We wanted to lightsaber duel in a fully interactive digital environment — perhaps a bar fight, so we could pick up in-game chairs and bash virtual Chewbaccas to death with them — and instead we got to molest virtual tigers and go bowling. Again.

The scenario shouldn’t have been a surprise: This is what nerds do. We get way too excited about the potential of something, then, when faced with the disappointing reality, we howl in impotent rage and set out to destroy it. We put these things up on a pedestal, then immediately stand at the bottom of that pedestal with an ax, just waiting for the moment we get to chop it down. And the Kinect definitely deserved it.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18950_9-major-stories-everyone-got-wrong-this-year_p2.html#ixzz1BVVvrEM

We all know that new technology – game consoles especially, it seems – doesn’t launch at it’s full potential. It normally takes a couple of years to get software developers who are creative enough to see everything that a piece of hardware can do, and a couple more years to actually do it. But the Kinect is moving much faster, and some of the home brew apps are signaling a change – not just in gaming, but in computers in general:

In the right hands, the Kinect actually does all it promised and more. You just have to head out to the fringes to see it:

For starters, it’s effectively changing the future of graphic user interfaces. The medical field is making use of Kinect’s software to enhance and tweak how technicians interact with radiological scans. Instead of awkwardly manipulating a 3D image with 2D tools like a mouse and keyboard, a Kinect-driven interface uses voice recognition, body position and hand gestures to attain an entirely new level of precise, intuitive control.

And all without any sort of physical controller — hell, even Minority Report had to use gloves to accomplish the same thing.

The current Kinect games mostly recognize only a few predetermined gestures and broad, sweeping movements, but it’s not the software’s fault. For example, this Japanese gamer built a full-body 1:1 motion recognition mod. Every single movement he makes, his avatar makes in kind…think of other potential uses for this: With some collision detection, this could easily bring about the aforementioned lightsaber fantasy that takes place in a fully interactive digital environment.

Kind of like this: A fully rendered (if glitchy and unintentionally hilarious) environment with two-way interaction. He lifts up, moves and repositions digital objects inside the space, and the space, in turn, renders the real objects he places in it — his chair, for example, is present in both reality and the game. And that’s just what the Swedish version of Kip from Napoleon Dynamite here can do; if you throw some real funds and a professional development team behind it, you’ve got the closest thing we’ve ever had to true virtual reality.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_18950_9-major-stories-everyone-got-wrong-this-year_p2.html#ixzz1BVYuKfOz

Where’s my XBOX720?

The PlayStation was released in the US in 1995. The PS2 and XBOX were released in 2000-01, and were followed by the XBOX360 and PS3 in ‘05-06. So where’s the next generation of consoles? There’s a simple answer: they’re not coming. The seventh generation of gaming consoles was built for growth, using software updates to make them more efficient and to add new features.

Instead of a new generation of thumb-straining consoles, Microsoft and Sony have followed Nintendo’s lead into motion-based gaming with the Kinect and the Move. These technologies are opening up a ton of new possibilities for the industry’s new target market: casual gamers. So even though there’s no new generation of consoles, there’s still a new generation of gaming.

TV without the TV Set

For the last few years, netbooks – those 10-inch laptops you could pickup for under $300 – were making a place for themselves in the market. They seemed like something that was here to stay. Then a few things happened to knock them off their path, and create a new market for home entertainment (presented in no particular order):

• The iPad: Everything your netbook does, but cooler.
• The $350 full-size laptop: When you look at a 10-inch screen for $300, and a 15-inch for $350, you suddenly realize that it’s tiny. It’s like you couldn’t see it before, but now it’s there, and you can’t not think about it.
• Netflix, Hulu, and streaming TV: They’ve been around for a couple of years, but 2010 was the watershed year, when it suddenly wasn’t odd to watch TV on your computer.
• Falling LCD prices: In November of 2008 I bought an LCD TV for $400. In 2007 that TV cost $600, and today it costs $279. When you put that together with free streaming TV on your PC, you get…
• Streamed TV and Movies in the living room: the XBOX360 offered Netflix streaming to your TV first, but now all three consoles, a number of set top boxes, Blu-Ray players, and Net-enabled TV’s have followed suit. Apple and Google have even entered the game (with the creatively named ‘AppleTV’ and ‘GoogleTV’, respectively).

It’s no surprise that no one wants a netbook anymore. It’s also no surprise that cable companies started acting shady.

Comcast, Verizon, and the FCC

With the growth of streaming services, cable companies worry that Netflix and Hulu will hurt the cable TV market. To calm themselves they made a deal to charge a middle-man extra to “transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content.”

This is just the kind of thing that Verizon teamed up with Google to prevent. In a much misunderstood proposal (at the end of this Wired article), they propose rules which would guarantee a free and open internet, while creating a second network which providers could use to serve premium content for a fee.

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to run the show as industry players negotiate these situations, but they (and the rest of the country) seem to still be confused about whether they have any authority over the internet. Don’t worry, though – eventually, someone will do something, and half the crowd will get mad.

Apple v. Google

No, they haven’t gone to court – not yet anyway. The massive and opposing philosophies of these two giants are like the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format wars, except this fight is for mind-share, rather than market-share.

Apple’s philosophy is simple: make it sleek, make it sexy, make it work, and don’t let anyone screw it up. They push a closed system where everything is designed together, built together, and approved together. The two results of this philosophy are that a) every product is seemless, and b) they have total control.

Google’s philosophy is equally simple: make it open, make it flexible, and make sure anyone can change it. They endorse free (as in beer AND as in choice) in as many ways as possible. They help design parts – parts that you can use together, mix and match, or use toward your own project. They have no control, and they don’t seem to want it.

Consider the respective app stores: Steve Jobs taking a strict ‘no porn’ stance, and pointing out the presence of a ‘porn store for Android.’ Is Google making a statement in favor of porn by not having a similar ban? Not really, it’s just their philosophy: open means open, even when it’s controversial. The same philosophy has the iPad competing with an untold number of variations, from Samsung’s GalaxyTab and the Dell Streak, to the VelocityMicro Cruz Reader.

Now consider that Android has 26% of the market, while the iPhone has 25%. While the iPhone’s share is made up of 4 iterations of the same (stellar) product, there are dozens of Android devices, each with a different set of features (and problems); manufacturers even have the ability to make Android look and work however they please. Their competitiveness shows how torn we are about which is better. It will be interesting to see if one of these philosophies pulls ahead this year.

So that’s the wrap up. I know a lot more happened this year (Boxee, 4G, LED TVs, wireless broadband), but I couldn’t possibly get to it all. What do you think about what’s here, and what important things did I leave out?

As Mr. Hitchens’ beliefs regarding God and religion are more than common knowledge, perhaps abstaining from doing that which is hateful to him is the best way for anyone who calls him- or herself a “person of faith” to uphold this biblical proscription.

Mr. Hitchens, who is the consummate gentleman, has been mostly tolerant of the array of religious groups who have organized this day of prayer despite his firm objections. Yet it seems quite intolerant, disrespectful, and contrary to religious practice to pray for a man who has stated firmly and clearly that he wants no such thing.

Sometimes being a person of faith — being a person in general — means putting the needs of another before one’s own. Christopher Hitchens neither wants nor needs our prayers. This is hateful to him. The rest is commentary. Go and learn it.

I don’t know anything about Rabbi Krause, but I feel safe saying that when we speak of “prayer”, we are talking about totally different things.

She seems to think of prayer as just another physical act, and that its efficacy to the one prayed for doesn’t extend beyond the feelings of comfort in knowing that someone is praying for him.

I think her last statement is most interesting. We should certainly put the needs of others before our own, but which needs? If you traffic only in felt needs, then it would be unnecessary, perhaps even wrong to pray for Chris Hitchens. If you don’t recognize any higher needs, this is where the story ends.

But when you recognize those higher needs — the need for salvation, faith, identification with Christ — it becomes pretty difficult to think it would be “contrary to religious practice” to pray for someone, even if he was opposed to it.

So, is it loving or hateful to pray for an atheist who doesn’t want your prayer?

I think far fewer would admit to loving How I Met Your Mother. In comparison this show is raunchy and raucous, like Knocked Up compared to 27 Dresses.  I’m not ashamed though, and part of the reason (besides finding it incredibly funny in seasons 1-4) is that I’m far more comfortable with its message than I am with the message of Friends.

If you’ve only seen a few episodes of HIMYM, that might seem a strange assertion, but behind its (very) thick veneer of vulgarity, the show supports a perspective that’s far more traditional, and compatible with my faith, than its predecessor. The easiest way to demonstrate is with a quick look at Joey and Barney.

Everybody loves Joey. He says so himself when he’s trying to convince Phoebe to name one of the triplets after him (“Joey’s your buddy. Joey’s your pal. Where is everybody? Oh, they’re hangin’ out with Joey!”). But something nagged at me as I watched. I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to be friends with him.

He sleeps with women and never calls them again. In the few situations when it comes back around on him, he gets a light slap on the wrist from the universe, but no comments from the group. In one episode he actually saves the day by convincing a woman that it was her who didn’t call. In another episode the woman is still in the apartment, and he can’t remember her name. And after 8 years of this, Phoebe sets him up with one of her friends, and Rachel decides to date him herself!

In ten years Joey’s exploits are never seriously cast in a negative light. His friends are never really disgusted, and he doesn’t ever suffer any consequences. On top of that, he rarely contributes to the well being of anyone else in the group.

Barney, on the other hand, gets the opposite treatment. He does all the same things, and with more gusto. He lies, cheats, and lies some more, all in a quest to sleep with another woman. He’s not so different from Joey, with two major exceptions.

First, the other characters on HIMYM savage him for the way he behaves. They call him disgusting and sleazy and are generally put off by him. More than that, they don’t even like him. He occasionally calls himself “the Barnacle”, which is a metaphor for his place in the group; they want to scrape him off, but he just keeps holding on.

The reason he keeps holding on is the second thing that sets him apart from Joey: he is constantly making sacrifices for the good of his friends. He gets one a job when his big opportunity falls through. He gives another a place to stay when she’s temporarily homeless. He sometimes goes behind the scenes to rescue them from their own mistakes. Every time they think he couldn’t possibly be any worse, he does something—like drag a depressed friend on an all night road trip to cheer him up—and totally redeems himself.

The show treats Barney differently, too. Barney’s lies routinely come back around to slap him in the face. Actually, it’s the women he’s lied to that slap him. He’s a sympathetic character, but not in the way Joey is. Barney is looking for something, and he thinks he’ll find it in sex, but he never does. Joey is just looking for sex. Barney is presented as simultaneously corrupted and naiive, a broken person trying to fix himself, and doing a poor job of it. Joey is just looking for sex. Friends’ treatment of Joey is a perfect example of calling evil good, while HIMYM’s treatment of Barney is an example of loving someone in spite of their behavior.

Aside from that, the other characters (particularly Ted, HIMYM‘s main character) demonstrate more palatable values as well. All Ted wants to do is get married and start a family. There’s an entire episode dedicated to how terrible it is to call a woman a “grinch” (only he didn’t say “grinch”), a word which is used without comment in several episodes of Friends. In one episode where he decides to let it all loose and try to party and have a one night stand, it’s presented glamorously, until the episode ending flashback, when he sees how terrible he’d actually behaved. Compare that to the episode where Joey trains Ross to lie to get a woman into bed.

Like Knocked Up or The 40-Year-Old Virgin, How I Met Your Mother uses outlandish plot devices and raunchy comedy to support some surprisingly conservative themes. Friends, while very entertaining, presses views (particularly related to sex) that are less consistent with Christian faith. Alan recently reminded us that there is a lot going on beneath the surface of the political ads, and the same holds true for TV shows and movies. We should be aware of the subtle views that are supported by what we watch, and not just the devices they use.

[Season five of HIMYM veered from the views and values I've described. Its creators acknowledged the change, and have promised to return the show to its previous focus (and glory). I hope they do. If not, then it's become just another bit of raunchy entertainment.]

This Ground Zero Mosque business has allowed me to finally face the issue personally and honestly, and I’ve decided that I don’t care. Aside from the fact that I’ve grown weary of the constant whining from the potential mosque’s imam and other supporters (no one can stop you; if you want to build it… build it), I still don’t have a clear idea of why a Christian should support it. The intent of building this mosque, or any other, is to draw worship to someone other than God. How are we honoring him by suggesting that the building of a mosque is a good thing? From a Christian perspective, it isn’t.

Unfortunately, our generation has been brought up the idea that “tolerance” is an unqualified good thing, that we are unable to see the folly in the concept. Several years ago I was serving as student minister at a Lutheran church. One day I came in to the office while our children’s minister and my intern were having a conversation. When I walked by one asked, “Where in the Bible does it say to respect other religions?”

