Films From The 80’s

Tonight my family watched The Princess Bride and all six of us loved it, two years old through forty-six.  Smarmy, geeky, silly movies from 1980’s.  You gotta love them. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, The Empire Strikes Back, The Karate Kid, The Last Starfighter, . . . and of course War Games.

Good news for movie lovers –the original WarGames will be back at the movie theaters next week. Seriously. WarGames will mark its 25th anniversary (man I feel old) by playing for one night only in select theaters nationwide on Thursday, July 24th. The showing will include never-before-seen interviews with the film’s creators, the cast (including Ferris Bueller Professor Gadget Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy), and crew. The July 24th celebration and reprise will also include a sneak peek at the making of the sequel – WarGames: The Dead Code.

I know where I will be next Thursday.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

We finally got around to taking the family to see the new Indiana Jones movie. It was in many ways what I was expecting. There was the cast of characters with whom we were familiar, chase scenes, critters to make you squirm (like the previous snakes and rats and roaches), exotic locations, humor, and the sense that you are engaging in entertainment that is not as mindless as most.

But there were some things that were NOT what I was expecting. Previous episodes were written in the vein of what you might hear from callers into Michael Medved’s radio talk show when he hosts his weekly Conspiracy Day. However, Read more

Are Professors Being Expelled

“Professors aren’t being fired because they support intelligent design, they are being fired for lots of other reasons and then they have to justify their firing to other people and say it was because they advocated ID, rather than admit they were in some other way inadequate.”

That is what I was recently told by a cheeky fellow who was trying to cast an aura of confidence and disdain.

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Our Young Indiana Jones

My wife, Susan, wrote the following:

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This was the year of Indiana Jones for our son, Daniel, who recently celebrated his 4th birthday. While my search for Indiana Jones themed party plates, cups and other Indy birthday paraphernalia turned futile (all the party stores were expecting shipments next week) I did manage to find the requested toys. There is the Indiana Jones Lego set which took my engineering challenged brain a mere hour to assemble. There is the action figure, complete with a press button which repeats bits of dialog from the movies. And of course where would an aspiring four year old Indiana Jones be without a genuine whip? The model I found is undeniably cool - looks authentic but is still soft and cushy and best of all, it makes genuine whip sounds followed by a bit of the Indiana Jones theme music. Cool huh?

We are already starting to regret the whip. On the first day Read more

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Ben Stein has done the unthinkable. He has become an advocate of something that our academic institutions and the gatekeepers of accepted Science absolutely will not tolerate. He has advocated freedom of inquiry. How dare he suggest that PhDs in mathematics, physics, and genetics be allowed to question the dogma of the scientific elite? Doesn’t he know that Science is about unquestioning acceptance of the theories of our predecessors? Where would we be if Newton and Einstein had the audacity to question the accepted theories of their day?

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Less Profanity Means More Money

Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull