavalise inimeste omast. Ma sööksin ära kõik ta kommid, mida ta oma toas hoiab ning näeksin lõpuks välja nagu jabba the hut.”

“Robiga toas elades saaksin ma arvatavasti unetuse ohvriks ja seda tänu kõikidele nendele naistele, kes ukse alt armastuskirju saadavad, öösel helistavad, uksele koputavad, või mida kõike veel.”

“Ma valiksin Catherine. Siis saaksime terve öö veeta järgmisele akadeemiale võidustsenaariumit kirjutades.”

Samuti paljastas Edi, et ta armastaks koos töötada Anthony Hopkinsiga.

“Anthony Hopkins on geenius. Joan Allen on geenius ja Daniel Day Lewis samuti. Vajab see üldse mainimist?”

Allikas: ajakiri Inspire Magazine

I wish I had the financial backing to even have ideas like this.

Listen to your elders.

This’ll make your head hurt.

What worries me is that this is real.

Google slipping through the back door to social networking.

See if you can work out the number of layers involved in this.

Well that’s breakfast sorted.

Fan fiction at it’s best.

This is genius.

I found a woman making a phonecall in a nightie.

This is almost enough to make me celebrate my next birthday.

It’s all Mel Gibson’s fault.

A few weeks ago I decided it was finally time to watch some of the many movies I have downloaded to my hard drive. For some reason, I decided The Passion of the Christ (which I’ve seen before, consequently almost vomiting all over myself) would make a nice, relaxing view. After all, Lent had just begun, and the study of religion has always fascinated me, mostly because of the asinine things it makes people do. Religious backstory time:

My family is not at all religious, although I have been told by my parents that I was baptized. My view of religion is mostly apathetic. I think it’s great to study, but praising some likely non-existent entity never really did it for me. I rely too much on reason and logical thinking to be attracted to such silliness. Still, I have gone through several phases where I started attending Mass, but they never lasted more than a month or so. 

So I’m minding my own business, cracking open a beer and watching The Passion of the Christ, when that old feeling of religiosity begins coursing through my veins. For the next week or so I start reading my Bible, praying before I go to sleep (which makes me feel like I’m just talking to myself), plan to attend Mass, and start unceremoniously judging other people and their lifestyles. It’s probably important to note at this point that I’m not Catholic. Since the Catholic Church and all of its crazy power is part of what attracts me to Christianity, it seemed like the way to go.

I started emailing a bunch of Catholic churches in the Boston area, asking if they have an RCIA program (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, for those little heathens out there), which is what you have to do to be confirmed. Most of them go from September to Easter (May), meeting once a week for a couple of hours. Catholics don’t mess around. About a week after I sent out my emails, the hits started coming in. I felt loved, like the popular guy at the prom that all of the ladies want to dance with. One of them seemed particularly appealing, so the priest and I set up an appointment to talk about stuff. Fast forward to a few days later.

The minute I step into the guys office, that oh so familiar realization hits me. That feeling of “what the fuck am I thinking” is all that I can focus on. The priest reveals himself and I nearly jump out of my skin, both due to my own lack of focus and his beastly appearance. He is a short pudgy Italian man, Jabba the Hut in human form. I find this fact overwhelming, and I feel an uncontrollable urge to inspect his office, searching for captured Carrie Fishers and other helpless comrades.

Jabba tells me to sit, and I oblige. He begins talking about Jesus or something, but I am unable to focus on anything for more than three seconds. I notice that when he speaks it is impossible to tell if his eyes are open or closed. Some kind of mind trick I assume. This goes on interrupted for about 20 minutes; Jabba telling me the commitment necessary to follow Jesus, me trying to determine if I should be concerned that this man appears to be talking and sleeping at the same time. I become annoyed, wanting to get some things off of my chest. I feel the overwhelming urge to start bashing Mel Gibson and his stupid little movies, Catholics for being so intolerant and hating on the gays, and Jabba the Hut for making Lando Calrissian be such a tool.

The meeting ends and he releases me from his throne room. On the walk to the T I think over what I just experienced, deciding that I am either too immature and/or not mentally vulnerable enough just yet to turn to religion. I just don’t feel it. Maybe the day will come when I can feel that comfort that so many others are capable of experiencing, but for now religion (at least Western religions) just seems like another barrier to social progress. The actual teachings of Jesus are cool, but too often they become so warped that all meaning is lost, and indeed the polar opposite of his teachings (like tolerance and humanity) are what become standard. 

So when I got home I deleted The Passion from my hard drive and turned on Star Wars; I felt completely at peace.

By Kelly Mahan Jaramillo, March 8, 2009

Yesterday was a rude day.  I was going to write a post titled “Ten Things I Hate” – but realized that I hated more than ten things, and decided to do something else.  What it was, I do not remember.

Today is better, so I thought I would try to see the upside of life and write about ten things I love.

The black and white of love and hate are so intertwined, that to declare what is loved and hated seems, well, kind of stupid.

That is all. It just seemed to be time to move past Jindal, unless I were to call him and ask for an exorcism, if he was not too busy bowing down with offerings and begging forgiveness from Jabba the Rush.

I recently had to travel on business to Oslo in Norway. Thanks to the demise of the airline industry post 9/11 and the credit crunch, I had to fly to Oslo from Birmingham International airport, rather than from Manchester, and, via Frankfurt in Germany rather than direct. This is like travelling to Aberdeen from London via Cardiff.

The cost of this mini European tour was some £750. For this I would normally expect the personal attention of my own stewardess (and a pretty one at that) with ready access to fois gras and a drinks cabinet. But, all I got in reality on the outward leg was the offer of a sandwich and a Twix bar, which I declined, and a small, unsatisfying square of cold chicken.

Oh, and we also got to sit next to/under a German man mountain.

I was travelling with my diminutive boss, who was rather technologically challenged when it came to checking in online (he is only European Vice President of IT after all). Consequently, he was sat in the aisle seat. I was sat in the window seat. I was, briefly, relatively comfortable due to the empty seat between us and the lack of a seat in front of me – we were by the emergency exit. Relatively comfortable that was until this huge German guy waddled down the aisle and grunted (the usual mode of communication of a German abroad), indicating that he was booked into the seat between me an my boss. This came as a surprise because there had not been a towel draped over the seat – the usual German method of reserving seats.

Now, readers of my earlier post – Letter From America- will know that the issue of fatties on board planes is an unnecessarily controversial topic. But this guy was fat. Obese. He had not seen his feet in a long, long time. I declined the advice of one fellow blogger to check whether this unseemly excess of blubber was due to a medical condition as it was clear to me that this was a lover of food and sofas in equal measure. Indeed, he may even have been partial to eating the odd sofa.

Fatty squeezed past my boss, causing the poor souls sitting in the row in front of us to adopt the crash position. He hovered over the empty middle seat, casting a large shadow over my boss and I. And, then, he lowered himself into the seat. When I say he “lowered” himself, I am describing a motion much like that of an elevator in freefall in a disaster movie having had the cable severed. Gravity did the inevitable. The arms of the seat spilled outwards and there was a groan of metal in agony as the plane sagged visibly in the middle. And, I lost all sensation in the right side of my body as it succumbed to the inevitable spillage of spare flesh and blubber over the arm of the seat. I sat for the duration of the flight with my shoulder and head pressed firmly against the wall of the plane.

I am sorry, but this has to be a health and safety issue. If we had been forced down by a bird strike or a Turkish refuelling policy, my boss and I would have been goners. There was no way that we could have summoned the inhuman strength required to extricate ourselves from the bulk of Herr Gross. The emergency exit would have been blocked and the ensuing fire would have burned for days as it consumed the fatty mass of the man sat between us.

You may be interested to know that Fatty also declined the offer of a sandwich and Twix bar. But, this was not because he was dieting. Rather it was because there was no way he would be able to lower his tray because eight of his nine bellies were in the way. Just think of Jabba the Hut and you’ll get the picture. (Ooh, Ive just had a Princess Leia flashback moment! ).

Incidentally, we were somewhat thrown by the safety notice on the leg from Frankfurt to Oslo.

It seemed to suggest that if you used your iPod then a black man would use his super powers to look through the plane’s wondow and set fire to the wing. It also seemed to suggest that Lufthansa had a less than pc approach to racial segregation on board, suggesting that black people should exit through the side entrance rather than through the front door with the rest of us.

This made me wonder what would actually happen if someone tried to open the emergency exit at 36,000 feet. I guess the only advice would be to hold on to the Fatty sat next to you and use him as an anchor. I assure you, that baby was going nowhere?