You may have noticed that my last name is not Piper, Carson, or Packer, but I felt pretty confident when I answered, “It’s not there.” God is clear about idolatry, and how we are to “respect” foreign gods. So why would a Christian leader try to form “conversations” with leaders from other religions, with tolerance or mutual respect as a goal? Christians learning to respect and love Muslims is helpful and productive, and it glorifies God as we love others. Christian leaders trying to emphasize the similarities between Christianity and other religions is unhelpful and counterproductive when we consider our mission: to go and make disciples.

I’ve come to realize that the only reason I was ever open to the suggestion of such things was so that I would be considered “thoughtful.” We all know that you can’t be thoughtful if you’re willing to say (out loud and in public) that any religion that doesn’t hold to the Gospel is evil. Surely our Christian obligations preclude us from supporting any religious message that doesn’t support the Gospel.

There are far too many Christians – evangelical Christians – who believe sentiments like “live and let live” are biblical with regard to other religions. I think too many of us are enamored with being considered “thoughtful.” I think too few of us are willing to associate Ba’al and “foreign gods” with the religions of our time.

I still want you to think I’m thoughtful, but I’m working on it. I’ll leave you with the words of Al Mohler:

Thus, evangelical Christians may respect the sincerity with which Muslims hold their beliefs, but we cannot respect the beliefs themselves.  We can respect Muslim people for their contributions to human welfare, scholarship, and culture.  We can respect the brilliance of Muslim scholarship in the medieval era and the wonders of Islamic art and architecture.  But we cannot respect a belief system that denies the truth of the gospel, insists that Jesus was not God’s Son, and takes millions of souls captive.

This does not make for good diplomacy, but we are called to witness, not public relations.  We must aim to be gracious and winsome in our witness to Christ, but the bottom line is that the gospel will necessarily come into open conflict with its rivals.

Murray Jardine, a political science professor at Auburn University, would like to help us with that. In The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society he explores the development of contemporary Western culture, which he describes as a “consumer culture” and a “market society”, and explains why pop culture had come about:

Put simply, if several generations of people diligently practicve the [secularized Protestant] work ethic, the eventual result will be a highly productive society…But then that highly productive society faces a very large problem: putting it crudely, somebody has to buy all that stuff!

…[Then,] as the aesthetic ethos of consumerism relentlessly increases the pace of life in capitalist societies, people must consume more and more services…this consumption includes everything from routine automobile maintenance to clothes. For all its obsession with personal “choice,” consumer culture offers little real choice about consuming; the only way to avoid copious consumption is quite literally to drop out of society.

Jardine compares our understanding of culture, creativity, morality, and freedom with a Biblical perspective that brings a new way of thinking and a new understanding of our place before God.

If you’re interested, you can enter to win one of two copies: Book Giveaway: The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society.

Winners will be announced Saturday afternoon.

Editor’s Note: RetroPost is a weekly repost of an older Christ and Pop Culture that has some relevance to current pop culture events or releases.

This Week: On June 8 of last year, Charles Jones wondered whether the initiative, and the attitude behind it, was such a great thing. This week, we found that a federal judge had more concrete reservations, striking down the Proposition as unconstitutional.

California’s Proposition 8, a ballot initiative making same-sex marriages illegal, just nicked by in November. I’m pretty sure that outcome, and everything that flows from it – starting with this week’s filing in federal court – is going to lead a lot of Christians to regret what they engaged in during the campaign.

Last fall I was of the mind that Christians in California needed to be politically engaged, but abstain from the Proposition 8 vote. I read (and heard) plenty of arguments on either side, and looking at the situation I saw that no good could come of it. Either we look like closed-minded bigots, who just want to exclude people who aren’t like us, or we endorse something most of us recognize as sin.

The church had no place in this fight, and it has no place in the fights to come in California and other states. That’s not because I think the we shouldn’t be involved in the discussion, it’s because of the way the question is framed.

As it stands now there are two options: give a right to marriage, or deny a right to marriage. As long as there are only those two ways, Christians have no good choice. Luckily there’s a third way. There are three facets to marriage: legal, social, and religious. The legal facet deals with governmental recognition. The social facet deals with the recognition of society. And religious is pretty well self-explanatory. There’s really no way the church can win through the legal facet.

