Quotes - The Edge

     An interesting quote occurred in the 1997 movie with Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins, "The Edge".  "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." - Robert Green (As played by Alec Baldwin).
     I have always found it fascinating how playwrights and screen-playwrights have worked philosophical views into dramatic and theatrical media.

Black History Month

     Seeing that February is the month in which we celebrate Black History in the US, I thought I'd promote a couple black brothers in Christ whom I admire.  The may not technically be part of history yet, but I believe they are making it.

     Ken Jones—Co-host on The White Horse Inn, and pastor of Greater Union Baptist Church in Compton California, has made an impact on the Reformed world, not by virtue of his Afro-American heritage, but by his commitment to the gospel.

     Thabiti Anyabwile—Native of Lexington North Carolina, Thabiti was one of the featured speakers at the 2008 Together for the Gospel Conference.  His message on bearing God's image, which deals mostly with racial tensions within the American church, is insightful and can be found here under Session II.

Quotes - The Office

"Also, I'm pretty sure she coughed up a hairball." - Oscar from "The Office".

Ministry Highlight - 9 Marks

     I'm beginning a ministry highlight post.  This will be the first in an ongoing series I plan to submit once every month.

     This first month will highlight 9 Marks ministries.  This is a ministry organized by Mark Dever and the folks at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.  Though there are countless written resources there, my favorite is the audio.  Every so often, Mark interviews a a person of faith, usually dealing with their personal involvement in the Kingdom, he asks probing questions that always produce an edifying experience.  About six months ago, he interviewed David Powlison.

     In the interview, David provided this humorous quote, "I never met a nuance I didn't like."

Icons of the Science Fiction Genre

Star Trek - The Transporter
In 1966 Gene Roddenberry and crew astonished the world with the some-what campy popularized sci-fi TV series that introduced us all to the idea of instantaneous travel through space by reducing our bodies to individual molecules and "transporting" them to another location.
2001 A Space Odyssey - HAL
Two short years later, Stanley Kubrick in his enigmatic way, lured sci-fi fans into a universe of endless possibilities. In this movie, one frightening character turned out to be the on-board computer which happened to value his "life" as much as the life of those humans he was created to aid.
Star Wars - The Death Star

In the epic sci-fi universe of Star Wars, the Empire's greatest and most destructive weapon was that one which resembled a small moon. A space station that destroyed the planet of Alderaan, from which Princess Lea was rescued, and which was destroyed itself, the first time, by the swift pilot (new to the Rebellion) from Tattooine—Luke Skywalker.

Blade Runner - Replicants
In this seminal 1982 detective style sci-fi movie, the last several androids (called Replicants), who had been created with a 4 year life-span rebelled against their place in the world.
Tron - Discs
In a world of computers, Tron showed us there was a world in computers. One in which the avatars of computer programmers are prisoners who have to compete in deadly digital games for their preservation. In one of these games the players throw their discs at one another to try and eliminate their opponent.
The Terminator -The Terminators
In 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger showed us just how "user-friendly" a computer could be.
Dune - The Spice Melange
With a star-studded cast, visionary David Lynch carefully translated Frank Herbert's novel into a sci-fi epic film in which the mysterious natural resource referred to as "The Spice" was both, the source of war in the universe, and the catalyst for life.

The X Files - EBE
For 9 years sci-fi fans were delighted by Chris Carter' monsters and conspiracies confronted by rouge FBI agents, Mulder and Scully. One of the main themes included the existence of EBEs - Extraterrestrial Biological Entites, or aliens.
Men in Black - Memory Eraser
Science fiction was never so funny than as resented by the characters played by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The icon taken from this film is the devise used to conveniently, and sometimes gratuitously, erase the memories of unsuspecting humans completely unaware of the existence of extraterrestrials.
The Matrix -The matrix
Well, the primary icon from this trilogy was the matrix itself, the artificial construct devised by machines to suppress the reality of existence in the minds of the humans who created them.