Indeed, this whole trip failed to satisfy on any culinary level. What is it with the Scandinavian obsession with fish, and, pickled herring in particular?! You know that you are not going to get a decent steak in a nation where the local delicacy is rotting shark meat.

I did try the sandwich on the return leg. The bread was hard enough to make your jaw ache ,while the tasteless cheese was hard enough to make the bread seem soft. Which reminds me, I must book a dental appointment…….The Twix was fine.

We nearly missed our connecting flight at Frankfurt. In part this was due to the fact that I got dragged off to a small ante room at the security check. The officious Non-English speaking security people were highly suspicious of my travelling iron and insisted on checking it for explosive residue……..fortunately they found none and removed their rubber gloves!

In any case, my boss and I were upgraded to business class for the final leg to Birmingham. We hoped that this meant a hot meal. It did not. Strangely, Lufthansa had chosen this month to celebrate all things potato. My mother-in-law would have been in her element – she is Irish and lives in Royston Vasey. Our fine fare consisted of ” sweet potato slices with tartar of smoked salmon, tricolour potato terrine, cumin potato wedges and sweet potato mouse, followed by marzipan and potato chocolate balls”. It was inedible.

I would have killed for a packet of Walker’s cheese and onion crisps!

By the way, why is it that all Scandinavian doors open outwards? In the UK and the rest of the world it is normal for doors to open inwards, with the possible exception of cubicles in the Gents where they have to cater for the possibility of a drunk bloke collapsing mid defication – the outward opening door facilitates  access by the emergency services. Strangely, I have it on good authority that this is not the case in the ladies. Anyhow, it seems nonsensical that in a region so used to heavy snow that you would elect to have an outward opening door – surely for 9 months of the year Scandinavians would be unable to get out of their front doors? Strange. It is also, as I found, embarrassing when you are stripped for bed in your hotel room and remember that you have forgotten to put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door – if anyone is in the corridor they will get an eyeful as soon as you open the door. At least she smiled…..

Related Posts:

Letter from America

Lots of people have commented that number one hubby has lost weight and they all want to know how he did it. I’ll say that he was certainly not jabba the b-u-t-t to begin with, but he has gone down at least two pants sizes since living in India.

He did not go on a diet and he did not start working out like a madman – but some things are different.

First, he is no longer working in our kitchen. That goes a long way in reducing the amount of food readily available.

He also switched from regular soda to diet soda. Real men do drink diet soda and they lose weight – especially if they drink a lot of soda.

Then there is the fact that Indian cooking is mostly from scratch. And not the kind of scratch where you open a can of something and doctor it up a little. I mean really from scratch. Fresh everything – that means there is not a lot of salt in the food or preservatives.

Plus it’s hotter here. I think we sweat more. I don’t know if that helps but it doesn’t hurt.

And, even though McDonalds delivers here, there are no cheeseburgers or Big Macs. The fries are delish – but when you aren’t wolfing them down with a cheeseburger  you don’t get as many calories.

Although, a lot of Indian people run 7-11’s in the U.S., there aren’t any here. So, sadly, no slurpees.

So it’s not magic – it’s fresh foods, less junk. You can see I am well on my way to being a scientist.

Note: And for those of you who know him, you will get a kick out of this – yesterday he started a yoga class. Anyone want to start a pool on how long that will last? hee hee

The biography of the conference’s last session speaker, Greg Thornbury:

“Gregory Alan Thornbury, PhD is the founding Dean of the School of Christian Studies at Union University, where he teaches philosophy and theology. Since 2002, He has served as Senior Fellow for The Kairos Journal (New York), an online research tool designed to help pastors and church leaders engage public square issues. The editor of two volumes and the author of numerous essays, his work has appeared in The American Spectator, Breakpoint Magazine, and other publications. In addition to his work at Union University, he has become a popular campus lecturer and conference speaker on the intersection between theology and culture.”

The following are the remarks of Greg Thornbury from his talk “Mugged by the Enlightenment: The Prospects for Natural Law & Christian Witness in a ‘Show-Don’t-Tell’ World.”

Irving Kristol memorably said, a neoconservative is “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.”  According to Thornbury, a young evangelical today is one who has been mugged by the ugly idea that their beliefs make them a social leper.