The social recognition of marriage exists on a number of levels from family and friends to society-at-large. This is the place where, for most people, the recognition of their relationship is really important. And in the social arena recognition is all but guaranteed. Two people can have a ceremony that includes vows to each other and their families and friends, which – as far as they are concerned – renders them married.

Legal recognition is a complicated issue, which also exists on many levels from hospital visitation and survivor benefits to licenses and joint tax returns. I’ll be getting into that soon at A New Kind of Politics.

It is, of course, religious recognition that is of true importance to the Church. Unfortunately – from my perspective, anyway – there will always be churches that support same-sex marriages and perform the ceremonies. And while we can open dialogue with them, it is unlikely either will convince the other. So the tension will remain. But whatever happens legally and socially, churches can maintain their positions.

The real benefit in abstaining is that staying away from emotional, hostile campaigns – especially those based on soundbites and picket signs – allows us to demonstrate what it means to love a person regardless of his sin, without condoning it. There was a great opportunity to demonstrate opposition to sin without condemnation, and we threw it away, instead opting for the much easier path of passing a law. In the process we sacrificed any opportunity for respectful disagreement.

Some wear the accusations of homophobia as a badge of honor. “If they ain’t shootin’ at ya, you must not be doing it right.” That may be the case for a prophet, but there’s nothing prophetic about “Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve.” There’s nothing Christian about it, either.

We need to approach these questions like we’re talking about real people. In fact, we need to approach all questions of sin that way. So next time there’s a vote about something like this, do what I do: vote “present”.

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain”…it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy…that’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

When I was in elementary and middle school, I would read a couple of books every month, and not just young adult stuff (I probably should have stuck to that though, Disclosure was a tad inappropriate for a 12-year-old). I didn’t read much in high school or college though. Reading books was hard. It would take so long to get through 100 pages that in time I’d forgotten what the beginning was about, so I’d give up and start something else—or nothing else.

Why did my reading drop off so sharply in 8th grade? The answer is obvious now: in 1995, the summer after seventh grade, we got our first real internet connection. We’d had Prodigy and AOL before, but that summer I fired up Netscape and set sale in the waters of AltaVista and Webcrawler to see what I could see. That’s when it all began. By my senior year of college about 90% of my time outside of class, work, and sleep was spent in front of a TV, an XBox, or my computer (not much of the remaining 10% was spent studying). This is where Carr’s research and my brain begin to intersect.

A book is arranged for linear thought; the ideas flow with purpose (we hope) from one to the next in a set order. As a reader, you are expected by the author to read those ideas in that order, and you expect to do it. Everything about the book’s design is meant to encourage you, and to minimize any obstacles. This allows the act of reading to be done simply and naturally, so that your mental energy can be focused on the ideas. This is “deep reading.” Little effort is needed to focus on the symbols in front of you and decode them, so you are free “to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction.”

Reading online is different. Nearly every page we encounter is full of extraneous information. Even on this site there are links to categories, recent posts and comments, and links to different types of archives. On other sites, there may or may not be links within the text, advertisements, or live RSS feeds from other sites. These things are not only distracting to the reader, but they’re intended to distract. And that makes it tough to read deeply.

Each time you have to decide whether or not to click. It may only take an instant, but when you have to do it every few hundred words, and contend with advertisements across the top, in the sidebar, and possibly in the body of the article, it takes a considerable amount of mental energy just to process and discard that info. Of course, we don’t discard everything, and when we jump to a new page, we have to do start all over again; it affects our ability for deep reading.

Until recently, this would all have been described in terms of habit: “Extended internet use leads to troubling habits of mind.” That’s because the prevailing view was that once we reach adulthood, the structure of our brains is set and immutable. But that’s no longer the case, according to research cited by Carr:

James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.”

This knowledge can be freeing. We’re no longer condemned by the decisions our 6-, 10-, and 15-year-old elves made about video games and TV. We can change. And parents no longer have to fear that letting their kid watch an extra episode of Go Diego Go! is going to ruin their chances of getting into Duke. But there is also some weight to it. Read again Carr’s realization about his own diminished abilities as proof. We can change our brains for the better. We can also do some minor physiological damage. In one study he cites, after just 5 hours of internet use over 5 days, the “subjects had already rewired their brains.”

The secret is a derivative of Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, now experiencing a resurgence of popularity: “the medium is the message.” In essence, the stuff on the website—the content—doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that you’re on the internet, on a computer(or phone or whatever), that makes the difference to your brain. It’s what you use, not what you use it for.

What does this have to do with Jesus, Christianity, and your average Christian? A lot, actually. It means that you have to think about more than Bible reading and theology…the way you do things is as important as the things you do. Some examples:

• I’m in front of a computer about 12 hours a day. I do work, entertainment, and homework online. So it makes sense to pop up Bible Gateway, YouVersion, or Bible Web App to read for class. But I had to give it up, because when I read the Bible online, I get nothing from it. There are too many distractions, so I read on paper. I can’t keyword search, I have to read whole passages. I have to wade into concepts before I fish out the nuggets for my work. Over the last year, giving up online Bible reading has changed the way I understand the Bible, and the way I understand God.
• The discussions about online church have gotten pretty intense over the last couple of years. But among all of the theological discussion, few are asking questions about the way we think: What will moving what should be our most profound community online do to our ability to relate personally? Will it cause us to understand communication as synonymous with community? More importantly: Is the belief in some corners that online community is equal to physical community a result of intense use of social networking? The movement may be evidence of the changes our technophilia has already brought about—ditto for recent attempts at online communion and baptism.

The clearest and most beneficial implication is that reading in long-form (books, magazines, long bible passages) will enhance your ability to think deeply, which will help you understand your faith and your relationship with Jesus in profound ways. I can’t promise that you’ll one day become C.S. Lewis or John Piper if you just read enough. But you can know the Bible well, and you can think deeply about Jesus, however your brain works now. Praise the God who can truly renew our minds—and our brains.

The Shallows is well-written and well-researched. Carr includes a brief history of “intellectual technologies”, a description of how those technologies affect our brains, and some in-depth discussion of recent research on the brain. It’s insightful and quite possibly prophetic, in the tradition of Neil Postman’s Technopoly.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is not going to be in the running for any awards that have to do with acting, direction, or writing. There were too many low-panning shots, too much slow motion, too much sophomoric humor, and not enough social commentary. But there aren’t many movies that can keep me entertained the whole time I’m in the theater. Even fewer that can pull it off at a length of 2 1/2 hours. This one pulled it off.

There’s no master thread holding this thing together, it’s pure formula. There are strong themes of faith (not in God), responsibility (Optimus: “Fate never calls on us at the moment of our choosing.”), and accepting who you are (Sam tries, and fails at, being “normal”). In the end though, it’s a Good vs. Evil showdown – all life on Earth hanging in the balance – featuring the purest good and purest evil characters you’ve seen on screen.

And this is where my dilemma lies in reviewing a film like Transformers. I see no real benefit in trying to delve deeply into the presuppositions and assumed worldviews of a typical summer action blockbuster, because there is no depth. It’s like the pool at my apartment complex: it’s 3 feet deep all over. This movie does not beget thinking.

In my opinion, the $250 million the film has pulled in at the domestic box office (nearly $500 million worldwide) as of Thursday is more significant. Why are people turning out for this movie in the same numbers as they did for The Dark Knight? There’s hardly any similarity. The Dark Knight offers a broken antihero, a “white knight”, and a villian with no history and no purpose, who seeks only chaos (and finds it with little trouble). The plot twists and the characters go through wrenching change as “an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.” It intentionally raises questions of value and principle in society.

Transformers has none of that. The plot twists are emotional, but uninspired. The premise (Earth will be destroyed!) is not at all creative. The characters are two-dimensional at their best. And the ancient robots are stronger than the new ones for no reason at all. I want so, so, so badly to go on a rant about intellectual passivity and the dumbing down of culture…but I can’t, because I liked the movie as much as the other 50 million lemmings that preceded and succeeded me in the theater.

So I let Murray Jardine, an Auburn poli-sci professor, lead into my thought with this bit from his book The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society:

Perhaps the most familiar critique [of consumerism is that it] represents a crassly materialistic way of life as opposed to a more aesthetically oriented way of life that would be more fulfilling. People should quit buying so much junk and instead appreciate great literature, fine art, and classical music. But this argument actually demonstrates how complete a hold consumerism has on our thinking.

As I sit here lamenting the fact that even I, the particularly intelligent fellow I like to think I am, enjoyed such a bottom-feeding movie, wishing I had spent my time on something better, like Up, or whatever else is out that critics think is grand, I realize that it wouldn’t matter. Even if I hadn’t seen it, I could talk until I lost my voice about what it means when a culture spends half a billion dollars on a bad movie without making myself any better. Because if it had been a good movie, I would have completely condoned a culture spending a half a billion dollars on something of so little true value.

I know this is a pop culture site and you probably just came to find out if there was anything in the plot worth thinking more about. Honestly, the three paragraphs I devoted to the actual film do it justice completely. The rest is written in the hope that Christian pop cultural analysis—not necessarily what you find here, which usually meets the standard—will start to go deeper than the films, books, music, or trends we’re discussing to the foundational aspects of the culture they embody.

Oh, and some company made a car that runs on compressed air. I don’t think that’s a big deal, though. Definitely focus on the motorcycle.

1) Oatmeal – Not only is it my son’s favorite food, bu for about $2 a week I can feed breakfast to my whole family, and have a snack at work. Throw in $1.50 for some raisins if you have a fancy palette.

2) Pancakes – The just-add-water variety is the cheapest (and still edible) but Bisquick won’t break the bank. Mixed with some cheap syrup and you have enough carbs to get you through a week.

3) Spaghetti – Cheap, healthy, and versatile. Hunts makes 30 different sauces for a dollar.

4) Corn on the Cob – A wise man said, “Corn-on-the-cob should be called ‘corn.’ Everything else is corn-off-the-cob.” That has no relevance here. But 5-6 for $1 does.

5) Wendy’s Crispy Chicken Sandwich – Hands down the best 99 cents I’ve spent since you could get M&M’s 3 for $1 at 7 Eleven. McD’s, Burger King, and KFC all bow before Dave Thomas’ posthumous mastery of the mystery chicken sandwich.

Hon. Mention) Peanut Butter & Jelly – Usually cheap and always satisfying. This one just missed the list because my wife insists we get fancy jelly, which defeats the purpose.

Last fall I was of the mind that Christians in California needed to be politically engaged, but abstain from the Proposition 8 vote. I read (and heard) plenty of arguments on either side, and looking at the situation I saw that no good could come of it. Either we look like closed-minded bigots, who just want to exclude people who aren’t like us, or we endorse something most of us recognize as sin.

The church had no place in this fight, and it has no place in the fights to come in California and other states. That’s not because I think the we shouldn’t be involved in the discussion, it’s because of the way the question is framed.

As it stands now there are two options: give a right to marriage, or deny a right to marriage. As long as there are only those two ways, Christians have no good choice. Luckily there’s a third way. There are three facets to marriage: legal, social, and religious. The legal facet deals with governmental recognition. The social facet deals with the recognition of society. And religious is pretty well self-explanatory. There’s really no way the church can win through the legal facet.

The social recognition of marriage exists on a number of levels from family and friends to society-at-large. This is the place where, for most people, the recognition of their relationship is really important. And in the social arena recognition is all but guaranteed. Two people can have a ceremony that includes vows to each other and their families and friends, which – as far as they are concerned – renders them married.

Legal recognition is a complicated issue, which also exists on many levels from hospital visitation and survivor benefits to licenses and joint tax returns. I’ll be getting into that soon at A New Kind of Politics.

It is, of course, religious recognition that is of true importance to the Church. Unfortunately – from my perspective, anyway – there will always be churches that support same-sex marriages and perform the ceremonies. And while we can open dialogue with them, it is unlikely either will convince the other. So the tension will remain. But whatever happens legally and socially, churches can maintain their positions.

The real benefit in abstaining is that staying away from emotional, hostile campaigns – especially those based on soundbites and picket signs – allows us to demonstrate what it means to love a person regardless of his sin, without condoning it. There was a great opportunity to demonstrate opposition to sin without condemnation, and we threw it away, instead opting for the much easier path of passing a law. In the process we sacrificed any opportunity for respectful disagreement.

Some wear the accusations of homophobia as a badge of honor. “If they ain’t shootin’ at ya, you must not be doing it right.” That may be the case for a prophet, but there’s nothing prophetic about “Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve.” There’s nothing Christian about it, either.

We need to approach these questions like we’re talking about real people. In fact, we need to approach all questions of sin that way. So next time there’s a vote about something like this, do what I do: vote “present”.

In short, the characters were magnificent. Each had enough of the original to be recognizable, without being an impersonation (One exception was Karl Urban in the role of McCoy. I could hardly take him seriously with his forced accent and constant catch phrasing). Simon Pegg was hilarious as Scotty. Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura all have their big moments on screen and own their scenes.

Chris Pine as James Tiberius Kirk does a great job resisting any temptation to channel William Shatner. The character is all his own. Zachary Quinto leaves Spock’s emotion right below the surface; you can see the tension behind the mask, and sense the character’s feeling. The best part is that the friendship that develops between the two feels totally natural.

These well-formed and well-played characters fall into a story that seems to have driven more than a few Trek fans to madness over the last few days. A ship captained by a Romulan name Nero emerges from a “lightning storm” and attacks the USS Kelvin. In the tussle we find out that Nero has come from the future, and George Kirk, Jim’s father, is killed just moments after Jim’s birth. At that moment, the timeline splinters. You don’t see it on screen, so much as hear it: When Nero returns, 25 years later, and the situation becomes apparent, Uhura says, “An alternate reality?”

At this point each character has to start dealing with some new questions. What is it like to live your life knowing that the future once laid out in front of you has been changed? What if you know you are living in your own alternate reality? What if you know it was caused by the actions of an agent from outside the system? At one point Kirk asks a character from the future, “In the alternate reality, did I know my father?”

(I’ve been told that what follows is a forced comparison. I would agree, except that it wasn’t. My brain is just weird.)

We have to deal with two similar situations. Our timeline was broken first in the garden, when Eve was deceived, and Adam careless. What should have been a blissful existence inside the garden became a difficult one filled with pain and work and fear and death.

Our timeline broke a second time, with the Incarnation. This time the outside agent came to right our wrongs and to take on himself the punishment for the incident in the garden and all that it brought about in us.

We’re a lot like Captain Kirk, separated from the father we might have known; we’re drunken, disorderly, and delinquent. We give in to our emotions and desires with little restraint. But Jesus comes to right the ship.

There’s no Christ figure in this movie, and I don’t think that these characters are examples for us to follow. But the use of this back-story for the most prominent character in the film, and the way it resonates, shows that even though we haven’t all lost a parent, we know we’ve lost something that we would have — should have — known, and that loss has crushed us. But if we, as Capt. Pike suggests, live for something bigger, it doesn’t have to destroy us.

So, tell me, what is it like knowning that you’re living your own alternate reality?

So yes, using computers all the time and chatting in the comments sections of weird web sites will modify the circuitry of the brain and have consequences that will affect the way you think. Maybe I should put a disclaimer on the text boxes on this site. However, there are events that will scramble your brains even more: for example, falling in love. I don’t want to imagine the frantic rewiring that has to go on inside your head in response to that, or the way it can change the way you see the entire rest of the world, for good or bad, for the whole of your life

How has experiencing Christ changed our brains? I’m sure he’ll have a field day with that question. Just ignore him though, he’s cranky when…well, always.

Windows 7 is set for release this fall, in time for Christmas. Not only that, but you can download a free evaluation copy of the release client (the version MS hopes to release in it’s current form; it’s more than a beta, less than the real thing) from Microsoft through July 1. It will run until March, when it will shut down automatically every two hours, then end completely June 1, 2010.

I’m running the RC on my home computer and it’s awesome. It’s a massive improvement on XP, without the bloat and frustration of Vista.

If you’ve got some confidence in your tech abilities and a spare hard drive (or partition) download it and have a go.

But now my daydreams are different. As technological magic becomes routine, I wonder whether a visit to a preindustrial society might teach me more than it teaches them. The only thing more fascinating than our technology is the idea of getting along without it. Maybe the way to recapture the magic is to turn all that stuff off.

I’ve been repeatedly amazed by how enamored much of the tech community has been with the idea of getting away from the gadgets that they make a living designing, selling, using, and reviewing.

This may not fall under the heading “popular” culture (and it probably reveals a bit too much about my true level of geekdom), but this editorial from io9 discusses the conflict in the sci-fi community between a childlike “sense of wonder” and a mature examination of humanity.