It’s finally here! I’ve just completed my first full week of blog posts on my new blog, Liberty On Screen. It’s a place for me to combine three of my loves: writing, movies/TV, and libertarian thought into regularly updated blog where I discuss themes of liberty (or a lack thereof) in popular movies and TV shows. Topics this week include Transformers 3, and the Star Trek episode, A Taste of Armageddon. I’m particularly pleased with the latter. Check back frequently for regular updates, and feel free to leave me a comment with suggested topics! Also, be sure to “Like” my page on Facebook!

For a while now I’ve wanted to start a website where my film and TV interests and my libertarian interests can merge. In other words, a place where I can write about movies and TV shows and point out both the libertarian and distinctly un-libertarian ideas they convey. I think I’m finally close. I registered a domain name tonight that I think will be the one. In fact, I was shocked it wasn’t already taken. I hope to have more specific information for you soon. For now, stay tuned…

“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service.” — Albert Einstein (via lewrockwell.com)

I was introduced to the Buffy Sainte-Marie song, “The Universal Soldier” in 2008 when Ron Paul asked Aimee Allen to sing it at his Rally for the Republic at the Target Center in Minneapolis. I had almost forgotten all about it until the Donovan cover came up randomly in my Peter, Paul & Mary station on Pandora the other day. Such a powerful song! Here are the lyrics courtesy of letssingit.com:

He’s 5 foot 2 and he’s 6 feet 4
He fights with missiles and with spears 
He’s all of 31 and he’s only 17
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years

He’s a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain 
A Buddhist, and a Baptist and Jew 
And he knows he shouldn’t kill 
And he knows he always will kill 
You for me my friend and me for you

And he’s fighting for Canada 
He’s fighting for France 
He’s fighting for the USA
And he’s fighting for the Russians 
And he’s fighting for Japan 
And he thinks we’ll put an end to war this way

And he’s fighting for democracy 
He’s fighting for the reds 
He says it’s for the peace of all 
He’s the one, who must decide
Who’s to live and who’s to die
And he never sees the writing on the wall

But without him how would Hitler
Have condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone 
He’s the one who gives his body 
As a weapon of the war 
And without him all this killing can’t go on

He’s the universal soldier and he really is to blame 
His orders comes from far away no more
They come from him and you and me 
And brothers can’t you see 
This is not the way we put an end to war

Wait. So the new Transformers movie is subtitled “Dark of the Moon?” I’ve been thinking the whole time that it was “Dark Side of the Moon.” Maybe it’s Pink Floyd’s fault, but the latter just rolls off the tongue better. “Dark of the Moon” just doesn’t sound right. Or is it just me?

A couple of years ago, my alma mater made the jump from NAIA athletics to NCAA Division III. Berry College currently has no football team, nor has it had one in recent memory. The conversation has come up many times about whether Berry ever would, or should add football to the list of sports it competes in. Not much has come of that thus far, but that could be changing soon.

Today, the school’s president, Stephen Briggs, sent out an email to alumni announcing that Berry and seven other schools are forming their own conference, and football was brought up. He addressed some of the history of the discussion of football that I mentioned above, and discusses the possible future of football at Berry. Here’s what he says:

Members of the new conference will begin working on detailed plans for the inaugural year of play in 2012-13, as the SCAC finishes out its last year of play in 2011-12. As part of this process, Berry will give careful consideration to the possibility of adding football and track and field. As you may know, on-campus discussion of football began last year independent of the forming of this new conference. That discussion will continue into the fall semester. We anticipate a decision by the Board of Trustees at its October meeting.

You can find some of this information in this press release on Berry’s website. Unfortunately the press release doesn’t contain the portion of the email that I quoted above.

This is a controversial topic among members of the Berry College community. Many seem to feel it will change the atmosphere of the school, or bring in a bad element. While I’ll admit there could be credence to those viewpoints, I have been and still am tentatively in favor of football being added to Berry athletics. I’m a fan of college football, and would love to drive down to Mount Berry, Georgia to cheer on the Vikings on a Saturday afternoon.

If you’ve been following my blog entries lately, you know that I’ve been reviewing several James Bond movies. John Gruber and Dan Benjamin have been going through them movie by movie on their podcast, The Talk Show, and when Netflix added them to their instant streaming service I decided to play along. Well, the fun had to stop sometime, right? It seems as though Netflix has removed the official Bond films from its instant streaming library returning them to being only available via DVD. Thus ends my current round of Bond movie reviews. I’m sorry to see them go! I was just working my way through A View To A Kill. It’s a real shame too as the next movie, The Living Daylights, is one of my favorites.

Last week, the social networking world was all a-buzz with talk of the rapture. For those who don’t know, the rapture refers to a time when we Christians believe that Jesus will return and take his followers to heaven. The Bible certainly has some things to say about the end times. Here’s what Jesus said in Matthew 24:30-31:

30 “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.

31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. 

The rapture has been introduced to popular culture before, for example in the “Left Behind” series of books and movies, but what got people talking about it last week were the predictions of a man named Harold Camping. I’ll let Wikipedia take it from here:

Camping gained notoriety owing to his prediction that the Rapture would take place on May 21, 2011, and that the end of the world would subsequently take place five months later on October 21, 2011. Followers of Camping claimed that around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the world’s population) would be raptured.

I’m really not sure why this became such a big topic of discussion. I could be wrong, but I don’t get the sense that people who believed Camping’s rapture time table were a large group. I think I saw someone suggest that the rise of social networking has helped spread what might normally be minor stories far and wide.

Non-Christians of course were having a field day making fun of the notion of a rapture. I understand that it sounds silly to them. What really bothered me though was the way in which many Christians reacted to the rapture story.

I didn’t really think that Camping had really worked it out to the degree that he could accurately predict the date on which the rapture would occur. After all, Jesus goes on to say in Matthew 24:36-41:

36 “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.

41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

I didn’t understand why Christians seemed to be joining in with the non-Christians in relentlessly mocking the event. I may have even joked about it a time or two. I think we need to be careful not to seem like we think the entire notion of the rapture is silly. While I think most Christians probably doubted that Camping had any special insight into the timing of Christ’s return, Jesus is clear that as Christians we need to be ready. Matthew 24:42 says:

42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

One of my all-time favorite books is The Robe, by Lloyd C. Douglas. It takes place before, during, and just after the time of Christ’s death and resurrection. One of the Christian characters is described as constantly looking up as if he expects to see someone (Christ) coming up the road. I think likewise as Christians, we ought to always be expecting our Lord to return at any moment, though of course it’s so easy to get caught up in our daily lives.

I remember sitting in my car on the morning of May 21 looking up at the clouds and thinking to myself something along the lines of, “If today be the day, then Lord come.” My hope would be that everyday I would think that.

Our friends the Kramers are in the process of adopting a little boy named Ivan from overseas. The child pictured here is a different little boy who is also in need of adoption that the Kramers have been praying for. His name is Nikita. This is what Karen Kramer had to say about him on her blog:

His blond hair and beautiful blue eyes immediately caught our attention. I was also taken back by the fact that he did not have a family already! I love the expression on his sweet little face. He looks like he is quite the thinker with just a little mischief thrown in for good measure!:)  

Nikita has several medical needs, but more importantly his window for being adopted could be closing. Karen goes on:

There are a few things that he and Ivan in common…however, Nikita is older than Ivan. Normally, no big deal. But in Nikita’s case, it means he is close to transfer….very close! He is 2 years older than Ivan which means that he will be 4 years old this September! Unfortunately 4 is the typical age for transfers to adult institutions! Can you even imagine this little guy in an institution with adults? The last statistic I read was that approx. 80% of children die within the first year of transfer because of the conditions.  

Please join us in helping the Kramers lift Nikita up in prayer, and if you know anyone who is looking into adopting a child, pass this information on to them. To learn more about Nikita or donate money toward his adoption, visit his profile here.

[UPDATE] Great news! Our friends the Kramers recently found out that Nikita has been adopted! Thanks to everyone for praying for him.

For their podcast The Talk Show, John Gruber and Dan Benjamin have been watching the James Bond movies in order and discussing them on the show. Now that Netflix has added the bulk of the series to its instant watch library, I thought I’d play along. Warning! Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!