Are fewer and fewer people listening to evangelicals today, we wonder?  If, as I will argue, people are irrepressibly religious beings, why is secularism advancing so rapidly in Europe and now America?  I will attempt to trace this out.  If some of this sounds like a mea culpa, then that is certainly intentional.  If the Christian community is indeed interested in a future for “making men moral.” then perhaps it is appropriate to begin not with an apologetic, but with the words “I’m sorry.”

Having noted the foibles and subsequent decline of Western institutional religion, I move on to discuss the persistence of transcendence and the reality that secularism fails to offer a better solution for cultural flourishing.  Finally, I want to look at two key ideas: reason and revelation, and ask if there is hope for rapprochement between natural law and theologies of revelation when it comes to the project of re-introducing the Christian witness to the Western world?

In 1887, Friedrich Nietzsche inscribed in his notebook that “God is much too extreme hypothesis.”  Depsite earnest attempts to do away with it in modern times, however, it seems clear that religion cannot and will not go away.  Faith shapes culture.  It is simply a matter of which belief system a society chooses and how effective that faith is at nourishing the animating impulses of a people.  Which religious expression/identity will capture the minds of this generation?  Goethe put it well: “The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinions of its young men under twenty-five.”

Wars of Religion: Public Damage to Christian Credibility
Secularism becomes plausible in light of certain events in 17th and 18th-century Europe.  The first event is Savanarola’s attempt to purify the church in 15th-century Florence.  Despite his best efforts, he was condemned by Rome and eventually burned at the stake.  Niccolo Machiavelli took note of this and concluded that what mattered for the supposedly religious prince was not religious zeal but the power to enforce one’s will on others.  Those who have followed Machiavelli have concluded one of two things about the Church: it is either corrupt or moralistic.

The 16th and 17th centuries did little to help this situation.  The French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), with such awful events as the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, still live on in infamy.  It seemed clear in this age that religion was inextricably connected with violence, a claim that is hard to shake.  Martin Luther also did not help the situation much.  With his “two kingdoms” model, Luther sowed the seeds for the demise of religion’s role as a source of cultural authority.  Certainly Luther could not have imagined a Germany in which the princes would no longer take stock of their religious heritage.  On the heels of the Reformation, the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) further besmirched the reputation of religion’s involvement in matters of the state.

The Plausibility of Secularism
The wars of religion had a deep influence on leading European thinkers.  Voltaire cried, “Crush religious superstition!”  And when Kant declare, “Sapere aude,” or, have courage to use your own reason (the Enlightenment’s motto), we can see the impetus behind this declaration of cultural independence from the dictates of the clergy and the theologians.

In the English-speaking world, no philosopher levied a more trenchant critique of theology’s role in forming government than Thomas Hobbes.  The author of Leviathan sought to remove political questions from the arena of theological debates, and turned them into a science of common sense and natural justice.  The 20th-century did not realize the inflated dreams of the Enlightenment thinkers like Hobbes and Voltaire.  The First and Second World Wars, Mao’s Revolution, Stalin’s slaughter of innocents, and the killing fields of Cambodia wrought horrors of proportions never previously seen.  In the place of a literal hell to punish those who did evil in this life when they die, George Steiner observed in 1970, modern ideologies had instead relocated hell above ground.  The problem, then, seemed not to be religious ideas about man, but man himself.

Certitude, resultingly, is in short supply today.  As a result of these disillusioning events, many people today buy fully into the postmodern project to subvert, resist and undermine ideologies that oppress groups who live on the boundaries of culture.  And yet nihilism seems scarce today.  Thornbury heard an NPR interview with David Bowie some time ago in which Bowie confessed that his music had become more hopeful and transcendent with the birth and growth of his child.  Despite this kind of thinking, prevalent today, a more substantive response is necessary to best handle the renewed cultural interest in transcendence.

Hope for Rapprochement Between Natural Law and Theologies of Revelation
I have been something of a skeptic when it comes to the persuasive power of natural law in matters related to public square issues.  I was profoundly influenced by theologian Carl F. H. Henry, who had little truck with natural law theory.  He mentored me and exercised a profound influence on my thinking, for he had a staunchly revelation-centric epistemology.  Others in recent days have also questioned the efficacy of natural law in questions of morality that don’t get into theology and revelation.  Straussians, for example, doubt the potential of the natural law approach to solving matters like the marriage debate.  The consense on natural law seems to have weakened some.

Sometimes, Jedi mind tricks work, as in Episode Four with the storm troopers.  Sometimes, however, you run into Jabba the Hut.  Stephen Pinker is Jabba the Hut (showed a picture of Pinker, much laughter).  Quoted Pinker at length, noting that his assessment was neither right or insightful, but proceeds from a strong sense of gamesmanship.  Try as you might to persuade an audience that your position on human dignity is derived purely from natural law, Pinker claims, as long as bear the stigmata of being a Christian, you might as well go ahead and cite Scripture passages in support of your position.  We’re going to fall prey to guilt by association one way or the other.

Also, people often embrace truth through their passions, their pre-theoretical faith commitments, not always through the exercise of reason.  Michael Polanyi has pointed this out.

Despite these concerns, all hands are needed on deck.  These concerns about natural law are being addressed.  Example: John Wilson-Michael Novak exchange in Books and Culture over Novak’s No One Sees God. On the one hand, Wilson notes, Novak forcefully counters the New Atheism by use of the rational proofs for God’s existence.  On the other hand, Wilson notes that both the atheist and the believer must live in darkness.  At first, Thornbury thought Wilson had Novak in a bind.  However, Novak countered in National Review that in the world of the heart, there is a “dark knowledge of “the cloud of unknowing.”  The heart has its reasons that reason cannot comprehend.

Thornbury also read J. Budziszewski published his essay “Natural Law Revealed” in Firs Things, where the professor spoke eloquently of the ways in which the book of revelation affirms and narrates the mirror of nature.  This resonated.  Nothing could restore the fortunes of historic Christianity more in postmodern times than a unified thesis of public reasons for traditional morality complemented by an authentic recognition that there is an existential dimension for why people disagree with our views on marriage, abortion, and other related life issues.

Hope for the Church After the Crisis of Faith in Institutional Religion
The church’s failure to resist the Nazis weakened its cultural position, and understandably so.  It was not the Protestants but the Catholic German territories that protested against the Nazis, while many German Christians of other groups welcomed the Fuhrer with open arms.  Quoted Bonhoeffer at length to make the point that he believed that the church from this point forward would need not to seek great things for itself, but rather needed to seek the welfare of the actual communities in which churches find themselves.  Therefore, everyone should see that the church is there, for them and for their children.  We need this kind of Bonhoeffer-like witness.  It is not quietism–Bonhoeffer protested all the way to the gallows.  He called on fellow Christians to be prophetic.  But he realized that the church’s structures of power had failed in the Second World War.  The prophetic tradition must be strong, as it had been in protesting slavery, and the excesses of Roman culture, and in many other eras.  This must be manifested in a life–it was Christians who stayed behind in times of plagues in centuries past, while the elites and bluebloods fled.  This had a powerful effect on the culture.

Conclusion
We pray now that young evangelicals would not be so concerned that the culture does not like us, but that would seek to be “in the city, for the city,” being the moral conscience of the culture.

My Take
Following the talk, Francis Beckwith of Baylor University responded to the talk.  Here’s where things started to heat up, as Beckwith responded to Thornbury’s critique of natural law.  There wasn’t time for heated debate, but it was clear that much could be said.

I’m not going to get into the natural law-theology of revelation debate here.  I don’t have the time or energy right now to do so.  I would commend the audio to you for further inquiry into this subject.  I will say that I very much appreciated Thornbury’s call for the church to retain its prophetic witness in the culture.  I liked very much that he called for young evangelicals especially to not bury their heads in their hands over their loss of cultural influence, but to work very hard to be salt and light in the broader culture.  This is surely the right approach to the loss of Christian influence in our society, and in all societies.

Thornbury is a fun speaker with a lively mind, an eloquent pen, and a clear heart for the church.  I like very much that he doesn’t join the chorus of commentators who slam Carl Henry, but instead recognizes that he was a tremendously gifted Christian leader who is far less intellectually spotty or unaware than is sometimes claimed.   Carl Henry had his faults, as we all do, but he does not deserve to be swept under the rug.  He is the most significant evangelical theologian of the 20th-century, and he deserves to be remembered as such and appreciated for it.

We are now heading off to chapel, where Robby George is speaking.  Following that, I’ll be blogging the final event of the conference, a lunch at which Hadley Arkes of Amherst College will speak.  The conference, just for the record, continues to be intellectually stimulating and very well-executed.

