Hang Right Politics

Posted by Big Mo on May 9th, 2008 in Random

One. Prey: 1, Predators: 0

This the most amazing viral vid I’ve seen in a while: Lions vs. water buffalo vs. crocs. Big hat tip to Ace of Spades. For some reason I missed it the first time around, but it has 30 million hits on YouTube and won YouTube’s 2007 award for eyewitness video. More here.

National Geographic Channel has created an entire special around this amazing encounter, which will air this Sunday (May 11) at 8 p.m. central.

Brings back memories of the Old Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

Great comment by “Spartan” on Ace’s site: “Yawn. You can see this every Sunday from the first week in September to January. The Detroit Lions race to an early lead, sit on it, then lose in the end.”

Two. This is the most hilarious and sidesplitting political parody since Jib-Jab’s 2004 “This Land Is My Land” sung by Bush and Kerry. No, scratch that. This is far superior.

Remember that disturbing worship-like video that a bunch of college-age kids made using snippets from Obama’s “Yes We Shall” speech following the New Hampshire primary?

Attack of the Show on the G4 cable network did a little reworking and slight rewriting.

Warning: put down your drink. NOW.

Hail Cobra!

Three. You’ve undoubtedly heard of Ben Stein’s movie, Expelled. It’s making waves, all right. Atheists definitively don’t like it. Those like NRO’s John Derbyshire dismiss it and anything related to God creating the world as—my words here—absurd piffle.

What I like about Expelled is that it asks questions—questions that are not supposed to be asked, because like global warming, the matter of evolution versus God creating the world “has been decided,” thank you very much. Whether you think intelligent design is a valid theory or not, whether it’s pseudo-science or plausible, it deserves to be explored and NOT dismissed out of hand because people who believe in God (and even some who still question God) are challenging the church of Darwinism.

Here’s the extended (7-minute) trailer for the film that explores just such questions that aren’t allowed to be asked in schools:

What’s wrong with following the evidence where it leads? Why are we continually being force-fed Darwinism when our naturally curious minds challenge Darwinism? This leads to the next point.

Four. This particular clip from Expelled is particularly odious—not a reflection on Mr. Stein, but on the three committed and militant atheists, including Richard Dawkins.

Their sneering, elite condescension is fast becoming the norm for today’s militant atheism. The first one, Dr. P.Z. Meyers, says with nobles oblige that atheists don’t want to take away religion from believers because that would be like taking away your comforting knitting. Oh, how snobbinsh can you get, sir?

Don’t ever believe today’s militant atheists when they say they have nothing against religion or don’t want to take it away. THEY DO. Their aim is to destroy all religion, which they believe will open up a glorious age of scientific advancement.

Never mind that the vast majority of the world’s greatest universities were founded by Christians. Never mind that such clowns as these three militant atheists are standing on the shoulders of giants in the sciences, who were themselves Christian or believers of another faith. Never mind that science has not once disproven anything in the Bible. Seriously—science never has. Not archeology, not physics, not medicine…

Atheists have theories, which Dawkins describe as so “beautiful.” And God has truth, which is the essence of beauty.

This whole Darwinism vs. creationism argument is yet another fight in which both sides are at loggerheads. And even though my sympathies are with creationism, I really do find the offensive sneering and jeering coming more often from the other side. However, a rejoinder that comes from the creationist side — “have fun in hell!” — does absolutely no good. (I know, I’ve stupidly and shamefully used it myself.) I like Ben Stein’s approach better. Let’s ask questions instead. Lay out the facts, not accusations. Lay out the competing theories, not sneering condecension.

Five. When the James Franco World War I action/adventure movie Flyboys was first promoted in the summer of 2006, I was quite happy. Finally, a modern movie featuring American fighter pilots in the Great War! But I never saw it in the theaters, even though the trailer looked great, because the reviews utterly panned it.

Well, I finally saw it this week, and it wasn’t half bad, even though the amazing historical inacurracies — some of them incredibly and bafflingly bad — were quite annoying. How hard is it to make a movie that’s thrilling, exciting AND true to history? Good grief. Many of the numerous mistakes would be known only to those who know something about World War I airplanes, tanks and the actual timeline of history, except for the annoying portayal of dogfighting as if they were using jet planes instead of early biplanes and triplanes. A couple of the situatiuons are so laughable as to be insultingly riduculous, especially one scene where the main hero lands his plane in the middle of No Man’s Land to rescue a fallen team mate trapped under his plane. The whole scene is so stupid that I want the movie’s makers to tell me that something like that actually happened, instead of the director, producer, etc. holding their audience in such contempt that they would think we’d accept such a scene without laughing out loud.

Anyway, end of rant. Here is the trailer from that movie:

What a wasted opportunity to make a far better movie. SIGH.