What a great year 1983 was! Not one, but two James Bond movies were released that year. How fitting it is then that I review Octopussy and Never Say Never Again as back-to-back blog entries. I’ll get into particulars in a moment, but while Never certainly has its flaws, it’s better than Octopussy.

The Wikipedia entry has the details, but in short Never Say Never Again is a remake of the older Bond film Thunderball, but made by another film company. It’s a fascinating story reading about how this all came about. I’ve seen Thunderball many times and even read the novel, but the plot of Never Say Never Again still felt pretty unfamiliar too me, even though I watched it as recently as a couple of years ago. Basically SPECTRE compromises a U.S. military officer to aid them in stealing two nuclear warheads and holds NATO ransom. (I think it was NATO.) Bond has to hunt down SPECTRE’s project manager in charge of the operation, a man named Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who has seduced the compromised U.S. officer’s sister, Domino (Kim Basinger). Largo is assisted by the evil Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera), who spends most of the movie unsuccessfully trying to kill Bond.

As a libertarian who doesn’t believe in intellectual property, I love the whole concept of this movie! I know the filmmakers went to great pains not to violate the copyrights of EON Productions, who make the “official” Bond movies, but even so watching this movie is like getting a glimpse into a world blessedly unfettered by copyright. And on top of that, it’s not a bad Bond film. After all, when you’ve got Irvin Kershner as your director (he directed The Empire Strikes Back), how can it not be at least decent?

Let’s get the bad out of the way, shall we? The music is terrible. I mean just dreadful. I think it’s safe to say this movie has the worst music of any Bond movie, starting with the terrible theme song. I’ll give them points for going for the classic style of a Bond theme song, but it’s just awful. And yet I can’t get it out of my head. The rest of the music in the film is bad too. It really sounds like stereotypical 80’s TV drama music, not something from a major motion picture.

The worst scene in the movie is the one in which Bond finally kills Blush. It’s by far the worst Bond-getting-out-of-almost-getting-killed scene in all of Bond history. So she finally catches him after a pretty awesome chase scene. She has him sitting on the ground, gun pointed at his crotch telling him where the first shot will go. In his pocket he has a pen that shoots an explosive projectile. So how do the writers get him to use it? He tells Blush that he was going to write her into his diary, so she grabs a piece of paper and orders him to write down how great a lover she was, thus giving him the chance to use the pen. Ok, so he takes advantage of her pride, but come on. Couldn’t they think of some more plausible way for him to kill her? And then right after she explodes, Felix walks in (Bond’s CIA counterpart). Bond asks how long he’s been standing there to which Felix responds, “Long enough.” Really? Your associate is about to get shot in the crotch before being killed and you’re just going to stand there to find out how he gets out of the situation? If I were Bond I’d have suspected Felix were in on it.

I’m not a big fan of Kim Basinger in general, but I really can’t figure out Domino’s attraction to Largo. I guess he’s charming and rich and all. But early on in the film she asks him what he would do if she were to leave him and after laughing it off he tells her quite seriously that he would cut her throat. She looks a little nervous, but wouldn’t you try really hard to get away at that point?

All that aside, I did enjoy this movie. Sean Connery reminds you why he’s the best Bond with his charm and confidence. Brandauer is actually quite a good bad guy. He does a good job of being creepy crazy. Max von Sydow is Blofeld! He’s only in the movie a short amount of time, but it’s still excellent casting. And then there’s Rowan Atkinson, the bumbling British government worker Bond runs into in the Bahamas. Atkinson is of course famous for playing Mr. Bean. My dad and brother used to always say, perhaps to annoy me, that Atkinson should play Bond. Well, here he is in a Bond movie. And that game Domination that Bond and Largo play? I want that. The three dimensional CGI globe still looks cool almost thirty years later.

The Wikipedia article points out the similarities between the way M sees Bond as archaic in this movie to the way M viewed Bond in 1995’s GoldenEye. I thought another similarity was in the female villains in the two movies. Fatima Blush seems like the prototype for Famke Janssen’s Xenia Onatopp with her obvious insanity and lust for killing.

If you haven’t seen this one, it’s worth checking out. If it’s between this one and Octopussy, watch this one.