Yes, he’s already contended with his first “screw up,” but I’m compelled to reflect on something that has stayed with me since President Obama’s Inauguration Day. After listening to pre-Inauguration on NPR while commuting, watching the oath-taking in a colleague’s cube, and tuning in again on the drive home, I wanted more that night. So I watched the Frontline special “Dreams of Obama.”

The meaningful moment for me came in the story of how Obama dealt with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright issue at its height. It is both the descriptions of what made this a pivotal moment, and how Obama responded, that lingered with me:

·         “His hand is forced” to deal with the Rev. Wright issue.

·         It is a moment of “maximum peril” for his campaign.

·         Jeremiah Wright allows Obama to “confront this issue sooner rather than later.”

Obama chooses rather than continuing to tactically deal with Rev. Wright’s sermons, to transcend the debate. He decides to write a very personal speech to address race in a much broader and more meaningful context. In delivering the speech on a Monday morning in Philadelphia, Obama regains control of his campaign’s narrative.

The personal computing industry — faced with global economy-driven reductions in demand, 20 million cheap-n-crappy netbooks sold in 2008 (and expected to quadruple by 2013?), dysfunctional and unfair competition, cloud computing/storage and more — perhaps faces just such a moment.

·         OEMs and chipmakers alike may “have their hand forced” to try new things and rise above classic PC industry tactics.

·         It feels like a “moment of peril” for dinosaurs like the “Intel Inside” iron fist that grips the industry. The prospect of 100+ million netbooks selling in a few years could unhinge Intel’s ability to keep the global PC industry under its thumb. If consumers by the tens of millions will buy an Atom-powered netbook with all its limitations – because they just want to surf, e-mail, Twitter and use cloud computing on a very portable device — what will that do to errode the potential returns on bringing arguably overwrought and reportedly underselling processors like Core i7 to a declining desktop tower PC market?

·         And with economic forecasts showing no immediate relief for the PC industry, perhaps the OEMs and chipmakers that “confront the issue sooner rather than later” will emerge as the new leaders.

2009 presents clear and immediate opportunity to transcend traditional PC industry dynamics and, hopefully, mature to a logical and healthier state sooner.

Transcendent Opportunities

• Stickers be gone: My three-year-old likes stickers and sometimes puts them places where they don’t belong. But I don’t know anyone who thinks they belong on a $1,000 consumer electronics device, especially one made by OEMs hungry to match Apple’s mastery of the aesthetic. When I bought my wife a new notebook about 6 months ago, my little boy saw all the stickers on the wristpad (yes, these included an AMD logo), and logically concluded “This is a place to put stickers.” The next time my wife opened her notebook, Jabba the Hut was looking back at her.

Should one of these ship with every PC sold?

• Netbooks that have it all (or most of it): AMD Yukon ultrathin platform is coming soon with the HP dv2 that plays 1080P video. The Nvidia Ion chipset is coming this summer, which reportedly brings 1080P video to Intel Atom-based netbooks. Faced with an HD chasm forming between AMD and Nvidia ultraportable PC capabilities and its own, Intel last week said it will pair a 720P-capabale Integrated Graphics Processor with its new Atom N280 processor some time this year. Two points on this: 1. The dark days of frustrating netbook experiences can come to an end and consumers will get the affordable, ultraportable experience they deserve. 2. What does this do to Centrino, which had an I-can’t-do-HD identity crisis of its own even at high-end mainstream notebook prices? (Note: go to 1:00 on the video.)

• Product tags that tell you something about the experience: Best Buy is a clear leader, but when I bought my wife that notebook there recently, this is what Best Buy considered the key information to put on the product tag as the consumer agonizes over a $700 to $1,700 PC purchase:
  • 3GB or 4GB of RAM
  • 250 GB or 320 GB hard drive
  • Windows Vista 32-bit or Windows Vista 64-bit
  • The price

None of which tells you a damned thing about the experience or design point of the product. Let’s tell the consumer something useful, like usage scenario categories: Good at HD video. Good at mainstream games. Good at high-end games. Good at video transcoding. Good at not using electricity or long battery life. All you need for a basic Web/cloud experience.

• Hot-Swap Desktop PCs: Another seemingly simple one, but one that actually requires innovation and R&D. One of the best and cheapest ways consumers can give PCs a makeover is to upgrade to discrete graphics. But they shouldn’t have to get all McGiever to do it. I LOVE building PCs, but I know I am in the EXTREME minority. Make plugging in a graphics card, or new memory, as easy as plugging an SD memory card into the reader on the side of your notebook. We do some of this with hot-swap server storage arrays. Let’s sprinkle a little of that on the consumer desktop market. Rahul Sood at HP with his BlackBird Hard Drives and the AMD GPG division with its Graphics Boosters are pointing the way for others to build on.

• Far more attention paid to the PC aesthetic with affordability: About 3 weeks before the initial iPhone launch, I was in Washington D.C. with Patrick Moorhead on a press tour. We met with an editor who had his iPhone review unit on him. He showed it to us without ever letting it leave his hands (don’t worry Apple, no protocol was breached). That Friday night, I remember having a fire going in the backyard with my boys, and thinking “Everything is about to change in the phone market. When the iPhone comes out, it will instantly make every other phone and smartphone seem sadly dated.” Where is THAT brand of UI and style innovation in the PC market? Apple itself took a big swing with the Mac Book Air, but perhaps overpriced. Dell? HP? Acer? Toshiba? Watcha’ got that we’ll love AND we can afford? Is the HP dv2 just such a step?

• Make it brain dead simple for PC salespeople: All this taken into consideration, you can see that much is left in the hands of the salesperson. It shouldn’t be. If $170 pocket cams can create HD video, $399 netbooks should be able to play it back. If $199 Xbox 360s play gorgeous games in HD, so should $1,000 notebooks. But today, most of them don’t. AMD introduced the 1^stmainstream HD notebook platform in 2008, and this year we’ll introduce the first affordable HD ultrathin notebook platform. Take away all the incompatibilities, up the bar on the graphics processing of everything the consumer buys, and salespeople stand to see far fewer of their customers come back only to stand in the “returns” line.

True story. My parents, both in their 70s but spry PC-users, needed a new notebook a couple months ago. They wanted AMD, being loving, supporting parents and all. First stop was a big box store. Actual conversation:

Mom: “Can we see your notebooks with AMD processors?”

Salesperson: “We have them, but I don’t recommend AMD. They are two years behind Intel in technology.”

Mom: “How so?”

Salesperson: “It’s how Intel makes their chips smaller and some materials they use.”

Mom: “Can you show me how that affects the way the notebook works?”

Salesperson: “Uhhhh…”   It’s not an easy question to answer with a straight face, especially to someone buying an $800 notebook. (Intel is fond of saying “We’re years ahead of the competition” based on the date it begins a transistor process node transition. Now, without using bar charts or saying the words “Hi-k” and “Hafnium,” Intel, please show us what 2 years into the future looks like with your products on the shelves at the big box store today. Something we can actually see and experience. In this new era of HD video and highly popular mainstream gaming, in fact Intel’s shortcomings in graphics are the easiest difference for the PC buyer to see for themselves.)

Next stop, Best Buy. Actual conversation:

Mom: “Can we see your notebooks with AMD processors?”

Salesman: “Sure! I love AMD. It’s all I use – best value by far.”

 As happy as I am that Best Buy set my folks up with a new HP notebook based on the AMD “Puma” platform, this should not have been their experience. Diametrically opposed opinions at their first two stops, with the AMD naysayer offering hype over sensibility.

And therein lies the opportunity for transcendence, but there will be winners and losers. It can’t be both ways. The big box store can’t go on selling increasing numbers of netbooks on an endcap, powered by processors that Intel says equate to 6-year old PCs, while upselling mainstream notebooks 10 feet away based on the materials used in the semiconductor manufacturing process. But that’s the paradox we saw for the first time during the 2008 holiday season.

Big changes are in store before the 2009 holiday season. Something’s got to give, consumers will benefit, and the PC industry will hopefully progress out of suspended adolescence as a result.

So I guess there’s now a Guacamole Bowl that takes place on Super Bowl Sunday.  Here’s my favorite… 

“You may have been a good smuggler, but now you’re Bantha fodder.”

You got to wonder who has a frozen Han Solo cast just sitting around that they cover in guacamole?? 

You can see them all here.

How do they keep it from browning? The secrets of modern medicine…

z

“I said WOOKIE not COOKIE but since you brought it…”

(Jabba the Hut)

picture: dunno source, via our lol builder. lol caption: Lorisard

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